October 2008 Archives

... to eat more slowly cuz it takes a while for your "appestat" to catch up, and it looks as though she was right!

Moms are smart, that way.

Wot's an "appestat," you might ask?

'k, so this was a cute buzz word she picked up from one of the weight-loss programs she was in as I was growing up. Mom's female (in case you were wondering) and as with most females in the United States she thought of herself as fat, so she was constantly dieting and trying new programs to help her lose or control her weight. One of 'em coined the term "appestat" -- the internal mechanism for telling you you're full -- and cautioned that if you eat quickly, your appestat will tell you you're still hungry even after you've eaten the correct amount of calories. These days "Appestat" is a brand name for some appetite control pills.

Makes sense, and here's the study that proves it.

I am a food gulper. Always have been, in part because I hated family meals when I was a kid (that's the time my step-dad would go around the table and find fault with each of us) and wanted to rush through them, and in part because I always had something else I wanted to do. Like go play outside at lunch instead of sitting in the smelly old cafeteria, or, these days, gulp down my lunch and get back to the Very Important Work I have to do.

I have mixed feelings on this report:

Overweight Women May Find Accessing Healthcare Difficult And Stressful

I mean, yes, you're overweight, and you probably didn't really ask to be so large because obesity is more complex than just "stop eating, you fool", but you are overweight and getting over that and accepting that you're a pariah might be a good thing for you, emotionally.

OTOH, this comment had me giggling with a feeling of sympathetic horror:

For example, the doctor delivering Doris' son upset her with a tactless remark at a time when she feeling particularly vulnerable because of her size. "He said 'Just relax and just envision yourself on a beach like a big ole whale beached.' "

What would Cameron say?

Get yours here: http://www.sp-studio.de/

Hat tip: Sylvia, Supreme Ruler of Usenet newsgroup misc.writing

I can be easily irritated. I know, I know, this surprises all of you who know me as a sweet and yielding little thing, but, gosh darn it, when a company lets me down, I want to ream their bloated stinking asses until busloads of tourists start coming 'round to gawk at the new Grand Canyon.

Bitching about shabby service is easy. Lauding great service doesn't seem to happen often enough. So this poast is a little of both.

Among my recent on-line purchases are two different items which both managed to disappoint. I contacted both companies to tell them about the issues. Both responded fairly quickly to my complaint.

Instawares.com is a company that acts as a distributor/seller of commercial kitchenware. I was looking for an attractive yet sturdy shelf that would hold a countertop microwave oven. I found one, via Google, on Instawares' site and the grainy, small photo looked right. The dimensions were right. The price and shipping were ... well, not the best, but it looked like a good solution for me, so I took the chance. The product arrived in a reasonably timely fashion. It was, however, entirely unsuitable. I expected a nice looking white metal shelf with support system and mounting hardware and instructions. I received a stamp-cut sheet of metal, with machined bends and curves, then lightly spray-coated with a scratchable -- indeed already scratched -- white paint on one surface. Two enormous, shiny metal flanges were also supplied. That was it. It was utilitarian, ugly, flawed, and unusable.

I wrote to the company, and a few days later someone responded telling me they'd be happy to take a return of the product and refund me -- with a 25% restocking fee and I pay shipping. Oh, and stay tuned, cuz they'd get back to me with an RMA one of these days. I paid with PayPal, so I cannot dispute the charge with my credit card company.

Go ahead and do business with Instawares if you wish, but be aware of that practice. Also take a look at all the ratings sites -- a lot of unhappy Instawares customers, mostly complaining about their shabby customer service practices.

The other product was a cool LED dog tag. Nicely designed waterproof bauble you hang from the dog's collar (or from your backpack, or your kid's earlobe, or wherever). Squeeze it, it emits a very bright light (white or red, your choice). It has a flash mode, too. I picked up four of them via Amazon. The company's name is NiteIze. Sadly, the four tags I got were flawed in manufacturing -- bad switches. So I wrote to NiteIze. I heard back quickly from someone who actually gave me her name and a direct line phone number. She would be delighted to send me replacements. I just needed to tell her what color and give her an address. She would send the replacements out and provide a return label so I could ship the faulty tags back to them.

NiteIze offers a variety of pretty cool light related products and accessories. Check 'em out, and if you get a chance to buy their stuff, be happy knowing that should there be a problem, they'll do things the right way.

Keep a pad and pen near your phone. When you are serving dinner, or about to go to bed, or just getting home after a tired day's work, your phone will ring, probably every evening until November. If you have Caller ID, it will display "Unknown" or "Out of Area", and it may show a string of digits that do not resolve into any real sort of phone number. If you answer it, you'll hear the click and a recorded message from a candidate will play. If you leave it for your voice mail, chances are good the recording will actually trigger when the voice mail message ends, and you'll get the recording on your voice mail.

Here's where the pad and pen come in handy: write down the name of the candidate, and the office he or she is running for.

Take that list of names with you to the polls in November.

Mark any names but theirs.

Politicians who invade your home, who make use of your personal information simply to promote their self-centered egotistic selves, who make use of the loophole they crafted into the National Do Not Call Registry law, do NOT deserve to be elected into office.

I have, in fact, taken it a step further and left a message with the incumbents who are running for office who have done this to me, letting them know how I feel.