# Friday, July 08, 2005

New Phrase

Look for it in future conversations.

In 1995, McArthur Wheeler walked into two Pittsburgh banks and robbed them in broad daylight, with no visible attempt at disguise. He was arrested later that night, less than an hour after videotapes of him taken from surveillance cameras were broadcast on the 11 o'clock news. When police later showed him the surveillance tapes, Mr. Wheeler stared in incredulity. "But I wore the juice," he mumbled. Apparently, Mr. Wheeler was under the impression that rubbing one's face with lemon juice rendered it invisible to videotape cameras ( Fuocco, 1996 ).

[ Unskilled and Unaware of It ]

Props: Gibson.

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# Thursday, July 07, 2005

I Love the Smithsonian

One of DC's true gems.

The Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C. are open every day of the year except December 25. Unless noted otherwise, museums are open from 10am-5:30pm; the Anacostia Museum is open 10am-5pm, except during exhibition installation. The Smithsonian Information Center, located in the Castle, is open 8:30am-5:30pm.

[ Smithsonian: Hours ]

In fact I was at least 18 years old before I "discovered" that museums aren't usually free...

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# Saturday, July 02, 2005

Where should I live

On Netflix's recommendation page, they tell me what is popular in my city. Since they know how I've rated over 1000 movies, do you think they can tell where I should live based on the movies I like?
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# Tuesday, June 28, 2005

You're a black knight

Arial Unicode MS is one fat font. I'm not sure what program installed it on my XP Box, I assume Office 2003, but it's just stuffed with goodness. Looking through for an empty checkbox I happened across this: BlackKnight.gif. Which reminds me that I'm a black knight.

What are you?

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# Friday, June 24, 2005

What is Seafood Watch?

Yaty and I went to the Aquarium on our last trip to California, and I picked up a few Seafood Watch wallet cards:

A program of Monterey Bay Aquarium designed to raise consumer awareness about the importance of buying seafood from sustainable sources. We recommend which seafood to buy or avoid, helping consumers to become advocates for environmentally friendly seafood. We're also partners of the Seafood Choices Alliance where, along with other seafood awareness campaigns, we provide seafood purveyors with recommendations on seafood choices.

[ Monterey Bay Aquarium: About the Seafood Watch Program ]

The display they made in conjunction with this was quite informative. For example I figured the best salmon was farm-raised because it wouldn't impact the wild salmon. In fact it's quite the opposite. Farm-raised salmon actually damages the wild populations.

The more you know... and of course, Knowing is half the battle...

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# Tuesday, June 21, 2005

RAM suckage

My PC seemed always have issues when I was away for a time being. It would be slow to "revive". Granted, I am a bit of a "power user". I have my wallpaper cycling every 15 minutes, which I suspect is a large part of the problem. It likely forces much of my system onto the scratch disc, which then requires a bit of work to pull back. Recently, Rhapsody has made it worse. It seems to like sucking quite a bit of RAM too. I had tried out some RAM freeing up program with mixed success before, but thought I'd try one again. This is what I found:

Our first and very popular product, FreeRAM XP Pro, optimizes computer RAM (Random Access Memory). Our software is available for download from CNET and Simtel, among many other sources.

[ YourWare Solutions: Quality freeware and home of FreeRAM XP Pro ]

After one day, I am still pleased. Sure that's not much time, but this morning it was much easier to log into my machine and get to work.

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# Saturday, June 18, 2005

One for Tom

Visited the US Botanical Gardens today, Yaty read this and thought of Tom:

Join us for an exploration of tropical fruit botany. We will get to taste and experience some of the more unusual fruits of the world. Would you like to try a lychee? Will you be brave enough to sample the durian? A short tour of the USBG’s tropical fruit plants will be included in the workshop.

[ Longing for Longans and Loquats ]

Sounds yummy to me, and only $5!

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# Wednesday, June 15, 2005

2005 Smithsonian Folklife Festival

Featuring:

    • Oman: Desert, Oasis, and Sea
    • Forest Service, Culture, and Community
    • Nuestra Música: Music in Latino Culture
    • Food Culture USA

[ 2005 Smithsonian Folklife Festival ]

As I've said before, if you are new to DC and don't know about the Folklife Festival, make sure you don't miss it. This year it runs June 23-27 and June 30-July 4, 2005 and is open daily 11 am-5:30 pm.

I have many great memories from Festivals past, and never been disappointed except when I messed up the dates and missed the whole thing.

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Netflix is back!

In my life that is.

Netflix Delivers DVD Rentals To You With Netflix you can rent as many DVDs from the comfort of your home and have them delivered to your door in about 1 business day! There are no late fees and no due dates, and shipping is free both ways. Plans start at $9.99 plus any applicable tax. With our most popular plan, 3-at-a-time, you can rent as many DVDs as you want for just $17.99 a month plus any applicable tax. You keep a revolving library of up to 3 DVDs at a time and can exchange them for new available DVDs as often as you like. There are no additional charges.

[ Netflix - Rent DVDs Online - Try Free ]

After I found a queue filled with nothing I was looking forward to, I decided to go on a movie moratorium. I should now have a sufficient amount of back log to fill a queue with movies. And now that Yaty's here, and Netflix supports more than one queue per account, we should have a steady supply of movies for quite a while.

How can you help? Have you seen a good movie in the last year and a half that I haven't? You could suggest a few of the gems I've missed...

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#1 in phone straps, because they tried harder

Call them straps, charms, fobs, or thing that helps you fish your phone out of your pocket or purse; they are very popular with me and other 14 year old Asian Girls:

We work hard for you keeping in mind this words. This does not mean just to sell well phone straps all over the world. We think that one Phone Strap is a tiny toy or pettit [sic] accessory for a person but it has an infinite loveliness maybe he longs for. This is What we are all about. "From Japan to you, we bring Straps to you with Love"

[ Phone Strap & Accessory, StrapYa! Stuff Introduction ]

They have everything from Zippo lighters, to Hello Kitty, to food items, and even miniature cell phones to hang off your your cell phone. I've been surfing for hours in amazement, and looking for a replacement for the "Hula Girl" that Yaty isn't so keen on. I found another site that has some coffee related charms, but alas I don't speak Japanese, nor live in Japan.

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# Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Word to work into more conversations

fratmosphere n. an environment resembling or affiliated with a college fraternity.

[ Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary: fratmosphere ]

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