This was just too much fun. Check out http://nekofont.upat.jp/index2.cgi and have fun making words with the Neko Font app! In case you didn't know, "Neko" is Japanese for "Cat."

A few years back when we did a kitchen remodel we picked up an American Standard composite sink, because we liked the big single open sink instead of a typical two-well stainless steel sink.

The sink is made out of a black plastic that one might take to be carbon fiber, but is really just some, well, black plastic. Coated in white enamel or faux enamel. Anyhow, whatever the white finish is, it sure ain't "stain resistant". Or if it is "resistant", it resists about as well as I do against pecan pie.

Okay, so you ask, how do you get rid of stains in a white composite kitchen sink?

Bleach. I tried Ajax. Tried Comet. Tried other "With Bleach" cleaners. And of course, since we're talking cleaners here, you never mix cleaners together. And have plenty of ventilation. And read the manufacturer's warnings. And don't do this if you have a septic system. All that.

So anyhow, here is what I did: Pour bleach into the bottom of the sink on the stained areas. Right out of the bottle. Bleach. Clorox, store brand, whatever. Bleach. Let it sit for about five minutes. You can literally watch the stains disappear. Rinse the sink out like crazy, and when done, rinse it more.

So in this picture, you'll note it is a bit yellow. This is one day after I bleached that thing bone white. So yes, this is the "After" picture, but one day's wear later. So the bleach trick will give you a fabulous looking sink for a day. If you're selling the house and need that perfect look, this is the trick. Oh, and of course seriously ventilating the house so it doesn't smell like bleach. So the thing about bleach is, it isn't actually removing the stains, it is bleaching them. If you could use a microscope, whatever is there causing the stain, be it a rough surface or some other material, it's there. Except now it's bleached white. So now you got your white sink back. For a day. Enjoy.

• Today, gold is USD 1,580.75 / ounce.
• 1,000,000,000,000 / 1,580.75 = 632,611,102.324845801043808318836 ounces
• or 39538193.89530286256523801992725 pounds
• or 19769.096947651431282619009963625 tons
• One troy ounce of gold is 0.098 cubic inches
• 10.204081632653061224489795918367 ounces of gold = 1 cubic inch
• 632611102.324845801043808318836 ounces of gold / 10.204081632653061224489795918367 = 61995888.027834888502293215245973 cubic inches
• 1728 cubic inches in 1 cubic foot
• 61995888.027834888502293215245973 cubic inches / 1728 = 35877.250016108153068456721785862 cubic feet
• Typical 40 foot shipping container holds 2720 cubic feet
• 35877.250016108153068456721785862 cubic feet / 2720 = 13.190165447098585686932618303626 40-foot shipping containers

I forgot what I was originally looking for, but I came across a Wikipedia article on aqua regia.

So for the tldr crowd, check out the article and scroll to the History part. Anyhow, the rest of you, aqua regia is an acid that can dissolve gold. It has plenty of industrial uses, naturally; but that history part contains what has got to be one of the best sleight-of-hand scams pulled on the Nazis during WW II.

Here, I'll include the good part from the Wikipedia article (hope that suffices for attribution)

"When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of German physicists Max von Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925) in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from confiscating them. The German government had prohibited Germans from accepting or keeping any Nobel Prize after jailed peace activist Carl von Ossietzky had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935. De Hevesy placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar--one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving--contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation. They re-cast the medals and again presented them to Laue and Franck."

Now that's a pretty good one to pull on the Nazis, I must admit.

How evil is PayPal? See what happens when I try to close out my account. I got notified that I cannot close my account because I have an open dispute. That would be the dispute over the bogus $50 NSFs I got hit with because of their lame processing. Well, be that as it may, check out what happens when I try to cancel that dispute:

See what I mean? PayPal is evil. They are. Yes, they are.

Just when I thought it was impossible for PayPal to be more evil than they are, they sent their loyal customers this email:

PayPal recently posted a new Policy Update which includes changes to the PayPal User Agreement. The update to the User Agreement is effective November 1, 2012 and contains several changes, including changes that affect how claims you and PayPal have against each other are resolved. You will, with limited exception, be required to submit claims you have against PayPal to binding and final arbitration, unless you opt out of the Agreement to Arbitrate (Section 14.3) by December 1, 2012. Unless you opt out: (1) you will only be permitted to pursue claims against PayPal on an individual basis, not as a plaintiff or class member in any class or representative action or proceeding and (2) you will only be permitted to seek relief (including monetary, injunctive, and declaratory relief) on an individual basis.

For the tldr crowd, it translate to: You can't sue us, you can't join a class action suit. All you can do is use our hand-picked arbitration, which amounts to a "Hahah, sucks to be you!"

PayPal, I shall be closing my account. You are evil. Yes you are. Good-bye and good riddance PayPal, hello Amazon Payments.

PayPal, you are evil. Yes, you are. Evil.

So you might be wondering why I say this. I'll tell you. A couple of weeks ago, I completed an eBay purchase by checking out with PayPal. In the usual fashion, the "Use PayPal!" blurb said that it would take the $ out of my bank acct, and if there wasn't enough money, it would go to the credit card."

Well, I've used PayPal for dozens of transactions, and they end up coming off of my credit card, as I typically keep my "for web use" bank account drained to near zero. Well, guess what I got? A $25 NSF charge from my bank! Yep, instead of checking the balance in the bank account, PayPal did a blind charge against the account.

Was that bad enough? Oh no. So yesterday they re-try the same transaction against my bank account! And again I get hit with a $25 NSF. You know, the first time I figured they NSF'd my account and then ran the transaction against my credit card. No, I guess that wasn't sufficiently evil enough. So why on earth would they make two blind charge attempts against my bank account before running the transaction against my credit card? I'll tell you my thoughts, I bet they're doing some sort of liberal-based screen scraping operation to find who doesn't worship at the feet of the Obama altar, and are intentionally messing with them, that's why. Either that or they're all idiots.

Our Hewlett Packard Officejet 4620 Wireless Color Photo Printer with Scanner, Copier and Fax decided to run out of ink, so I took it to Costco to get the cartridges refilled. Costco charges $7.99 per color to recharge the cartridges, so you should only take in the colors that need it.

Ah, but how will you know when a color really needs a refill? For your reading pleasure, and this might be entirely useless info, but I'll give it anyway. If you get your ink cartridges refilled at Costco, and those would be the factory cartridges that ship with the HP Officejet 4620, they weighed the following after refilling:

• cyan: 21 grams
• magenta: 21 grams
• yellow: 21 grams
• black: 30 grams

The weights above are with the protective cap removed from each color. All the cartridges are #564 in the HP system, as seen on the shameless promo shots above. Anyhow, maybe that info will help you determine which one of your cartridges need refilling. Chances are it'll be the black. Also, know ye that if you order the ink cartridges from Amazon, black is shipped separately from the color combo pack, so you might find it cheaper to refill at Costco after all.

Just a couple weeks ago, my wife and I noticed a nasty cat urine smell coming from our couch. A close-up sniff test revealed nothing, and even a recently purchased urine finder black light turned up nothing. We vacuumed the couch, sprayed it with Oust, but in vain. Now and then, a nasty whiff of cat urine would waft our way.

Just recently, I was vacuuming near our refrigerator, which by the way is over 20 years old, when the fan within it kicked on. That awful smell blew out the back of the fridge, and I got down right next to it and got hit with a triple dose of funk.

Now God is good, I tell you people, because a few weeks prior, we had ordered a new fridge from Sears, but it had not arrived yet because it was a special order. When we ordered the fridge, there was no immediate sign of any trouble with the old one, we just figured it was time. Well, it was time, allright.

So, when that happy day arrived, I thanked the old almond-colored fridge for decades of faithful service, and it was hauled away, hopefully to be remade into something meaningful. With the new fridge in place, the smell has never returned. So let it be said, if you smell cat urine in the house, you might want to check the fridge. It might be ready to call it quits.