A Bronx Cheer...

Have you wondered where the term "Bronx Cheer" came from? It's not a cheer as most of you know it's also known as "blowing a raspberry." You can guess that it came from the Bronx though that's not a given, French Toast and French Fries didn't come from France. It's been reported that it came from New Yorkers expressing their unhappiness at baseball games with the first reporting of a Bronx cheer taking place back in the 1890's. It is of course not something you'd want to do to a Bronx medical malpractice lawyer unless of course you were the one who was being sued...

:-)

I like the look of stainless steel...

My dream appliances when we ever get to that point with our house, are stainless steel or at least faux stainless steel, I like the look, especially for a kitchen. Which makes the idea of using stainless steel tiles for the backsplash behind the sink instead of ceramic tiles seem even more appealing. It also looks as if they would be easier to install instead of the ceramic tiles...

Mint.com did spend money on advertising...

The funny part of reading this Newsweek article on the sale of Mint.com was this:

Yesterday, at a panel I moderated in San Francisco, Donna Wells, Mint.com's chief marketing officer, stunned a room full of digital marketing pros by noting that she really didn't have much of a marketing budget. Mint.com has gone from zero to 1.5 million users in two years with no ad campaign, save a mid-five-figures sum spent on search engine terms. Rather than purchase traffic, it has pursued the same type of strategy that food trucks and online magazines do: Using free social media and piggybacking on popular new communications technology. Mint.com has more than 36,000 Facebook fans and 19,000 Twitter followers, a well-trafficked blog, and a popular iPhone application.

It's not true, Mint.com did pay for advertising costs, that spending on "search engine terms" was through companies like PayPerPost where bloggers were paid to write material in the form of written ads to boost their search engine terms in a manner that Google took issue with and ended up spanking those who worked for PayPerPost while companies like Mint.com were not penalized.

Trying to not get caught up in the red tape...

Our government does not make it easy at times to fill out applications for disability, it's not uncommon for an application to be rejected and if you don't know how to mount a proper disability appeal it can take longer for you to get through what can seem like mountains of red tape. It pays to do your research but even trying to read through all of the government websites can be daunting, there are services out there that charge to help you. It's important that you do your homework to make sure that you have read all of the terms of service...

I think this horoscope is a bit late...

September 11, 2009: Your energies is going down. Its important you take care of yourself. Short rest can be very effective for you.

Now this was neat - how to build a micro-sized outdoor fireplace

I always enjoy checking out wikihow.com and once in a while I find something that I think would actually be neat to create. Today is one of those times, making a fireplace from recycled materials.

What's always neater yet is the video they have most of the time to show you how it looks and works:

Evidently they are looking to make more on Gardasil

Now the makers of Gardasil are saying that males starting at the age of 9 can take the shot that was originally stated worked only for women, I admit I'm skeptical as to the stated results of the research:

At Wednesday's advisory committee meeting, pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., maker of Gardasil, presented data from three clinical trials that the company claims supports broadening the distribution of the vaccine to include males. The trials included more than 5,400 boys and men from six continents and 23 countries.

According to Anna Giuliano, an independent scientist at Moffit Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, and the trials' principal investigator, "The data clearly demonstrates that there was a benefit to men in receiving Gardasil. Overall, we saw a 90 percent reduction in disease -- genital warts and pre-cancerous lesions -- caused by HPV in men and an 89 percent reduction in genital warts incidence.

It's hard to believe they saw a 90 percent reduction considering the time span of how long it takes for signs of this disease to show in men and Gardasil was just released in 2006. It also does not address some of the recent concerns related to death.

Banks Ease Burden Of Credit Card Debt

Recommended article in today's Washington Post on how Consumer Stress Has Firms More Eager to Bargain and it's being stated that companies are trying to get some money from those who owe credit card balances as opposed to getting no money. Part of the article:

"Issuers are looking to get something as opposed to nothing," said David Robertson, publisher of the Nilson Report, which monitors the industry.

Most card issuers are unwilling to talk about the practice for fear that they will be swamped with requests from people who do have the funds to pay their bills. But industry executives confirmed that the practice is becoming more common as card issuers face a record percentage of charge-offs, giving up on collecting debts that consumers never repay. The charge-off rate on U.S. cards for July was 10.52 percent of balances, according to Moody's, which expects it to reach at least 12 percent in the middle of next year.

"I think the credit card companies have learned from the mortgage problems the value to them and their customers of trying to work something out where it's appropriate and feasible," said Nessa Feddis, vice president and senior counsel at the American Bankers Association.

Mr. Know-It-All gives good advice...

I enjoy reading Wired's Mr. Know-It-All column, I especially enjoyed this week's in particular this one related to babies:

I recently posted a photo on Facebook of my 4-month-old son taking a bath. My mom flipped; she said I was creating child porn. Is she overly paranoid?

Sounds like your mother has seen one too many episodes of To Catch a Predator. The legal test is for the depiction of "sexually explicit conduct" (including "lascivious exhibition" of genitalia). Neither the Feds nor Facebook care about a cute bath-time picture of your own kid. And it means a lot if Facebook is cool with it, because the company is notoriously prim—it has been known to delete images of breastfeeding. "We've carved out an exception in our policy to allow photos of infants posted by parents or other family members," says Simon Axten, a Facebook spokesperson.

Mom also needs to understand that Facebook can actually be more private than a beach or park—the photos can be viewed only by trusted friends, assuming you have the appropriate privacy settings. (You do, right?) Unless she has a blanket objection to her grandson appearing naked in public, including during emergency diaper changes, her anti-Facebook logic doesn't hold water.

Throwing out the rules on campaign finance

We need campaign finance laws since it's really the only way people have any power, but? It appears those days could soon be ending as a majority of the Supreme Court seemed impatient with an increasingly complicated federal scheme intended to curb the role of corporations, unions and special interest groups in elections. The laws, former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson told the court, instead "smothered" First Amendment rights and "criminalized" free speech.

The question is whether the court is willing to strike two of its precedents and defy Congress on corporate restrictions that date to the beginning of the 20th century.

It appears the Obama administration is willing to try to lose the case in front of the Supreme Court if it means a stronger ruling won't take place. That's a waste of time, effort and tax payer dollars...

Nearly one-third of those who obtained home loans during the boom years of 2005 and 2006 couldn't get one today

That to me is troubling, because of the degree of governmental control over the mortgage industry and it conflicts with the message that the government actually wants people to have that American dream...recommended Washington Post piece, part of which:

Now the pendulum has swung to the other extreme. Only one lender of consequence remains: the federal government, which undertook one of its earliest and most dramatic rescues of the financial crisis by seizing control a year ago of the two largest mortgage finance companies in the world, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

While this made it possible for many borrowers to keep getting loans and helped protect the housing market from further damage, the government's newly dominant role -- nearly 90 percent of all new home loans are funded or guaranteed by taxpayers -- has far-reaching consequences for prospective home buyers and taxpayers.

The government has the power to decide who is qualified for a loan and who is not. As a result, many borrowers among both poor and rich are frozen out of the market.

Nearly one-third of those who obtained home loans during the boom years of 2005 and 2006 couldn't get one today, according to mortgage industry analysts. Many of these borrowers were never really able to afford their homes and should not have gotten loans. But many others could, and borrowers like them are now running into tougher government standards.

At the same time, taxpayers are on the hook for most of the loans that are still being made if they go bad. And they are also on the line for any losses in the massive portfolios of old loans at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which own or back more than $5 trillion in mortgages.

Unusual Recovery Act projects

Don't read this CNN story, The wide, weird world of stimulus, unless you want to be disgusted. Or unless you really, really love mascots and are happy that we spent money on:

$51,500 of stimulus money on nine mascot costumes and robots, including Bobber the Water Safety Dog, Coastie the Water Safety Education Seaboat and Seamoor the Sea Serpent Robot.

Or this, given DC's love of pork, ironic:

To be specific, AMS bought $16.9 million of canned pork, $2.6 million of ham, with water added, cooked and frozen, and $4.8 million of sliced ham (with water added, cooked and frozen).

Memories of those call center days...

One of the full time jobs that I had that to me was the most fun and the most rewarding was when I worked doing call center services - level one tech support for a cable internet service provider. Working in a call center is not for everyone, but I not only learned quite a bit I was lucky to be surrounded by some fantastic co-workers. Unfortunately my job was eliminated when they decided to move our call center operation out of the US...

Almost everything can be custom...

Custom kitchens, custom cars, even custom software, if there is something you need that is not "off the shelf" than it's also a given that there will be someone out there that can take the "ordinary" and make it exactly what you wanted. This is especially true when it comes to software, many businesses have special needs that can't be addressed easily by standard software and not every business can afford to have their own staff to be able to create software, it's not as easy as you might think...

Who got the last California IOU?

According to CNN, Yellow Cab and it doesn't sound like it was the only IOU that the company received from the State of California...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- California sent out its last IOU on Thursday. The "lucky" recipient: Yellow Cab Co. of Sacramento, the oldest and largest taxi company in California's capital city.

Yellow Cab's historic warrant was for $41.60, covering a trip taken by a California Department of Fish and Game worker. The IOU hasn't yet arrived in Yellow Cab's office, but when it does, it will have plenty of company. In the two months that California relied on warrants to pay its bills, Yellow Cab collected 62 of them, totaling $16,435.68.

The cool stuff for school...

I recommend checking out Wired with their coverage of what's cool for school kids. They review computers to backpacks with some items that you might not have heard about. Like this one:

Tech Group WipeOut Chalk Dust Gun

There's a safer, lighter, much less messy version of paintball — only it doesn't use paint in any form. It's called WipeOut, and it comes as set of two guns, each of which holds and can shoot foam-tipped darts that leave a smear of chalk dust when they hit. The kit also comes with two pairs of safety glasses, because of course chalk dust in the eye would not be much fun. The guns are spring-loaded, so their range is considerably more limited than paintball guns, but as a parent I'm not sure that's a bad thing.
— Matt Blum

Getting your job through Twitter...

Now I've heard everything, woman gets hired because of Twitter not working for Twitter but seeking employment after being laid off for two months and she used the social networking tool to search out prospective employers. It worked for her...

The story behind Frankenstein...

Recommended piece in Newsweek Their Love is Alive where the mystery of Mary Shelley then Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin has a bit more light shed on it. One small part:

Few people did more to promote the archetype of the independent Romantic hero than Percy Shelley. It turns out, though, that he was a conscientious helpmate. By examining Mary's original drafts, Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson identified Percy's contributions to Frankenstein and, in 1996, edited a reproduction of Mary's notebooks for scholarly audiences. Now he has published The Original Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley (with Percy Shelley). The first part of the new book highlights Percy's edits and the second reveals Mary's lone voice. "The novel was conceived and mainly written by Mary Shelley," Robinson writes in his introduction, but he estimates that Percy wrote "at least" 4,000 to 5,000 words of the 72,000 total. Many of -Percy's fixes are minor. Some are good, some bad. Percy may have corrected Mary's parallel constructions, but he also mucked up her more straightforward language. "Smallness" became "minuteness." "I did not despair" became "I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed." Frankenstein was already turgid; Percy made it more so.

Watchdog Says SEC Mishandled Madoff Probes

Despite the claim though, it doesn't sound as if the report found any strong evidence of wrong doing, just a lot of sloppy work... According to NPR:

The watchdog of the Securities and Exchange Commission has found the agency consistently mishandled its five investigations of Bernard Madoff's business, despite ample complaints over 16 years about the multibillion-dollar fraud.

But SEC inspector general David Kotz's report found no evidence of any improper ties between agency officials and Madoff.

Despite speculation that senior SEC officials may have tried to influence the probes, a summary of Kotz's 450-page report released Wednesday also found no evidence of that.

The SEC enforcement staff, conducting investigations of Madoff's business, "almost immediately caught [him] in lies and misrepresentations, but failed to follow up on inconsistencies" and rejected whistleblowers' offers to provide additional evidence, the report says.

Revelations in December of the agency's failure to uncover Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme over more than a decade touched off one of the most painful scandals in the agency's 75-year history.

Halloween costume hints...

Sometimes you'll get a hint from a Halloween Invitation as to what your hosts will be dressed up as or as to exactly what type of a party it's going to be from Halloween Invitations. So you don't end up with a room full of witches, it's a good idea to drop hints in Halloween Party Invitations unless of course your Invitation Halloween theme would be to have more than a coven full. I recommend checking out Invitations-Shoppe (http://www.invitations-shoppe.com) because they will print and ship your order the same day it is approved and they will modify any card ThankYou design or color as requested. Which means if your theme is purple people eaters? The card can match...

Downturn in economic activity felt to be ending

So says the Federal Reserve anyway, though they did not give completely good news as to the economy making a complete turnaround, according to minutes from a meeting almost a month ago that were finally released from an August 11-12 meeting of the central bank's policymaking committee, top Fed officials agreed that improving economic data had "strengthened their confidence that the downturn in economic activity was ending," according to minutes of the meeting released Wednesday.

But that confidence did not extend to the shape of the recovery. The officials also expected the economy to improve "only slowly during the second half of this year, and all saw it as still vulnerable to adverse shocks," the minutes said.

Ample evidence in the last few months has pointed to an economy that is expanding -- producing more goods and services. But the Fed minutes show that top officials at the central bank, like their private-sector counterparts, have simmering concerns about whether the improvement will be enough to steady the job market.

"Conditions in the labor market remained poor, and business contacts indicated that firms would be quite cautious in hiring when demand for their products picks up," the minutes said.

Preparation key to best fright night

It may start with picking out the perfect Halloween Invitations but the party invitations Halloween perfection relies on planning if you want to really give party goers more of a fright than a scary Halloween invitation. Even something as simple as dry ice for fog can be hard to find in some parts of the country and has to be ordered in advance. If you don't take advantage of some of the free Halloween invitations out there, consider Holiday-Invitations (http://www.holiday-invitations.com) you can view your card before you buy with their patented instant preview feature, make unlimited changes at no additional cost and proof will be emailed to you within one hour on business days.

Boeing's 787 Dreamliner more like a nightmare

After initial high hopes it seems there are quite a few problems with the production of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, most of which are said to stem from the way that Boeing tried to outsource to save money on building the planes. The first one has yet to fly with the trail being delayed several times.

Highly recommended NPR story...

Another reason to drink pepsi from a cup...

In case there are ever any gutted toads or frogs in the can...

Now the question will be how did the frog or toad get in the can and will it be another scenario similar to the finger in the chili saga...

The "disgusting" blob that Fred DeNegri's wife says she poured out of his Diet Pepsi can was probably a gutted frog or toad, the Food and Drug Administration said.

DeNegri was grilling in his backyard tiki bar in Ormond Beach, Florida, when he popped open a can of Diet Pepsi, took a big gulp and started gagging, his wife, Amy, said.

He emptied out the can down a sink but something heavy remained inside. His wife took over and shook the can over a paper plate until something resembling "pink linguini" slid out, followed by "dark stuff," Amy DeNegri said.

"It was disgusting," said Amy DeNegri, 55. "And now, what started out as a normal afternoon in our tiki bar has blown up into this crazy thing."

The DeNegris took pictures before calling poison control and the FDA, which showed up the next day to examine the can in question and collect it for lab testing.