I'm so HAPPY!

I made Dave giggle on his birthday! He giggled like a little girl. It made me happy!

I must be cranky today

I blame the excessive St. Louis heat. Some headlines from various places really had me all atizzy and aflutter today.

Viagra offers help to some women
I'd like to know how much money we spend aiding men in getting off versus how much we spend on helping women and their sex and reproductive issues. Anyone with data? How many years did it take before even the pill moved on to a next generation? And don't we know that excesses of estrogen cause cancer? Yet here we are, still using estrogen or synthetic estrogen based drugs. And the companion article, More Sex for Today’s Seniors. TMI first off, but I love the numbers: more married men are having sex than married women. But wait, isn’t marriage a one to one ratio? The men must have been dipping in the Viagra but who are those 70 year old tarts?

Grocers stop selling jalapeno peppers after salmonella discovery
Time to move out, buy you own land and farm your own food. If you can't buy a jalapeno pepper, what's the world coming too?

Fight Breaks Out During Shock-Sparks Game
Well, call me SHOCKed! I guess it's news because it involved women, but really, nothing is a surprise any more these days.

Health Plan From Obama Spurs Debate
OMG! Is this really how they calculate stuff?!

Why InBev needs A-B
Sadly, another St. Louis bastion has taken the corporate tumble. After InBev gets through with A-B, I'm sure they will have many fewer people and a lot less of the perks that make this company one of the last great places to work in our city. I don't expect them to close any breweries because I really believe InBev is looking for the increased capacity to position their move into expanding overseas markets. But no more monthly free beer, SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, onsite barber and shoe shines, fitness, etc. GAK! InBev Stadium? Even the generic flavor of all those international company names is irritating. I suppose they will at least still sell beer at the ball games.

Oh and hey Shannon? You aren't the only one. See this link and chuckle. At least you caught it.

Copy Machines and .pdfs

I have wasted so much time today trying to get a copy machine to send my documents to me as reduced pdfs. It seems like it should be simple enough. My original is a nonstandard size and reducing by 90% gets it to fit on a standard 8 1/2 by 11. Yet somehow, this doesn't work with pdfs. The file does not reduce. It does, however, save as a screen percentage of 90% so that all my edges are chopped off, and lo, I can expand to a chopped off version at 100%! YAY! To make it (me) sound even whinier, the A/C is out in the building all this week and I have to traipse back and forth, upstairs and down, through the whole building to keep trying different things. I'm a computer literate person. I can operate any number of expensive, technical pieces of analytical equipment. Copy machines and office telephones are my bane. This should not be so difficult.


Ya, so you know those people that have to sing along but never know the lyrics? Like, when CCR supposedly sings, "there's a bathroom on the right"? Now you can help those misguided inDUHviduals with the following pages that list the lyrics to all their favorite songs and TV shows.

Commercials

I suck at associating brands and commercials. I'm an advertiser's nightmare. I do enjoy watching commercials but only for their entertainment value. I rarely remember what the commercial was for. For example, I know I enjoyed the phone commercials that turned the traditional parent/teen argument around but I sure couldn't tell you which company it was for. That and I don't watch a lot of TV anyway. (However, this last week or two, I've been sucked into watching an anime series that I've really enjoyed, so much so that I bought it. Ask me about it if you are interested.) Anyway, because of my hopelessness at brands, I found this link interesting. Especially clicking their link that shows how each logo has been tagged by others.

Pringles

Sadly, the inventor of the Pringles can died recently. I will share with you my fond memories of Pringles cans. Many moons ago, way back in like the 70s, the cans had a corrugated paper liner, I assume to cushion the tender chips and prevent breakage and hence a canful of crumbs. My friends and I used to make candles (fad) by pouring melty wax in the cans and tearing them apart when cool. After of course, eating all the chips. And everyone who knows me knows how I love chips.

Universal Health Care

Scary version...which congress do you want to make decisions about your health, the democratic one or the republican one? And have it flip every few years to boot. I guess it depends on where your political tumbleweed rolls. Personally, I don't want the bloated, red-tape filled feds choosing my treatments. I'd die before they could decide what treatment is the most inexpensive, ineffectual one to give me anyway. If HMOs are any indication of what federal health care would be like, no thanks. HMOs have already devalued the practice of medicine so much that the really talented don’t want to study medicine anymore. Physician salaries have steadily declined since HMOs started really rolling in the 80s. Less skilled doctors and lower salaries did not mean lower cost health care like we were promised, in fact, it skyrocketed and all that money filled the HMO's coffers. They are middlemen, health care distributors. A distributor’s only purpose is to make money and make money they do. And they do it partly by controlling what care you can have and what medications you can have. It is almost to the point of "these are the allowed treatments and no special ones for anyone". Hmm. Scary. Does anyone truly believe the greedy, self-centered, partisan, corporate driven, special interest group run, federal government can do this better? I'm sure it would be a huge success, like federal education or federal social security.

These should make kitty and owner happy.

Wanderings

Shannon has added me to her list of PALS! Yay! But now I feel pressure to actually update my blog occasionally and post items of worth, insight, and profundity. And let's face it, I'm just not very profound. However, after reading Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story this weekend, I'm not sure even those who THINK they are profound, truly are. Perhaps it's just that the older you get, you know you know less than you thought you knew and it doesn't matter any more, either. Maybe I should have read his Cocoa Puffs book first.

I ran across this post on A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette and I must admit, I love the lolcats. I am ashamed.

Post:

Cheezburger, U cannot haz

You are a librarian. An information professional. You are too old to be into lolcats. Seriously. Stop it.

End post.

Enjoy!

What Was I Thinking?

I'm an idiot. Don't ask.

That being said, check out these cartograms of world from worldmapper. There is some pretty interesting info on the world displayed in these maps.

For example, literacy of women around the world:

I'm disappointed (though I guess not surprised) that the US is as large as it is, especially given the criterion set to determine literacy. Its even scarier when I think that this is not in absolute numbers but as a comparison to male literacy.

Refining

For grins I wanted to see the scoop on the refining story since Katrina. Here is my own little excel-made graph showing refinery input in thousands of barrels per day over time. We broke the uptrend after Katrina, the low point around Sept 05. This is just input though and doesn't show the coorelation with available oil and output. (Can you tell I'm a stock charter?)

Get up-to-date on your Aussie talk.

Misplaced Rants

I've been posting rants elsewhere when I should probably be posting them here. So, I'm going to repost them here just so I can start getting in the habit. Besides, I wouldn't want to deny anyone the benefit of my rants.

On Dumbass American Energy Consumption
I find the whole gas thing pretty funny, even as serious as it is for the economy. We, as a nation, suffer from such a lack of restraint and foresight. We don’t demand, with our dollars or of our politicians, to do what really needs to be done. All along we could have been looking at alternative engine designs and fuels, having more flexible auto assembly, driving smaller, more economical vehicles instead of SUVs and enormous trucks, designing cities with commuting in mind, using creative work environments, etc. We’ve had time given that we went through a similar thing in the 70s. We prefer our convenience and our status symbols. We fuss over our politicians once every couple years, then forget about what they are doing until the next cycle. Shame on us.

We can make economics as complicated as we want but it still comes down to demand. As long as demand is high, the prices will go up. Unfortunately, or not, depending on your view of the world, we are no longer the (essentially) only ones demanding oil. We find ourselves in the position Europe used to be in, looking at the gas hog USA (still are, yes) and having no control over what those arrogant people were doing to drive up prices and create pollution. Now as our country gets older and is no longer the "only" thoughtless consumer, we can watch and fret as other nations like China industrialize and do as we do, compounding the problems of price and pollution.
We’re screwed America, learn to deal with it. The classes are about to separate even further. It’s our own fault and we have quite a climb to get out of this. I doubt our ability to sacrifice as required to do so.

On Dumbass Politicians
Let the battle of dumb begin. I get really frustrated that campaign topics are so much fluff over things that presidents don't really do. Taxes, health care, etc. These are emotional issues that campaigns are won and lost on but have no roots in the Office of the President. The tax war already has me up in arms.
Mr. Obama, the lowest income people already pay NO taxes. The rich have loopholes and taxing them more essentially does nothing. Guess where the burden falls yet again?
Mr. McCain, asking people to voluntarily put money away for retirement is asking for the government to continue to support those people because they, for the most part, aren't going to do it.
These aren't Presidential issues anyway. These are Congressional issues. I want to hear about foreign policy strategies and the things presidents really have control over.
GAH! Rant again. I love politics but really hate politicians and election times.

And so on a similar note, here is a website to keep an eye on.

I am such a Nerd!

My heart is racing and I feel like jumping up and down. Why? NEW COMPUTER PARTS! YAY! I get to rebuild the pc and I can't wait.

I have yet to get one that looks like more than just squiggles, but I'm going to keep trying!

Sweeney Todd

Just saw it. Gloriously, joyfully, gory. It revels in it, and has fun doing so. You know, Johnny Depp is one of those actors that you almost can't admit you like, the guilty pleasure variety. I tell myself all the time that whatever movie he has coming out can't possibly be any good, but damn, he always makes it enjoyable. Its the difference between him and a Brad Pitt. I always like the "movie" when its Johnny Depp. Brad Pitt is just kinda nice to look at but his movies just never seem to gel. Maybe the difference between a craft actor and a pretty boy?

Track your dollars with this. Its takes a while but it is interesting to see where they end up.

My Bad

Since I forgot what I was going to say yesterday, I thought I would go ahead and post my interesting website. I sure don't want to penalize anyone because my brain goes bye-bye.

Clickie here and here. In case you ever wondered.
This has interested me since Matt was born on Good Friday. His birthday has been on Good Friday again two times (1987 and 1992) but it won't happen again until 2071. Hopefully he will see it happen. He doesn't do much better when his birthday actually falls on Easter (it hasn't yet) in 2022, 2033, 2044, 2101, and RUSH! 2112. Aiden will get 2010, 2021, 2083, and maybe 2094, and Christian, 2075, and 2080. Of course we have many birthdays in the affected date range but I was mostly interested in the younger ones.

Oops

Yesterday, I forgot what I was going to say while I suddenly got busy with other stuff. Oh the drama of the workplace in estrogen overload.

Computer Paint-By-Numbers

EARTHQUAKE!

So I had a hard enough time sleeping last night. Just as I'm drifting off, AT FREAKING 4:30!, we have an earthquake. Now, they do happen here once every ten years or so but strangely, I've never actually felt one. I'm either sleeping or in a car, and they are so small, I never notice. This one was actually big enough to shake the whole house. I thought it was a wind storm rattling the windows. That's a much more expected occurrence.

For Lotr geeks.

Poor Barack

He's so naive. The whole Bittergate thing is silly. I really think his intent was to make the elitist, liberal, and yes, I've seen this personally, hateful, San Franciscans, understand that not everyone thinks their way. He's trying, foolishly, and unsuccessfully, to be a mediator, as I tried to do in my younger days. As he tried to do with the loud-mouthed, racist, pastor of his. It just goes to show his inexperience in the arena of politics.

Sigh for us. People lose sight of what the president's job really entails.


Be glad these aren't YOUR job.

Watch out for this stuff

it's nasty.

What's with

the water Nazis? Quit telling me I have to drink all that damn water every day. IT'S A MYTH--URBAN LEGEND!

Science education/knowledge in our nation is a crime. Can people even think or reason at all?

Auspicious Beginning

But it doesn't count thanks to our lately diluvial conditions. I understand the Birds are picked to finish last. There's nowhere to go but up, right? On the other hand, they could just stay right there in the basement.
I hope the rains have left. My basement can't stand much more water. This is one of the wettest springs on record for our area.
















Orange gold.