Tuesday, July 26, 2005
"IGNITION SEQUENCE START" was plenty of chatter for me. Is anybody else annoyed by the use of the liftoff countdown on recent space missions as a platform for sloganizing? Is Buzz Lightyear doing this color commentary? "Liftoff! We have liftoff for space shuttle Discovery, beginning America's new journey to the moon, Mars and beyond. Brought to you by Sunny Delight. Sunny D: Unleash the power of the sun!"
Monday, July 25, 2005
THE BEST AD ON TV? I couldn't agree more about "Tiny House." Don't like the cavemen ones so much, though.
Friday, July 15, 2005
LIFE-CHANGING KITCHEN DISCOVERIES:
The leave-one-end-intact method of chopping onions, which I learned from "America's Test Kitchen." Maybe I'm just imagining things, but it appears to solve the crying problem as well as improving the dicing result.
Setting up coffee the night before. I don't mean fiddling with the stupid timer, which requires a prediction about wakey-wakey time (we night-shifters have the luxury of varying that quite a bit). No, I just mean grinding the beans and filling the water reservoir so that the push of one button is all that is required in the morning. The speed and design of my coffee maker (I'm currently using a Hamilton Beach BrewStation, which dispenses directly into the cup and skips the carafe middleman) mean I can pour myself a cup less than a minute after I hit that button.
Honorable mention: The garbage bowl. Yes, the Rachael Ray garbage bowl. The idea makes no sense at first glance -- why not just throw things directly into the garbage? -- but few kitchens have refuse facilities mere inches from the cutting board, and at the same height. Yes, the Racher is often annoying ("Mmmmmmm!" ... "E-V-O-O" ... "Just water, please" ... "Tip: 38 cents"), but that idea is genius, and her ruthless critics need to calm down a little. Even if there were something wrong with small boobies, which there isn't, that isn't a suitable topic for public criticism, especially of someone you've never met. (I'll admit, though, that some of the cruel stuff on that site is pretty funny.) I'll report back on whether Rachael's love for the santoku knife is justified, once mine arrives.
Honorable mention: The garbage bowl. Yes, the Rachael Ray garbage bowl. The idea makes no sense at first glance -- why not just throw things directly into the garbage? -- but few kitchens have refuse facilities mere inches from the cutting board, and at the same height. Yes, the Racher is often annoying ("Mmmmmmm!" ... "E-V-O-O" ... "Just water, please" ... "Tip: 38 cents"), but that idea is genius, and her ruthless critics need to calm down a little. Even if there were something wrong with small boobies, which there isn't, that isn't a suitable topic for public criticism, especially of someone you've never met. (I'll admit, though, that some of the cruel stuff on that site is pretty funny.) I'll report back on whether Rachael's love for the santoku knife is justified, once mine arrives.
Friday, July 01, 2005
A TECHNICAL QUESTION from the Idealistic Idiot:
OK, you know how some programmer somewhere had to write code specifying that when (not "if," sadly) your browser crashes, you get that little prompt telling you that your browser crashed and asking you whether you want to report it for investigation?
Well, instead of writing that, why not write code that reloads the last page loaded?
We can put a man on the moon (and load the damn page in the first place), but we can't do something as simple as that?
OK, you know how some programmer somewhere had to write code specifying that when (not "if," sadly) your browser crashes, you get that little prompt telling you that your browser crashed and asking you whether you want to report it for investigation?
Well, instead of writing that, why not write code that reloads the last page loaded?
We can put a man on the moon (and load the damn page in the first place), but we can't do something as simple as that?
