bacon-free?

just because this was a tax-free weekend doesn’t mean it has to be a bacon-free weekend.  saturday morning started with some bacon, pancakes, eggs, bacon, juice, coffee, and bacon.


  mmm, bacon


  full plate

good sleep is cherry

i read in a health guide that cherries contain melatonin and help with sleep.  someone had given me a bag of them, so i decided to try it out.  it was the soundest sleep i experienced in a long time.  so, i went out last night to stock back up on cherries to see how well i could sleep last night.  i wasn’t tired or fatigued when i got home, but i tossed a couple of handfuls in my mouth.  less than an hour later, i was starting to nod off.  i slept soundly another night.

i had mentioned this to a friend of mine who did a little research on the web about this fact and found that there is a big deal about cherries and melatonin.  a simple google search gave me a site with this quote (source choosecherries.com):

Cherries are one of the few known food sources of melatonin, a potent antioxidant produced naturally by the body’s pineal gland that helps regulate biorhythm and natural sleep patterns.  Scientists have found melatonin-rich tart cherries (commonly enjoyed as dried, frozen, juice or concentrate) contain more of this powerful antioxidant than what is normally produced by the body.  Eating cherries can be a natural way to boost your body’s melatonin levels to hasten sleep and ease jet lag.

i’ll have to give this a try when i fly across time zones next time.  another article at msnbc.com says the same thing.  follow this link for the nutrition four-one-one:  www.nutritiondata.com/facts/.

as for regular sleep patterns, i am planning on trying this out for a while to see how my body adjusts.

lock your machine

if you’ve worked in the tech field for any amount of time, you learn the importance of locking your screen when you are away.  my current company policy requires this action, but not all follow.  i learned at my previous employer to be wary of my colleagues when it comes to this principle.  even the most disciplined will give into the temptation to pull shenanigans on an open system.

the other day, i gave into the desire to post this tweet on @ryanberg’s open twitter account.  my hijinks are shown in the image to the right.  (for those not used to a twitter client, read from the bottom up.)  i almost got away with it but was quickly ratted out by his fellow designers.

i heard he was furious at this.  his reply tweet employing some cursing and assessment doesn’t quite communicate the level debauchery he felt this was.

and i can understand how he felt.  i’d be mad if someone invaded my computer like this.  indeed, i felt a little bad about it…until the next day when i walked into his area and saw his account left wide open again.  dude had not learned any lesson about security.  i no longer felt any remorse.  what’s the old saying?  “fool me once, shame on you.  fool me twice, shame on me.”  shame on him, right?

even though my regret had been (mostly) purged, someone else felt no inhibition to taking advantage of this situation.  so, sitting down at his workstation, he pulled up tweetie’s post box and typed the following under the guise of mr. berg:


ryan hacked again

LOL!  that’s pretty funny.  and what makes this worse is when someone else retweets your invasion.  you cannot remove that post since you do not own it.  @ericmoritz, at the suggestion of a couple of others,  ran with this:


ryan hacked again – retweeted

the beautiful thing about this retweeting with hash tags is that more people will see it who keep up with groups, such as #drupal and #django.

he isn’t the only person to suffer from this.  felicia day’s twitter was taken over by her own brother.  read about that at mspixel.com.

i don’t believe @ryanberg saw this last hijacking.  nevertheless, i walked into his area again today to see his computer wide open still.  i didn’t feel the need to mess with it again as he has vowed revenge upon me, but my conclusion is this:  how can you justify your disappointment when you take no steps to correct a problem?