Oct 13, 2017

A Road by any Name

The difference between names like street and avenue are the size of the path, what surrounds it, and how it intersects with other roads. Road is a general term for any throughway that connects two points. Streets and avenues are types of roads.

Streets are public roads that have buildings on both sides. They are often perpendicular to avenues, which historically were grander and wider. These days, the difference tends to be directional.

Denver, Colorado dictates that Streets run north-south and avenues run east-west.

In Manhattan, New York avenues run north-south and streets run east-west. In Washington, D.C., avenues run diagonal to the street grid.

Tucson, Arizona named some roads as stravenues, which run diagonal to the normal north-south/east-west grid.

Boulevards are grander than avenues and designed to funnel high-speed traffic away from residential and commercial streets. Boulevards have trees on either side and a sizable median.

Smaller roads are named way and they are a smaller side street that splits off from a road. A place has a dead end, as does a court (UK close), which usually ends in a cul-de-sac. A lane or byway is narrow and lacks a median, usually found in rural areas. A drive tends to wind around a natural landmark, like a mountain or a lake. A circle usually circles around an area and is an open road intersected by multiple roads.

Pinocchio

Was originally a book published during 1883. The story of the little wooden boy with a nose that grew if he told a lie was one of the best-selling books in the world, with 35 million copies sold.

Wireless Charging

To fully understand how wireless charging works takes understanding the concept of an electromagnetic field and electromagnetic induction. Electromagnetic induction is an energy transfer system, meaning that it can be stored or used.
Think of a person making waves with the rope, the other person will receive the waves as they travel down the rope. This is like electromagnetic induction: a force sends energy from one point to another. The base unit (powered by electricity) transmits energy to the smartphone via electromagnetic fields. The sensors on the smartphone recover the energy and channel it to the battery for storage.

Qi is the most popular wireless charging technology. It is not restricted to a particular manufacturer. Qi uses electromagnetic induction charging and magnetic resonance technology.

Kentucky Fried Recipe

A Sanders-signed copy of the recipe is inside a vault in KFC’s Louisville headquarters, and even the manufacturers do not know what goes into it. Half of the mix is made by Griffith Laboratories, and then it is sent to McCormick, where the rest of the mix is added.

What's in a Name, Knocker-Upper

There were a lot of ways to wake up before the alarm clock was invented. People living in towns had chimes from the church bells, and people living on farms had roosters to crow them awake. In some places, people made getting up in the morning a much stranger experience.
Native Americans would make sure they got up early by drinking as much water as physically possible before falling asleep. That way, the water would fill up their bladders while they were sleeping. Pretty soon, they would be so full that they needed to get up. So they would get up early.

In England, you could pay a “knocker-upper” to get you up in the morning. Your knocker-upper would come to your house first thing in the morning and bang on your window with a long stick. If he wanted to make his shilling, he would keep banging until you got up and shared with him the money (about 12 pence) and customary curse words of morning.

Boston Cream Pie

Armenian-French chef M. Sanzian was credited for creating the first Boston Cream Pie in 1856 at the Parker House Hotel. The dessert acquired its name when cakes and pies were cooked in the same pans, and the words were used interchangeably.
It is really a cake, a yellow butter cake that is filled with custard or cream and topped with chocolate glaze.


The Boston Cream Pie was proclaimed the official Massachusetts State Dessert on December 12, 1996.

Oct 6, 2017

Happy Friday

It is impossible to fill your heart with happiness, love, and joy. There is always room for more.

Expand your heart with happiness, love, and joy by celebrating a Happy Friday!

World Smile Day

Every year on the first Friday in October we celebrate World Smile Day. It was created by Harvey Ball, creator of the Smiley Face during 1963.


After his death, the “Harvey Ball World Smile Foundation” was created to honor his name and memory. The slogan of the Smile Foundation is “improving this world, one smile at a time.” The Foundation continues as the official sponsor of World Smile Day each year. It is easy to participate on this unofficial holiday. Just do acts of kindness to spread good will and cheer.

Smile, it improves your beauty 1,000%.


Also on this day is German-American Day. It first gained a spot on US calendars over 130 years ago. An annual holiday on October 6th, it marks the day in 1683 when 13 German families arrived in Philadelphia to set up home. Of course, there was no Germany until 1871, instead separate German-speaking states mostly ruled themselves as parts of the Catholic Holy Roman Empire.

National Emergency Nurses Day

Wednesday, October 11, 2018. Show them some love. They have an extremely difficult job and deserve much credit.

National Pizza Month

This month, October is the one for the Pizza goodness. Have it your way, but please no pineapple.

Debit vs. Credit Card Liability

Most credit cards offer fraud liability, which means you will not be out any money, or at least not more than fifty dollars if you are a victim of fraud or theft. Of course, you need to be current on your payments and are required to report any loss or theft as soon as you discover it.

Debit card users need to notify the bank or credit union within two business days of discovering the loss or theft of the card. The bank or credit union cannot hold you responsible for more than the amount of any unauthorized transactions or $50, whichever is less. Also for debit cards, if you wait more than two days, but fewer than 60 days after receiving your statement, you can be liable for up to $500 in charges. If you wait more than 60 days to report debit card fraud/theft, you could be liable for all the money taken, plus funds in a savings or other account linked to your debit account.


A recent survey showed 66 percent of Americans say they are more likely to trust debit cards than credit cards. Those folks should think a bit more about what it could cost them to use a debit card vs. a credit card.

Nine Hot Dog Facts

The hot dog is as quintessentially American a food as any other, and one of the staples of summer cookouts. Even though the long days of Summer are fading, hot dogs are still a wonderful treat.

During the 1690s – Legend is that the popular sausage was created by Johann Georghehner, a butcher living in Coburg, Germany. It is said that he later traveled to Frankfurt to promote his new product.

During the early 1800s, the people of Vienna (Wien), Austria point to the term “wiener” to prove their claim as the birthplace of the hot dog. It is said that the master sausage maker who made the first wiener got his early training in Frankfurt, Germany. He called his sausage the wiener-frankfurter, but it was generally known as “wienerwurst.” The wiener comes from Wien (the German name of Vienna) and wurst meaning sausage in German.

Did you know the difference between a wiener and a frankfurter? Wieners are a mixture of pork and beef. Frankfurters are made entirely with pork. Seasonings may include coriander, garlic, ground mustard, nutmeg, salt, sugar, and white pepper.

Wieners and frankfurters do not become hot dogs until someone puts them in a roll or a bun. During the late 1800s, a German peddler, Antonoine Feuchtwanger, sold hot sausages in the streets of St. Louis, Missouri. He had his brother-in-law to make up soft rolls, slit longways to fit the meat he called red hots.

Singing waiters named Eddie Cantor and Jimmy Durante convinced Nathan Handwerker to go into business on his own selling hot dogs for five cents. Thus was born Nathan's.

Hebrew National are 97% Fat Free Beef Franks (not frankfurter).

In Dubai, they have camel meat hot dogs.

The earliest use of the term “hot dog” appeared in the December 31, 1892 edition of the Paterson (New Jersey) Daily Press. The story was about a local traveling vendor known as “Hot Dog Morris.”

Michigan hot dogs are popular in upstate New York. Coney Island hot dogs are popular in Michigan. New York System dogs are popular in Rhode Island. Texas hot dogs are popular in New York and Pennsylvania, but not Texas. Skin or no skin, dogs are still a favorite. I prefer a solid skin pop when I bite down on a hot dog.

Blackboards

Though the term blackboard has a color in its name, most of them are now not actually black. We still use the term interchangeably with chalkboards. Now they are more often green.
A few hundred years ago, blackboards were black. They were large boards of connected slates that teachers could write on for the whole class to see. The name blackboard was not used until 1815. They were usually made with slate, but in rural areas, they were often wooden boards painted dark with egg whites mixed with the remains of charred potatoes. Later, they were also made of wood darkened with a commercially made porcelain-based ink.
During the 20th century, manufacturers began to make chalkboards using a green, porcelain enameled paint on a steel base. By the 1960s, the green chalkboard trend was becoming universal. Teachers had discovered that a different colored paint was a lot more comfortable to stare at all day, because green porcelain paint cut down on glare.

During the 1990s, schools began converting their classrooms to whiteboards, which produce less dust and eliminate that telltale screeching noise.

Did You Know

Harry Truman was the only president of the 20th century without a college degree.