pileofcrapola

Chapped lips never feel good. While moisturizing them with lip balm will go a long way towards making them feel better, you also need to get rid of the dead skin. Using a toothbrush on your lips can remove it.

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With thousands of new people entering the job market daily, you need to tap every available resource to stand out. The internet can help you hack into the minds of potential employers, if you know where to look.

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Speaking in front of a crowd, giving an important presentation, going to a job interview—they're all stressful and they can trigger anxiety and fear in even the most stalwart people. So how do you beat it back when you need to? One psychologist suggests the FEAR method, or "Focus, Expose, Approach, Rehearse."

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Off-contract phones are great, particularly if you want to save some money on your contract, or go prepaid. Fortunately, it's simpler than you think to know which devices are compatible with your network.

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Your office probably doesn't have a cold-brew system or a fancy kettle, but that doesn't mean you can't get a batch of cold-brewed tea while you work. All you need is a jar, tea bags, water and some time.

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When you're out hiking and need a small backpack for an emergency, a pair of pants can be quickly turned into a carrier with some extra cord or string, letting you carry your water bottle, lunch, or small supplies. Here is Ludvicka's Instructables guide:

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Sour cream and cottage cheese have a short shelf life, usually 7-10 days after being opened. But if you want to store one of them for longer, then all you need to do is invert the container and keep it in the fridge, says the One Pot Chef.

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Even though Walmart does not manufacture plastic gasoline cans, it does sell more of the cans than any other retailer in the country and it has been named as a defendant in dozens of lawsuits regarding exploding cans. And so the retail giant has reportedly agreed to fork over $25 million to cover its portion of a $161 million settlement that would close the book on a number of unresolved claims.

NBC News discovered this settlement proposal in bankruptcy court documents for Blitz USA, a company that had been the largest manufacturer of gas cans in the U.S.

Lawsuits filed against Blitz and Walmart allege that both companies knowingly sold an unsafe product. Specifically, the complaints charge that Blitz refused to add a “flame arrester” — a simple mesh disk or plastic disk with holes that is intended to reduce the likelihood of a flame traveling back into the can and causing an explosion.

The former Walmart buyer who had been responsible for purchasing gas cans testified in 2010 that even after the retailer had begun being named in explosion-related lawsuits, it did no tests on the products, leaving that responsibility in the hands of the manufacturers. A rep for the company admits to NBC that it did not ask Blitz to investigate the explosions or consider adding flame arresters.

But an attorney for numerous plaintiffs in these suits believes Walmart, which has been known to use its buying power to compel suppliers to make material changes to their products — and indeed Walmart did request that Blitz change its spouts after complaints about leakage — should have demanded that Blitz provide safer gas cans.

“You’re making money off of those cans. You have a responsibility at that point to investigate it, to do whatever is necessary, if you’re going to continue to sell the product,” explains the attorney.

A rep for Walmart released the following videotaped segment to NBC. It should be pointed out that the rep refers to the Consumer Product Safety Commission as the Consumer Protection Safety Commission…

Walmart says it is “waiting on experts,” like the CPSC and ASTM to determine whether flame arresters should be required.

In 2011, the CPSC chose to not require flame arresters on gas cans, points out Walmart. However, after NBC News reports that the Commission has recently reviewed the data and is asking manufacturers to now add flame arresters.

The folks at ASTM announced last week that 4 out of the 12 flame arrester designs it has tested effectively prevented flames from reaching the inside of the gas can.

As part of the settlement, none of the defendants are admitting they did anything wrong. A number of the incidents involved in these lawsuits included people pouring gasoline directly from the can onto a lit fire. The manufacturers and other defendants have maintained that this is not a product safety issue, but a matter of a consumer using the product in a dangerous fashion for which it was not intended.

What would you do with five kilograms (11 pounds) of the glorious choco-hazelnut spread Nutella? Jeff assumed that this isn’t even a reasonable question, because the giant jar at his local grocery store couldn’t possibly be real. Right? Nope. It’s real, it’s full of Nutella, and it costs sixty bucks.

Naturally, once he realized that the mega-jar was a real product for sale and not just a prop, he had to calculate the price per ounce for such a thing. Maybe you use a lot of Nutella and want the most cost-effective way to get huge quantities of the stuff into your roadside crepe stand.

Like with many far more normal bulk deals available in stores, though, buying more Nutella gets you a worse deal. It’s the fuzzy math phenomenon writ large. Really large. 11 pounds.

Jeff calculated that the bulk purchase was a better deal at the store’s regular price, but not when the small jars are on sale. They’re on sale now. Jeff laid out the math on his blog:

At $4.40 for 371 grams, you’ll get 5Kg for $59.30, 69 cents cheaper!

But this grocery is running a deal right now: 2 small jars for $7!

So at $7 for 742 grams (2*371 grams), 5Kg will cost $47.17, for a savings of almost $13. In other words, the bigger tub is actually marked up more than 25% from the smaller.

For that markup, you get the distinction of having a 5-kilogram Nutella tub in your home. It’s a tradeoff, really.

We were in the supermarket near us (Central Market) and I noticed this gigantic tub of Nutella. [Planet Jeffro]

When has enough time passed to turn a tragedy into just another day on the calendar to sell drink specials? Some marketers thought that the 72 years that have elapsed since October 7, 1941 was enough time that it’s OK to mention the anniversary in their marketing. One mention was pretty innocuous, the other…not as much.

First up was this innocuous-looking tweet from SpaghettiOs.

That’s not so bad, is it? Just a patriotic pasta ring asking americans to honor a day that changed our country forever, even if hardly anyone alive now remembers it.

As tone-deaf historical tweets go, this wasn’t even that bad. But comedian Patton Oswalt tweeted about it, leading many hilarious people to flex their Photoshopping fingers and add the SpaghettiO mascot to other important moments in history.

Spaghettio storms Iwo Jima http://t.co/3F8GTPiT6v—
Brandon Wall (@Walldo) December 07, 2013

@TreyStokes @Popehat @adamsteinbaugh http://t.co/lquJtH8AsU—
FightCopyrightTrolls (@fightcopytrolls) December 07, 2013

@jesseltaylor http://t.co/HZnQtR38Rq—
Adam Steinbaugh (@adamsteinbaugh) December 08, 2013

@petershankman this one's the one I'm most proud of. http://t.co/mIC5W3Gi4L—
Adam Steinbaugh (@adamsteinbaugh) December 09, 2013

This isn't the first time the @SpaghettiOs guy has shown up at inopportune times #UhOhSpaghettios http://t.co/g93ZSgpz94—
Benjamin Lipsman (@blipsman) December 07, 2013

http://t.co/3OF92xp6ga—
Adam Steinbaugh (@adamsteinbaugh) December 07, 2013

Remember Pearl Harbor. Remember SpaghettiOs. http://t.co/hRNXBbizBQ—
Matt Binder (@MattBinder) December 07, 2013

Eventually, the company deleted the tweet and apologized to anyone who happened to be offended.

We apologize for our recent tweet in remembrance of Pearl Harbor Day. We meant to pay respect, not to offend.—
  (@SpaghettiOs) December 07, 2013

But the Internet never forgets…at least not for maybe a week, until they latch on to something else.

A Chicago bar, meanwhile, took their December 7 promo to a different level, offering drink specials. No, not just any random drinks.

Not the way to remember a tragedy. http://t.co/JZk8kxFwYM—
Paul Sullivan (@PWSullivan) December 07, 2013

Bombs and kamikazes? How thoughtful. The bar behind this promotional marquee took it down quickly, almost as soon as complaints began to filter in, but not before someone snapped a photo.

As the image propagated on Twitter, the bar issued an apology on their Twitter feed.

Writing this post gave me another unrelated idea: has anyone ever tried to make a Bloody Mary-like drink with Spaghetti-Os? No? Well, my weekend plans just changed.

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Wrigleyville Bar Sign: ‘Remember Pearl Harbor With Bombs And Kamikazes’ [CBS Chicago]

For the longest time, the tax lien investment business — in which investors buy property tax liens from cities and counties and then collect on the debt (or foreclose on the homeowner) — primarily consisted of small, local investors looking for a relatively quick profit. But in the last two decades, larger companies have taken to buying up as many liens as possible and then shaking down homeowners for the debt and often thousands of dollars in fees. But just because these lien-buyers are bigger and operate in multiple states doesn’t mean they are any more legitimate.

The Washington Post has a fascinating, in-depth look at one Chicago-based company, Aeon Financial, which has purchased thousands of liens in D.C., Maryland, Kentucky, Iowa, and Ohio.

We say “Chicago-based,” but that’s really just where the company’s mailboxes are, reports the Post.

In recent years, Aeon has purchased thousands of liens in various states and in D.C., making a profit by tacking on substantial legal and other fees to the usually small lien amount.

Like one D.C. resident who found out he owed $500 on a condo parking space — not even the condo — after lien notices had mistakenly been sent to the previous owner.

He went to pay the $500 but then found the debt had been sold to Aeon, and the company now wanted $4,200 — more than eight times the original debt — to cover its legal fees.

And thus a 2-year legal battle began, with a judge ultimately deeming the $4,200 bill “excessive” and unnecessary” before knocking it down to $952.

The City Attorney General for D.C. filed suit against Aeon in 2009, claiming it was charging abusively high legal fees to consumers. That case is still pending. Lawyers for the city have been trying to suss out for years who exactly owns the company, but Aeon has repeatedly fought back, asking the court for a protective order to prevent it from being compelled to turn over financial documents that would reveal the ownership.

The best the Post could figure was that a Chicago-based lawyer, Mark Schwartz, is a key figure in the business.

Records from 2004 and 2005 list his sister as the manager of a company named Aeon Properties in Nevada and Maryland. Documents filed in 2011 in Kentucky list Schwartz as a director of Aeon and give his $1.7 million home in Vail, CO, as an address.

Another “owner” of the business is a company called Axis Investment Holdings Trust, which lists the same Chicago office as Aeon, and for which Schwartz is CEO. The office for both of these companies is held in the name of Records Direct, which is a subsidiary of Axis.

The true ownership of a company like Aeon isn’t just a matter of curiosity. On a consumer-facing level, the company’s lack of a place of business, reliable method of contact, and accountability to ownership can result in confusion for those receiving bills and notices from Aeon.

But there are also other legal concerns. For example, the Post points out that Aeon, under fire from officials in Cleveland for allowing foreclosed-upon properties to fall into disarray, managed to unload 83 of those properties in a single day to newly formed LLC. Did Aeon just shuffle these properties to another hand in order to get the city off its back? It’s hard to say without knowing exactly who owns the company.

“This is debt collecting that leads to the destruction of the lower economic level of the community,” said former D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles. “Anyone who would be behind that kind of scheme — and it was a well-thought-out scheme — I don’t think they would be very happy about their names being disclosed on the public record.”

Here at Consumerist, we’ve heard about practically every kind of creepy, crawly, grody thing/creature showing up where it shouldn’t, whether that means spiders in your grapes and bananas or urine in your Taco Bell nachos. But having a pair of spectacles show up in your jalapeño poppers? That could actually be useful.

Useful, perhaps, expected, definitely not. In a post on Reddit that claims “My mom found a pair of glasses in with her Jalapeno Poppers,” we see a cardboard box of poppers with a plastic bag in front of it. And look, inside the plastic, a pair of seeing eye goggles! What is the MEANING OF THIS?

There doesn’t seem to be an explanation, as the poster noted in the comments that the company didn’t seem to be perturbed: “‘Sorry, we’ll send you a coupon’ was the response from the company.”

“Better than ‘Please send them back, Susan can’t read without them,’ ” points out another astute commenter.

And hey, it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than buying prescription specs and frames and all that.

It’s worth pointing out, as of course the Reddit commenters have, that the whole photo could be a sham. Is that bag open? Couldn’t someone just slip the glasses in afterward and claim it came that way? I hope not because I prefer to believe that everything on the Internet is true.

Because terrorists may be secretly chatting with each other while also trying to level-up their paladins and warlocks, the National Security Agency thought it was a good idea to eavesdrop on online games like World of Warcraft and Second Life, and on gamers who used Xbox Live.

A joint report from the NY Times and ProPublica looks at the latest revelation from the NSA documents leaked by former government contractor Edward Snowden.

The idea is that these games, where players can hide behind characters but still openly communicate and even exchange funds, could be a potential place for terrorists and their supporters to communicate outside of the usual methods.

The apparent threat was so huge that folks from the CIA, FBI and the Dept. of Defense all needed to get in on the action. The documents say that a “deconfliction” group had to be created in order to minimize agents from stepping on each other’s virtual feet in Second Life.

There was also the hope that the agencies could use these online communities to recruit people — drivers for embassies, foreign intelligence agents, etc. — to provide information and access.

And it wasn’t just spies going online to kill orcs and whatnot. The NSA and intelligence officers from the UK were collecting vast amounts of data on users, including communications that took place between gamers.

But for all the work put into spying on gamers and collecting their data, the documents reportedly make little mention of any successful results.

Blizzard, the company that makes World of Warcraft says that any spying done on its users was done without the company’s permission.

“We are unaware of any surveillance taking place,” said a Blizzard rep to the Times. “If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission.”

Just to lighten the mood, let’s just pretend that the great Leeroy Jenkins was actually a top NSA spy gone rogue:

Gift cards can be a truly great gift…to the retail sector. While only 1% of gift cards go unredeemed, with about $116 billion in gift card sales annually, that’s more than $1 billion that we’re just leaving in a drawer until retailers take it back.

When you activate or re-load a gift card, the clock starts ticking. Thanks to 2009′s CARD Act, you have at least five years to spend a gift card after that point. Customers aren’t entitled to a full refund in the event that a company goes out of business. The smaller a company is, the better the odds are that they will disappear: about half of all small businesses close in their first five years.

Size is no guarantee that a company’s doors will stay open, of course: just ask everyone who was stuck with a Borders or KB Toys gift card.

$1 billion in gift cards go unredeemed [Marketwatch]

Someone at a Missouri Sonic Drive-in chose to express both their support for the Kansas City Chiefs and their utter ignorance by using the restaurant’s sign to post a message that combined nearly every offensive Native American stereotype into one garbled statement.

“‘KC CHIEFS’ WILL SCALP THE REDSKINS FEED THEM WHISKEY SEND – 2 – RESERVATION,” read the sign outside the Sonic in Belton, MO, referencing yesterday’s game between the Chiefs and the Redskins.

After a passerby snapped the above photo and posted it to Twitter, the story took off, with people calling for the sign to be removed and for Sonic to issue an apology.

“The remarks posted on this message board were wrong, offensive and unacceptable,” a rep for Sonic HQ tells NBC News. “In a misguided effort to support his football team an independent franchise owner allowed passion to override good judgment. The owner has reinforced with his employees the boundaries of what is acceptable and unacceptable. On behalf of the franchise owner and our entire brand we apologize for the offensive remarks.”

The rep says that there is an employee at this particular Sonic who has previously had a knack for posting funny message on the sign, but that this was an instance in which his humor apparently crossed the line. He also claims the sign was only posted for “a matter of hours.”

Yet another development in the tale of the New Jersey waitress who recently claimed that she was stiffed out of a tip by diners’ who disapproved of her being a lesbian. Over the weekend, the restaurant at the center of this story announced that the waitress is no longer an employee there.

In a post on its Facebook page, the restaurant states that “this is not a simple, straight-forward matter and we have conducted our own internal investigation.”

It also calls the results of that investigation “inconclusive as to exactly what happened” but then adds that “in light of the investigation and recent events,” the two parties have made a “joint decision that [the waitress] will no longer continue her employment at our restaurant. We wish her well in the future.”

Oddly enough, this announcement does little to clear up exactly what happened that night. The waitress made headlines around the world when she shared a photo of a receipt leaving her zero tip along with a note that said she was not receiving a gratuity because the customers did not approve of her lifestyle.

This resulted in a widespread outpouring of support. The waitress received thousands of dollars from people who felt she’d been unjustly stiffed on the bill. She stated that she would donate this money to the Wounded Warrior Project.

Then a family came forward — albeit anonymously — to say they were the diners who ate that meal, but that they not only didn’t leave that note on the receipt, they actually tipped $18. To prove their point, the family showed NBC News copies of their receipt and a copy of their credit card statement showing that they had been charged the full amount, including the tip, by the restaurant.

Following this rebuttal from the diners, supposed friends and colleagues of the waitress began speaking to various news outlets, calling into question other claims the waitress had made in the past.

And last week, a rep for Wounded Warrior could not locate any record of a donation from the waitress, causing some to wonder what had happened with the money she had promised to donate.

If the owners of the restaurant wanted to make this issue go away, their statement should have provided more detail. Instead, the vague tone of the announcement only serves to fuel more speculation about what may have actually occurred that evening.

When we received an e-mail from reader Ryan entitled, “The most brilliantly evil Christmas commercial ever made,” well, our interest was piqued. Surely that bar is very high.

“Basically Hallmark threatens Santa to die in a blizzard unless children beg their parents to buy the life saving ornament for $22.95,” Ryan writes. Is that what’s going on here? You be the judge.

In the commercial, Santa’s on someone’s roof, so his life isn’t in danger. The real danger apparently is that he won’t find your house without the ornament to use as a magical beacon. Surely a few people have asked for GPS units and smartphones for Christmas, though. Santa has my permission to tear the boxes of any of my gifts open if it will help him to find my house. I’m cool with that.

- As the captain of an oil platform supply boat in the Gulf of Mexico, Tom Wagner is no stranger to bumps and other movement while he sleeps. So when he nodded off on a flight from Louisiana to Houston, it was no surprise that the landing bounce didn't wake him.

- Violent dramas on the broadcast networks carry milder parental cautions than cable shows like "The Walking Dead" but can equal them in graphic gore, a failure of the TV ratings system, a new study found.

- Wisconsin's ultra-liberal capital city is a place where just about anything goes, from street parties to naked bike rides. But city officials say a business is pushing even Madison's boundaries by offering, of all things, hugs.

- The startup is housed in a garage-like space in San Francisco's tech-heavy South of Market neighborhood, but it isn't like most of its neighbors that develop software, websites and mobile-phone apps. Its mission is to find plant replacements for eggs.

- When insurance agent Kelly Fristoe recently spent 30 minutes helping a client pick a mid-level health plan and the federal marketplace website froze, he called the government's hotline and tried to finish the application. But the operator refused to credit Fristoe as an agent on the application, meaning he wouldn't get the commission or be listed as the follow-up contact if his client needed help again later.

time, experimental therapy several years ago and some remain cancer-free today. Now, at least six research groups have treated more than 120 patients with many types of blood and bone marrow cancers, with stunning results.

Poor Diva just can't catch a break. She's looking for a new home. Could your home be the one?

The weather and traffic gods may are not smiling on the D.C. region.

A team of Santa's helpers spread Christmas cheer to military veterans in Northern Virginia.

A 6-year-old boy who dreams of being an astronaut for NASA has taken matters into his own hands by starting an online petition to try and save NASA.

Police maintain that cellphone data can help solve crimes, track fugitives or abducted children - or even foil a terror attack.

A couple married just three weeks lured a Pennsylvania man to his death with a Craigslist ad because they wanted to kill someone together, police said.