February 24, 2008

Self Portrait Sunday for February 24, 2008

I cooked, cleaned the kitchen and tidied my bathroom today. That accounts for about an hour of my time, I suppose. The rest of the day was pretty much wasted, I think, because I can’t recall anything else I accomplished. No, that’s not true. I dyed my roots (yep - the color is entirely too dark) and did some laundry. Why don’t they make women’s lingerie that looks delicate but is sturdy enough to just toss in the washing machine? Would that be asking too much? Anyway, I had a reasonably restful day and should start my work week tomorrow relaxed and full of energy. Maybe. It’s been raining off and on all day. I hope it continues because I always sleep well when it’s raining. Before I can go to bed, though, I need to go visit Digi-Cass and let all of my Self Portrait Sunday pals know that I played with them. You can come along if you like. We don’t bite. Much. Mostly we just smile.

Technorati Tags: meme, photos, self portrait

Posted by skeet @ 10:28 pm • Photos, Meme • 5 comments  

February 22, 2008

Cate West: The Vanishing Files, new hidden object game

Cate West is an author with psychic abilities. When she touches certain items, she forms a sense of their context and meaning within a bigger picture. When the police discover her abilities they request her help in solving mysteries. With that set-up for Cate West: The Vanishing Files we’re ready to tag along as Cate searches for clues, builds cases and identifies guilty suspects.

The artwork is bright, colorful and cluttered. I couldn’t figure out at first what bothered me about the way the first hidden object screen is presented, but then it registered. There’s no cleverness at all to the way hidden objects are placed in several of the screens. It appears that someone took a picture and just pasted a bunch of objects all over it, making no attempt to blend them in and create some semblance of normalcy in the overall picture.

I suspect that this game is the result of a collaborative effort (surely most of them are?) and that the creators of some of the later screens that I played were more experienced than whoever made the first one. Objects are more cleverly placed and the scenes are more cohesive.

There’s a twist on the standard presentation of the split-screen, find-the-differences minigame in Cate West. Instead of just locating differences, the player is required to place missing items back into each of the two scenes. The object of the games hasn’t changed, but the extra step adds a little fun to the same old/same old.

Another minigame that makes several appearances requires the player to find pieces of clues that have been chopped up and scattered around the scenery. We’ve seen it before in other games, and done better. Pieces were too obviously placed to offer any challenge in locating them. Some of the other minigames are more engaging. After several rounds of hidden object and minigame play, suspects and clues are presented and the player must decide which should be arrested. Another minigame is presented during the trial. I liked the variety of games and play presented, keeping standard gameplay from becoming monotonous.

I downloaded Cate West: The Vanishing Files from SpinTop Games for a free hour of play. They’ll sell you the full version for $19.99. Despite some problems, I liked the game. The storyline is engaging and makes sense (something lacking in many hidden object games.) Some of the gameplay was challenging, but inconsistencies abound in the overall quality. While I don’t think it’s ready to cash in a burial policy I don’t like it well enough to shell out twenty bucks. I might buy it for $6.99 when Big Fish starts offering it. We’ll see.

You can see all of my hidden object game reviews by selecting the games category from the drop-down menu in my left sidebar. Each review contains a link to a source for downloading the game.

Technorati Tags: Cate West: The Vanishing Files, games, hidden object games, SpinTop Games

Four Foods on Friday #18

It’s after midnight and I have to be up in a few hours to go to work, so I’m going to have to make my post short and sweet this week. You can participate in Four Foods on Friday by answering the questions below on your own blog. Link back to Val’s post and make sure you also post your link in the comments to her post. She’ll give you some link love when she writes her Friday “What I learned …” post and you get a contest entry in her February giveaway just for participating.

#1. Steak. Plain, steak sauce, hot sauce, ketchup or something else?

That depends on how it’s cooked. If I use a rub or marinade before cooking, I don’t add anything. Why would I when it’s already perfect? If I do a quick cook in the broiler or on the stovetop with no elaborate preparation, I bake some instant fries from the freezer as a go-with. That’s when I slather everything in ketchup!

#2. Water. Flavored, plain, carbonated. How do you like it?

Right from the tap. Hawaii’s water is consistently judged some of the best tasting in the world.

#3. What’s your favorite kind of waffle?

I like my waffles plain, but the syrup or topping fancy. Coconut, blueberry and real maple syrup are favorites.

#4. If you could have any one new small appliance for your kitchen what would it be and why?

I have so many counter-top appliances that I don’t have room for all of them and have to keep some of them inconveniently stored away. I’d find some room, though, if I could get one of those beautiful stand mixers that some of my blogging pals won recently. My little dinky hand mixer doesn’t have much power and I need at least three hands to add ingredients when I use it to mix things like cakes and cookies.

Technorati Tags: food, food meme

February 21, 2008

Share Some Good Stuff

Sometimes we get so overwhelmed with the bad news that we forget that there are good things going on around us all the time. We can’t change the headlines, but we can seek out that which is good, that which is uplifting, that which shines with a positive radiance - the good stuff. Here are some recent feel-great stories:

Loretta over at Not Just Martha is awfully proud of her son Lucas, who made the honor roll. Lucas has had some struggles, but worked hard to achieve success. Way to go,Lucas!

Go watch the short video Val at I know EVERYTHING - just ask my hubby found for us. I had seen the video before, but I got teary-eyed all over again as I watched the story of a a special boy, a special game and a very smart coach.

I’ve become addicted to Houndsgood’s blog, with its mission of supporting abused and neglected animals. The story is sad, but Tammy Grimes did the right thing when no one else would. Yeah, Houndsgood - that’s Good Stuff!

Rather than creating a separate post for my own Good Stuff this week, I’m sending you over to Daily Mitzvah to see what Jen X is doing. She’s been posting daily about her Carbon Fast for Lent. What? Giving up carbon for lent? Yes, and Jen has made remarkable progress by cutting down her carbon footprint each day during lent. It’s a novel idea that I hope catches on. Read a few of her recent posts to see how she’s helping heal the planet. If you’re like me, you won’t stop until you’ve read the whole series. Congratulattions Jen X, and mahalo challenging us all to do better!

Have you checked the back pages of your local paper lately? Do yourself a favor and make it a point to find the good news that never gets the bold headlines. Pick a news source anywhere in the world or something great you’ve found on the web. Better yet, share a heart-warming first-person moment that made you smile. Did your youngest just bake a cake without parental interference? Did the smelly guy on the bus finally get a clue and clean up his act? Maybe your neighbor’s nut tree is hanging over your back fence and giving you all the free pecans you could ever want. Those little day-to-day moments that make us smile are the stuff of a happy life and worthy of sharing. Here’s your chance to recognize them for what they are and spread a little sunshine in the process. Make sure you send me a link when you’re moved to blog about something good going on. I’ll hook you up the next time we Share Some Good Stuff and then we can all feel a little better about what this world is coming to!

Technorati Tags: good news, current events, local stories, meme

Tuesday Teaser photo verification

That wasn’t the sound of thunder you heard early on Tuesday morning. It was the sound of a stampede as Tuesday Teaser players took one look a the “new and improved” Tuesday Teaser and took off running. I think maybe we should call it “new and not imporved enough.” Here are the answers:

a. garlic press
b. can opener
c. egg slicer
d. pasta maker
e. chef’s knife (”knife” would have sufficed)
f. beverage strainer
g.Theme - kitchen utensils

So here’s what was supposed to happen and how I screwed it up. You, the players, should have looked at the photo mosaic, figured out what several items were, recognized the theme and used that information to figure out what the remaining items were. That was the theory, anyway, and I think a sound one. The flaw was in the execution. By placing the photo clues into a mosaic I made it necessary to compress them to a tiny size to accommodate the width available on the blog. That made it difficult for you to see enough detail to solve the puzzle. If it had worked as planned most of you would have guessed the theme and cracked open the “tough nut” of the last clue. Alas, none of you realized that the theme placed all of the clues in the kitchen and not the bathroom (several of you thought the last clue was a shower head.)

No winner this week due to my ineptness, but that means that the winner next week will get a double prize - two blog reviews and two entries into the February prize drawing. Now it’s time for some feedback from you. What did you think of the new conept for Tuesday Teasers? If the photos had been more genrously sized (like, say, the photos above) do you think it would have worked? Shall we try it again next week, using the new multi-clue, theme-related format in a more player-friendly layout? I think the use of multiple clues elevates the level of challenge (a good thing) but I don’t want it to discourage you from playing (a very, very bad thing!) Should I have mentioned in the post that you can always see the photo clues in larger size by clicking any photo to go to my Flikr page? Did any of you do that? Give me your feedback! I want Tuesday Teasers to continue to be a fun distraction for you.

Technorati Tags: contest, games, kitchen utensils, photo puzzle, photos

February 20, 2008

Filthy food?

Do you ever wonder just how “clean” your food is? The answer, as illustrated in the above YouTube video, is “probably not as clean as you think.” I hate to tell you folks this, but all produce carries the same risk as those lemons. Every bite of food you’ve ever put in your mouth, with the possible exception of your mother’s milk, comes with a certain exposure to risk. Best-selling novels and hit movies have taught you a few things about that in recent years. Here’s my contribution.

I’ve worked in the pest control industry for almost three decades. Education is an on-going process in regulated industries. Between in-house training, industry seminars, correspondence courses and college classes, I can’t even begin to tell you how many hours of study I’ve completed over the years. Suffice it to say that I have always met or exceeded the continuing-education requirements needed to stay certified and licensed. I wrote the in-house pest control training manual for a national firm and was their primary instructor for several years in a past life. This is by way of explaining that I’ve had a lot of exposure to our industy’s view of sanitation and regulations that impact food safety. The information is out there and available to you, but might not be something that you’ve ever researched.

The bottom line is this: The FDA defines tolerance levels of impurities or adulterants that are “allowable” in our foods. Other state, federal and local agencies also provide regulatory oversight. None of them guarantees that your food is contaminant-free. Their job is to keep contaminants below certain levels. The most common contaminants include insect and rodent droppings, rodent urine, insect body parts, pesticides and just plain dirt. Human fecal matter shouldn’t be present, but here’s a reality check: field workers are paid by production weight. Many of them are not going to walk across several acres of produce when nature calls, nor to wash their hands after they’ve answered that call. If no one is watching they may choose to take care of business between the rows of lettuce and get back to meeting their quotas. The exposure doesn’t stop there. Restaurant and food production facilities have certain standards - washing hands, wearing gloves, sometimes wearing masks and coveralls - but enforcement is lax in many establishments. Regulatory officials and production supervisors can’t monitor your food each step of the way. The best they can hope for is to sample a certain percentage of product as it makes its way from the field to your mouth.

The things I learned about sanitation, food handling establishments and regulatory oversight were pretty hard to stomach during my first few years in the industry. Some of what I witnessed first hand was much more shocking . My clients included restaurants, fast-food chains and food production plants. Some of the best restaurants had dead rats under the stoves, droppings all over the food storage shelves and floor drains crawling with maggots. A company that produced packaged sandwiches for lunch wagons had cockroaches skittering hither and yon on “sanitized” production-line tables the first time I visited. A chef in a fine restaurant smashed open a locked bait station in a service corridor, removed the rodenticide and put it in a saucer on a shelf above his stove. The technician who serviced a commercial route before me had routinely sprayed the open rafters of a food storage warehouse with chlordane to control spiders. That was illegal and he “knew better,” but no one was aware of his unorthodox treatments until I asked because I wasn’t having his success with the spider problem. Like the chefs and plant managers, the only thing he saw wrong about the whole scenario was that he got caught.

I also serviced some remarkably clean facilities over the years. Every surface in a potato chip factory was covered with fine potato dust at the end of each workday, but was spotless before the morning shift started. They processed tons of raw potatoes into packaged product, but the only pest problem I ever found there was a cockroach infestation in the employee break room, probably originating from a single gravid female hitching a ride in a lunch box. An airline catering business isolated and hand inspected each food and packaging shipment before moving it into a sparkling-clean production area. A bottling plant used a high-powered steam wash each night for line equipment, floors and walls. These businesses were no more rigidly regulated than the ones I mentioned above. They just cared more.

I quit eating fast food and certain other types of cuisine shortly after I got into pest control, convinced on my own anecdotal evidence that they were purveyors of filth. A little more experience taught me that sloppy practices can occur at every level of the food-handling process and in every type of establishment. So can diligent adherence to sanitation standards and safe practices. In the end I learned that most of the companies and individuals who handle your food want it to be clean and safe when you get it. Most of them succeed. Even the best of those are giving you a miniscule dosage of cockroach toe or rodent whisker in a small percentage of your food, but it won’t kill you. The best advice I can leave you with? Caveat emptor!

Mahalo and a hat tip to An American housewife whose post inspired me. She’s got some yummy recipes on her blog, including one for Coconut Sour Cream Cake that I definitely need to try soon. Go check her out!

Technorati Tags: food, food contamination, food handling, food handling regulations, pest control

February 19, 2008

Tuesday Teaser for February 19, 2008

Can you identify the items depicted above? Take your best shot and answer in the comments below. If your answer wins, you’ll get a nifty prize.

These are new instructions, so read the following paragraph carefully. Here’s how it works:

1. Write a comment giving your guess as to what each item is. The photo clues are labelled from left to right, top to bottom with the letters a through f. Use these designations in order in your answer. You must also provide answer g: what is the common theme that unites the items?
2. First person to identify all of the items wins.
3. The author of this blog will be the sole judge as to what constitutes a correct answer.
4. Comments have been set to full moderation until the contest is closed. The author of this blog will reply to each comment, letting you know how many items you have correctly identified, however, comments will not be visible. This will allow each player to answer withour influence from previous comments. Hmmm! I’ve just tested comment moderation and it looks like comments will still be visible. We’ll see how this plays out.

What will you win?

1. The author of this blog will write a LINKY LOVE POST (review) about the winner’s blog (commercial sites ineligible.) The LLP will contain the url for your blog plus at least two deep links and will be posted here on Skeet’s Stuff, a PR4 PR2 PR0 (bah google!) blog. Skeet writes good reviews.
2. The winner’s name will be entered into a drawing for a $10.00 gift card from Starbucks or Amazon.
3. Drawing for the gift card will be held on or about March 1, 2008, and will include all weekly winners for the month. There are four Tuesdays in February, thus the maximum number of people who will be eligble is four.

Other stuff -EDITED - PLEASE READ!

1. All comments to this blog are time and date stamped. The winner will be the first person (according to time and date stamp) to provide the correct answer. Guess as many times as you please, but please place each guess in a separate comment.
2. No hints will be given.
3. Answers must specifically identify the item. For instance, if the item depicted were to be a button on a remote control, the answer “something electronic” would not suffice.
4. Decisions of the judge are final. Don’t argue with me. I won’t answer.
5. I will attempt to post every few hours as to whether or not a winner has been declared, but I am not continuously at the keyboard so please be patient.
6. Entries must be posted before 2:30 a.m. on Thursday, February21, Hawaii time (GMT -10, approximately forty-eight hours from now.)
7. This is intended to be an ongoing feature at Skeet’s Stuff. If you or I lose interest it will cease to exist, but all qualified winners will get their prizes.
8. Skeet’s Stuff is a do-follow blog, so you get some link value just for commenting.
9. You do not have to have a blog to enter. Your review can be donated to a charitable or non-profit site if you don’t have a blog or just want to share the love. Sites to be reviewed are subject to my approval. I’m not harsh, but I’m also not interested in donating space to a radical political non-profit site or a blog that is dedicated to porn. Commercial sites are ineligible and comments with commercial links will be deleted. If you would like to advertise on my site I’ll be happy to discuss your needs and my fees.

Additional Notes:

10. Let the fun begin!

Technorati Tags: contests, photos, photo contest, blog contest

February 18, 2008

President’s Day in Hawaii

Many in Hawaii took the day off today. I had to work - a single condominium inspection in Waikiki. Traffic can be unpredictable on a holiday, so I left early. There were no road crews working and no wrecks, so I got downtown ahead of schedule. Where better to kill a little time than Ala Moana Beach Park, where the locals go to party?

Today Hawaii took to the beaches …

… to the water …

and to the air to relax.

Looking across Magic Island towards Diamond Head, where the air was not quite so brilliantly clear. Probably smoke from all of the luaus and barbecues, don’t you think?

Yeah, that’s probably what it was.

Some kupuna (grandparents, elders) enjoyed a game of dominos while the young women cooked. Maybe the young men playing volleyball and horseshoes nearby were a part of their family group.

My free time gone, I left the park to meet the couple who are buying the condo I needed to inspect. One eleventh floor lanai offers them a slice of a Diamond Head View, while the other two looked across the gentle rise of populous Kaimuki. Being in no rush, I spent a little time talking story with the couple, their realtor/son and their lender before meandering my way home. My car radio brought news of tomorrow’s Democratic caucus, traffic deaths and yet another baseball player trying to explain away his use of not quite legal steroids. I turned it off, put an Iz cd in slot, and enjoyed my drive.

Working on a holiday? Nah, it’s not such a bad thing.

Technorati Tags: Ala Moana Beach Park, beach, Hawaii, Honolulu, Waikiki

February 17, 2008

Self Portrait Sunday for February 17, 2008

I can’t seem to remember some of my regularly scheduled tasks lately. Tasks like doing a self portrait every Sunday. The age thing, you think, or maybe a sign that my disorganized life is spinning out of control? Anyway, here I am, rather late in the day, but well before midnight. My face is broken out, my roots need doing and my hair is a mess. At last - the real me!

The baby in the family portrait is also in the photo at my shoulder. Even the second picture is a bit dated. He’s my nephew, thirty-one years old now and he got married today. Congratulations Todd and Emily. I’m still hoping you’ll get to visit me someday so I can meet the lovely bride and we can spend some quality time together. The guest room is ready and I’ll even pay for your travel insurance whenever you’re ready. Forty-eight hours notice preferred but not demanded!

Go visit Digi-Cass to see who else smiled for the birdie today!

Technorati Tags: meme, photos, self portraits

Posted by skeet @ 8:08 pm • Photos, Meme • 5 comments  

Create your own hidden object puzzle greeting

Make a slideshow - it’s easy!

This has got to be the coolest thing to come down the pike since the first hidden object game. I noticed Big Fish Greetings on theBig Fish Games site a whie back, but hadn’t gotten around to checking it out until today. I’m glad I did because this is mondo fun and a great way to share your own photos while creating new puzzle addicts.

Here’s my first attempt to create a greeting. I did okay, if I do say so myself. The software takes a little getting used to, but that may be because I’m a technophobe. If I can do it, anyone can! Once you’ve created an account and selected to send a hidden object puzzle greeting, it will automatically find your photos on your computer. If your stored photos are anything like mine, choose “delete all” then “add photos” so you can select photos that will work well. I have a lot of photos of faces and dogs and advertisers’ logos that aren’t “busy” enough to hide objects in. I removed all of those and selected some landscapes that I thought would work better. After you’ve loaded your photos, drag the one you want to use into the photo frame, then start building your puzzle. A scrolling menu allows you to select the objects you want to hide in your photo greeting. Use handy tools to size your objects and adjust the light/dark, then drag them to where you want to “hide” them. I hope I didn’t hide all of mine so well that you’ll need reading magnifiers to find them! Add a message which your recipents will see once they’ve solved the puzzle, then select some music and a background color. You’re done! The free version comes with ads, but I can live with that for right now. Purchase a Club Smilebox membership for added options. I haven’t yet decided whether or not to join at $4.99 a month or $39.99 per year. It’s kind of pricey, but you can send all kinds of greeting (including other puzzles you create,) so go take a look and then decide for yourself. I may join just so I can have fun playing with the creation process. If you’d like to solve my creation, click on the play button above. I think I may a future as a puzzle creator!

I know that the code for the greeting card is making my whole page look wonky. Fixing it is beyond my capabilities and I want to publish this post, so we’ll live with it ’til this gets pushed off of the front page.

Technorati Tags: BigFishGreetings.com, games, greetings, hdden object puzzle greetings, hidden object puzzles