Blogs

I spotted Google Play on Google’s header menu last week. My first reaction was what the heck is it? I clicked on it and saw a menu for Movies, Music, Books, and Apps. I took a peek at the Movies channel, noticed and liked the clean design, and left.

The design for Google Play is comparatively more gaugy than the bare-bones design of the other items on the header menu, but still simple and elegant.

It’s hard to think that increasing gas prices alone can derail the economy and Barack Obama’s re-election along with it, but the media certainly makes it seem possible with their headlines.

I remember during the summer of 2008 - in the heat of the presidential election - we encountered the same issue. Democrats tried to blame higher gas prices on then president George W. Bush. There were talk of opening up our oil reserves, more drilling, and regulating speculators.

In a recent article posted on msnbc.com, “In praise of germs: Why common bugs are necessary for kids”, a team of researchers found that being exposed to some germs is good for building children’s immune system. They showed that young mice introduced to germs were able to keep their immune system active, to better help fend off bacterial and other infections later in life.

The article points out that parents are being told to keep everything, including their children, spotlessly clean, but that may not have to be the case. Some exposure to dirt and germs could be good for us.

A recent article posted on myfoxdc.com said an Australian poll of 1,000 women found that women prefer that their husband cooked them dinner than have sex, and nine out of 10 women prefer a cooked dinner over flowers. The article goes on to say that women prefer men to help with household chores instead of doing more manly tasks. The article is a very short summary of a study done by Emperica Research and seemed to be missing a lot of data to make this information new and profound.

Like many people, I am disgusted by the lack of disciplinary action by Penn State University over the Sandusky pedophile charges back in 1998. If something would have been done then, it could have saved nine other boys from having to go through similar traumatic experiences as the first boy did in 1998. It makes me wonder if Penn State ignored it to protect the image and financial wealth of the school.

I’ve switched over to Facebook’s comment system a while back. I did it for two reasons. First, offloading comments to a third party takes the load off my server. Second, I’m hoping to get some Facebook traffic juice.

The first part worked out. I disabled Drupal’s commenting system, which resulted in less cron jobs and queries to the database.

The second part hasn’t quite worked out. My Facebook referrals have mostly stayed the same. I’m also noticing less comments, which is a surprise. I figured since most people are on Facebook already, I would get more.

I’ve been using the ASUS Zenbook for months now. It’s running on an i7 1.8GHz Processor and 4GB of RAM. I can’t say I’m completely satisfied with it. It’s the keyboard that I just can’t get used to. After almost four months, I’m still missing keys when I type. It gets pretty annoying, especially if you have to type often.

I’m sure you heard of what happened to Jason Russell, the guy behind the ultra viral Kony 2012 video, over the weekend. He had an embarrassing mental breakdown due to physical and mental exhaustion (according to his wife) in San Diego and is now being held by the police for psychiatric reasons.

The recent outcry over ‘pink slime’, the ground beef treated with ammonium hydroxide, which has been provided to schools since the early 80s by such companies as Beef Products, Inc, has prompted the USDA to offer untreated, fattier ground beef. Beef is treated with ammonia to destroy E. Coli, but the thought of food being treated with ammonia just didn’t sit right with some people although the FDA claims that such processing of beef is safe for human consumption.

I finally found some time to replace the now deprecated Google Buzz with Google Plus. And it's probably a waste of time, but I'm just doing it out of completeness.

My personal Google Plus account has turned into a ghost town, just as soon as Buzz. It's sad. That's why I don't understand how there are still reports saying that it's growing. I bet it's just users from various Google products who are signing up and then taking a peek. And then never coming back again.