Digital Lifesavers

Stanford’s health site for its staff is full of random tidbits: For example, a cup of what is called 2% milk on the package may contain 5 grams of fat and 120 calories. In other words, 38% of its calories come from fat. It is a peculiarity of the labeling regulations that milk has been allowed to be called 2% fat because it’s 2% fat by weight (milk being mostly water), but 38% fat by calories, the more significant way of determining percent fat. Do you think milk would sell as well if it were called 38% fat milk?

I also never really thought about how peanuts (and consequently peanut butter) contain a lot of fiber.  In fact, I think I’ve just been confused about what constitutes fiber in the first place.  I’m about to turn a quarter of a century old and I haven’t even figured that out.  Imagine that.  Sure, I know that fruits and vegetables are generally high in fiber, but for some reason,  I was also under the impression that meat, which can be stringy and sinewy in nature, also contains “fiber”.  Thanks to 10 minutes spend in online health education, I have eradicated this ridiculous misconception.  No more chicken-spinach-tomato-soup smoothies for me!  Thanks, Stanford!

Brilliant idea of the day (not approved by Martha Stewart): Instead of dousing baby carrots in a bowl with Marie’s Poppy Seed dressing and letting precious and tasty dressing go to waste (unless you’re going to lick the bowl afterward), just dump all the carrots into the dressing bottle, close the cap, and shake shake shake! Perfectly drenched carrots, every time!

Got a demo unit of Motion Computing’s M1400 tablet PC last week.  It got hacked over the network on the first day, so I’ve spent more time reloading the OS on it than actually using it for anything interesting.  Ironically, this meant that I had an external mouse and keyboard plugged into unit for the first two days of “testing,” which pretty much defeats the point of having a tablet.  And for something that you’re supposed to cradle in your arms, it sure runs hot!  Not so sure it’s supposed to be like that…

Have you ever worked in a restaurant before?  How much of the tip ends up in the waiter’s pocket, and how does he even get any of it when you include it on the credit card payment anyway?  Had an *excellent* pork shank dinner (for lunch) at Mimi’s Cafe with Steph and friends last Saturday.  It was way more excellent after the waiter said it was on the house because I actually had ordered the pork chops and they made me the wrong thing.  In gratefulness, I wanted to leave the waiter (who for all I know had to pay for the mistake out of his own pocket) a larger tip.  But then we decided not to add it to the credit card payment in case it didn’t go directly to him.  But then we stayed at the restaurant to chat with our friends for such a long time that the waiter eventually told us his shift was over and that he was going to have to leave us.  And then he didn’t take the cash tip that we had placed on the table specifically for him!  So who exactly ended up with the tip anyway?

Trying out Blockbuster.com, which offers 3 DVDs at a time, plus 2 in-store rentals a month, plus random free popcorn and soda, for less than the cost of Netflix. Is Blockbuster really that much slower a service, or else why aren’t more people biting? I don’t know a single Blockbuster.com user, except… me.  And the first month is free!  What’s the catch?

Had $0.99 Chicken McNuggets with Steph last Sunday.  They were so-so when lukewarm.  I remember the days of 20-piece boxes of McNuggets for $5.00, which I often consumed all by myself.  Guess I’m a tad less inclined after reading “What’s in the Meat” in Fast Food Nation and watching Morgan Spurlock super-size himself (though Brian and I did order an extra helping of Micky D’s to liven up the viewing).  But I’m still pretty curious about Chick-fil-A, if only I could find one.

Finally added RSS feeds for my phpbb forum at work, and then decided to enable it in my photo gallery too at http://niftyken.stanford.edu/gallery/rss.php (uh, which won’t look like anything if you don’t have an RSS news aggregator like Firefox’s Live Bookmarks).  Hey, I think the Jack Checker should bookmark my photo site instead of this sad little blog that I “nearly never update.”  Cute baby ducks, Cute babies, cute… pore strips!  All this and more at http://niftyken.stanford.edu (updated way more often, and much more visually stimulating).

Speaking of photos, I think my Canon Powershot G2 is dying.  The LCD screen doesn’t light up most of the time unless I position it just the right way.  What will I do without a camera with a swiveling LCD screen?

Since I haven’t blogged in nearly a quarter of a year, I was tempted to just up and systematically delete all of these entries today.  But instead here I am adding another one.  *Shrug*

Life at Meyer:
— My cube got flooded when a silly consultant put a message to me in my serenity rock fountain instead of my paper inbox.  And this is already *after* I dubbed one of the consultants the official Fountain Monitor.  Just how *is* one supposed to explain the presence of a giant puddle in his cube?
— Wide-format printing is alive and kicking! Now that we offer 44″-wide prints for $45 (up to six feet long), users are finding all sorts of creative things to print in poster format: huge advertising banners, a big… uh… leaf?…, a giant pink rubber ducky… Should I be surprised we haven’t gotten any Britney Spears posters reproduced here yet? 
— The consultant who now looks like Jesus / Dartanian with his shoulder-length hair and goatee has come back after a year from backpacking in Chile, ready to make all the ladies swoon again over his dashing good looks and irresistable charm.  I’ve already gotten one personal “thank you” for rehiring him.  Wow.  I’m tempted to include a photo of my very capable consultant, but I don’t want to bring the Xanga servers down.

Random:
I never knew what the song “Mack the Knife” was about until today.  I always thought it had to do with that Moon Man in the McDonald’s commercial in the 80s.  It doesn’t.  It’s actually kind of weird how they changed an upbeat song about a murderous gangster into a subliminal suggestion to eat a Big Mac for dinner.  Speaking of commercials from the 80’s, I came across this random site in my research.  McDonald’s sure has a lot of commercials.  Strangely, I don’t remember most of these.  Maybe I was deprived of television.  All I seem to remember is MacGyver, Captain Planet, and Thunderhawks, which I’ve been frustrated about since probably 6th grade since nobody ever remembers them.  But then I just googled it right now and realized that it’s because it was ThunderCats and SilverHawks that I had blended together.  Silly Kenneth, Trix are for kids! And holy cow, I just realized “MacGyver: Season One” is on DVD and that Green Library is going to have it for checkout!

Um, more later about Steph, my studies, church, Xbox, and the Prius.  Yeah, “later.”  Alternatively, you can make suggestions about what I should post about, since you’re gonna be the one reading it.

Wow, shameless plug:  My photo site broke through the 10,000 photo threshhold!  Chieze’s album has 10 hits, and it doesn’t even have any photos in it yet!!  I think I’ve spent the past three hours trying to sort the endless Stanford pics.  Google AdSense still hasn’t figured out that there isn’t a single ghost-related photo on my entire site, and it keeps serving up outdated Halloween ads.  However, this is a pretty funny targetted ad if I do say so myself.  And somehow the Project Compassion Kenya 2004 folder continues to lead in hits, to my jealous bewilderment.  (There’s no need to further inflate the figures by visiting it just to confirm this claim.  Go look at some of the other albums instead, like this, this, and this.)  How is this possible?  All these interesting stats and more are available at http://niftyken.stanford.edu

It just occurred to me that people in England probably don’t celebrate (American) Thanksgiving.  I mean, part of it is about *fleeing* from England, after all.  I bet Google has to make sure their turkey and pilgrim graphics and whatnot for the Google home page are absent from people searching the Web in England.  I wonder what other holidays we take for granted are celebrated at somebody else’s expense!