Saturday Activities

Thanks to Carla, I had an abnormally early start to my Saturday. I was at the Kings Island amusement park by 7 AM to take photos at the Adventures For Wish Kids 5k run/walk fund raising event. I know what many of you are thinking....they must have been hard up if they needed me to take photos. How true! I actually found it quite difficult as I don't take pics of people. It's hard! Many of the spots where I was taking photos (under a tent, at the finish line, at the awards) were back lit and it was a very sunny day. That contrast made it hard to get a good photo. I was constantly trying to play with the exposure to get decent photos of faces in the shadows. I ended up doing quite a few adjustments on the computer to get a better light balance. The park had Blue and Scooby Doo stop by to say hi to the kids. The kids really enjoyed it. They were hugging Blue and Scooby and the dj at the event got everybody dancing together. I can now say I've seen Blue and Scooby dance to "Y.M.C.A." and do the "Electric Slide" and the Macarena.

In the afternoon I went flying a bit. A co-worker built a new home in the Morrow area, so I flew over to take some photos. I'm not too familiar with the roads in that area. It took me quite awhile to find the neighborhood. I think I found the right spot. On the way back to the airport, I got another shot of the building where I work in Mason, OH. Compare the photo here to my earlier post in March to see how much greener things are now. In today's photo, the brown is just the long grass laying down after the rough bush mowing they do once a year. Although it was a beautiful day to fly, things were relatively quiet at the Blue Ash airport -- likely due to yesterday's collision.

Mid-air Collision Over Sharonville

As most folks in the area have already heard (and likely many more since it was also on the national news), there was a mid-air collision yesterday between two general aviation planes a few miles north of the Cincinnati Blue Ash airport. That's the airport I fly out of. Three pilots were killed -- unable to control their planes after the collision. A very sad, tragic accident on a clear, beautiful day. I was surprised to hear the news of the collision. However, I was even more shocked when I found out I knew one of the pilots involved in the accident, Ted Hitchens.

You can read more about the accident in articles on all the local news sites. I found a couple articles on the Cincinnati Enquirer site and the WLWT site. The Enquirer also has photo sets of one plane and the other plane. The photos of the wreckage speak for themselves.

I first met Ted at work. He and I were on teams for a few osteoporosis projects before he retired a few years ago. I stopped by his cube one day many years ago and noticed all the aviation items decorating his work space. We got talking and I found out he was also a pilot and furthermore, an instructor. Ted was a very warm, personable guy who always enjoyed talking about aviation. He did charity flights for people needing medical treatment and was also involved in the air safety foundation. He was part owner of a twin engine plane and for awhile after I first bought my plane, our planes shared the same hangar at Blue Ash. I saw him a lot then, but I hadn't seen him much since he retired. The last time we talked was about a year ago when he stopped in at work to say hello to some folks. Of course we talked about flying. It's terrible he died in such an accident, while doing something he was so passionate about.

When news of the accident broke, I got instant messages and phone calls from several friends and co-workers checking to be sure I wasn't involved. Thankfully not, and thanks to all for your concern. Now we just need to keep the families of all the pilots involved in this tragic accident in our thoughts and prayers.

5 Second Rule Quantified

Most folks are aware of the "5 second rule" for food -- if you drop food and pick it up within five seconds, it's probably safe to eat. How true is that? Do you use the 5 second rule of food?

It's no secret I'm a germ-o-phobe. Obviously that "rule" doesn't fly with me. Even more so after reading this article in the New York Times in the curious cook column written by Harold McGee. The article summarizes some old work as well as a relatively recent Clemson University study that quantified how badly food is contaminated when dropped on a dirty surface.

The bottom line is there's a reason I'm a germ-o-phobe. Check out the article -- if you drop your bread or bologna, pick it up and throw it away.

US States Game

The Random Good Stuff site has a cute little game called Place US States. You start with a blank map of the US. As random states appear, you click and drag them to their proper spot on the map. If you're off a bit, the game keeps track of your error. The first couple states in the middle can be tough for the geography challenged folks like me. I'm sure Josh would do well at this since he's probably driven through all the states in the last month.

Pillows for Gamers

Check out these pillows. The perfect gift for your Nintendo loving gamer. Neat idea.

Cincinnati Jungle Kats

On Saturday, Dianne and I went with a few folks she works with to see our local arena football team, the Cincinnati Jungle Kats. They played the Fort Wayne Fusion. It was black and orange night and there were many Cincinnati Bengals fans dressed up for the event. An added bonus for the first several hundred folks in the door was a Chad Johnson bobblehead.

I had never been to an arena football game before. I was expecting some fast paced action. It seemed a bit slow and it was a low scoring game. I enjoyed seeing it, but I wasn't sold on arena football.

The half time entertainment was a frisbee demonstration from three handlers and dogs. The dogs seemed like they were having a great time sprinting down the field to jump and catch the frisbee in their mouth. I'll be looking for Kyle to be doing that next year with Yahtzee.

Thai Cooking Class

Last night I went to a cooking demonstration class given by Helen Chen. Helen is the daughter of Joyce Chen whose cookware you've probably seen in stores. Helen has written a couple of cookbooks and now has her own line of cookware. She's a very high energy, down to earth person that made the class a lot of fun. Helen prepared 5 different Thai dishes that we got to taste.

The class was held at Cooks'Wares at Harper's Point. It's close by and they have a small, but nice area where 24 people can watch a cooking demonstration. Mirrors above the counter/stove let you see exactly what the chef is doing. It's small enough so you can interact with the chef and ask questions along the way about recipe substitutions, favorite brands of ingredients, cooking techniques, etc. Check out their course offerings here. It's worth the price and you get a 10% discount at the store when you're attending a class. I picked up a couple items like a new, large flat bottomed wok and a Japanese mandolin. Can't wait to try some of the Thai recipes I learned about.

Plane Crash at KHAO

A quick follow-up to my Sunday post describing my landing practice at the Butler County Regional airport. It couldn't have been more than a half an hour after I was there that a Cessna 210 crashed at the airport. Very spooky. The Dayton Daily News has photos of the crash posted. A lot of damage to the airplane. It looks like they were off to the side of the runway. The 4th picture gives a good idea where the plane ended up.

There was a gusty wind when I was there, but it didn't seem too bad and the wind was more or less down the runway. While practicing there was one approach where a gust caused me to flare a bit high. I just executed a go-around (also good practice) and came around again and landed. If anything, there was a slight crosswind right to left so I'm guessing there was another reason they ended up off the right side of the runway. I'm doubting the weather was an issue.

Unfortunately the three occupants were taken to the hospital -- no word on their condition although the Hamilton News said one person was taken by air care to University hospital. I did a quick N number search and one of the co-owners of the 1964 plane was from Canton, OH.

Center of US Population

On Tuesday, I went to the greater Cincinnati airport to pick up Dianne -- returning from her trip to Washington, DC. I got there early, so I went to the airport viewing area on the east side of the airport. There is a car park just outside the fence, on a bit of a rise, that gives a good view of runway 18L/36R and runway 9/27. It's a nice spot to watch the planes come and go, although it would be better in the morning when the sun is at your back.

On my way out of the parking area, I saw this sign marking the location of the center of the US population in 1880. It's gone quite a bit west since then. After the 2000 census, the Census Bureau announced the center is now near Edgar Springs, MO (southwest of St. Louis). I guess California and Hawaii are mostly responsible for the shift. The Census Bureau announcement gives the history that shows how things have shifted west over the years.

Recent Flying Adventures

I've been a blogging slug. A week ago Friday (4/20), I took the afternoon off and took a trip to the Indianapolis Mount Comfort airport on the east side of Indy. It's a very nice airport with two perpendicular runways so it's easy to land no matter which way the wind is blowing. It's also the home of Indy Aero where I bought Tony. Indy Aero is a very nice FBO -- very professional, courteous service. They have a large ramp for parking. The photo at right is Tony parked on the ramp in front of their building. Indy Aero is a big Cessna dealer and so they always have used aircraft for sale. Although you can check out there inventory on the web, it's fun to fly in and see what they have. Nothing there was better than Tony.

Today I got some practice in by flying in the Cincinnati area and up towards Richmond, IN. When I took off the winds were gusty. My first destination was the Butler County airport for some landing practice in the gusty winds. That went well. Afterwards, I did various maneuvers and slow flight/stalls just south of Richmond and then headed home. Although it was a bit windy and bumpy, it was a beautiful day to fly as there were just a couple puffy clouds at about 5000 feet.

My Friday the 13th Surprise

What is this photo? It's a photo of my driver's side door. You're seeing the parking lot, grass, a bush, a building, my fingers, and part of the cell phone reflecting off the finish of the car door. There are some dust and dirt specs -- my car needs a wash and wax. But what's that big white triangle in the middle of the picture? That's a new door ding, in my black car door, that I got at work.

Last Friday was a busy day at work. I had a surprise request at about 11 AM to revise one document and create another document for a regulatory agency before the end of the day. To make a long story short, I dropped everything else and after a lot of work I finished and sent them about 4:40 PM. After sending I had to wait awhile for someone to review and OK them, so I didn't leave on time. I was a little grumpy as it was a nice day and I wanted to get out and fly a bit.

When I got to my car, I found someone had given me a door ding on my previously pristine driver's side front door. OK, it's not really a 'ding'. It's a large scrape (compare to my fingers) and a good dent. I got to work early and left late so I have no idea who was parked next to me. However, I do know it was some idiot co-worker that somehow managed to slam their door into my car even though the parking spaces at work are unusually wide. In short, the person had to make a real effort to put a ding like that into a neighboring car.

The only bright side is now my driver's side front door is a closer match to my driver's side back door that has five parking dings in it. Argh!

Sunday Errands

Late this afternoon, Dianne and I ran a few errands. We carried our recyclable items to the car. As we were pulling away from the house, I noticed I forgot my cell phone. I like to have one along while driving, so I asked Dianne if she had hers. She did, so all was good. We dropped off our stuff at one of our local recycling bin centers. Then we drove downtown to pick up our Little Giant ladder that we had delivered to Dianne's office.

On the way home, we stopped at the Indigo Casual Gourmet Cafe for dinner. It's a small, but very nice Italian place near Hyde Park Square. It was a nice dinner. We just finished dinner, and Dianne gets a surprised look and starts patting her jacket. I didn't hear her phone, but I thought maybe it was vibrating. Nope. She didn't have her phone.

I remember she told me a story several days ago that she dropped her cellphone in a co-worker's car when a group drove to lunch. She took the keys to go look in the car while I waited to pay the bill. Dianne didn't find the phone in the car, so it was time to retrace our steps. I didn't think there was much hope of finding the phone. We drove back downtown and fortunately some kind soul had turned her phone in to the security guard at her office. Whew! That was lucky! I think someone will keep it clipped to her belt or in a zippered pocket from now on. Yes, Dianne, I had to get one more reminder in.

"New" Wine Store

This afternoon, Dianne and I noticed a couple "new" stores in the strip mall on the east side of Kenwood Road just south of Montgomery -- across from the Graeter's ice cream store. Tucked away on the south end of the strip is a store called microWINES. We noticed their sign the last few weeks and thought the place was new. We stopped in to look and found out they have been there over a year, but put up new signs relatively recently.

It's a very nice store that offers a wide variety of wines from smaller wineries across the world. The store has an elegant look and the two staff folks we met were very knowledgeable about the wines. They have a tasting table that is always open, so Dianne and I tried a pinot grigio and a tempranillo red wine from Spain. Both were very nice, but I liked the Kios wine a lot.

They have lots of tasting and education events, they will track your purchases to help you remember what you bought, and they have information about wines in their inventory on their website or available via kiosks in the store. If you're into wine and in the neighborhood, stop in and check out the store.

Peep Show

This is a bit late, but check out this flash piece called Peep Show at the Washington Post site. It's pretty funny. You can scroll at the bottom of the screen. My favorite is #17. And yes, it is safe for work (it's not that kind of peep show). Thanks to the Foodie Report for pointing out the site.

FAA Safety Team Website

I attended an FAA general aviation safety seminar last week at the Clermont County airport (I69). At the start of the seminar, the host of the event took a few minutes to give a brief overview of the FAA safety team website and the resources there for pilots. Surprisingly, he mentioned that just over half of the general aviation pilots in the US are registered at the site. The FAA is trying to get the word out to folks to register. By the way, you don’t have to be a pilot to use the site. Anyone interested in aviation or a student pilot can benefit.

One of the nice features of the site is the option to send notices to you by email for many different items – newsletters, seminar announcements, airworthiness info, etc (the safety program airman notification system). You can pick and choose what you want to get in your preferences. Also, the site has many training/refresher documents, on-line courses, etc. in the learning center area. If you haven’t been there, check it out.

Google Mobile SMS

Dianne pointed out a Google Labs product a couple weeks ago called Google SMS. It lets you make a Google search via a text message from your cell phone. It is really slick. If you go to the Google SMS page there is a sample interface where you can try it. They also have a list of sample searches. It's a handy tool when you're out and about and not near a computer.

Today we were out and about and wanted to see the movie Grindhouse, but didn't know the show times. While sipping our smoothies, I just sent a text message containing "Grindhouse" and our zip code and about 10 seconds later the movie times at neighboring theaters popped up as text messages. That is really handy. The only watch out is that searches like that may be long and so the results are split into several messages. If your plan doesn't have a lot of text messages, just be aware one query could produce several messages and be judicious about your searching.

We did see Grindhouse today. It's a long double feature, but we both enjoyed it a lot! Brace yourself for a lot of gore. Dianne was jumping out of her seat and grabbing me during some scenes. I liked the first segment a bit better, but they were both good. Definitely a 'buy' when the DVD comes out.

Spring Day

The early part of the day was another beautiful Spring day in the area. But if the weather forecast holds true, we're in for several days of hard overnight freezes that might put the brakes on the blossoms. I used a half day of vacation from last year to take some photos. There were lots of bees out sampling the flowers. It didn't take me too long to get the shot shown here. Look at my Flickr pool to see several flower photos I took today.

Slide Show

I'm testing a slide show of some spring photos I took last weekend. If you move the cursor over the image it will pause and show the title. Clicking on an image will take you to the photo in Flickr. Thanks to Breeze Debris.

Flashback

I had a flashback this morning, triggered by a horse crossing sign, which reminded me how much the character of the Mason, Ohio area has changed.

On the news this morning I saw there was an accident at a busy intersection that’s on my normal path to work. I was running a little late and knew I’d hit the rush hour traffic jam at the accident. Therefore, I decided to take the side roads to work.

I call them ‘side roads’ now, but eight years ago when I first started working in a new building I called them the ‘back roads’. That seemed more appropriate because the area was wide open with farms and a polo field (hence the name of the Polo Grille at Deerfield Place). In fact, there was a sharp S-curve in Irwin-Simpson road to accommodate a farm that had several horses. You had to go slow around that curve and there was a yellow horse/rider warning sign just before it to let you know there could be folks riding in the area.

Going slow around that S-curve was actually nice. It gave you time to look at what was happening at the farm. Depending on the time day you might see the family feeding the horses or working around the buildings. When it was cold, often times you’d see the water vapor condensing just outside the horse’s nostrils as they exhaled. Often times I’d see a girl who lived there waiting in their driveway for the school bus. She always waved at the cars going by. She must have waved at thousands of cars as a kid.

That farm is now long gone, the buildings removed. The road was straightened not long after the barn was demolished so the S-curve is gone. The land and the surrounding fields were developed into a strip mall shopping area, homes, and apartments (the google map satellite image shows the area during the time when the buildings were removed but the S-curve was still there). There are probably thousands of people living, shopping, and driving in the area where a few people and some horses lived and played.

This morning I took that road to work and noticed the yellow horse/rider warning sign is still there. It was never removed. Seeing that sign brought back memories of the S-curve, the farm, and the people that lived there. It made me realize how much the character of the area has changed with the tremendous development of the land. I’m not convinced it has changed for the better.

Desktop Tower Defense

I was reading Jeremy Zawodny's blog (he's a pilot) and saw his post about the on-line game called Desktop Tower Defense. It's a real time strategy game where you try to prevent invaders from passing across a desktop by using various types of towers to shoot and destroy them. It sounds too simple to be much fun. However, Jeremy's post is accurate. It's an addictive game -- don't click on the link.

The Fresh Market is Open

Dianne and I made our first visit to The Fresh Market on Sunday. They just opened a store across the street from the Kenwood Mall.

It is not a large store, but they have a nice selection of produce and specialty items. It's in the same vein as Trader Joe's (just a few blocks away), Wild Oats, and Dorothy Lane Market. The employees were very friendly and very willing to wait on you. We were browsing several of the counter areas: meat/fish, deli & prepared foods, cheeses. In each area, we were asked multiple times if we needed help.

They have some nice prepared items that we'll try on evenings when time is tight. I thought the produce was better than Trader Joe's. I think they will do well, although there'll be some competition for customers.

First Days of Spring

According to the calendar, Spring officially started this week. We've had some unseasonably warm weather. It was a beautiful day today. The mild temperatures have caused the leaves and flowers to start popping out. I took a few photos around our place today. At the right are flowers on some ornamental trees lining our street. Here is the entire Flickr set I posted.

Denied!!

We had a Nintendo Wii today...sort of...for about 3 hours. What a disappointing, waste of a day.

We've been wanting a Wii for awhile. Actually, I wanted to get Dianne one for her birthday. But with all the supply problems they've had, I couldn't find one. A few weeks ago, a co-worker told me he scouted the Sunday paper inserts and went to the store early and got one. One of Dianne's co-workers also mentioned local Wii sightings.

I decided today was the day to go for it. I got up about 6:20 and went to Krogers to buy the Cincinnati Enquirer. It's easy to get a prime parking space at that time of day! I went home, scoured the inserts, and found that Circuit City mentioned Wiis. The ad said they were handing out vouchers at 9 -- one hour before they open. I had some toast and hit the road.

When I got to Circuit City a little before 8, there were eight people already waiting. As you saw in my Twitter tweets, one couple had been there since 5 AM! At 9 AM the manager came out and distributed the vouchers. I was one of the lucky 10 who got one! Several folks were denied. I waited with my book to read ('Made to Stick' by the Heath brothers) until 10 AM when the store opens. While waiting, there were a bunch of folks that drove up looking for a voucher. They were out of luck.

At 10 I went in and bought the Wii, an extra controller, and a Zelda game for Dianne. I thought life was good. I even stopped at Marx's Bagels on the way home to get brunch for us.

Dianne opened it up and we spent quite a bit of time fishing cords through our wall unit to connect up the Wii to the TV. We turn it on and...NOTHING. We check everything...still nothing. I even brought the TV down from the bedroom to try the connection there...still nothing. Were we doing something silly or did we get a bad unit?

So we had to pull the cords back out of the wall unit. We packed up the Wii and made a return trip to Circuit City. The customer service person was nice enough, but he kinda had a look of "...no signal...yeah, sure." He connected it up to one of the showroom TVs and got the same result -- a black screen. At least we weren't doing something stupid, but how disappointing to get a bum unit. They took it back and will hold one for us when they get their next shipment (whenever that is).

20 Things

The Discover magazine site has posted a collection of lists of twenty things about a variety of topics: bees, skin, aliens, etc. An interesting read if you're looking to take in some science trivia.

Shorpy Photoblog

I stumbled across a nice photo blog the other day. The site is "Shorpy -- The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog". Here is the site's description of the blog:

Shorpy.com is a photo blog about what life a hundred years ago was like: How people looked and what they did for a living, back when not having a job usually meant not eating. We’re starting with a collection of photographs taken in the early 1900s by Lewis Wickes Hine as part of a decade-long field survey for the National Child Labor Committee. One of his subjects, a young coal miner named Shorpy Higginbotham, is the site’s namesake.

The photos do give a glimpse into life back then -- and how the country has changed since then. Not all the photos are 100 years old. The site has recently posted a series of photos from the 1940s. In fact, I was surprised to see this photo. I was in this building a few years ago while visiting a company we were working with. The building was remodeled into an office space, but the architects preserved the interior brick work and beams. It was a wonderful restoration.

Personal Bee

I've mentioned that I get most of my news on-line. I visit some sites regularly and read the headlines and click on some of the interesting ones to read the article. I skip over the various sections. In short, I approach using the site like I would an actual physical newspaper.

I also use several RSS feeds and a newsreader (Bloglines) to get general news as well as science and technology news. That's a little more targeted, but I still have to scan through many headlines I'm not interested in to find the gems. It's an improvement that lets me look efficiently at a lot of news sources.

I have a couple breaking news sources in my Twitter group so I get breaking news through instant messaging. That's kind of interesting and sometimes a little annoying. I have to turn it off sometimes.

The other day I stumbled on a new service (or at least new to me) called the Personal Bee. It's trying to be an intelligent filter for the flood of information we're exposed to everyday. Sounds like they're trying a combination of software and human filtering to present news. You can set up your own "beehive" on the service to see things the way you want. I don't have a lot of experience with it. Anyone reading this a user?

How do you read your news on-line?

I'll Never Make It

I realized today that I don't have what it takes to climb way up the corporate ladder. Not that I didn't know that before, but it was reaffirmed today as I walked into the men's room at work.

When I opened the door I heard someone talking in the men's room. In and of itself, that isn't unusual. However, as I walked in I noticed there was only one person in the men's room. It was a manager who is several levels above me. He was talking on his cellphone. Again, even that isn't so unusual in this day and age. But he was talking on his phone while standing in front of the urinal.

My first thought was wow...that's a sign that someone is too busy. I chuckled to myself when he flushed. I wondered what the person on the other end of the conversation was thinking. That's a little up close and personal.

Then he walked out the door. I guess with one hand holding the phone, he wasn't able to wash his other hand. I've admitted it before -- I'm a germ-o-phobe. That put the whole situation over the top for me. Yikes!

So if being a high level manager means you don't have two minutes of peace to use the restroom and wash your hands, then I don't want the job. If I'm ever that busy, please...someone do an intervention. And disinfect my phone. By the way, I just saw this briefcase. Maybe that and some Purell will help me get ahead.

Sunday Flying

At the last oil change for the plane, the mechanics also checked my lights and pitot heat. Everything was fine -- that’s the good news. Unfortunately, after checking the pitot heat, they must have put the pitot cover on immediately. The pitot tube must have been hot so the cover partially melted to the metal tube. I had to cut the cover off the pitot tube when I went flying last week. Not cool. The pitot tube is part of the system used to measure your airspeed, so you don’t want it getting clogged by insects, etc. It’s a good idea to keep it covered.

Today I flew out to Sporty’s pilot shop at the Clermont county airport to get a replacement. Here is Tony in front of the building. It was busy there -- a lot of planes parked there for a visit.

It was a nice day, but the wind was very different than the forecast and it was a pretty bumpy flight. I had my seatbelt cinched up pretty tight, but at one point I went through some rough air and I was bounced up in the seat and my head hit the top of the canopy! Haven’t had that happen very often.

After picking up a new pitot cover and some gas, I flew north/northwest toward Middletown. On the way I flew over Procter & Gamble’s Mason Business Center where I work. The picture gives a good idea of how brown things look right now. Spring hasn't kicked into high gear yet. On the south side of Middletown I got a good photo of the AK Steel plant. I also took a picture of the Middletown airport. There is a Flickr group dedicated to aerial shots of airports, so I thought I'd take a quick photo for the pool. The Middletown grass runway is really brown too.

For dinner in the evening, Dianne and I went to Smokey Bones for some ribs.

Cincinnati Rollergirl Teams

The Roller Derby Diva posted the rosters for the 2007 teams of the Cincinnati Rollergirls. The Rollergirl website isn't updated very often, but I'm assuming they'll have the new teams and photos posted soon.

Not Your Average Brown Bag

Surfing around (I apologize I forgot who supplied the link) I ran across the LuNcHoLOgy site. Here is an excerpt from the 'story' page on the site:

Each morning, Kristi Thomas spent a few moments adding a special touch to her daughter’s school lunch bag. Some days, it was a love note or words of encouragement. Other days, it was a brainteaser, joke or fun fact. Whatever the theme, Kristi always took the time to handprint it, along with some cool artwork, on a simple brown lunch bag. The decorative bags quickly became a hit with her daughter’s classmates.

The rest, as they say, is history. The business now provides themed sets of brown bags. If you don't have a fancy lunch pail, this is a cute idea to kick up lunch.

Making of America Collection

Thanks to Make Magazine, I found Cornell University's portion of the Making of America collection. The MOA collection is a digital library of items from the mid to late 1800s. The images provided are scanned from the actual 19th century items. In addition, they have performed optical character recognition to aid searching. The collection is a joint project between Cornell and the University of Michigan, with each library focusing on different types of publications. The Cornell collection is journal based. They have a lot of early Scientific American issues which are interesting to look at. The illustrations, such as the plane at right from 1855, are amazing. Click on the image to go to the source page.

Pluto

I like "Pluto, little Pluto" as much as the next guy, but is this the highest priority of the New Mexico state legislature? Wow!

Sunday Stuff

It was a beautiful day here in the Cincinnati area. The temperature was near 60, little wind, and just a couple whispy cirrus clouds in the sky. A perfect day to enjoy the outdoors in your vehicle of choice.

For me, that was the Tiger. It was the first time I had been flying for awhile. Now, with daylight savings time kicking in and some warmer weather on the horizon, I hope to fly more. Today I went up north to Middletown to practice some landings. They have a nice long runway and generally not too much traffic. However, today there were a lot of people flying. I saw a lot of different planes. There is a nice park (Smith Park) adjacent to part of the Middletown airport property and there were a lot of people picnicing and walking. Several families were at the fence watching the planes come and go. As I was taxiing for takeoff, I slid the canopy back and waved to the kids. They were so excited to get a wave! It was cute seeing them wave back so hard their arm was about to come off.

After that I flew northwest toward Richmond, Indiana to practice some ground reference maneuvers and do some other checks. With all the snow gone, everything is so brown and bare. A few of the larger lakes still had ice on the surface, but most of the ponds are ice free.

Dianne's vehicle of choice was the motorcycle. She got her bike out of winter storage today. It started right up and she went for a quick ride. Afterwards she did some more laundry and ironed some shirts for me -- what a cutie!

When I got home, we went to the Smoothie King to get a drink. Dianne has been big on the Pineapple Surf offering. I tried something different today -- Hearty Apple. It was a nice treat. The camera phone photo at the right was taken a couple weeks ago. However, except for not needing a jacket today, Dianne looked pretty much the same sippin' on the Surf.

Brad Delp Found Dead

Just read a BBC news report this morning that Brad Delp, the original lead singer for the band Boston, was found dead at his home on Friday afternoon. The cause of death wasn't yet known. Their debut album was standard issue equipment in the late 70s. They are one of my favorites. I finally saw them on their Walk On tour in the mid 90s. Click on the image to go to the Boston web ring.

A sad day for Boston fans.

I Hate Mail-in Rebates

Why not just sell a product at the sale price or have an instant rebate? Why have mail-in rebate offers? Those are rhetorical questions answered here by a rant and follow-up to a Twitter I sent the other day.

We were looking around a local computer store recently and stumbled on a display with some cute USB flash drives. The item had a mail-in rebate offer that made it seem like a good value. Dianne got one for work and as an impulse buy I got one for my use at home. Dianne very kindly filled out the rebate paperwork and sent everything in promptly. Life should be good, right?

A few days ago we received a postcard in the mail from the rebate processing center saying “our records indicate the reference number is a duplicate from a previous submission.” What’s up with that? If you have any questions, call yada yada yada.

On Monday I called. After getting a blister on my finger by working through the menu triage system, I get a recording that says something like “all our representatives are busy. Due to an unusually large call volume, long delays are likely. We suggest you call back at a later time.” Sigh! After holding for 20 minutes, I decide to follow the suggestion and call back later.

On Tuesday I tried again early in the day. I go through the prompts and get the exact same recording. Either they have 1 service rep or a boatload of issues to deal with – or both! I put on my headset and started working while waiting on hold. After about 15 minutes I hear a real person. I explain the postcard and ask for an explanation. He asks for enough information to do a TSA background check in order to pull up the rebate information. “Oh yes,” he says, “there are duplicate entries for you.” Duh! I knew that much from the postcard! Why are there duplicate entries? “Let me check,” he says. Clickity click keyboard sounds fill my ear. “Hmmm...it appears our system created duplicate entries for the same item and that is blocking your rebate.” I explain the situation and he says, “I’m sorry…Let me fix that.” Clickity click click….click click….”this’ll just take a minute”…clickity click…click. The whole time I’m wondering if he’s really typing or just running his fingers randomly across a dead keyboard that isn’t even plugged into a computer. “OK…the error has been corrected and you should have your rebate in 3-4 weeks.”

That reminded me of a similar situation Dianne handled a couple years ago for a larger rebate associated with a Sony camera purchase. In both cases, there was nothing wrong with the rebate submission. The representatives released the rebate after we called, but we had to make the extra effort. I wonder how many people don’t send in the rebate, don’t call, or don’t wait on hold to resolve a rebate “issue”. I suppose companies save a lot of money with these rebate hurdles rather than cutting the price directly. But in the long run, as people get fed up with all the follow-up and challenges to get a rebate, will that affect purchase decisions? Ultimately will they ‘save’ money with that type of promotion if people don’t buy at all?

I’ve learned my lesson – especially for items that are impulse buys. Avoid the mail-in rebates.

Say It Ain't So

Accurate or not? According to John Kiesewetter, TV and radio critic for the Cincinnati Enquirer, Gary Burbank plans to retire at the end of the year.

Those of you in the Cincinnati area have likely listened to Gary’s afternoon radio show on 700 WLW – the BBC (Broadbank Burbcasting Corporation). For those outside the area, Gary uses the many different voices he does as the basis for a wide range of characters that are used for comedy segments throughout his drive time show. Gary also does interviews, crazy news, Sports or Consequences (a call-in quiz show), etc. It’s a great show that he’s done for many years in the area. I’ve been listening for 15 years.

My favorite Burbank character is Earl Pitts. I wonder why? He’s so popular that Earl has his own website. I also like his Gilbert Gnarley character. Gilbert is an old guy that lives in the St. Pia Zadora Golden Buckeye Retirement Home in Pisgah, Ohio with his dog the Amazing Crepso. Pisgah is an actual town on the north side of the Cincinnati area. Gilbert is easily confused and calls companies and help lines to get help and answer questions. There is more info on Gilbert and some of his calls on his Wikipedia page.

Gary also has a restaurant in the area that features live music, mostly blues, many nights.

It’ll be a sad day for Cincinnati radio if John’s report is true.

Top 200 Definitive Albums

Thanks to Michael at the Neverending Rainbow, I found the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of the top 200 definitive albums. You can search the list or browse through from top to bottom. It's fun to look through. Our CD collection is a pretty good reflection of the top 20. Dianne and I have it covered from different angles.

Internet Music -- Pandora

Thanks to The Bestest Blog site, I found a cool music site called Pandora. In brief, the site is an internet radio station that you create and influence. You set up a station's playlist by adding your favorite artists to a primary list. Pandora plays songs from those artists as well as artists related to those on your primary list. In that way you are introduced to new artists that you may not have heard before. It’s another way to discover some new music.

The relations between artists/groups have been defined through a music genome effort. You can also rate songs as they are played and your ratings guide the system to choose music more suited to your taste. I thought it worked pretty well, but I did notice few limitations. First, that rating system is a simple like or dislike. It would be nice to have a five or ten point scale. Second, if you get a really bad song you have the option to skip over it. However, you can only skip a certain number of songs per hour. Finally, it's a US only service right now.

Check it out.

Twitter

I’ve heard a lot of buzz about Twitter over the last couple of weeks. The site is a stream of short (140 character max), “what I’m doing” messages from Twitter users. You send notes about news or what you’re doing using the web, an instant messenger (like AIM), or your cell phone. You can also add a badge to your website that shows what you or your friends have sent to Twitter. If you scroll down a bit on the right, you'll see the Twitter badge that shows my entries.

When I first read about Twitter and looked at the site, I didn’t think too much of it. Most items in the public stream were very personal and not too informative (e.g. I’m eating lunch). However, after reading a bit more I can understand the value in some situations. For example, it’d be easy for travelers to update their whereabouts – like The HOV Lane blog for example. It’s also a quick way for folks to get out breaking news. For example, Robert Scoble has been making announcements there. Although I’m not entirely convinced of its value, I did register. Perhaps it’ll be different once I have a network established. We’ll see how the site evolves. If you register, let me know -- leave a comment with your username.

Lake Wobegan News Podcast

This is probably old news for all the Minnesota readers. The Prairie Home Companion site now offers a weekly podcast of the news from Lake Wobegan. Directions for downloading the podcast are on the Prairie Home Companion page. Alternatively, iTunes users can subscribe to the free podcast through the iTunes store. The news is usually about 15 minutes long. If you like Garrison Keillor's stories but can't always catch the show, you'll love this podcast.

Changes at USA Today

USA Today is one site I read for news. Not necessarily the hard hitting news I expect from the New York Times or Washington Post, but it is a good read. I noticed today that USA Today has re-vamped their website. They now allow comments on their news articles and recommendations. With ratings, you can look at articles the editors think are important as well as displaying articles that are considered highly interesting by other readers. Here is a short article about the changes. Techcrunch also posted their perspective on the change.

Cincinnati Home & Garden Show

Yesterday Dianne and I went to the Cincinnati Home and Garden show at the Duke Energy Center. We had never been, so it was nice to see. We spent most of the time looking at the home side of the show. I had no idea how many kitchen counter/cabinet places there are. Windows too, although we're not in the market for those. It was fun to look around and get some ideas. We took a quick stroll through the garden section even though we're not into that sort of thing. Here is a view of the garden area.

Saturday was the opening day of the show and the main event of the day was an appearance by Alton Brown. He does the 'Good Eats' show, among other things, on the Food Network. Alton made a few opening remarks about the Food Network and some future possibilities that technology and the internet could bring to allow interaction with television programs. He then took suggestions from the crowd on what they'd like to see. Two suggestions that built on his opening remarks were interesting to me. The first was a recipe substitution list in case you couldn't find the item specified in a Food Network recipe. Actually, a replacement list would be nice for forbidden ingredients like onions. The second suggestion was to present or have the option to choose different variations of a recipe (e.g. how to alter a cookie recipe to get more chewy or crunchy cookies).

It was interesting to hear the discussion and get my celebrity fix (although Dianne would disagree with that last point). I like the show so it was fun to see him live. Alton did mention that there would be some changes in the Food Network coming in July. He didn't give specifics except to say there would be twice as much Good Eats on the schedule!

BLT Anyone?

If you like bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches as well as candles, then this is for you. Thanks to chef JoAnna for pointing this out.

Earl World Was Locked

On Wednesday, I signed in to write a post and got the following warning:
"This blog has been locked by Blogger's spam-prevention robots. You will not be able to publish your posts...."

Wow...instant blogging withdrawal. Blogger provided a link to take you to an information screen for a locked blog. The information screen said I had to request a manual review of my blog in order to have it unlocked. Their manual review takes up to two business days. Great!

The only thing I can figure is that I was locked due to me leaving comments on several blogs. My comment spree was started by a local food blog. The Foodie Report had a post not too long ago saying their management is questioning the extent of the audience of their blog. They made a request to visit often and asked folks to post a comment as well. I like their blog (and I like getting comments here too), so I decided to help them out and leave at least one comment a day there or somewhere when I'm surfing around.

Rather than always putting in simple text comments, I included links in several of my comments made to various Blogger blogs. They were relevant links -- and I think each link was unique. It's actually more work to add html tags to include a link in a comment. Blogger's own comment box directions specifically mentions it's ok to use tags in your comments. Finally, every comment I made required "word verification" that is specifically used to prevent comment spamming. So what's up with that!?! I think they need to work on their spam filter criteria.

Finally today I was released. I received this note:
Hello,
Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so that it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team


I'm still going to leave a comment a day when I'm reading various blogs. And thanks to all the folks who leave comments here. I know it takes some extra time, but they are much appreciated. If you're a Blogger user, I hope your blog doesn't get locked.

Who Needs Google...

...when you can have your own personalized search engine page. Check out my page here.

Thanks to Erika Jean for pointing out this site.

Sad Flickr Story

As you know, I'm a big fan of Flickr. Besides being a useful picture repository and a great place to host images for blogging, I enjoy participating in various Flickr groups. It's humbling to see all the wonderful, creative photos people take. However, it's a good way to learn and hopefully improve my photo skills.

I've made a few contacts there as well. It's not the social network that a site like MyBlogLog provides, but you can find and connect with folks. You're able to keep track of new photos posted by your contacts. One contact I've mentioned before is carlosluis. He has an amazing photographic ability -- especially with portraits and action shots of his kids. He had posted a wonderful collection of photos that captured the activities of his son and daughter as they were growing up.

"Had" is the operative word in the previous sentence. Tonight I noticed two images he recently posted contained words instead of an image. I thought that was strange. When I went to his photo pool I noticed all his images were gone and only 4 remained. The images were messages to folks looking at his photo collection that explain why Carlos made all his photos private. The reason Carlos mentioned (see the comments on the pixelated photo and his recent self portrait) is that the photos of his daughter were being used by someone else to make up a story about an adopted daughter on a myspace profile. That's disturbing to me -- I can't imagine how upsetting that discovery was to Carlos!!

It's sad to read stories like this. It explains why bloggers like Julie Leung don't have photos of her children on her blog.

I hope he'll at least post his nature photos. He has some incredible photos of hummingbirds he took while they were near feeders they had outside their window. My best wishes to Carlos.

A Needle in the Haystack

I read an interesting article on protein analysis in biological fluids in the latest issue of LC/GC North America magazine. The article itself was about how to separate the wheat from the chaff during analysis. The article made me realize how difficult diagnostic tests are to develop. When trying to diagnose a protein related disease or pathophysiological condition, the issue boils down to how to detect very small amounts of a specific protein needed for diagnosis that is buried among the large number of proteins in the sample.

A specific example is the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test in human serum/plasma. Even when there is a bad prostate problem, the PSA protein that signals a problem is present in a very tiny amount. That alone makes it hard to detect. But compounding the problem is sorting out the PSA protein from many other proteins in the plasma. Albumin, responsible for managing blood volume and transporting substances in the bloodstream, accounts for over half the protein in plasma. Immunoglobulin G, a protein that helps defend the body from attacks (e.g. by toxins), accounts for roughly 15-20% of protein in serum. These two proteins alone make finding and measuring the PSA protein very hard. But how hard?

To put the problem in perspective, finding and measuring PSA in a single blood sample is about the same as trying to find a single, specific nail (the PSA protein) among all the fingers and toes of every human being (all the serum proteins) in the world. Talk about finding a needle in a haystack! And to think PSA analyses are done in several minutes, hundreds of times a day. Amazing.

How Not to Paint a Kitchen

Today Dianne and I were part of a crew of 23 people (sorry if we miscounted and left out anyone) who gathered at the Sojourner House in Hamilton to paint and fix-up several of the apartments there and the common space. The event was well organized and there had been a lot of pre-work done by a few of the folks. The planning group had scouted the place, estimated the materials needed (paint, blinds, flooring, etc.), and bought or got donations for everything. If anything, we were a bit short on cleaning supplies to prep the walls and spruce up the place.

We aren't experienced painters. We were put in one of the kitchens. It took us the better part of the day to clean the walls a bit (we had help with baseboards) and do some prep work, put on two coats of paint, and clean up. I think we were the slowest painters in the group. The moulding and trim around the doorways and the two windows seemed to take forever. Also, the plaster on one of the walls wasn't in good shape so the wall was very bumpy and hard to paint. There were also a lot of odd things to paint, paint behind, or avoid: hot water heat pipes, a radiator that was about a million degrees according to Dianne, electrical conduit, cabinets, you name it. In our defense, one of our paint brushes wasn't much bigger than a toothbrush -- that didn't help.

I'm sure some of the more experienced folks on the crew could have completed that in half a day, but at least we helped out. With everyone chipping in, quite a few of the apartments were fixed up. The place really did need some work and the effort made a huge difference.

We are tired tonight!

WonkaZoid

Here’s another old news item I missed last fall. Has anyone seen, played, or tasted Nestle’s new WonkaZoid? Apparently Pez dispensers aren’t the interest catching candy gadget they used to be. The Nestle R&D folks came up with the WonkaZoid -- a combination video game and candy dispenser. What more could you ask for? Heaven forbid you’d have to release both hands from your video game to get some candy. I wonder if you have to reach a certain score or perform certain tasks before the candy can be dispensed.

Why am I worried that I’m going to see one of these at home? I’m guessing either the Sour Nerds or the Sweetart Shockers variety.

Seasoned Skewers

I’m not a huge marinade fan. One reason is that marinades usually have a lot of salt. That’s a big killer for me. Also, many of them have onion bits which is a killer for Dianne. Aside from the ingredient limitations, another reason is marinades take planning and time in order to get a good flavor from the effort. That’s tough to do during the work week.

Apparently the folks at Callison’s Fine Foods spent some time thinking about these problems and how to address them with a new product. I just read about their new Seasoned Skewers. They are skewers with seasoning embedded in the wood. They come in various flavors and the product claims the meat is seasoned from the inside out in 15 minutes. The nutritional information looks good with zero salt. Their ‘where to buy’ section says they’re available in the Cincinnati area at Cooks’Wares at Harper’s Point and Sur la Table at Rookwood. Anybody out there given them a try? I’m curious how well they season the meat. Seems like something you could use not only for traditional grilling but also for broiling or on the George Foreman grill.

M&M's Dark and The Scream

Dianne and I were fortunate to visit Oslo in the 90s. I had to attend a training course in Denmark for work and we went over early before I headed to the course. We spent some time in Denmark and Norway. In Oslo we saw the large version of Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream in the National Gallery. It’s exciting to see famous works of art that you’ve only seen as reproductions.

In 2004, another version of the painting was stolen from the Munch museum. I remembered hearing a news story last year that the painting was finally recovered. Not being a huge candy eater, I didn’t know the rest of the story until today. I thought I’d keep my M&M theme going for another post even though this is old news.

Apparently there is a ‘new’ variety of M&M’s out there – M&M’s Dark Chocolate Candies. Part of the ad campaign for the new candy placed an M&M in Munch’s painting. The campaign was announced while the painting was still missing. Masterfoods (owner of M&M) offered a reward of 2 million of the new M&Ms for the return of the painting. Less than 2 weeks after their announcement, the painting was found! Apparently Masterfoods is going to make good on the reward that amounts to a retail value of $22,000. If they had only waited a couple weeks!

Wikipedia and Citizendium

I ran across a Harvard Business School case study on Wikipedia and “Enterprise 2.0”. It’s a good read. Don’t expect an earth shattering conclusion about the term if you read the article. It’s a case study discussion piece.

I still found the article interesting for a general perspective on Wikipedia and its problems. Personally, I like Wikipedia. It’s not a conclusive information source, but often it’s a reasonable place to start when looking for information. Like anything on the web, you can’t always assume it’s 100% accurate. Just go in with eyes wide open. The site illustrates both the power of collective intelligence and also the ugly side of folks that try to spoil the collective intelligence. I have found some strange articles and some heated content discussions. The HBS article outlines perhaps why those issues are showing up on Wikipedia.

That case study led me to read a bit about Sanger’s new effort labeled Citizendium (a Citizen’s Compendium). In brief, it’s trying to be a better, more authoritative Wikipedia. You can read more about the philosophy behind the effort and there is information about the organization behind the new wiki. The main Citizendium pilot page has more information about participation. Any authors or editors out there? It sounds like an ambitious, but worthy goal. However, it’s sad to see that the ‘bad apples’ are still there trying to spoil the development rather than applying their effort for the collective good. I guess some kids never did learn to play nicely in the sandbox.

Labelman

Have you seen the FDA's new 'superhero', Labelman? That's Labelman at the right. Go to the official site here. Wow. On the one hand I appreciate the importance of making sure nutritional labels are readily understood by everyone. But on the flip side, a couple things about the initiative bother me.

First, is it necessary to brand the effort with a 'superhero' like Labelman? Is that really making it more fun for people to learn the meaning behind %DV? I wonder how much the design of Labelman cost the taxpayers. I should let an expert like Dianne weigh in on the Labelman design. Personally, I find it only marginally better than my M&M character and about as fun and informative as the reconfigured nutritional pyramid. I guess I shouldn't be surprised since this is coming from the same government that put out Woodsy Owl ("...a whimsical fellow and he's got his heart set on motivating kids..."). Incidentally, remember the fate of Woodsy Owl costumes before you make a Labelman costume.

Second, as brought out in the Washington Post article that pointed me to the Labelman site, I question the impact this site will have on people that have trouble understanding nutritional labels. What percent of those folks have ready internet access? Of those, what fraction will take the time to go to the FDA site and work their way through the Flash modules or study the PDFs? If my recent comments about reading apply in this situation, I don't think this effort is helping many people.

Let me know if I'm way off base. There has to be a better way to educate folks. Any ideas? Perhaps the FDA should set up an educational facility in Second Life. I'll bet that would reach more people than the Labelman site.

Dianne's M&M

Dianne went to Planet M&M and made a character. I think it turned out very well!

Alternative Manapua

One of my favorite things to eat when going to Hawaii is manapua. Check out this old post for a picture of a manapua we picked up at a favorite place around Daiei (or Don Quijote) market near Ala Moana. There is a wikipedia entry about manapua and the Ono Kine Grindz site has some great pictures.

What prompted this post was an organization of my RSS feeds. I was looking at the Hawaii Stories site and happened to stumble across a series of posts about different flavors for manapua. There are four links: original, first follow-up, second follow-up, and third follow-up. Yikes! Most of them seem to be 7-11 experiments that have gone horribly wrong. Anyone tried these alternatives?

Become an M&M

Thanks to the Erika Jean blog, I found the page where you can become an M&M character. Here is my M&M.

The Secret In-N-Out Menu

I'm not a huge fast food fan, but when I'm traveling in California, Nevada, or Arizona I always keep an eye out for an In-N-Out Burger place. They have the best fries! It has to be the fresh ingredients that make them so tasty.

While surfing around this weekend, I ran across a post on the PreZ who? blog where the PreZ describes the secret In-N-Out ordering tips. I'll have to give the extra crispy fries a try next time I'm at In-N-Out.

Our Icy World

Rain, freezing rain, sleet, and snow. We had them all in the Cincinnati area over the last couple of days. With the temperature hovering around the freezing point for most of the day Tuesday, we saw a messy mix of precipitation. Fortunately, both Dianne and I were able to work from home on Tuesday so we didn’t have to worry about the roads.

The worst part was the freezing rain that started Tuesday afternoon and lasted well into the evening. Everything outside was covered with ice. There was about 3/8 to ½ an inch of ice on everything in our area. The trees got very heavy with the weight of the ice and were bending. There were many news reports of tree limbs falling and power lines down. We lost our power for about 7 hours Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning. However, we were lucky as there were still many people without power Wednesday morning. The local news mentioned at one point there were more than 140,000 people without power.

On Wednesday morning, it was cold but the sky was partly sunny after the storm. The sunlight reflecting off the ice covered world was a pretty site. It was like sunlight shining through a giant crystal chandelier. It was hard to capture the beauty in a picture (I need to investigate the high dynamic range photos). Although pretty, you had to be very careful walking and driving. It’ll be several days before the temperatures get warm enough to melt the ice off the trees. On the way to work I saw many broken limbs on trees lining the highway.

I took a several photos during the day on Tuesday and a some on Wednesday that shows the ice buildup. You can see the entire set of photos here – click on the thumbnails to see larger images. Some of the photos like the maple tree branch, this shrub, and the tree branches at sunset give a feel for how thick the ice layer is.

Cincinnati Rollergirls 2007 Schedule

For all you Cincinnati Rollergirl fans, or wanna be fans, Sk8 Crime posted dates for events in the 2007 season. Check out the schedule here and mark your calendars.

What a Difference a Quarter Makes

Tonight I went grocery shopping at Bigg's for the first time in years. Between Jungle Jim's, Trader Joe's, Wild Oats, Super Walmart, and Kroger (for quick things), I haven’t needed to go there. However, I’ve been disappointed with my Kroger shopping experiences lately, so I went to Bigg's on Mason-Montgomery to pick up a few things. The store has changed a lot. They recently altered the configuration to compete with the deli, prepared food, and natural food offerings at Wild Oats and Kroger. I like the variety of items and choices at Biggs. It is easier for them to stock the variety because unlike Kroger they don’t have crummy Kroger store brand products displacing good products off the shelf. However, the biggest change I noticed was the shopping carts.

When we first went to Bigg's many, many years ago, you needed a quarter to get a shopping cart. When all the carts were stacked in a line, each cart was attached to the one ahead of it with a chain connected to a release mechanism on the cart. You needed to insert a quarter in the mechanism to release the chain. The quarter stayed in the mechanism until you returned the cart to the corral and connected it with the stack. When you reattached the chain, you got your quarter back.

The purpose was to get people to return their carts to the cart corral rather than leaving them all over the parking lot after they loaded things into their car. It worked! I remember Dianne commenting on that when we were shopping one cold winter evening. There wasn’t a single lone cart in the lot. If someone was cold and lazy and left their cart in their parking space, someone else would return it to get an extra quarter. That 25 cent incentive was a great way to keep the carts organized.

The problem was sometimes you didn’t have a quarter and so you’d have to go into the store, get change, go back out to get a cart, and then go in to shop. That was a pain. Eventually the service desk got tired of making change and just gave you a quarter to save time.

On my way to Bigg's I was digging in my ash tray to find a quarter. It was about 20 degrees outside. I noticed quite a few carts scattered across the lot when I turned in to park. As I got closer I noticed all the chain mechanisms had been taken off the carts. Without that incentive, people just left the cart where it was after they loaded the car. About 20% of the carts in the lot were loose. I bet the number of stray carts is inversely related to the air temperature. What a difference a quarter can make!

And yes, I did return my cart to the corral.

The Aftermath

When all was said and done, Cincinnati got 6.4 inches of snow officially. We probably got about 6 inches here. Fortunately, the snow was very powder like so it was light and easy to handle with a shovel or snow blower. You get a sense of that in the picture of a snow covered shrub shown here. Click it to see a larger view. The sky was clear this morning and things were bright with the clean snow. I snapped a couple pictures while I was waiting for the car to warm up. I saw some icicles on the downspout, the snow removal folks were here but our neighbors still had to dig out their cars, and ok I was fascinated with our shrubs.

5 Food Things -- Tagged

I just happened to be visiting the TriniGourmet blog and I got tagged to post 5 things people don't know about me. I've never been tagged before. But in an interesting twist, she decided to tag the most recent 5 readers of her blog from the MyBlogLog community. You can read her 5 items here. Although I'm not a food blog, I'm going to stay with her food theme and list 5 food things that the blogging folks don't know.

1 - I'm allergic to walnuts. It's not a severe allergy, but enough to be careful about. We discovered it when I was a kid helping my mom make banana bread. She had a Tupperware gadget to grind the walnuts that I thought was really fun to use. It's always fun until someone has an allergic reaction! It's caused me to limit nut consumption. For example, I don't eat pecans because they can look similar to a walnut when in food. As a result, I also don't care for most nuts in foods unless I'm controlling the recipe. One notable exception is cashew chicken. There's no way you can mistake a cashew for a walnut. On their own, I'm ok with peanuts, cashews, and sunflower seeds.

2 - My favorite spice is tarragon. I like the anise-like sweetness of tarragon and it really brightens up certain dishes. There's nothing like a good tarragon chicken. Tuna patties are enhanced by tarragon. Finally, souped up rice is kicked up a notch with tarragon.

3 - I'm a sucker for a cooking show. I like the cooking reality shows like Top Chef and Hell's Kitchen as well as how-to shows. It's a great way to get ideas and learn some new things. One of my favorites was Ready...Set...Cook. That show brought out the creativity of the chefs -- especially when the contestants brought a strange bag of ingredients.

4 - I really like parmesan cheese. Sometimes I'll have spaghetti with a touch of oil, a little garlic, and lots of parmesan cheese. You can put parm on anything -- mashed potatos, soups, couscous, etc. There are lots of other good cheeses, but nothing compares to the taste of parm.

5 - I eat apple pie from the inside out. I don't have pie very often, but apple is my favorite when I do. When I eat the pie, I first use the fork to scoop out and eat the apple filling. Once the bulk of the filling is gone, then I'll start to eat the crust. I like the crust when it has a thin layer of residual apple filling on it.

The White Death Hits Cincinnati

The weather forecasts predicted it for a couple days...everyone knew it was coming...schools were closed or sent kids home early...businesses sent employees home early...and yet the Cincinnati panic associated with a snowstorm (a.k.a. the White Death) hit the city. I took this picture right after I got home. It was right near sunset and the snow was still coming down pretty hard. Click here and here to see a couple other photos. We got 4-5 inches. My usual 15 minute commute took just under 2 hours. Dianne decided to wait it out at work. She went with a couple of colleagues to get some dinner downtown to wait for the snow to pass and the traffic to thin out.

On the way home I was listening to Gary Burbank on xmradio (700 WLW). As I was inching along in traffic, he said something that made me laugh. He said the Cincinnati area has about a million people, but when it snows it seems like about 7 million idiots somehow come out of the woodwork and all of them are out driving a car in the snowstorm. That comment, along with Jim Borgman's Cincinnati snowstorm portfolio he posted today (I love his commute cartoon and the Kentucky snow removal cartoon) made the commute home a little easier to take.

The snow eased up around 8 pm and I took the photo below. It's always peaceful after a big snow. There aren't a lot of people out and about. Any sounds are dampened and the reflected light casts a soft glow on the new snow.

7 Deadly Sins -- Indexed

I go to the Indexed blog every now and then. The posts are mostly diagrams or graphs that are basically single cell comics (they aren't all humorous) written on index cards. This recent post on the 7 deadly sins was quite clever.

Historic Maps

There is a lot of good information available on the Library of Congress web site. I was looking around there and found a nice set of old maps and panorama views of various cities. At the right is part of a panorama of Brainerd, MN from around 1914. Click here or on the image to see a larger view. Better yet, go to the Library of Congress site and look at the whole thing.

You can get to the city and town maps here and to the panorama views here. I don’t care much for the interface. After picking a map, click on the thumbnail image to open the map viewer. Scroll down to the options below the map, set the size and zoom level, and click on the map to refresh the image. The directions are given above the images. Although the viewer is a bit crude, it’s fun to see how places have changed in the last hundred years or so.

You can see part of a drawing of downtown Cincinnati in 1900 here. Compare that to the Google map satellite view of the same area here. The suspension bridge, finished in 1866, is visible in both. However, except for special events, the riverboats have nearly disappeared and the area has been transformed by the new football and baseball stadiums.

Too Cold for the Robins

At the beginning of January I wondered if there would be a winter. It was exceptionally warm here and we had so much rain there were flood watches issued regularly. The photo to the right is of berries on the tree outside our place during a rain shower. The ground was warm and after a rain you’d see worms on the surface. There was a robin hanging around our place too. He had plenty to eat.

Then the temperatures started getting more seasonable and in the last couple weeks it has been cooler-than normal. The robin stuck it out though. I heard the robin’s song in the morning when loading up the car. I’d see him going to our tree every now and then to pluck a berry for lunch. He was searching for food to tide him over until things warmed up again.

The last few days have been very cold here. The high today was about 30 degrees less than normal. This morning it was 3 degrees outside. A little wind made it feel very cold when I was brushing the snow off the cars. And it was quiet outside. Mr. Robin wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I think he finally went south to find some greener pastures until the warmer temperatures are here to stay.

Let’s hope Punxsutawney Phil is correct and we’ll have an early spring this year. I'm listening for the robins.

Movie Musings - Part 1

Between our Netflix service and the movies shown on the Turner Classic Movies channel, I’ve been watching some old films I’ve never seen or catching up on those I haven’t seen for many years. We’ve been watching a lot of old black and white films – Dianne groans when I start a DVD and the color “goes out” on the TV. Nevertheless, even the silent movie comedy classics are good for a laugh. Here are few I highly recommend.

The Gold Rush with Charlie Chaplin has to rank up there as one of his best. Chaplin’s tramp character goes to the Klondike to search for gold. We saw a re-mastered version that had a narration done by Chaplin and music composed by Chaplin. It was very well done and eliminated the need to read (see this earlier post).

The General is a Civil War era picture that puts Buster Keaton in the role of a locomotive engineer trying to thwart some Union spies. It’s a classic action and romance movie. Another Buster Keaton flick, a short called One Week, is also very good. He plays a newlywed that receives a do-it-yourself house building kit as a wedding gift from his uncle. A lot happens while building that house in the first week of marriage!

Finally, I also recommend the Harold Lloyd full length film called The Kid Brother. Lloyd plays the youngest of 3 sons of the town sheriff. He’s sheltered as the youngest son, but steps up when his dad needs help. It is also a romantic comedy with lots of action. The short film by Lloyd called Number Please is also good. It features Lloyd as one of two suitors of a woman which eventually became his actual wife. Lloyd’s efforts to lose a purse to avoid being accused of purse snatching are hilarious.

There are two common elements that make these silent films stand out for me. First, I’m amazed at the stunts and sight gags in these films. Long before computer generated imagery and sophisticated camera tricks were available, these folks captured some amazing scenes on film. The visual effects they created add levity but also enhance the story. It’s a lot of creative effort to come up with these ideas, scout appropriate locations in some cases, and plan the camera angles and timing to produce the desired effect. Second, the full length films not only allow time to show stunts and sight gags but also let the characters develop and give time to showcase the acting talent of the stars. Body language and facial expressions are key to convey emotion and make the connection with the audience. The action and romance aspects in these films demanded a wide range of acting ability. Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd handle it very well in these films.

Lentils and Ham

I like Alton Brown’s show Good Eats on the Food Network. He puts a light-hearted spin on culinary topics that makes the show educational and fun to watch. Along the way he gives lots of interesting tips.

His recent show on lentils got me inspired. He took lentils out of their traditional soup role and into other dishes – including lentil cookies. Well…I wan’t THAT inspired. But I took his basic guidance and came up with a nice ham and lentil creation.

I used his approach to preparing the lentils described towards the bottom of this page (minus onions for Dianne). While the lentils were boiling, I fried up a package of small diced ham cubes in some grapeseed oil. When they were cooked through, I deglazed the pan with some white wine and seasoned the mix with thyme (~1+ tsp), one fresh ground clove, parsley, ground pepper, and a dash of lemon juice. After the lentils were drained and the bay leaves removed, I tossed about 2/3 of the lentils together with the seasoned ham and served with some corn on the side. I thought it turned out pretty well for a first try.