From not just NBC ("Nothing But Commercials"), but also the usually far superior CBUT Canadian broadcast. Are men’s beach volleyball or traditional indoor gym volleyball Olympic events?

Stranded by a management-union dispute, my family had a sleep over in the airport as a result of United AIrlines pilots "sick out " canceling our flight.  Pilots were calling in sick in "retaliation to the airline’s plan to reduce its fleet size and furlough pilots" according to Aviation Week .

The pilots may think they are so clever for "sticking it" to management, but instead were "sticking it" to paying customers. After paying outrageously high airfare for a 3-day trip to a family reunion, we arrived a day late. We tried calling it a "sleep-over" and "camping" to generate some fun for our 4-year old son. He bought into it for about 15 minutes.

I have no symphathy for the pilots who use strong arm tactics where the customers incur the pain.  Plus, it even calls attention to the fact that they make more money than I do.  Trying to avoid layoffs?  Only aged professors have tenure.  Maybe there will be more layoffs after people stop flying United like the all the stranded people waiting in the customer service line for 2 hours with us claimed they would do.

The lawlessness continues in Belltown in another article about troubles in Belltown, a neighborhood of downtown Seattle. The final sentence is the best part:

All this in a part of town with million-dollar condos, foie gras and a brand new motto: "Come to Belltown, Get your bell rung."

A bit of lame trickery in the wine business. I bought 6 bottles of Pepperwood Grove Pinot Noir . Opened one bottle. Yuck. Thin, watery, simple. Tasted odd. Notes of fingernail polish.  Not good and certainly not tasting like a Pinot. Checked the bottles. In very small print, the labels reveal that 2 of the bottles are wine from Italy. The other 4 bottles are from Chile.

Long a California winemaker of bargain, but acceptable wines, Pepperwood Grove now appears to be merely a label slapped on generic imported wine from around the globe.  I had purchased 6 bottles because based on past experience with Pepperwood Grove, this would be a good wine to keep around for picnics and times when informal, easy wines were in order.

The Chilean wine was not as horrific as the Italian, but not much like a pinot. I paid little for the wines, but at any price, I feel ripped off because I was expecting a California wine and was duped.

I am done with Pepperwood Grove wines of any varietal.  A once reliable winery I no longer trust. It’s just marketing.

Excepts from an excellent article in a Seattle newspaper about neighborhood in downtown Seattle that could be absolutely wonderful. I used to live there and can say that the author is spot on about the total lameness of the situation. Hopefully articles like this one get the city’s attention.

It’s no secret – Second and Bell is an open-air drug bazaar, drawing people who use, deal or panhandle to score a high. The question is, why have Seattle officials shrugged off a problem that tourists complain about, al fresco diners dread and pedestrians see when they come across sidewalk drug deals.

This human circus is bringing Belltown down.

All while Seattle politicos are caught up in peripheral issues:

You’d think a mayor who wages war on plastic bags and nightclubs could find the political will to address this scourge in plain sight. Then again, this being Seattle, the mayor and City Council probably are preoccupied with how to free Tibet.

The open-air drug market is nothing new. About 10 years ago I was booted off a jury for a trial of an alleged drug dealer in Belltown. In questioning us prospective jurors, the public defender representing the accused asked if any of us thought we had ever witnessed a drug deal. Mine was one of only two hands raised. He pressed me for more details, challenging and trying to imply that I was imagining it.

He pressed me to give examples. I lived in Belltown at the time and had an easy time providing full descriptions and details. One example I gave was an old yellow pickup truck that dealt out of the bed of the truck using USPS priority mail envelopes. I even provided the model and make of the truck. It was amazing what I could see from my perch above the street from my apartment all while the "bad guys" thought no one was looking.

I relayed how several dealers used Microsoft bags emblazoned with tech conference logos to store their goods. Leftovers after the conference, these were nice bags I assume were donated to charitable causes to help the homeless.

Jaws dropped. The defender got stern with me then stopped and cut his losses.  One juror went on an on about the need to help those less fortunate and down on their luck.  I don’t live in la-la land and was surprised that the situation did not seem to be a problem. Please, City of Seattle, wake up before a vibrant, economically thriving community is ruined.

I love the comics. Using humor about lame hydrogenated oils (as well as the crap that is passed off as food) beats my rants.

I started a "Hydgrogenated Oils Wall of Shame " as a permanent page for products that contain hydrogenated oils and that are especially appealing to my 4-year old. This will be an ongoing effort that I’ll update because every trip to the grocery store seems to turn up another wall of shame product.

My inspiration was the frequent articles about how food manufacturers have done a great job ridding their products of hydrogenated oils and trans fats and how cities including New York, Philadelphia and others to are requiring restaurants to prepare all foods without trans fat.

Nor do I buy into the lame way that products containing hydrogenated oils can state they are free of trans fats on their nutritional labels as I ranted about in my Girl Scout cookie post .

I’ve stopped telling people that I’m in software. Inevitably, I’m asked stupid questions such as how to work some lame feature in Microsoft Office (I’m an OpenOffice guy), or something about Windows, or what computer to buy, or the very worst, something along the lines of:

Him: “My computer is running really slow lately. What do you think it is?”

Me: “Oh, lots of things can cause that.”

Him: “Like what?”

Me: “Oh, lots of things. Hardware. Software.”

Him: “Do you think I have a virus?”

Me (ugh, the dreaded “v”can of worms): “It’s possible.”

Him: “Can’t be. I’m always very careful.” (long pause) “Can I bring my laptop over so you can look at it?”

Me (what I’d like to say): “Sure, so long as you come over and fix up my messy life by straightening out my garage and home office, weeding my yard and scrubbing my bathrooms. No prob.”

Me (what I actually say): “You should have that looked at by a professional. Oh, I see someone I came here to talk to…”

From a reader who is a computer professional:

Totally lame: the sleazy sales guy at Best Buy who took advantage of my 70-year old mother who came in to look at computers. She said she likes to play computer games so you sold her an expensive, souped-up gamer machine and told her that she had to have it because anything else would be obsolete in a year. And she should buy it now because the price was going up and it was a great price because it was the last one in stock.

That computer game this little old lady likes to play is Microsoft solitaire. She also sends a few emails and looks up houses for sale on the internet. That’s the extent of her computer use.

Unfortunately, my mom lives several thousand miles away or I would have been with her. She lives on social security. There is a special place in hell for sleazy sales folks who take advantage of old people.

Another Girl Scout cookie season is upon us and the Girl Scout corporate decision makers are still OK with loading up Girl Scout cookies with hydrogenated oils. I’ve ranted about this practice in the past years and am disgusted that it is still business as before.

They are playing games. Hydrogenated oils equals trans fats. The box can say no trans fats even if the cookies contain trans fats. It works like this. Set the serving size to one cookie. If that cookie has less than 500 mg (half a gram) of trans fats, then the box can say in big, bold letters that it has no trans fats. Eat a box of cookies and you have eaten lots of trans fats.

Here is the lame spin provided by Girl Scouts.