Heinz “57 flavors” ketchup actually has zero flavor. I realized this while grilling hot dogs for lunch. I have delicious whole-seed mustard, some nice hot pickle relish, but I’ll be damned if I’ve ever found a ketchup that has any taste. It wasn’t always this way, and I remember topping my chicken nuggets (didn’t eat the beefs back then) with incredibly delicious, red, sweet, tangy ketchup.

Perhaps Heinz has changed their recipe to accommodate diabetics, high blood pressure folks, or people not allowed to have flavors. It sucks.

When finals are over, I’m making myself a big batch of Spicy Homemade Ketchup, according to this recipe from Emeril: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/spicy-homemade-ketchup-recipe/index.html

You want to put this on your burger:
* 3 pounds very ripe tomatoes, coarsely chopped
* 1 1/2 teaspoons vegetable oil
* 1 small onion, finely chopped
* 1 large clove garlic, minced
* 1/4 cup light brown sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon ground mustard
* 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
* 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
* 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
* 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
* 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
* Pinch ground cinnamon
* 1/4 cup cider vinegar
* Salt

Can’t stop playing this. It is terrible yet so addictive.

PROTEKT YO SELF

Too many snacks make American kids fat. And dumb and slow. Ok just fat.

I’m disappointed in America, with what’s going on.
- China is KILLING us in Energy Policy. Melissa’s work at FERC is making that painfully obvious to me. The next few years will make it obvious to you.
- Obama’s murder of the US Space program. Where do you think all of your nice technologies, from microprocessors to solar panels to synthetic fabrics to your friggin coffee thermos came from? NASA! What inspired generations of us to become scientists and engineers? Most will answer, the novelty and challenge of space, shows like Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.
- Tea Party movement… give me a friggin break. People are stupid enough to listen to this crap? You fools started these wars, where the defense budget eats more than half of our national spending. Now you’re suddenly so worried about health care?

UGH.

Avatar was an awesome movie and I sincerely enjoyed it. The graphics totally blew my mind, and all I could think about what an insane amount of computing time it took to generate all those frames of 3d imagery. 3d must be far more complex than ordinary 2d computer generated graphics.

But the plot line seemed all too familiar. Read this, but not unless you’ve already seen the movie! (click the picture to see it full size)

Cygwin makes Hadoop MUCH harder to run.

If you’re having problems setting up your DFS file share under Cygwin, see what happened to me. Notice that you have to use the WINDOWS path (C:\\cygwin\\home\\Rajat\\…..) With escape characters.

Rajat@rtde ~/hadoop-0.20.1
$ bin/hadoop dfs -copyFromLocal /home/Rajat/java/mrh/input inputs
copyFromLocal: File /home/Rajat/java/mrh/input does not exist.

Rajat@rtde ~/hadoop-0.20.1
$ bin/hadoop dfs -copyFromLocal C:\cygwin\home\Rajat\java\mrh\input input
copyFromLocal: File C:cygwinhomeRajatjavamrhinput does not exist.

Rajat@rtde ~/hadoop-0.20.1
$ bin/hadoop dfs -copyFromLocal C:\\cygwin\\home\\Rajat\\java\\mrh\\input input
(((THIS WORKED)))

Test:

Rajat@rtde ~/hadoop-0.20.1
$ bin/hadoop dfs -ls
Found 1 items
drwxr-xr-x – Rajat supergroup 0 2009-12-16 23:30 /user/Rajat/input

Rajat@rtde ~/hadoop-0.20.1
$ bin/hadoop dfs -ls input
Found 1 items
-rw-r–r– 1 Rajat supergroup 683956 2009-12-16 23:30 /user/Rajat/input/162523852.csv