Don’t use black rice in your home-made turkey and rice soup unless you want it to have a less-than-appetizing purplish-black color. Even the pieces of turkey and the carrots are stained. That’s good eatin’!

Space is a little tight at the office, so when Jeff discovered he’d been demoted to an open area, he used duct tape to demark his cubicle. He also borrowed one of the fake plants in order to class it up a little.

My pastor emailed me his sermon so that I could publish it on the church web site, and here are the targeted ads that Gmail displayed along side the email:

I am not going to click on that ad even to satisfy my curiosity.

Via Ugly Food.

In this morning’s team standup meeting, one of the team members reported on her progress with some automated testing. Afterwards, our scrum master asked her, “But the real question here is: ‘Do you consider Watir testing to be a form of torture?’”

Wired News ran a contest for the saddest cubicle. Check out the winners. This reminds me of when I worked for AT&T in New Jersey back in 1996-97. AT&T had a hiring freeze on, so I was hired as a contractor from a non-personnel budget. Furthermore, this was right after the AT&T/Lucent split, and the group I was working with was working in an overcrowded building that had gone to Lucent.
Due to all of these factors, my AT&T manager couldn’t request an office for me. I worked for several months in a data center. Go to the basement, unlock the door to a huge, roaring data center at 65 degrees. Walk through it to one corner that had been walled off. Inside was a small testing lab that was somewhat warmer and somewhat quieter. That was my office. Lovely.

A few years ago, Samuel attended a birthday party at an ‘inflatable party zone’ (like this, but not the same one). One of the inflatable toys was a caterpillar through whose body the kids could crawl. They went in under the head and exited via a vertical slit on the back end. It was one of those occasions when I really regretted not having my camera. But that was nothing compared to this (which I found on the internet):

That’s a child psychologist’s money machine.

I’m a big fan of the band The Decemberists. I downloaded most of their music that is available on eMusic and purchased their most recent album at a retail store (the only CD I’ve bought since I got my iPod two years ago).
I listen to The Decemberists all the time, but I had never actually seen the band–not even photos. I caught their recent performance on Austin City Limits this weekend, and I was shocked that lead singer Colin Meloy looks nothing like I imagined him.
With his distinctive tenor voice, I’d pictured Colin Meloy as a thin 20-something hipster. Instead, he looks like he’s in his 30s; he’s somewhat heavy set and wears glasses. He looks much more like a fellow parent who I would run into a a PTA meeting. I didn’t realize until I saw him in performance what a strong mental image I’d formed of him. Strange.

I’ve seen the new diet drug alli promoted heavily at Walgreens. This blogger interprets the marketing hype for us: “A simplified medical description of the drug is that it’s a fat blocker. It stops your body from absorbing some of the fat in your diet. . . But here’s the most important thing the drug does: it makes you shit oil. Worse, it makes you shit your pants.”
My favorite part of the post is the blogger’s interpretation of the alli web site bullshit (aka WSBS):

WSBS: The excess fat that passes out of your body is not harmful. In fact, you may recognize it as something that looks like the oil on top of a pizza.
No BS: Oh dear god. Pizza is one of my favourite foods and these evil fucks have done their best to turn me off it for life. It will be very hard to look at a pizza again without wondering if someone on this drug has taken a shit on it.
WSBS: Eating a low-fat diet lowers the chance of these bowel changes. (my emphasis)
No BS: Even if you do cut back on fat, you’re still going to shit oil.
WSBS: …pick a day to begin taking alli, such as a weekend day so you can stay close to home if you experience a treatment effect.
No BS: Do not go out in public after taking this drug. You are going to shit yourself. Stay close to a toilet.
WSBS: If you’re getting ready to travel or attend a social event, hold off on starting with alli until the event is over.
No BS: Don’t say you weren’t warned. You are seriously going to shit yourself.
WSBS: You may not usually get gassy, but it’s a possibility when you take alli. The bathroom is really the best place to go when that happens.
No BS: You’re old life is over. Forget what you think you know about your body. You are going to fart uncontrollably. And there will be follow-through. This is not going to be something you want to share.
And my absolute favourite (which is to say, the part of the website that horrifies me most):
“You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it’s probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work.”
Oh. My. Fucking. God. They are so sure you are going to shit your pants they are saying you should accept the inevitable. There is no way to avoid this. So wear dark pants to hide the liquid shit stains. And bring a change of clothes. Because your first set are going to get impregnated with liquid shit.

Today, AP has a story about a cat that predicts the death of nursing home patients:

Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.
…
Doctors say most of the people who get a visit from the sweet-faced, gray-and-white cat are so ill they probably don’t know he’s there, so patients aren’t aware he’s a harbinger of death. Most families are grateful for the advanced warning, although one wanted Oscar out of the room while a family member died. When Oscar is put outside, he paces and meows his displeasure.

The AP reporter is missing the other obvious conclusion: the cat is sucking the life out of the patients. Everyone knows, after all, that cats can kill babies.