Just in Time for the New Ikea Catalog

Swedish-ify your name at Blogdilla.com.

Thanks, Babe.

Don’t ___ Where You Eat

I was talking with a co-worker today who missed a day of work due to “severe intestinal distress.” (That’s MY quote; he put it much more bluntly.) As he described his symptoms in detail, its sounded as if he might have had a case of food poisoning.

Me: Did you have anything bad for dinner last night?
Co: I don’t think so. I ate at [very toney downtown steakhouse] with a group of people and nobody else got sick.
Me: Huh. Did you eat anything than no one else had?
Co: Well, I did have the lobster macaroni and cheese. Maybe the lobster was bad.

Maybe, but it seemed unlikely that he’d get a hold of a bad crustacean at a restaurant with average entrée prices of—well, so expensive that they don’t list them on their website.

Unlikely, until I read this article in WebMD titled “Cities Ranked by Dirtiest Restaurants.” Check out this ranking from worst to best from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI):

* Austin, Texas: 58 violations in 30 restaurants
* Boston: 63 violations in 30 restaurants
* Milwaukee, 27 violations in 20 restaurants
* Colorado Springs, Colo.: 46 violations in 30 restaurants
* Kansas City, Mo.: 41 violations in 30 restaurants
* Pittsburgh: 40 violations in 30 restaurants
* Denver: 35 violations in 30 restaurants
* Las Vegas: 30 violations in 25 restaurants
* Washington, D.C.: 27 violations in 25 restaurants
* New York: 32 violations in 30 restaurants
* Atlanta: 19 violations in 20 restaurants
* Portland: 25 violations in 27 restaurants
* Baltimore: 14 violations in 14 restaurants
* Minneapolis, Minn.: 31 violations in 29 restaurants
* Chicago: 22 violations in 30 restaurants
* St. Louis: 17 violations in 27 restaurants
* Seattle: 16 violations in 30 restaurants
* Philadelphia: 16 violations in 23 restaurants
* San Francisco: 15 violations in 30 restaurants
* Tucson, Ariz.: 14 violations in 29 restaurants

Pittsburgh: Most Livable City, As Long As You Don’t Eat Here.

OK, that’s probably not fair or accurate, as the article does state, “Some cities were more reluctant to report than others[….] The ‘best’ cities may, in reality, simply have the most lenient inspectors; the ‘worst’ cities may have the strictest inspectors.”

Pittsburgh: Most Livable City And Home To Some Of The Strictest Health Inspectors Around.

It has a nice ring to it, eh?

Web 2.0

I’m sitting in the office with my husband who is busy constructing his latest masterpiece with Reason (”I tried Logic, but it didn’t seem very logical”) and this conversation occurs:

Rick (who is a very good drummer a decent guitar player and can fake his way around keyboards): Sometimes I think it would be easier just to play and record all these instruments myself, but I guess that isn’t very Web 2.0.

Me (who played the oboe for seven years in grade school and the mellophone for a year so I could go to Florida with my cool marching band friends): How is that Web 2.0?

Rick: Yeah, I guess that doesn’t have anything to do with Web 2.0. But everything’s Web 2.0 nowadays.

Me: That’s like saying “I really wanted to fry this chicken instead of microwaving it, but I guess that isn’t very Web 2.0.”

Rick: Exaaaactly.

So, if he posts it to the Pinkeye music site, that means it’s Web 1.0, but if you subscribe to the RSS feed or the (not so) weekly songcast , that makes it 2.0, right?

Bless Me, Bloggers, For I Have Sinned

It’s been eight days since my last post. My son’s asleep and I’m semi-conscious, so let’s give it a whirl, shall we?

I regularly email myself ideas for posting when I’m too busy to write. Here’s the running list right now:

1. Write about the“Unboxed - If You’re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow” article in today’s NYT. You’ll notice that this article ran about a month ago. (I am right on top of things.) The gist is people who believe that talent can be developed rather than doled out in one giant dollop at birth are more likely to “push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them.” I drew a few parallels to my life after reading this article. I was always a smart kid: spoke well, wrote well, had a sophisticated sense of humor. (My parents steeped me in the classics of Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker and Mel Brooks.) My third grade class though I liked a boy who poked me in the leg repeatedly with a sharp pencil when I said, eyes narrowed, “You are SUCH a sweetheart.” The sarcasm was lost on the rest of the eight year olds.

The problem was I did not test well. I tended to flop when it came to tests of the standardized variety. I tested myself right out my school district’s accelerated program, although I had been nominated twice by teachers for exemplary work. I didn’t bother applying for the Scholars Program at Penn State, since they at the time recommended a median score of around 1400, and mine was a piddly hrmmmph hrmm-ty. And while it’s a blow for someone to tell you you’re not smart enough to participate according to the numbers, I’ve always had that “Oh really?” attitude and figured out a way around the obstacle to learn what I wanted to learn. I probably wouldn’t have this blog if it wasn’t for that attitude. Compared to my programming friends in the labs, I knew next to nothing about computers. But then I found a tool I could work with - Blogger at the time - and just started publishing. It is liberating to me to work around a problem and prove to myself that I do have skills, even if I wasn’t born with them. (Plus it’s cool when your hard work gets you a kick ass medal.)

2. Write about web headshots article in Slate. Originally the image at the start of this article was the avatar the writer created for himself at the St. Andrews Face Transformer. I wonder why he took it down? It’s a pretty awesome tool.

This is my Manga Me:


My Modigliani Me:

And my Mucha Me:


And here’s the reason why I stopped playing with the Face Transformer:

That’s my son. At 80. *shiver* This photo was actually taken when he was not quite one.

If you’re not into the Face Transformer, St. Andrews also has a pretty cool library of photo archives. Although it is also pretty creepy looking at pictures of a bunch of dead people.

3. Write about The Pineapple Ad. Speaking of transforming faces, UPMC is now promoting plastic surgery. The below add ran in last month’s Pittsburgh Magazine. If their giant triple logo on the top of the U.S. Steel building wasn’t a conspicuous enough display of profit seeking, then how about touting unnecessary cosmetic procedures? This ad effectively says: we know where the money is and we’re not going to be shy about collecting it.

Click for a larger image.

4. Write about Cleveland. I lived there for three years, you know. Came back home because we wanted to start a family, but there a few things I miss about Cleveland.

• Cleveland has infinitely better concert venues than Pittsburgh. I will never forget the GBV show at the Grog Shop. Similar to this atmosphere.
• Food scene. This warrants it’s own post. I will work on that.
• GLBC. I miss it. I am visiting next Sunday as part of an all-staff 20 year reunion. I will write more about that too.

5. Write about today’s mail. For the love of god, Mike Doyle, do not send me any more of your crappy “Reports from Washington” mailers, especially when they say, plain as day, “This mailing was prepared, published, and mailed at taxpayer expense.” Got an RSS feed? I will gladly sign up for it.

6. Write about my birthday. What can I say? It was awesome. I had a fantastic party with a great mix of friends and family. I drank too much punch known as Lady D. My son picked out my birthday cake. The conversation went like this:

Tommy: Mommy, what kind of picture are you getting on your birthday cake?
Me: I don’t think I’m getting a picture. Maybe just some flowers.
Tommy: No, Mommy, you need to get a Dora cake.
Me: A Dora cake? Why?
Tommy: Because you are a girl and girls have Dora cakes. Daddy is a boy and he gets a Diego cake.
Me: OK. Dora cake it is.

And it was.

(That’s a “3″ plus four and one to grow on, in case you couldn’t figure out the candle math.)

Harrisburg Chicken License!

Pretty cool, PittGirl. I had to try it for myself. The tags don’t seem indicative of what I normally write about (I’ve written one post about the whole Barden debacle and his name is all huge in the cloud), but I still like the way it looks. (It makes me look like I write about smarter stuff than I actually do.)

Multitasking Gone Wild

I think I may be slightly over stressed by the current lightening-speed pace of my life.

I woke up sort of panic stricken at 1 AM (after passing out around 9 PM with my son), thinking:

1. I should go in early today and finish up the .ppt due tomorrow PM and
2. I didn’t order enough chicken for Saturday’s work outing

My brain is apparently outsourcing for help these days because it came up with this solution for the chicken: Just increase the font size.

There are many things I’d like to be blogging about now, in particular my Birthday Week Extravaganza!^(TM), but too many things (including my new Wii Fit) have been keeping me away from the task.

Perhaps I’ll make up for my lack of postings by just increasing the font size.

That and linking to movie trailers. My husband forwarded this one along with the note: “A movie we can both enjoy… Cars and the mom from gilmour girls.” Enjoy:

Flash of Genius, based on a true story, in theaters October 17.

(Seriously, is Greg Kinnear in every movie now?)

Good Night!

Lullaby

I love this video because this is the song I used to sing to Tommy when he was a baby. Got him to sleep every time, too. Good night, Sweethearts.

Bait and Switch

Finally, some public outcry from Harrisburg on this whole Don Barden debacle:

Sens. Jane Orie, R-McCandless, and Jim Ferlo, D-Highland Park, sent a letter today to board Chairwoman Mary D. Colins urging the board not to hastily approve a refinancing plan being sought by casino license holder Don Barden, who is ceding control of his Majestic Star casino project to an investors’ group from Chicago.

Ms. Orie and Mr. Ferlo called the potential transfer of the slots license to the new group a “last-minute bait and switch,” and “unacceptable.”

They called the Barden refinancing request “a blatant attempt to force this board into hastily approving a financial bailout without any public scrutiny or input.”

Say you owned a business and you put out a bid for office products. After reviewing the proposals from three competing vendors you award the bid to the vendor that promises the best solution for your company, and as a added benefit, is minority owned. Eighteen months into their contract, the vendor realizes it is not financially sound enough to deliver on its promises to your company, so they decide that it is in everyone’s best interest to release the contract to a fourth, previously unmentioned, office products vendor of their choice, which happens to be owned by a billionaire white guy from Chicago.

What business–particularly a publicly traded one, open to the scrutiny of shareholders–would accept this decision? Where is the guarantee that this fourth vendor is obligated to offer the same solutions as the bid winner, and, hey - what happened to that added benefit of minority ownership?

The State of Pennsylvania must revoke Barden’s license and rebid this project. As Ruth Ann Daily says, if one investor was eager to rush in after Barden’s failure, there have to be a few more out there. Take the time sort out the needs for the state and the city and award the bid to the investor who can deliver on those needs.

Measuring Worth

Found this neat tool that calculates the relative value of the US dollar (or the currency of your choice) from one year to another. I was interested in this because I saw these ads from Found in Mom’s Basement and thought to myself, “Man! $8400 seems like a lot of money for 1946. I wonder how much that would be worth today?”

Well, wonder no more:

$89,133.72, using the Consumer Price Index
$71,870.57, using the GDP deflator
$138,761.06, using the value of consumer bundle
$152,600.00, using the unskilled wage
$244,877.10, using the nominal GDP per capita
$523,018.08, using the relative share of GDP

Don’t know what any of those measurements mean? Check out the glossary. But any way you measure it, it $8400 was definitely a boatload of money in 1946.

Picasa Test

This is Tommy at about four months.

I played around with Flickr last night. I like the service, but Flickr photos regularly get filtered out. Let’s see if Picasa has the stuff.