Month: August 2005

Hurricane Relief

Hurricane Relief:

The American Red Cross

Donation Link: Click here
Relief focus: Provides a full spectrum of services to disaster victims, including shelter, medical care, food, clean water and assisting with cleanup efforts.
__________________________________

America’s Second Harvest

Donation link: Click here
Relief focus: Transports food to victims and secures additional warehouse space to assist member food banks in resuming and maintaining operations.
__________________________________


Catholic Charities USA

Donation Link: Click here
Relief focus: Community based relief efforts focused on the long-terms needs of disaster victims and affected communities.
__________________________________

Direct Relief International

Donation link: Click here
Relief focus:Serves as a private back-up support to official emergency response efforts in the United States.
__________________________________

Feed The Children

Donation Link: Click here
Relief focus: Mobilizing and distributing supplies in hurricane devastated areas.
__________________________________

Habitat for Humanity

Donation link: Click here
Relief focus: Helping disaster victims rebuild piece by piece and house by house.
__________________________________


Humane Society of the United States

Donation Link: Click here
Relief focus: Dispatching Disaster Animal Response Teams (DARTs) to rescue animals and assist their caregivers.
__________________________________

Noah’s Wish

Donation Link: Click here
Relief focus: Keeping animals alive during disasters.
__________________________________

The Salvation Army

Donation Link: Click here
Relief focus: Providing hot meals to displaced disaster victims and emergency personnel working to aid those devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
__________________________________

United Jewish Communities

Donation Link: Click hereRelief focus: Community organized and administered humanitarian relief for disaster victims.
__________________________________


United Methodist Committee on Relief

Donation Link: Click here
Relief focus: General community-based disaster relief, as well as the creation and distribution of “flood buckets” — a relief item for those who prefer to donate with a personal touch.
__________________________________

United Way

Donation Link: Click here
Relief focus: Identifying serious needs of devastated communities and helping not only with front-line disaster relief but with long-term recovery.
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(Thanks to RenaRF for the idea.)

stolen wholesale from Billmon
Continue reading “Hurricane Relief”

feh

Free Download A Day » Blog Archive » Opera Web Browser: free reg code (today only):

Today only, Opera Software is celebrating its 10th anniversary by giving away registration codes for its Opera web browser. (It’s normally $39.) Opera’s a fantabulous web browser: features include a pop-up blocker, RSS newsreader, e-mail client with spam filter, a notes feature, and much more.

Have patience when you go to the site: understandably, the Opera site is heavily loaded — and therefore slow — today. The offer is valid until 12 a.m. Wednesday, August 31 2005 (PDT).

Opera 10-year online anniversary party – Opera Web Browser:

No more free drinks!

Cheers guys, it was a blast! Millions of people (literally) got their free registration code at our party, but the offer is now over.

white:~ paul$ date
Wed Aug 31 21:03:27 PDT 2005

Looks like I missed it.
Continue reading “feh”

How old do you feel?

BELOIT COLLEGE’S MINDSET LIST® FOR THE CLASS OF 2009
Most students entering college this fall were born in 1987.
1. Andy Warhol, Liberace, Jackie Gleason, and Lee Marvin have always been dead.
2. They don’t remember when “cut and paste” involved scissors.
3. Heart-lung transplants have always been possible.
4. Wayne Gretzky never played for Edmonton.
5. Boston has been working on the “The Big Dig” all their lives.
6. With little need to practice, most of them do not know how to tie a tie.
7. Pay-Per-View television has always been an option.
8. They never had the fun of being thrown into the back of a station wagon with six others.
9. Iran and Iraq have never been at war with each other.
10. They are more familiar with Greg Gumbel than with Bryant Gumbel.
11. Philip Morris has always owned Kraft Foods.
12. Al-Qaida has always existed with Osama bin Laden at its head.
13. They learned to count with Lotus 1-2-3.
14. Car stereos have always rivaled home component systems.
15. Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker have never preached on television.
16. Voice mail has always been available.
17. “Whatever” is not part of a question but an expression of sullen rebuke.
18. The federal budget has always been more than a trillion dollars.
19. Condoms have always been advertised on television.
20.
They may have fallen asleep playing with their Gameboys in the crib.
21. They have always had the right to burn the flag.
22. For daily caffeine emergencies, Starbucks has always been around the corner.
23. Ferdinand Marcos has never been in charge of the Philippines.
24. Money put in their savings account the year they were born earned almost 7% interest.
25. Bill Gates has always been worth at least a billion dollars.
26. Dirty dancing has always been acceptable.
27. Southern fried chicken, prepared with a blend of 11 herbs and spices, has always been available in China.
28. Michael Jackson has always been bad, and greed has always been good.
29. The Starship Enterprise has always looked dated.
30. Pixar has always existed.
31.
There has never been a “fairness doctrine” at the FCC.
32. Judicial appointments routinely have been “Borked.”
33. Aretha Franklin has always been in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
34. There have always been zebra mussels in the Great Lakes.
35. Police have always been able to search garbage without a search warrant.
36. It has always been possible to walk from England to mainland Europe on dry land.
37. They have grown up in a single superpower world.
38. They missed the oat bran diet craze.
39. American Motors has never existed.
40. Scientists have always been able to see supernovas.
41. Les Miserables has always been on stage.
42. Halogen lights have always been available at home, with a warning.
43. “Baby M” may be a classmate, and contracts with surrogate mothers have always been legal.
44. RU486 has always been on the market.
45. There has always been a pyramid in front of the Louvre in Paris.
46. British Airways has always been privately owned.
47. Irradiated food has always been available but controversial.
48. Snowboarding has always been a popular winter pastime.
49. Libraries have always been the best centers for computer technology and access to good software.
50. Biosphere 2 has always been trying to create a revolution in the life sciences.
51. The Hubble Telescope has always been focused on new frontiers.
52. Researchers have always been looking for stem cells.
53. They do not remember “a kinder and gentler nation.”
54. They never saw the shuttle Challenger fly.
55. The TV networks have always had cable partners.
56. Airports have always had upscale shops and restaurants.
57. Black Americans have always been known as African-Americans.
58. They never saw Pat Sajak or Arsenio Hall host a late night television show.
59. Matt Groening has always had a Life in Hell.
60. Salman Rushdie has always been watching over his shoulder.
61. Digital cameras have always existed.
62. Tom Landry never coached the Cowboys.
63. Time Life and Warner Communications have always been joined.
64. CNBC has always been on the air.
65. The Field of Dreams has always been drawing people to Iowa.
66. They never saw a Howard Johnson’s with 28 ice cream flavors.
67. Reindeer at Christmas have always distinguished between secular and religious decorations.
68. Entertainment Weekly has always been on the newsstand.
69. Lyme Disease has always been a ticking concern in the woods.
70. Jimmy Carter has always been an elder statesman.
71. Miss Piggy and Kermit have always dwelt in Disneyland.
72. America’s Funniest Home Videos has always been on television.
73. Their nervous new parents heard C. Everett Koop proclaim nicotine as addictive as heroin.
74. Lever has always been looking for 2000 parts to clean.
75. They have always been challenged to distinguish between news and entertainment on cable TV.

Now playing: Going Down by Jeff Beck from the album “Beckology (Disc 2)” | Get it

changes

Not much to mumble/grumble about lately. The shortening days of summer (both in length and quantity) have taken precedence over logorrhea.

  • Two families of raccoons have taken residence in the impenetrable thicket in the middle of my block: 2 mother and 2 litters, of 4 and 5. 11 raccoons is too many, but since we have a soft-hearted neighbor who leaves cat food out for them, they don’t know any better.
  • Gardening proceeds nicely. I just discovered the canonical handbook on gardening locally and wish I had grabbed it earlier. I’m not doing too badly — lots of tomatoes on the vine, lots of basil, and some green beans in flower — though it is late. My efforts at harvesting rainwater over the wet months have paid off: I haven’t had to tap into drinking water, with my 250+ gallon reserve on hand. I realized that I was overwatering (automated watering systems are not the boon they could be: they require more management than I realized) and the byproducts were waterlogged vegetables, lot of weeds (broadcast watering helps them too), and astronomical water bills. Next summer should see much better yields.
  • I have been making some money lately doing some freelance system management work, which helps make ends meet around here. So I dropped the shilling for dollars: no ads anymore. My options with Google are to suspend my account and let them hold my earnings or close it and get paid off. I’m leaning toward option b, since it’s unlikely I’ll hit on any sure-fire traffic generating scheme. Hope springs eternal, but even I can take a hint.
  • Now playing: Exit Music (For A Film) by Radiohead from the album “OK Computer” | Get it

Continue reading “changes”

Wanna be in a Neil Gaiman/Jonathan Lethem/Stephen King/Lemony Snicket book?

This September, Your Name Here…:

It’s nice — and that’s an understatement — when something good done in this blog has repercussions. You may remember that back in March I auctioned off the name of a Cruise Ship in ANANSI BOYS for the CBLDF. And we made $3,533 for the CBLDF. And that happened around the same time that Michael Chabon used this blog to mention to the world that the First Amendment Project was running out of money having used most of it up defending Freedom of Speech issues (and many of you went and made donations). So I suggested to Michael Chabon that we might want to try something similar to what I’d done with eBaying a name in a book, only bigger.

Michael and the FAP folk went away and did lots of work. And now it has borne cool fruit…

Have you ever wanted to be in a Stephen King book? (You must be female in order to die, though.)

Stephen King

What he’s offering:
“One (and only one) character name in a novel called CELL, which is now in work and which will appear in either 2006 or 2007. Buyer should be aware that CELL is a violent piece of work, which comes complete with zombies set in motion by bad cell phone signals that destroy the human brain. Like cheap whiskey, it’s very nasty and extremely satisfying. Character can be male or female, but a buyer who wants to die must in this case be female. In any case, I’ll require physical description of auction winner, including any nickname (can be made up, I don’t give a rip).”

When you can bid:
September 8-18

Or a Lemony Snicket book?

Lemony Snicket

What he’s offering:
“An utterance by Sunny Baudelaire in Book the Thirteenth. Pronunciation and/or spelling may be slightly ‘mutilated.’ An example of this is in The Grim Grotto when Sunny utters ‘Bushcheney.’ Target publication date is Fall 2006.”

When you can bid:
September 8-18

or a Jonathan Lethem-written Marvel comic?

Jonathan Lethem

What he’s offering:
“I need the name of a Columbia University professor for a comic book I’m writing for Marvel. It can be your name or the name of a friend — but if it’s a friend, I need to hear from them with their permission.”

When you can bid:
September 8-18

While I am promising to put your name onto a gravestone in my next children’s novel, THE GRAVEYARD BOOK.

Anyway, the schedule (and the complete list of authors) is as follows:


September 1-10: Michael Chabon, Amy Tan, Peter Straub, Andrew Sean Greer, Karen Joy Fowler

September 8-18: Stephen King, Lemony Snicket, Dorothy Allison, Jonathan Lethem, Ayelet Waldman

September 15-25: John Grisham, Nora Roberts, Neil Gaiman, Dave Eggers, Rick Moody, ZZ Packer

And all the information is up at http://www.ebay.com/fap. It’s a perfect birthday present, graduation present, retirement present, way to impress a boyfriend, girlfriend, parent, child. And it’s for an extremely good cause.

Spread the word.

Stick the info up on your blog or journal. Put it in your newspaper or magazine (if you happen to write for one). Print out the page and pin it up on your office bulletin board. It would be a good thing if, when September starts, everyone who wants to be in a book by any of the above people knows that this is their chance.

Continue reading “Wanna be in a Neil Gaiman/Jonathan Lethem/Stephen King/Lemony Snicket book?”

summer fare

Also featured at tonight’s outdoor dining extravaganza (at which we learned that the childhood best friend of our hostess was someone I had once worked with: if her hometown of Soperton, Georgia, has not been mentioned, the connection would not have been made) was a red potato salad I have made a few times every summer for a while now.

Take a 2-3 pounds of good quality red potatoes (Paul Newman offers organic red and russets under his Newman’s Own brand that I buy at Trader Joe’s), scrub and cut them into small chunks (again, about the size of the last joint of the thumb), and boil or steam until just cooked (pierceable with a fork). While they cook, mix 1/2 cup mayonnaise and 1/4 cup prepared mustard, a generous shaking of celery seed (a teaspoon), and a tablespoon of cider vinegar in a measuring cup.

When the potatoes are done, remove them from heat, drain and quickly mix the dressing into them. Serve as soon as you can, or prepare as close to mealtime as possible: they are better warm then chilled.
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summer’s bounty: balsamic strawberries

Off to a backyard cookout this evening and since I was raised never to go to anyone’s house empty-handed, here’s what we’re bringing.

Balsamic strawberries[1]:

1 pound ripe red strawberries (doesn’t matter if a few are underripe or overripe: this covers a multitude of sins). These are on sale at a lot of places right now so make the most of it.
1-2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Clean/hull/trim the berries and cut them in pieces no larger than the last joint of your thumb, halving ordinary ones and quartering the big monsters. I clean mine with a damp paper towel and wipe down each one: if you rinse them, they absorb water and taste, well, watery. You could use a squirt bottle and a mushroom brush: I haven’t tried.

Drop the pieces into a bowl, and add the sugar. Cover with plastic wrap or a tight-fitting lid, and shake/swirl/agitate the contents so that the berries all get some sugar on them.

Leave them on the counter for a couple of hours, gently swirling them every half-hour or so as they sit.

Uncover and marvel at the rich red color and heady smell. And all that juice you’ve released makes them a perfect complement to a rich vanilla ice cream. But first, drizzle the balsamic vinegar over the top and gently stir it all around. Then serve in small bowls, over a shortcake, with ice cream, or however you like. We’re bringing vanilla ice cream with us.

This sugar technique (if I can call it that) is similar to macerating, but the strict definition is to steep in a liquid. We’re not doing that, so I’m reluctant to call it that.

1. Previously written about here.
Continue reading “summer’s bounty: balsamic strawberries”

A farewell to AdSense

ongoing · Exit AdSense:

[T]he only conclusion I can draw is that AdSense isn’t going
to make you much money if you write about Web technologies and politics and
publish pictures of flowers and donkeys.

I am coming to much the same conclusion. I don’t even have the pictures to post (still scraping up the pennies for a Nikon Coolscan 4000) and I doubt it would make a lot of difference: they aren’t content AdSense can sell against.
Continue reading “A farewell to AdSense”