Me: "I’m trying to find retailers in this area who carry caffeine-free Barq’s."
Receptionist at my local Coca-Cola® bottling plant: "I think all Barq’s is caffeine-free; root beer usually doesn’t have caffeine in it."
Me: "Well, it turns out most Barq’s does have caffeine; the only place I’ve seen it not have caffeine is in Richland."
Her: "Richland…?"
Me: "Washington."
She forwards me to somebody in the sales department (or to his voice mail, rather), where I leave a message with my name, phone number, and question. Stay tuned for further developments.
And just by the way, wouldn’t you think you’d want a little better product knowledge in the public face of the company? Sure, they have lots of brands (and note "Caffeine-free Barq’s" on that list), but still….

From IRS Publication 529:
“You cannot deduct the cost of a wristwatch, even if there is a job requirement that you know the correct time to properly perform your duties.”

A dear friend pointed me at this cool language comparison survey. I haven’t fired up IE (which it says it requires) to try it out yet, so I don’t know whether Icelandic is one of the languages they’re measuring.

I finally used a Gazeteer to answer an actual reference question! Which is a little like finally being able to use algebra in everyday life. You spent an awful lot of time learning it, but almost no time using it.

And from yesterday (shame, Craig, shame!): no matter how much you argue with me, I will not keep your mysterious lumpy package for your friend to pick up later in the day.

Sorry for yesterday’s outage. I’m a lamentably tardy bill-payer, but steps have been taken so that it won’t happen again.

You haven’t seen puppets until you’ve seen Folkmanis puppets. If you’re not going to make your own artisan puppets, these are really the way to go. I really do think that there is some deep-down monkey brain connection to puppets. It’s amazing how quickly you can get someone to talk to or react to a puppet, even if they know how one works.

I’ve seen news about John Gottman‘s Relationship Research Institute for a while now. This week’s This American Life is about marriage, and includes a lengthy segment where he talks about his research into what makes happy couples different from unhappy couples. Once the stream is available, I hope somebody remembers to put a link to it here. It is, as Ira points out, very difficult to hear the discussions of and about happy couples without reflecting on one’s own relationships.

Artoyz products look really cool, but the site is taxing my French vocab. They’re expensive for toys, but cheap for art.

The Food Guide Pyramid is a good starting place for healthy eating, but the US Pyramid does not reflect other possible healthy eating patterns. Another flaw with many healthy diet outlines is the problem of confusing serving sizes, an issue which the Fillipinos have sidestepped nicely.

One of these days, the Elgin Marbles are probably going to be gone from the British Museum, but it’s seemed like that for a long time now. Everything old is new again.