Monday, December 02, 2013

Almost Human

Dear Almost Human,

I really like you, except for the fact that I've had "Benny and the Jets" running thru my head for days now and it's really starting to drive me crazy!

Other than that, keep up the good work...

Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Feedly is Friendly to Me

Thank you Feedly for understanding something which my beloved Bloglines forgot after its acquisition by MerchantCircle: I want my RSS feeds to show the blog posts in the order that they were posted, not the newest first. I know that a blog is reverse chronological order and that's fine, but using a feed reader is different than visiting a blog page.  I've been searching and searching for a feed reader that understood this - surely I'm not the only one with this preference?  I'm so happy to have found Feedly: may you live long and prosper (and not delete user choices for no reason).

Monday, August 26, 2013

E-Receipt Only

Kudos to Sears for offering to email me the receipt rather than using paper.  I was somewhere else recently that also offered email receipts, but in addition to the paper receipt, which makes no sense to me.  Sears did give me a small piece of paper with a transaction number on it in case I needed to return something, but this is a step in the right direction...

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Good and Bad

The good of libraries, courtesy of  John Scalzi.

The bad, courtesy of  Sarah Houghton.

I've met Sarah - she most emphatically does NOT deserve any of the extremely bad shit that she has been and is still being subjected to.  I wish she wasn't the poster child for "Look!  No matter how bad your life is, it could be worse."

Sunday, March 03, 2013

Random Penguin

Most of the time, the Internet is used for stupid.  Sometimes, cleverness peeks thru...

"On Feb 14 2013, the US Dept. of Justice cleared a merger between Random House and Penguin. When this merger was first announced, the Internet rightly decided the new company could only be called Random Penguin.   The company says it will be called Penguin Random House. This is unacceptable. Until the company comes to its senses and renames itself, I will post Random House and Penguin book covers with added random penguins on this site to register my righteous indignation and protest this failure of vision."


Friday, March 01, 2013

3, 2, 1 Cake

If I had stumbled across this on the Internet, I would have classified it as "too good to be true" and moved on.  Fortunately, a friend recommended it after trying it herself.


3, 2, 1 CAKE
These individual little cakes are amazing and ready to eat in one minute! They are perfect for whenever you feel like a treat without all the fat and calories that cake can have.

INGREDIENTS:
1 box Angel Food Cake Mix
1 box Cake Mix - Any Flavor, may be available in sugar-free

DIRECTIONS:
In a ziploc bag, combine the two cake mixes together and mix well. For each individual cake serving, take out 3 Tablespoons of the cake mix combination and mix it with 2 Tablespoons of water in a small microwave-safe container. Microwave on high for 1 minute, and you have your own instant individual little cake!  You can top each cake with a dollop of fat-free whipped topping and/or some fresh fruit.

Store the remaining cake mixture in a ziploc or self-seal bag and use whenever you feel like a treat! No need to refrigerate, since the mix is dry.

This recipe is called 3, 2, 1 Cake because all you need to remember is:
3 tablespoons mix
2 tablespoons water
1 minute in the microwave!

TRY various flavors of cake mix like carrot, red velvet, pineapple, lemon, orange, etc.  The flavor possibilities are endless!

Just remember that one of the mixes has to be the angel food mix; the other is your choice.  The Angel Food is the cake mix that has the eggs whites in it so if anyone is allergic to egg whites, you can NOT serve this recipe to them.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Astro Videos

These are older, but I was cleaning up the desktop...

Flight Through the Universe
From the APOD description: "Every spot in the video is a galaxy containing billions of stars."  This bears repeating:  all the numerous spots you see aren't stars.

In case you feel very small and alone after that, Neil deGrasse Tyson has some words of comfort for you.  It's essentially Carl Sagan's "we are star stuff" expanded, but very well said.  I've linked to Phil's page because I like his acknowledgement of Neil's eloquence.

btw, that eloquence is occasionally evident in Neil's tweets:

"As retired Shuttles majestically grace our cityscapes, we shed a silent tear, not for the end of an era but for the absence of a new one."

...although his Twitter account is usually filled with funny:

If someone committed a crime in outer space who would have jurisdiction? // The law firm of Smith & Wesson.

I'm told somebody's jumping out of a perfectly good balloon from 23-miles up. The theory of gravity no longer needs to be tested in this way.

How To Get Rich: If you fail to convince your friends that the world won't end in 2012, then offer to relieve them of their needless wealth.