Welcome to tastypopsicle.com

I've decided to open up the weblog archive. At one point is was closed off except to registered members due to an incident, However, that company has since closed its doors so they can just eat it. Use the search to find something that youmight be looking for. Maybe you'll find it.

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It's just too much even for me to fathom anymore. I simply cannot imagine the HELL it must in New Orleans. Some people have been stuck in the Superdome for 4 days and they still do not know when they can leave. These people have nothing. And the Superdome has become a living hell for them. From the Washington Post:

Rochelle Montrel, dedicated middle school teacher, thought she should stay in town to prepare for the first day of classes. "We have all this testing now, earlier and earlier," she said Wednesday, "and I wanted to be ready." Instead, she spent Monday clinging to her roof, and that turned to Tuesday, and then "the wonderful man" in the helicopter finally swooped in, after 24 hours, and delivered Montrel, her mother, father, sister and the poodle onto the ramp outside the Superdome. They had lived. "We were so grateful," said Montrel, 35, "and now we are in hell."

The scene inside the Superdome is described as "Four levels of Hell" - each level corresponding to the various levels of seating found inside the stadium. The first two levels are where the families are set up. They use their cots to create personal space. The third and fouth levels...

Within the skyboxes, on the third level of hell, life was dark 24 hours a day, a place for abandonment and coupling. Also up there was "a sort of speakeasy," said Michael Childs, who had some beer in an empty Dannon water bottle. "You got to know where to go," he said, and grinned. "And you just put your bottle under the spigot. It is disgusting in here, and I lost everything I had, and I'm glad to have found a little beer." On the fourth level, the darkest and highest of all, the lurkers lived, scary in the shadows. The fourth level, people explained, was for the gangsters and the druggies. The rumors sprang from there: Two girls had been raped; one girl had been raped and one killed. Someone was abducting newborns. A man had jumped from there and died. A murder had occurred.

The authorities, for whatever reason, dismiss the claims of rape and murder as perhaps fanciful stories. Yet they have no control of the situation and many fear for their own lives. From the LA Times:

The soldiers — most are sleeping two or three hours a night, and many have lost houses — say they are doing the best they can with limited resources and no infrastructure. But they have become the target of many refugees' anger. "They've got the impression that we have everything and they have nothing," 1st Sgt. John Jewell said. "I tell them: 'We're all in the same boat. We're living like you're living.' Some of them understand. Some of them have lost their senses."

And more will lose their senses, especially once disease, dehydration, and hunger start to set in. Oh, and the Superdome isn't the only place where people are stranded. There are at least 9 other places like the Superdome where tens-of-thousands of more people are trapped and waiting. But waiting for what?

I just noticed this: http://www.apple.com has a Google PageRank of 10 (out of 10). Can you guess what http://www.microsoft.com has a PageRank of? Well, here's a hint: it's not 10. Yes, Microsoft's home page only has a PR of 9 while Apple's home page scores a 10. I can't understand why, though. I mean if you think about it it defys all logic: 1) Microsoft is a bigger company than Apple 2) Apple's home page is almost entirely images where Microsoft has more text on theirs Can anyone offer an explanation?

John Scalzi's post from September 3 entitled Being Poor has such an emotional ring to it. What's amazing is reading all of the comments (there are hundreds) from people sharing their own "Being poor is..." memories. Some are doing it anonymously, still feeling ashamed for what they have suffered through, while others list their names having gotten past the hurt but never forgetting. I'm not ashamed so I'll leave mine here: Being poor means chopping firewood with your brother in the summer heat with a sledgehammer and a wedge so your family can heat the house in the winter. Being poor means carrying that wood indoors through 2 feet of snow one milk crate at a time. Being poor is reduced lunch. Being poor is realizing that you got new clothes because you're the oldest and biggest but your younger, smaller brother gets your hand-me-downs. Being poor is sharing a bed with your brother. Being poor is hanging ALL of your clothes on the clothes line - matching up each of the pairs of socks so it's easier to fold them when you take them down. Being poor is washing your used tin foil and plastic sandwich bags so you can reuse them. Being poor is treating your eyeglasses like delicate china because you can't imagine telling your parents that they broke. Being poor is being treated to an ice cream cone on Report Card day and being very excited because you could also get sprinkles. Being poor is eating everything on your plate no matter what was served to you. Being poor is participating in afterschool activities every day of the week so you don't have to go home. Being is poor is watching your mom go to the church to ask for help and realizing it was probably one of the hardest things she ever had to do. Being poor is not wanting children. Being poor is doing everything you can as an adult so that if/when you have children you can give them everything. Being poor is not being able to leave (and I'm not talking about New Orleans)

After a seemingly uneventful week last week, the internets are abuzz this morning with some interesting news. I think the biggest, of course, is the word that eBay (of all companies) is getting set to seal a $2.6 BILLION deal with VOIP company, Skype. Holy. Mother. Of. God. But why is eBay, which has forged the ecommerce revolution out of gold that it mints across the world, interested in a company and technology that basically amounts to a free phone between users? The answer is simpler than you think. Skype has been register millions of downloads and can claim 50 million registered names and the 1.7 million paying customers. "Paying customers? I thought this was for FREE?!" It's free to make a Skype call from one Skype user to another using a PC. But the true power of Skype's VOIP technology is that you can make inexpensive phone calls from your PC to another person's phone (including their mobile phone). The rates are ridiculously low compared to what your local bodega is going to charge you for a calling card. Which is why a lot of international users have quickly signed on. So why eBay?

By integrating Skype with its own software to bring voice calls to its online market, Ebay would be able to ease communications and increase the level of trust between its buyers and sellers, according to the person close to the deal.

That's why eBay. To be able to make calls between buyers and sellers eBay would help the guy who's making a living selling products online behave like a true, live business with a real person that people can connect with if they have questions. Only time will tell if the dollars eBay is willing to spend will have a big return in the end. But before you write this deal off as a little wacky don't forget what eBay did with Paypal... Also, if you haven't heard already, Gap Inc. has relaunched it's websites Gap.com, BananaRepublic.com and OldNavy.com after being down for 2 weeks. This downtime allowed Gap Inc.'s web team to deploy some hott new shopping technology built in-house. The sites all use a custom made backend system developed by Gap Inc. Direct, the company's corporate catalog and online division, which means no other e-retailer is going to have the same infrastructure which could prove to be Gap's advantage.

There was an announcement today that spiked my interest. The web browser, Opera, was now being released for FREE. You're now thinking what I thought long ago - "Why would you pay for a web browser? Aren't there free ones already?" And indeed there are (my old favorite being Firefox for both the Mac and PC and of course Safari for the Mac ain't that bad). Before I jump ahead of myself let me state that Opera was free, but it had ads in the free version. If you paid for Opera then you didn't have to look at any ads in your browser. That's all good but I wasn't going to play that game. But the truth is that Firefox has been pissing me off - for awhile now. The program is soooooo slow at times. If you're working in another program and then you switch focus to Firefox it can take a painfully long time for the application to respond. It's infuriating at the office where my computer is already slow.In fact, there's been times when I'll pull up IE just so I didn't have to deal with how unresponsive Firefox had become. This has been a known issue and in their defense this is apparently fixed in version 1.5 which is now in beta. Opera has everything that I love about Firefox - tabbed browsing, spell check (people really should use the spell check when they post online), remembering username and passwords for web pages, and simple bookmark management. It's even got some things that are new to me: bookmark nicknames - give a bookmark a nickname and then you can just type the nickname into the address bar to get to the page; a download manager that opens in a new tab rather than a new window; it's got rewind and fast-forward next to back and forward to quickly jump back to start pages when you've clicked around a lot. Oh, and it's wicked fast. It's a godsend compared to IE and it already outshines Firefox in my book. All of the web pages I have tried (tastypopsicle, KennelSource, KeepingYouWell, etc etc) have all rendered without a single problem that I can so far see. So give Opera a chance if you're looking for some better browsing.

I've stopped reading books. I wasn't always an anti-book person. When I was much younger I used to read books a week. I was particularly fond of Stephen King and Dean Kuntz and I would read them in the dimly lit corner of our basement just to scare the bejeezus out of myself. But then I stopped reading some time in highschool. Well, not reading-reading. Just reading for pleasure. This was around the time when we had to read a lot of crap for school about topics for which I had no interest. So I began to suffer from book apathy and it was a struggle just to read the required books for school let alone muster enough desire to open a suspenseful and thoroughly engaging book. I also think this was around the time when I was really into girls so maybe my attention was elsewhere. Regardless of those years I still fondly remember reading some absolutely wonderful books - some were even required for school. What I have thus discovered is that quite a few of those books are banned books on many lists. MetaFilter (MeFi) has a Front Page Post (FPP) about this week being Banned Books Week. Out of the post comes the The American Library Association (ALA) list of 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 for which I found old memories:

4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier 5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 8. Forever by Judy Blume 13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger 22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle 27. The Witches by Roald Dahl 32. Blubber by Judy Blume 40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras (my sister got this book. My brother and I shared the What's Happening to my Body? Book for Boys. We did look through the one for girls, though. It had drawings of boobies and other naughty bits.) 41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein 52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 55. Cujo by Stephen King 56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl 61. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras (there it is! Apparently, it's not as controversial as the one for girls. What a shame.) 62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume 65. Fade by Robert Cormier 70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding 77. Carrie by Stephen King 83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King 88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford 96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell

I've read all of those books. In fact, I'm THRILLED to see my all time favorite, The Chocolate War, is number 4 on the list. The ALA later listed it as the Top Most Challenged Book of 2004. But just look at that list. That's just the books I've read and I don't like to read. I imagine some people have read all 100. I'm sure kids actively seek out what is considered banned or challenged and try to read those books. I found it interesting that the Harry Poter series is listed as number 7 yet parents wait with their kids outside of the bookstores at midnight to get the book. Seeing all of this makes me want to think I want to read a good, challenged book again. But I'll give my brain a little drinky-drink and it'll forget all about this silly talk of reading for pleasure. Further reading from the Forbidden Library