Category: Random Ramblings

Anything that catches my fancy as a topic I want to cover. Truly random crap.

Tips for clearing clutter

My wife and I are hoarders. We get stuff and have trouble doing away with it. This leads to a shamefully messy house, and excessive need for storage. We’ve tried all manner of overcoming the problem, but without a consistent effort, we pretty much fall back into over-collecting soon after clean-ups. I’m going to give it another shot, after having found Zen Habits’ 15 tips to declutter.

13. Internalize that your value is not in your “stuff”. It is just “stuff”. And realize that your value grows when you share your “stuff”. Hoarding is a selfish act.

I think this one really applies to me. I tend to buy when I’m stressed or down. Some people eat – I spend. Bad Randy.

1. Declutter for 15 minutes every day. It’s amazing how much you can get through if you just do it in small increments like this.

One of the reasons why I like this list so much is almost everything on there is as simple as this opening step. I can much more easily stick to it if it is easy and I can start with a low commitment. Much like I’ve been most successful sticking to day-after-day of frozen dinners with known calorie counts, I think I can be more successful decluttering and cleaning if I do small increments of clean-up daily with a room-by-room cleaning plan.

[tags]Declutter, Zen Habits, Cleaning[/tags]

Maker of Lipitor cites dubious study to keep patients from generic

We all know that medical care and especially drug costs are crazy high in the US. We’ve probably all heard the many commercials that recommend jumping from name-brand drugs to generic drugs. However, not all drug manufacturers find that to be a good idea. In an attempt to protect the big-money drug LipitorTM, representatives from Pfizer are citing a widely questioned study that indicates patients on generic cholesterol-blocker simvastatin die more often and have more heart attacks.

While simvastatin is not a generic equivalent for LipitorTM, it is a generic version of competing cholesterol-blocker ZocorTM. Studies other than the one Pfizer is referring to show that at the most commonly prescribed doses of LipitorTM, simvastatin is equally effective for most patients. Naturally, Pfizer representatives disagree.

The company has mounted a campaign that includes advertisements, lobbying efforts and a paid speaking tour by a former secretary of the federal Department of Health and Human Services. Pfizer is also promoting a study – whose findings many experts are questioning – that concluded that British patients who switched to simvastatin had more heart attacks and deaths than those who remained on Lipitor.

Naturally, the mighty dollar plays in here. And I do believe Pfizer has not only a right, but a duty to shareholders to try protecting such a big funding source. However, I think reliable science needs to be behind any claims used to try swaying opinions, and apparently the study in question may not be reliable science. We’ll just have to see how it turns out, I suppose.

I also take issue with the following claim from a Pfizer senior vice president:

Continue reading “Maker of Lipitor cites dubious study to keep patients from generic”

How long does your luck hold against dozens of rattlesnakes?

In a special show of stupid, a man nicknamed “The Texas Snake Man” has set a new (stupid) world record by sitting in a bathtub with 87 rattlesnakes. Real, live, fanged, venomous rattlesnakes.

Another day, another bizarre world record for Jackie Bibby, “The Texas Snake Man.” Bibby spent about 45 minutes in a see-through bathtub with 87 rattlesnakes Monday, shattering his own record by 12 snakes just in time for Guinness World Records Day, which is Thursday. The record was certified by a Guinness official.

. . .

The record was Bibby’s latest grab at glory. Last year he set a Guinness-certified record by holding 10 rattlesnakes by their tails in his mouth at once. He said he plans to break that record Tuesday by squeezing in an 11th.

I don’t mean this as an insensitive comment, but he might do well to ask Steve Irwin (nee The Crocodile Hunter) a bit about how long you can go around dangerous animals before your luck fails.

The article discusses other official and unofficial records held by Bibby, so head over to get the full scoop if you want to see how far someone can press their luck.

[tags]The Texas Snake Man, Rattlesnakes, Snakes – why did it have to be snakes?, World record[/tags]

Saudi marriage counseling

This is one of the oddest things I’ve seen recently. Marriage experts in Saudi Arabia are supposedly teaching men the “right way” to beat their wives.

“Admonish them – once, twice, three times, four times, ten times,” he advised. “If this doesn’t help, refuse to share their beds.”

And if that doesn’t work?

“Beat them,” one of his three young advisees responded.

There is more helpful information in the full article, if that isn’t enough to guide you.

[tags]Saudi, Marriage counseling, Beat your wife[/tags]

$50,000 corkscrew

For me, I can’t imagine $50,000 for any kind of screw, even if it’s with a amazonian-sized redhead dominatrix wearing stilettos and fishnet stockings who will sing Wagnerian opera to me while I’m tied up and getting whipped like the dirty dog I am (but hey, that’s just my thing). But for a platinum corkscrew with 18K gold hook, it really seems to define stupidity of excess.

corkscrew_12.jpg

I can’t even imagine having so much money available that this would seem like a good purchase. Anyone? (via boingboing gadgets)

[tags]Corkscrew, 18K gold, Excess, Stupid, Amazonian dominatrix[/tags]

Portal

OK, I’ve finally join the masses of gamers who have finished Portal. Color me very impressed. I started playing it because I understood it to be a first-person puzzler. I stopped around level 14 to play other games, but after reading high praise from so many other sources I finally came back and finished it today. The last 3-4 levels are just brilliant, and the gameplay portion after the last real level was very, very impressive. As so many others have done, I’ll pass on giving away the ending completely for those that haven’t finished it. I do recommend you finish it if you have the Orange Box and haven’t completed Portal yet.

Once I finished, I started looking at what others had to say about the game. This lead to stumbling on some YouTube Portal videos that are just great. Below the break, I’ll pop out a couple I really like. They are speed runs of some of the tougher or more puzzlish parts near the end.

Continue reading “Portal”

Genital piercing to protect virtue?

On one side of the story, we have the daughter who claims her genitals were forcibly pierced by her mother to “make it uncomfortable to have sex.” The mother says the girl agreed to the piercing to help rebuild trust.

Prosecutor Steve Maresca said the mother called on a friend to shave the girl’s head and do the piercing after realizing that she had been having sex, including with the mother’s boyfriend.

Wait a minute. I think I see the real problem here. All this over a boyfriend? Clearly the daughter is a dirty little whorish Lolita, trying to steal the love-toy away from frigid and impersonal mama. Mama should just say “No” to the boyfriend a little less often and he’ll be less tempted by the younger tramp. That, or just get her in bed for an especially nasty threesome.

As a bonus, I caught this advertisement with the story, which has the headline “Girl: Mom forced genitalia piercing”

piercing-could-happen-to-you

And I know it can happen – I just hope forced genital piercing doesn’t happen all that often. I couldn’t help but laugh at the close proximity of the ad and headline.

[tags]Genitalia, Forced piercing, Dirty little whore, Frigid, Lolita, It could happen[/tags]

GIMP finally hits 2.4

If you are into heavy-duty image editing, but can’t afford Photoshop, you are probably already familiar with GIMP, and already know version 2.4 was release last week. If you didn’t know that, well now you do, and you can head over to the GIMP website for the download. In honor of the release, the GIMP team has updated the website with a cool new look, too.

Developers, artists and user interface designers from all over the world worked together to make GIMP more powerful and easier to use than ever. The changes from version 2.2 are too numerous to list here, please check the Release Notes to get an overview.

If you want to try out GIMP, but can’t or don’t want to install it just yet, you could also try out GIMP portable from the PortableApps collection. The version there is not yet updated to 2.4, but it will be soon. This is actually how I run GIMP on most systems where I use it. It’s just so convenient to use it from a USB key or to copy a single directory to a local hard drive and run it. I’m getting really used to just running everything portable that I can.

One last bit of advice. While GIMP is powerful, it can be a little tough to grok the interface. I highly recommend Akkana Peck’s Beginning GIMP book. It makes easing into the program so simple, and exposes the power of GIMP early. I have no idea why it is out of stock everywhere, but I assure you it is worth having if you plan on working with GIMP. For more details on it, check out the book website the author’s web site or the book detail page at Apress (where you can buy the ebook version) for possible help tracking it down.

[tags]GIMP, Graphics, Image manipulation, PortableApps, Portable Apps[/tags]