Bacon Turkey

In case you missed it, here is a nice pic to make your mouth water all over again. 

Also, warm up your leftover turkey in the oven with a few strips of bacon draped on top. It enhances the flavor. Partially cook the bacon first, so you do not overheat the leftover turkey.

Update - Bud sent this along to one-up me -  Bacon covered Turducken, chicken stuffed in duck stuffed in a 15 lb. turkey, all nicely packaged in pork bacon. The bacon isn't just on the outside. The chicken pieces were wrapped in it then the duck was bundled in bacon, and then the turkey was lovingly covered in more bacon, resulting in a total of five pounds of the porcine product. Mmmm!

Recruiting With Bacon

Another reason why I love Google. This week, it set up tables outside of Amazon headquarters to recruit new employees.  It hired the ad agency Wexley School for Girls to find a solution.

They set up a food cart outside of Amazon.com’s headquarters and invited workers there to have some free bacon. A bunch of bacon lovers braved the rain for free strips of pepper bacon. They also had toppings of spray cheese, peanut butter, maple syrup and chocolate sauce.  Serious candidates can even get a bacon air freshener. How can you not appreciate the unique way to steal employees.

Shameless Self Promotion

Shameless Self Promotion - Last year I promised that I would put all my Friday Thoughts for the year in a book. I have been very busy until lately, but have finally managed to finish a book with all of the  2010 Friday Thoughts and another from 2009. Bloginalia 2010 and bloginalia 2009 are available on Amazon now. These facts never grow old, so don't let the title throw you.

In addition, Bloginalia 2011 will be out no later than February, as I have been adding to it weekly. Anyway, if you want a whole collection of interesting tidbits and facts to read while you are having a bacon sandwich, these might be just for you. Fun stuff and great Christmas stocking stuffers for kids and adults of any age. They will also be available on Kindle for those who need a bit of light reading while on the go. Thanks

Buying Technology

As we approach the buying season, here are a few tips to remember when buying technology. Memory (RAM) is more important than speed. Most do not use the full capacity of their computer, so getting more memory actually translates to more speed than chip speed.

Texting is more expensive than voice time, so watch your contract for cost of messages.

Buy the best components, and the cheapest cables, because all those claims about gold cables, ultra cables are almost meaningless.

When looking at cable plans, buy speed, not channels, because hundreds of those channels have nothing worth watching. Plus if cable internet is fast enough, you can watch more TV and videos on your PC for free. You can do like my brother and hook up your laptop to TV for Netflix movies. Wouldn't you like a 50 inch monitor to surf the net?

When it comes to TVs, remember that size really does matter. A larger screen is more enjoyable to watch than paying for faster refresh rate. Technology has come a long way and refresh rate is way less important than it used to be. Also, LED LCD is much better than LCD alone.

3D TV is an immature technology waiting for an audience, which will not likely happen until at least the next one or two generations. Save your money and wait.

Camera lenses are more important than the camera and most lenses can be re-used on next year's wizbang camera model.

Mark Twain

Happy Birthday next week to Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who was born on November 30, 1835.

Home Robots

Still time to buy a robot for Christmas. While Roomba vacuums your living room, Scooba is scrubbing the bathroom floor, Verro is power washing your pool, and Looj is clearing out your gutters. You can kick back, catch the game, and the house will be spic-and-span just in time for the party. Prices are coming down, too. A few hundred bucks for many and up to a few thousand for the really slick and sophisticated ones.

Millions of home robots have been sold and are busy every day. Ava, an autonomously-guided, mobile robotics platform that has a PC tablet, a smart phone, etc. for its brains. This mobile interface will allow us to become a night watchman, or see things that we currently can not, or anything we can think of, only limited by developers’ imaginations. This and others are all open platform, which means we can do our own programming and teach our bots to do our personal bidding. The home bots are coming and the next generation will be absolutely amazing. We will likely have to wait for a few years, but the trend is up.

Google and Facebook

Google will now begin adding Facebook comments that are public and your comments could end up in a Google search. One more reason to watch what you type on Facebook, especially when you type personal information or names. This stuff lasts forever on the web, so it pays to think ahead before you type.

Grating Butter

When you're buttering your bread, or other goodies, it is a pain when the butter is cold and hard. Instead of microwaving or waiting, you can solve the problem with a cheese grater. Grab your butter brick and grate it over whatever you're going to eat. This process generates a little bit of heat, but mainly the smaller pieces will melt faster and spread better when they hit your warm piece of toast or muffin. It works on bread for sandwiches and is also a good idea for baking.

Fenelon Funicular

The Fenelon Place Elevator in Dubuque, Iowa is an incline railway running 296 feet from bottom to top. It first went into business in 1882, and has been owned by the same family since 1912. It was originally built so workers could get up the hill quickly to go home for lunch. Now visitors take the one dollar ride up the hill for the scenic views.

This year, four inspectors from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) arrived in black vehicles to secure the 'railroad' and conduct inspections and investigations to prevent attacks.

To give you an idea of how far 296 feet is, the farthest baseball throw was 445 feet 10 inches by Glen Gorbous of Canada August 1, 1957 while playing with the St. Louis Cardinals Triple A team.

A funicular is a railway up the side of a mountain pulled by a moving cable and having counterbalancing ascending and descending cars. Yep, that's our government dollars at work. Oh, we are safe. They did not find any security threats or WMDs.

Organic News

True and funny. Nebraska troopers patrolling the state fair grounds in September told a woman that she had an "illegal" message on her T-shirt and that if she wished to remain at the fair, she would have to either change shirts or wear hers inside out. The message was a marijuana leaf picture with the slogan "Don't panic, It's organic." She was at the fair to attend the night's live concert starring self-proclaimed marijuana user Willie Nelson.

Thanksgiving

Don't forget next week is Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving to all.

PS - Here is a site for bacon wrapped turkey recipe.  LINK  Also, I read where some folks are beginning to add bacon and sausage to the stuffing for Turducken. Mmmm!

Who is Watching You

Each minute, 24 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube, and it is only one of many video sites. There are millions of photos uploaded to Facebook each month. Flicker has 5 Billion photos and there are hundreds of photo sites like it. Millions of people have iPhones and Androids with video and still cameras. Google Earth is constantly scanning the globe from satellite and you can actually zoom into a view of your own home. I found one site where you can compare pictures from today, side-by-side with the same location from many years ago.

There are many thousands of cameras in public places around the world. One site that I enjoy has a collection of cameras available from around the world and it has a search capability LINK. Earthcam has locations of cameras that you can watch what is going on in full detail, live, up-to-the-minute color, and in full screen. Get a view from the Statue of Liberty, or Trafalgar Square. Check out the ski conditions in Switzerland. How about a live view of Hong Kong, or Melbourne? There is even a camera to watch the penguins in Sarasota, Florida.

Dallas has hundreds of traffic cameras that you can click on and watch traffic and weather. If you know someone it going to work on I75, you can actually watch them drive all the way to work, using the many traffic cameras. You can even set up a list of personal cameras that you want to watch. If a spouse or friend calls and says there is an accident, you can check the cameras and tell them what happened. Of course, if they have their iPad, they can look it up themselves while they are at a dead standstill.

Be careful if you call and tell your boss you are stuck in traffic, he or she might just check the cameras to make sure you are telling the truth.

Planning a trip, check the weather and traffic cams set up in the city you are going to and get a close up look at weather and traffic conditions. Tie these together with Google Streetview and you can look up pictures of the building, neighborhood, or house you are looking for. If you are going on vacation almost anywhere in the world, let your family back home know where you will be and they can watch you on a local camera. Of course, you can just stream your own video from your phone.

It is fun, interesting, distracting, and a bit scary at the same time. Big brother, big sister, and their nieces and nephews, cousins, and neighbors are all watching. Smile, you are on camera!

Baconator Dumpling

Just saw this on the web, peanut butter baconator dumpling. Put a gob of peanut butter and some cooked chopped bacon in a potato dumpling and deep fry. Am searching to see if the cook is a long lost relative.

What's in a Name, Leotard

In 1859, twenty one year old Jules Leotard, made a public appearance as the world’s first flying trapeze artist. He was first to turn a somersault in mid-air and the first to jump from one trapeze to the next. He died at 28, likely from smallpox, typhoid, or cholera.

 
He also designed the eponymous piece of apparel for men. He called it a maillot, and the name leotard did not come into being until years after his death. The original leotard design was a skintight, one-piece garment with the lower portion resembling tights. Current designs do not have legs, but may be worn with tights. Unitards cover the torso and legs.

Jules had been practicing since he was a little boy. He would swing from a trapeze hanging over the swimming pool in his father’s gymnasium. The leotard is still worn by acrobats, dancers, skaters, and exercise enthusiasts throughout the world.

In 1867 George Leybourne wrote lyrics to the song "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" about Leotard,