pileofcrapola

The Dalai Lama is coming to Washington, D.C., this week and he'll be greeted by protesters.

- An Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race musher was flown to a hospital after a harrowing ordeal that included crashing his sled, hitting his head on a tree stump and getting knocked unconscious, and later falling through ice and breaking his ankle.

- The contractor working for New Jersey's largest utility at the site of a town house explosion that killed one resident recently had been fined more than $100,000 by safety regulators for problems at two other sites, but the utility said Wednesday it never had any problems with the construction firm.

One Maryland lawmaker wants to expand bans on smoking in bars and restaurants to electronic cigarettes, commonly referred to as "e-cigarettes."

- The Virginia Department of Forestry is improving its ability to respond to wildfires thanks to upgrades to its firefighting equipment.

Fairfax County Animal Watch Washington Post FAIRFAX COUNTY. No incidents were reported by the Animal Control Division of the Fairfax County Police Department. For information, call 703-246-2253. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry holds a lit candle as he lays roses atop the ...

Multi-vehicle crash snarls traffic in Manassas Inside NoVA Two helicopters were called in to take away injured patients after a pileup at University Boulevard and Va. 234 in Manassas. Posted: Wednesday, March 5, 2014 6:27 pm. Multi-vehicle crash snarls traffic in Manassas 0 comments. A crash involving a ...

Prince William County community calendar, March 6 to 12, 2014 Washington Post Thursday, March 6. County student art exhibit, works by elementary, middle- and high-school students from the central area of the county. 7 a.m.-6 p.m. weekdays, through March 14, Edward L. Kelly Leadership Center, 14715 Bristow Rd., Manassas. Free. School Delay Decision from Manassas Area SchoolsPatch.com all 8 news articles »

Prince William County news in brief Washington Post Drop, cover and hold for statewide tornado drill. The annual statewide tornado drill is scheduled for 9:45 a.m. Tuesday. Individuals, businesses and schools are encouraged to participate, Manassas City officials said. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry ... and more »

PotomacLocal.com

Manassas Mall under new management Inside NoVA Pyramid Management Group, which describes itself as “the largest developer/owner of shopping centers in the northeastern United States” has signed on as the mall's management company and this week took over all leasing, operating and managing tasks ... Flash CubePotomacLocal.com all 2 news articles »

PotomacLocal.com

Community Center Plans Summer Job Fair PotomacLocal.com MANASSAS PARK, Va. – The Manassas Park Community Center will hold a summer job fair for seasonal workers from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, March 8. The job fair will be held at the Manassas Park Community Center where on-the-spot interviews will be ...

If you want to apply a little design to your home, or just tidy it up with some well-placed and good looking upgrades or functional furniture, you don't have to break the bank. Whether your personal aesthetic skews modern and minimal, or rustic and ornamental, let's build a list of great, affordable design upgrades for any home.

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After losing my wallet every couple of months and getting myself into all sorts of trouble as a result, I decided to try out a Bluetooth locator and found a friend in the form of Wallet TrackR. It reminds me when my wallet's not near my phone and helps me locate it with a horrible beep if I need to track it down.

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Homemade pasta sauce is the best, but few of us have the time to make it regularly. When you want a fresher, more unique taste than what you can find in the stores, you can add some sauteed vegetables to bring out a crisp flavor.

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Saving money on groceries and making great, healthy food don't have to be mutually exclusive. You just need to plan your meals. Last week we asked you for the best tools for the job , then looked at the five best meal planning apps . Now we're back to feature the community favorite.

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Even as the East Coast continues to dig out of its latest snowpocalypse the country's more hospitable climes are already beginning to thaw out. And now that your garden no longer resembles tundra, it's time to dig in and get your plot ready for spring planting. Here's what you'll need to do.

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We all know having and raising a baby is expensive, but so many of the tons of baby supplies pushed at parents are just not necessary—and that includes accessories for nursing moms. US News rounded up several breastfeeding items that are just a waste of money.

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Of all the things that airline passengers should care about — schedules, airfares, fees, delays, weather, that guy across the row from you who refuses to put his shoes back on — one thing that shouldn’t matter at all is the pilot’s gender, as I’m pretty sure the Y chromosome contains no special aviation-related genetic information. And even if you do think that only brawny men named Rex or Ace should be flying your airplane, what is the point of leaving a nutty, angry note when your pilot happens to be a woman?

And yet a passenger on board a WestJet flight from Calgary to Victoria, BC, felt compelled to do just that, putting pen to napkin and expressing an anger so outdated that it would embarrass a caveman.

“The cockpit of an airliner is no place for a woman,” it reads. “A woman being a mother is the most honor, not as ‘captain.’”

It also appears to state that “were [sic] short mothers, not pilots,” and includes the helpful postscript directed at WestJet: “I wish WestJet could tell me a fair lady is at the helm so I can book another flight!”

The pilot reportedly responded in a Facebook post that has apparently since been deleted. According to Metro it read:

“To @David in 12E on my flight #463 from Calgary to Victoria today. It was my pleasure flying you safely to your destination. Thank you for the note you discreetly left me on your seat. You made sure to ask the flight attendants before we left if I had enough hours to be the Captain so safety is important to you, too. I have heard many comments from people throughout my 17 year career as a pilot. Most of them positive. Your note is, without a doubt, the funniest. It was a joke, right? RIGHT?? I thought, not. You were more than welcome to deplane when you heard I was a “fair lady.” You have that right. Funny, we all, us humans, have the same rights in this great free country of ours. Now, back to my most important role, being a mother.”

“I just couldn’t believe there are still people in this country that think like that,” the pilot told Metro. “It just shocked me.”

The folks at WestJet released a statement saying, “We’re enormously proud of the professionalism, skills, experience and expertise of our pilots, and we were very disappointed to find this note.”

Passenger’s sexist note left on WestJet flight stirs pilot’s heated response [Metro]

The White House has gotten its tab from Sprint for wiretapping expenses and is sending it back with a big old frowny face on it, saying the company is overcharging it by more than $21 million. And by “sending it back,” of course I mean it’s suing Sprint.

Feds claim in the lawsuit (PDF) that Sprint inflated charges by about 58% between 2007 and 2010, reports Wired.com.

“As alleged, Sprint over billed law enforcement agencies for carrying out court-ordered intercepts, causing a significant loss to the government’s limited resources,” said San Francisco U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag.

Under the Communications Assistance in Law Enforcement Act of 1994, telecommunications company must provide the government with wiretapping services when ordered to do so. But those companies don’t have to comply out of pocket and can recoup “reasonable expenses” incurred while wiretapping.

Not included in those, the government claims, are any expenses carriers ring up to modify “equipment, facilities or services” while complying with the 1994 law, under guidelines issued by the Federal Communications Commission in 2006.

“Despite the FCC’s clear and unambiguous ruling, Sprint knowingly included in its intercept charges the costs of financing modifications to equipment, facilities, and services installed to comply with CALEA,” according to the suit. “Because Sprint’s invoices for intercept charges did not identify the particular expenses for which it sought reimbursement, federal law enforcement agencies were unable to detect that Sprint was requesting reimbursement of these unallowable costs.”

But Sprint claims it’s just exercising its right to get those “reasonable costs” taken care of.

“Under the law, the government is required to reimburse Sprint for its reasonable costs incurred when assisting law enforcement agencies with electronic surveillance,” a Sprint spokesman. “The invoices Sprint has submitted to the government fully comply with the law. We have fully cooperated with this investigation and intend to defend this matter vigorously.”

Who knew the government’s complaints could be so similar to our very own consumer billing qualms?

Sprint Accused of Overcharging Feds Millions for Wiretapping [Wired.com]

When you hear the phrase “vast hidden network of cameras that scan license plates,” what do you think of? The police? The Department of Homeland Security? While the government and privacy advocates argue over government use of plate-scanning data, private companies are already collecting and selling that data with little regulation.

The Boston Globe’s BetaBoston brought this industry to our attention. There happens to be a bill up for discussion right now that would ban private-sector license plate data collection and scanning in Massachusetts.

The most logical private-sector application of this technology is to track down and collect cars with delinquent payments. Indeed, many cameras are mounted on tow trucks or unmarked cars belonging to recovery companies. Spotter cars love to check office parking lots during the day, and malls and sporting events on weekends and after hours.

Okay, but you’re current on your car payments, so you have nothing to worry about. Right? Nope. The plate-scanning companies don’t just erase all of that data. They’re keeping a massive database of which cars were in which locations at what time. Government entities have to purge their data, but private companies don’t. It’s all for sale. If you’re out driving or parked on the street, after all, your plate is visible to everyone. Cameras too. Here’s a visual primer on how it works.

“I fear that the proposed legislation would essentially create a safe haven in the Commonwealth for certain types of criminals, it would reduce the safety of our officers, and it could ultimately result in lives lost,” the vice president of marketing for Vigilant said in his testimony at a transportation committee meeting today. Vigilant just happens to be the parent company of Digital Recovery Network, or DRN, a company that sells plate-scanning cameras and the data they collect.

This has been really great for the recovery industry, and we don’t begrudge banks taking back cars once the owners have defaulted on their loans. Well, as long as they have the right car. It’s the “collecting and selling the data” thing that most people have more trouble with. DRN claims that it has scans about 40% of the vehicles in the United States at least every year, and competitor TLO brags that its cameras have probably seen every car in the country at least once, and they have a database of over a billion sightings of individual cars ready for companies to mine. Who’s searching this data? Who the hell knows? Private investigators can use it. So can insurance companies.

A vast hidden surveillance network runs across America, powered by the repo industry [BetaBoston]

Don’t you just hate it when you’re driving down the road, cruising the highways and byways as you please, when you suddenly realize you have a flat AND you don’t have any drugs left?* One Ohio woman is totally covered by her seven-month-old car that she bought new, because not only does she have a spare tire but she’s got a spare eight pounds of marijuana inside it.

When the Cleveland-area woman took her newish car into the dealership to replace a flat tire this week she was surprised to find out there was about $12,000 in pot hiding in the tire, reports Reuters.

Mechanics didn’t realize anything was amiss until after they’d installed the spare and heard a “loud thumping” as the woman drove off, police said. Probably because the marijuana fairies got scared and started smacking the sides to get out, if you ask me.

Upon closer inspection they found eight pounds of marijuana wrapped in plastic and stashed in the car, which the driver had bought new in August.

The driver hasn’t been charged with any crime — because who would get a spare installed if they knew there was a bunch of drugs in it? — and cops are now trying to trace back the pot to whoever supplied the parts or transported the vehicle.

And despite the fact that most of us don’t have drugs rattling around in our cars, the chief deputy of police says this isn’t the first time they’ve found marijuana in cars, and it likely won’t be the last.

“I’m sure it is not the only vehicle out there with this,” he said.

*Not condoning driving and drugs, this is a hypothetical, sarcastic situation.

You can follow MBQ on Twitter where she has absolutely nothing to say about cars or driving: @marybethquirk

Ohio driver finds $12,000 stash of marijuana in spare tire [Reuters]

Ooh, more exciting international snack food news! Down in Australia, they now have Vanilla Shake flavored M&Ms. Does that sound tempting? Well, it isn’t. People there report that they’re similar to the boring flavor profile of Birthday Cake M&Ms, which just taste like boring old milk chocolate M&Ms. [The Impulsive Buy]

While we totally understand that there’s nothing quite like the cheesey siren song of pizza after a few too many drinks, in no way, shape or form is it acceptable to try to burn down a pizzeria with homemade moonshine firebombs when you’re refused service.

Police in Eugene, Ore. say a couple that was cut off from pizza and told to leave a pizzeria because they were intoxicated came back later and tried to burn the whole place down, reports the Associated Press.

After kicking the couple out around 10 p.m., one employee tells KMTR.com that the man and his companion came back shortly after, and starting banging on the door “really hard, like the things on top of the door were falling off.”

Things got even worse when he allegedly tossed a planter through the window to break the door’s glass and came inside to wreak havoc while workers hid in the basement.

“I was on the phone downstairs crying with the cops, and was like you need to hurry, he’s upstairs in our restaurant!” she said. “I heard the glass crash, and I was like run! And we ran, and he was shutting the doors behind us through the restaurant.”

That’s when police say the suspect fashioned a wick from a curtain and stuffed it into a bottle of moonshine, setting the homemade Molotov cocktail on fire.

“I thought he was going to blow the place down,” the employee recalls. “I really thought he was going to hurt us, like – that was terrifying.”

Officers arrived on the scene and arrested the man and his companion on charges of arson and burglary.

And now they have no pizza and burned up all their moonshine, so the moral of the story is clearly that (attempted) arson doesn’t pay.

Couple who were refused service accused of setting Eugene pizzeria on fire with employees inside [Associated Press]
Duo accused of trying to set pizza parlor on fire [KMTR News]

One of the only possible bright sides of an interminable winter? Cooking up something delicious, warm and filling in your slow cooker or crockpot all day. Then come dinner time, filling your belly with not only food, but the sense of a job well done. But are you making the best stew/soup/casserole you could be?

To make sure you’re getting the most out of your slow cooker, we had the pleasure of talking to Jack Bishop, the editorial director of America’s Test Kitchen, who dispensed some very valuable nuggets of advice designed to maximize any recipe.

One of the biggest mistakes people make, he explains, is thinking you can just take whatever recipe you use to cook on the stove top or oven and think it’ll translate to a slow cooker.

“People often think, ‘Oh, I’ll just dump everything in and it will be fine!’ ” points out Bishop. “But different foods require different cooking times and so sometimes you end up with ingredients way overcooked or undercooked.”

Here’s how you can change everything.

1. Limit your liquids: There’s absolutely no evaporation in a slow cooker — it’s a sealed environment, Bishop points out, so it’s important not to use too much liquid or risk a watery, washed out result without much flavor.

“Most slow cooker recipes are better with less liquid than you would use if you were making the same thing in a pot on the stove,” he explains. “So that could mean draining the canned tomatoes and discarding that juice or it might mean using less broth than you normally would for a stew or a soup.”

2. Save your chicken from drowning: Bishops suggests putting chicken pieces in a foil packet — just take a piece of aluminum foil and wrap them in it — and then setting that on top of all the other ingredients in the slow cooker.

“That means that they cook a little bit more slowly because they’re not sitting in the liquid, and it allows you to make chicken soups and stews and other things with protecting the chicken somewhat.”

3. Give slow-cooking foods a jumpstart in the microwave: If you’ve got something that will take longer to cook — like red or new potatoes — throw them in the microwave for a minute or two before tossing them in the slow cooker.

“Microwaving a slow cooking vegetable allows you to then dump everything in the slow cooker together and have it come out tasting good with each item perfectly cooked,” explains Bishop.

4. Bloom those onions and herbs: If you just drop onions, garlic and dried herbs in the slow cooker, they tend to be kind of crunchy and the flavors are undeveloped. Bishop suggests tossing those ingredients in a bowl with a little bit of vegetable oil, maybe some tomato paste or red pepper flakes, depending on what you’re cooking, and microwaving them for a few minutes to soften the texture and get the flavors to bloom.

“For a lot of things like chills, or stews, it really adds that depth of flavor that’s sometimes missing from slow cooker recipes,” Bishop says.

(Yes, you can do this in a skillet or Dutch oven on the stove, but this way it’s one less pan to clean.)

5. More often low is better than high: Most slow cookers have two settings, Bishops says, and he’s found that the high can be awfully high, to the point where liquids almost start to boil and food can get blown apart, basically.

“If you want a beef stew with nice big chunks of beef, a lot of times the high setting can boil the meat and it dries out and sort of falls apart,” says Bishop. Low in general is better — and it gives you more time, so you can leave, and go to work and come back to it.

6. Use a foil sling to make lasagna, macaroni and cheese and other casseroles: Consider our minds blown — lasagna in a crockpot? Yup. Foil is your friend — use two pieces of foil placed perpendicularly in the slow cooker to make a sort of sling for your lasagna or casserole. Then when it comes time to remove it, you aren’t spooning it out, but transferring a complete dish to be cut and served. Magic.

Interested in that lasagna or looking for some other ideas? America’s Test Kitchen has a new cookbook dedicated to your crockpot, Slow Cooker Revolution, full of recipes designed to get you through the winter.

You can follow MBQ on Twitter where she will profess all things slow cooker to be mighty and beautiful: @marybethquirk

Like most folks, we here at Consumerist love a good deal. The problem is that sometimes stuff that appears to be a big money-saver is actually a big money-waster.

Enter the case of bulk purchases.

Conventional wisdom says if you buy more of something in one shot, you’ll get a discount. In many cases, it’s absolutely true. But in others, well, you’re sucked in to sucking at buying in bulk.

Here’s what you need to know.

Actually compare prices
You can’t just assume that a batch of products packaged together — a bulk buy — is cheaper than buying the items individually. It just ain’t so, and Consumerist readers have seen the fuzzy math time and time again, especially at Target, though it’s a problem at other retailers, too.

If you want to be a bulk purchaser, you need to invest time in research. Yes, research. Boots on the ground research.

Sure, it’s time-consuming, but you should spend a day surveying prices at the stores where you might buy bulk items rather than make assumptions.

Make a list of the items you might buy in bulk, or the ones you know you’ve seen at your favorite retailers, and visit each store to compare. Write down the prices for the bulk buys, and also write down the cost of buying the same item as a single. Then, do the same search online, and make sure to take shipping costs into account.

Do the math
My math capabilities aren’t stellar, but this one is simple. Divide the price of the bulk package by the number of individual items in the package. For example, if there are 12 paper towel rolls for $9.99, each one comes to a smidge over 83 cents a roll. (Admission: I used my calculator to be sure. No shame in that, she told herself.)

The bulk math is a tool you can use for any kind of purchase.

Then take that $.83 figure and compare it to what you’d pay for a single roll.

Then do the math for a three-pack or a six-pack of the same item, and bingo — you know if bulk pricing for that item, from that store, or which bulk item from which store, is worth your while.

If you have a coupon for the item, remember you’ll save more per unit if you use the coupon for a non-bulk purchase.

Be realistic about storage
No matter how great a deal is on any product, you first need to make sure you have space to store the items.

If you’re in a small apartment, you might want to keep your bulk buying to a minimum — unless you have other small apartment friends who want to split the bargain with you. Or, get creative. No one says you can’t store extra toilet paper next to your dishes in the kitchen cabinets if you have the space.

If you have a larger home with a basement or a garage, or even a second freezer, buy away if the price is right.

Be realistic about expiration dates
We know that misunderstanding “use-by” dates and plain-old expiration dates leads to lots of waste.

But still, bulk food can go bad, so use common sense when you buy. Those delicious looking loaves of bread that you can get three-for-one and those half-priced veggies aren’t worth the extra money if you can’t eat it all before it spoils.

There are times when bulk perishables make sense. If you buy a gazillion tomatoes, for example, and you plan to head home to make a few jumbo pots of sauce that you can freeze, that’s great. We don’t advise trying to freeze the tomatoes. Okay, well, you can freeze tomatoes, but that’s one bulk buy on which I’ll take a pass.

Bulk Specifics
So what is a good deal? Like we said, you have to shop around and do the math. Here’s the lowdown on some common items sold in bulk packaging.

Meat: When all that uncooked protein is on sale, you can save a bundle. Just make sure you have a plan to prepare it, or you have a very large freezer. But you can’t just chuck the meat in the freezer in the supermarket’s packaging. Take some time to store your mass meat the right way.

Paper products: It’s one of the most commonly bulk-packaged products, and it all depends on the math. Just don’t count on the bulk packaging as a promise of lower per-unit pricing.

Diapers: The pricing gods don’t seem to have fuzzy math when it comes to caring for a baby’s bottom. These are almost always cheaper when you buy in bulk, but we repeat: do the math.

Alcohol: When you’re done changing those diapers, you may want an adult beverage. And the pricing gods do have some sympathy, it seems, because alcohol is another slam dunk when you buy in bulk, and when you do it at a warehouse store, the store’s big buying power translates into even bigger discounts for customers.

Condoms: If the diapers haven’t scared you away from sex, or if the alcohol has made you more open to some, you can get a deal on condoms when you buy in bulk. For example, a pack of three Trojan-Enz condoms sells for about $5.99, or about $1.99 per condom, but a 36-pack of the same brand can be found on Amazon.com for only $11.95, or about 33 cents per condom. And expiration dates are usually four or five years out, so we’ll let you be the judge on whether yours will go bad or not.

Prescriptions: If you take any regular prescriptions, ask your doctor for a prescription for a 90-day supply rather than just 30 days. You’ll save on co-pays, and you’ll find some pharmacies have a cheaper per-pill price for bulk buys. Also, note that you don’t need to be a member of Costco nor Sam’s Club to get prescriptions filled at their pharmacies.

Big-ticket items: If you’re traveling and need train or plane tickets, or if you’re buying seats for a sporting event or Broadway (or other) show, you can find group discounts. Hotels will do the same. You can save 15 percent or more.

Insurance: It’s a different form of bulk pricing. If you insure your home and your car with the same company, you’ll get a discount.

Some Closing Thoughts
If you go bulk, just make sure you don’t buy big for an item you’ve never tried before. It really would suck to have six sticks of a deodorant that doesn’t work for you.

And if and when you choose to buy in bulk, just be prepared for occasional funny looks from your checkout clerk.

Have a topic you’d like to see covered in How To Not Suck? Or maybe you’re an expert who would like to share your insight with Consumerist readers? Send us a note at notsuck@consumerist.com.

You can read Karin Price Mueller’s stories for The Star-Ledger at NJ.com, follow her on Facebook, and on Twitter @kpmueller.

PREVIOUSLY ON HOW TO NOT SUCK:
How To Not Suck At Planning Your Wedding, Part 5: Spending Your Wedding Cash
How To Not Suck At Planning Your Wedding, Part 4: The Honeymoon
How To Not Suck At Planning Your Wedding, Part 3: The Costly Little Extras
How To Not Suck At Planning Your Wedding, Part 2: The Stuff People Pay Too Much For
How To Not Suck At Planning Your Wedding, Part 1: The Most Expensive Steps
How To Not Suck… At Teaching Your Kids About Money
How To Not Suck… At Valentine’s Day Gifts
How To Not Suck… At Merging Your Money When You Marry
How To Not Suck… At Borrowing For College
How To Not Suck… At Saving For College
How To Not Suck… At Pre-Paying For Your Funeral
How To Not Suck… At Making Financial New Year’s Resolutions
How To Not Suck… At Last-Minute Christmas Gifting
How To Not Suck… At Saving For The Holidays
How To Not Suck… At Charitable Giving
How To Not Suck… At Disputing Credit Report Errors
How To Not Suck… At Lowering Your Utility Bills
How To Not Suck… At Home Inspections
How To Not Suck… At Understanding Credit Card Rewards
How To Not Suck… At Getting Ready For Tax Season
How To Not Suck… At Picking A Retirement Plan
How To Not Suck… At Deciding When To DIY
How To Not Suck… At Getting Out Of Debt
How To Not Suck… At First Year College Budgets

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- A Baltimore police officer beat and choked his girlfriend's 7-month-old puppy and texted her a photo of the dog's body, authorities said Wednesday.

- Former District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry is set to be released from a rehabilitation facility after a 16-day stay.

Two Republican state lawmakers from Washington County want to make it crime not to report a dead body or death.

As soon as a snow emergency is declared in the city, the ticketing begins. And during Monday's snow storm, more than 1,000 drivers received tickets.

It's time to turn those clocks ahead and that means one less hour of sleep this week. Dr. Neal Maru has tricks to avoid missing that hour and reset your sleep schedule.