Ugly office ice cream

The Office was phenomenal last night.

Did anyone else notice on Ugly Betty last night that Becki Newton, the actress who plays Amanda, is also playing Ruthie, the girl who sits across from Betty's new desk as exec assistant to Salma Hayek's character, Sofia? I love how this show can take beautiful people and make them really not.

I am glad this week is over. It was pleasant busy, but still very busy.

I could use a bowl of chocolate ice cream. Who's with me?

Spring cleaning in the winter

So, I've moved a bunch of blogs that I wasn't actually reading frequently out of the "blogs I just can't live without" section and renamed that section "... for now". It feels cleansing but fills me with some guilt. I'll live with that. If I moved you out of that section and you noticed then I'm sorry. I can't keep adding to that section forever or else it's a dishonest reflection and/or all I do 24/7 is read blogs. Yaaay, blog.

Now hear this

Justin Timberlake is officially single. (I know I'm late in reporting, but I don't like posting something untrue and have to retract it after.)

Maybe he and Drew could get together?



Speaking of single, NotCarrie emailed me to let me know that her site is doing a date bidding auction to raise money for V-Day, “a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM) and sexual slavery.” I am very happily married, so I won't be bidding on a boy, but if you'd like to bid on one then please go to The Not Girls' Charity Auction. Thank you, and good night.

Ain't no Julie Andrews

I guess I've been blogging long enough for this to happen by now... Have you ever stopped loving a blog and wanted to just slowly back away from visiting and commenting on it, but didn't quite know how? How about remove it from your blogroll because it no longer represents you or your interests? How about stop conversing with said blogger because you have absolutely nothing in common anymore? Yah. Well. That's happening for me.

Q: Do I have the testicles to take the blog off my blogroll?
A: I don't have testicles.

I sound like a total bitch, don't I. *sigh* Real me, right here. Not all kittens and lollipops.

Not really a great time to be a technology editor.

First it was CNet's James Kim versus the elements. Now it's PC World's Rex Farrance versus 4 armed intruders:

PITTSBURG, California (AP) -- A senior editor for PC World Magazine was fatally shot in his home in what authorities said Wednesday was a drug-related attack.

Rex Farrance, 59, the San Francisco, California-based magazine's senior technical editor, was shot in the chest after four masked men broke into his home Tuesday evening, Pittsburg police said.

The assailants also pistol-whipped Farrance's wife, Lenore Vantosh-Farrance, 56, a registered nurse. She called 911, but the attackers fled before officers arrived. No one has been arrested, officials said.

"We have substantial reason to believe that the victim and his wife were involved in the possession and, potentially, the distribution of illegal narcotics," said Pittsburg police Inspector John Conaty, who declined to specify what type of drugs were involved.

The couple's son, Sterling Farrance, 19, blasted the police assertion that they were involved with illegal drugs, saying he grew and stored medical marijuana at the home with his parents' permission.

"I have a prescription. I'm a patient. It was medical," Sterling Farrance told the San Francisco Chronicle. "This one officer I remember at the house, he had this predisposition to think it was all illegal."

Colleagues at PC World described Farrance as a fitness buff, rock-music fan and a dedicated husband and father who excelled at his job.

"We're all in shock here," said Denny Arar, a PC World senior editor. "Rex loved his work. He really cared about covering technology in a way that was useful for readers. He cared a lot about people, period, including his co-workers." (CNN)

What?! Noooooooo..... :(

Drew Barrymore and Fabrizio Moretti have broken up. :( Phooey. Well, at least Drew knows when something isn't working. Bright side. Right? And, now everyone has a chance with her... Phooey again.

This, that, the other thing

Tom Skerritt is the face of Windows Vista. He also plays the husband of Nora (Sally Field) on precisely one episode of Brothers & Sisters before his character dies of a heart attack. Tom and Sally were the parents of Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias so throughout the first episode of Brothers & Sisters all I could think of was Tom shooting the birds, going to the bathroom and leaving his gun out, and other crazy hijinx. I'm not happy that someone died, but I am glad that the show didn't perpetuate the relationship between Tom and Sally's characters so that I didn't have to boycott the show. Don't get me wrong, I love Steel Magnolias, but you don't just throw two actors together because they worked in a movie 18 years ago. Sacred. Leave it be.

And, on a totally local level: It took us twice our normal commute time to drive into the town where I work because of a quickly passing* snow storm that caused really poor visibility, really backed up traffic, people to go off roads, and roads to be closed until the storm passed* while the roads were cleared to make them passable*. When we couldn't “get there from here” Hay turned around and brought me to his work until the storm passed* and the roads were cleared. We used to work together a very long time ago, so it was like old times. Ahh, memories...

Okay, seriously, why am I so hungry? I need to eat another burrito. I think 2007 is the year of the burrito for me.


*I like the word. What can I say...

What else does it kill?

I know, I keep stuffing news up here. It's what's on my mind, so here we go again:

How spicy foods can kill cancers

Scientists have discovered the key to the ability of spicy foods to kill cancer cells.

They found capsaicin, an ingredient of jalapeno peppers, triggers cancer cell death by attacking mitochondria - the cells' energy-generating boiler rooms.

[...]

The study showed that the family of molecules to which capsaicin belongs, the vanilloids, bind to proteins in the cancer cell mitochondria to trigger apoptosis, or cell death, without harming surrounding healthy cells.

Capsaicin was tested on cultures of human lung cancer cells and on pancreatic cancers.

Lead researcher Dr Timothy Bates said: "As these compounds attack the very heart of the tumour cells, we believe that we have in effect discovered a fundamental 'Achilles heel' for all cancers.

"The biochemistry of the mitochondria in cancer cells is very different from that in normal cells.

"This is an innate selective vulnerability of cancer cells."

He said a dose of capsaicin that could cause a cancer cell to enter apoptosis, would not have the same effect on a normal cell. (continued)

I like spicy food. I'm not awesome with hot, but mild and medium are all over the inside of my tummy. Num!!! Of course, the capsaicin is in the seeds that I remove to make the pepper less hot. Silly me. :)

La Belgique

If you want to see the progress of a guy who drinks a different beer every day for a year then go visit Dann, who has already critiqued my favorite of the non-flavored beers, Stella Artois. I don't really drink anymore, but back when I did I enjoyed her for one night of sinful delight. I still think of her fondly. My favorite flavored beer is a strawberry ale, also from Belgium. I have a thing about Belgium. It's my Eeyore. Eeyore is my favorite Pooh character. I enjoy a good melancholy session.


^{= =}

Thanks to Pat for the link to Dann.

Superseriously wrong

Hit man to Pittsburgh professionals: Pay up or die

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Dentists, doctors, lawyers and other professionals in the Pittsburgh area have been targeted by a "hit man" e-mail scheme, receiving messages that tell them to pay up to spare their lives, the FBI said.

The e-mail, which was sent to most recipients around Christmas, tells the reader that there is a contract out on his life, generally for $50,000.

It says that if the recipient sends the "hit man" more money than that -- generally ranging from $80,000 to $150,000 -- the hit man will leave him alone.

No one has reportedly lost money or been harmed in the scam, but some recipients were unnerved by the messages, said Special Agent Bill Shore, who supervises the computer crime squad in the Pittsburgh FBI office.

"You think, 'What did I get into? What do I gotta do to get out of this?' " Shore said.

The FBI became aware of the scam when people in Atlanta, Georgia, and New Orleans, Louisiana, received similar e-mails in early December, Shore said.

The scheme seems to have originated in Russia.

Dude, get a frickin' soul.

Ich bin mad mac

I'm hazarding a guess that the majority of Blogger/BlogSpot authors are from the United States of America. Why, then, do they schedule LONG PERIODS OF OUTAGE during our normal waking hours?! WHY?! I understand that if I had already upgraded to the beta version I would not have experienced a problem, but: BLOGGER, I CURSE THEE. It's free, so I should be grateful. But, Thanksgiving was last year. So, again I say: .... Oh, you know what I said.

Today was the MacWorld Keynote address. If you want to know what good stuff was announced then click here. If you want me to eat your brain then click here.

National Geographic informs me that my image may now identify me on the internets:

A new type of search engine using facial recognition technology could soon be able to pinpoint images of a person among the billions of photos posted online—even if their name does not appear.

A Swedish company named Polar Rose plans to launch its service for facial searches tied to the photo-sharing site Flickr within a couple weeks.

In the next few months the firm hopes to expand the service to search images across the entire Web.

The technology promises enhanced photo finding that would make it easier to find people on the Internet.

But privacy advocates are concerned that Polar Rose and similar facial-mapping search engines will violate people's rights and potentially aid criminals.

Lee Tien is an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet watchdog group that focuses on privacy and civil liberties.

"Photos [posted online] are effectively anonymous now," Tien said, unless they are labeled with some sort if identifying text. "But if Polar Rose works the way they say it will, that's all going to change."

Tien said that this kind of technology could aid stalkers in tracking down their victims, or it could allow employers, insurance companies, and the government to pry into people's lives more than some of us would like. (continued)

I'm so excited that there is yet another way to invade my privacy. I know some folks who read my blog (I'm thinking of you fondly) are going to challenge that everything about me is already known through other electronic means, and why am I being so private in the first place, blah blah blah. Too much is too much sometimes, though. This. This is too much.

Did you see up at the top, where I changed my tag line to π ρ? Do you get it? It's funny! It's a Campus Ladies joke. :)

Que la freakando smelly f?!

First it was Baltimore, and now New York has a sketchily foul odor. Are we being tested for our patriotic response to smell now?

I mention this story because it interrupted the morning training session, and I'd like to point out that you're supposed to be learning, not surfing the web. But, whatever. I get paid for showing up to work no matter.

Don't bother

I'm teaching all day tomorrow, so there won't be anything exciting published here until at least tomorrow evening. Have a great Monday!

This one time in 5th grade...

I got a 100 on a grammar test even though we hadn't learned what a conjunction was yet and five of the questions were about conjunctions. But, I'm smaht and can sound out words and know that conjunctions join things.

Your Language Arts Grade: 100%

 

Way to go! You know not to trust the MS Grammar Check and you know "no" from "know." Now, go forth and spread the good word (or at least, the proper use of apostrophes).

Are You Gooder at Grammar?
Make a Quiz

Thanks, LP!

´ Accent egu ´

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West   Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Cred to Avi, who found it completely accurate. I, on the other hand, found it completely not. Well, let me clarify. I don't have a typical accent, so this quiz was not able to pinpoint my place of heritage. I'm just an enigma.

Terrible twos

I know a lot of you don't read blogs over the weekend, so I'll pretend today (Friday) is tomorrow (Saturday) so you can join in the celebration.

(: (: (: (: (: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BLOG! :) :) :) :) :)

---

My blog is two today! It can speak and walk now, it's almost fully potty-trained, but it throws trantrums in public and bites its blogmates. I thought I was a great parent, but I guess all blogs go through this stage...

Thanks to all of you for contributing to my blog's delinquency. It takes a village. :)

Ugly Betty

The gorgeous America Ferrera graces the cover of the newest CosmoGIRL!

“Hot mami!”

A little Betty trivia from IMDb:

Based on the popular Colombian telenovela "Yo soy Betty, la fea" (1999) (I'm Betty, the Ugly), which has been dubbed and broad casted in countries such as Brasil, China or the Philippines and has been adapted in some other countries. Local versions like "Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin" (2003) (There's No One Like Jassi) in India or "Verliebt in Berlin" (2005) (Smitten in Berlin) also have been immensely successful.

How did they know I love cows?

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Baroness Poppy the Bovine of Similar Ealand Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Merci, Maman!

“Please pack your knives and GO.”

Did anyone watch the supersized Top Chef this week?

I can't say Marcel is my favorite person in the world, but Betty, Sam, and Ilan were being so mean to him that I yelled at the screen that I hoped they all went home before him! And, if you haven't seen the episode I won't ruin it by telling you how judges' table played out. I think the judges chose the right reasons to send this week's person packing.

Nice job, Michael! Vicodin inspires you to cook great food! Perhaps you need to be medicated to be a great chef. Not good... The look on Debi Mazar's face when she saw Michael's effed up mouth was priceless. :) She asked for him to come out! Her own fault!

If wishes were fishes...

I wish that flickr allowed me to favorite entire sets, as in "I favorite this dog set" rather than clicking "add to faves" on the 30 photos included in the dog set. Example? Heather's set of Darren. Yes, that's Darren of Darren McLikes Himself / Look at Me. I'm So Important That I Have a Blog. Heather and Darren are dating. Isn't that fantastic?! Anyway, he's such an interesting looking guy. A super-cute version of Richard Dreyfuss mashed with Robin-Williams-Popeye, particularly in this photo.

^{+ + cute = Darren.}


All rights are reserved on images of Darren, so you hafta visit flickr to see him. :)