Cuppacafe

Three or so days ago I lost my bluetooth earpiece to my cell phone.

I wasn't too, terribly worried about having lost it, because I knew that it was inside my house (someplace). I was sure of this because, whenever my cell was close to it, the two devices would link-up electronically, and "talk" to each other.
of course this also meant that while the two devices were linked, my phone wouldn't ring at the handset, because the ringing was "forwarded" to the hands-free device, thus rendering the phone essentially mute.

Well, today I located the Bluetooth (it was under the couch in my office), and plugged it into the charger. Soon I'll be able to drive and talk at the same time.

Today is definitely looking up.

The Perfessor

I don't know if this story made the news where you folk are (Walt not withstanding), but it was certainly a big deal here in CT.

MIDDLETOWN, Conn.—An explosion rocked a natural-gas power plant Sunday in Middletown, Conn., sending earthquake-like shock waves miles away. At least five people were killed, 12 were injured and an undetermined number of people were missing, authorities said.

A state official who said he was briefed by emergency personnel said the toll was unlikely to rise significantly. The official said the gas explosion was caused by a "flame device'' that a victim's son had been told was a propane heater.

To be sure, Middletown is essentially halfway across the state from me, but, well, it was close enough (my cousin owns a bar in that town and some of my friends live in that area), so yea, it's close enough. Interestingly enough. I found out about it when Walt (all the way from TX) IMed me to ask if I was OK. (Yep, we DO live in a global village, as he heard about it before me). Once I assured him that I was fine, I checked up on the folks that I knew, and then passed info along to others.

At 11:25 a.m., the explosion ripped through the Kleen Energy Systems LLC natural-gas power plant being built here in a sparse industrial area along the bank of the Connecticut River. Four pipefitters who were inside the main generator building were killed immediately, according to the state official. Emergency rescue teams, some with rescue dogs, descended on the scene and were airlifting injured workers by helicopter to nearby hospitals.

Yeah, no jokes this time out, as this is sort of a big deal around here.

The Perfessor

A while back I told you that I acquired a (free) pound of coffee from Dunkin' Donuts by donating a pint of my blood to the American Red Cross, well, I picked up the coffee (finally) and added it to my stash of ready-to-be-ground coffee beans.

This pint puts me on the plus-side of 15 gallons that I've donated. I try to go every two months, and by now, know most of the nurses at the donation center where I usually donate.

On an entirely different matter, I know that tomorrow is Superbowl Sunday, but just the other day I (finally) received a special Union Mets pin of the new Shea...er Citi Field. No, I'm not in a union, but my brother, Ron, is, (abnd is a HUGE Mets fan), and he pointed me in the direction of the pin (which was free for the asking).

Well, I requested the pin back during baseball season, and just received it.

Cool, eh?

Well, I'm off to run some errands with the ball and...er...wifie, so I'll be back later.

The Perfessor

I almost forgot to add this photo to my earlier post about the Red Cross. These are the pins I’ve acquired from donating blood to the Red Cross (one pin for every gallon, plus several for donating on or near a specific holiday), plus my favorite pin, a special Pin I acquired from donating at a special Valentine’s Day comic book show sponsored by Harris Comics in support of their character, vampire-themed character, Vampirella.

I keep all these pins on a vest that I occasionally wear (and, no, not just when I’m donating).

The Perfessor

P.S. Don’t forget the lb. of coffee!

I know that Walt has a different opinion about this, but I like the Red Cross. I’ve been donating blood since I was like 18 or 20. Right now I’m on the plus side of 15 gallons (fairly impressive when you realize that not only can you only donate a pint at a time, and only ever 56 days (or six times a year at most).

These days I try to donate five or six times a year, and the location of a local donation center near my house makes it easier than having to find an open donation call. This month (as in years past) if you donate blood you get a coupon for a free pound of coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts.

So, yea, if I wasn’t already donating this would get me into the chair.

The Perfessor

You like bagels? Yep, me too. If you are like me, you tend not to buy the pre-bagged, pre-cut versions, and go for the fresh (uncut) versions. Ever cut yourself while slicing them? Me,? Not so much (I’ve cut myself while cutting other things, not bagels). Still there are — apparently — a large number of people who do just that, cut themselves while slicing bagels (yes, we’re talking about you, Ed).

According to The Wall Street Journal:

In 2008, according to an analysis of fingers cut by knives as reported in the government's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, 1,979 people appeared in ERs with a BRI [Bagel-Related Injury]. Chicken-related injuries (3,463) led the category, but recorded bagel injuries were otherwise exceeded only by potato, apple and onion injuries.
[Bagel Guillotine]

Bagels, in fact, were implicated in more finger cuts than pumpkins (1,195) or cheese (1,236). Fewer than 100 incidents in 2008 involved turnips; ditto for wedding cakes.

(Of course, many BRI victims skip ERs and go to urgent-care offices. Or they stay home and eat breakfast anyway.)

I worked in a professional kitchen for a number of years as a short order cook, and one of the first rules of the kitchen (right after “the stove is hot” is “knives are sharp.” This is important to know. (An important corollary is that you don’t attempt to catch a falling knife. Trying to stop whatever just used to be in your hands from hitting the floor is a natural reaction. It is not really something you want to try with something that has a sharp end.)

Anyway, I just wanted to alert you all to this:

"Whenever you put a knife in a person's hand, it's an issue," Mr. Ricard said. "People don't know how to use knives." It was this insight, which came to him while he was chopping wood 15 years ago, that led to the guillotine's self-contained blade.

The breakthrough gave rise to a new era in bagel-safety -- and a multitude of competing contraptions, most of which have flopped. Mr. Ricard has collected a bunch -- from the "Bagel Wizard" with three handles for two hands, to a Ginsu slicer that resembles a slot machine. All operate on the principle that pushing an unreachable blade into a bagel beats sawing a bagel in half.

Knives are sharp, and if you don’t handel them proberly while cutting stuff (especially bagels) you could (and probably will) cut yourself. (Right Ed?)

The Perfessor

I realize that this event happened back in June, but I just recently became aware of it. Apparently, 90-year-old great-grandmother, donated her 25th gallon of blood to The Red Cross. Now while you may realize how very cool this is right away, you have to understand that you only have about four quarts of blood in your body, and can only donate a pint at a time, and can only give every eight weeks.

This means that it takes just over a year (like a year and three months, give or take) to get a gallon. So, assuming that Margaret managed to give six-to-eight times a year, it would have taken her well over 30 years to give that much blood.

I bring this all up because I’ve been giving blood since I was about 18 and just last week I reached 15 gallons which means (at my current rate of giving) I should reach 25 gallons in about 13 years, so by the time I reach Margaret’s age, I should be hitting 68 gallons or so.

The Perfessor

Yeah, yeah we are all superstitious to some bit of another. Not walking under ladders, tossing salt over our shoulder, Black Cats crossing our paths, breaking mirrors, And of course, Friday the 13th. Well, apparently fear of the #13 is something of a real phobia (probably started by right around the time of the Last Supper when the 13^th guy at a dinner party got nailed to a tree); it is actually called paraskavedekatriaphobia as well as friggatriskaidekaphobia. Triskaidekaphobia is fear of the number 13.

Anyway, not only is this the third Friday the 13^th we’ve had this year, (something that happens only every 11 years) there are quite a few interesting things about the #13. Some of them are as follows:

• Many hospitals have no room 13, while some tall buildings skip the 13th floor and some airline terminals omit Gate 13.
• President Franklin D. Roosevelt would not travel on the 13th day of any month and would never host 13 guests at a meal. Napoleon and President Herbert Hoover were also triskaidekaphobic, with an abnormal fear of the number 13.
• Mark Twain once was the 13^th guest at a dinner party. A friend warned him not to go. “It was bad luck,” Twain later told the friend. “They only had food for 12.” Superstitious diners in Paris can hire a quatorzieme, or professional 14th guest.
• The number 13 suffers from its position after 12, according to numerologists who consider the latter to be a complete number — 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 apostles of Jesus, 12 days of Christmas and 12 eggs in a dozen.

Meanwhile the belief that numbers are connected to life and physical things (which is called numerology) has a long history.

“You can trace it all the way from the followers of Pythagoras, whose maxim to describe the universe was ‘all is number,’” says Mario Livio, an astrophysicist and author of The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved (Simon & Schuster, 2005). Thinkers who studied under the famous Greek mathematician combined numbers in different ways to explain everything around them, Livio said.

If you want to learn more about the superstitions surrounding this particular date (or just the number 13 itself) you can go here.

Meanwhile, I'm staying indoors, drinking heavy, and, you know, keeping my guns close by.

The Perfessor

Today is Friday the 13th, and you should be especially aware of Black Cats whom might cross your path.

Especially if they look like this...

Be safe.

The Perfessor

So, have you ever had the experience where you were watching a TV program and you fell asleep just before the end while watching it? Of course you have. this is one of the reasons that they invented recording devices for the TV. This way you can simply roll back the recording and watch what you’ve missed. In fact, my wife and I have taken to the habit of recording virtually any TV show that we regularly watch that falls in the 10:00 hour, as it is a sure bet that one (or both) of us will pass out on the couch just before the end.

Needless to say, this very often involves us watching the last 15 minutes of last night’s program (or last week’s episode) before watching TV tonight (or this week). Well, last night I wanted to watch an older episode of CSI NY, only, as I was watching it, I recalled that I had apparently seen parts of it (I think I was dozing all the way through it when it first ran). Anyway, I started watching it around 10:30 or so, and finished watching it at 4:30 this morning.

How does it take six hours to watch a one-hour program? Easy, I kept falling asleep during a portion of it, would wake up, roll the program back to the last point I remembered viewing, get another two minutes into the program, and then fall back asleep, only to repeat the process about a dozen times.

Sure, sure I could have simply have thrown in the towel and gone to bed, simply to have finished watching it another day, but I was bound and determined to finish watching it so that I could erase the show off the DVR and free up the space. Well, as stated, it took six hours, but I did finish watching it. Needless to say, once I had finished, I was wondering why I had bothered.

The Perfessor