pileofcrapola

There's nothing like a barbeque in your backyard once summer rolls around, or even a tandoor . But it does get hot out there. To keep things cool, set up a DIY water misting rack on the cheap.

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You get done with a long day of work and on your way home, you hit the grocery store to stock up on supplies. This everyday act might be burning a hole in your wallet and tricking you into making bad decisions.

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Electronics components range widely in size and function. From a beginner's point of view, it's hard to know where to start digging in. Programmer Christopher Pitt made a nice little beginner's guide over at Medium that runs through all the essentials to get you started.

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It's a long running joke that the cable guy is always late, or at the very least, makes you wait awkwardly by the door in two hour blocks of time. The Verge figured out why exactly that is by interviewing a bunch of different Comcast employees.

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Rooting around a cooler in the dark is annoying. For $5, Instructables user MechanicalMashup shows us how to add a light to your cooler that automatically turns on when opened.

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A few hours watching the Discovery Channel can prompt extreme survival fantasies involving frog licking and urine drinking, but what basic skills would you actually need to survive in the wilderness? Here's a look at the basics you need to become an adult Boy Scout straight from a cadre of survival experts.

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If you're learning to bake or just trying out a new recipe, it can be hard figuring out exactly why your cake failed. This handy chart will tell you why your cake ended up with cracks, browned edges, or why it has a runny texture.

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After this epic, torturous Comcast support call that went viral , getting better customer service has taken the limelight. You'll probably get better customer support if you go see someone one-on-one.

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Conventional wisdom says that clutter is bad. You've got a lot of junk laying around and you don't need all of it. However, as the Art of Manliness points out, reducing your stuff to the bare essentials may not be a luxury that poorer households can afford.

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Global brands like Apple vs. Google are pretty easy to learn about because we all know them. Local shops and restaurants are harder because they can go undiscovered. What are the best places in your area that make your life better?

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Whether it's cookies or cake you're baking, adding a touch of flair with your icing is tough without some tools. If you need some help prettying up your sweets, a plastic oral syringe will do the trick.

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Maybe we need to stop writing about the instances where you are not supposed to call emergency services, and instead we should make a list of the times when you are supposed to dial 9-1-1. For example, if you are in imminent danger. If your house is on fire. If someone nearby is having a life-threatening health problem. When you should not dial 9-1-1: Facebook is down.

We understand that you just have to talk to someone about it. Heck, we even felt the need to post when the site was out intermittently on Friday. However, we did not pick up the phone, partly because talking to real humans is terrifying, and partly because a social media outage is not a situation that the police should address.

Apparently, that did not stop people in the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, where Public Information Officer Burton Brink does not want to hear about your Facebook outage.

#Facebook is not a Law Enforcement issue, please don't call us about it being down, we don't know when FB will be back up!—
Sgt. Brink (@LASDBrink) August 01, 2014

Yes, he clarified later: this is a thing that really happened.

Yes we got calls #facebookdown That is why I sent out my previous msg to prevent them. Unk number received on 911 or reg number TY #LASD—
Sgt. Brink (@LASDBrink) August 01, 2014

The LASD is not to be confused with the Los Angeles Police Department, covering the city of Los Angeles, which reports that it did not receive any 911 calls about the Facebook outage.

LA residents call 911 when Facebook goes down [CNN]

Buying in bulk to save money seems like a good idea, but in practice it doesn’t work so well. Want proof? Check out these examples of unit prices that go up the more you buy. We call it Target Math, since the phenomenon happens often in Target stores. Not exclusively in Target stores, though, as you will see.

Reader Wilman sent us this photo from his local Walmart. I was unaware that orange juice came in shrink-wrapped two-packs. That seems very handy, but not when you have to pay 28¢ more for the same quantity.

Maybe that shrink-wrapping is worth an extra 28¢ to some consumers. Whatever they’re into, we guess.

Meanwhile, over at Wegmans, Max has something to clean all of that orange juice acid out of our mouths. Except not.

In this case, there are two different bottle sizes in the mix, possibly making matters even more confusing. Still, you can sort things out with some elementary school level math.

“If you don’t believe the unit price,” Max points out, 6L of the one on the left is four bottles for $27.96, while 6L of the item on the right is 6 bottles, or 3 x $9.49, or $28.47.”

Well…at least the unit prices are calculated correctly? Here’s a zoomed-in version of those shelf tags from Wegmans.

This is Reason #516 why I don’t have a car… While we understand why Parking Authority agents have to be coldhearted when someone comes rushing up to an expired meter, crying, “Please don’t ticket me! I was just coming out to put in more money…” we also think there has to be a few seconds of grace period between pulling up to a parking meter and being ticketed. But apparently not here in Philadelphia.

The Daily News has the story of a driver who says he was ticketed before he even had the chance to get out of his car and feed the meter.

“I pull up, take off my sunglasses, turn off the ignition and reach for a roll of quarters,” he tells the News. But by the time he got out of his car and walked the few feet to the meter, the PPA agent had already begun writing up the $36 ticket.

He says the officer asked him where he came from.

“From the driver’s seat,” responded the driver. “I assume you’re not giving me a ticket.”

To which, he claims, the officer answered, “Your meter has expired.”

The driver explained that he had just pulled into the spot, but the PPA officer told him, “Well, I’ve already processed the ticket,” and the only thing that could be done is for him to plead his case at a hearing.

When the Daily News contacted the PPA, the agency’s executive director said he’d never heard of a ticket being written so quickly.

“I don’t have anyone that is that quick,” he says, explaining that the PPA’s training includes looking to see if someone is in the car first. The director also says this particular officer, a 14-year vet, had no history of being too fast on the draw when it came to ticketing cars.

Like in a number of other cities, PPA tickets are now written electronically on wireless devices that automatically enter them into the system. Officers can cancel a ticket up until the last element is added on the form, but after that it’s apparently out of the officer’s hands.

The exec. director tells the Daily News that if the officer agrees after the fact that the ticket shouldn’t have been written, the driver can request a letter from PPA customer service.

From the archives, here’s reason #273 for my decision to be carless in Philadelphia.

Wawona Packing Company in California has expanded its recall of fruit that it processed and packaged during the months of June and July that may be contaminated with the foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes. The company has alerted consumers and retailers that all fruit packed at the facility between June 1 and when it shut down operations on July 17 are potentially contaminated, and that all fruit that has passed through the plant is potentially contaminated.

The original recall covered only certain lots of fruit packed between June 1 and July 12.

Pieces of fruit that came through the plant and may have been contaminated with Listeria were sold at a variety of grocery and warehouse chains ranging national warehouse retailers BJ’s and Costco to locally-owned, single-location grocers.

Since cooking or canning kills Listeria when done correctly, if you bought fruit from the period of potential contamination and canned it, it’s up to you whether to keep it around. The fruit shouldn’t be contaminated unless you are dangerously bad at canning.

How do you know whether you ate fruit that was part of this recall? Well…you don’t. Unless you save all of your fruit stickers and/or cartons, you cannot know for sure whether that the fruit you ate was affected. Do you remember eating an organic plum and then coming down with a stomach bug shortly afterward? If so, you may have eaten contaminated fruit.

The last thing that you want to do when you have a headache and gastrointestinal distress is get in the car and drive to the doctor, and that’s the problem. In order to confirm that you have a case of foodborne illness, your doctor and government agencies need to test your bodily fluids. They need samples of feces, blood, or spinal fluid (depending on which illness you have) to prove which strain of which pathogen has made you sick, which then is traced back to something that you ate.

Most people don’t run to the hospital or see their doctor for a one-day stomach bug, which is why the Food and Drug Administration, Wawona, retailers, and news outlets continue to report that there are no confirmed illnesses from this outbreak yet. The Listeria was found through routine testing, not reports of illness from consumers.

WAWONA PACKING CO. EXPANDS ITS VOLUNTARY RECALL OF FRESH, WHOLE PEACHES, PLUMS, NECTARINES, AND PLUOTS BECAUSE OF POSSIBLE HEALTH RISK [Press Release]

Between food, booze, flowers, decorations, and the millions of other tiny little things everyone has come to expect, weddings can be quite costly. One thing the bride and groom probably didn’t count on paying for: their guests’ negative online reviews of the hotel venue.

A Hudson, NY, inn now charges the bride and groom $500 for every negative review posted about the establishment on the internet, The New York Posts’ Page Six reports.

The boutique hotel’s website provides details about the fairly strict policy:

Please know that despite the fact that wedding couples love Hudson and our Inn, your friends and families may not. This is due to the fact that your guests may not understand what we offer…If your guests are looking for a Marriott type hotel they may not like it here.

Therefore: If you have booked the Inn for a wedding or other type of event anywhere in the region and given us a deposit of any kind for guests to stay at [The Hotel] there will be a $500 fine that will be deducted from your deposit for every negative review of [The Hotel] placed on any internet site by anyone in your party and/or attending your wedding or event.

The policy doesn’t just cover weddings that occur at the inn, either.

If you stay here to attend a wedding anywhere in the area and leave us a negative review on any internet site you agree to a $500 fine for each negative review.

The hotel notes that the fine will be refunded to the guest or the couple if the offending review is removed from the internet.

A post on the hotel’s Yelp page from November 2013 details the company’s attempts to have the former guest remove a negative review he made two months earlier.

The management of this hotel had the gall to email us twice to threaten us financially about the negative review!

Here is an excerpt from their first email:
“please note that your recent on-line review of our Inn will cost the wedding party that left us a deposit $500. This money be charged via the deposit they have left us unless/until it is removed. Any other or future reviews will also be charged to the wedding party (bride & groom) from the guarantee they have provided us.

Aside from charging for negative reviews, the hotel has other strict policies including canceling at your own risk.

The hotel states that it only accepts cancellations via email and will approve at its own discretion. However, the hotel can not make exceptions for any reason including “weather, family issues, personal issues, illness or anything that is not something we can control.”

Since the Page Six story appeared Monday morning the hotel has received considerable backlash from consumers on sites such as Facebook and Yelp.

Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online [New York Post Page Six]

We hate to conclude the week with a discouraging pet story, but there’s bad news out of John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City: airline workers lost a French family’s cat somewhere between Paris and New York. Update: Gyzmo was found on Saturday!

Gyzmo’s owners sent him on the flight because they’re moving to the United States in a few weeks. A family friend brought him along on her own trip, and he traveled as cargo.

The news that another cat is missing in JFK activated the Friends of Jack network, a group organized in memory of a cat lost in that airport in 2011 who died of injuries and malnutrition after spending two months on his own. The group, organized by a friend of Jack’s owner, organizes searches when an animal goes missing from an airport, and works to educate consumers and travelers about safe travel with pets.

Gothamist reports that airport officials know about the missing cat, and the Friends of Jack network say that they are trying to secure permission to bring a scent dog in to track Gyzmo. The first 24 hours are crucial in searching for an escaped animal.

Before you criticize the family friend who transported Gyzmo for checking the animal, note that the airline she used, French discount carrier XL Airways, has stricter limits than most American carriers on which animals can travel in the cabin.

“You are not allowed to take the cat with you in the plane if he weighs more than 3 kg,” she explained on Facebook. “Which is [under] 7 lbs. Gyzmo is 16 lbs.”

We will update you when we learn that Gyzmo has been found. Let’s hope that happens very soon.

UPDATE: Good news, cat fans: searchers found Gyzmo on Saturday afternoon, less than 48 hours after his escape.

Get out of here plain, boring white-colored vanilla ice cream, there’s a new, more vibrant vanilla in town. Or, at least, that’s the hope one physicist and entrepreneur has with his newest invention: invention: Color-changing ice cream.

Manuel Linares invented Xameleon, an ice cream that changes color as you eat it, Christian Science Monitor reports.

Here’s how it works:  The ice cream, which Linares says is made with all natural ingredients, is first sprayed with a “love elixir” that sets things in motion. The spray apparently acts to accelerate the color-changing action.

Next, the heat of your tongue and acidity of your saliva reacts with the recently sprayed ice cream to magically change the color from periwinkle blue to pink to purple.

While you can’t just spray any old ice cream to create the color-changing dessert, consumers who have tried Xameleon say it tastes tutti-frutti.

Linares tells CSMonitor that he was inspired by the glow-in-the-dark ice cream made by a British food inventor last year.

Although the ice cream sounds interesting, we won’t be getting a scoop anytime soon. That’s because it’s only available at Linares’ store in a tiny Spanish town. But there’s still hope — Linares hopes to expand the dessert in the future.

Color-changing ice cream: Mix a physicist, dairy, and ‘love elixir’ (+video) [Christian Science Monitor]

The United States isn’t responsible for everything that’s wrong with the world, but we certainly can accept the blame for one global menace: Holiday Creep. Specifically, Christmas Creep. Now the CBC is using the emergence of Christmas décor in July as evidence that Americans are nothing but soulless mall-romping monsters.

South of the border, we don’t even consider holiday-themed wrapping and decoration items on display at warehouse stores in July “news” anymore. Sure, it’s an example of Christmas Creep, but many readers have also pointed out to us (repeatedly) that small businesses use Costco for some of their supplies, and these small businesses need to buy Christmas ribbon in mid-July for some reason. Fine.

This is all new to the CBC, though, which interviewed ordinary Canadians shopping at Costco about the early appearance of wrapping paper. One shopper used the “small businesses shop at Costco, too” argument, and another complained that it’s too early, and he plans to buy his wrapping paper on December 24th.

A marketing professor at Simon Fraser University put the blame for Christmas Creep squarely where it belongs: America. We simply don’t celebrate Christmas the same way Canadians do, and American ownership of chains like Costco and Target means that our disgusting marketing schedules have crept north, too.

“In the United States, Christmas is not the family holiday that it is here. Christmas is an economic time for the retailers to make the money,” she explained to the CBC.

That’s not really how it works, though, is it? We’re buying presents for our friends and family and spending time with them. Sure, marketers want us to think that how much we spend on our family members is a direct proxy for how much we care about them, but most people are bright enough to see through that.

Besides, if you see the holiday season as an “economic time,” the flaw in that reasoning is that putting Christmas stuff out in July means that the season lasts almost half of the year.

Costco Christmas decorations already on sale – but is it too early? [CBC]

Trading in an old video game isn’t that complicated. Once you finally figure out what you did with the box (it’s under the old coffee mug) and get the cat hair off the disc and put the two together, it’s just a matter of bringing it down to your local GameStop and getting your pennies back so you can buy another game. But in one city, GameStop now won’t just collect your old games — they collect your fingerprints along with them, too.

In several states (including the one where yours truly used to work as a GameStop clerk), video game trade-ins are regulated under the same set of laws that apply to pawn shops. And since pawn shops are often used as a way to resell goods acquired in … questionable circumstances … it’s not uncommon for store staff to have to fill out a fairly detailed form, including verifying and recording information from the customer’s ID, in order to accept their trade.

Gaming news site Kotaku now reports that Philadelphia GameStop locations began scanning thumbprints, along with the rest, about a month ago.

Apparently, there are still too many hot goods moving around in Philadelphia. Local police asked GameStop to implement more stringent security measures, and so for approximately the last month GameStop stores in that city have been requiring fingerprints from customers who want to trade anything in.

A representative for the Philadelphia police told local media that the fingerprint scans are uploaded to the Leads Online database, which bills itself as “the nation’s largest online investigation system” for law enforcement to “recover stolen property, help stop meth makers, reduce metal theft, and solve crimes.”

The city told local media that the retail chain was not required to meet Philadelphia’s pawn shop standards, and that they were being proactive. However when a GameStop representative confirmed the fingerprint scanning requirement to Kotaku, she said that the retailer started taking prints at the request of the Philadelphia PD. She added, it’s “a practice we’ve also put into place in other parts of the U.S., depending on local or statewide second-hand dealer or pawn broker laws.”

Customers are unhappy with the policy change, and it’s not hard to understand why. One customer told local media, “I really don’t appreciate it. You fingerprinted me like I’m in a police district. No, I’m at a game store.”

The company is probably not also thrilled about the extra requirements. The majority of the chain’s sales and profits come from used games, not from new items. Anything that slows down and inconveniences customers looking to make trades doesn’t help the chain… but then again, neither does receiving stolen property.

Philadelphia GameStops Start Fingerprinting People Who Trade In Games [Kotaku]

Procter and Gamble own practically everything, it feels like. From pet food to Pepto-Bismol, Tide to tampons — P&G is in a zillion businesses. But today, the company announced that they want to be in many fewer businesses. Less than half of what they currently own, to be specific.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the company plans to drop over half of their brands, setting somewhere between 90 and 100 of them loose in the breeze.

But the thing about having a zillion brands (it really is a big list) is that half a zillion is still quite a lot. And those hundred or so brands P&G is dropping? They’re mostly the ones you’ve never heard of.

The company may currently own something close to 200 brands, but while Dawn and Duracell are household names in the United States, you really can’t say the same for Alomatik, Dodot, Fairy, Viakal, Mr. Proper, or Rindex (all real).

In fact 90% of the company’s profits come from just 50 of its existing brands, and those aren’t going anywhere. The company plans to focus on “70 to 80″ of its core brands, according to the WSJ.

Pantene, Pampers, and Prilosec are almost certainly all safe. You will be able to buy Bounty paper towels or Cover Girl mascara with no trouble, or Swiffer your kitchen floors and fix it with Fixodent. But if your favorite way to clean is one of the less-popular brands, there might be no Joy (or Myth, Gala, Fab, or Dash) in your future.

P&G to Shed More Than Half Its Brands [Wall Street Journal]

Bottlenose dolphin deaths in Virginia are declining.

Gabe: I’m finally back home after a bunch of traveling. Comic Con has changed a lot over the years. I think 2002 was the very first year we attended. We were guests at Kiko’s “Gameskin’s” booth. 2003 was the first year we actually had our own space. PA reader Nessa was one of the very first people to come see us and she snapped this picture. Look at those babies! Well I look like a baby, Tycho looks pretty much identical. For reference here is another pic snapped this year with PA reader Lauran who happens to be the very cool social media coordinator over at Lionhead. Somewhere…

Here’s the thing about zoos: Despite the fact that those wild animals are behind bars, they’re still wild animals. So no matter how fuzzy and furry that lion looks, it’s not a good idea to pet it unless a zookeeper says to go ahead and do so. But one Michigan woman claims that after she was allowed into a lion’s cage, she ended up losing part of her finger..

She tells WNEM.com that a zookeeper allowed her into the cage with the big cat over the weekend, and that the guide told her “yeah,” when she asked if she could pet it. But as she tried to pet it, she claims the lion ripped off part of her finger.

“I was totally in shock. I really didn’t believe that was part of my finger laying on the ground,”she said. “I put my hand down there to pet it and it ripped my finger.”

Afterward, she alleges that the staff tried to cover it up.

“They just told me not to tell. They told me to lie,” she claims.

But the owners of the zoo tell the news station that the woman went into an area where she wasn’t supposed to, and tried to pet the lion against the zookeeper’s warning.

“The lady went into the security area and was told by the guide to get back and the lady stated she wanted to touch the lion and continued, against the guide’s warning, to put her finger inside the fence and the lion nipped the end of her finger,” the owners said in an email to WNEM, adding that the zoo has posted warning signs and bite signs everywhere.

The woman says she’s considering legal action, although she wants the zoo to stay open. But if you’re ever tempted to stroke a flowing mane, don’t, she advises. Because everyone likes having full fingers.

“They are beautiful, but don’t do it,” she says.

Woman loses part of finger during lion attack [WNEM.com]

I’m not here to burst your happy grilling bubble, but come on — can you really consider yourself a master of the art of grilling if you haven’t tried cooking with hot lava? What about lightning? Maybe. But bending the forces of nature to do your culinary bidding? There’s no topping that, at least not yet. Call me when you beat an egg with a tornado.

Don’t feel too ashamed, my fellow normal people who do not have access to hot lava or lightning on demand, it’s not like Pat and Terry next door are going to top you anytime soon, as these two methods aren’t things anyone should be trying at home.

Over at DesignBoom, however, a video made by a London-based creative team knowns as Bompas & Parr shows how it could be done if you’ve got the right tools: An artificial volcano, allowing grillers to get molten hot liquid to 2,100 degrees using an industrial furnace, an ice flue and dry ice.

The resulting stream of hot lava flows beneath a normal grilling surface to cook steak and corn on the cob, basically instantly roasting both foods.

The B&P team also cooked with lightning, using a high-voltage laboratory that again, isn’t going to be easy to replicate but is super cool.

I don’t even have to warn you not to try this at home, because unless you happen to have the abovementioned tools or live on top of an active volcano (in which case you’d have other things to worry about besides ribeyes), you’re not going to be able to top Pat and Terry next door anyway. But it’s still fun to watch.

B&P Cook Out from robert wysocki on Vimeo.

Hash yer dothrae chek? Oh, I’m sorry, fellow equine enthusiast hanging out at this stable. I thought you might speak Dothraki. No fear, you’ll soon be able to learn all the phrases you need to pick up fellow horse lovers at the stable or tell your boss she reminds you of an enraged wild boar.

When George R.R. Martin created the Dothraki language for his Game of Thrones series of books, he didn’t build an entire vocabulary or grammar, but he did a good enough job that a linguist has expanded it to an actual language, reports CNET.

Language consultant David Peterson introduced a new Living Language course at San Diego Comic Con this week, a course based on the series that offers grammar lessons, pronunciation guides, vocabulary, and cultural notes that tell you exactly when and where you should use certain words.

“Living Language Dothraki” will sell for $19.99 starting on Oct. 7, with 200 words and phrase included. For an additional $10 you can buy an expanded online course, or a mobile app for an additional $3.99.

“I always like Dothraki because it’s non-European,” Peterson said, noting that its roots in mostly Arabic and Spanish really makes it roll off the tongue, especially with those trilling Rs.

“It’s great for picking people up,” he joked.

This is the first language he’s invented that was based entirely on someone else’s work — Martin started the process and Peterson says he’s kept the author’s structure.

“George R.R. Martin did an incredible job for someone who says he’s not a language guy,” he explains.

Beyond saying “how are you” to the hottie with the horse, which literally translates to “you ride well” — the best compliment a Dothraki could give — you can learn to call your annoying neighbor an “ifak” which means, “one who walks.” BURN! Thanks, Dothraki!

​Soon, you too will be able to learn Dothraki [CNET]

The cost of groceries can take a bite out of shoppers' budgets, but Consumer Reports has some tips to combat rising food prices and other costs at stores.

Court documents show the only son of former District of Columbia mayor Marion Barry has been jailed after he was caught driving on a revoked license.

When it comes to online shopping, Amazon is king. But for some items, shopping at the e-commerce site can cost you money.

I gave a short talk at W00tstock this year about animals in space.

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