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Still twinges over the loss of Dean - weirdly focused on the dumb but consistent parts of life with a cat... him coming over on his own schedule to get skritches and make biscuits was probably the most emotionally important parts of our connection, and I miss that, but sometimes the absence is more keenly felt in the ridiculously pragmatic - "oops, don't leave that rubber band out, Dean mi- oh never mind." Or the loneliness lurking behind how now *no one cares when I head to the fridge for a chicken sausage or bit of string cheese*.

And it all gets mixed up with the general challenges of this season - like how it's been a crap time to look for work, and there's an underlying low key anxiety there, not to mention having to whether a series of attacks on confidence and self-image, and a sense of futility emanating from my last gig. So sometimes leaning into the kitty sadness when it pops up seems self-indulgent, or like an excuse. But still, the house Melissa and I share has lost an important piece of its lively soul, a kind of spark of animism that's no longer there.

Long Haul Paul's song It Comes In Waves is hitting for me right now: "It comes in waves / It comes in waves / But I'll be alright / But I'll be alright" Like maybe I'm overdoing it - that song is about a person - a son and father - lost to an overdose, which is orders of magnitude more of a loss, but sadness does know from that kind of math, or recognize the need to keep a sense of perspective.

Ah well. It's nice to enjoy a rainy morning on the porch (albeit a porch badly in need of some expensive restructuring - another little sling and/or arrow of semi-outrageous fortune) Drinking homemade iced coffee, condensation on the glass and the pot, and enjoying a weird breakfast of some cheap chicken Cup Noodles with just a kick of sriracha.

I'll be alright, I'll be alright.

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Pretty interesting Slate article on procrastionation.

"Some believe it's caused by a lack of confidence--that procrastinators fear, deep down, that they'll screw things up, so their ego prevents them from beginning. (This was Sigmund Freud's theory.)"

I get that - but for me it tends to come up before subtasks inside of a larger task.

But I think the article is also right to point out that "rational actor" analysis only works at the way zoomed out level. I think that's because we're not a single monolithic actor - each of our psyches is made up of multiple actors, with their own agendas - ego protection, sensual pleasures, etc etc.

You're so calm, always...like a tractor.

One of the pleasures of running a quote-and-link blog for over 20 years is looking back and finding evidence of growth, or the consistency of personal traits... like this one tells me 16 years ago I still had this (maybe overly) even-keeled nature that's been on my mind lately

(This quote came about a week after she said "I'm so jealous.... you have such long eyelashes... like a *cow*!" and then had to explain it was a legitimate compliment, think like a baby calf, and she was envious of what I could achieve without mascara.)

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Went a little long but English with German Syntax was kinda neat. Is that where Yoda gets it? Four days a row, I did some gigs at the North End for the feasts of Saint Anthony and Saint Lucy, with the Roma Band and the Abruzzi band (secretly New Magnolia in disguise). Both feasts have been going around for like century...
Amazing to be a part of the traditions, seeing the veneration of the saints and people pinning money to it (and getting a little band number in thanks.) But also very grueling - some of the walkabouts were like 5-6 hours.

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At the end of his life, the great picture book author Maurice Sendak said on the NPR interview show Fresh Air, "I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more." He said, "I'm finding out as I'm aging that I'm in love with the world." And I remember, when I first listened to that interview, wondering if I would ever feel that way.

It has taken me all my life up to now to fall in love with the world, but I've started to feel it in the last couple years. To fall in love with the world isn't to ignore or overlook suffering, both human and otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is merely to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance. It is to hold your children while they cry, to watch as the sycamore trees leaf out in June. When my breastbone starts to hurt, and my throat tightens, and tears well in my eyes, I want to look away from feeling, make a joke, I don't want to feel this, because I've loved enough to know how loving ends. They die and I can't stop them, Sendak said. But to fall in love with the world is to let the world crack you open anyway.

Sendak ended that interview with the last words he ever said in public: "Live your life. Live your life. Live your life."

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People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.

Surprised I don't think I've cited that idea on this blog before - inspired by this McGST post about the author's family heavily into the Apple ecosystem...

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Forget trying to make a kidz bop version of the Card B's raunchy hit "WAP"... I want the geek deep-cut followup "WML"

I don’t mean to ruin the ending for you, sweet child, but life is one long headwind. To make any kind of impact requires self-will bordering on madness. The world will be hostile, it will be suspicious of your intent, it will misinterpret you, it will inject you with doubt, it will flatter you into self-sabotage. My God, I’m making it sound so glamorous and personal! What the world is, more than anything? It’s indifferent. [...] But you have a vision. You put a frame around it. You sign your name *anyway*. That’s the risk. That’s the leap. That’s the madness: thinking anyone’s going to care.

I was brought up Catholic too, you know. When I was seven, they were teaching us about the loaves and the fishes. I raised my hand and said, “That couldn’t really happen.” Sister Bridget, not happy, responded, “Faith requires the mind of a child.” I said, “But I am a child.” She replied, “A *younger* child.” I thought, What a load of malarkey, and never looked back.

Just because you’re calmer than I am doesn’t mean you’re morally superior.

Customizable PT Reps Vocalizer - I made something I might find useful. It turns out most browsers have a voice synthesizer built-in, and also despite years as a youth counting measures of rests (shout out to my Orchestra homies) I hate keeping track of reps in the PT exercises I should be doing. So I decided to make a tool. More about that on my devblog The other day I realized there's a weird parallel between stoicism and its concept of "attend to that which you have control over, and ignore the rest" and some types of eating disorders, where people curtail their eating as being an exercise in something they can control.

A few weeks ago I snagged this link about the "voices in our head", the parts of us that are us, but separate from our main, self-narrative-constructing selves. "To achieve their goals they lie like crazy. They know you -- have been around you a long, long time." Mine seem to be the form of inner-children, loving sweets and creamy textures and demanding to be shown how they're just the smartest, most-creative beings in the world, and pushing me away from tasks that are might reveal my need to grind stuff out.

Combining these concepts: having control of stuff appeals to young children, who live in a world where they have relatively little agency, and are generally at the whim of the grownups. I wonder if the rational me can get more desireable results over these inner-children -- the indefatigable-snacker me and the angsting away from doing productive-but-not-ego-affirming work me -- by showing these toddler how this IS something we can have control over, that we have great (if incomplete) power over these parts of the world. They can be in their glory like the little 4 year old waving an imaginary baton to conduct the actual band, and I can get some damn work done.

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You can't do much carpentry with your bare hands and you can't do much thinking with your bare brain.

I saw a billboard with this magazine cover in the Frankfurt Airport

With self-driving trucks on the horizon, kinda makes ya think. Made me think, anyway.

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Followup from Bill the Splut

If the month has an 'R' in it I'm cold!

Some how this observation seems both new and obvious to me. Is it the origin of all those "any day that ends with y is good for drinking" style parodies?

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RIP Oliver Sacks... WARNING: this post is not very interesting to anyone except weirdly geeky stalkers of me.

Usenet used to be really central to my online life... before the web really got into gear, it was a great set of forums over myriad topics, and it was cool to have so many different forums all with the same interface, one that the poster could choose. (Especially compared to web-forums, where every forum requires a new login and uses a slightly different interface.)

Years ago I used Google groups to do some basic metering of how much I posted to Usenet. Today, cleaning out an old HD (including a snagged snapshot of my old cs.tufts.edu account home folder) I found a copy of my ".posted" file, a list of references to Usenet posts I made. I crunched some numbers and came up with the following...

Here's how much I posted per year:

1995	615
1996	570
1997	1048
1998	959
1999	1149
2000	453

Here are the groups I posted to most often. (I posted to 441 unique groups, 193 only once, and 65 only twice.)

rec.games.video.classic	1167
tufts.general	752
comp.sys.palmtops.pilot	354
alt.fan.cecil-adams	308
alt.folklore.computers	267
rec.games.video.nintendo	258
alt.games.wing-commander	150
alt.tv.commercials	139
alt.comp.sys.palmtops.pilot	137
tufts.tuftsconnect	124
alt.hackers	102
rec.arts.sf.written	89
rec.arts.sf.starwars.misc	64
comp.sys.palmtops	61
alt.peeves	60

Finally, here were the threads I participated in the most:

What does Micro$oft do Well ?	alt.folklore.computers	46
Tufts Lifeline Taxi	tufts.general	45
Tufts on NPR	tufts.general	40
Worried about IDSA killing emulation?	rec.games.video.classic	23
What did Nintendo do that Atari couldn't?	rec.games.video.classic	19
Defending Emulation / some ROMS.	rec.games.video.classic	17
Just missing immortality, defining a life well-lived	rec.arts.sf.written	17
Reorganization RFD has been submitted	rec.games.video.classic	14
Just Wondering...	tufts.general	13
Primary Source	tufts.general	12
So quiet	tufts.general	12
Landware Go Type Pro keyboard comments	comp.sys.palmtops.pilot	12
whats your favorite classic system (cannot include arcade emulators)	rec.games.video.classic	12
The string of lights down the hill	tufts.general	11
Dont buy Palm: Retarded OS with 4K memo limit	comp.sys.palmtops.pilot	11
tuftsconnect	tufts.general	10
Atari VS. ???	rec.games.video.classic	10
Gameboy vs 2600: The Ultimate Classic System?	rec.games.video.classic	10

It seems odd to me how few of these I remember, and odd to look things up on Google Groups, and see discussion that once meant kind of a lot to me.

Anyway, here is the raw .posted file, the full data analysis, and the node script I wrote to crunch it. For a few days there's been an older man sitting on the benches around the Kendall Square globe fountain, panhandling, holding his sign with some tremor. This morning there was a second sign offering a camera "with disk" for sale, saying they got it for $90, would like $60. (I think maybe even saying something about 3 payments of 20?) Anyway somehow that detail broke my heart.

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(Went back to give him a bit more money... wasn't 3 payments, but it was something about helping paying for PT)

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Notes by HP Lovecraft...

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"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

"Sorry, I don't really follow American hip hop."

"It's a quote from Macbeth."

"Sorry, I don't really follow Scottish hip hop."

Just finished it. What a game... if Saints Row the Third was GTA dialed up to 11, this is GTA dialed up to 14 or 15.

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is? This. [holds up one finger]

Mitch: Your finger?

Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean shit.

Mitch: But what is the "one thing?"

Curly: [smiles] That's what you have to find out.

via Coding Horror who use it to explain "Curly's Law", an emphasis of only doing things one time.

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http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-words/ Kudos to Fox News for allowing such a negative editorial! "Ryan's speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech."

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Geekery! I'm releasing a new javascript library, geared at sounds for browser-based games: http://lowlag.alienbill.com/ lowLag.js: responsive html5 audio "a simple wrapper for low-latency, high-compatibility, html5-friendly audio"

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$25 to United for an "excess baggage" charge. Hm, I think that used to be called just "any baggage"... #bravenewworld Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is my new favorite geek-friendly webcomic... I think smbc gives xkcd a run for the money:

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In a dream, if someone says "at all costs prevent X!" X happens. Dreams' dumb sense of humor? Or their function of testing scenarios?

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Noisy-ass geese, honking their way south at Alewife. Sigh. Winter is Coming.

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Plus just yesterday Dunkies put up their Hot Apple Cider window display, good from 8-29 to 10-31...

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Man, the GBA micro was so minimalist & perfect. Maybe if the screen was a bit larger without increasing the size, it woulda been perfecter

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The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.

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foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/29/the_black_hole_of_911 Keeping 9/11 in perspective; it wasn't the news of the decade.

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Don't be a guy who feels bad. Nobody ever knows what to do. Our life-task is to *decide* what to do.

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THE COMMONWEALTH REQUIRES THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE AS THE SAFEGUARD OF ORDER AND LIBERTY

Too more from the Rockport Legion Band last night... kinda cute how the kids were all running circles around the bandstand...

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http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html - I should a link to this for "mortality for skeptics" ( http://mortals.be )

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The other week I found out my dad sometimes used the family name "Dyke" as a kind of second middle name. Snicker-worthy, but interesting.

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So many headhunters are looking for roles all over the country. Are they just lazy or is there a whole subculture of migrant coders?

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What is the speed of light? As far as you're concerned, it's nine inches per nanosecond.

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Friend Indy's Hypothetical Drink idea -- Gin, Curacao for Blue Coloring, and Peach Rings (Yellow Side Up) -- it's a Gin + Sonic!

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Just watched "The Big Chill" for the first time. Good flick, good soundtrack, good wishing for group of friends that cohesive(ish) and big.

She is now in the vile embrace of the Apollo of the evening. Her head rests upon his shoulder, her face is upturned to his, her bare arm is almost around his neck, her partly nude swelling breast heaves tumultuously against his, face to face they whirl on, his limbs interwoven with hers, his strong right arm around her yielding form, he presses her to him until every curve in the contour of her body thrills with the amorous contact. Her eyes look into his, but she sees nothing; the soft music fills the room, but she hears it not; he bends her body to and fro, but she knows it not; his hot breath, tainted with strong drink, is on her hair and cheek, his lips almost touch her forehead, yet she does not shrink; his eyes, gleaming with a fierce, intolerable lust, gloat over her, yet she does not quail. She is filled with the rapture of sin in its intensity; her spirit is inflamed with passion and lust is gratified in thought. With a last low wail the music ceases, and the dance for the night is ended, but not the evil work of the night.

The girl whose blood is hot from the exertion and whose every carnal sense is aroused and aflame by the repetition of such scenes as we have witnessed, is led to the ever-waiting carriage, where she sinks exhausted on the cushioned seat. Oh, if I could picture to you the fiendish look that comes into his eyes as he sees his helpless victim before him. Now is his golden opportunity. He must not miss it, and he does not, and that beautiful girl who entered the dancing school as pure and innocent as an angel three months ago returns to her home that night robbed of that most precious jewel of womanhood--virtue!

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http://www.slate.com/id/2225748/ - planned neighborhoods done right, a century ago... SO BUSY WITH A WHOLE WEEKEND ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD PHYSICS GAME JAM.

One thing I've learned... OLPC is not as organized as one might've thought.

It's fun though. This day's gonna be a real challenge, to pull together a game with my buddy "dongle" (together we're Team Cowsome Loneboys) in an environment and language neither of us know too much about... we have some good ideas though.

There'll probably be continued streaming video coverage, though I don't know if a bunch of geeks collaborating will make for all that great watching...

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OLPC: "I've seen monkey poo fights at the zoo more organized than this!" Seriously, it represents the potentials + problems of opensource..

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windows ctrl-F find has gotten a little worse every generation since Windows 95 David Foster Wallace has a tremendous command of footnotes. He's also a hell of a writer, and his essay "Authority and American Usage" is causing me to rebalance my view on the whole Prescriptivism vs. Descriptivism debate. (My current thinking is that above all I want to be a Utilitarian, that the best use of language is what takes the least amount of mental energy to construct and the audience to parse. This might be hopelessly subjective.)

Anyways, I enjoy the footnotes, some of which go for pages, very much. In fact, I'm realizing that, really, the beauty of life is in the footnotes*. The small asides are what make it all worth while.

*I realize that there's a possible tension here with my other "overarching philosophy of life", that the goal is to have content expressed as economically as possible, that nuance and detail just isn't that important. But footnotes aren't details in this worldview, but rather novel ideas themselves, and so tend to increase the interestingness-density of whatever I'm reading.

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Video of the Moment

--Making the rounds. Miss Teen South Carolina. Just... jawdropping. Nerves? Or just so pretty and so so dumb... (more at boingboing)

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Products of the Moment

PepsiCo is snug in bed with Microsoft, promoting its exciting new Mountain Dew flavor, "Game Fuel," with a Halo 3 tie-in. The flavor is described on the bottle as "an invigorating blast of citrus cherry flavor," but it could also have reasonably been called "Unbelievably Vileberry," "Piña Colonic" or "Kool-Aid Man's Embalming Fluid."

Jeez, Norton Antivirus sucks.

I took it off my work laptop when it was clogging my Java build process (sometimes software guys kick off builds that make lots and lots of small temporary files... to which Norton would go "ooh another new file... gotta scan it! Maybe there's a virus in it! Ooh... another new file! Gotta scan it! Maybe there's a virus in it!")

But the place I'm consulting has a strict policy about Antivirus. It needs to be there, and up to date, or no Net For You! So last night I downloaded the software, and today I ran it... it clogged my computer the whole day, scanning the 3 million or so files to find... exactly bupkis.

It seems like such the wrong way to go about protecting computers (especially since Virus writers specifically code to be stealthy with the leading brands of Antivirus.) Just watching it go through all the files...yeah, I'm sure someone hid a virus in that .BMP clipart that came bundled with Microsoft Word.

I don't know how to implement the "right" way of protection, which is to be more interested in virus- and worm-like activity rather than specific patterns of code. But doing that badly probably ends up with something like the say Windows Vista beta is like, all these popups telling you about "suspicious activity", 'til finally you just mindlessly click "OK" without trying to figure out if bad stuff is going on or not.

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Ksenia Quote of the Moment

You're so calm, always...like a tractor.

(She also added "[...] Like an elephant.") I think she was berating me for not sounding all sad and missing her after like, 2 days... still, I like tractor, I wouldn't have thought of that one. I just gave a couple hundred to the Salvation Army, earmarked for Katrina relief, and invite folks to do the same or similar. Even if the worst of the predictions I posted yesterday didn't come to pass, it's very bad on the Gulf Coast.

If there's a Katrina-related blood-drive around here, I'm tempted to give despite not quite waiting for the "minimum number of weeks between donations" thing. I'm a big guy, I can probably handle it, though my bloodtype isn't especially useful.

Sigh.

In other news, I was thinking about getting some home exercise gear. I have to admit Dance Dance Reolution wasn't quite working out, to get decent exercise from it you have to be pretty good at the game itself, plus it can sometimes be harsh on the knees. Historically I'd gotten ok use out of an ordinary treadmill, and then Mo had us buy a fullsize Stairmaster. Brookstone has that ministepper for $200...I was certain if it would suffice, but then on craigslist I found essentially the same model for $25. Seemed ok this morning. So we'll see how that goes.

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Not-So-Ominous Warning of the Moment

--This "teaser" was put in the window of a storefront being rennovated on my street. Judging by the name "Beijing Kitchen" (the proper signage showed up a month or so later) it looks to be a small chinese restaurant.

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Quote of the Moment

Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.

...man, this has so happened to me at work. Every other coworker reminds me of a previous coworker. Philosophy of the Moment
Huh, thanks for your comments.

I'm trying to figure out if there is any established belief system that comes close to matching my piecework one:

• Consciousness is an illusion, or at least not nearly as much of a "thing" as our animal selves have us believe.
• You should be nice to people.
• You can't always trust your instincts.
• What you see is pretty much what you get viz a viz the universe, spirtuality is mostly poetry and metaphor on top of mundane matter, emergent phenomena that, admittedly, science alone is pretty bad at getting handle on.
• "Interesting" and "Non-trivially Unique" are two of the few self-evident "goods" in the Universe, along with more obvious things like kindness and love.
• The universe is interesting, and you should try to observe as much of it as possible.
• Moderation in everything is key, including moderation. Therefore:
• It's good to follow a life path that corresponds to your strengths and interests. A good course has one stretching one's abilities to meet self-goals and challenges, but without spending too much time worrying struggling for unobtainable goals.

Eh, that's where I am right now...I guess finding some organized beleif system would kinda..I dunno, justify it or something.

I don't like the Bhuddist idea that everything is suffering and longing, or the Daoist notion that one's instincts are always trustworthy....

Thanks for listening to me ramble,
Kirk

--I'm not sure who exactly I was writing to last November, but I still feel that's a pretty good summary of my core beliefs.

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Photo of the Moment

--Hard to see in all the glare, but according the the Salem Willows' Arcade's Love Tester, I "HAVE 'IT'".

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Article Quote of the Moment

But the sad truth is, the real difference between Democrats and Republicans is that their celebrities are, like, actually famous and ours are, well, singing weirdly erotic songs about Our Savior.

I heard Evanescence, who do two very good songs ("Going Under" and "My Immortal") used to have more of a Christian vibe, and sometimes their lyrics have that same odd ambiguity. (Of course "U2" did that pretty well. Amazing how just a simple gender swap in "Mysterious Ways", portraying the holy spirit as feminine, masked the lean of the message from me for years.) Oy, I'm up to my ears in atari programming, don't expect much from the site this weekend...

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Funny of the Moment
From McSweeney's, a site with humor so dry it crackles, Goofus, Gallant, Rashomon. (Or stroll down memory lane with this previous kisrael.com Goofus and Gallant entry. Or go see the real thing.)

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Brag of the Moment
Cool, my Atari programming tutorial "2600 101" finally has been added to the brilliant site Atari Age. Makes it feel more "legit"!

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Games of the Moment
Spaced Penguins is a very satisfying game where you must slingshot a penguin into its spaceship, taking into account the gravity of the planets that may be in your way. For something more down-to-earth (and tougher), this carny-ish Win-A-Goldfish promises you...err, a goldfish I guess...if you manage to sink at least 2 of 5 ping pong palls into goldfish bowls from a spring launcher. Got another page done in "2600 101", my programming tutorial for the Atari VCS.

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Religious Links of the Moment
This Bible Quiz is a parody, though it does point out that Jesus didn't always sound as full of love-thy-neighbor as he's sometimes presented today. "My family values are simple: hate your family. And I don't just mean compared to your love for me. Hate them. Create huge, nasty arguments with them and then have them killed" may not be the fairest paraphrase of Luke 14:26, Matthew 10:34, and Matthew 10:21, but unless a lot is lost in translation it's in the same spirit. Then there's this page...either the most sophisticated, straight-faced parody I've seen, or a very scary site indeed. Seriously, click the links on the sidebar...it's tough to be certain.

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Blog Link of the Moment
Some of the best advice I've read for blogs and other frequently updated online publications, 10 Tips on Writing the Living Web. I guess it would apply more to me if I did more actual writing, not just quote and link harvesting. (Gratuitous plugs: Lupschada and Bill the Splut do more of that kind of personal writing. I should get a blogroll links section going.)

It is kind of funny how they repeat "Omit unnecessary words".

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Quote of the Moment

If Shaw and Einstein couldn't beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none.

Weapons
Salon on why zero tolerance in schools sucks. Typical anecdote: "An arbitrary search of his car by school officials in the spring revealed no drugs, but a scraper and pocketknife that his father had inadvertently left there the night before when he was fixing the rearview mirror. Despite anguished pleas of extenuating circumstances by the desperate father, the school system has so far adamantly insisted that automatic punishments for weapon possession in school are inviolate." Isn't that awesome? Once in third grade some guy gave me a moneyclip with a tiny little foldout pocketknife in it, and I was showing it to the other kids, and the dumbass bully (Tim Brown, I think) managed to cut himself with it. I was amazed at how seriously the principal took it... I'd hate to think what would've happened now. I mean jeez! Zero tolerance for guns, yes-- though even that would be problematic in some rural communities, but knives in any way shape or form? Maybe they can ban books as well, they're so big and hefty with those sharp corners, you could really do some damage.

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Kittens
Heh. PETA is really ticked about a video this site had, where a very small kitten is shown slaughtered (in the clinical sense) and then fried up in a wok. Now, PETA in general has a reasonably consistent stance on not eating animals, but I don't see what's so bad about a video, or a young cat. I think the fuss has more to do with this quote from the tick:
"Eating kittens is just plain...plain wrong! And no one should do it, ever!"
then any real moral issue. But the fact is we as a culture eat some animals, and other cultures eat other animals. Having a videocamera on either doesn't seem like such a big deal to me.

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Calories
Science, is there anything it can't do? The other day I bought a bottle of CALORIE FREE BLUE CHEESE DRESSING! It's by this company. And on their Dressings Order Page, you can even get Calorie-Free "Hot Bacon" or "Bacon Ranch"! That blows my mind! Almost as much as the lovely veggie woman to the left, lovingly stolen from their frontpage. This is truly an age of miracles, I never would've guessed they could Diet Coke-ize the thing that make salads so bearable. They have zero calorie chocolate syrup as well.