Spring Cleaning with Beer

Wash wooden furniture to get the winter grime off, then pour a bit of flat beer onto a microfiber or soft cloth and rub it onto the surface of your favorite outdoor wood furniture. It works like a traditional furniture polish product, removing the dullness of years of wear and tear and instilling a shining, rich color. Works indoors. also.

Block My Name

If you do not want someone to know you are calling them. Just type *67 or #31# before the ten-digit mobile number of the person you are calling. Some providers will provide a confirmation beep or tone after you dial *67, so wait for the regular dial tone to return before dialing the 10-digit number you wish to call. Some countries have different codes, such as 141 in the United Kingdom or 1831 in Australia.

Drive C

Early PCs did not come with internal storage devices due to the expense. Instead, they generally had some form of a floppy disk reader, such as those used to read 5 1/4″ floppy disks, initially labeled as “A” in MS-DOS and certain other operating systems.

Some systems came with two such floppy disk drives necessitating the need for a “B”. When the 3.5″ floppy disk was commonly added, using both “A” and “B” for floppy drives was firmly entrenched.

When hard disk drives became standard in most PCs during the 1980s, since the first two letters were already commonly used for these floppy drives, they logically labeled the third storage device “C”, even though it now tended to be the main storage for the computer.

Even though no longer used, the drive designation remains, with A and B not used. Now you can easily change, remove or add drive letters for both physical and logical drives.

Freddie Mercury

Was just discussing Zoroastrianism with friends a few nights ago and it reminded me of this. The late Farrokh Bulsara (Freddie Mercury) was proud of his Zoroastrian heritage. “I’ll always walk around like a Persian popinjay and no one’s gonna stop me, honey,”  he once said. His sister Karishma Cooke also talked about the role of Zoroastrianism in the family. “We as a family were very proud of being Zoroastrian. I think what [Freddie’s] Zoroastrian faith gave him was to work hard, to persevere, and to follow your dreams.”

Texas Rangers Food

It is baseball season again and the Texas Rangers are changing their famous “Boomstick” and taking it up a notch for the 2017 season.

Here is the “Most Valuable Tamale”, a 2-foot tamale filled with the Rangers’ 24-inch “Boomstick” hot dog and covered with all sorts of foodie goodies.

Hottest Planet

Even though it is not closest to the sun (Mercury is), the hottest planet in our Solar system is Venus, second closest. The average temperature on the Venus does not go below 462 degrees while that of Mercury reaches only up to 420 degrees.

Taxi Medallion Value

New York taxi medallions that are tightly regulated by the city and allow yellow cabs to legally pick up fares on the streets have drastically come down in value during the past three years. The tags sunk from about $1.05 million in 2014 to $241,000 for one sold during March 2017. The main cause is rivals Uber, Lyft, Via, and Gett.

Also, during March, Philadelphia Parking Authority, which regulates the city's taxi industry, sold new medallions for $80,000  falling from last year with an initial asking price of $475,000, but received no bids. The value of taxi medallions in other cities, such as Boston and Chicago have also fallen sharply.

Good Neighbors

The Canada–United States border officially known as the International Boundary, is the longest international border in the world between two countries. Eight Canadian provinces and territories and thirteen US states are located along the border.

At one point the border between Canada on the north and the US runs through the villages of Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec - and though the middle of the town library.

It physically snakes through side streets, in and out of houses, through the public library, and straight down the middle of a main road that residents affectionately call “Canusa Avenue." An apartment building in town has two addresses, one for each country.

Incidentally, Canada borders are east, west, north, and south of the US. In Alaska, Canada is directly East. In many northern US continental states, Canada is directly North. In Maine, it is directly West and North. In Detroit, Michigan, Canada is directly South. Part of Washington State is both North and South of Canada. See my blog  LINK

Happy Friday

“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I always try to be kind, especially on a Happy Friday!