Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

I found out today that the Ohio Technology Access Project (OTAP) recently shut its doors due to a lack of funding. That's a shame, because they did a lot of good for the community. Their mission was to accept older computers, refurbish them, and give them (or sell them at greatly reduced rates) to disadvantaged people. I used to do volunteer work for them years ago.

Now if people in town want to recycle their older computers and computer parts, they need to take them to the county dump for proper disposal. *sigh*

Last week, I talked about mustard here on my LJ. Today, I want to talk about the other squeezable condiment: ketchup.

Heinz is the market leader by far and away. Why other companies still make ketchup is a mystery to me.

An even deeper mystery is why they call it by another name: catsup. Where did that word come from? Catsup isn't made from cats, it's made from tomatoes. (Wikipedia's article on ketchup attributes the spelling variation to one Jonathan Swift, circa 1730.)

Several years ago, clydar taught me the trick to get ketchup out of a glass bottle: hold the bottle upside down and hit one of the "57"s on the bottle with the palm of one's hand. Although fewer and fewer places use glass bottles for their ketchup these days.

What do I like to put ketchup on? French fries, hamburgers, hot dogs, and meatloaf. Some people put it on their eggs. (I can understand that if the eggs were scrambled and prepared in mass quantities.) And it's Heinz for me; no cheap imitators.

What brand(s) of ketchup do you like? What foods do you put it on?

Many of you have probably seen the commercials with the young guys singing the praises of freecreditreport.com. What they don't say in their songs -- but is mentioned as a disclaimer and a caption -- is that in order for people to get their credit report, they have to sign up for a service called Triple Advantage. I suspect this service costs money. Furthermore, my sources tell me that this website is owned and operated by Experian, one of the three major credit reporting companies here in the USA.

So, the folks at the FTC decided to parody them, plugging the site annualcreditreport.com. Here are their commercials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ0xsF5XWfo (Restaurant)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krG2d7OK8MM (Apartment)

The Phoenix Coyotes -- the team coached by the Great One himself, Wayne Gretzky -- has filed for bankruptcy. The scuttlebutt I've heard is that the guy who owns Research In Motion -- RIM, better known as the Blackberry maker -- wants to buy the team and move it to Canada. Some say that's already happened. Other sources say "not so fast".

One of the rumored sites for the team is Hamilton, Ontario -- halfway between Buffalo, NY and Toronto, ON. Each of those cities has an NHL team (the Sabres and Leafs, respectively). My concern is that placing an NHL team in Hamilton would take away fans from Sabres and Leafs games. Or are there enough hockey fans in all three cities to support three teams within such close proximity to each other?

Here's the first of two posts about train travel. This one covers a recent trip I took.

Ever since February, I've thought about taking the Amtrak train to Buffalo instead of driving up to see my mom. And in April, I finally did this.

The Lake Shore Limited train train left Chicago's Union Station at around 9pm on Friday. There's not much to see at night. I talked with a fellow passenger, Mahesh, for several minutes. The train ride was smooth, not bumpy. I got up and walked to the diner car to get some tea, and met a young man running Ubuntu Linux on his laptop. Many of us, myself included, tried to catch some Z's while the train made its way past South Bend, Toledo, Cleveland, and Erie. I was awake when the train arrived at Erie, and stayed up to see the local sights. We arrived in Buffalo around 8:30am on Saturday.

The way back was similar. I left Buffalo at around 12:30am on Thursday, tried to catch more Z's, and arrived in Chicago around 10:00am, if I remember correctly.

Why do I like train travel? I think there's less hassles than airplane travel, it's cheaper than airplane travel, and I don't believe it's as dependent on the weather. Also, traveling by train is a lot less frenetic and more leisurely.

Would I do this again? Absolutely. Although I'd find another way to get to Chicago besides driving to Indy and busing to Chicago. I got stung on the parking.

Shout-outs: Happy birthday min0taur! Let's do lunch (or dinner) sometime soon!

Earlier this morning, filkertom posted something about hamburgers, and in usual fashion, asked his readers what they like on their burgers. Eventually the topic of mustard came around, and people indicated their choice of mustard as well. So I'll spawn my own topic.

I used to like French's. It was the hometown favorite. The R.T. French Co. had their offices and factory in Rochester, NY -- an hour's drive east of Buffalo. (Not any more. French's was bought by Durkee, which in turn was bought by Reckitt & Colman.) Then a neighbor of mine turned me on to Weber's Horseradish mustard. It's yellow, like French's, but this mustard has kick. It's become my current favorite -- especially on hot dogs -- and I often pick up a bottle when I go back to Buffalo.

I also like Grey Poupon or honey mustard on ham sandwiches, Gulden's on pastrami and corned beef sandwiches, Chinese hot mustard on my egg rolls, and sweet mustard on various cheeses and summer sausage.

I also tried Bertman's Stadium Mustard, but I thought it was very bland. Supposedly this is a Cleveland favorite.

I'll do like filkertom and ask for your feedback. What are your favorite varieties of mustard?

This evening, I met a man in the apartment complex neighboring my condo complex. He was out walking his dogs -- actually, letting them go unleashed. (I need to check the township ordinances to verify that dogs need to be on leashes.) He said his name was Ken. He asked me 2 or 3 times how I was doing. (Why does he need to know and why should he care?, I thought. But I answered "All right" each time.) He also said that he's a Christian. Right then, my guard went up with him. He was trying to cozy up to me with further conversation and an invitation to dinner, but I remained aloof.

( I don't grok the evangelical mindset. )

Was flipping channels on the TV yesterday -- nothing remotely interesting on except the Weather Channel -- and came across the Come-to-Jeezus channel (aka Trinity Broadcasting Network), which was hawking a book linking Presdient Obama with the End Times. I think it was called New World Order Rising, or something like that. It was offered by Jack Van Impe Ministries.

I can do without high-powered televangelists. Instead of gently inviting people to their faith, they make it sound like it's a hard-sell. And that's what turns me off.

I'm not sure which is scarier -- the people who actually come up with this nonsense or those who gleefully eat it up with a spoon without question.

The civil libertarian in me says people have a right to express their religion. But a more logical part of me says, "It's not *what* one expresses, it's *how* one expresses it."

Unfortuantely, it's an old TV and I can't erase this channel from the memory bank. Grr argh.

Many years ago, at a science fiction convention (probably Marcon), R and I bought complementary T-shirts. Mine had the sun in the center, surrounded by (in clockwise order) Herne, an Aztec warrior wearing an eagle costume, a dragon, and Osiris (or Horus) -- representations of masculine energy. (I call it the "male energy" shirt.) R's shirt had the moon in the center, surrounded by (what I remember) White Buffalo Woman and a few other representations of feminine energy. Problem is, I don't know the name of the design, or the artist, and it's nearly impossible to track down. I'd like to get another T-shirt with the same design. I've tried searching on Gogle and came up empty. I also tried OffWorld Designs -- the suspected vendor -- but it's not in their online catalog.

In case I don't get a response, I'll try taking a picture of the T-shirt design and posting it here.