Wow, two posts in three days! I'm on FIRE!

Actually, the only reason why I logged on today was to clean up the 200+ spam comments I noticed yesterday, and to edit my blogroll. (Added There, I Fixed It to the Sites I Like category. I love this site so much that I actually have the feed on my iGoogle page… right above Lolcats. Don't judge me.)

Anyway, I always get a kick out of seeing the spambot crap that shows up in the modertion queue. (That also reminds me… obviously my anti-spam comment filter-y thing is not working quite as well as I'd hoped. Maybe the words aren't hard enough? I'd love to see if spambots have dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane in their dictionaries.) Apparently spammers think I have a serious insomnia problem, because about 70% of the comments were for Zolpidem, a.k.a. Ambien. The other 30% believe I'm addicted to painkillers and are pushing me to buy Darvocet.

Guess I should rethink tagging all my posts with "I love prescription drugs." [kidding.]

A few weeks ago, I driving home from the barn, dying of thirst and completely out of water. I took quick detour to Giant and grabbed a Vitamin water drink, since I hate buying bottled water - might as well spend the money on something with flavor, right? (Side note: Vitamin Water 10 is gross. I know they glorify it because it's naturally flavored with Acai, but to me it tastes like Sweet N Low. Blech.)

Anyway, I pay for my drink, and the register spits out a receipt about as long as my forearm. Seriously? A 14 inch receipt for a $1.50 bottle of yuckiness?

The offending receipt.

The worst part is, if I had paid with a credit card, the receipt would have been 3 inches longer because they print out a separate CC portion. Ridiculous.

What's the big deal, you say. Here's my problem with it: Giant tries to pass off this image of being an environmentally friendly grocery store chain. They have the bins in front for recycling plastic bags, they sell reusable shopping bags, their stores are energy efficient, blah blah blah. However, they apparently don't seem to follow the whole idea of conserving paper. Every other grocery store I've been to uses at least half the amount of paper in their receipts. From what I've seen, they use smaller font, shorter line heights, no stupid logo, and generally don't put erroneous crap that no one reads (e.g., sub sandwich points).

Ideally, grocery stores would be like gas stations and give you the option not to print a receipt… or, better yet, electronic receipts. The only downside to that would be missing out on those coupons on the back that everyone uses. (insert sarcasm here.)

Awhile back (before the Vitamin Water incident), I even wrote Giant an e-mail asking about whether they were planning on modifying their receipt machines so they'd be somewhat shorter and less wasteful. The dude that wrote me back said they were planning on fixing this, but that was about 6-7 months ago, and obviously nothing has happened.

I was listening to NPR yesterday, and heard this story about bird strikes at airports in the U.S: Pinpointing Airports With High Rate Of Bird Strikes.

Bad News: Number of bird strikes is up. Good news: Damage done by birds is down.

Bad news of good news: they don't know why. The population of large birds, who do the most damage to planes, has increased, as has the amount of air traffic. Large birds, as in Canadian Geese.

Most aircraft, particularly large planes, are able to (for lack of a better term) "ingest" the bird and no harm is done… if the bird is small enough. A larger poop-spewing Canadian goose, on the other hand, will leave a bit more damage.

Needless to say, I've never liked Canadian geese. They honk loudly and make you depressed in the fall, because when you see them you know they're peace-ing out to a warmer climate while you're stuck in the frozen tundra. Also, if you've ever played on a grass field near a lake, then you probably understand my reasoning: GOOSE TURDS. Canadian geese leave these nasty slick green poops all over the place and consequently you come home and find your shoes covered in goose doo.

Additionally, they're MEAN mofos. Female geese have been known to attack humans, and I'm always afraid the ones at our barn might decide to challenge Cass to a game of chicken (or would it be goose?) when we walk by.

Now, according to this website, anti-goose techniques include scarecrows (yeah, sure, like those ever work), guard dogs (Stella the barn dog is not allowed to chase wild animals), propane exploders and pyrotechnics (which, as an added benefit, scare horses too!), toy water craft and helicopters (hmm…), and lasers.

I think a trip to Toys-R-Us might be in order!

(I know, I'm really bad at coming up with good blog post titles.)

Hopefully anyone reading this entry will do me a favor and bookmark this blog. My friend Nadine is campaigning for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Man & Woman of the Year, and I am really proud of her for stepping up to the challenge! If there is anyone more deserving of this title, it's Nadine, so please support her in her efforts to help the millions affected by leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, and Hodgkin's disease.

There are some great fundraising events coming up, so bookmark or add her blog to your RSS feed, and get involved!

3/23/09 update: Maybe I should delete this entry now that Daschle is not quite as cool as I originally thought…

Obama Nominates Daschle for HHS

President-elect Barack Obama formally nominated Thomas A. Daschle to become the next secretary of health and human services this morning and said the former Senate majority leader would lead efforts to reform health care.

Most excellent. I'm a big fan of Tom Daschle for a couple of reasons: one, I got to meet him in person five years ago, and two, my friend Peter worked for him as a summer intern.

Peter's probably going to roll his eyes because I'm showing this pic for the 3000th time, but I can't help it, it was VERY exciting to meet the current Senate Minority Leader… it was basically my one and only face-to-face interaction with a national 'celebrity.'

At the Wright Brothers' Centennial Celebration dinner in 2003. It was held in a hangar at National Airport… very fitting. (And COLD!)

John Travolta was also at the dinner, but personally I couldn't have cared less. Besides, who's cooler — a senator from South Dakota or a celebrity whose movie about his Scientology 'religion' (Battlefield Earth) won 7 out of 8 nominations for the 2000 Razzie Awards? Yeah, I thought so.

Additionally, Dad thinks it's funny that Travolta prides himself on owning/flying a Boeing 707, which apparently is a pretty crappy airplane. Not only does it have a terrible record (thanks to its predisposition to doing a "Dutch Roll" motion), but it's considered to have crummy fuel economy and is noisy as hell. To put it in perspective, the last Brazilian Air Force One was a 707-300, also known as "Sucatão" ("big junk").