Year: 2010

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Disaster News Dump

– First of all, let me just say that my thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti. I’ve been watching CNN all day, and it appears that the death toll will be in the hundreds of thousands (500,000 is not impossible here). It’s heartbreakingly sad, and I hope that rescue workers can get there as soon as possible.

– Speaking of disasters, a mystery object flew by Earth yesterday. The object, which was no larger than 50 feet across, came within 76,000 miles of our planet, or roughly a third of the way to the moon. That’s pretty close in planetary terms! Astronomers disagree about what it might have been. Italian scientists Ernesto Guido and Giovanni Sostero think it’s space junk, but NASA is not so sure. Given the object’s trajectory, the space agency thinks that it’s unlikely to be space junk and is more likely to be a small asteroid.

– Fast food giant KFC is suing itself. Sort of. It’s complicated.

– A lost and hungry pig made her way to the drive-through at a Quizno’s in Lake of the Pines, California last week and attracted the attention of employees by oinking into the microphone. They fed her some Quizno’s while they waited for Animal Control to arrive. The pig was malnourished, but is now doing fine and should have no problems being adopted.

– I’m not a big fan of “emotional distress” in lawsuits, but I think I agree with this one: a family is suing two funeral homes… because they included a mother’s brain in the personal affects given to the family. The woman (named only as “M.F.R.” in the suit) died in a car accident in Utah. The body was prepared there, then returned to her home in New Mexico for the funeral service and burial. During the embalming of someone who died from trauma, organs in the damaged area are typically removed from the body and placed in plastic bags (which makes sense: if someone died from a bullet wound to the head, it would be kind of gross to have brains leaking out everywhere). Somewhere along the line, the bag containing the woman’s brain was mixed in with the bag of her personal items (clothes, purse, etc.). The two funeral homes blame each other, and the family is presumably having nightmares about the entire incident.

– Speaking of gross, I guess you’ve heard by now that a Mexican drug cartel killed an opponent, skinned his face, and then stitched it to a soccer ball.

– Lastly, in lighter news, fans of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia might like this pic from a local newscast, where the dreaded Dick Towel made an appearance:

Dick Towel

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Yummy Cupcakes!

The Steelers season might be over, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t drool over the cupcakes at Coco’s Cupcake Café in Pittsburgh… specifically this cupcake:

Steelers Cupcake

That looks delicious! You should check out the other flavors of cupcakes this place makes – I’d kill for the recipes for the Banana Peanut Butter, Snickerdoodle and Chocolate Stout cupcakes!

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FRIDAY FUN: Old and New Hotness

Not a whole lot going on here at the house – I’m in the midst of the Great MP3 Cleanup of 2010, and checking the artwork and dates on 14,000 files takes a surprising amount of time (sarcasm) – so I’ll just post two quick pics.

Dita von Teese posted this pic on her Twitpic account. It’s apparently a very young Dita in her “first corset”:

Old Dita von Teese pic

What do ya think? I like her hair! Sure black is good, but variety is good also.

Continue reading “FRIDAY FUN: Old and New Hotness”

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REVIEW: Flip Burger Boutique

I subscribe to a blog called A Hamberger Today, which discusses such eternal topics as “regular bun vs. ciabatta bun” or “mayo vs. no mayo”. They also review burger joints and link to other reviews of such places. So when I saw glowing reviews of a place called Flip Burger Boutique in my original hometown of Atlanta, I just knew I had to go there over the Christmas holidays. As luck would have it, Lisa wanted to meet an old friend (who now lives outside Chattanooga) at some point midway between Atlanta and that city… so I had the Sunday after Christmas free. My Dad offered to take me to Flip in exchange for some computer lessons. Score!

Flip Burger Boutique (exterior)

We got there around 1:30 or so on a Sunday afternoon. The place was swingin’ – so much so that the line was out the door! We faced around a half hour wait for a table, but thankfully two spots opened up at the bar, so we were able to sit immediately.

Continue reading “REVIEW: Flip Burger Boutique”

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Win7: “God Mode”

Here’s a new Windows 7 tip that’s been flying around the Internet:

If you want to have a single folder where you can access almost any setting you’d ever need, just create a new folder wherever you’d like and give it the following name:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

This will create a folder which contains quick links to every Control Panel option, Windows 7’s “Action Center”, the “Backup and Restore” applet, Autorun settings, desktop gadgets, “Devices and Printers” and more.

I have to kind of laugh at the name, though. It’s not really “God Mode”, especially since you could simply type the name of any of these applets into the search box on the Start Menu. But still, if you’re a tweaker who likes having everything at his or her fingertips, then maybe “God Mode” is for you!

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Good and Well

Look, I don’t know of a easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna come right out and say it: judging by the way I hear people speak up here, the North Carolina public school system has apparently done a horrible job in explaining the difference between “good” and “well”. So let’s see if I can clear up some of the confusion for you:

“Good” is typically used as an adjective. Adjectives modify nouns. So you’d say “That was a good dinner” or “He is a good quarterback”.

“Well” is typically used as an adverb. Adverbs modify verbs. So you’d say “He cooks well” or “He throws the ball well”.

It’s all quite simple, no? Well, the English language being what it is, there’s an exception to this rule, and that’s when linking verbs get thrown in the mix. Most verbs imply some kind of action (like “cooks” or “throws”). But some verbs simply link a noun with a state of being. Words such as “appears”, “seems”, “looks’, “tastes”, “grows”, and most forms of “to be” (“am”, “is”, “are”, “was”) are such linking verbs, and you can use either “good” or “well” (“I feel good” or “I’m well, thanks”) in some cases, but not all.

So how do you know which one to use?

In most cases, if it’s a simple adjective you use “good” and “well” if it’s a simple adverb. If it’s a linking verb, simply remove the verb in question and replace it with “am”, “is” or “are”. If the resulting sentence makes sense, use “good”; if it makes no sense, use “well”. For example, “the pizza looks good” would become “the pizza is good”, which makes perfect sense. On the other hand, “the bunny smelled the grass but decided not to eat any” would become “the bunny is the grass but decided not to eat any”, which makes no sense, so you’d then say that the “bunny smelled the grass well”.

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A Stupid Navigator Tip

I’ve spent a lot of time on this site bashing Time Warner Cable’s Navigator DVR software, and with good reason. It sucks.

But in the interest of fairness, let me share this tip with you I picked up the other day:

To quickly move to a future date in the Program Guide, simply press the right arrow key and then (quickly) press a number button for the day you want to skip ahead to. For example, if you want to skip ahead 6 days in the guide, just press the right arrow key and then press 6.

It’s kind of neat, and saves keypresses over using the “Day” button once you go over two days.