pileofcrapola

Chrome: Google Drive is adding an "open with" option to the right-click menu. As you can see in the GIF above, this lets you directly open photos in Photoshop, PDFs in your favorite PDF tool , and so on from your web browser.

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If you're faced with repiping your home because of a water leak, you'll be presented with two piping options: copper or PEX. Here's a breakdown of the pros and cons for each type.

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Eating while you're playing games is an art unto itself. The wrong food will either gunk up your controller or your arteries, and probably both. Here are some of the best alternatives for keeping your console and your body clean.

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Freezing food is a great way to keep it fresh when you buy it in bulk, but refreezing is a completely different story. Here's a few foods that are just fine to freeze, but shouldn't ever be refrozen after they've already been thawed one time.

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There's an amazing amount of coffee coverage across our network, and today we want to figure out which brew-carrying vessel is best. Head for the comments and sound off.

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You've probably heard before that the blue light from your digital devices can interrupt your sleep if you use them too close to bedtime, sapping your productivity the next day . Good news: Research shows a way you might be able to get away with using your phone or tablet in bed without affecting your sleep.

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Staring at our screens and sitting all day long is killing us . Our necks crane forward , our shoulders hunch , and we put terrible stress on our lower body. Here's a quick way to get into proper posture.

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Unless you're a devout minimalist, moving can be daunting—especially when you're on a tight budget. How do you get all your stuff out of your current home and into your new place without dropping a ton of cash in the process?Here are a handful of tricks and strategies for moving on a tight budget.

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If you're a parent with young children—or constantly busy multitasking—you can peel a hard-boiled egg in under three seconds with only one hand by rolling it quickly on a clean surface.

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Taking as many votes as the other four contenders combined, La Crosse takes home your nod as the best battery charger. You praised it for its versatility, ease of use, wide range of options, and features like the ability to refresh lost capacity in your batteries. [La Crosse BC1000]

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Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., voted to legalize recreational marijuana Tuesday. The drug is already legal for people 21 and older in Colorado and Washington, thanks to ballot measures voted on in 2012.

A health care millionaire who fatally drugged her developmentally disabled son was convicted of manslaughter Wednesday in what her defense portrayed as a mercy killing by a mother trying to escape a labyrinth of fear and despair.

Nearly a year ago Jillian McCabe was posting cheery videos on YouTube of her 6-year-old son, London, holding a stuffed toy lion while tossing coins in a fountain to make a wish, and her husband, Matt, lying in a hospital bed talking about his sudden struggle to walk and even talk.

Fairfax County crime report Washington Post These were among incidents reported by the Fairfax County Police Department. For information, call 703-246-2253. Fair Oaks District. THEFTS/BREAK-INS. Autumn Willow Dr., 13000 block, Oct. 30. Property was stolen from a residence. Chain Bridge Rd. and more »

Yesterday, Target announced that it would be closing 11 underperforming stores by Feb. 2015, which only represents a small fraction of the retailer’s 1,800 stores in the U.S. But that brings this year’s total number of Target closures to 19, nearly five times the number of stores shuttered the previous year.

In fact, Target had only closed a total of 9 stores during the two previous years, while also opening more than 40 locations during that same period of time.

“The decision to close a Target store is not made lightly,” a Target rep tells the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “We typically decide to close a store after careful consideration of the long-term financial performance of a particular location. In most cases, a store is closed as a result of seeing several years of decreasing profitability.”

The company says that employees at affected stores will be offered jobs at other stores and those who don’t accept the transfer will be giving severance packages.

Here is the complete list of the 11 stores, in 8 states, set to close on Feb. 1:

GEORGIA
8109 Mall Parkway
Lithonia, Ga.

ILLINOIS
1860 N. Richmond Road
McHenry, Ill

1717 E. West Road
Calumet City, Ill.

INDIANA
8448 Center Run Drive
Indianapolis, Ind.

IOWA
2900 S. 25th St.
Clinton, Iowa

KANSAS
301 S. Towne East Mall Drive
Wichita, Kan.

MICHIGAN
2121 N. Monroe St.
Monroe, Mich.

21400 Northwestern Highway
Southfield, Mich.

4135 Wilder Road
Bay City, Mich.

MINNESOTA
1701 18th Ave. N.W.
Austin, Minn.

TEXAS
2620 N. Josey Lane
Carrollton, Texas

From NFL sidelines to product placement in various movies and TV shows, Microsoft has been making a huge marketing push to get its Surface tablets in the hands of people you see on TV. But what’s that distinctive-looking Surface stand actually propping up? In the case of CNN, it’s probably an iPad.

Last night, the CNN election center news desk was arrayed with Surface Pro 3 tablets for Anderson Cooper, et al, to follow the latest election news (or, more likely, check out NBA and NHL scores).

But viewers noticed that, when shown from certain angles, some folks at the CNN had a dirty little Apple secret hiding behind that $799 Microsoft tablet — iPads:

CNN commentators using Microsoft @surface tablets as iPad stand. Facepalm. http://t.co/BPxWTf2zhI—
Adam (@adamUCF) November 05, 2014

[via Gizmodo]

As we shared before Halloween, this year some of the most popular costumes for girls (and a few boys) were the lead characters from the animated Disney movie “Frozen.” While the movie came out last winter, Disney announced that it remains popular, and they’re going to be putting even more “Frozen” merchandise, including costumes, on the shelves for the holiday season.

Keep in mind that those are just the official, Disney-sanctioned costumes that have sold 3 million pieces. That’s just costumes, which start at $50 in Disney Stores. There are plenty of unofficial versions out there, too, and that’s partly because, according to the New York Times, demand for toys and outfits took Disney by surprise last holiday season. This year, they’re ready: “Frozen” merch remains popular, and they have plenty of sparkly blue dresses and tiaras to go around.

As far as the holiday that just concluded goes, about 2.6 million kids dressed as characters from “Frozen” this past Halloween. An estimated 3.4 million were just generic princesses. As a point of reference, 2 million American kids dressed as Batman.

3 Million ‘Frozen’ Princess Dresses Sold, Disney Says [New York Times]

It’s not a deli counter where you can order up sandwich fixins willy nilly, but the CEO of Arby’s would like to remind customers that you can customize your sandwich — well, to the extent that you can ask for things to not be on it, or for a different kind of bun.

In an interview with the Associated Press about what the chain is doing to bring customers through its doors and position itself as a “premium” fast-food chain, CEO Paul Brown acknowledged the trend of customization in the fast food industry.

“You can customize your way to being healthy,” he points out, while noting that Arby’s won’t be going the way of ‘build your own as you go.'”

“But we give the ability to say without onions, without mayonnaise or whole wheat instead of a regular bun,” he added.

Is that just holding the mayo and/or making substitutions, or customizing? Shrug.

Brown explains however, that customers might not necessarily know that kind of experience is available at Arby’s — he says less than 1% of customers request a customized order.

“We don’t believe enough people know you can, which is one of the reasons we’re working on our marketing to make that a lot clearer,” Brown said.

Arby’s CEO on customized orders, quality meats [Associated Press]

While we hear almost daily reports of retailers having their payment systems hacked and customer records stolen, it looks like cybercriminals are increasingly realizing they can turn a profit by stealing assets many consumers treat as an afterthought — loyalty rewards.

KrebsOnSecurity.com reports on the rise of rewards-related theft, and specifically on the growing number of consumers who have seen their Hilton Honors loyalty accounts violated by hackers.

One man tells Krebs that he recently had more than 250,000 points stolen from his Hilton account.

First, the thieves accessed his online account and changed the e-mail addresses associated with the account so that he would not receive any correspondence regarding the use and abuse of his rewards.

Then they helped themselves to six different Hilton hotel reservations in September, from Atlanta all the way up the Atlantic coast to Stamford, CT, where we assume they attended a taping of the Jerry Springer Show.

It gets worse — because the victim had a corporate credit card linked to the Hilton Honors account, the thieves were able to use that card to purchase additional points.

Krebs checked out some online black markets where people buy things they can’t get at the corner sore (at least not legally) and found people selling Hilton HHonors points for a fraction of their face value, from as little as $10 for 50,000 points to only $200 for 1 million points, along with suggestions on how the purloined points could be used — turn them into gift cards, buy items from the Hilton HHonors online marketplace, or just turn them in for cash.

The seller advises against using them to book travel for yourself but does admit that it’s “safer (and cheaper) than using a carded hotel service.”

So how are thieves getting this info?

The fact is that, though many of us have earned some sort of loyalty rewards — whether it’s from airlines, hotels, retailers, or credit cards — not everyone treats the online repositories of these assets with the security they deserve. So you might be throwing away a good password on an unsafe site, or maybe you’re using a simple, common password on a site that is otherwise secure.

In the case of Hilton, it looks like hackers are taking advantage of the fact that there are two login options — either a user name and password or a member number and 4-digit PIN.

Hilton isn’t talking about these incidents, but Krebs points out that the hotel chain recently added a CAPTCHA step to its login process in an apparent effort to stop hackers from brute-forcing their way into accounts. This seems to indicate that thieves were just running scripts to try as many number/password combinations as possible until the account was unlocked.

I can remember being a kid and thinking the best way to get rid of paper evidence like a bad report card would be to just shove it in my mouth and eat it. Fortunately, I never got a (really) bad report card [pats self on back] so I didn’t have to employ that method, but police in New York say one driver pulled over for speeding went the route of turning possibly damning breathalyzer results into a comestible.

According to New York state police, troopers pulled over a 40-year-old man from Connecticut for speeding around 5:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, reports the Associated Press.

During the course of conversation, officers decided he was likely intoxicated, and arrested him. He was taken to the state police barracks for processing, which is apparently when he got a rumble in his stomach that could only be satisfied with paper.

Troopers say that as his breathalyzer test results were printing, the man snatched the paperwork and tried to shove it down his gullet. It seems he was ultimately unsuccessful, as he was charged with driving while intoxicated, obstructing governmental administration, and criminal tampering.

Let’s hope he at least got a glass of water to rinse out that ink flavor from his mouth, because gross.

Greenwich man tries to eat breathalyzer results: Police [Associated Press]

This year, Kmart is sticking with its dubious tradition and opening on Thanksgiving Day. Like last year, they’re opening at 6 A.M., and will keep the doors open for 42 consecutive hours until midnight on Saturday. Maybe if they keep the doors open for that long, someone will wander in.

According to a Sears Holdings press release, Kmart has opened its doors on Thanksgiving morning to Black Friday “early birds” for the last 22 years. Kmart’s sibling retailer Sears, meanwhile, is exercising restraint and good judgement in comparison, waiting twelve more hours to open up. It will stay open for only 30 consecutive hours, from 6 P.M. on Thanksgiving Day until the end of the day on Friday.

“This holiday season is all about giving more to our members and because many like to start shopping well before Black Friday, we’re excited to open our doors early on Thanksgiving and offer other early access opportunities for them to shop and save,” Sears Holdings Senior VP Leena Munjal is quoted saying. The company’s continued insistence on calling its shoppers “members” as if signing up for a rewards program confers special status is irritating, but Sears is actually doing something dangerous by opening up those “opportunities to shop and save” early. By “early,” they mean that Sears stores will begin offering a selection of Black Friday deals as part of its Friends & Family sale the evening of Sunday, November 9th. Yes, that’s this weekend. Yes, that’s two and a half weeks before Thanksgiving.

This kind of nonsense risks retail fatigue. At minimum, retailers marketing to extreme early birds at least risk the sort of backlash against Christmas Creep and the kickoff of holiday shopping in October that our ex-sister site Jezebel published today, pleading for marketers to maybe give us a break between Halloween and Christmas, instead of two full months of Santas and garlands.

As part of McDonald’s battle to appeal to customers by answering their questions about what’s in the chain’s food and addressing other rumors, there’s one image burned into many a McRib lovers’ minds that prompts the question, “What is this thing I’m stuffing down my throat made out of?” But again, if customers have to ask or express doubts about the food, McDonald’s is already losing the battle.

That photo from last year that went round and round on social media showing a frozen McRib patty before it’s cooked prompted reactions from, “Shrug, doesn’t everyone freeze their meat these days?” to “OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE TO MYSELF?”

In an effort to calm any McRib qualms customers might have, McDonald’s has posted a video featuring one of those McRib critics who shared the photo on Twitter last year, and the guy formerly of Mythbusters hired by the company ostensibly to put customers at ease with his nicely-tailored pants and blandly reassuring demeanor.

The video (via Eater) takes viewers from the cuts of pork used in the patties, through the forming process and yes, subsequent flash freezing, and all the way up to the point where the pork supplier tests the product by preparing the McRib just as it’d be done in the restaurant.

Is this a blatant PR move designed to lure customers back who might’ve turned their noses up at the McRib last holiday season? Definitely. But is it still interesting to see how the sausage gets made, proverbially speaking? Yeah, sure. Meanwhile, the return date for the McRib this year has yet to be set, so if you’re a fan, this might just make you torturously hungry.

No surprises here:

What did you do for the last 27 minutes of your life? It could not possibly have been as entertaining nor as fascinating as watching a 1949 informecial for a Vitamix that includes a recipe for a Carrot/Eggshell/Raisin smoothie.

In what I can only describe as the most intense healthy eating diatribe I have ever witnessed, there’s an intriguing video posted by Vitamix on YouTube that we came upon via @harrymccracken, which the description says stars Vitamix founder William G. “Papa” Barnard. He apparently “created the first infomercial in the U.S. to demonstrate how the Vitamix blender can help families eat healthier with whole foods.”

“Demonstrate” is a catch-all for Bernard’s 27-minute presentation of not only each ingredient in the health drink, but also a flowing account of all the horrible things mothers are serving their children, at the detriment of their health. Beware if you do decide to give up your time to Papa B that at times, his shrieks over the the crimes done to potatoes rival those of the Wicked Witch screeching at getting Dorothy and her little dog, too.

TL;DW VERSION
Because not everyone has 27 minutes to be mesmerized by Papa B’s obsession with Mother’s failure to feed her family healthy food, let me sum things up: There’s the merits of stainless steel based on its use on U.S. battleships and in hospitals for food preparation; lessons in bread crumbs and making whole wheat products with electricity; repeated displeasure with “mother” for cooking their families foods like mashed potatoes and butter carrots, resulting in the loss of teeth, eyeballs and tonsils; and the fact that worms know more than mother what the values of an apple’s skin is, which essentially makes her Eve with a paring knife, trying to unmake the work of God. Apple sauce? Ha. More like “assassinated apples,” Papa Bernard explains.

Also — lots of talk about laxatives.

The entire time, Bernard is adding ingredients to the smoothie’s base of water and orange juice. All and all, into the Vitamix goes: a carrot, an entire egg including the shell, raisins, peanuts, an apple, cucumber (a “natural diuretic!”, celery, lemon, ice cubes.

After crowing that there’s no more seeds, pulp or shells in the liquefied result of what I can only imagine tastes like how a a compost bin smells, Papa Bernard takes a big swig, smacks his lips and proclaims, “Ahh… Delicious!”

Don’t need 27 minutes to do something else more important today? Just see if you can hang with Papa B long enough to not throw up when he drinks that thing:

In what was definitely more of a sad, accidental trick than any sort of Halloween treat, an Arizona woman says she lost her wedding ring somewhere in the sea of candy she gave out Friday night to costumed kids. And though you might think it’s a long shot, she’s asking parents to check those trick-or-treat bags carefully.

If there’s one night where it’s acceptable for frenzied masses to crowd your doorstep clamoring for candy, it’s Halloween. And it was in that creepy chaos that the Mesa, AZ woman says lost her wedding ring.

She tells ABC 15 she’d put it for safekeeping in a candy jar while carving pumpkins with her daughters, and forgotten it was in there. During the craziness of handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, she accidentally dumped candy — and her ring — straight from the jar.

“When I first realized what had happened, I just lost my speech, I froze,” she said, adding that someone might not know they have the ring in their loot in the first place.

“I actually had plastic rings in there too, so it wouldn’t have felt much different,” she said.

It’s also not the financial loss she’s sad about — she and her husband couldn’t afford much when they got married when she was 20 — but the pricelessness of what it means after 10 years of marriage.

“If you were to try and pawn it or sell it you could probably get $50 for it. It’s not an expensive ring,” she said. “It’s my wedding ring, you know? I mean you could replace it but it’s not the same.”

Mesa candy lovers, start checking those loot bags.

Mesa woman loses wedding ring handing out candy [ABC 15]

A man delivering sheet rock to a construction site was killed Monday when a tape measure fell 50 stories and hit him on the head, authorities said.

A couple made Southwest Airlines history with in-flight nuptials Sunday.

You don't necessarily need a college degree to have a happy career, according to a recent review.

Arlington County will no longer ask many job applicants about their criminal record prior to an interview.

There are plenty of poisons and traps you can buy at the store, but here's a re-usable, highly effective trap you can make with an LED light and a two-liter soda bottle.

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We've highlighted a number of secret menu items over the years, from the Poor Man's Big Mac at McDonald's to the Chipotle Quesarito . If you can't get enough of these "insider" menus, #HackTheMenu is a great one stop shop for them.

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