Mokka mit Schlag » Personal

I’m saddened this morning to find out that Robert Anton Wilson is dying, and is close to destitute. Support is needed. Paypal contributions can be sent to olgaceline@gmail.com. You can also send a check to RAW c/o Futique Trust, P.O. Box 3561, Santa Cruz, Ca 95063. Speaking as an author myself, while I’m sure he appreciates it if you buy his books, the time it takes for royalties to trickle through the system makes it unlikely that any such purchases will reach him before the end. Direct contributions are needed.
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I’m overly fond of Pillsbury Hungry Man Biscuits, which I’m sure means they’re incredibly bad for me. One can of 10 is roughly a day’s worth of calories. In Kentucky, Uncle Hamp used to buy cans of five biscuits each, which is a little more reasonable. However, all that seems to be sold in New York are cans of 10, and 10 is just way too many for one person. (My wife won’t touch them.)

Does anyone know a way to store the dough such that it’s still good the next week? or even the next day? Refrigeration doesn’t work. Freezing doesn’t work. Whatever I try, the second day biscuits fail to rise and end up tasting like half-burnt, gooey dough. How does the dough stay fresh in the pack in the first place? Airtight packaging? Any ideas?

I’ve been reading The Shangri-La Diet by Seth Roberts, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley. I’ve mostly managed to stay away from fad diets over the years, but this one got some unusual endorsements from people I respect including Kathy Sierra and the Freakonomics duo.

The basic idea is that twice a day you eat one to two hundred calories worth of sugar water or extra light olive oil. You must do this at least one hour after and one hour before eating or drinking anything else except water. Roberts claims this reduces your “set point” and thus reduces your appetite. Consequently you eat less, and lose weight.
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I’ve been on an organizing binge lately. I’ve thrown away maybe a metric ton of old paper, clothes, disks, software manuals, magazines, catalogs, books, obsolete and broken hardware, and more. I’ve got new shelves and filing cabinets in my office, which I can finally walk through for the first time in two years; and my desk is actually usable as a desk instead of the foundation layer of of a small mountain of random paper. I’m even catching up with bagging and boarding my comic book collection.

Today I’m going to tackle the last major stack of clutter in my office. Yes, I’m going through my e-mail inboxes. This could take a while. If you’ve sent me e-mail some time in the distant past, don’t be surprised if you get a response from me in the next week or two. Hopefully whatever I say will still be relevant. If not, well, I’ll try not to get so far behind again. :-)

Once again today I was assailed by a common spelling bug I see in code around the world. This example comes from PHP’s WASP:

can not write to 'compileDir'

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