Why you should try online dating

Not so long ago an acquaintance asked me if doing online dating was a good idea (see prior post detailing experiences with specific websites).

I thought about it and gave them this answer.  Now there are two normal "relationship-ish" answers people typically give when answering this question.

1. Getting out there
   
   Perhaps the most important reason for going online dating is to just put yourself out there.   You aren't going to find Mr. Or Mrs. right sitting around the house.
   
2. Figuring things out
   
   If you're single and haven't been out there much (see prior post about the game theory of online dating), it's good to get out there and meet people and figure out what you're looking for, what's good for you, and what's not good for you.  You'll find the answer may be very different than what you originally thought.

Now, those are the generic reasons people give.  Here are a few answers you probably weren't expecting but none the less are true.

1. Go do stuff you like to do
   
   If you have some hobby you like to do the hobby, it's likely you'll be able to meet someone you can do it with.  Even if it's just for one date.  For me, I love to eat food (see dining adventures), and online dating was a great way for me to check out a bunch of restaurants I'd been meaning to try.
   
2. Go do stuff you've never done before
   
   Likewise you're likely going to meet people who have much different hobbies and/or interests than you.  So you'll end up doing some cool/interesting stuff, even if it's just for one date.
    
3. Make some new friends
   
   While this can be hit or miss based on each other's personalities.   Sometimes you can meet some cool new people even if they'll never end up a romantic partner.
   
   
4. Meet some crazy people
   
   You will inevitably have some bad dates.  They end up for great stories with your friends.  I have my share of stories that my friends love to hear.

What's wrong with Final Fantasy XV

SPOILERS WARNING
SPOILERS WARNING
SPOILERS WARNING
 
I just finished up Final Fantasy XV to the level I wish to complete it (gave up on Costlemark postgame dungeon, not even going to bother with Pitioss).  While I enjoyed the game a lot, there was something subtle about the game I disliked.

As many reviews have stated, the story and characters were on the weak side compared to many Final Fantasy games.  There were just too many story elements that were either cut, skipped, or not fleshed out.  Perhaps some of these will be fleshed out in DLC, some may have been covered in the movie "Kingsglavie", but it just made the game not feel quite that fulfilling.  Here's some examples.

1) Who are the main characters?

This is obvious, but the game threw your entire team together at the very beginning of the story without much backstory.  This isn't a bad idea by itself, but it felt like the background of the characters was never fleshed out.  You get a few conversations in hotels/campsites, but it's not much.

A good counter example is Dragon Quest VIII, one of my favorite RPGs of all time.  The characters are relatively nameless at the beginning of the game, but little side adventures give you more information about them as the story advances. I think of the Mass Effect games are another a good example.  You get character side missions to help you learn more about the backstories of the characters and why they are there.  Final Fantasy XV could have had similar stories, helping your characters deal with "personal issues" in the story.  Perhaps these "side stories" will be in DLC later.

2) Aranea and Ravus, no boss battle

In many games, you meet a tough boss early in the game but get out of the fight due to some story element.  Perhaps the boss was simply distracting you for some other purpose.  You suspect you'll battle the boss later on as the boss was clearly too tough for you earlier in the game.

This is what I suspected when I first fought Aranea and encountered Ravus.  Aranea sort of becomes an ally (kinda?).  Ravus only appears in a disappointing zombie form later on.  It felt unfulfilling.

3) Ravus switches sides

For no reason at all, Ravus appears to switch sides at some point, which seemed out of place, and with little explanation in the story.

4) Prompto being an MT

Late in the game it's revealed that Prompto was a MT.  This wasn't really discussed further.

5) What about all the enemy generals?

At several points in the game enemy generals appear.  There's Verstael, the main general, which you never really see outside of a cameo.  There's the general you capture for a bit in Chapter 6 when you get back the Regalia.  He "escapes" at some point.  It could have been a good side quest to track him down and get him back and interrogate him.  Perhaps leading to another side quest, lets say a secret base you get to take out.  Nope, none of that happens.  Basically all those enemy generals you see in the beginning disappear and are never seen again.

6) What about the bad emperor?

Similarly, after having a cameo early on, he doesn't appear again.  Only in daemon form (which I learned online after defeating the daemon).

7) Universe history

The game could have fleshed out some of the world's history a bit better, for example the history of "the six".  The main characters could have had a side quest to some random memorial/place to learn about history in the universe at any point in time to flesh out the universe (Ignis could have pushed the matter, as he's the intellectual one).  It's there they learn about some mysterious history and .... tada Ardyn is the person in the story.  If such a quest would have foreshadowed the ending too much, fine.  They could have had random quests to just learn general history of the world.

Tasty Stuff I Ate in 2016

Following my tradition from 2014 and 2015, the following are dishes that I loved but didn't blog about.

1) Tea Leaf Salad from Burma Superstar, San Francisco, CA

Tea Leaf Salad

I forgot to take a "before" picture of this salad ... Oops.   You can find a good pic on Yelp here.

Anyways, this salad is pretty famous.  It's apparently a well known must have when going to Burma Superstar and was featured on Food Network at some point (according to their menu).  Fermented tea leaves, shrimp paste, all mixed into a salad with romaine, sesame, peanuts, and other stuff I can't remember. 

2) red octopus from Nishiki Market in Kyoto, Japan

Now I've had these mini octopuses many times, typically as an appetizer at Chinese banquet meals and I think I've munched on them at Korean restaurants too.  This was particularly tasty, but what made it so awesome is they stuffed (what I assume was) a hard boiled quail egg into this octopus's head before skewering it.  Together they were delicious.

3) red and black curry from Kara Kusa in Kyoto, Japan

One thing I've read about a number of times is how great food can come out of very tiny kitchens in Japan.   A restaurant concentrating on just 1-2 tiny things is something you may don't see much (if at all) in America.

My girlfriend had a curry craving, so we wandered into this place in Kyoto.  They serve three items.   Red curry with chicken, black curry with beef, or a mix of both.   That's it.   It's a one man shop with no other staff.

I got the mix above and it was delicious.   Everything was super soft and tender.  Curry was really flavorful but not too spicy.  Personally I preferred the red curry, but the black was delicious as well.

4) Bun Bo Hue from Bun Bo Hue An Nam, San Jose

I wasn't familiar with bun bo hue soup until wandering into this restaurant in 2015.  It wasn't until trying the dish at other restaurants that I realized how good this place was.  It was even name dropped by Vietnamese friends once I mentioned I liked bun bo hue.  The dish can come with pizzle (Ox penis) if you want.

5) Nam Khao from Green Champa Garden, Fremont

I've never had "Nam Khao" before but tried it at this small Thai/Laotian restaurant in Fremont.  It's basically a whole bunch of fried umami in one dish.  I can't remember all of the ingredients, but wikipedia says it's typically fried rice balls, pork, scallions, with some chilis, lime, mint, and fish sauce mixed in for good measure.   I'll be on the lookout for this dish in other places now.

6) Berry Combination from Railroad Cafe, Livermore

This is more of an ode to a restaurant now closed.  I've gotten this "berry combination" plate from Railroad Cafe for over 10 years.  I'm not sure why it's called the "berry combination" as berries are only in the fruit cup on the side, but it along with a cheese blintz, swedish pancakes, and lox on a bagel made for a delicious brunch dish.  Sorry to see Railroad Cafe now gone.

Play the lotto or have a kid?

A few years back I had a funny thought.  If you put all the money it would take into raising a child into the lotto instead, would your odds of being financially set for life be better?  My last post's thought experiment reminded me of this thought experiment I did years ago and decided to re-crunch the numbers.


Obviously, there's a set of ridiculous assumptions here.  The most ridiculous assumption is that the probability of any child becoming rich is the same across all people.  This is a horrible assumption in reality of course.  Also will a rich child actually take care of you?  Oh well, this is just a silly thought experiment.

Another assumption we need to make is how rich is rich?  Lets look at someone with a net worth of $100 million dollars.  There's never been a billion dollar Lotto payout but there have been multiple hundred million dollar payouts, so lets just go with this number.

The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292,201,338.

Based on the most recent census, the U.S. population is about 309 million.  According to a recent Forbes article, there are approximately 5000 hectomillionaire households in the U.S.  Now "household" is different than "people", but we'll go with this number as it's the best one I can find.

Based on these numbers, the odds of a person becoming a hectomillionare is about 1 out of every 61,800 people.

Using the default inputs on a cost of raising a child calculator I found online, it'll cost about $191,000 dollars to raise a child and not send them to college.  If you put all that money into Powerball, you have about a 1 in 3059 chance of winning ($2 for a ticket).

So if you wanna be rich, play the lotto instead of having a kid!

How much food do pets eat?

I recently had a conversation about an old article on the topic of carbon emissions of pets.  For example, here's an article on the topic from Salon.  Short story, dogs consume enough resources that their carbon footprint is more than your average SUV, while cats have a carbon footprint bordering on an average compact car.

So this led to an interesting thought.  If we didn't have pets, how much more food could we produce?  The thinking was that more food means lower prices and more abundant supply of food for more people and subsequently more people wouldn't go hungry.  Of course, increased supply of food wouldn't be a guarantee that the same supply would be produced.

Other assumptions are that all pet food is human edible (almost certainly false, as some dog food contains bone meal).  But I thought it was an interesting thought experiment to just look at how much food dogs & cats eat and the basically the cost our society may put on food production for non-humans.

Since it's hard to look at all pets, I'll look at just dogs & cats.  I'm going to stick to stats in the United States since it's just easier for this thought experiment.

According to ASCPA there are 70-80 million pet dogs in the US and 74-96 million pet cats.  Lets take the low end of those numbers, 70 million dogs and 74 million cats.

The average number of calories a moderately active adult male needs according to the USDA is about 2600 and for women its about 2000.  We'll take the average of these and say the average adult needs 2300 calories of food a day.

Based on this OSU veterinary chart dogs should get the calorie count according this an advanced formula based on weight.  Unfortunately I cannot find an estimate on the average weight of a dog in the United States.  So I'm just going to go with 25 pounds as the average and hope that's a good guess (I'm likely underestimating given that the most popular dogs are labradors, german shepards, golden retrievers, and bulldogs, which all exceed 25 pounds on average).

1.6 * 70 * (25 pounds / 2.2 (pounds / kg) )^0.75 = 693 calories needed by dog per day

For cats I found this random page saying cats need 20 calories per pound, with Google saying the average cat is 7.9 to 9.9 pounds.  We'll just assume 8 as the average.

20 * 8 = 160 calories needed by cat per day

So under the (likely bad) assumption that all food production for cats & dogs could be converted to human food and assuming all cats and dogs are fed properly, cats & dogs in the US eat enough to feed:

70 million dogs * 693 (calories / dog) / 2300 (calories / person) ~ 21 million people

74 million cats * 160 (calories / cat) / 2300 (calories / person) ~ 5.1 million people

Total ~ 26 million people that could be fed everyday if we didn't have pet dogs & cats

That's a lot of people!  Way more than I thought.  Many of the assumptions above are probably not good ones.  But even general "off by" factors, we could perhaps safely assume it's still enough to feed atleast 10 million people.  Any rounding errors could probably be handled via statistics on other pets not discussed here, the likely larger average weight of dogs, or the low bar I selected on many of the estimates.

Shelby Miller trade vs. Chris Sale trade

Last year the Atlanta Braves traded Shelby Miller to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Dansby Swanson, Aaron Blair, and Ender Inciarte.  The trade was widely panned that the Diamondbacks overpaid for Miller.  Miller was considered a very good pitcher, perhaps at peak a #2 starter, but nothing near an elite pitcher.  Miller had just come off an All-Star season for the Braves in 2016 and had 4 years of team control left.  If Miller could improve, he'd be an incredible asset under budgeted team control for quite some time.

The haul the Braves got for Miller was Blair, the MLB.com pre-2016 #56 prospect in baseball, Swanson the pre-2016 #8 overall prospect, and a MLB starter Ender Inciarte.  Inciarte was a relatively light hitting outfielder, but with elite defense.  He posted an incredible 5.3 WAR in 2015 with a 2.6 defensive WAR.

The 2016 results was about as horrific for the Diamondbacks as one could have ever imagined.  Miller struggled with his mechanics and was even demoted to the minor leagues at one point.  He finished the year 3-12, with a 6.15 ERA, and -0.7 WAR.

On the other hand Swanson continued to impress in the minors and got a small callup, Blair made it to the majors in 2016 (although struggled), and Inciarte produced a solid 3.8 WAR and ended up winning a Gold Glove.

Some rumors point to the Diamondbacks looking to move Miller, as a change of scenery might be the best thing for him.  In other words, the trade is just looking absolutely horrific for them.

Just a few weeks ago, the Boston Red Sox pulled off a blockbuster deal, trading for the White Sox's Chris Sale.  Sale is a five time All-Star and has placed in the top 6 of Cy Young voting 5 years in a row.  His past five years he's posted WARs of 5.9, 6.9, 6.6, 3.3, 4.9.  He's a completely different beast compared to Miller.   In addition, Chris Sale is under control for three more years at a very team friendly salary.

So while Chris Sale is a far superior pitcher, has 3 years of team control at a good (although more costly than Miller) price, one probably would have thought the Red Sox would have had to give up a much bigger haul for Sale.

But as I thought about it, I felt like the Red Sox got Chris Sale for about the same price the Diamondbacks paid for Shelby Miller.  Lets take a look.

For Sale, the White Sox got Yoan Moncada the MLB.com pre-2016 #3 prospect in baseball and pre-2017 #1 prospect in baseball, Michael Kopech the pre-2016 #98 prospect and pre-2017 #30 prospect, Luis Alexander Basabe, and Victor Diaz.  The latter two prospects aren't on any top 100 rankings but were considered top 20 prospects in the Red Sox organization.

While the pre-2017 #1 prospect in baseball is better than the pre-2016 #8 prospect in baseball, and the pre-2017 #30 prospect is better than the pre-2016 #56 prospect, it's not that different.  Both of the top two prospects traded were high value middle infield prospects and RHP prospects.

The difference of course is the two other minor leaguers vs Ender Inciarte.  Inciarte was an established major league starter with 5 years of control.  By most people's estimation, that's better than the two lower end prospects the White Sox received.  One can make an argument that the Braves haul was better than the White Sox one solely based on the fact that Inciarte was already a solid major league starter.

So the Diamondbacks appeared to pay an elite #1 starter price for Shelby Miller.  Making the trade look even worse than it already did.

Dining @ Oriole in Chicago, IL

The last time I was in Chicago I stopped in at Blackbird.  I was lucky enough to snag the reservations sort of last minute.  This time I actually had time to plan for the trip so I looked into restaurants way earlier.  I wanted to hit up the famed Alinea, but tickets were sold out by the time I checked (2 months before my trip!).  So I had to hunt for another place.

I looked into Grace but that place is hard to get into as well.  I looked into Goosefoot and Elizabeth, but they were bit farther away in the North side of Chicago.  El Ideas was closer, but I thought the restaurant might be a bit too quirky for my co-diners who aren't quite the foodies I am.

After some random searching and I came upon Oriole.  It's a relatively new restaurant that was run by the chef from Senza, a 1 Michelin star restaurant that closed in late 2014.   Oriole got an amazing 4/4 stars from the Chicago Tribune.  It's only the 6th time the Tribune has given a restaurant a 4/4 as its initial review.  The other restaurants given initial 4/4 were all run by eventual 2 or 3 Michelin Star chefs.  So it's very high praise for Oriole.  Sure enough, a few months after that stellar review, Oriole debuted at 2 Michelin Stars.

Luckily for me I was able to snag a reservation for 4 while I was in town.  Here's an overview of the meal we had.  One interesting note is that the restaurant did not present a menu to you before the tasting, as they wanted the dishes brought out to you to be a surprise.  It's the first time I've ever had a restaurant do that.  So all the official dish descriptions listed below were determined after the tasting.  It does affect how you view the meal and interpret the dishes without knowing them ahead of time.

1) Hot Apple Cider

When we arrived we were given some hot apple cider.  I'm not sure if this is a regular thing at Oriole or not (if it is, perhaps they substitute other cooler drinks during the summer), but given it was a really chilly night, the hot apple cider was really nice and welcome.

2) GOLDEN OSETRA CAVIAR - coconut dashi, lychee and sea grapes

Nothing too much to mention about this dish, a tasty start with some interesting mixtures of flavors.

3) LANGOUSTINE - spring roll with shio kombu, calamansi and mint

Overall, very tasty.  I had to lookup what calamansi is, and it's apparently a hybrid citrus/kumquat fruit.   I guess it was the primary component of the sauce.  The "sweet and sour" of the sauce was a little on the strong side, perhaps drowning out the relatively tiny spring roll a bit. I actually had never had langoustine before so I tried some of it by itself and it had a flavor that certainly reminds you for shrimp/lobster, but had a distinctive taste.

4) KAMPACHI - nigiri with yuzu kosho and genmai

This was a great piece of nigiri.  I believe the rice was a bit more vinegared than other sushi rice I recall having, but the kampachi and yuzu kosho was really flavorful overall and very tasty.  The genmai (brown rice) was added on top for texture.  It gave a nice texture contrast, but I think the dish would have been delicious even without it.

5) BEEF TENDON - puffed with wagyu tartare and shaved matsutake

The first thing I thought of was to compare to the puffed tendons that I had at Alta CA.  The flavor wasn't quite as strong, as I suspect it wasn't salted like the one at Alta.  That's not to be surprising as the wagyu tartare was to be the highlight.  Overall, quite tasty, although I did wish I got what flavors they had used to mix together with the wagyu tartare.

6) BONE BROTH - vietnamese coriander, cinnamon and lemongrass

This dish was served at the same time as the dish above, as we were told to enjoy the broth in between bites.  Overall, really tasty and delicious broth.  Wish I could have had a huge bowl of it.

7) BEAUSOLEIL OYSTER - iberico consumme and smoked finger lime

This was an interesting flavor combination I haven't had before.  The consumme really muted the typical strong taste of the raw oyster, making the flavor more subtle.

8) JAMON IBERICO DE BELLOTA - black walnut, egg yolk and campo de montalban

I've never had iberico ham before, so I didn't know what to expect.  The flavor was definitely different than most other hams and not as intense as I had expected.  I had to lookup campo de montalban, which is apparently a type of cheese.  Overall, an interesting combinations of flavor but hard to give a verdict as I'm unfamiliar with the main ingredient.

On top of the dish was an almond crisp with some jam, which I cannot recall.  This had a very strong flavor and was quite tasty.

9) CARDINAL PRAWN - meyer lemon, fennel and melted lardo

This was one of the best dishes in the meal.  This plate was surrounded by toasted (IIRC) juniper and plated with a sauce that I unfortunately can't recall.  Cardinal prawn is apparently a deep sea salt water prawn, so you get the great flavor that comes with salt water prawns instead of the freshwater ones.  I don't know how Oriole cooked this, perhaps it was done via sous vide it so it was "medium rare" in the middle, but this prawn was really tender in the middle and had a melt in your mouth quality.  I don't recall having prawn like this before, overall it was really good.

10) SEA URCHIN - emulsion with bay scallop, cauliflower and anise hyssop

This was probably my favorite dish of the night, it was an explosion of umami and flavor with chunks of scallop and cauliflower underneath the sea urchin emulsion.  I had to look up what anise hyssop was, it's in the mint family of herbs.  After eating this, I wondered if the sea urchin emulsion could have been poured over pasta, it's just that good.

11) SOURDOUGH - cultured butter and local grains

Overall really tasty, although I think there was too much butter on the bread for my particular taste.

12) CAPELLINI - burgundy truffle, rye berry and yeast

I'm not a huge fan of truffle, as I consider the flavor a bit too earthy for my tastes.  However, I really enjoyed this dish, as instead of raining truffles on top of the pasta only a small shaving was put on top.  So instead of getting all of that truffle flavor, you only get a hint of it in each bite.  One of the servers I spoke to said he agreed that raining too much truffle on top can make it too intense.

13) JAPANESE A5 WAGYU - charred little gem, furikake and sesame leaf

I don't know what needs to be said about A5 wagyu other than it's delicious.  I actually don't recall what the sauce flavoring on the right was.  Perhaps it was the sesame leaf.  The charred little gem of lettuce had a bit of a pickling/vinegar-ish taste to it that I thought was tasty and interesting.

14) LEMON TEA - sorbet with hibiscus, asian pear, and bitter greens

Just like when I went to Blackbird, Oriole surprised me with an interesting sorbet flavor.  Overall, quite tasty along with all the other flavors.

15) CROISSANT - raclette, apple butter and cardamom

This came straight out of the oven warm and hot.  Overall, rich and creamy and tasty.

16) PISTACHIO - gelato with pineapple curd, elderflower, and puffed rice

I wasn't exactly sure what "pineapple curd" was, but it appears to be a combination of a fruit, egg yolks, and sugar to produce a creamy spread.  As you can see in the picture there were also some wafers and (probaby not noticeable) some gelatin chunks for additional texture differences (although I couldn't figure out the gelatin flavor).  Overall, I really enjoyed this dessert, a lot of great flavors and textures throughout.

Because I'm a bit allergic to pineapple, the restaurant substituted pomegranate curd instead in the bottom picture.  I have a feeling I might have been the first one in this restaurant to have a pineapple allergy, as one of the servers asked me how the dish was.  She mentioned that several of the staff saw the dish and were "oh wow, look at that".

17) MIGNARDISES - yuzu and salted caramel

Starting from the top, there was a dark chocolate with salted caramel, middle was a macaron with milk chocolate, and the bottom was a white chocolate with yuzu.  Overall, all good with the dark chocolate being my favorite.

18) Coconut Cream Pie

Off menu, we were each given this box with a coconut cream pie togo.  I'm not a big fan of coconut, but the pie was delicious.

Overall the meal was a little over 2 hours, perhaps about a 2 hour and 15 minute affair.  Compared to other meals, I did leave the restaurant a tad on the not-full side.  It wasn't as bad as Sons & Daughters or Commis, but an extra bread course would have been nice or some fillers at the end (a la French Laundry) to stuff yourself.  Perhaps the coconut cream pie could have been served along the mignardise as an extra filler.

One other thing I'd like to highlight for the restaurant.  My co-diners were worried about their meter running out and wanted to head outside to add more money into the meter, but the restaurant said they would take care of it for them at no cost, which was really nice.