Two weeks ago, I was petting the neck of Sadie, my dog of the past 7 years. I was scratching her chin when I felt something that was out of place. There was a lump on the left side of her throat. My heart skipped a beat and I inspected her further. There was also a lump on the other side as well. It felt like two golf balls in her throat.
My wife was away, for a job interview and I did not want to burden her with this discovery. So I did a bunch of internet research and came to the conclusion that this was her thyroid. I agonized over how to break the news to my wife. Sadie has been with us a long time and she was really the first dog we picked out together, from the humane society in our new house. Sadie had some fatty lumps show up a year or so ago and they never became much of anything so this came as quite a shock.
Look tasty don’t they? I actually prefer the plain mint and chocolate ones however these came as an unexpected gift in the mail. Along with a hilarious pint glass and a book on Physics called “The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality” I will probably write a post about the book when I finish it. Back to the mints. Judging from the packaging this appears to be a package full of mints from top to bottom, full of minty deliciousness.
See the truth about marketing, packaging and deception after the jump.
I have had my eyes on a getting a fountain pen for quite a while. I have been more interested in writing lately and I seem to have a fascination with doing that writing with both a computer and handwritten. I was bored one night and decided to do some research on fountain pens, how to use them and which models are affordable. Then I was sucked into the internet vortex and spent a few hours wandering around looking at amazingly written paragraphs of script, YouTube Videos on different pens, and countless reviews of pens.
A nice site I found is titled Beginner’s Guide to Fountain Pens, the pen that jumped out at me from these reviews was the Lamy Safari. This pen seemed like a great starter pen because it is a utility pen, all function with a simple and reserved design. It comes in many colors, takes cartridges or a converter to used bottled ink. Retailing for about $30 this pen is very affordable.
While my brother-in-law (BIL) was staying with us over the past two days, I got a crack at two new android devices I had not seen yet. Of course they did not leave the house without being rooted. I sort of talked BIL into it by tempting him with more free apps and divesting himself of all the carrier provided garbage. Not a hard sell.
We attacked the Kindle Fire first. Let me say, first off, that I was really impressed with the device. Having an iPad myself, I had the defacto tablet to compare the Fire to. The Fire came along with a lot of hype and it appears to live up to it, especially after being rooted. We did not put cyanogen on it but just rooted and got the android market on there. It is not an iPad by a long shot, however, it is a really nice tablet / ereader for the price.
We followed this guide and video to root it. The process was ultra smooth and took less than an hour to do. No hiccups at all except having to do it in bootcamp because of some windows only tools. Not a huge deal for me but it might suck for people without access to a Windows installation.
We also followed this guide to put the android market on it. We did not do the custom recovery or CM7 mod because I was not sure he wanted his Fire to look like a big phone from the CM7 mod.
This was even easier than the Kindle Fire, probably because I rooted my phone with Cyanogenmod in the past. When I did my HTC Hero about 2.5 years ago, the process was much less refined and took a lot longer to do. It is quite amazing how far the process has come in that time frame. I do wonder why we still have to do this to our phones, I would like to see them have the rooting option be a check box like running unauthorized apps. Simple and easy.
We followed this guide Cyanogenmod HTC Desire and everything went super smooth. Easy to follow guide and just about anyone should be able to follow it. The CM7 was a huge hit with the BIL. CM7 has such a clean and smooth interface it is hard not to like it after getting away from the default carrier interface. I really enjoyed being the one to root the phones and pull back the curtain a bit for the BIL. He has not really had much exposure to hacking and I am hoping this little taste of fully owning an electronic device sheds some light on the options that are available for those who choose to seek them.
