April 1st.

It's f*ucking EVERYWHERE now, too.

In order to get a better picture of DRI and related information for vitamins and minerals, i started a Google Doc: Vitamin and Minerals DRI and related

It's incomplete, may have errors, and only for Males, 31-50. Though, i would add more if it weren't so tedious. The source material for most of the information comes as separate documents, or one that has all the sheets together, albeit with a different orientation. This focuses on matching up the EAR/RI pair or AI (those are mutually exclusive) with the TL, if any. Plus, it makes the other units used more clear. IIUC, many labels misrepresent folic acid because they ignore the DFE. Having the IU as a number right by it also helps.

Then there's the little notes. Why don't we use D1? (It was a mistaken label. It was found later to be D2 and another chemical.) Why are Potassium tablets 99mg or less? (FDA regulation) What is the difference between Cartenoids and Retinoids? (Retinoids are Vitamin A, Cartenoids are Provitamin A, meaning they are converted to Vitamin A as required.) Little notes i'm picking up to help things make sense. Interests come in bursts, but if anyone else is interested, that would likely change.

The document is available to anyone with the link, but not editable. Please let me know if you are interested.

Last night, as the calendar shifted to 27 Adar, i became 42. My birthday is actually in Adar 1, but not being a leap year, there's no intercalary month, so its just plain Adar.

42 is cool and all, but as each year passes, i care less and less about birthdays. It's not more than just getting older. It's about understanding things, realizing how stupid young people are (like i was, back then) and just a general non caring. Life simply is.

In other news, slashdot is changing styles again and overall is slower and looks clunky. I feel some odd attachment to writing JEs once in a while, perhaps to justify my almost two decades since first checking it out. has it really been that long? I wonder if i would attend a slashdot meetup. Probably not. It's sounds great on paper though.

You're not still reading this, are you?

I visit a few threads here, on reasonable topics - like Barrett Brown case, etc.

The level of discourse has really troughed. It's like "conversation" between the Dufflepuds..

It's not worth even trolling these people. There isn't enough signal-to-noise for this to even register.

I love Amazon reviews:

A review on a scale explains how (cheaper) scales provide repeatable numbers.

People love repeatable numbers. Consistency is more important than accuracy. Of course some get the two mixed up. But that's okay, as long as you get what you want.

(Cheap) bathroom scales are affected by slight differences in foot placement. Another scale compensates it otherwise. Other people just go for three consistent weightings.

Similar to the 80/20 Rule, perhaps, most people just want a decision made for them. Sure, we all know the numbers change, but which do i use? Three weightings? That's unscientific! Proximity to the last time? That's silliness! Yes, what if the manufacturer of the scale is willing to do just that for you? Finally, an accurate, consistent scale!

Currently, it has 12,639 out of 15,649 5-star reviews. That's ~80%. Who woulda thought?

Leaving the office yesterday, i got in at the 6th floor. First it stopped at the 5th and a man got on. At the 4th floor, another man and woman entered. From there we went straight down the other 4 floors unabated.

Mr. 4th floor recognized Mr. 5th floor and they chatted. Moments before the gates to freedom something like this transpired:

Mr 4th floor: "Now off to the gym to say hello to all those 2015 resolutions."
Mr 5th floor: encourages him that he'll be able to keep them.
Mr 4th floor: "No, i have no problem with the gym. I mean all the other people."

Overheard a coworker in mid sentence, "but if we were talking about pesos, there'd be _a lot_ more zeroes"

On a side note, i've been at the office for a year. How do i know? Building access was denied. Happy anniversary...

A friend pointed me to Study proves we CAN see âinvisibleâ(TM) infrared light.

I like to customize my email addresses. (parts 2 and 3 are not as relevant here.) The problem is, not all websites accept this format. Somehow the extra period throws them for a loop and either i get no response from them or they reject it from the outset.

So, like Froman's comment i started using + which is supported in GMail.

That all worked great for a while. Recently, however, many websites are rejecting the plus sign! Worse, some sites that used to accept it, no longer do. For example, Barnes and Noble used to accept it as my login email contains a plus sign. No more. I had to create a new account to login. Part of their stupidity is putting sign-in and create account on the same form, so the validation routines validates email addresses that are already registered. But, wait, don't buy yet. We'll throw in a free stupidity. Free nookbooks now require you to have a credit card listed. Really?!

It's as if some moron wrote code without checking the RFC and somehow that code became standard. The beauty of this is that whereas emails to sub-domains are now supported, plus signs are not. Flippity flop. Luckily, i can do both.

Anyone still lurking around this place? I see several people are still active here.... quite a huge pile of names I have not seen in a long long time.

Woman can keep $10G ring reminds me of another court ruling (from another state.)

Friday Philosophy - Is Dave Working?

And the part about the backspace or delete button. This guy is scary. :)

Well, Apple just refreshed the Mac Mini. I was actually waiting for the update because i have a 2011 Mac Mini and upgrades are usually nice.

I switched to the Mac because i got sick of Windows with all their changes. There's the ribbon, the attempt at removing the start menu, the reorganizing of the Control Panel, and the overall homogenization of the desktop and handheld UI, which i want to be different. After disliking Vista, not liking Windows 7, and being horrified by Windows 8, i just gave up. Now i run OSX on my Mac Mini which, for the most part, i find to be fun.

After my conversion, i realized what OSX users had that they could be upset about. First and foremost, Apple is not responsive. Find a bug, they'll probably fix it in the next release, if they care. For me, the Speakable Items bug was the worst, because i wanted it, with a multiple monitor bug being annoying as well. The former has been fixed in Yosemite, luckily someone noticed.

That call upgrades into play. Apple now offers them for free, but it's take it or leave it. Like those blue scroll bars? Too bad, they removed them. Like something else? You can keep them as long as they want them. Yosemite changes the UI giving it a flat look which the community seem divided on. I dislike it so much ihave decided to not upgrade to it. Between it's ugliness and the push to make it like the handhelds, i'm back to my problem with Windows. Oh well.

But now comes the clincher. The Mac Mini has soldered RAM. My current Mac Mini has 16 GB RAM that i bought myself for significantly less than what Apple would have charged. I would not want to limit my next Mac to 16GB nor pay Apple some ludicrously large amount for it either. On it's own this is a bad move. Added to the flat look, and i no longer want a Mac.

So, my next computer will probably run Linux. Question is, should i go back to Debian (i don't think i can handle Slackware anymore) or use one of them newfangled distros. Well, i have some time before i need to upgrade to Linux again. And who knows what will happen?

A friend sent me a link to a synopsis of work done on a 13th century treatise that has theories about cosmology very close to the Big Bang and Mutliverse theories.

It's amazing how the old is new. Or is that the new is old?

It's amazing how many friends and fans i have that no longer post. Well, on second thought, it actually isn't that amazing. But, when i sent the voting fairy to do her job, she had a hard time finding posts to moderate!

Nonetheless, she got the job done. Though, noone left her any presents under their posts.