Flash Player Bug Fix

Yet another bug fix. Alerted via PCWorld which is a decent mag. Most people don't see these fixes, since they don't sit around reading computer magazines for fun, but I see them, so might as well post what I fix or tamper with here, eh!

Go to Adobe for the fix or if that doesn't work, try the PCWorld.com download page.

Bob Martyn Baseball Almanac

Here's dad's page at the Baseball Almanac

Instant Content for Websites

Another fun toy from the FreeDictionary.com. I wish Blogger would make these links automatically to open in a new window. It's stupid to want to check something that's recommended but you lose the original page.

If you want to follow links without losing the page you're on, just do a Shift - Right Click which "should" open the link in a new window. I say "should" since not all browsers react the same.

I like the "Match Up" game, which is matching words to their meanings. Granted the words chosen the day I saw this were a bit out of the ordinary such as turgid and loquacious but then again, use them in a sentence and see the eyebrows raise. It's a fact that the more words you know the smarter you are. Ask anyone with a big vocabulary and they'll tell you.
I'll toss more fun junk I find into this post, if I remember that is.

Crazy Patents

Fun site, Free Patents Online, with loads of links to idiotic patents granted in the Good ole, United States., the country with too much time on its hands.

I referenced one of my favorites, the Anti-Eating Face Mask at The Slimming Pool Weight Loss Blog, in draft today so if I remember, I'll come back and fix the link after I post it.

Best Chocolate in the World

Where to Find the World's Best Chocolate?
I've collected tons of links for chocolate sites but do you think I can ever find where that list is kept next time I want to look for something? Nah, that would be too easy. I'll post a few here, and see if it leads to something (like organization). This might be better over at One More Bite, my Weight Loss site, but then again, if someone wants to lose weight maybe they don't want to hear about how I am obsessed with chocolate? Hard to know which is the right way to turn, ya know?

A quick turn to my QuickNote file and I find:

Vosges Chocolate My note said, "Order for Valentines" and actually I did. They were wonderful too. If you see their chocolate bars and think they're too expensive, think aagin. They are wonderful, and you're not scarfing the whole thing, just eating a square or so, then saving the rest for next time. Really. With good chocolate, it's pretty easy to have a bit at a time.

Candinas

John and Kiras. Order their catalog! Nothing better than getting chocolate catalogs in the mail. They are socially responsible too, so hey, support their efforts and buy some chockies.

La Mason du Chocolat - er, this is just sitting here. Does it have an address? Maybe some day I'll find that info.

Chocolate Festival, 2005 World Chocolate Awards Winners:

L'Artisan du Chocolat was an OFM award winner. They state, "we love them for their unfailingly high standards, and the fact that they're still a tiny little shop making huge waves and getting their wonderful chocolate into all the best restaurants. So, luck holding, we'll be stuffing our faces with these." Located at 89 Lower Sloane Street, London SW3, 020 7824 8365

RICHART French Chocolates
For the serious chocolate lover. Get the catalog and try the mice.

Fortnum & Mason's chocolates score highly on many counts, not least as an excuse to amble around the food hall. Their pencil-thin chocolate buyer, Chloé Doutre-Roussel, does mesmerising tastings, and packaging is sublime - lovely Oriental padded boxes, wonderful graphics on their dark chocolate selection (£22). --Hey, again, where's the addy? Sheet.

Cocoa-covered truffles (£14.40) this year will come from La Maison du Chocolat - absolutely delicious. The shop is in Piccadilly, London; 020 7287 8500. So much chocolate, so little time...

"And swirly chocolate painters' palettes will come from Hotel Chocolat, which has just opened its first London shop opposite Harrods in Montpelier Street." Mail order: 0870 442 8282 --Cripes. Mail order? How quaint.

Some of my favorite Oregon chocolatiers:

Moonstruck

Godiva

Sees

Michele's Chocolate Truffles

Ladybug Chocolates

Chocolate Decadence: Chocolate Decadence has the added benefit of being dairy, lactose and casein free

Lillie Belle Farms

Jaciva

Guanaja

Teuscher

Dagoba

Euphoria

Godiva Chocolatier: What? No website? You gotta be kidding me?
888 SW 5th Ave, Portland, OR, phone: (503) 226-4722

Jaciva's Chocolates & Pastries. These folks make some wonderful looking desserts.
4377 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR, phone: (503) 234-8115

Moonstruck Chocolate Company
526 Northwest 23rd Avenue, Portland, OR 97210, phone: 503-247-3448, toll free: 800-557-6666

Portland Chocolate Fountains: Rent, don't buy. Who in their right mind would purchase a chocolate fountain? The first time it's kinda cool and the second it's like, "Wha?"
PO Box 5757, Portland OR 97228-5757, phone: 503-639-2134

No websites but worth visiting:
Suki's Vanduyn Chocolate: Hey! Suki get a website.
900 SW 5th Ave, Portland, OR, phone: (503) 227-5187

Teuscher Chocolates of Switzerland: Website in NY, but here's a shop in Portland.
531 SW Broadway, Portland, OR 97205-3425, phone: (503) 827-0587

Truffles by Serendipity
Portland, OR, phone: (503) 684-9371

Van Duyn Chocolates
10162 Se Washington St, Portland, OR 97216-2426, phone: (503) 262-0729
12000 Se 82nd Ave Ste 1033, Portland, OR 97266-7739, phone: (503) 659-1031
1212 Lloyd Center, Portland, OR 97232-1301, Phone: (503) 281-2421
9982 Se Washington St, Portland, OR 97216-2422, Phone: (503) 262-0729

Verdun Fine Chocolates
421 NW 10th Avenue, Portland, OR 97209-3112, phone: (503) 525-9400

Wild Sweets Chocolate Factory
Po Box 14215, Portland, OR 97293-0215, phone: (503) 232-6931

More Favorites:

Joseph Schmidt: I used to buy these in Portland, at $2.50 each they may seem expensive, but they are gigantic so one is plenty. They are egg shaped. Recently I found them at Safeway in the bakery department so I bought six to show my support.

Clare Du Lune Confections

Hand Painted Chocolates

Good Search, Better Search, Best Search

Yes, I'm a Google addict. I almost always go there first, but sometimes their results just don't cut it. That's when I think, where did I put that giant list of all the other search engines? I've got way too many lists, favorites and otherwise.

Clusty is a great place to start. Seth Finkelstein has an excellent post in his InfoThought Blog about how he was able to find how much to put a logo on a chocolate poker chip. Now that's some handy info to keep. He details wending his way through the muck and all. Good stuff. I've gone looking for info and found nothing but dreck, but he hit pay dirt! Way to go, Seth. That's why they pay you the big bucks!

So, this is the beginning of a place to put details on various good search sites. Let's just see how well I keep up that plan...

Meandering in Hyperspace

Just another day in paradise, I like to say.

Why am I constantly looking at 50 pages at once and then never wanting to close any for fear I'll never return? I can't be the only one. Here's today's selection which is somewhat left over from yesterday.

Things I'm trying to accomplish include finishing this month's Bits-n-Bites newsletter, which always leads me in a million directions but that's another rant.

I joined Dave's Garden since I want to grow flowers and it looked like a good place to learn a few things. I haven't joined for the paid part, but may do so later, which is why I left the thing open. I'd love to hear if anyone has a way to track the things they want to return to repeatedly because favorites lists won't cut it. I must have a thousand sites in my favorites, so I keep starting other lists which get lost too, and so it goes.

I know, I could start a "Daily Page" for stuff I want to do regularly, only it would include just about every category, so that's not helpful either. Maybe I'll do it anyway. If I do, Dave's Garden is getting a spot. There's a plant sale in Hillsboro May 6th, but alas I think I'll be in Eugene anyway. If not, I posted for the address, so now how do I know if someone replies? I prefer bulletin boards that send you e-mails when you get replies. Who's got time to keep checking back?

So, out of an abundence of paranoia, I'm leaving that page open for a few days, just in case I find out where that plant sale is going to be.

I started a page at Voo2Do.com but it's unlikely I'll keep using it. I still just don't trust online services--I mean what happens if they up and disappear?

I had the page of a business mentor up--I saw his page with pricing so that led me to a forum he had with posts from he and a client and I spent about a million hours reading those. Frankly, it was good at first then it slowly turned into nothing more than conversation.

I also had the Slow Food Forums page going. Must have been my day for forums. This happens to me all the time: I find a forum and they are in my area so I'm all interested then I finally notice the posts are from 2004 so they're way too old to bring back to life. Sad really.

That's all for now on this browser anyway.

MySpace for Networking?

What about using MySpace.com for networking? I saw someone's post yesterday that included a link to her MySpace site and I thought, "Hey, there's an idea." Then again, there's not an idea.

I went to the group that was supposedly medical professionals and found about 5000 photos of young, urban whatnots. I seriously doubt any of them were medical professionals, so much for that idea.

So my question becomes: Should you create a separate identity at MySpace just for networking, or use the same one you may use for personal purposes as well? I'd love to hear from any professionals using MySpace.com as a true business networking vehicle.

Why I'll Never Be Rich

Up less than two hours and here's what happened.

I read a sig file which led to a chat on IRC so of course had to check that out. That led to the script source at sourceforge which led to ad avert link to Googlebar for Firefox (my old version wasn't working), so I clicked that.

Now I've got a new Firefox extension installed so I have to shut-down the browser, and must close all open windows, meaning I have to either finish what I'm doing, make a note to return or ... go off on some new tangent.

Another side trip today: A posting mentioned a business opportunity having At Home Weight Loss Parties. Sounds weird, but hey, weight loss is my deal, so off I go. The poster said she'd met the owner of the Belly Buster Parties at the Ryze network which I'm also using, but not active since I'm like, "Whose got the time?" Sheesh it's bad enough how easily distracted I can be.

Anyway ... back to my story, I'm interested in being more active in Ryze and networking with likeminded professionals so I wanted to see who this person was, so naturally I click t he link to her site callled Belly Busters. The owner's contact info was found there, Lee McCaskill at (772) 224-0753 or e-mail her at Bellybusterdiet@aol.com so now all I need do is follow up. I'd rather find her at Ryze but will that ever get done? Don't hold your breath.

I also want to make contact with Barbara Casey who had the site that led me to the Belly Buster lady. She had a post about using EFT for weight loss, and duh, that's my deal, so there you go.

What got me on that? Blog Search. I was at Blogger.com and saw a search box for "search blogs" so I tried it with "weight loss" and "eft weight loss" but sadly about 90% of the posts led nowhere. Funny too since it was nearly always my text about my free e-book, Changing Beliefs, that was in the search results. Very strange. It didn't work very well though, so I'm not likely to waste more time in there, thank God.

Article Sites: Taking Over the World

Whatever happened to websites? Today, you read an article with a link to the author's website and it leads you to nothing more than an article directory. Check any of the articles and they too lead to nothing more than more article directores. Whatever happened to websites with some content? Like Wendy's used to say, "Where's the beef?"