Random Thinking

I have been a member of the Amazon Vine program since August 2007. The program gives free stuff to reviewers in exchange for a review. Amazon doesn’t care if the review is good or bad (at least they say they don’t), they are just looking for reviews on new products. In the beginning it was pretty cool with some expensive electronic products and DVDs on the list of things I could review each month. You had to be quick to get them before they were all gone but I scored some pretty good stuff.

About a year ago, Amazon switched to a program of gearing products to particular reviewers and since then all I have been offered are books and feminine care products(?). Anyway, this month I was offered some chocolate and since I have piles of books that I haven’t read yet, I took the chocolate instead of the Always Infinity pads. Needless to say, the chocolate didn’t last long even though it was only so-so. Here’s my review… maybe next month I will take the feminine care product – it should make for an interesting review.

Werther’s Original Caramel Chocolates, Milk, 5.2-Ounce Bags

If I’m going to use up a lot of calories (especially calories from fat) then I expect to get a big reward, especially if you are talking about a chocolate product that is twice the price of Hershey’s or Reese’s. And the fact is that there is a lot of fat and calories (16 grams, 230 calories, 150 calories from fat) in this product and the taste is good but not outstanding.

The product is a thin chocolate and caramel wafer. It is like a soft chocolate bar, not chewy as you might expect from caramel. The taste that first hits your tongue is a very creamy and rich chocolate followed by a taste of caramel. But there is also a slightly off taste that is left in your mouth at the end. I didn’t find anything in the taste (or the ingredients list) that made me want to jump for joy. I’m sure there are people who will really enjoy this product but I’d rather have a Reese’s milk chocolate and peanut butter egg.

Time for this week’s song from my iPod:

Boys Like Girls is a four-piece pop-punk band from Boston, Massachusetts. The members of the band are Martin Johnson (vocals, guitar), Paul DiGiovanni (guitar), Bryan Donahue (bass), and John Keefe (drums). The group reached #1 on the Top Unsigned Artist chart on PureVolume within a few months of forming in late 2005. The band was voted 2006 Artist of the Year by the readers of Spin.

The group has released one album, Boys Like Girls, which has been certified gold. The album reached 55 on the Billboard 200 and #1 on the US Heat chart. The song The Great Escape reached #8 on the Billboard Top 40 and has been certified platinum. The video for the song was filmed on the Granada Hills Charter High School campus located in Granada Hills, California and in Los Angeles, California. A new album has been rumored to be released this year.

The Great Escape
Paper bags and plastic hearts
All are belongings in shopping carts
It’s goodbye
But we got one more night
Let’s get drunk and ride around
And make peace with an empty town
We can make it right

Throw it away
Forget yesterday
We’ll make the great escape
We won’t hear a word they say
They don’t know us anyway
Watch it burn
Let it die
Cause we are finally free tonight

Tonight will change our lives
It’s so good to be by your side
But we’ll cry
We won’t give up the fight
We’ll scream loud at the top of our lungs
And they’ll think it’s just cause we’re young
And we’ll feel so alive

Throw it away
Forget yesterday
We’ll make the great escape
We won’t hear a word they say
They don’t know us anyway
Watch it burn
Let it die
Cause we are finally free tonight

All of the wasted time
The hours that were left behind
The answers that we’ll never find
They don’t mean a thing tonight

Throw it away
Forget yesterday
We’ll make the great escape
We won’t hear a word they say
They don’t know us anyway

Throw it away
Forget yesterday
We’ll make the great escape
We won’t hear a word they say
They don’t know us anyway

Throw it away
Forget yesterday
We’ll make the great escape
We won’t hear a word they say
They don’t know us anyway
Watch it burn
Let it die
Cause we are finally free tonight

Embedding of the video has been disabled so click here to see and hear.

More crocuses ae blooming. The gnome seems to be quite pleased that the early spring flowers are here.

Mikey had a fantastic weekend. We picked him up at 3 PM and he was smiling and running around. The nurse told us that he was much better behaved then last time. He sat at the table with everyone for all the meals, he particpated in all the activities, and he went to bed without any trouble. The new medication seems to be making some difference.

When we picked him up, he ran around giving everyone goodbye kisses and then he ran out to the car. He was tired when we got home and fell asleep early. A weekend of camping takes a lot out of you.

Here are some more pictures from MOMA. They are all after the break.

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With Mikey away for the weekend, we decided to take Beth and her friend Irene into the city to enjoy a nice lunch and then go to the Museum of Modern Art. I found out that Van Gogh’s Starry Night wasn’t going to be there because it is out on loan, but there is plenty of other fun stuff to see.

Lots of fun descriptions and pictures after the break…

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Last night, we dropped Mikey off at his camp for the weekend. This is the second weekend he has spent at this camp. We arrived around 8:30 last night and Mikey was thrilled to be there. He ran right into the dorm and claimed a bed. As soon as he was settled, he ran into the main room to claim some cookies. The teenagers who were the counselors remembered Mikey from the last weekend back in November were thrilled to have him. They said they loved his cheese doodle covered smile. Mikey gave us a few kisses and then it was goodbye. We are picking up Mikey at 3PM on Sunday.

Today Beth had to get up early as she had an appointment to get her hair cut and colored. And then we went into the city with Beth and one of her friends. We had lunch at… well, I’ll tell more in the next blog entry complete with pictures!

Time for this week’s song from my iPod:

Placebo is an alternative rock band formed in London in 1994. The members of the group are Brian Molko (vocal/guitar), Stefan Olsdal (bass), and Steve Forrest (drums). Forrest is new to the group replacing Steve Hewitt who was kicked out last November after 10 years in the group. (It was never made clear why he was removed from the group.) The band has gained some measure of notoriety for the sexualities of Olsdal and Molko as well as for their excessive lifestyles and Molko’s androgynous image.

The group has released five albums, all of which have been very successful, either going Gold or Platinum in the UK and Europe. They have been hugely successful in France, where their last three albums reached number one on Billboard, as well as other European countries. They have had little success in the US with only one album reaching Billboard’s top 200. The song, Protège-Moi, was a special release French version of the song Protect Me From What I Want and was released in 2004 on their greatest hits compilation album, “Once More With Feeling.” The original video for the song was never released because it was decided that it was too sexually explicit. The video that was released was from a live performance of the song done in 2003 in Paris.

Protège-Moi
C’est le malaise du moment,
L’épidémie qui s’étend,
La fête est finie, on descend,
Les pensées qui glacent la raison.

Paupières baissées, visages gris,
Surgissent les fantômes de notre lit;
On ouvre le loquet de la grille
Du taudis qu’on appelle maison.

Protect me from what I want
Protect me from what I want
Protect me from what I want
Protect me, protect me

Protège-moi, protège-moi
Protège-moi, protège-moi
Protège-moi, protège-moi
Protège-moi, protège-moi

Sommes-nous les jouets du destin
Souviens-toi des moments divins
Planant, éclatés au matin,
Et maintenant nous sommes tout seuls.

Perdus les rêves de s’aimer,
Le temps où on avait rien fait,
Il nous reste toute une vie pour pleurer
Et maintenant nous sommes tout seuls.

Protect me from what I want
Protect me from what I want
Protect me from what I want
Protect me, protect me

Protège-moi, protège-moi
Protège-moi de mes désirs

Protège-moi, protège-moi
Protège-moi, protège-moi

Protect me from what I want
Protect me from what I want
Protect me from what I want
Protect me, protect me

Protège-moi, protège-moi

I love The Register. It’s an IT newspaper from Britain with the slogan, “Biting the hand that feeds IT.” They are always finding great stories in the IT world such as this one.

Apple has been great at applying for patents for virtually anything having to do with the iPod, but this is really stretching things. So it’s cold out and you want to change the song on your iPod. With a glove on, it’s hard to manipulate the controls so Apple has come up with a brilliant idea… a glove with a hole in the finger tip. And Apple thinks it’s such a brilliant idea that they have applied for a patent for it. As Apple describes in their patent application:

When users, in cold weather, wear thick or bulky gloves … the loss of tactile feedback to the user may prevent the user from properly operating the electronic device, and may lead to frustration. Alternatively, if the user has to remove his gloves … the user’s hand may become cold and uncomfortable, which may also lead to user frustration.

So Apple’s plan is to create a glove in which the user may thrust his or her digit through an “aperture” in order to manipulate their iPod or iPhone. In other words, they want to make a glove with a hole at the end of the finger. Apparently Apple thinks this is such a brilliant, new concept that it should be patented. As the people at The Register suggested, perhaps Apple should have submitted this application on April Fool’s Day.

Time for this week’s song from my iPod:

Bright Eyes is a rock band from Omaha, Nebraska that was formed in 1998 by Conor Oberst. The group consists of Conor Oberst (singer-songwriter/guitarist), Mike Mogis (multi-instrumentalist/producer), Nate Walcott (trumpet and keyboards), and a rotating lineup of collaborators drawn primarily from Omaha’s indie music scene.

The group has released albums of various styles including two different albums on the same day in January 2005. The group has had some limited success with several albums reaching the top 25 on the Billboard charts in the US and the UK with their most recent album, Cassadaga, reaching #4. The song Easy/Lucky/Free was released in July of 2005. The song reached #42 on Billboard in the United Kingdom. The music video features Conor Oberst entering a room, and then writing the lyrics and drawings on a transparent wall as the song plays.

Easy/Lucky/Free
Did it all get real? I guess it’s real enough
They got refrigerators full of blood
Another century spent pointing guns
At anything that moves
Sometimes I worry that I’ve lost the plot
My twitching muscles tease my flippant thoughts
I never really dreamed of heaven much
Until we put him in the ground
But it’s all I’m doing now
Listening for patterns in the sound
Of an endless static sea
But once the satellite’s deceased
It blows like garbage through the streets
Of the night sky to infinity

But don’t you weep
(Don’t you weep for them)
Don’t you weep
(Don’t you weep)
There is nothing as lucky
Honey, don’t you weep
(Don’t you weep for them)
Don’t you weep
(Don’t you weep)
There is nothing as lucky
As easy
Or free

Don’t be a criminal in this police state
You’d better shop and eat and procreate
You’ve got vacation days, then you might escape
To a condo on the coast
I set my watch to the atomic clock
I hear the crowd count down until the bomb gets dropped
I always figured there’d be time enough
I never let it get me down
But I can’t help it now
Looking for faces in the clouds
I’ve got some friends I barely see
But we’re all planning to meet
We’ll lay in bags as dead as leaves
All together for eternity

But don’t you weep
(Don’t you weep for us)
Don’t you weep
(Don’t you weep)
There is no one as lucky
Honey, don’t you weep
(Don’t you weep for us)
Don’t you weep
(Don’t you weep)
There is nothing as lucky
As easy
Or free

Or free
Or free
Or free

There is nothing
There’s nothing
There’s nothing