August 29, 2009 at 8:25 AM · Filed under Misc
If you care even a little about your health, the quality of your food, the environment and even animal rights, then you owe it yourself to read these 2 fantastic books: Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I just read these and was floored. There’s no question they’ve changed how I look at food and how I eat.
FFN focuses on the fast food industry, while IDoF takes an in-depth look at how the food industry, particularly in the Western world, has completely changed how we humans eat in less than 100 years.
While these are just 2 books among many, they’ve lead the vanguard in what is hopefully a revolution. What’s ironic is that it’ll be a ‘revolution’ to get us back to how we used to eat, a practically pre-science status.
Next up on my reading list is Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. If you’d like to read even more, you can check out these refs:
July 23, 2009 at 2:53 PM · Filed under Internet, Misc
I don’t know how I never discovered this service before now, but better late than never. Booksfree is a Netflix-like service for paperback books and audiobooks. For a flat monthly fee, you can get any of their titles shipped to you (free shipping). Whenever you’re done, ship it back.
At $11/mo for the paperback book plan, I think you would need to read 2-3 books per month for it to pay off. The audiobook plans are more pricey and the any format you want plan tops out at $30.49/mo.
As my reading sources have shifted to the Net, I probably wouldn’t break even – I think I’ll stick to the local library for now.
June 10, 2009 at 2:53 PM · Filed under Misc
If you’re looking for a new dentist in the Camarillo, CA area, the consider giving my dentist, Dr. Page Mansourian, a shot. Great doctor, friendly staff, modern office. One of my favorite things – my appointments are always on time, no hanging out in a crowded waiting room.
More info at Best Camarillo Dentists site. They’re also running a free teeth whitening offer.
May 29, 2009 at 2:27 PM · Filed under Internet, Software, Tech
If you use Skype, then you should do yourself a huge favor and lock down your privacy settings asap. This will prevent you from receiving calls and notes/messages from spammers, phishers and malware vendors.
Just today I received a rather legitimate looking e-mail that could easily be misunderstood to be from Skype. If I had clicked on the embedded link, and installed any of the software I would have been in for a world of hurt. It was one of those malware writers that makes you believe you have a virus/malware and says you need their software to clean your computer. Their ‘software’ in turn ends up being garbage that costs lots of money.
Here’s how to lock down your Skype settings:
- Go to the menu Skype-> Privacy
- Ensure that all of the “from” settings are from “people in my Contact List only“
Here’s a screenshot of what that dialog box looks like. Click for a larger version.
There is just one minor drawback. You will need to manually add new contacts before they are allowed to call/message you. A small price to pay for a lot more security.
May 18, 2009 at 1:50 AM · Filed under Misc
For the past few months, I’ve been using one of those recipe planning sites (MealMixer.com) to help me plan out a week of meals and then the shopping list. The latter is really the best part of the service – saves me a lot of time in trying to figure out it.
However, I’ve found that sometimes I don’t have time to either cook an extensive meal, go shopping and/or plan the week’s meals, or just want something different and/or simpler. So I went searching for some alternative recipe sources and found these. I was also specifically looking for ‘healthy’ dishes as it’s totally easy to get fast food or nuke a frozen dinner. I’ll bet that there are lot of these recipes that don’t qualify as ‘healthy’, but there are lots to choose from so you don’t need to depend on all of them.
- Lifehack
- WebMD
- The Food Network (also has useful search tool for finding recipes with specific ingredients in under x # of minutes)
- WHFoods
I’m yet to try any of the recipes here, but my goal wasn’t to necessarily find the best recipes, but more to find ideas. And after all, I’m yet to find a recipe that I ever followed to a ‘T’!
May 1, 2009 at 10:10 PM · Filed under Misc
So I was just talking to one of my friends who was excited, gleeful even, that they were able to screw over some of their colleagues to get their way at the same company.
Any company that gets big enough where they have so many products/projects and/or groups and/or diversity such that infighting starts needs to split up and/or downsize. Pronto.
When a company starts reflecting the human race in the clannish aspect, the one group vs another, the zero-sum game that everyone thinks it is, they need to step back and take a good look at themselves, because this is not a way for any company to succeed.
Ironically, there was a great deal of pride taken in the action. This is not something to be proud of. This is symbolic of a dysfunctional company.
January 30, 2009 at 10:42 PM · Filed under Internet, Misc, Uncategorized
So you’ve decided to buy a house, eh? Good for you! But now, the hard question is who to borrow that money from, which lender? Well not all lenders are created equally; they charge different amounts. Don’t pay attention only to the interest rate, otherwise you can miss out on $1000s in savings.
I’ve attached an Excel spreadsheet w/ formulae that I used to compare
mortgages. Just punch in the value of the house you want to buy, the downpayment you plan to make, and the various fees that your potential lender is going to charge you. You can adjust this to suit
you.
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