Jan 25, 2019

Streaming Outpaces Cable TV

Streaming video services already outpace pay TV in US homes with broadband (about 80 percent of all US homes. More than three-fourths of those homes (76.4 percent) use a streaming service like Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu, etc., according to research from The Diffusion Group.

Slightly fewer broadband homes, 74 percent, have a traditional pay TV service from a cable, satellite, or fiber provider. Another 8 percent use a net-distributed service, such as DirecTV Now or Sling TV. The Diffusion Group found in its survey of 2,000 US adults with broadband service, "Despite subscriber growth for virtual pay TV services, they will not be enough to overcome declines in legacy services," said Michael Greeson, Diffusion Group's president and co-founder. "We see the entire pay TV sector slowly declining in the next five years."

Jan 18, 2019

Happy Friday

Anticipating tomorrow causes us to ignore today.

Be happy and enjoy this Happy Friday, next week will bring another!

Happy Thesaurus Day

Peter Mark Roget, the author of Roget’s Thesaurus, was born on January 18, 1779. In 1840, Roget retired from a successful career in medicine and spent the rest of his life working on “Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases.” He published his dictionary of synonyms in 1852. Since then, it has never been out of print.

The word “thesaurus” is Latin for 'treasure'. Roget’s original information included 15,000 words organized into primary categories, existence, relation, quantity, number, and time. Today the book boasts over 230,000 words, but it is still organized by ideas and concepts.

Lunar Eclipse Coming

A total lunar eclipse occurs when the moon and the sun are on exact opposite sides of Earth, according to NASA. When this happens, Earth blocks sunlight that normally reaches the moon. Instead of sunlight hitting the moon’s surface, Earth's shadow falls on it.
Starting at 9:36 p.m. EST Jan. 20, sky-watchers will notice a "little notch is taken out of the moon," according to Brian Murphy, director of Indiana's Holcomb Observatory & Planetarium and Butler University professor. "The moon starts to enter into the earth's shadow in a portion called the umbra when the sun is totally blocked out," he said. "Earth is moving from right to left through the shadow."

At 10:34 p.m., it moves into a partial eclipse, and starting at 11:41 p.m., the full eclipse begins; a maximum eclipse occurs at 12:12 a.m. Jan. 21. The total eclipse ends at 12:44 a.m.

Global Belly Laugh Day

Next Thursday, January 24 is Global Belly Laugh Day. Time to celebrate the gift of laughter. On January 24 at 1:24 p.m. (local time) smile, throw your arms in the air and laugh out loud. You will scare some people, amuse others, possibly make new friends, and generally have fun laughing out loud. Laughing out loud is good for your body and your soul.

Liver Facts

Our liver does everything from filtering blood, breaking down and absorbing fats, processing cholesterol, carbohydrates, and proteins. It stores glycogen, vitamins, and minerals. It detoxifies chemicals and metabolizes drugs. It is also one of the organs that break down old or damaged blood cells.


The liver plays a central role in all metabolic processes in the body. In fat metabolism the liver cells break down fats and produces energy. The liver also makes proteins important for blood clotting and other functions. The liver is the largest internal organ and is the only organ that can regenerate itself. However, repeated damage to it can eventually injure and scar it.

Wordology, Minuscule

This is a frequently misspelled word. It is not 'mini-scule'. It bears no linguistic relation to mini or miniature, but actually comes from the Latin minus, meaning “less.” Now that you know the 'minus' origin, it should be easy to remember the spelling of minuscule.

IBM and Weather

IBM’s new Global High-Resolution Atmospheric Forecasting System, or GRAF for short, is a global weather forecasting system that uses IBM supercomputers and taps into millions of previously untapped crowdsourced data to more accurately forecast weather around the world, by what IBM claims represents a nearly 200 percent improvement.
IBM owns The Weather Company. By relying on cell phone data from the Weather Channel app, in addition to traditional forms of weather data from balloons and weather station observations around the world, GRAF also draws on atmospheric data collected by planes and also ground pressure data from millions of cell phones that have the Weather Channel app.

Most smartphones have a barometer inside, which is used to help your phone’s fitness tracker figure out how many stairs you climbed. It has been useful for meteorologists for years, because pressure provides clues about storms. Using this additional phone data as a network of tiny pressure sensors opens up a world of forecast improvements. Some of this barometric work has been going on for a few years. LINK

Cheese King

Denver headquarters of Leprino Foods, sells mozzarella to Pizza Hut, Domino's, and Papa John's. It also sells cheese for ham-and-cheddar Hot Pockets, Stouffer's lasagna, and Smart Ones baked ziti, cheese cubes like pear flavor with nuts or Gorgonzola with pretzels. It even sells a dessert salted-caramel-flavored mozzarella wrapped in hot dough, rolled in cinnamon sugar. The company's lactose and whey powders are used for protein bars, Yoplait yogurt, Pillsbury Toaster Strudel, and baby formula. In fact, Leprino Foods sells more than a billion pounds of cheese a year.

Taste Bud Tidbits

The taste cells in our taste buds live for only about two weeks.

Taste buds are not visible to the naked eye; the little bumps that can be seen on the tongue are actually papillae, taste buds rest on top of the papillae.

Jan 11, 2019

Happy Friday

If you appreciate who you are, you will never be unhappy.

If you appreciate who you are, you will always have a Happy Friday!

Body Mass Index (BMI) Origin

Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (pronounced Ket-eh-lay) was born into a middle-class family on February 22, 1796. He was a mathematician, astronomer, statistician, poet, dramatist, and one of the founders of sociology. Quetelet believed society could be analyzed without bias using statistics. He described this new academic field as social physics, believing it would reveal important patterns in human society. In 1832, Quetelet discovered in his mountains of data a relationship between height and weight in adults. “The weights of individuals of different height are nearly like the square of their height.” In 1972, the American physiologist Ancel Keys formed the view that the Quetelet Index was the best way to identify obese individuals and gave it a new name – the body mass index.

In 1985, the U.S. National Institutes of Health adopted the body mass index or BMI as a means of identifying underweight and overweight individuals. He died age 77 on February 17, 1874.

Hardee's Frisco Burger

Hardee’s Frisco Burger, one of the first fast-food burgers served with bacon, came out during 1992 and was a hit. It revived bacon as an ingredient, and convinced other fast-food companies to bacon-ize their burgers. Bloomberg called it "a momentous event for fast food, and bacon’s fate, in America."


Incidentally, Hardees was founded by Wilber Hardee and is now owned by CKE, owner of Carl's Jr. Because of the similarity to the name of popular Canadian chain Harvey’s, all Canadian locations of Hardee’s need to be called Carl’s Jr.

Tool Tips

Synthetic wine corks are great for sealing partially used tubes of caulk. Drill a 5/16-in. hole into the cork about 1 in. deep. It makes an airtight seal and is reusable.

Used six pack holders are great for storing things, such as caulk, spray paint cans, WD40 cans, etc.
To keep pictures level, use two hangers or use small rubber feet with adhesive back on each bottom corner.
Spring is coming, so save old newspapers to spread on the ground before you mulch. It is very effective to eliminate weeds and easily poked through for planting. It also will keep moisture in and decompose over time.
Dryer sheets can be reused twice, so save them for that second load of clothes.
Egg cartons are great for keeping the odd screws, bolts, and nails separated and handy. They are also great indoor plant starters to get ahead of spring.

A soap dispenser brush is not just for the kitchen. Keep one in the shower with dish soap that also works well for a quick tile cleanup.