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Via RCR.

How rat poison got into cat and dog food is a good question. I’m left scratching my head a bit more at the concept of a single company being responsible for 95 brand names of animal food. Though this is one time I’ll say my cat being a picky eater is a good thing. On the list of recalled cat food is “Science Diet Feline Savory Cuts Cans”. Thankfully she likes her food in that mashed form that seems to be less prone to having rat poison as an ingredient.

I shall be hosting the next edition of the RVA Blog Carnival so gimmie what you got! Usual rules and regulations apply:

- Must be a Richmond blogger

- Does not have to be from your own blog (share the love of others)

- Must be a post made in the last week (as of this upcoming Sunday)

- Must be in my inbox by 9pm Sunday night (well, by the time I post the carnival really)

- Must compliment my sweet bum

- Must like dogs

Either e-mail me or use this nifty form to shoot a submission my way. Also, if you’d happen to be intersted hosting a future edition of the Carnival, e-mail me and I’ll get you on the list.

So come one come all and give unto the RVA Blog Carnival. It’s relatively painless and quite fun.

Having finally found a plastic hole filler thingy that lets you play 45s, I broke out the old record player I got for $1 at an auction years ago and listened to a stack of old country singles I got off of E-Bay a few months back. Half of it is disco-based crap, a quarter is warped, the rest not so bad. I ended the evening wishing I had a larger record collection.

UPDATE: Someone asked so I figured I’d tell. The albums on the floor are:
TOP - The warped country singles
BOTTOM (l to r) - Radiohead “Ok Computer” - Outkast single that came free with his last album - Death Cab For Cutie single that came free with their last album - stack of random country singles - And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead single that I got for free from the station (the red album).

In writing, that is.

I was taught in typing class way back in the day that you ALWAYS double-space after a period. This is just the way typing works. More and more I’ve noticed that not happening so much, though, whether by a forced removal of the double-space by a program or people just not bothering with two spaces after periods when they write.

Dan Santow says it’s a habit worth breaking:

The practice of double spacing after a period is a holdover from the days when typewriters had “monofaced” type, meaning fonts in which every letter had exactly the same width (in other words, “m” used the same amount of space as “i”). Because of the monoface font, two spaces after a period made it easier to see where one sentence ended and another began.

Today, however, most fonts we typically use are proportionally spaced, meaning that characters take up an amount of space relative to their actual width (the “i” uses less space than the “m”), so that double spacing after periods is not only unnecessary, it mars the look of your text by scattering it with small gaps. Books, magazines, brochures, newspaper, desktop publishing, etc., use only one space after a period, as do both AP style and The Chicago Manual of Style.

Personally I’ve never found the double-spacing to be an issue unless it’s forced words to another line when I don’t want them to be (typically in webdesign and the like). Overall, the gap doesn’t seem awkward to me or that it mars the look but it seems natural, like there’s supposed to be that extra gap, because that’s the way you’re supposed to type.

I just can’t break myself of the habit, though. I’m sure that if I tried and worked on it that I could be rid of it over time, but why bother? Is it so bothersome to the reader that I must change what has been the industry standard since typing began? Perhaps I should just pick fonts that need the double-space so there’s no awkward spaces and the like. Or perhaps people should just not be so damn picky.

This is a little experiment/project/filler-thingy I do at a LiveJournal I keep (I’m a tool) and I figured I’d toss it up on the good ol’ blog and see what kinda sport it generates:

If you’re feeling saucy enough, ask me questions and I’ll answer them, thus creating content for J’s Notes and feeling like I’ve done something with the site. Or maybe you want my opinion on something. Or maybe you’re wondering my philosophical feelings on pie. I dunno, toss me a bone and let’s see what happens.

Tim has this week’s installment of the RVA Blog Carnival available over at geistweg, and what a great carnival it is. Enjoy!

PS - If you’re interested in hosting an upcoming RVABC, please let me know. Hosts of all varities are welcomed and encouraged.

After the first two rounds:

click to enlarge

Not bad. I could have had more points coming out of this weekend but I’m still pretty solid down the stretch with all my Elite 8 still alive and well. UCLA vs. Pittsburg might not go my way and UNLV over Oregon may have been a stretch but we’ll see.

Sure the ODBA Aggregator is read in the states, but Iran seems to be interested too…

The first three way tie in Jeopardy history.

My first thought was that this had to be rigged or set up in some way. A comment on the YouTube video says the following:

I work with Scott at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, MD.Scott says his reaction when he realized that there could easily be a three-way tie was “that would be cool!” So he did it. He counted on the other two contestants making (what he called) “rational bets” and then went for the tie.

And it makes sense. If you win money no matter what, why not set it up and have fun with it.

Good luck to the Rams. After one hell of a game against Duke, they’re going to have a hard time keeping up with the bigger Pittsburg team but I think they’re going to give Pitt a good run for their money. Maynor just needs to stay calm and play solid and Walker needs to get some good looks on the outside to sink the three’s that make VCU so damn good. And hopefully Fameni’s broken nose won’t impact his performance.

Go Rams!

Or just submit. To the RVABC. Forget Zod. At your own peril.

Tim over at geistweg is this week’s host and he’s the man who you should shoot all your submissions to. And they don’t have to be your blog writings to be submitted. Nope, if you read something really awesome earlier this week and feel it ruled so much that the rest of Richmond (and the entire WORLD!) really should read it, submit it to the blog carnival for all sorts of highlighty goodness.

You can submit by e-mailing Tim or use this handy form. All submissions are due by 9pm EST Sunday, March 18th so he can have plenty of time to generate the carnival for Monday.

And if you’re interesting in hosting a future edition on your own personal blog, shoot an e-mail my way and I’ll sign you up. A ton of slots are open (all slots really) and this is good fun and a great exercise in community building. It’s also a great way to get some attention to your site. If you’re an attention whore. And let’s face it, we’re bloggers, it kinda comes with the territory.

So submit and enjoy responsibly.

My bracket:

click to enlarge

Only two Virginia teams make it to the Sweet 16, VCU and Virginia Tech, only because they’ll have an easier time of it. Virginia won’t be able to beat Tennessee and Maryland will beat ODU all in the second round. But VCU won’t be able to handle UCLA and Kansas will beat Tech only to lose to UCLA in the Elite 8.

As for the whole thing, I give Georgetown the win over Florida in the final.

Best of luck to all teams and bracker fillers.

225p UPDATE: Well crap. Texas Tech lost to Boston College. I’m not starting off on the right foot. Maryland and Louisville are up, though, so all is not lost.

John Murden’s a busy man. Not only does he give unto Richmond and the world an archive of some old Punchline issues but he also unveils the new Petersburg People’s News, another community blog to go with Church Hill People’s News. (There’s also West Of The Boulevard News but he doesn’t run that.)