Random Timelines

m0ar! #4872 - Hitler ruls

2011-07-18T20:32:00.000-04:00

m0ar! #4872 - Hitler ruls

He was a total anarchist & a-hole of course, but this video is funny!

Sunshine and Vitamin-D

2011-07-06T22:13:00.003-04:00

++ Click to Enlarge Image ++

Image Source: Lung Cancer Causes.org

SocialMonkee URL Submitter: What it is, What it does

2011-04-18T16:58:00.005-04:00

Building backlinks to your pages is an essential part of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for two reasons. The first reason is that it helps your pages get indexed faster, which is very important because you want the search engines to find them as soon as possible and crawl them regularly. The second reason is that it helps your pages get higher search engine rankings for the keywords of your choice.

The more incoming backlinks you have, the stronger your PageRank can be.

However, building backlinks can be a time-consuming, boring process. You can outsource the process to an agency and pay a lot of money. Or you can do it yourself with SocialMonkee!

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If you have a Premium Account you will also get access to link reports and RSS feeds, which are great to keep track of your backlinks and get them indexed fast. Submitting your RSS feeds to RSS submitters is actually a very important step in link building.

http://www.socialmonkee.com/index.php?af=31578

So what are you waiting for? Join SocialMonkee now while it's still free.

2011-03-04T22:32:00.000-05:00

Once in a Blue Lobster: For The Seafood Lover in You

Another rare blue lobster is caught and spared from the dinner plate.

Pretty in Blue: Lobster with Recessive Gene Caught

Only about one in every two million lobsters have this recessive gene, a gene that makes the otherwise greenish-gray colored cetacean a pale blue. Lobster fishermen might only ever see one or two in their entire lifetime, -if they are lucky.

Unnaturally Blue Coloration in Nature

Several years ago, there were sporadic occurrences of ‘blue iguanas’ showing up in pet shops. These were ‘Common Green Iguanas’ but instead of the typical bright emerald green, they had a distinct pale-blue tinge.
Unknowing pet buyers would pay several times the typical price for these ‘rare’ blue iguanas which, as they grew older, eventually changed to the usual green coloration. A creature such as a reptile (and possibly also the lobster?) is said to be anerythristic (an-er’-i-thris-’tik.) This fancy word from biology is derived from “erythro” meaning “red.” An example of this prefix is erythrocyte, which is a red blood cell. The prefix “an-” in English is equivalent to “un-” so anerythristic literally means “un-red.”

Rare Blue Lobster Yes, But Do They Reproduce?

The recessive gene does not affect any other aspect of the blue lobster as far as we know. It just makes them an extraordinarily rare catch. This blue lobster is destined for an aquarium where it will live a very long life, free from the dangers of being caught for the dinner plate. It is not known if blue lobsters are rare in actual populations of free-range lobsters or if there is an exceptionally high predation factor due to the unusual coloration...

When Whales Explode: Blasted Blubber Beyond All Believable Bounds

2011-01-02T16:03:00.000-05:00

What happens when a whale beaches itself and dies? Parks and Recreation must remove the carcass of course. But how do you remove a multi-ton whale into manageable pieces? Why, you detonate it with sticks of dynamite d-UH!

Exploding Whale

An event that occurred in Florence, Oregon in 1970 coined and defined the term ‘exploding whale.‘ When a dead 8-ton sperm whale washed ashore, The Oregon Highway Division (Oregon Dept. of Transportation,) made an impromptu and ill-informed decision to follow U.S. Navy advice to ‘cut apart’ the carcass using controlled detonations of dynamite.

The idea was simple; fracture the rotting hulk of whale flesh like a boulder. By violently breaking the decaying flesh into smaller pieces, the scavengers (sea birds, seals, crabs, etc.) would be better suited to cleaning-up the mess in a responsible and ecologically sound manner. What occurred however became the stuff of FAIL legend....

Read the Whole Story at:
When Whales Explode: Blasted Blubber Beyond All Believable Bounds

One Little Loophole and Woman Stakes Ownership Claim to The Sun | Newsflavor

2010-12-01T06:47:00.000-05:00

Can Someone ‘Own’ a Sun?

A 49 year old Spanish woman named Angles Duran was apparently was aware of organizations that allow people to name and register stars in the heavens (and real estate/mineral rights to acreage on the ocean floor, the Moon and Mars!) suddenly realized that nobody has claimed ownership of the nearest star, our Sun. She allegedly filed a claim of ownership with a notary just like filing a mineral claim like a ‘gold strike.’

Legally, she does actually have the right to claim un-claimed mineral or energy sources. Realistically, this won’t stand. It would be of course, unenforceable.

That hole in the ozone has apparently cooked her noodle as she intends to bill all of use for the rights of use of ‘her’ claim.

or

One Little Loophole and Woman Stakes Ownership Claim to The Sun

How to Stop Hating Calorie Counting and Learn to Love Your Food

2010-11-17T13:22:00.001-05:00

So many diets fail because they are difficult to follow. You can't eat one thing or another, or can only eat this food items for X-many days to the omission of one item and then the following week, the forbidden item is allowed but some other food is not. And the endless calorie-counting! -Stop the madness!

Food is not the enemy. Forget the calorie-counting. Forget the diet pills. Focus upon the right foods for nutrition and health and the weight will watch itself. Here are some reasons why:
(Cont. here)
Need to Diet? Forget The Calories and Focus Upon the Food

Casa Loma Castle: A Medieval Castle in Modern-day Toronto, Canada

2010-09-20T22:17:00.005-04:00

URL: http://factoidz.com/casa-loma-castle-a-medieval-castle-...

We visit here often enough, -I am becoming somewhat well-known there. The unguided tour is excellent, -you move around at your leisure throughout the facility and grounds. Although now that my Cultural Access Pass is about to expire I'll have to start paying to get in. Oh well, -it's been fun.
Still, the visit is worth it even at the admission price and you can stay as long as you like (until 5-PM at least.)

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/aupe

Waste Nothing; Save Everything.

2010-09-18T09:12:00.000-04:00

BYUN from thismustbetheplace on Vimeo.

I like this little film. We're all packrats at heart.

Good Inbound Links and Inline-Links Means Better Ranking and More Traffic to Your Site

2010-09-16T00:14:00.001-04:00

URL: http://factoidz.com/good-inbound-links-and-inlinelinks-...

A little primer in good SEO and the importance of good inbound links, and inline-links used to reference articles in the same domain.

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/akyp

They Are Not Escargot: Do Not Eat Garden Slugs

2010-09-13T19:57:00.001-04:00

URL: http://factoidz.com/they-are-not-escargot-do-not-eat-ga...

One might make the assumption that slugs might be edible, like the high cuisine escargot. They are not. At least, the raw ones are unfit for human consumption but the same could be said for escargot which must be 'purged' of stomach contents and 'gutted' prior to cooking.

Still, I could probably manage to eat escargot that I knew was prepared by a chef. But a common garden slug? -No way!

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/ae4y

Health Ontario Releases Findings of Public Water Fountains in The GTA | HealthMad

2010-09-06T08:08:00.001-04:00

URL: http://healthmad.com/health/health-ontario-releases-fin...

Returning to the use of plastic bottles for drinking water I guess!

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/9teh

The Effects of Temperature Change on the Entropy of a Rubber Band

2010-09-05T12:52:00.001-04:00

URL: http://factoidz.com/the-effects-of-temperature-change-o...

I smooched a lot of rubber bands back in High School demonstrating this very principle...

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/9rr1

What Does This Picture Remind You Of?

2010-09-04T13:21:00.004-04:00

Totally Looks Like...

Pictures that *totally remind you* of something else... I found a kewl web site where you can mix & match images from their database with unrelated but similar-looking pictures for a humour effect.
Read my whole (albeit short) article here
at "What Does This Picture Remind You Of?"

The Simplest Mouse Trap You Will Ever Make... and two more articles.

2010-07-09T22:56:00.000-04:00

"Boss, I Done Seen Me a Mouse!"

I love that line from the movie "The Green Mile." In this 1999 movie (based upon a Stephen King six-volume novel) starring Tom Hanks as Paul Edgecomb Death Row Supervisor, and Michael Clarke Duncan as John Coffey the death row prisoner/inmate. The movie is about the lives of the guards in a prison's Death Row section days before the execution of an innocent black man. Found cradling the lifeless bodies of two sexually-abused young girls and wailing pitifully, the townsmen find him and assume his guilt. Unable to prove his innocence, John Coffey... From: The Simplest Mouse Trap You'll Ever Make

Reproduction without Sexual Coitus: Is it Cloning?

Actually yes. Parthenogenesis, defined as a form of asexual reproduction in females of certain species that produces an exact replica of itself (basically, a 'clone') by the development of an unfertilized egg into an embryo. There are a number of invertebrate species which do this naturally such as aphids, nematodes, a few of the scorpion species, some crayfish species, water fleas and more.
A few of the vertebrate species that can undergo parthenogenesis naturally include notably the turkey, a few species of reptiles such as certain types of... From: Parthenogenesis: Sexless Reproduction is a Useful Quality

The Sting of a Honeybee vs. Chronic Arthritic and Neural Body Aches

Sufferers of chronic joint, bone, neural or other painful muscular-skeletal conditions that have not improved through the use of conventional OTC and prescription pain relief may find themselves condemned to endure constant pain. Long-term use of anti-inflammatory medications can lead to complication of the liver and the use of prescription pain-killers should not be a long-term treatment option. When nothing else seems to work their lives are seemingly destroyed. Everyday tasks are excruciatingly painful. Sitting or lying down... From: Apitherapy: Bee Sting Therapy for Pain Relief

Little Robert and The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster in Ukraine

2010-01-20T20:51:00.005-05:00

My grandfather was of a different era. He would be totally lost and befuddled in today's world what with the reusable Space Shuttle Fleet (soon to be replaced) and the International Space Station, internet, Google and Twitter. He knew about hayfields, cows and farm life. He liked his beer, rocking chair and his dual-use wood/coal stove. When we came to visit he was usually involved with all three. He'd be in his rocking chair by the roaring fire in the round stove, -and have an opened can of Genesee Beer secreted into the knee-high farm boots by his feet.

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The year was 1986, April 26th to be exact, when the nuclear reactor number 4 at Chernobyl, Ukraine overheated, exploded and released massive amounts of radiation. Over 400 times more radiation than Hiroshima was released. It was the most deadly nuclear accidents in history and most dangerous clean-ups ever.

Grandpa was aged in the final years of the 1980s, more-or-less confined to bed at his home. Grandma was at his beck and call, day and night. When she needed to go shopping, mom or my aunt would do the chauffeuring and I would sit with grandpa to help him with any needs, be there in case the phone rang or anyone came knocking at the door.

We would visit, read the newspaper, whatever. One time we got onto the subject of where my mom worked, at County Mental Health. Grandpa had heard something on the radio once about a 'peeping Tom' and he was not quite sure what that was, but that someone had been arrested for it.
I tried to explain (from my teenage understanding) that it is when someone has a compulsive and irresistible desire to spy on people, peeking in their windows. It is not so much about just viewing (they can buy a magazine or go to a strip-club for that) as it is a mental disorder, a desire to covertly observe people in their private lives.

Grandpa, sitting in his rocking chair by the filled wood-box and coal bucket sort of shook his slowly in disbelief that people do such things. He unconsciously turned his head to catch a glimpse out his window in genuflection. Tapping all five fingers together with their counterparts, he finally turned to me and summed up the conversation with "Well, -people ought not to go 'round doing that... -They're liable to get a block of wood tossed through the window at 'em."

I got to know grandpa better in these final months that he was still with us than in any other time in my life.

Sometimes he would want to take short naps so I would go to the livingroom and watch television with the volume turned down low. Every quarter hour he'd turn on the bedside radio and listen to local & world news. Topping the news during the weeks and months that followed the Ukraine disaster were updates of cleaning up the radioactive debris of the Chernobyl site. If anything at all funny can be said of this disaster, it was of the plight of poor Little Robert...

Grandpa would tell what he had listened to on the radio, and he kept talking about Little Robert. He said that they are so MEAN to him. -He said that they keep sending 'Little Robert' back into the wrecked nuclear plant to collect samples. He'd come out, the scientists would take the samples he carried then they'd send him right back in there again... WHAT was he talking about?!

Finally to settle this curiosity, we all sat with him by the radio to listen and finally, -there it was ...they were sending a little ROBOT into the plant to collect radioactive samples! Grandpa had no idea was a 'robot' was, -what he had heard and was able to understand, was "Little Robert."

It is one of our funniest, most heart-warming memories of dear ol' grandpa, that man from another era and the story of Little Robert.

Worm Fiddling Or Worm Grunting: Old-timer Methods Of Catching Nightcrawlers Fast

2009-12-29T20:16:00.000-05:00

Old timers called it 'Worm Fiddling' or 'Worm Grunting,' the traditional way to quickly coax nightcrawlers to the surface to be picked-up for fishing bait.

It’s a dying art and takes a practiced hand to do it right. A long, flat and somewhat flexible board is pounded into the ground leaving a short stubby end exposed. This is done during the day perhaps a day or two before its intended use. This installing in advance allows the worms below the soil to become acclimated after the insertion of the stick. The pounding of this flat board into the ground will scare the worms deeper for a day or so as would any other digging or pounding activity. This flat board in worm grunting is called the "stob..."

Read more about Worm Fiddling or Grunting HERE...

Our Place in the Universe

2009-12-27T16:11:00.003-05:00

I have seen other images and clips similar to this, but this one is pretty good and easy to comprehend. It shows the comparative sizes of our planets, sun and other stars. Moving from the small to the very large, this is an interesting ride.

Apart from this quick-video being pure eye-candy, the fast-paced viewing and uplifting music reminded me of the ending of the new STAR TREK motion picture, -which I received as a Christmas gift thank you very much!

Enjoy the video and leave a comment!

I Love it When I Publish Something 24-hrs. in Advance of a Major Site on the Same Subject

2009-12-21T19:45:00.004-05:00

It happens occasionally. I write and submit an article to a writing site such as Triond.com and it gets published and I earn pennies for page-impressions, etc. and the very next day, MSN.com or CNN runs an article on the same topic. This sends droves of people to SEARCH the topic, often landing upon my work.

The first time this happened I had published a 'how-to' article on the home-made ferret cage that I built. The very next day, MSN.com ran an article on diseases of the wild Black Footed Ferrets of the Southwest United States and everyone was searching and Google-ing "Black Footed Ferrets" or just "Ferrets" and I received a lot of traffic.

Well it has happened again. Last night I wrote and submitted a short article on the Fennec Fox of Northern Africa. The Fennec is 'the desert fox' from which the Spanish call "el zorro" and yes, it is the same "Zorro" as the swashbuckling swordsman.

Anyway, I really like the Fennec Fox. They are so cute.

Here is a short fact-filled snippet of my article:

The Desert Fox of the Sahara

Their most noteworthy physical feature are those stunningly over-sized ears, disproportionately large for their diminutive body. Living in North Africa and the regions north of the Sahara Dessert, these large ears probably serve several adaptation purposes. Mainly, large ears can detect even the smallest of sounds such as approaching predators and of course, the presence of live food. These large sound-gathering ears hear movements of burrowing rodents under the sand, the rustling of insects and small birds, all of which are part of their diet. They are an opportunistic omnivore....

(image source)

(Read the Whole Fennec Foxes Article Here) Just look at those amazing ears! Isn't that just about the cutest thing you've ever seen?! I was not aware that these are eventually coming to the commercial pet trade, and are already in the United States, Canada and Japan etc. Some states and locales may require a special permit, but it is the same with domesticated ferrets in some regions so this is no special problem.

I love these foxes!

The Reward-Eligible ME! Excercises in IKEA Furniture Assembly

2009-11-16T23:00:00.002-05:00

This forenoon I assembled two pieces of IKEA furniture that we bought for our son's room. First, a short dresser which went totogether easily and flawlessly and second, an upright bookshelf. The bookshelf assembly however required a re-do. Twice.

You see, there are these 'locking screws' which connect two upright board together to create the actual height and there are four of these, two sets per side. I managed to get two of them (one on each side) incorrectly assembled. The locking-screws are supposed to face inwards, towards the books. -Or outwards, away from the books. One or the other but I managed to get one facing in and one facing out on both sides. Swapping these pieces does not solve the puzzle either, as there are 'front' and back' upright boards to consider as well. Not very attractive the way it was albeit, easily dismissible. Still, I needed to change this.

I disassembled the long boards and with some swapping around, got it correct finally. IKEA makes some really attractive simple, bare-bones essentials and the price is right but sometimes their non-textual sketch-images-only depictions are less than intuitive. Factually correct, but these can be interpreted incorrectly.

It is untypical however for an IKEA furniture to be assembled incorrectly and not be obtusely noticeable early-on. This particular piece however, assembled incorrectly with ease.

IKEA Dresser & Bookshelf Assembled By Me

(modeled by my son)

Anyway, it is done and I was left feeling quite reward-eligible. Ice cream and Coca-Cola tonight!

The bookshelf is a laminate and does not require any finishing, but the dresser is naked white pine and tomorrow I intend to give it a clear spray urethane coat for durability and shine. My son is ecstatic with joy over having new furniture for his room, more places for 'his stuff.'

I also got to work some more on that end table for my wife. I was able to remove some rusty and broke-off wood screws that were embedded into critical joints, and got the spindles cut for replacing the painted ones.

I'm getting rather excited to see this reassembled and finished. I will have to fine-sand it again to remove hand and fingerprints, scuffs and etc. and likely, use steel wool tp really get it smoothed-out.

This is going to look really nice.

A Terrible Week for Electronics...

2009-11-14T20:47:00.005-05:00

This past week we did a sideways movement with our big TV, the one that we bought about a year and one-half ago. It was HUGE, and no longer functioning Not a flat screen mind you, but a picture tube legacy models that Best Buy played a little game called 'The Price is Right' and it was an eye-waterin' deal. Or seemingly so.

The remote channel-changer has in recent weeks been slow to perform and finally we could not change channels at all, could not adjust volume, etc. It was not the batteries of course, it was in the switches on the set itself.

Out of warranty
(the one year warranty expired this past August) I opened up the unit from the back and using my computer-cleaning equipment and know-how, cleaned out the dust and detritus that could possibly be present. Very little dust, just the usual 'fine talc' dust that is present in homes that use humidifiers in the drier winter months, and the expected very fine dust. Anyway, a small slip of circuit-board paper WAS present in the mechanical switches board, possibly obstructing the signal I had hoped. It seemed possible that this was at least the reason why the manual buttons also failed to function. I thought this was cured sp feeling rather accomplished in my task I re-assembled the back of the set and plugged it in. It seemed to work fine for about 30-seconds. Then it was back to turning itself off with "NO SIGNAL" text floating on the screen. Time to say buh-bye to the TV.

We could I suppose get it repaired. However, the huge TV only cost $189.00 so we opted instead of use the second-hand TV from my wife's parents. We got over 1 1/2 years use out of the leviathan at a cost of about 50-cents per day I guess so it was worth it. No sense spending another fifty or a hundred dollars possibly, fixing this low-cost set and the way flat screen TVs prices are coming down perhaps in another year we can get one of these instead.

Also, did I mention that this TV was super heavy? It must weight 150 lbs. or more, -it was amazingly heavy and the awkward and immense size made grabbing it by the virtually non-existent hand-holds almost impossible. Time to get rid of it and save for a new flat screen.

That, -and get satellite television instead of stupid Rogers network programming.

Other electronics breaking down: our portable DVD 'boombox' that we won in an Ontario Cancer Lottery drawing is acting up in a bad way. We hardly ever used it until after several months ago we retired the stereo player we had (which was old and also not expensive, but quite outdated.)
Playing the CD music on the boom box makes scary noises; it occasionally makes this horrendous electronic screeching noise that is volumes louder than the music being played. Very annoying and more than slightly frightening...

And this just in; I have been refinishing a small end table for my wife that she brought home. Some fool had painted it with interior white paint (I called in INFERIOR white paint, more on this later) which covered-up the natural black walnut wood beneath. Yeah, -peeps were smokin' blunts I think when they did this abuse.

This table has six off-white ceramic tiles featuring quaint folksy images. Centered on the tabletop, the wood frames these in exquisite detail. Delicate slender tapered legs and hardwood upright spindles support magazines on either end below the table. I'm talking about a sweet home furnishing that would have looked like something in my mom's house back in the day.
Instead of trying to sand smooth all the spindles, I merely bought new hardwood oak spindle rod at Canadian Tire home center and will replace the painted ones with new raw wood. Easier, faster, less complicated.

Anyway, furniture stripper applied to this table, the white paint easily slid off of the wood. I have not seen paint 'give up' as easily as this paint did! I have refinished furniture before (a table, a rocking horse, etc. -I'll try to find a picture of the rocky-horse I refinished last summer for the momma of a my son's playground friend) so this came as a surprise to me how easily the paint came off. I could get used to furniture refurbishing if it were always this easy.

The Refinished Hobby-Horse

(above: the finished [stripped, stained & re-varnished] rocky hobby-horse that I did last summer. It formerly had a cloudy clear-coat of some water-based material over a dirty-dark black unattractive base-coat of stain or varnish that completely concealed the wood grain. It looks LOADS better this way!)

The white paint on the end table looked as if it had been applied with a floor broom. At least on the undersides; it was horrendously sloppy work. I think that the paint was 'poured onto' the flat surface and merely moved around with the brush to make it smooth. I could see thick drag-marks and globby sections where the paint had pooled and hardened in place.

Well, after chemical stripping the residual white paint was removed using my ol' trusty orbital sander with medium grit sanding sheets. Now the sander is quickly dying a horrible death as well. It is very loud and getting louder, slower and working harder every time I use it. It was not expensive, but damn! I am pretty sure that this will be its final project and then, -off to recycling with it. -Electronics come here to die folks! And we're sending quite a few of them back to their maker these days (or to recyclers at least.)

I'll post back with an image of the finished end table when it is done.

November, We Saw Snow!

2009-11-05T22:46:00.003-05:00

Well I am delighted beyond giggles to report that the little carpet bagger of an insect that was in my hair (from previous post a few days ago) has died a horrible death from my repetitive efforts to exterminate him. He/it whatever was last seen floating down the tub drain! And, we had a brief snow flurry here in Toronto today so that means NO MORE BUGS! See you buggy bitches next spring.

Next week is our son's 5th birthday. I still have to get him a nice birthday gift. He provided me with some ideas so this weekend will be a 'me-day' for shopping, a movie and most importantly, buy a gift.

I have a rockin' gift for him for Christmas; a Rock Tumbler. He loves pretty stones and gems. I had a rock-tumbler when I was maybe 5 or 6 years old too, -it was awesome!
You get enough rocks to do two 'loads' and the grits to include with each batch of rough stones. They 'tumble' in an insulated container (with some noise mind you) and each 'grit' shines and rounds the stones until some hidden semi-precious gem is revealed. He's gonna love it!! ;-)

I could maybe use it too... We love finding colored beach glass here on the north shores of Lake Ontario. These are old beer, wine and other bottles that have broken and through the pummeling of the waves and the action of the sand, have reduced the sharp shards of colored glass into 'teardrops' of pure color. Blues, greens, olive (my favorite finds) and clear glass are found. These can be, I dunno, -glued onto the sides of flower pots for decorative crafts or used in 'costume jewelery' or whatever. I have seen bagfuls of these sell on eBAY for dollars. I should post a few bagfuls of our finds. I know that sites like etsy.com love stuff like this. Repurposed, recycled and HANDMADE are the basic tenants of items for sale on etsy.com.

I could (with my son's oversight, of course!) insert loads of broken wine and beer bottle glass into his tumbler with a handful of clean beach sand for polishing grit and a few drips of sudsy ammonia or detergent to make 'faux beach glass' in a matter of days whereas 'the real thing' probably takes months, or years to produce naturally.

Well peeps, it's been a tiring day and I'm ready for bed. Stay sharp!

Jump-n-Grab Insects That Get Into Your Hair!

2009-11-02T16:23:00.003-05:00

Nobody wants to admit or even acknowledge that they have had an insect get into their clothing or hair. I'm not talking about a fly, grasshopper or moth. I am talking something more insidious and loathsome like a tick, flea or worse ...like a head louse.

In front of our building there is are two large evergreen trees with low-hanging branches and I am always cautious about walking under them or accidentally brushing the top of my head against the lowest branches that reach out over the sidewalk. Too often I have picked-up an insect that was laying in wait, ready to reach and grab.

Well folks, I snagged one the other day. Damn!

I noticed last night when I showered that there was a very small twig in my hair, in length about 1/3 that of a toothpick and maybe only half as big in diameter. Easily dismissed really. But this morning I could feel this tingly, spinning 'thing' in my hair. It feels like something swinging jauntily around and around a hair or group of hair, like a child twirling around a Maypole. -I have bug!

(pix source)

My first recourse is to wash my hair and rinse with the hottest water that I can tolerate. Sometimes this causes the interloper to give-up the host. No dice. The tickle remained. I tried splashing the affected spot with a handful of rubbing alcohol, -try to scald it loose with alcohol. I let this sit for 5 minutes until I could no longer stand the smell. It seemed to work and my hair after rinsed and dried dry, felt fine. Fine, for about an hour then the spinning, gyrating insect dance of defiance began again.

I tried super-drying my hair using my wife's hairdryer. -Dedicate that little bitch in~situ. Again, nothing doing. I didn't have any bugspray which is not a good thing to spray into your hair, but dammit I wanted this bug DEAD and I can always wash the bugspray out. What now?

I could find nothing that might work. I refuse to apply chlorine or anything like that to my hair. I draw the line there.

I got a little bowl with two tablespoons full of sea salt (any salt might work, but I wanted the large granules as a abrasive scrubbing agent) and added just enough water to make it into a thick gritty slurry. To this I added garlic-salt, a finer 'finishing salt' thinking that maybe the garlic smell & taste might also help repel this little vamp.

Into the bathroom I went and applied this sandy grit to my head and began to gently scrub in a circular pattern. There was a lot of 'grinding' involved; surely this must scratch and affect the insect. Without a doubt the salinity and pH change would be upsetting to the bug.

I allowed this to dry until large white crystals were dropping from my head like dandruff before I committed the salt-scrub to the shower again. That was several hours ago and so far, there has been no more sensation of this little peckerweed insect doing the happy-dance in my hair. Failing this, my next step is to employ my wife to go after this bug baboon-style, weeding my hair with her fingers and if necessary, plucking this little annoyance from my scalp.

-I hate fall, -damn bugs always trying to come inside.

It Runs On Grease!

2009-10-31T14:27:00.004-04:00

Simple automobile modifications can let your car run in vegetable oil, -cooking grease! I keep hearing about this and it sounds like such a good idea. We don't have enough room to do this, it requires a place to strain and filter the oil to remove food particulates, etc. And storage of the strained oil. A 55-gallon barrel at least.

Here is a neat video that shows how one couple converted their Mercedes to run on restaurant waste.

I am told that the emissions are cleaner and the exhaust actually smells a little bit like warm French Fries.

Good on 'em! I don't think that we can all do this but for those that do they are part of the solution and no longer are part of the problem. Cutting our collective dependence upon foreign oil is paramount to saving our planet. They are contributing for their part.

When Spell-Checker Programs Go Rogue

2009-05-15T19:03:00.010-04:00

I write articles for a publishing site called Triond and earn some cash for views and clicks. It is as much for the joy of writing as for the money, although my desire for money exceeds my current need for joy. In that department I am wealthy. A beautiful wife and an amazing four-year old son.

This writing site Triond has been in recent weeks adding 'toys' to their user's dashboards, things like a VISITOR TRENDS and REFERRING SITE graphs, so as to gauge what articles are receiving the most views and from where your traffic is coming from.

Another recent addition is a online spell-checker program. I think they have some bugs in this still. It flags foreign words, unknown and slang of course, using a yellow background highlighter. You can either correct the word, or add it to the user's personal dictionary. But the problem is that if more than one or two words are 'flagged' this way, submitting the article to be published causes it to automatically rejected by their web 'bot. You receive a nebulous notice to the effect of "Your article has been rejected due to numerous spelling errors" and so forth. It recommends that you correct the work and re-submit the article.

Sometimes, you can do this a DOZEN or more times before it is accepted without having 'added' these alleged misspelled words to your personal user's dictionary. The submitted article seems to have not been looked at by human eyes until it passes this point as the rejection is almost always less several seconds after having been submitted.

Even if it passes the auto-'bot spell-checker, it can still be returned to the "REVISIONS" folder speciously 'for cause.'

I have found that if a word is flagged as being misspelled and you have verified that it is in fact correct, you must "Add to Dictionary" in order to get the article past this automated web 'bot.

This is ludicrous. Any article that uses a lot of 'street slang' or even proper nouns that are correct by not included in the default dictionary database, must be added or else you will not get the article published. I do not feel comfortable adding these words that, despite allowing this article to be presented for publishing, might someday turn up in my user dictionary when I do not want them to. -I might want the slang word "dawg" to be accepted in one article, but would want the word flagged in another when what I meant to write was "Doug" or "dang" (the latter being a vernacular street slang for "damn!")

Even some common and CORRECTLY spelled words are missing from this default dictionary, as we see here;

(click image to view LARGER version)

(click image to view LARGER version)

Please notice the pointer arrow and the highlighted word "proven." This is a recent article I have been trying to submit, and the word "proven" is being rejected for being misspelled! Huh-LO!?

Well, I added it to my personal user's dictionary.

Other highlighted words (such as "YouTube") are expected to trip the spell-checker, but were also added to my personal online dictionary. In the URL and CODE they would be ignored, but I use these terms fairly often and therefore would in fact want to include them in my personal dictionary.

"Thunderbird" is another example of a correctly-spelled word that is missing in this dictionary, but now added. But "proven" is not there? Damn!