Junk Food

I eat a lot of junk food. Well, what others call 'junk food', but I call snacks. I'm lucky. It doesn't affect my weight. I know, you hate me, but I really couldn't live without it.
Since I eat so much of it, I consider myself an expert. Yes, yes I am. Shut up! I am!

Here's a rundown of what I think are the best choices of the available brands. I guess I don't have to mention that the best nacho cheese tortilla chips are Doritos, right? I mean, we all get that. They really have no competition.
On with our show...
Best cheese curls: Wise Cheese Doodles
Why? They are not too crisp - many brands are - and not horribly salty (you hear me Cheetos?). They have the perfect amount of finger-licking powder. My friend calls cheese curls packing peanuts with orange spray paint, but what does she know?

Best cheese popcorn: Kroger brand
What? Yeah, that's what I said. Get some, see if you doubt me. My sister doubted me. Now, when she comes to town, she doesn't say, "Hey, I'm here!" She says, "Did someone pick up cheese popcorn?" Seriously.

Best guacamole dip: AvoClassic
Who? Try looking it up for a post when you can't remember the name! I finally found the name, then a website. The packaging has changed, but this is real guacamole dip. This isn't paste in a can with some green food colouring. You'll find it in the refrigerated section, sometimes near produce. It may be hard to find, but you won't regret it.


Best tortillas: Utz White Corn Tortillas
Stop arguing! I'm right! These chips are my newest favourite. I used to love yellow corn chips, but for some reason everyone, save the generics, has gone to white corn. These are light, bubbly chips. They don't hold up to heavy dips, but they don't shred the inside of you mouth like Tostitos Scoops. Those are like a mouthful of razor blades!



Best Nacho Cheese Dip: Fritos Jalapeno Cheddar
Seriously? Yes. It's in a tiny can, usually hanging somewhere in the chip aisle. It doesn't taste like paste with a little bit of spice in it. It tastes like jalapeno dip. It will spoil, so don't forget to put the lid back on and put it in the frig.

Best Onion Dip: Your own
No fair! Sorry, but you have to get some sour cream and french onion soup mix. There are no short-cuts for french onion dip. Everything I've ever tried tasted like mayonnaise. I've tried jarred ones, refrigerated ones. I'm not a huge fan of onion dip, but I tried a few and couldn't find any worth buying again.

Best Bizarre Chips: Pringles!!!
Bizarre? Oh, yeah! The Pringles guys are nuts. They come out with the most unusual temporary flavours. I will buy any flavour they put out. They have an amazing talent for making their chips taste like exactly what they say they'll taste like. I've had Bruschetta, Thai Sweet Chili, Extreme Dill, Smoked Bacon ...only once did I find one that wasn't great - Extreme Cheddar, it tasted like wet paper. I don't buy the printed ones, and I don't like barbeque chips. Anything else they put out, I will try. I'm not the only one. Check out this site. And, down a little ways on this page.

I didn't save the cans. Part of me wishes I had. Part of me is glad I have my sanity.

Creative CSS - an oxymoron?

I can't stand the internet anymore. Everything is a template. Uniform. Pedestrian. Bland. Boring.

Sure, I'm posting this to a blog site that uses templates, but THIS IS A BLOG SITE. They use templates to make everything easy to use. This isn't my personal domain. This isn't my business domain. Neither of those should look like a blog site, yet the majority of the internet now looks like a blog. Everything is a template and it's freaking, driving me out of my mind.

Back around 1998, we used to laugh at how pages that were designed by programmers looked like programs. They were sterile and unappealing. The programmers would hire html writers to make their pages more interesting. Then, along came CSS. It's the unimaginative programmer's wet dream. The templates are like programs. You fill in your information and have a webpage. It's just enough different from the next persons to be different, but just enough the same to make the nervous programmer feel comfortable. What started as a convenience has taken over the net. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness.

I looked up uncreative css, to see what I'd find and came across this page. It was posted in 2001. It's only gotten worse, since then.

In an attempt to vent, I made a creative page. It's on my real domain, that I can't mention here, but I sent the link to a friend, after bitching about the sameness of everything. She sent me back a link to a page she made for me. IT WAS A TEMPLATE!

She actually read my complaint, looked at my page, then slapped an image in a template and sent it to me as an example of creative css. A template! Am I speaking a different language? Are there people, my friend included, who can't see that templates are the antithesis of creativity??

I'm an html person. I know html like nobody's business. I can put anything, anywhere with html. I'm learning CSS, but slowly. I love the fixed background. God knows how much I love that. Seriously, He knows, and He's a little concerned about it.
I cannot use a template. Templates are for convenience - for blog sites and businesses - or for stupid uncreative people. That's it. Those are the only uses. Any domain that isn't a blog or a business needs to get out of a template.

If you have an example of a site that hasn't sold it soul to templates, please comment with a link. Creative sites should be having a field day with the new options CSS allows, but I'm not seeing it. It's really easy to stand out in a field full of templates - JUST STOP USING THEM.

Is It Finally Gone?

I think I finally lost my old XP machine.

This is truly sad.
It wasn't a computer I used a lot. A friend slapped together some spare parts a long time ago, so I could look around XP and see if I liked it. It has (had?) a tiny, tiny hard drive and was slow as a slug, but I liked it.

About four years ago, I tried to turn it on and it made a horrible clicking noise. I had never heard of the 'click of death', so I just kept rebooting until it started - and it did. Whenever I turned it off, or the lights went out (sneeze too strongly and our power goes out), I would keep rebooting till the click stopped, and it would work. Yes, yes it would. For FOUR YEARS, it ALWAYS booted.

All my techy friends said the click of death was final. What do they know?

Sure, it could take anywhere from 3 to 30 reboots, but it ALWAYS would boot... eventually.

Sometimes, the screen would say 'no operating system found'. Oddly, that was a good sign. It would usually boot the next time I tried.
Sometimes, it would throw odd ansi characters on the screen - hearts, squares, blinking characters - but it always would boot... eventually.

Today, I was trying to start it, because the lights flashed a few days ago and it shut down. Now... it wants the cmos password. I never set a cmos password. I tried cmos, password, bios, the usual suspects. They didn't work. I went online and looked it up. Tried a few other known passwords. Nope. Three tries and:

System Disabled
My last resort will be to pop it open and pull out the cmos battery. I don't want to do that, but I can't take it anywhere to get someone to clear, or bypass, the password. I can't imagine what a real tech would think if I told them to 'just ignore the click of death, it will boot.' ::sigh::

I know, I should simply let it go. I know that. I could probably pick up a faster system with a bigger hard drive for the cost of the copper in its components, but I like my computers - I have three - and it's very, very hard for me to let one go. The other two computers, with three different operating systems aren't that computer. This computer - a tablet - has XP Pro, but it isn't Clicky, the Unbreakable.

Plus, there'd be a desk in my office empty for a while. I can't have that.

Fascinating New Thing

I was helping someone clean out old stuff yesterday. I found this card under the bed.


I have it on my keyboard. I love it! I think it's from some game, because the back says Hasbro, Inc., but I don't want to know what game.



It makes me smile. It makes no sense. Like some type of odd apology card.

You couldn't give a card with that written on it, in this day, but wouldn't it be interesting to print up cards with unusual sentences on them and leave them places? A bit like anonymous mail art.

"I never loved you, but I always wished I had."

"Once, I had a bunny. I named him bunny."

Random thoughts. They would have to have a common flip-side. I guess that would identify the author. You could even have a name or URL on the back. Oh no, now some advertiser will do it, and we'll all find these really bizarre cards and it will turn out to be a promotion for beer, or online insurance. Please, don't. Artists, writers, and creative types with no real reason except mischief, okay?

I also put up a bit of flashing. If you've never had the pleasure of working with flashing, it's like a rolled razor blade. It will cut you, deeply, if you are not completely focused. I was wearing my leather work-gloves - they must be stiff, hard to bend leather - and I took one off, because I was having trouble using the tin snips with it on. Quick as a wink, the flashing flipped around and cut my finger. It wasn't too bad. It spurted blood like crazy, but wasn't big enough for a stitch.
Imagine working with a live rattlesnake. Every second, you must pay attention. You must respect and fear the snake. It will strike at any opportunity. This is flashing.
But, flashing is shiny. Oooooo.... shiny!

Peruvian Aspargus

::Update at end::

Who doesn't love asparagus? Who would dare say it's evil?

Um... that would be me.

I had some weird symptoms after eating asparagus. The palms of my hands and the soles of my feet started itching and burning. I didn't get hives. I didn't get a rash. It was the second time in my life I had these 'itches' happen. The first time and this time, I had just eaten asparagus.

I've always loved asparagus, so I didn't like the connect - at all. I decided to look it up, see if anything could be done. What I found was not helpful.
Seems, it's very, very rare to have an allergic reaction to cooked asparagus. That really cut into my search results. I decided to look up just 'asparagus'. Turns out, off-season and most of in-season asparagus is now coming from Peru. This is new. Like my allergic reaction.
I'm hoping, I'm only allergic to asparagus from Peru. I tried a search for 'Peruvian asparagus' and allergy, but the results were only relevant to contact dermatitis. Again, I hit that brick wall of rare reaction to cooked asparagus.

Maybe, it's something in the soil in Peru? Maybe, arsenic or copper? Those seem to have the same allergic itch reaction. Our local grocery stores do NOT say the source of their asparagus. I thought all foods had to have the origin on them, but nope - nadda.
Since I couldn't find anything about this online, I wanted to post about this stupid, tiny inconvenience. If anyone else is having a problem with Peruvian asparagus, maybe they will at least find this.

I'm going to see if I can find some locally grown asparagus. Do my own experiment. If that doesn't give me a reaction, I can grow my own. I hear it's simple and grows like grass. Yummy, yummy grass.


::Update::
It's copper. I believe there are elevated levels of copper in asparagus from Peru. Not only is copper one of Peru's biggest exports, it is commonly used in agriculture.

Every symptom those who are finding they are suddenly allergic to asparagus have are all symptoms of too much copper.

B6 can help chelate some of that copper away, but until the U.S. government starts looking into this and forcing Peru to meet dietary standards for copper, some Americans will not be able to eat asparagus without making SURE it is NOT from Peru.

Did My Brain Write This?

This popped in my head yesterday and kept repeating. I don't know if I read it somewhere, or my crazy brain wrote it:

I am a fairly reasoned man,
Few things I will not do,
There are some things
I do not like,
And one of them is you

I don't see it in a search for a few of the phrases. Crazy brain.

New Amsterdam

My Mom: I don't get what that show is about.

Me: It's about a guy who died 400 years ago, and an Indian lady put a spell on him. He can never die, until he finds his true love.

My Mom: He's been looking for his true love for 400 years?

Me: Yes.

My Mom: He's pickier than you are.

The Gathering of the Pod People

I don't really participate in social networking. I've always thought having a website with a valid email address was social enough for me. I don't have a MySpace page. I get grief about it all the time. One of my friends is so in love with MySpace, she refuses to acknowledge any stalker story is true, or that most user's pages could put you in a coma from the colour/image clashes. I call them MySores. She defends the service like it's her abusive husband. ::sigh::
I cannot bring myself to get a page on MySpace. I can't.

Lately, however, I've been working on a project that may require a social networking application as its base. I had to join somewhere, to have a look around. I decided to try Gather.com. A few minutes, and I do mean a few minutes, after I signed up, I got my first 'connection' request. Over the next few days, I got more. They weren't from anyone I knew. They were random people asking me to add them to my friends connections.

I wrote my MySpace friend and asked her what the deal was. Why would these strangers want me to list them as a friend? She said, she didn't know anything about Gather. I asked her why people do that on MySpace. She didn't reply.

I've been on Gather for about a month now. The people are strange. If you're on Gather, you either 1. Think I'm crazy to say that, or 2. Know exactly what I mean. If you aren't on Gather, I'll try to explain it as best I can.

Have you ever seen the movie, The Steppford Wives?
That's the best place I know to start. Everyone - everyone - is super, happy, friendly. Everything that anyone writes, uploads, thinks, is ...nice.

"Nice image!"

"Nice essay!"

"Nice icon!"

If you do a Google site search for the word 'nice' on Gather you'll get over half a million hits for the word 'nice' - that's not counting how many times it appears on each page. It can appear 10-20 times on the same page. Everyone telling someone how 'nice' their new post is. No one on Gather can do wrong. Images, almost always have a 10 rating.
It may be, Gather's unspoken motto is 'If you don't have anything nice to say, keep your mouth shut,' or it could be that Gather is a cult. I was welcomed and friended within minutes. I was told how nice my avatar is. I was told how nice my writing is. My avatar was nothing special. I wrote something off the top of my head, just to see how their posting application worked.

I am loved there. I am nice and everything I do is nice. Yesterday, I commented on how nice someone else's writing was... I tried to think of another word, but only the word 'nice' came to mind. It was frightening.

(is it just me, or does it seem like I'm ending almost every sentence with a preposition?)

One explanation for the niceness, could be a points system Gather has in place. I don't understand it. I have points. I think I can trade them for discounts, but I haven't looked into it. If people are given points for friends and writing, that could explain the friendliness. If they get points for every time they comment on something... well, eventually you run out of adjectives. Maybe, it's simpler for them to stick with 'nice', than try a thesaurus?

Yesterday, I received 17 notices from Gather users - comments, mostly. Seventeen notices on a site I've been on for a little over a month and know only one person. Someone I asked to join, because the Steppfords were creeping me out. Join us. Join us. ::shudder::

How Weird AM I??

I was burning a CD today. David Gray's White Ladder. I need a spare copy of my CD, incase anything happens to my original. Right now, I can't live without this CD. Seriously.
I opened a new pack of CD's and took the UPC/security thing off the wrapping. It was still sticky. If something is still sticky, it must be stuck to something. It's a rule. So, I stuck it to the center of my forehead and promptly forgot about it.
I burned the CD, tested it. Yes! I will never be without White Ladder. Buy this CD.
Go now. You won't regret it.

A while later, someone came by and I talked to them for a while. They left. I walked past a mirror and noticed I still have the UPC thing on the center of my forehead. My friend didn't say anything. They didn't stare at my forehead. Didn't ask me what was up with the thing on my head. I can't decide if this is a good, or bad thing.

How weird am I, that I can stick a UPC thing right in the center of my forehead and it passes as 'the usual'?

Yeah, Colouring Books

I have a new respect for 4-year-olds. I went to a party over the weekend that had a kids area. There was a colouring book left. I took it. I will not longer snicker at kids drawing outside the lines.
I haven't coloured in years. It's harder than it looks. The crayon, as it wears down, creates a new 'tip' while you're colouring! The lovely tip on the left I was using, would quickly turn into a tip on the right and the next thing I knew I was drawing dangerously close to the lines. ::shudder::


Oh, I almost forgot my point!

While flipping through the colouring book I came upon an image that looks incredibly like Mr. Hanky! This is a standard,
generic kids colouring book.











I think it was unintentional, but it seriously looks like him.







I coloured as well as I could with the crazy point-changing, then put the picture in my computer.


Playing with graphics all day, I'm use to altering images a bit. Here's the 'stained glass' version for your next Christmas card.


You're welcome!

A Positive Negative

I was working on some graphics today and realized something I'm totally excited about. If you already know this, it's cool, right? I was staring at a photo, trying to think what I could do with it. I closed my eyes to think and saw the image in my mind's eye in negative.
Negative images are always a little creepy. They're great, and I can stare at them forever, but it's the creepiness factor that gives them their appeal. I stared, with my mind's eye - which is really just some type of retinal burning of the image I'd guess - until it faded away. Then, I remembered that Jesus test. It's in a lot of books about eyes or science or something. I've come across it a few times. You see it a lot with that 'is it a vase, or two people facing each other?' image. You stare at Jesus, close your eyes, and Jesus appears to you in your mind's eye.
So, I thought, if staring at a portrait created a negative image....
I changed the image on my screen to a negative. I stared at it for a few seconds and shut my eyes. There it was! The real image! I could almost make out the colours. Have I mentioned I'm easily amused?

I'm listening to David Gray's White Ladder album. I can't let this go. If I don't have the CD nearby, I feel like I'm missing something.

"Where are my keys? Here. Where's my checkbook? Right here. Where's my David Gray???"

Somehow, it's become a security blanket for me. My most favourite part is that Babylon is on the album twice.
When I used to make cassettes of albums/CD's for my car, I always recorded my favourite song again at the end of the tape. Babylon is recorded twice, with some variance, on White Ladder. I got the CD for Babylon, but my favourite song changes daily. I highly recommend this album.
Here's a karaoke version of one of his songs for you: