Sundry, Part IV

Another day when I blog stuff that landed in my PDA in the past month. Hmm.

Technology

• 10 Rules for Corporate Blogs and Wikis


• alec muffett :: dropsafe


• Spam Beacons (which is why I always check web mail before downloading any message)


• Safely storing passwords: Password Safe and Password Corral


• Hardware firewall: SonicWALL


• Cyber Citizenship ("The Cybercitizen Awareness Program educates children and young adults on the danger and consequences of cyber crime.")


• DVD writers: LaCie's DVD burners and Nero's CD/DVD burning software


• Steganography - hiding text in image files

Gardening:
Burgess Seed and Plant Company;
Direct Gardening.com

Elder care:
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (Prescription Drug Patient Assistance Programs);
Helping Patients.org;
AARP magazine;
AARP Bulletin (news);
AARP Financial Planning

Media:
WXVT (Greenville MS channel 15);
WTVA (Tupelo MS channel 9);
WREG (Memphis TN channel 3).
Someday I may blog extensively about my commercial radio "career" (of 2 years). Then again ...

Shopping:
Ontel Products

Aviation:
General Aviation Serving America

Pets:
pic-a-pal.org (Dallas clearing house for pet adoptions);
Richardson Humane Society;
Man's Best Friend

Cars:
Davis CarChipE/X can silently log where your car has been driven, and at what speed (can you say "teenager"?);
2003 BMW Photo Contest Winners

DVDs:
The Conversation (1974)

spotted in Technology Review's archive: The Witch of Yucca Mountain (nuclear waste storage).

On The Road:
George Payne Cossar State Park; Clark Freight; GEORGIA.gov (on most every Georgia license plate).

Health / Medical:
Stop Hospital Infections;
caregiver.org;
Local Drinking water quality;
The Natural Pharmacist: Safe Supplements?

Legal:
Nolo (self-help legal);
Washburn University School of Law;
Legal Information Institute (Cornell Law School);
Jurist (U of Pittsburgh School of Law)

decent pedometers for $15-30:
DigiWalker;
Accusplit;
Walkers Wearhouse

very cool rocking chairs: Klein Design

Travel:
Best Fares;
World Wildlife/Buyer Beware (products made from endangered or threatened wildlife);
Semester at Sea (learn about other cultures while taking a cruise);
See America.org has a nice clickable map of all 50 states' official travel sites;
100 Reasons to See North America;
Vegas.com (the official Las Vegas site);
Tour Pike County (Kentucky);
Tour Yukon (Canada);
Ghirardelli Square (San Francisco).

eBay made easier

An item in the newspaper ("Drop-off stores making eBay easy for customers") pointed me to Cash It In; AuctionGateway.com and QuikDrop, each of whom will take your stuff, auction it on eBay, and send you a check for the proceeds (minus their 35%+ fees).

I spotted another site (TransLingo) that claims to "Make your Web Site Multilingual" but I haven't been impressed (yet) by any of these auto-translators, except as a source of amusement. I've blogged before about so-called bi-directional translation experiments, where you translate from English to another language, then back to English. The results are often bizarre. You'd be better off getting results from The Subservient Chicken

Another high-definition satellite image service is at keyhole.com; many cities, including Dallas, are available in enough detail to spot the weeds in your backyard.

and finally, there's the Fort Worth German American Club (if you're in an office, the background audio may not be recommended).

RSS and Methuselah

Want to live to be 123 years old? I hope your 401(k) and/or Social Security doesn't run out. This is Really Nothing New, but a recent article entitled Methuselah Man was good for a laugh. It may take all those extra years to keep up with changing web pages. Although it's not unique, this could work as a starter: The Rocket RSS Reader is listed as "A Free Personal Web-based RSS News Reader"

Weaving

It's been a busy week at work, and in the evenings, I've been hand-carving a 42 foot totem pole for the backyard, so not much time to blog. So, I'll take the easy way out and weave these seemingly unconnected pointers together:

While sitting in my La-Z-Boy, wishing to sample Air America Radio (so-called Liberal Talk Radio) here in Dallas (other than via an Internet feed), I remembered the yummy taste of Bawls Guarana. I wonder what a mix of Bawls and dnL (upside down 7up : green & caffeinated) would taste like? The National Center on Elder Abuse (NCEA) is not a codename, but what if it was a code name?. Guess I should find out more about Osteoarthritis (OA) .. what if it's a Jeopardy question someday?

This reminds me that Humor is no laughing matter overseas, where they are less fortunate, and do not have The Traffic Cone Preservation Society. I suppose I could lookup the ZIP codes of traffic cones, using the Zip Code Finder with Zip Code Directory and Zip Code Map (a truly useful site).

I wonder if Fun Chain is a place where those of us who are traffic cone fanatics can gather? FunChain is billed as "The Semantic Social Network". What a deep thought!

Here's another Deep Thought article (see the PDF) : Searching versus Finding: Why Systems Need Knowledge to Find What you Really Want. Which reminds me of the article "Networking is a joke", about hi-tech standup comics (Don McMillan; Wayne Cotter; Dan St. Paul), some of whom use pi meson humor. And who could forget Alec Muffett's blogrant: RSS Considered Harmful.

Finally, if you have (what must be) 5 minutes to spare, check out Debian's 404 page (old, yet good, but you only have to see this once before it gets very old).

numerology

Well, I waited until 4 seconds after 4 minutes after 4 hours after 4 months after (200)4 years, so the time was exactly 04:04:04 on 4.4.4 and phoned The George to wish her a happy birthday, but .. no answer (voicemail instead). Argh. I should've sent a guy dressed in a pink leotard, to dance & sing on her front lawn.

To while away the time, I nosed around an item that's been providing filler for CNN recently: Religion on the Southern Roadside. Also noted that a jury decide that Deanna Laney was insane when she stoned 2 of her 3 sons to death. As Spock would have said: "Fascinating."

Trivia Time! the Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" hand gesture represents the Hebrew letter shin, as explained near the bottom of Leonard Nimoy's brief piece entitled What Being Jewish Means To Me.

... and then I was cleaning my email inbox when I ran across an item that Tim-Bob sent a few weeks (months?) ago, supposedly penned by Andy Rooney (the Chief Curmudgeon of 60 Minutes). It was easy to find out that Rooney never wrote In Praise of Older Women .. it was done by Frank Kaiser (the guy who writes a newspaper column called Suddenly Senior), in 2000. Not only did snopes.com debunk the Rooney attribution, but Susan Reimer of the Baltimore Sun contacted Andy Rooney to hear him whine even more.

it'll be light one hour later than usual today, due to that throwback Daylight Saving Time (loathed by us Morning People). Guess I should stroll over to Whole Foods Market to see if they stock Baker's Breakfast Cookie. Before I ingest it, I will wash my hands for 20 seconds, after reading New Scanning Technology May Detect Dirty Hands. Hmm.

GoogL'ost: Celebrity Atheist List

Final score: Blue 1, Yellow 5

I finally got around to drinking a can of dnL today (upside down 7up) and noticed that the green coloring comes from a mix of blue & yellow food coloring. This would've made a great St. Patricks Day offering. I was surprised to read about some people's (1 in 10,000) adverse reaction to Yellow 5 as explained on the Food Color Facts publication (on the International Food Information Council site).

.. and to think this came near the end of my screening of The Egg and I (1947) which is on the Ma & Pa Kettle, Volume 1 DVD. The movie stars Fred MacMurray & Claudette Colbert, who are upstaged by Marjorie Main & Percy Kilbride as Ma & Pa Kettle. This film debuted soon after World War II ended, and hearkens (did I just say "hearkens"?) back to a simpler time, of rural barnyard humor. Fascinating. Word is this eventually led to the TV series Petticoat Junction and Green Acres and (40 years later) to “The Simple Life.”

Check your calendar

It was only a few minutes after midnight, when I ftp'd an April Fool's Day prank to a website that I run. I then IM'd a friend with a pointer to it. "Really?" he asks, then I wait a few seconds before advising "Check your calendar." Argh! First victim, at 12:03am.

Today's newspaper was mostly bereft of 4/1 humor. I only spotted 3 comic strips with humor on-topic for today. This is sad; we need to remember how to laugh. One item I spotted was all about payback pranks: Benjamin Dover At His Best! ... and then, there is the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes Of All Time (which reminds me .. I need to water my spaghetti tree, and re-brine my pickle bush, and ...).

random stuff : Pets By Mail; A Plan for Spam; Google's GMail