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I've had a few people in the community message me asking to post my link for the furry cat hats & fun playa wear I make. ALL proceeds go to this years burn and theme camp fun!

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQfrppZ25QQsassZkittyinthebox

In the spirit of Burning Man, I also down for trade/barter. (I still need to get my ticket for this years burn-poor cat is poor). Shoot me a message of leave me a post here...let's work something out.

Don't see your size or color? I offer more than 50+ different colors, styles and lengths of fur. And I can make custom hats, shrugs, leg and arm warmers in any size or color. Woo!

Thanks for the support and see you all on the playa!
I can't wait to go home...

lovenlight,
*christine*

PS. I would also like to offer FREE SHIPPING to anyone on this list. Be sure to mention it and I will be sure to adjust the final cost. Meow!
,,,>^..^<,,,

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/in-our-inbox-hundreds-of-confidential-twitter-documents/

Mike Arrington, writing late last night at TechCrunch:

Here’s a dilemma: The guy (”Hacker Croll”) who claims to have accessed hundreds of confidential corporate and personal documents of Twitter and Twitter employees, is releasing those documents publicly and sent them to us earlier today. The zip file contained 310 documents, ranging from executive meeting notes, partner agreements and financial projections to the meal preferences, calendars and phone logs of various Twitter employees.

What you may ask, is the dilemma, since it is clear that any decent human being would simply refuse to have anything to do with something so lurid? Arrington’s dilemma is that he’s unsure how to clean the jizz stains from his pants, incurred during his excitement at the opportunity to publish as much of this material as he can get away with.

He is a very sad excuse for a man.

Dear Salem,
You are my dearest darling little love. You know this. When those horrible men broke into our apartment I made sure you got out first even though I was too big to get out the window myself. I love you, my fuzzy son, and no one will ever replace you in my heart. Where I go, you go. We're a pair, you and me.
That being said, dearest, you are going to be a brother to a hairless sibling soon that will look far more like Mummy than you do.
Please do not take this as something to be scared of or intimidated by, even when mummy's stomach gets huge and you lose your lap. Something tells me though, that you will have no issue perching and in the winter I'm sure I will find that a godsend.
You will always be my big boy and my little love.
You and the new baby will be good friends, I just know it.

Love More Than You Will Ever Know,
Mummy

http://www.slashfood.com/2009/07/15/what-can-i-get-you-folks-the-case-for-pre-tipping/

Filed under: Restaurants

A receipt. Photo: Rick, Flickr

Hanna Raskin's first waitressing job was at a small Greek diner in Michigan. In the 15 years since, she's worked at a chop suey joint in Mississippi, an exclusive Arizonan country club, a vegetarian eatery and an Irish pub. She currently picks up odd shifts at a seafood eatery in the North Carolina mountains, where she cracks crab legs for helpless tourists. This is the fourth in a series of posts.

"Writers of almost all the nations in the world have denounced the custom, but there will never be any change, for the reason that there is not enough profit in the restaurant business to allow paying the waiters good living wages," wrote bartender extraordinaire Harry Johnson in 1882.

In the eyes of many, the practice of tipping is inequitable but unavoidable. Some even find the custom downright strange: Outside of restaurants, it's pretty much impossible to procure any goods or services without first committing to pay a certain price. For example, try paying for your next movie ticket after the film.

If a restaurant patron bolts without paying his bill, he's committed a crime. Even if he thinks his steak was overcooked and his salad was soggy, protocol calls for him to ante up for whatever he ordered (unless he's sent it back). But if he stiffs his server, he's exercised his prerogative.

So here's a radical suggestion: Why not make service a menu item?

Continue reading What Can I Get you Folks? - The Case for Pre-tipping

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http://www.slashfood.com/2009/07/15/heirloom-tomato-salad/

Filed under: Vegetables, Recipes, How To, Garden Party, Ingredient Spotlight, Summer

Heirloom tomato salad. Photo: Eric Diesel

If you're lucky enough to live near a farmers market, don't forget to thank your local farmer and gardener for that sparkling-fresh produce, especially those who grow heirloom vegetables and fruits. In addition to growing delicious produce, they're cultivating history, right on the vine.

Though there are some differences of opinion about its exact definition, an heirloom variety of fruit or vegetable is generally agreed to be one that has been cultivated for at least 50 years. Beans are an heirloom veggie ever-growing in popularity, but the food that truly sings of summer is the tomato.

Heirloom tomatoes are beginning to appear in gardens, at roadside stands and lining produce aisles. In honor of the unique flavors and colors of these beauties, beyond the jump is an original recipe for a summer tomato salad: history you can eat. But remember to save some seeds -- preserving them is the least we can do for these species that give so much to us.

Continue reading Heirloom Tomato Salad

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http://www.precentral.net/apple-blocks-palm-pre-itunes-syncing

Not a surprise, considering Apple’s warning last month.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/07/laptop_security.html

Last year, I wrote about the increasing propensity for governments, including the U.S. and Great Britain, to search the contents of people's laptops at customs. What we know is still based on anecdote, as no country has clarified the rules about what their customs officers are and are not allowed to do, and what rights people have.

Companies and individuals have dealt with this problem in several ways, from keeping sensitive data off laptops traveling internationally, to storing the data -- encrypted, of course -- on websites and then downloading it at the destination. I have never liked either solution. I do a lot of work on the road, and need to carry all sorts of data with me all the time. It's a lot of data, and downloading it can take a long time. Also, I like to work on long international flights.

There's another solution, one that works with whole-disk encryption products like PGP Disk (I'm on PGP's advisory board), TrueCrypt, and BitLocker: Encrypt the data to a key you don't know.

It sounds crazy, but stay with me. Caveat: Don't try this at home if you're not very familiar with whatever encryption product you're using. Failure results in a bricked computer. Don't blame me.

Step One: Before you board your plane, add another key to your whole-disk encryption (it'll probably mean adding another "user") -- and make random. By "random," I mean really random: Pound the keyboard for a while, like a monkey trying to write Shakespeare. Don't make it memorable. Don't even try to memorize it.

Technically, this key doesn't directly encrypt your hard drive. Instead, it encrypts the key that is used to encrypt your hard drive -- that's how the software allows multiple keys.

So now there are two different users named with two different keys: the one you normally use, and some random one you just invented.

Step Two: Send that new random key to someone you trust. Make sure the trusted recipient has it, and make sure it works. You won't be able to recover your hard drive without it.

Step Three: Burn, shred, delete or otherwise destroy all copies of that new random key. Forget it. If it was sufficiently random and non-memorable, this should be easy.

Step Four: Board your plane normally and use your computer for the whole flight.

Step Five: Before you land, delete the key you normally use.

At this point, you will not be able to boot your computer. The only key remaining is the one you forgot in Step Three. There's no need to lie to the customs official; you can even show him a copy of this article if he doesn't believe you.

Step Six: When you're safely through customs, get that random key back from your confidant, boot your computer and re-add the key you normally use to access your hard drive.

And that's it.

This is by no means a magic get-through-customs-easily card. Your computer might be impounded, and you might be taken to court and compelled to reveal who has the random key.

But the purpose of this protocol isn't to prevent all that; it's just to deny any possible access to your computer to customs. You might be delayed. You might have your computer seized. (This will cost you any work you did on the flight, but -- honestly -- at that point that's the least of your troubles.) You might be turned back or sent home. But when you're back home, you have access to your corporate management, your personal attorneys, your wits after a good night's sleep, and all the rights you normally have in whatever country you're now in.

This procedure not only protects you against the warrantless search of your data at the border, it also allows you to deny a customs official your data without having to lie or pretend -- which itself is often a crime.

Now the big question: Who should you send that random key to?

Certainly it should be someone you trust, but -- more importantly -- it should be someone with whom you have a privileged relationship. Depending on the laws in your country, this could be your spouse, your attorney, your business partner or your priest. In a larger company, the IT department could institutionalize this as a policy, with the help desk acting as the key holder.

You could also send it to yourself, but be careful. You don't want to e-mail it to your webmail account, because then you'd be lying when you tell the customs official that there is no possible way you can decrypt the drive.

You could put the key on a USB drive and send it to your destination, but there are potential failure modes. It could fail to get there in time to be waiting for your arrival, or it might not get there at all. You could airmail the drive with the key on it to yourself a couple of times, in a couple of different ways, and also fax the key to yourself ... but that's more work than I want to do when I'm traveling.

If you only care about the return trip, you can set it up before you return. Or you can set up an elaborate one-time pad system, with identical lists of keys with you and at home: Destroy each key on the list you have with you as you use it.

Remember that you'll need to have full-disk encryption, using a product such as PGP Disk, TrueCrypt or BitLocker, already installed and enabled to make this work.

I don't think we'll ever get to the point where our computer data is safe when crossing an international border. Even if countries like the U.S. and Britain clarify their rules and institute privacy protections, there will always be other countries that will exercise greater latitude with their authority. And sometimes protecting your data means protecting your data from yourself.

This essay originally appeared on Wired.com.

http://www.slashfood.com/2009/07/15/simple-italian-snacks-cookbook-spotlight/

Filed under: Cookbook Spotlight

Photo: Amazon.

'Simple Italian Snacks'
Recipes by Jason Denton and Kathryn Kellinger
Photos by Michael Piazza
William Morrow -- 2008
Buy it on Amazon

Italian food: Unless you grew up noshing on Italian-American fare -- pastas, sauces, meatballs -- this particular Old World cuisine can seem fairly intimidating to newbies, especially in the era of sea urchin and lardo and beef cheek ravioli with squab liver and truffles. (Not that we'd complain if either dish arrived on our doorstep).

So we're grateful to see another book keeping things simple in the home kitchen from Jason Denton, partner in the very popular New York City restaurant Lupa and the man behind panini pioneer 'ino.

Most of his recipes are mercifully simple, relying on a few super-fresh ingredients to comprise menus that still look darn decadent when they hit the table. Look for a seasonal pizza of peach, mascarpone and honey or a gorgeous veal involtini wrapped around arugula and sweet roasted garlic.

See what we tested and whether the book's worth buying after the jump.

Continue reading 'Simple Italian Snacks' - Cookbook Spotlight

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Dear Mr. Ain't Whitey, Mr. Pants, Manny, Ben, Edgar, DeeDee, Bonnie, Munchie, Damage, Louie, Ninja, Sampson,

We have been all granted a reprieve! You can all still live here, with us! I just got off the phone with the case manager in charge of getting our Jessica back home and she said that as long as I am able to get rid of the few fleas that have taken residence in the area rug in her room, there's No Reason to get rid of any of you! She has had to recant her position because there have been NO Issues with our home until now with the fleas and they are already gone!

Y'all can expect Extra fishy treats with your suppers tonight, my darlings! (and, unfortunately, more frequent baths).

Love,

Your much-relieved Mommy.

http://www.slashfood.com/2009/07/15/new-louisiana-law-is-my-crawfish-from-around-here/

Filed under: Southern States, Shellfish, Food News

A bulk order of Louisiana crawfish. Photo: nola.agent, Flickr

Louisiana crawfish advocates have finally discovered -- after years of unsuccessfully appealing to economic interests -- that the quickest way to consumers' hearts is actually via their (unsettled) stomachs.

The state legislature this year enacted a law requiring restaurant owners to disclose whether their crawfish is Louisiana-raised. Bill sponsor Fred H. Mills, Jr. -- a pharmacist whose district includes Breaux Bridge, better known to Cajun gourmands as the "Crawfish Capital of the World" -- credits the law's passage to a major tactical shift.

"Everyone was upset that Chinese seafood was being disguised as Louisiana seafood, but the law just never could get any legs to it," Mills says. "The difference this time was we didn't talk about commerce. We talked about public safety."

The campaign against imported crawfish, after the jump.

Continue reading Louisiana Law - 'Is My Crawfish From Around Here?'

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http://feeds.theonion.com/~r/theonion/weekly/~3/v65_BfmJd7Y/barry_zito_throws_one_hit

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/barry_zito_throws_one_hit?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

SAN FRANCISCO—Struggling Giants pitcher Barry Zito (4.54 ERA), who had shown some progress in his previous two bullpen sessions, gave up a...

I have to go to Dubuque, IA a lot as one of my employees works in our office there. On the way back down to Illinois I pass through the village of Maquoketa, IA. This house is a little past the village going South. It sits right beside an apparently still-active drive-in theater. I first saw it last Winter but it was way too cold and windy to explore it then. Turns out that may have been a better time. In March I was able to finally stop and shoot it. The first thing I noticed was the grass was all matted down in the front yard. At first I thought maybe it was due to high winds as the area around is unprotected prairie. As soon as I stepped one foot in the yard, I found out it was from water....lots of water. I sank up to my knee in cold and slimy mud and water. I quickly extracted myself and sought higher ground to shoot the house. It's been abandoned for several years and the elements have really taken their toll. A medium sized tree has grown up in the back doorway. Had I been any heavier I wouldn't have been able to squeeze through. Much of the floor has given way so I couldn't make it to the stairs. The basement has about 8 feet of standing and stagnant water in it. Luckily I wasn't there for mosquito and gnat season. Every place I stepped inside, my foot went though the floor and twice I almost ended up in the basement. So I had to balance on floor joists and be very careful. Buildings out back seem to indicate a cattle or milking operation at some point but nothing is stirring now.



( Lots more to see )

Enjoy,

Wander

http://www.slashfood.com/2009/07/15/crabs-coffee-and-corn-the-new-york-times-in-60-seconds/

Filed under: In Sixty Seconds

Shore crab close-up. Photo: visualdensity, Flickr

• Piles and piles of glorious crab with a dip into Maryland's crab shacks.
• Calling all mixology fans -- Manhattan will preview its namesake Cocktail Classic at a two-day event this fall.
• Rejoice, Canadian expats! Coffee and donut chain Tim Hortons hits the Big Apple through Dunkin Donuts converts. More on the invasion, and even more here.
• The Minimalist makes a frittata.
• Spain's Ribeira Sacra wine region might be a couple of thousand years old, but it's getting new energy and life with renewed vineyards.
• Kronos Foods explains exactly what a gyro is, and why it's so prevalent on Greek menus stateside.
• Olive oil adds a new element to granola.
• Grand Central, Chelsea and Essex St. Markets all offer great fare for a picnic.
• Kid quirks: Dining Editor Pete Wells' son Dexter selects his own carefully managed stash from the weekly grocery haul.

Continue reading Crabs, Coffee and Corn - The New York Times in 60 Seconds

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/QTT7GmGVnzU/google-voice-mobile-app-for-blackberry.html

It’s been an exciting few months since we announced Google Voice. The feedback from early users has been terrific, and the requests for invites have been flowing in. We started sending invites a few weeks ago and will keep sending them daily.

At the same time, we continue to improve the service and address your requests and feedback. Among the most requested features are tools to make placing outgoing calls from your Google Voice number easier. So today, we’re pleased to announce a Google Voice mobile app for Blackberry and Android.

Previously, to place a call using Google Voice, you had to dial your own Google Voice number from your cell phone or use the Quick Call button online. With this new mobile app, you can make calls and send SMS messages with your Google Voice number directly from your mobile phone. The app is fully integrated with each phone’s contacts, so you can call via Google Voice straight from your address book.

From the mobile app, you can:

• Access your voicemail: read message transcripts, follow along with "karaoke-style" playback of messages, read SMS messages sent to your Google Voice number (even if your phone doesn't receive SMS messages) and access your call history
• Place calls that display your Google Voice number from your address book, the app dialer (Blackberry) or the native dialer (Android)
• Send SMS messages that display your Google Voice number
• Place international calls at low rates

See how it works in the following video:



You can download the app from the Google Voice mobile site at m.google.com/voice. It's also available in Android Market — just search for "Google Voice."

And for those of you who don't have a Blackberry or an Android-powered device, we have a mobile web version of the Google Voice site (accessible by typing www.google.com/voice into your mobile browser) that allows you to access Google Voice features.

You'll need a Google Voice account to use the mobile application. Currently, Google Voice is only available in the U.S. If you'd like to check it out, request an invite here.

Posted by Vincent Paquet, Google Voice Team and Marcus Foster, Google Mobile Team

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=746571

This is going to keep a lot of people on 3.0 — tethering is simply marvelous.

http://www.slashfood.com/2009/07/15/whats-on-tap-orlando-redlight-redlight/

Filed under: Beer, Lists, What's On Tap?

Redlight Redlight in Orlando, FL. Image: Redlight Redlight

A weekly look at the draft selection in beer-friendly bars across the country.

Last week, What's On Tap suggested craft beer seekers crash the college town of Athens, Ga., while the students are away. This week, why not leave your kids at home during that summer trip to Orlando? Drop the tykes off at Grandma's, lie about the location of Disney World and add world-renowned Florida bar Redlight Redlight to the vacation itinerary.

For more than four years, this hip and particularly well-stocked pub has been a must for seekers of rare brews. And now is as perfect a time as any to pop in as they celebrate Christmas in July. "We saved most of the Christmas beers," says owner Brent Hernandez, including a couple kegs dating back to 2005. "We do a lot of aging and have a pretty solid vintage list."

See all 21 beers on tap as of Monday and learn more about Redlight Redlight after the jump. ...

Continue reading What's On Tap, Orlando - Redlight Redlight

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http://www.slashfood.com/2009/07/15/have-your-cake-and-drink-it-too-feast-your-eyes/

Filed under: Whisky, Dessert, Chocolate, Feast Your Eyes

Photo: Whipped Bakeshop/Flickr

At first glance this bottle of Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey appears to be just that: a bottle of whiskey. But upon closer examination you will find it is a two-hit wonder, a duo of beloved treats: cake with (score!) a little bit of whiskey baked into it.

Zoe from the Whipped Bakeshop spent hours on this deceptive, decadent chocolate-whiskey birthday cake filled with caramel-whiskey buttercream and wrapped in fondant she painted by hand. Even its "hardwood" base is made of sugar.

While it is probably best washed down with a glass of cold milk, we imagine the birthday boy, Josh, downed a few shots of the real thing before building up the nerve to cut into this culinary work of art.

[Via Whipped Bakeshop/Flickr]

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