short takes

[cellio]

Recently apod (astronomy picture of the day) has had some stunning shots.

I found a large display of half-price Easter candy in the grocery store today when I went to get lunch. We were hard-pressed to find chocolate bunnies in a different store Tuesday, and decided then to settle for chocolate chicks for the annual bunny melt. So I picked up a couple bunnies today so we can be all proper about it. (The bunny melt involves the ritual slaughter of half-price bunnies followed, soon thereafter, by fondue. My friends are delightfully twisted.)

I used to file spam complaints, but it became clear that talking to the originating sites is a bad idea and the independent services required too much work, usually cut-and-paste into browser forms. Now that my mail provider is using a blacklist based on SpamCop, I decided to reconsider them. I figure it's in my best interest, as well as being a community service, to report spam that makes it past SpamAssassin to the organization that's producing our blacklist. Much to my delight, SpamCop now accepts forwarded email for reports. Unfortunately, you then have to go to a confirmation page when their auto-responder confirms receipt; this is apparently part of an effort to keep the spammers from attacking them with DOS attacks. (They also require a real email address.) It's not onerous, though, and it does let me see what information they distilled from the spam (along with running commentary like "yum, this spam is fresh!" if you send it in promptly).

Why do car speedometers compress the useful part of the scale so much? My current car uses about 300 degrees of a circle to display 0-160. More than half of that represents speeds I will never reach. It would be much more useful if they gave me more space for the lower part, either by a graduated scale (if the mechanics behind the dial permit it) or by truncating. In my previous car, the 12:00 position represented approximately 50 MPH; in my new car, that's 80.

This Pesach I sampled three different sorts of (identifiable) store-bought macaroons. The results: Manischevitz chocolate: good (thanks siderea). Rokeach almond: ok. Shabtai almond: yes!! (thanks lefkowitzga). The orange peel adds a lot to the flavor of the last. Pity I didn't find these earlier, but I'll know for next year.

Comments

[zare-k.livejournal.com]

Mmm, macaroons. I seem to recall someone else mentioning them in the context of Pesach, is there an association? Where can I get the Shabtai ones?

[cellio]

is there an association?

They're a kind of cookie that can be made without flour.

Where can I get the Shabtai ones?

A couple days ago they were gettable in the Squirrel Hill Giant Eagle. They had a bunch of boxes when we were there, but I don't know about current status. Kosher Mart had been pretty much cleaned out of its leftover Pesach cookies when I was there tonight, but they might have just judged the quantity better to begin with. (They're smaller; they have to care more about planning errors.)