COMPUTER COLONICS

It has made us all dumber.
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Flat Tax?

Farmers in Estonia are facing a new gas tax. But it might not be what you’re thinking. Cattle ranchers in the Eastern European country have started receiving notices that they will be taxed for methane gas emissions from their cows.

Cows produce large quantities of methane gas through belching and flatulence when they digest grass. Some environmental estimates say that cows account for 15-25 percent of the world’s gas emissions and a single cow can produce 350 liters of methane and up to 1,500 liters of carbon dioxide in a single say.

A spokesman for the country’s main opposition party — the People’s Union of Estonia — calls the new tax a “huge surprise.” There is no other European Union country that imposes a flatulence tax on its farmers.
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Do not keep your pets in the ocean. Someone will eat them.

Dear Neighbor a mile to the South,

I feel I must apologize for my son and my husband for the incident that occurred yesterday fifty yards off the dock three houses down from you. They were fishing up and down the bay and when they hit a particularly good spot, they stopped and threw an extra line in. In all they kept about four yellow tail snapper of legal size, even though they caught more. Both have their captain’s license and fishing license and they were a pretty good distance from shore. Still. You and your spouse came out and shouted at them that you owned that part of the bay and everything in it and that those fish were your pets. While it is true that waterfront property extends out under the water, technically you don’t own the fish in the water. Because you live three lots over, they weren’t – even if the property line extends all the way out to where they were – on your piece of the bay but that is no excuse.

You told them they were on private property and Dave respectfully disagreed. You told them that you were going to call the marine patrol and Dave asked you to call them and said he would wait for them to arrive. He clearly was way out of line. When you didn’t call the marine patrol or the police, but stood on the shore and called him and my son murderers – well – you were right. They murdered those four fish. Since you are an animal lover it might comfort you to know that, after my son filleted the fish he left them on the counter, Crystal the Wonder Dog ate them. So we did not even reap the benefits of this tragic crime, the dog did. Who knew she even liked sushi? We didn’t.

I can’t help but point out, though … you know that we (you, me, Dave, your spouse, my kids, etc) … we are all living in Islamorada “Fishing Capital of the World”, right? If you want to keep fish as pets, get a tank in your house, because more fishermen are going to come. It’s not their fault, really. It’s a tropical thing. I hope you can forgive them, they just really like to fish and unless you tag them with your name and address – well – in our house, if it swims and it’s tasty, it’s dinner … sometimes for the dog.

For you Google Reader users: I made a change to the feeds to only show the top few lines of each post because I sometimes have some hella long posts and I seem to have an aversion to the “More–>” option. Which would you rather? Should I set it back to the full post for the feed? Or do you prefer the short “quick see”?

For All Readers: CBS channel 4 is doing some marketing cross link thing that apears to be advertising more than anything else but I registered just to see. I think their widget is going to be too wide for my format so I doubt I’ll be able to use it, but I may experiment. If load times take a dive or it is annoying please tell me. the weather widget takes awhile to load I noticed. Any complaints?

So in the Cage we are throwing around recipes. The theme was to save money and Eva has some really good standard recipes designed to feed nine on a budget. I wish she’d blog them even if some are not hers. But. She mushes carrots and puts them in frick’n EVERYTHING! Sloppy Joes? Meat loaf? Who does that? Anyway. Here was my contribution. It’s not really money saving if you use the exact ingredients but it’s tasty.

My meatloaf recipee from what I can remember.

2 lbs ground sirloin
2 Eggs
3\4 cup Italian Bread Crumbs
One packet of Liptons Onion Soup Mix
one small can of tomato paste
4 tbl spoons Brown Mustard
1 tsp salt
whole nutmeg - grate about half into mix
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

Bake for an hour at 350 and the add topping

For top ketsup and brown sugar.

Bake for another 15 minutes.

Can also add fresh diced sweet onion, a little fresh garlic minced and mixed in well.

I seldom cook but when I do that is one of my favorite recipes.

If I Had My Life to Live Over: “

One of my favorite authors of all times is Erma Bombeck. She made us face our everyday lives with humor. It's always seemed to…

”

It’s a great reminder featuring one of my favorite authors.

I had to think a bit about what I would do if I had a do over, but a few things came to mind.

* I would have watched less TV. Not that I watch that much now, but man I’ve watched some brain cell killing shows when I could have been gardening or out to lunch with friends or writing more.

* I would have figured out a way to work from home sooner and more. As much as I love driving, I’ve missed quite a few kid things that I wish I hadn’t.

* I would have gone on more overnight boating trips.

* I definitely would have entertained a LOT more. I have virtually stopped entertaining over the past year and I need to get back to planning parties again.

* Even though it turned out to be great research for Snark and added extra, disturbing dimensions, I would have invested way less time and energy on certain blogs.

Man I need some resolutions. This post may be a work in progress today.

Once a month some time between the 4th and the 12th, my webhost takes down the server, blows out the vermin, and kick starts it back up again. It takes about an hour or so. If you’ve been trying to get on and couldn’t, that’s what was happening. It would be nice if they would send an email anouncing the date and time they are going to do this, but they don’t … and since they don’t charge me all that much I try not to care.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Update: It was a wee tad more than maintenance which ServerGrid says it doesn’t do so I have no clue why it goes down once a month. This month they had to take it all off line and rebuild the server array (RAID? They didn’t say.) 1:30 to 5:30 in the dead zone. Add that to all the other issues and GoDaddy Web hosting is looking pretty good to me right now. Does anyone else use GoDaddy as their web host? Any reviews if so?