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From the Pocono Record

John T. Finnegan, 37, of Stroudsburg, died on Monday, March 17. Raised in Acton, Mass., he was the beloved son of Gail and Robert Finnegan. He was the loving husband of Colleen Ann Capuano, with whom he celebrated nine years of marriage.

John was employed by QA Associates and served as a respected quality assurance engineer. John Finnegan was one of the founders of the New England Roleplaying Organization, a national Live Action Roleplaying group. He was the organization’s heart and soul, spending countless hours enhancing the gaming experience. Its customers benefited from John’s magnetic personality and his extraordinary creative talent for unique stories and unforgettable characters.

John graduated from St. Anselm College with a bachelor of arts degree in history. He was an avid reader of the fantasy and science fiction genres. He loved to spend time with his many friends, playing video games and especially Dungeons and Dragons. John could always be relied upon to offer a sympathetic ear or a shoulder to cry on.

In addition to his wife and parents, John is survived by his brother, Christian Finnegan, and his wife, Kambri Crews; his grandmother, Latrice Griffin; his brother-in-law, Patrick Capuano; his sister-in-law, Andrea Bacchi; father-in-law, Pat Capuano; mother-in-law, Laura Capuano; stepmother, Debra Finnegan; his stepsiblings, Matt and Sally McCracken, and Molly and Mirco Gaggiotti.

Visitation will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, March 21, at the funeral home. Additional visitation will be held from 11 a.m. until the time of the service, Saturday, March 22, at the funeral home. A Catholic prayers service will follow at 1 p.m. Saturday, March 22, from the Joseph J. Pula Funeral Home, 23 N. Ninth St., Stroudsburg, with the Rev. Fr. Thomas D. McLaughlin officiating. Cremation will follow the services.

In lieu of flowers and at the family’s request, donations may be made on behalf of his departed brother, Robert Finnegan Jr., to Children’s Hospital Trust, 1 Autumn St. No. 731, Boston, MA 02215-5301. Please attach a memo or note citing care of Robert Finnegan Jr.

:-(

Baking yeast packets at the supermarket: $3 for 3 0.25 oz packets. $64/lb

Bulk baking yeast: $2.29 for a 1lb brick. $2.29/lb

Packets cost 28 times as much. Yipe.

Smart and Final sells packets right next to bulk 1 lb containers. The packets cost $3 for 0.75 oz, the bulk costs $4 for 16 ounces. You do the math. Buy the bulk yeast. It freezes perfectly well after being opened for at least a year (I haven’t ever had to freeze it longer, I use it)

Costco, Sams Club and similar stores also have the 1lb brick of yeast. If you make more than 3 loaves of bread this year, it’s worth getting the large size. With my breadmaker, I make about 30 loaves/year.

Rainbow also has open bulk yeast.  Yeast generally lasts at least 1 year in the freezer… except for the yeast I got at Rainbow. I’m pretty sure it needs to be refrigerated and not frozen because twice now I got yeast there, made a loaf, froze the rest and the yeast was dead after. :-(

Click Here
By Lee C. Sonko

Last month, I told you about some websites you can visit to get off of junk postal mail and telemarketing lists. A few people have asked me how they can use those services without a computer. To get on the Federal Trade Commission’s National Do Not Call List, call 888-382-1222. Continue reading ‘Click Here January 2004: Junk Mail’ »

I just received this (wonderful) announcement. Put the PTDR on your calendar!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, please brace yourselves for the following
double-barreled announcement.

You Said It Would Not Happen!
You Said It Was Better Last Year!
You Said There Was No Way You Would Stand In Those Concession Lines Again

BUT IT DID. AND IT WASN’T. AND YOU WILL.

Assorted parties are PROUD to present

The One And Only

POWER TOOL DRAG RACES

TWO WEEKENDS. . eekends. . . eekends. . .eekends

At The Maker Faire. . .aire. . .aire. . aire

Maker Faire Bay Area
May 3rd and 4th 2008
http://makerfaire.com/

And then AGAIN at ACE! International Speedway. . .eedway. . .eedway. .
.eedway. . .

Continue reading ‘Power Tool Drag Races!’ »

I offer this in the spirit of a previous rant of mine, Megan’s Law Wouldn’t Have Saved Megan.

Remember Love Canal, that awful housing development where residents kept dying from Leukemia and shit in unexplainable numbers until someone figured out that the whole place was built on a chemical dump? This case was so serious that the government created a whole series of laws, commonly called “Superfund” to keep horrible things like this from happening.

The trouble is, it was –well known– that it was built on a chemical dump. Hooker Chemical had sold the land to the city under threat of the city just taking it by eminent domain. Hooker Chemical told them there were nasty chemicals down there and suggested that building a school and housing development on it wasn’t the best idea in the world. They even insisted on a disclaimer notice going into the bill of sale saying (I’m paraphrasing) “Dude, there’s some nasty shit down there. But you bought it so it’s not our problem any more.”

So the city turned around, poked some big leaky holes in the (previously) sealed and very dangerous landfill and had a school and housing development built on it, not telling anyone that there was nasty shit down there.

The purpose of Superfund is to clean up toxic waste sites where they couldn’t get the owner to pay for it. Well, we all know who the freaking owner is. There is a deed on record in (I presume) Niagara Falls City Hall. We know who the criminally negligent people are, why are they not in jail?

This originally pointed out to me by TJIC.

Click Here originally published December 2003 in The Panther

By Lee C. Sonko

“Spam, spam, spam, egg and spam.” The comedy troupe Monty Python’s Flying Circus performed a skit some 25 years ago where an unfortunate restaurant goer had no choice but to order a meal that had spam in it because that was pretty much all that was on the menu. If you haven’t seen the skit, I highly recommend it. It’s pretty darn funny. The name of that ham-inspired product has been co-opted by the computer world. Here is a definition of “spam” from the American Heritage Dictionary, “Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.” Continue reading ‘Click Here December 2003: Spam Spam Spam Egg and Spam’ »

… and the only access you have to the world is through a wire connected directly to this website.
This is what’s funny these days:

The whole craze started on January 11th, 2007.

Sure, it’s easy to upload your company’s videos and your friend’s videos to Youtube. It’s hosted for free and can stand virtually unlimited downloads. But I can do that right here at my web provider without giving my content to a third party… who -might- be around in 5 years and -might- keep the links to my content the same for 5 years, without selling out to Youtube’s advertising.

Yes, you’ll get more exposure by posting to Youtube. And using their limitless bandwidth for high-bandwidth applications is nice. But you should post locally and then consider posting to Youtube as part of your marketing plan or “emergency bandwidth plan”. Always link back to the original content. It’s just too easy to give the “keys to the store” to too many people.

Update 3-13-08: I just read this article about Youtube. It reminds me of Kozmo.com in the dot com era.

Rex Wong, chief executive of Next.TV (formerly Dave Networks)… says, it costs a provider about $2.50 for every 1,000 views of a user-generated three-minute video clip. But that clip will bring in just $1 or so in banner ad revenue, he says. In other words, says Wong, profit can only be made when clips are getting tens of thousands of views.

So let me get this straight: it costs $2.50 to serve 1,000 views… and that generates $1 in revenue. (1-2.5=-1.5) And if we do that a whole lot, we’ll make it up in volume! Yeah.

Books? Feh!