If you use Gmail as your email provider, you might be interested to know about this Google group. Only Googlers can post to it. It will let you know if there is a problem with Gmail. There's also an RSS feed you can subscribe to if you are so inclined.
This website from the FDA has information on the peanut recall and a comprehensive list of every product affected.
The other day I was on Amazon MP3 and saw a free download (still free as of this writing) from Steve Martin. At the time, I thought the name was just coincidence, but then I saw this article in the Times about how Steve Martin plays bluegrass.
Last Thursday, there was a piece on NPR's All Things Considered about people who are preserving "old-timey" music. The CDs available for purchase on the group's website are pretty pricey, but the audio on the story's page on NPR is free.
Google posted some interesting statistics about searches during the inauguration. It's neat (although not surprising) to see the drop in U.S. queries during President Obama's swearing in/speech.
Google also posted some interesting stats awhile ago regarding the election. I had meant to post them earlier, but here they are now.
I saw this recipe in the Times and thought it was worth a try. I modified it slightly. I used plain olives and frozen cauliflower which I prepared in the microwave. I also omitted the thyme because I didn't have any. It still worked out perfectly well.
If you're bored, you can try going to Settings|Language in Facebook and picking English (Pirate) as your language. You'll have to scroll down through the languages, but it is there. Facebook's developers apparently had a lot of time on their hands. It looks like they rewrote the entire interface in Pirate.
There was an article in the New York Times a little while back about runners and cars. When I can, I like to avoid running with cars, but, unfortunately, living in an urban area, that's sometimes difficult. I usually try to defer to cars, but it can annoy me when cars don't yield to me when I am in a cross walk. Right now, on weekends, I like running in Rock Creek Park on Beach Drive. At least a portion of that road is closed to vehicular traffic.
I also discovered a useful link, that lets you see what your pace is based on mileage run and distance traveled.
There was an interesting piece on NPR yesterday which was a musical analysis of Buddy Can You Spare A Dime -- a depression era song. Even though my musical knowledge is pretty limited, I was able to get a lot of what the analyst was talking about.
I also didn't know that the lyricist for this song also wrote Over the Rainbow of Wizard of Oz fame.
A few weeks ago when I went camping, I made Hobo Stew over a campfire. The meal is readily transferable to non-campfire cooking.
What's nice about this recipe is that you can use pre-cooked items, so you don't have to worry about cooking things extra thoroughly.
So, without further adieu, here is the recipe:
In a non-stick frying pan (although you can use a regular frying pan if you want), combine:
A customer went to his local Chevrolet dealership and, while his car was in for repairs, borrowed a loaner car from the dealer. The car was insured under the dealer's insurance policy. The customer was involved in an accident, and the dealer's insurer then turned around and sued the customer for the damage sustained to the vehicle. As the customer was a permissive user of the dealer's loaner car, an appellate court in New York ruled against the insurer. I would imagine, however, that this customer will not buy a GM car ever again.
Apple is being sneaky, sneaking applications onto people's computers without their consent. They say they're installing only iTunes, but then lots of other applications find their way onto the computer.
NPR had a good commentary by someone on why people did not evacuate during Hurricane Ike. While I don't really agree with their reasoning on not evacuating, the essay is, nonetheless, very good (in particular the last paragraph). I think it's more powerful listening to it than reading it.
In March, I wrote how the Virginia Supreme Court upheld a criminal sentence of a spammer from North Carolina who used AOL's servers. The Virginia Supreme Court issued a new opinion on Friday, vacating the convictions based on the First Amendment and the spammers right to free speech. Here is a link to the summary (search for Jaynes within the page if you don't see it at the top). Here is a link to the opinion (a PDF).
I found a utility, aptly named Desktops, which allows you to easily switch between desktops on Windows. So, if you wanted to switch between one Desktop where you had Word set up and another desktop where you had Excel set up, you could do so easily. It's published by Microsoft, and it looks like it will run on most versions of Windows.
There was a piece on NPR about the Yellowstone National Park Fires, ten years later. This is the first part of a five part series.
I also found more than you ever wanted to know about how the National Park Service manages fires.
I discovered a few plugins for Firefox, two of which are from Mozilla Labs. A disclaimer: These are all non-final versions, and therefore might be buggy. However, I have not had any real difficulty with any of them.
Ubiquity allows you to use the keyboard to quickly Google something, select text and email it to someone, or insert a map into an email and email it to someone, and more. But hitting
Second, a program called Auto Dial, which, based on your web history, builds a custom web page that opens each time you open a new tab, so that when you open a new tab, it will
Finally, a program called Ctrl-Tab allows you to switch between tabs easily, all the while seeing what tab you will be switching too.
I've written regarding the Red Cross's blood donation problems before. According to an article in the Times, they still continue to have problems. The article discusses a specific procedure for disinfection prior to inserting the needle to donate blood (swabbing antiseptic and such). I didn't know there was a separate procedure, but I'll bet that other blood donation services that I've given to have not followed that rule.
I was listening to NPR recently and heard a Quebecois group called "Le Vent du Nord" or "The Wind from the North." The band plays traditional Quebecois music. The neat thing is that they play songs that date from the founding of Quebec and came across from France. Meanwhile, these same French songs have become extinct in France.
There are songs to listen to both at NPR's website (where you can hear the report) and also at the band's MySpace page. They're also on iTunes.
What's one million dollars to fund a mystery rider program on Metro???!!!
See:
http://www.wmata.com/about/met_news/story.cfm?ID=1813
What a waste of money. Especially because I can tell you about Metro for free, as can many other customers.
