Just when I was starting to wonder if maybe my iPod’s hard drive is losing its mind, I run across instructions for getting into diagnostics mode.

If Colgate does what it claims it will do with Tom’s of Maine, it should mean only that their products will be more widely available. And that’s a good thing. It’s also a good thing I (mostly) wasn’t buying it for the smug satisfaction of supporting a small company.

Do you have a barcode scanner at work? I do! Perhaps you will be entertained by this database of UPC codes! And if you don’t have a scanner, perhaps you would like to know what kind of fruit you have.

I’ve run across a couple different RFID-related items today: first, the RF-blocking wallet (hmm… I do have a birthday coming up); then, news that RFID tags can be used to spread malicious code.

Might have to make a Costco run tonight.

Sarah adds: there’s another list here, but it seems fairly generic, since it points out the usefulness of having anti-diarrheal medication, but not that you might need way more TP than you might usually have on hand. Sorry for that mental image. Also, check out lots of books from the library so you always have a good flu amount of entertainment.

After Jane pointed her readers at the Jack Benny program scripts on tobaccodocuments.org, I did some browsing. Of many many alarming items, one is a letter from William Randolph Hearst complaining about tobacco companies advertising cigarettes in the comics section of the paper. The tobacco guys assure him that they are advertisting to adults. Who read the funnies.

Also, there was a cigarette brand called “Spud”!

Two especially enjoyable moments from my commute home last night:
1. Just as dusk was falling, a sudden heavy shower starts, but I am warm and dry in my car, with Charles Trenet playing on the car stereo.
2. Driving behind a Subaru Outback with the vanity plate FUBARU

The Grauniad suggests that the use of two stolen satellite phones to run sex and gambling services means that Iraq is on its way to Western-style democracy.

Pretty soon we’ll be able to take off the Iraqi people’s stabilisers and marvel as the line representing their electoral turnout begins its sharp descent, in exact counterpoint to the line representing the number of Temptation Island reruns being watched in the region.