Or you just have the genes for a stronger bitter taste, and it overwhelms absolutely everything else.

I can taste PTC paper from across the room. It's horrible; painful on the tongue to actually try one.

That said, crank up the cocoa level on my chocolate to 95%, so long as it's the good stuff. But forget black dark roast coffee, bitter beer, or raw greens. Painful, more like the bite of capsaicin than a flavor. My guess is there's some difference in the bitter compounds among the four; there are several bitter genes and they react differently to different compounds, so all this stuff tastes different to each of us, and it's not just an all or nothing sort of thing. You're lucky in a way; chances are you aren't actually tasting as much bitter as some of the rest of us do. No big deal, so long as there are options for everyone :)

Which would have been 4/15, not 4/16.

The real trouble is that most doctors aren't independent any more -- most of that $1000 goes to somebody else, owners and investors in hospitals and medical groups. Same people dictate rules for how long the doctor can see you and over-schedule them horribly so you have to wait for hours past your appointment time. A money grab, yeah, just not one the benefits the people actually doing the work.

(says someone currently fighting the system)

Rinikusu -- it's very easy! These folks offer food-grade mold supplies and videos on how to use them: http://www.makeyourownmolds.co...

I made my own gamer dice molds with the putty-style old materials they sell. Very easy to work with.

" If it were, then employers would post jobs for free, and you would pay for access"

For the love of God, don't give them any ideas!

Those companies don't want your business -- they very, very intentionally want that precious phone number. It has more value than you do.

~a web-dev who has fought the "you don't really want that to be required, chief" battle more than once

You can't not use Google without not using most of the Internet (assuming for the moment that you don't use something like RequestPolicy to blacklist/whitelist, which is generally too much for most normal folks). It follows you around via Google Analytics, embedded maps and calendars, Google fonts... other people are making the choice to give your browsing information to Google (and Facebook, and Twitter). Same trouble if you ever email anyone with a GMail address or need to collaborate with someone via Google Drive/Docs. You're kinda stuck.

No. They don't. I'm sitting here wearing a pair of in-ear noise blockers (the best I can find after years of searching -- used to live next to some seriously bad neighbors, so I've had a long time to perfect my choice) and they don't come close to eliminating problem noises. Over-the-ear noise-cancelling is utterly useless for the human voice.

The only thing that works is rising an bludgeoning the offender with a MacBook or other metal-cased laptop.

Doesn't help with the screaming idiots who have to come stand in front of your desk and natter on about something entirely unrelated to what you do. No headphones block that out, or the stompy-footed women who need 6" platform heels and make more noise than a full hitch of Budweiser Clydesdales.

Bullpen with a small number of people doing the same work as you is great. Working in the middle of Main Street sucks.

Maybe the joke really is on us. NK made a stink so that we'd all go waste time and money watching an awful movie (and being offended by it).

Well played, NK, well played...

There sort of is, if you have a limited enough group of people you're interested in -- put them in your close friends and only look at that feed. So far as I can tell*, you then get all the entries for that group (though you still need to sort chrono, which FBPurity and other tools will do for you).

*not necessarily very far

Actually, I come from Ohio and remember there being a story in the Dispatch about the time my siblings were going for their driver's test about just that -- people scheduling at the "easy" offices.

Though the damn test was so easy already that it makes me wonder just how bad they really were. The only hard part was the "maneuverability" test, and that wasn't even too bad, just dumb and somewhat badly set up in my opinion. I still don't know how to properly parallel park because that test was nothing at all like actual parallel parking. This has actually become a problem, given that I now live and work in the Boston area. (And yeah, Ohio drivers ARE worse than Boston drivers, I don't care what anyone says.)

sumdumbass, are you a central Ohioan? Because I swear that sounds like back home.

Not there any more, but I wouldn't have voted for a school levy at gunpoint in the district I was in. Worse abuse of funds ever, and everyone knew it.

When I was growing up that's how we were taught to use encyclopedias anyway... a starting point. Have people forgotten this?

Given that it's Google, they're probably happy to peer into your apartment. Just be sure to leave the shades up.