Vaad HaTznius - Washing

From Harry's Black Hole email.

The following statement has just been released by the Vaad Ha Tznius:

The Vaad Ha Tznius has just issued the following guidelines regarding laundry. It has come to our attention that many families, including those who pride themselves on following all aspects of halacha, are regularly not conforming to proper Tznius guidelines. Unbelievably, many, many families are washing men's and women's clothing together at the same time in the same washing machine. This is an unprecedented breach of Tznius!!! How could anyone think that one is allowed to wash men's and women's undergarments at the same time in the same washing load?!!! What has our nation come to when people have fallen to such a low level? For shame!!! This practice must stop!!! Given this we are issuing the following guidelines regarding the doing of laundry.

1. Ideally each observant home should have two washing machines and two dryers - one washing machine and one dryer should be used exclusively for men's clothing and the other washing machine and dryer should be used exclusively for women's clothing.

2. In the event that a family cannot afford to have two washing machines and two dryers, the following rules should be adhered to. ... See More
a. Under no circumstances should men's clothes be in the same machine as women's clothing. They should, of course, also be dried separately.
b. After doing a load of men's clothing, one should run the washing machine through a complete cycle without any clothes in it. Then one may wash women's clothing in this machine. The same procedure should, of course, be followed after washing a load of women's clothing, namely, run a complete cycle without any clothes in the machine. Then one may wash men's clothing in the machine.
c. After drying a load of men's clothing the dryer should be allowed to cool off completely. After this, one may use the dryer for drying women's clothes. The same applies after drying a load of women's clothing before using the dryer for men's clothing. It is not enough to let the dryer cool below Yad So Ledas Bo. The dryer must be completely cooled off.

Our forefathers lived in a land that was between two rivers - the Tigris and the Euphrates. The reason is obvious to anyone who thinks into it a bit. One river was used to wash women's clothing and the other to wash men's clothing. Surely we can continue this tradition by observing the rules stated above. We are confident that everyone who takes Yahadus seriously will abide by the guidelines stated above.
With Torah greetings,
The Vaad Ha Tznius

Частушки

Рыбка плавает в томате,
Ей в томате хорошо,
Только я, едрена матерь,
Места в жизни не нашел.
Fish in thick tomato sauce
Swims in happy comatose,
Only me, pathetic wimp,
Have no fucking place to swim.

По реке плывет топор из села Чугуева,
Ну и пусть себе плывет железяка ...
Down the river drifts an axe from the town of Byron,
Let it float by itself- fucking piece of iron!!!

Я лежала с Коленькой совершенно голенькой,
Потому что для красы я сняла с себя трусы.
I was sleeping with my honey absolutely naked;
I have taken off my panties just to make a statement.

С неба звездочка упала
Прямо милому в штаны,
Пусть горит там, что попало,
Лишь бы не было войны.
Starlet's fallen from the heavens right into my boyfriend's briefs,
I don't mind his roasted penis if it helps us live in peace.

Posting Thanksgiving RSVP in Frontierville

Open FrontierVille in one tab.
After FrontierVille loads, open Application Privacy in another tab. Open FrontierVille's settings and delete "post to wall".
Go back to FrontierVille tab.

Click Post Dinner Invite.

Click Yes and then Allow.

Go back to Privacy Settings tab and again delete "post to wall".

You may now manually post the invites.
You may have to do this each time you play.

TSA: making sure you're not lonely this holiday season

ColdFusion 9: ByteArray error

If you've upgraded to ColdFusion 9 with MySQL, be prepared to get a "ByteArray objects cannot be converted to strings." error. This error occurs because the JDBC driver for MySQL included with the ColdFusion 9 install converts TinyInt values to a Byte Array if they're used in a function or a CASE WHEN. You will not get this error if you're simply including a TinyInt column in a SELECT statement, but you will get it if you're using it inside a function or a CASE WHEN.

One solution is to encapsulate your function in a CONVERT([function] USING latin1), but you will have to do it in every query where this condition occurs.

Another solution is to revert to an earlier driver. ColdFusion 9 install includes mysql-connector-java-commercial-5.1.7-bin.jar. You can try downloading the latest driver from here, however, version 5.1.13 still had this bug. If you're still having a problem after downloading the newest driver, revert to the version which was included with ColdFusion 8, mysql-connector-java-commercial-5.0.5-bin.jar.

Kosher Porn

Wrote the following in a thread on hashkafah.com. Apparently someone had a problem with the post, yet didn't mind reading the thread so am reposting it here.

DISCLAIMER: This is a parody on imamother and should not be taken seriously. ;-)

His arms, muscles bulging from doing hagba, held her tight to his body. She could feel the imprints left by his tefillin straps sensually caressing her skin. His hands touched and explored her body as if he was holding a gemorah. He was kneading her sufganyot like challah dough, his fingers circling the raisins. Her body tensed in anticipation as his hands roamed towards her lower mouth while his lips kissed her as if she was a mezuzah. As his lips brushed the lips of her upper mouth, his hand drew a magen david around the contours of her lower lips. She almost screamed when his thumb brushed over her nerit. As she felt the the hardness of his havdalah brush against her thigh, she knew that her wait will be over soon. Just as she had anticipated, he rose over her, his body like a chuppa, held up by the four poles of his arms and legs. He positioned his lulav at the entrance of her shofar and, at first slowly, slid forward into her. His pace increased as she played with his peyos, twirling them with her fingers. When he heard her chanting "talmidim hachamim" over and over, he slammed into her, his havdalah shooting its light into her body.

Was cracking up while writing it. Feel free to expand, ha ha, on this.

Friday's special guests

Last night, November 12, at 9:20pm, we had a knock at the door and a visit from the NYPD.  Apparently Vader called the cops because he had a problem with my kids playing in their room, on mats and before 11pm.  He told them that I made cracks in his ceiling and make noise at 2am.  I informed the officers that the noise is Nochum waking up and me walking to get him a bottle and that I couldn't care less if he has a problem with me walking.

CSS - font and color

Always set the default font and color in body.  Also, right below body, set default font and color for links and a:hover.  This will make things a lot easier for adding new pages, changing default font and color and customizing font and color.

Never ever set font and color for each individual element when they are the same.  Font and color should only be specified for an element when they differ from the default set in body.

MySQL - COALESCE on an empty string

COALESCE works only on NULLs.  If you have an empty string, COALESCE will return the empty string instead of the second value because the first value is not NULL.

How to return second value or column if first one is NULL or is blank:

SELECT IFNULL(NULLIF(col1,''),col2)

The inner NULLIF returns a NULL if col1 is blank.  The outer IFNULL returns col1 if it's not blank or NULL and col2 otherwise.

The non-equilateral Delta

For the first days of Sukkot we were invited by friends to Detroit.  Ended up paying extra for the privilege of not flying at 7am with 2 kids.  The funny thing was that I was able to find a better deal by going to each individual airline's site versus using expedia and similar sites.  Apparently those sites only look for flights leaving and returning to the same airport.  We ended up leaving from LGA (LaGuardia) and coming back to JFK.  Our experience with each location and flight was very different.

Terminals
LGA Delta terminal is L shaped with the bottom part housing all of the pre-security sections.  Once you walk past security, you have shops on both sides, with gates located past the shops and at the end.  Past security, the terminal slopes downwards making it easier to drag your carry-on.  The terminal is very easy to navigate and you pass the restrooms as you head to your gate.  There are large windows at the end where kids can watch planes land, get prepped for take-off, and take off.  In 2011, Delta is planning on doubling the amount of food offered and offering kosher food.  The terminal is intelligently constructed and was a pleasure to use.

Detroit Metro is good for arriving but bad for departure.  If you're traveling with a lot of carry-on and kids, on arrival, you have plenty of time to take the elevator to the express shuttle.  On departure, however, you end up running through half the airport, using horizontal escalators.  There's less sitting space than in LGA, though shops are positioned more or less reasonably.

JFK is a crowded, narrow, disorganized mess with unhelpful and possibly high employees.  When I asked a guard if there's an elevator to go to luggage area, he pointed at the escalator.  When I pointed at the strollers and our carry-on, after 20 seconds of thinking, he finally figured out that we can't take the escalator and told me where the elevator is.  There's a definite lack of signs telling you where you are and where to go .

Flight
The flight from LGA to Detroit was a pleasure.  Because we had kids, we were allowed to board ahead of everyone.  We flew on a Tuesday and there were only around 20 people on the plane which allowed us to move around to different rows so that we could all get window seats.  The flight attendants were very nice and the pilot, very experienced.  No turbulence and a perfect landing.  For the 4 of us we got a double the amount of peanuts.  After asking for a Tylenol for the other flight attendant, our kids got a whole bunch of candy bars.

The flight from Detroit to JFK was nasty.  After reserving seats a week in advance and checking in the previous night, the morning of the flight, I found out that Shlomik was moved 6 rows ahead.  After calling customer service, I was told there's nothing they can do and that the seating change is automatic and even though I entered everyone's age, apparently that's used for security purposes only.  A blatant lie all around, IMO.  The treatment at the gate was no better.  Though we did get our seating corrected, we were not allowed to board until almost everyone boarded, even though both kids were screaming by that time.  The flight crew seemed to be of the 50+ variety.  We got 2 bags of peanuts for 4 people and were given 2 more bags after having to ask for them.  The pilot, who's hands seemed to be shaking from his advanced age, hit turbulence at least 5 times with one of them being 5 minutes after drinks were given out.  The landing was both seen and very much felt.  After waiting for half an hour for the plane to get to the gate, we had to wait yet again for the door to be opened.

LGA is a pleasure, JFK is a dump and Detroit sucks.

Vader's Wife

This afternoon, Vader's wife showed up claiming we're moving things for hours in kids' bedroom and it's disturbing her grandson's sleep.

Looks like in their native Elbonia, people have not yet learned to tell time accurately, as we were only home for about an hour.  The "moving things" was actually kids playing, some of the time, in the bedroom.  Though maybe the Elbonian language is not rich enough to express such concepts as "kids playing".

Apparently neither Vader, nor his wife, have any manners.  A normal person, would go, apologize, and ask for people to be quieter because baby is sleeping, and not make assumptions and accusations.  Ironically, both of them claim to be nice.  I wonder how people in Elbonia normally talk to each other if they consider this kind of behavior "nice".

Mafia Wars - Boss Fights - Las Vegas and the Feds

In another attempt to make the game more "fun", Zynga added extremely unbalanced bosses in Las Vegas and the new Beat the Feds challenge.

Beat the Feds
On gold, these are brutal and DEA Iverson and DA Embry are the worst. The trick is to stack stamina and use consumables.
Since Feds don't regenerate stamina, the only useful consumable is the shiv. Grenades do too little damage while the shivs were doing more damage than my regular attacks.
Have friends send you a lot of shivs. Accept 10 and keep the rest in reserve. Accept another 10 after you use the ones you have, etc.
For stamina, make sure you start your fight within 4 hours of leveling and your next energy pack and make sure you level before using the energy pack. Have 5 crime spree requests primed as each will give you 40 stamina.
Install the toolbar. Hopefully, you'll get the 200 stamina refill or the 25% energy recharge. At worst you'll get 200 energy.

Las Vegas
Here, the 2 nasty bosses are Juliana "Black Widow" Trieste and 'Red' Jackson.
In this case, it's the stun guns which are crucial. Shivs and grenades are great for getting rid of henchmen but will do little damage to the boss. Stack a lot of stun guns, again accepting them 10 at a time.
Don't bother wasting time on health refills as the help they provide is too insignificant when compared to the stun guns.
While in Beat the Feds, you'll need very powerful allies to help you do any kind of damage, Las Vegas bosses' attack and defense seem to depend on the attacker so any one of your allies will prove useful.

Six Flags Great Adventure - No Dogs or Jews Allowed

Sunday we went with a group of friends to Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey.  Because we went as a group, the price was only $25 plus tax which is an awesome deal.

From the start, we decided to split from the group as neither of us were interested on going on roller coasters, with the exception of the log ride.  We also went to the tiger show and got tickets for the safari tour bus.  At the arcades, I realized too late that the easiest way to get tickets was the incredibly easy, at least for me, shooting gallery.

Since we were there all day, we got hungry.  The event organizer called Great Adventure beforehand and asked if they have kosher vending machines, he was told that yes, they are present.  There is no information about kosher locations on Six Flags' website and no brochures in the park.  We went to Information to inquire where we can find some kosher food.  We were told there are no kosher vending machines and were sent to a section of the park which only had kosher ice cream.  Though not food, Information had no idea there was a store next door full of kosher candy, a fact we discovered as we were leaving the park.  Half of the park employees had no idea where exactly in the park there was kosher food, while the other half had no idea what kosher is.

Why am I complaining?  Because Six Flags has a strict no outside food or drink policy which is enforced by having all bags inspected and food confiscated.  Six Flags has made zero effort to provide kosher food for Jewish Orthodox patrons.  If you keep kosher, you will have to eat outside of the park as the Six Flags gestapo will not allow you to bring any food with you.  There is no separate brochure and nothing on the main map telling people which food establishments have kosher items and park staff is just as useless.  Movie theaters and zoos in New York now have kosher vending machines where you can get hot food.  Six Flags has nothing.

After we came home, I filed a complaint on Six Flags' site and BBB.  I invite everyone to do the same.
I wouldn't be surprised if  Six Flags' insensitivity includes even those people whose dietary needs are medical in nature.

Fish with pasta

Being very lazy and too lazy to cut potatoes, I created a variation on my shawarma fish. The name is due to the color and taste from the Israeli fish spices. Besides involving less work, this version can feed more people and is very much enjoyed by kids.

Cook half a box of elbow macaroni and set aside.
Take 2 bags of frozen tilapia or flounder and cut each piece into 4 parts.
In a large wok, fry the fish in toasted sesame oil.
When the fish doesn't look raw anymore, mix in the pasta and let it stand on a low flame for 2~3minutes.

Turn off the flame and add pasta sauce, preferably thick and preferably with mushrooms.
Let stand to allow the pasta to absorb flavor from the fish and pasta sauce.

Why is California broke?

From an email from frum skeptic.


California vs. Arizona             

California: The Governor of California is jogging with his dog
along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out, bites the Governor
and attacks his dog.

1. The Governor starts to intervene but reflects upon the
movie "Bambi" and then realizes he should stop; the coyote is
only doing what is natural.

2. He calls animal control. Animal Control captures coyote and
bills the State $200 testing it for diseases and $500 for
relocating it.

3. He calls a veterinarian. The vet collects the dead dog and
bills the State $200 testing it for diseases.

4. The Governor goes to hospital and spends $3,500 getting
checked for diseases from the coyote and on getting his bite
wound bandaged.

5. The running trail gets shut down for 6 months while Fish &
Game conducts a $100,000 survey to make sure the area is free of
dangerous animals.

6. The Governor spends  $50,000 in state funds implementing a
"coyote awareness" program for residents of the area.

7. The State Legislature spends $2 million to study how to
better treat rabies and how to permanently eradicate the disease
throughout the world.

8. The Governor's security agent is fired for not stopping the
attack somehow and for letting the Governor attempt to intervene.

9. Additional cost to State of California: $75,000 to hire and
train a new security agent with additional special training
re: the nature of coyotes.

10. PETA protests the coyote's relocation and files suit against
the State.

Arizona: The Governor of Arizona is jogging with her dog along a
nature trail. A Coyote jumps out and attacks her dog.

1.  The Governor shoots the coyote with her State-issued pistol
and keeps jogging. The Governor has spent $0.50 on a .45 ACP
hollow point cartridge.

2. The Buzzards eat the dead coyote.

And that’s why California is broke.

Eminent Domain

"The mine falls to us by default?" said Vetinary.
"Apparently, sir. I believe the term is 'eminent domain.'"
"Ah, yes. That means 'theft by the government,'" said Vetinari.

- Thud (376)

Sears - Time, Well Wasted

Went to Sears with a friend to get a bigger AC as my old one from the previous apartment is not strong enough for my living room.

Picked out the AC, paid for it, was told to go to the back to pick it up even though there were at least 10 boxes by the display.

In the pick up section, there was a sign stating that if your purchase is not give to you within 5 minutes, you get $5 coupon. The sign also proclaimed that 100% of yesterday's customers got their item in less than 5 minutes.

There was a display in the pick up section which showed orders sent for pick up and average waiting time. Average waiting time was a minute and a half. My order was not entered into the computer and did not show up on the display. We waited for 25 minutes for my AC to be brought out.

My friend pointed out to the department manager that we were waiting for more than 5 minutes. He was told that you only get your coupon if you wait for 20 minutes. When informed that we waited for 25 minutes, he said he didn't have any coupons left. While we were waiting for my order to be brought out, my friend told me that when he went to buy a car seat in Sears, he waited for an hour because they forgot he was there.

Check out Modern Tribe for cool and hip Judaica.

Whole Wheat Raisin Nut Bread - Zojirushi BBCCX20

After going to a friend's party and seeing his Zojirushi BBCC-X20 Home Bakery Supreme Bread Machine, monkey see, monkey do, I bought one also.

The bread maker comes with a recipe book, except the recipes are not very Jewish Orthodox friendly. All of the recipes contain milk. I asked my friend what substitutes he uses and then modified the recipe some more.

1. 1^7/8 cups of room temperature, not cold, water.
2. 2 tbsp olive oil.
3. 3 tbsp uncooked black buckwheat honey.
4. 3 cups whole wheat flower.
5. 2 cups high gluten regular flower.
6. 1/2 tbsp salt.
7. 3/4 cup mix of sunflower seeds, chopped walnuts or almond slivers, and caraway seeds.
8. 1 envelope of active dry yeast (3/4 oz).
9. 1/2 cup of raisins.

First add water, olive oil and honey. Then flower. Then salt and nuts and seeds. Make a depression in the middle and add yeast. Select whole wheat course and press start.

To insure that the majority of the raisins end up inside, I like to add them not when the machine beeps, but rather when it's still doing the initial mixing. Add the raisins when the display says 2:55.

PSA - USPS offers redelivery

What's the difference between USPS and UPS besides the extra S?
UPS is a business where you pay for a service. USPS, on the other hand, is an acquaintance of an acquaintance who does you a favor of, on the way to somewhere else, dropping off your package.  If you're not home, too bad, go pick it up yourself.

It was a pleasant surprise finding out that USPS finally offers redelivery request on their site.  Granted, the "we missed you" card was put in my mailbox on Monday instead of Saturday and the tracking wasn't updated until this evening.  Still, I'm a lot happier with USPS than I was before, now that I don't have to stand in line for half an hour to get my package.

What is pathetic is the time it took the morons in charge to implement this.  Why morons?  Because this is good not only for USPS customers, but for the company itself.

1. There's no need to go to the post office to pick up your package and stand in line for half an hour.
2. The lines are now shorter because people don't need to go to the post office to pick up their packages.
3. USPS employees don't need to waste time going to the back and looking for people's packages which may or may not be there.
4. Packages can now be separated into pick up and redelivery, which means less time spent looking for a package.

You can request redelivery here.  Though it looks this service is not offered everywhere at this time.

The Three Terrors

Fixing Cart Weaver's Archived Products page

By default, cw2 and cw3 only have search and pagination on the Active Products page. Archived Products page outputs all archived product. If you have a lot of products, this page becomes slow and useless.

To add search and paging to Archived Products page, edit cwincproductsearch.cfm and replace tbl_products.product_Archive = 0 with tbl_products.product_Archive = <cfif findnocase("archive",cgi.script_name)>1<cfelse>0</cfif> in the query at the top of the page and replace action="ProductActive.cfm" in form with action="<cfoutput>#request.ThisPage#</cfoutput>".

Now edit the productarchive.cfm and remove the rsProductsSearch query. Then add the following right below the divMainContent div:

<cfinclude template="CWIncProductSearch.cfm">

<cfoutput>#PagingLinks#</cfoutput>

Mauja Hi Mauja - Jab We Met

Memorable Memorial Day

To start the day off right, Shlomik woke up at 6:30am and demanded cartoons. Since he was going to day care and not staying home, I decided to give him what he wanted and go back to sleep. I woke up to the disturbing sight of Nochum walking around the room. Disturbing because wife was asleep and so was I and the rail on the crib was up. Apparently, Shlomik somehow managed to get Nochum over the rail and out of the crib without either of them falling.

In the afternoon, we went to a hashkafah.com meet at Amazon Cafe on Quentin and E 12th. There won't be any more meets at Amazon, nor am I interested in patronizing it by myself.
After a glass water carafe was accidentally broken, the staff didn't bother cleaning the table of off glass even though there were kids sitting at it.
The selection of beer is a joke and so are the prices. $5 for Heineken and $5 for Corona.
I ordered nana tea and I would assume that for $2.75, they'd be able to afford something better than Lipton.
To top off the quality service, the waitress, who was not busy, or rather was busy posing for pictures, refused to split the check, claiming we were a party of 7 and the check could not be split. I assume her extensive knowledge of mathematics, led her to believe that 15% off of $100 is higher than 15% off of 4 checks adding up to a $100. She did, towards the end, offer to make 2 checks. As I said, she was extremely busy.
She also forgot to bring one of the drinks.
Interestingly enough, even though the waitress called us a party of 7, we were only a party of one:

Incidentally, after looking at Amazon Cafe's website, the bad service is no surprise. The site seems to have been made by a 10 year old, and not a talented 10 year old but one of those designer wannabes from myspace.

After the meet, we went to avenue U China Town to restock on some green tea. I made sure to bring a backpack, which was put to good use as I also bought two six packs of Chinese beer, and one of Thai.
Near the train we saw some fresh, steaming kaka:


Since there's no uptown service at U, thank you MTA for charging more for less, we took the train to Sheepshead Bay. Our misadventures continued when, after getting off the downtown Q and crossing to the uptown side, we were met with a station and train full of people, cops on the scene and more cops pulling up outside. Apparently there was a fight and someone got stabbed.
The place was crawling with cops and we decided that it would be faster to walk to Ocean Avenue and catch a 49 bus. 2 overfilled buses drove by without stopping and we decided to walk. As we walked from Z to U, I called several friends and finally got through to one who graciously agreed to pick us up.

It's good to be home.

UPDATE
Just found out that the person's item who left early was not removed from the check and the place actually stole money from us.

Ye Ishq Hai - Jab We Met

ABCDEFG that's how we spell Anarchy

A is for Anarchy

B is for Blood

C is for Capture

D is for Doubt

E is for Exterminate

F is for Fight

G is for Guns

H is for Hide

I is for Injure

J is for Jab

K is for Killing

L is for Laugh

M is for Munitions

N is for Nuke

O is for Oppression

P is for Puke

Q is for Quartering

R is for Rage

S is for Sadism

T is for Trade

U is for Uranium

V is for Venom

W is for War

X is for Xeno

Y is for Yield

Z is for Zone

Blogger labels are case sensitive

Blogger labels are case sensitive regardless of how they are displayed. If you mouse over the label, you'll see that the label in the link is actually case sensitive. If you are linking externally using labels, make sure your link has the correct case.

To change the case of a label, edit post, delete label, publish, edit, add label with correct case and publish again.

If more than one post has this label, you'll need to go to "Edit Posts", click on the label, click "all", remove label using "Label Actions" and then re-add it with correct case.

Removing a fraud alert with Equifax

After mailing a request for removal of a fraud alert, I received a letter that I would need to send in 2 pieces of ID to verify identity and current address. I called the number provided for questions, 877-528-6479. Seems like this is only accessible if you have a confirmation number.

I asked if I can fax in my IDs and was told that I can fax the IDs, with confirmation number and request to 888-826-0573. This is for both removal of alert and update of information.

It may be possible to do the initial request via this fax number. Information I sent in the original letter was name, social security, phone and address.

RN looking for an employer in Manhattan who'll sponsor her work visa

Any help would be appreciated.

I am working in a nursing home ventilator unit for the last 2 years as an RN. They are sponsoring my work visa (H1B) and my greencard.  I have Israeli passport. The visa was approved and it's going to expire in Januray 2011, but the greencard processing has been put on hold for all immigrnat nurses for unknown governmental reasons. 

 

I would like to leave my present employer and work for a hospital. Preferably in Manhattan but I am flexible.  The most important part is that the sponsorship for a visa/greencard needs to be transfered to the new employer.  I have had job offers, but those employers did not want to sponsor.  Any help would be really appreciated.

Israeli Gas Station Spoof

War Metal FAQ/Guide

Attributes
Get stamina, stamina, and more stamina. You'll need 120 energy and put an equal amount into attack and defense. Each time you level, add at least 1 point to stamina and when you train with the Emperor, train stamina.

Alliance
Grow your alliance. Not only will a large alliance aide you in PVP, you need people to exchange gifts with.

Gifts
Combat units are useless. Do not send them and if someone send them to you, take the +5 Energy instead. Trade tokens for collections, stamina for epics and energy for advancing quicker and for getting those elusive bonus units that are unlocked when you finish all missions in an area. Components are for those interested in hosting epics.

Missions
Don't complete all 4 missions in an area, even though that unlocks the area bonus. Complete 3, go to the next area and get the better formation and commander.

Collections
Do swarms to get a better formation. As you complete sub-missions, see if there are any Attribute collections you can complete. Focus on getting Dune Runner, Isabelle, ExoDrone, SkyCom, Tiamat and the 3 below. SkyCom is more or less easy to put together because of the low token requirement and is essential in epics. If you're lucky, you'll get at least half of them when you complete the sub-missions in The Red Sands and Blackmarsh. Don't try to find the missing tokens in other areas. Even though the probability is higher, it's not high enough to warrant the the amount of energy you'll end up spending.

Epic battles
Scorpions and Dozer Tanks may look powerful, but they're useless in epics, and so are any units without a secondary attack. For structures, use SkyCom and missile silos. Until you get missile silos, use Thermite Bunkers and Command Center. For units, Dreads and Infiltrators until you can get Sabres and Hatchlings. Then Mech Walkers, Chimeras, Razors and the better units from Collections and Combat Rank rewards.
Do not break cap and when you host, don't forget to set a cap.
Hatchling swarms, especially those with 3.5k and below caps are a good way to get better units and tokens.
Wyrms are a lot easier than Chimeras so do a couple 105k ones for silos, and if you're lucky, 5 fangs for your own personal wyrm.

Hatchling Swarms

Once you collect enough Mech Walkers and are doing these just for the tokens, be nice. Unless the battle has too many ghosts, I tend to stop at 30% to allow lower players to get their Mechs.

I do, however, check back often to make sure cap has not been raised.

Chimeras

If the chimera is killed before 100 people join / the Rail Cannon is brought online, there will be no chimera drops. Once 40 hitters join, start asking for ghosts and be careful not to kill it accidentally before the event is maxed out.

Xeno Mothership (XMS)

Loot is damage based and there is no point in chasing cap breakers. The only thing chasers are doing is wasting stamina and taking away loot from lower players.

Here are 3 useful sites you can refer to for proc rates, location of tokens, general info and an epic battle damage and percentage calculator:
blem.org
War Metal Guide
Proc Rates

Kids say the darndest things

Wife went to hear second megillah reading. My dad brought Shlomik home and Shlomik asked where mama is. I told him she went to listen to megillah. My dad, who was in another room, asked Shlomik where his mother is.
Shlomik then produced the following:
Моя мама пошла в могилу (My mama went to mogila). In Russian, mogila means grave.

Later when Leah came home and was getting dressed, he asked her what she's going to be. She told him she's going to be a Cave Woman. He turned to me and told me that mama's going to be Cake Woman.

Shidduch profile - "love to read"

The following was posted by a friend on Facebook and I just had to repost this:

have hazel eyes avrege wieght brown hair i love to read i like animals.i dont have a loud persanlity.i am practical by nature.and feel that sephardic tradition is very important.im easygoing. This is what I am looking for in a mate: easygoing must be openminded and preferibly religious entire life not ball tusheva must be chalabi syrian good midot yerat shamayim must be honest

My favorite is the "i love to read". Read what? TV Guide?

The best way to learn spelling and grammar is to read. What can you possibly love, not like, but love, to read that would produce the above crime against the English language?! Maybe what she loves to read is VIN, YWN and other shidduch profiles because I can't think of any other reading material that would result in such eloquence.

Setting up a Facebook Page for your blog

You may want to set up a Facebook Page for your blog.  You can set it up separate from your regular profile and show a different email that you only use for your blog.

Category
When setting up your Page, make sure to choose the correct category.  "Webpage" will only give you a place to put your url and an "established on" date.  "Writer" category, on the other hand, will allow you to add location, birthday and a more extended info.  You can experiment with the different categories to see what the difference is.  Have in mind, however, that Facebook does not allow changing the category of a Page, you would need to delete the page and recreate it under the new category.

Publish blog to Notes
Go to "Edit Page" which can be found under the Page's picture.  Click "edit" by "Notes" application.  Click on import settings.  For those who are using blogger, the rss feed link is http://[blog url]/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss.  When I was importing my blog, it took me 5 attempts before Facebook stopped giving me an "empty feed" error.  Keep clicking until your feed is accepted.

Placing a Notes box on your page's wall
Go to "Edit Page" which can be found under the Page's picture. Click "application settings" by "Notes" application.  Add "box".  Go to "Boxes" tab and click on top right corner of the "Notes" box and select "Move to Wall tab".

Username
You will be able to set a username for your blog once you have 25 fans. To set your username, go to http://www.facebook.com/username.  Once set, you will not be able to change it and if you delete and recreate your Page, the old username will not be available again.  Make sure it's the username you want and that it's spelled correctly.  Once set, your Page can be accessed by going to http://www.facebook.com/[username].

Other settings
Go to "Edit Page" which can be found under the Page's picture.  Under "Wall Settings" you can change the landing tab and what's shown on your wall by default.  The default setting is that only what you post is shown on your Page's wall.  You can also set posting permissions.

Flounder and Pasta salad

Ingredients:

Flounder, pasta, shoyu soy sauce, mirin, semi-dry white wine.

Directions:

Cut flounder into half inch thick pieces.

Fry on on both sides using sesame seed oil.

Add pasta.

Add shoyu soy sauce and mirin.

Cook on medium and add more mirin to taste.

Deglaze using semi-dry white wine and mix into the salad.

War Metal - Hosting a Hatchling Swarm

You want to host a Hatchling Swarm but not sure what cap to set? The popular ones are 4K and 3.5K. 4K depends on a lot of ghosts and is not a good cap for private swarms with everyone actively hitting. If your cap is low, be ready to raise sufficiently in the middle of the event and don't leave cap raising for the last 2 hours.

Cap	Avg Dmg	Ghosts
2.8K	2,750	0
3K	2,950	1
3.1K	3,050	2
3.3K	3,250	3
3.5K	3,450	4
3.7K	3,650	5
4K	3,950	6

Dafina 2/6/10

Thank y'all for coming. Was fun.
Here's what y'all were eating:

Dafina
Layer 1: 5 cloves of garlic, chopped
Layer 2: Lamb stew, package of roasted chestnuts, ginger
Layer 3: Dark buckwheat honey, cinnamon, hot paprika, sweet paprika, salt, curry powder, ground ginger, cumin
Layer 4: Vitarroz Fiesta Rice (long grain & wild rice), Sadaf #3 bulgur
Layer 5: In the middle, ground meat; on the outside, 1 yam, cut into circles and then in half
Layer 6: 1 Italian Spicy sausage, 1 Meal Mart Garlic sausage; in the middle, 3 organic brown eggs

You're in America, learn English!

We're doing a birthday party for Shlomik at his day care and I asked the owner, Russian Israeli, what to bring.  She said not to bring "choken hazart", written with Russian letters.  I told her I have no idea what she means by that.  Is it a brand?  Company name?  Hashgocha?
Apparently "choken hazart" means choking hazard.

Charities who call after 8:30PM

Hatzholah Rescue of Israel - 9:30PM 02/01/2010

Love Hina - רוצה בנות (Rotze Banot)

Reading Heiroglyphics

From an email:

Symbols found in a cave in Jerusalem

Written across the wall of the cave were the following symbols:
It was considered a unique find and the writings were said to be at least three thousand years old!

The piece of stone was removed, brought to the museum, and archaeologists from around the world came to study the ancient symbols. They held a huge meeting after months of conferences to discuss the meaning of the markings.

The President of the society pointed to first drawing and said: "This is a woman. We can see these people held women in high esteem. You can also tell they were intelligent, as the next symbol is a donkey, so they were smart enough to have animals help them till the soil. The next drawing is a shovel, which means they had tools to help them."

Even further proof of their high intelligence is the fish which means that if a famine hit the earth and food didn't grow, they seek food from the sea. The last symbol appears to be the Star of David which means they were evidently Hebrews.

The audience applauded enthusiastically.

Then a little old Jewish man stood up in the back of the room and said,

"Idiots! Hebrew is read from right to left...
It says: "Holy Mackerel, Dig The Ass On That Chick!"

th (table header cell) has not been deprecated

Two programmers I'm working with seem to not know what th is or how to use it. One went so far is to put a div with a class in order to make something bold. The other only used an h2. Why they couldn't use th and changed text alignment in css is beyond me. Note that all of these contained headers and th is specifically used for table header cells.

Both of them also used span and div with a class inside td instead of just assigning the class to the td. Again, no idea what the logic was.

Another pet peeve is assigning a class to every single child of an element instead of assigning a class to the parent and using inheritance.

Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version

Bad HTML - img tag

<IMG style="WIDTH: 710px; HEIGHT: 207px" height=830 alt="" src="https://www.somesite.com/UploadedImages//red%20banner%20with%20sign.jpg" width=1946 border=0>

Developer was wondering why image was getting stretched and asked me to take a look. Always make sure your coder knows what s/he is doing.

See how many errors you can spot and then scroll down. Have in mind that this is from a newsletter sent in email.

1. Tag name is uppercase.
2. CSS is uppercase.
3. Values not quoted.
4. HTML width and height different from CSS width and height.
5. https instead of http.
6. Extra slash in url.
7. Tag not closed.
8. Pointless inline CSS.
9. alt not set.

ColdFusion - Getting the total for a query column

Here's how to get the total for any number column in a query without using loops:

total = arraysum(listtoarray(valuelist(query.column)));

Vanessa Mae - Red Hot

Kaleido Star - Fuego (Bond)

CafePress - Pole Bearer

Always stuck holding up the chuppah while your friends are getting married? Sure, it's an honor, but how about honoring you with the bride's sister or best friend instead.

Goyim have "Always the bridesmaid, never the bride."
Here's my Jewish version, "Always the Pole Bearer, Never the Corpse."

Buy it here.

Castle Age FAQ/Guide

UPDATED: 1/05/10

Added stats

Oracle -> Demi-Power

• Make sure to receive your blessing every 24/48 hours.
• Stick to one Demi Power, preferably the one that gives you a +5/+10 bonus.
• Each Demi grants a different item as a final reward, these are very important for duels and monsters.
• Besides rewards, you get stat bonuses: Ambrosia - Energy, Malekus - Attack, Corvintheus - Defense, Aurora - Health, Azeron - Stamina.

Town -> Land

• Buy land in sets of 10 only. Price goes up after each purchase and buying 10 at a time gives most land for least money.
• Don't buy too much of 1 type of land. I recommend 10 towers, 10 temples, 20 marketplaces, 20 mountain keeps and 10 each of all the rest.
• Before buying, sell whatever land of that type you got for free from monster fights to amount owned to 0 or 10.

Quests -> Quest

• Don't jump too fast from land to land. You need to build up enough income to offset upkeep costs.
• Do each quest and subquest 4 times. Each time you complete a quest, you get a stat point. Also, you get achievements for completing a certain number of quests.
• Do Demi Quests. This is one of the ways to get magic and also you can get energy potions and upkeep free units.
• Make sure to use the general shown in the picture or you won't gain influence.
• SubQuests don't have a general requirement. Use Sano to do these to gain influence faster.
• Use subquests to quickly level your best generals, Celesta, Sano, Dante and Vanquish.
• Switch to Sophia, Elena, Terra or Elizabeth Lione before doing a quest that will push you to next level to get some free energy.

Keep -> Achievements -> Monster Achievements

• You get achievements for doing assists so do these even if you're already in the middle of a fight.
• To get a monster achievement, you need to slay a certain number of monsters, but, you need to also deal a minimum amount of damage or the kill will not be counted.

Heroes

• Use Sano for subquests.
• Use Celesta when defending in monster battles. Switch to Dante once you're able to get him.
• Use Zarevock when attacking in monster battles. Switch to Vanquish once you're able to get her.
• In each land, there's a general that gives a max energy increase. Use these before leveling for some free energy.
• Use subquests to quickly level your generals.

Keep -> Monster

• Don't fight too many monsters at once, you need to deal minimum damage for a monster to count towards an achievement and you need to deal enough damage to get good loot.
• The more damage and healing you do, the better loot you get once the monster is killed.
• Power attacking deals more damage than attacking 5 times.
• It's possible to get items, like Poseidon's horn or Dragon Charm, from a loot drop and not have to craft them.

Battle

• You can earn 10 demi points per demi power per day.
• Invade uses army size, Duel uses stats and best items.
• Don't attack players who's rank will give you no or very few batle points.
• As you gain more Battle Points, you'll gain ranks and will be awarded skill points and items, however, you can get much better items from monster fights.
• Winning a certain number of invaasions and battles will grant you achievements.

Keep -> Stats

• Never, ever spend skill points on health, ever. Having more health just means it'll take longer to kill you, you'll still lose the battle.
• Don't waste favor points to increase your army size. You need to friend real people who will send you gifts and will help you with boss battles and vice versa.
• I tend to put 2 points in Energy, 2 in Defense and 1 in Attack.
• Don't forget to increase Stamina, but don't waste all your points on it. It's good to have enough Stamina so that it's recharging while you're not playing.
• Don't forget you get free stat increases demi powers.

2010

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE.