don't know how i missed this: washingtonienne, and her freakishly wonky eye, get covered in usa today (along with a bunch of other bloggers with book deals).

via Slashdot, check out these pics of a Bender-shaped computer case. Includes mouth-mounted slot-feed CDROM drive!

As impressive as Justin's Bender costume? One can be plugged in, the other can consume beer. Tough call.

this day did not start off too well. as you know through my unrelenting whining, i've been sick, and so after getting out of the shower this morning, i popped a couple of dayquil in my mouth. nothing like a dayquil to get the day started when you've got snot slobbering down your face, or so i've heard.

but i made the fatal mistake of taking the dayquil on an empty stomach (i'm not a breakfast sort of gal). did you know you're not supposed to do this? i didn't, at least until i entered SuperSpecial DayQuil World sometime around 9:45 am. admission to SuperSpecial DayQuil World grants you a head that feels like a cork about to pop off a bottle of bubbly, and the supernatural power to hover two inches above your chair. or, at least the supernatural power to feel like you are hovering two inches above your chair. it was actually kind of cool until my eyes started to cross and i IM'd tommy, noting that i seemingly was floating on a drug-induced cushion of air and wondering what was up with that. he immediately ordered me to go buy a can of coke and some sort of food to get my blood sugar up, or something, i dunno. and it worked, because he is smart, and knows that you do not take chair-hovering drugs without first eating food.

i'm a little concerned, though, that i am becoming some sort of -quil addict. while in chicago, i confessed to susan that i was a recreational nyquil abuser and was thrilled to find out that she was, too! i mean, i'm not downing the stuff on a regular basis. but i don't just take it when i'm sick. i take it sometimes when i'm healthy, having trouble sleeping and just need the sweet, sweet nyquil blanket to fall over me. is this normal? i'm a little concerned that i'm the kind of person who could become easily addicted to sleeping pills. i just love the sensation of getting so sleepy that your head lolls about and you say words but your mouth is too tired to form them, resulting in a sort of "imasolepybuhcahnatalsoshleeepeee..." (btw, tommy could probably put up some relatively funny footage of me, high on nyquil, right before i pass out and proceed to start drooling all over him, if he had a video camera, and was cruel).

i dunno. i also found this super awesome tea that i used for a week while tommy was gone and i had trouble sleeping by myself. it was called sleepytime EXTRA tea. i loved that it was EXTRA sleep inducing, and hell, did that stuff knock you out. the first evening i tried it i brewed one large mug around 9:30 pm, because i'm an old lady, and was slurring by 10:15. it contains "folklore favorite" valerian, an herb "used most commonly for its sedative and hypnotic properties," though i certainly never was hypnotized while drinking it. or so i believe.

anyway, i'm obviously rambling and don't know where i meant to go with this post, except to say: drugs are good, sleeping is nice, and i am apparently addicted to both.

Not the food; not the drug; not the terrifying drunken running hobby. No no no, a FAR more exciting type of hash: the algorithmic kind! Party!

See, these things have been in the news lately because a couple of popular hashing techniques have started to look susceptible to attack. This might seem mind-numbingly boring, but it's important -- in a broad sense, because of security and encryption. In practice, because defeating hashing could in theory allow record companies bring P2P to a halt.