Good Tidings Toxicity Levels

Let there be light...

The neighborhood we live in goes pretty insane when it comes to Christmas lights.  There's no "official" rule that says you have to decorate, but for some reason we go all Clark Grizwald-y when it comes to decorating.


The first couple of years we lived here it was kind of fun.  People come from miles around to drive through the neighborhood to look at lights, and it was cool to wave as they went by.


Then the next couple of years the limos started, followed closely by the little mini-buses full of blue-haired ladies, followed by the full-size transit system bus tours, followed by the (no kidding) horse-drawn carriage tours.  Just getting in and out of the neighborhood after dark can take 20 minutes.


Then came the helicopters.  We had flights of helicopters hovering overhead, night after night.  It sounded like we were in a Vietnamese firefight.  We finally chased those guys off, though I don't really know how.  Maybe it had something to do with the heat-seeking missiles.


Adding insult to injury, my next-door neighbor routinely wins the Children s Choice award (yes, we even have judging and contests!).  Every night this time of year, hundreds of minivans full of little snot-nosed ankle biters wait for hours to pull up in front of his house and ogle.  They generally fall into three categories: they're either (a) asleep, (b) crying, or (c) fighting with a sibling.  Those in Category C often transition into Category B right before our eyes.


And then... this happened.  He's on the same street as me, except that he's on the segment of the street that dead-ends into a cul-de-sac.  So now we have buses, vans, horses, limos, the occasional shot-down helicopter, cars, trucks, trains and other random means of conveyance literally parking for hours, waiting impatiently, and depositing all manners of litter (and in the case of the horses, some high-quality fertilizer) in the street.


So you will pardon us if we get a little overdosed on Christmas cheer.  Mrs. Bug and I occasionally long for the anonymity of Jakar- THE REMAINING PORTIONS OF THIS BLOG POST HAVE BEEN REDACTED BY THE FEDERAL WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM.  MR. & MRS. BUG (NOT THEIR REAL NAMES) HAVE NEVER BEEN TO JAKARTA AND HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT INCIDENT AT THE SOVIET EMBASSY.  PROMISE.

Dilemmas...

Dilemma (n); a German phase meaning "a lemma".

This is how you get a real appreciation
for the phrase "Christmas Rush"

So we got yet another request today from someone wanting to know if we sell wholesale.  The weeks immediately before Christmas are probably not a good time to ask - one of our Christmas ornaments was in Etsy Finds the other day in the No. 1, upper left-hand corner position, and we got crushed by orders.  Crushed as in "run to the office supply store because we drained an ink cartridge printing invoices" crushed.

(On a side note, what the hell is in those cartridges that makes them so expensive? Unicorn sweat?)

Anyway, the fundamental concept of wholesaling is that you'll make it up on volume.  That theory holds if and only if you can make the volume.  If you're running an operation out of an Uzbekistan sweat shop, achieving the necessary volume is a real possibility.  However, if you're running an operation out of a spare bedroom, the volume question becomes much more interesting.  Interesting in the way that an airplane crash is interesting.

This is a lemma. Really.

So for now we think we'll pass.  Talk to us in February when the sales have gone to zilch and we're breaking up furniture for firewood.  We might have a different answer.

Oh, and here's a lemma.

A little decorum, please.

Ewwww...

So we're sitting around watching football with the family - all ages, in-laws, etc. -  and we're subjected to a torrent of ads for men with (ahem) issues.  We wrote this open letter in response to these ads.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Dear Big Pharma,

We would like to start by saying that we appreciate the effort you have expended to improve the lives of humanity. We acknowledge the fantastic contributions you have made to the health of people world-wide. We wish you continued success as you seek to conquer the diseases that endanger us.

But we need to talk. You see, every time we turn around we are seeing "male performance" ads, and frankly, we're sick of them. Setting aside the rather uncomfortable subject, these ads are just plain stupid. Sitting in matching bathtubs while watching the sunset? A NASCAR car flying around a race track? Getting frisky while doing the laundry?

Seriously.

And if the ads weren't bad enough, the accompanying warnings are making us nauseous. We're had it up to here with commercials warning us about blurry vision, dangerous increases in blood pressure, and the need to ask our doctor if we're healthy enough for sex. Like, what's he going to say? "No, Trevor, you better just make do with gardening?"

But the topper, the one that makes us want to run screaming into the street, is the instruction that we should call the aforementioned doctor if our, ahem, condition lasts for more than four hours. Here's a hint, Big Pharma. We ain't callin' no doctor to report that "the moment has been right" for half the night. Aside from the fact we'd die from embarrassment before we'd die from the diagnosis, we're scared to death of what the doctor might actually do to relieve our problem. How the hell do you fix it? Pics of Margaret Thatcher? Ice packs? Chain saws?

So stop it already. What's wrong with advertising a nice skin cream or something? We're tired of squirming in our seats every time we see a bathtub.

Sincerely,

The Entire Frigging Planet

Greetings Jingle Bashers!

If you're here reading this, it's probably because you scanned a QR code you picked up at the Etsy Dallas Jingle Bash (you certainly didn't wind up here because of this blogs' overwhelming popularity). "So", you're asking yourself, "what's up with this?"

Nothing but fun and games, actually. This is the official blog of Yellow Bug Boutique, an Etsy shop, purveyor of fine stuff with a slightly scientific bend since, oh, at least week before last. We occasionally use this blog to muse on things we find interesting, amusing, infuriating or otherwise noteworthy. Herein you'll find samples of our somewhat bent sense of humor, offered up in snibbets sized so that they can be read on your smartphone in an average bathroom break.

You may notice that occasionally sections of this blog are redacted by the Federal Witness Protection Program. You can get some background on why Agents Hotchkiss and Vickers pay so much attention to this blog here. Hi, agents! (HI BACK. KINDLY LEAVE US OUT OF THIS.)

Hope you had a good time at the Jingle Bash. This is a somewhat risky statement since, at the time of this writing, the Jingle Bash has not technically occurred. Hopefully there won't be a zombie attack or mass spontaneous human combustion at the event. If there is, kindly disregard the previous statement.

Assuming that the Jingle Bash was a success, as you read this Mrs. Bug and I are probably soaking our feet and trying to recover from the event. We're not used to spending that much time on our feet, unlike when we were on our mission together in Jakar- (REDACTED AGAIN. YOU GUYS ARE REALLY BEING A PAIN IN OUR PATOOTIE(S). DO YOU *WANT* TO BE HUNTED DOWN BY THE KG-)

PORTIONS OF THE PREVIOUS REDACTMENT HAVE BEEN REDACTED BY ME, SENIOR AGENT MAXIM OF THE FEDERAL WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM, WHO HAS TO KEEP TOO MUCH OF AN EYE ON A COUPLE OF GOOFBALL AGENTS WHO ALMOST GAVE AWAY A STATE SECRET. KNUCKLEHEADS.

What the hell is a shrift?

And why is it always short? Apparently, "shrift" is an old English term for a penance. Doing penances back in the medieval day was frequently a big deal - kind of like pledging a fraternity, just with more relevance and less beer. Being given a short shrift was a good thing.

However, it turns out that short shrifts were most frequently given to condemned prisoners. This was to allow the prisoner an opportunity to clear their sin docket before getting the infamous Haircut That's About Six Inches Too Low. Typically, if you were getting a short shrift, you were going to have a very bad day.

So somehow all of that got munged down into meaning that a short shrift was something that wasn't going to get a lot of attention. It stands to reason, then, that a long shrift would mean you're going to pay a lot of attention to something.

So why don't we ever talk about long shrifts? It's a mystery. I think I'll sit down and have a nice long shrift thinking about it.

Hitting the Big Red Button...

So after slaving away on the blog (well, slaving is probably too strong a term, seeing as how I wrote all of two posts), Mrs. bug has decided that her audience isn't the least bit interested in my technical suggestions. Instead, she believes that I should devote this blog to my ruminations on life in general.

This assumes, of course, that I know how to ruminate. "Rumination" is one of those words that only makes sense in specific constructs. Consider "feckless" - a word meaning something is futile. So when something is a slam-dunk sure thing, why don't people say, "I'm going to make a feck attempt at eating this peach."

Or "bode", a verb meaning "to signify." I'm waiting to hear this at a card game, "This hand does not bode well. Can anyone bode better?"

More later. Assuming Mrs. Bug doesn't change her mind. She better not fecking try.

More Spy Stuff - Secret Passwords

Being former spies and everything (NOW CUT THAT OUT!), we're highly adept at managing passwords. Passwords are really a poor way of securing access to a website, but until the cost of moving to something more secure is outweighed by the cost of theft, not much is going to happen. So what to do?

Here are some triple top secret ways of managing passwords on the interwebs:

Use a gadget. We like Keypass, which you can download here. It runs on Windows, Mac, Unix and pretty much anything else except your microwave oven. Keypass is a password database that lets you store lots of information about a website beyond just the password. It's portable, meaning it will run on a USB stick, so you can carry it around with you and run it on a windows machine without having to install it.

Use the browser. Not nearly as secure, but very easy to use. Most current versions of all browsers support remembering user IDs and passwords. As long as you're the only one with physical access to your machine, this is ok. Never use this method on a laptop, for obvious reasons.

Use yellow sticky notes. Write down all of your user IDs and passwords on sticky notes and attach them to your monitor. Then take a very high resolution picture of your monitor and email it to me. I'll take really good care of them. Promise.

Make a hard to guess but easy to remember password. Here's a good trick - choose a memorable date - graduation, wedding, birthday, zombie apocalypse, etc. Then make a simple statement about that date. For example, "I moved into the Sea Breeze apartment on June 12, 2002." Now take the first letters of the phrase, the numbers, and the punctuation, and turn it into something like this: "ImitSBaoJun12,2002." Easy to remember and rock solid.

Finally, if you want to have some fun with secret passwords and codes, try this. It's a web-based re-creation of the German Enigma machine. Set the rotors, type in a message, and out comes gobbletygook. Reset the rotors, paste the gobbletygook into the message line, and wa la! Why would you use this? Well, we use it as a verification code for gift certificates. When we print one, we encode the recipients name and print it on the certificate. That way, only they can use it.

We used a similar technique to communicate with our secret spy handlers back when we were in Jaka

THE REMAINDER OF THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN REDACTED BY THE FEDERAL WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM. GEEZ, GUYS - WILL YOU CUT IT OUT ALREADY? FRANK ALMOST HAD A HEART ATTACK WHEN HE READ THIS POST AND JUST BARELY GOT IT REDACTED IN TIME. HELP A FEDERAL AGENT OUT, OK?

Kit from Q

In every James Bond movie, 007 pays a visit to "Q", an aging scientist with excessively bushy eyebrows, who dispenses high-tech widgets and gizmos. James then uses these gizmos to save the day (and his skin) during the rest of the movie.

James needs Q's gadgetry to survive in a very scary world. If you're on the internets, you're in a scary world too. So while our eyebrows don't quite rise to the level (get it?) of Q's, we thought we'd give you some gadgetry that you might need in the dangerous world of cyberspace.

Things You Don't Need

If you've watched any cable TV, you almost certainly seen ads for an alleged service called MyCleanPc.com. Pay careful attention to this ad, because almost everything it says is wrong. A slow running computer, blue screens, and email that takes more that 3 seconds to load are not, as the ad says, "usually the signs of a virus". Neither will any of these things cause "permanent damage to your computer." Sites like this one are a waste of money and precious bodily fluids.

Neither do you need gadgets called "registry cleaners". These purport to fix your registry, because we all know a registry with errors must be bad, right? Well, horse hockey. Registry errors are almost always benign, and these "cleaners" stand as good a chance of screwing something up as they do of fixing something, which probably doesn't need to be fixed in the first place. So Just Say No.

What You Do Need

Assuming you're a Windows kind of guy / gal / android, Get Microsoft Security Essentials here. Better than most of the $50 per year or more commercial anti-virus packages. And not as likely to lock you out of your computer (sorry, McAfee) or do nasty things to your computer (sorry, Symantec). Make sure it auto-updates.

Run Malwarebytes occasionally. If you do get infected, Malwarebytes is a great tool for uninfecting you.

Use Revo Uninstaller (free version) when you want to remove a program from your computer. The"moderate" setting will work just fine. And CCleaner is a very useful tool for brushing your computer's teeth and getting all the leftover spinach out from between it's little silicon incisors.

You Mac users out there shouldn't be so smug anymore - as Apple market share grows, the bad guys have more and more incentive to target you. And Safari is one of the easiest browsers to crack.

You Ubuntu peeps can just smile quietly to yourselves and keep trying to figure out Gimp.

Tomorrow - useful photo editing tools and our secret Cold War -inspired recipe for poisons used in Ja

THE REMAINDER OF THIS POST HAS BEEN REDACTED BY THE FEDERAL WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM. SERIOUSLY, WOULD YOU GUYS CUT IT OUT ABOUT JAKARTA ALREADY? WE'RE GETTING TIRED OF MOVING YOU.

Look, honey - we're on the internets!

So we've been trying to lay low, under strict orders from our contact in the Federal Witness Protection program, but we just couldn't stand it any more. We're live and blogging!

... crickets chirping ...

Apparently we've been doing too good a job staying under cover.

Anyhoo, welcome to the official blog of Yellow Bug Boutique, a Etsy (and occasionally Artfire) store specializing in fine home furnishings with a scientific bend, and some way cool artsy-fartsy stuff that we do just because we want to. This blog is dedicated to the proposition that all you people out there in the dark probably don't give a flying toot about this blog, but we're going to have fun with it anyway.

So by way of introductions, heeeere's us! Cindy is the artiste in residence here in the Yellow Bug Bungalow. Cindy has been crafting, sewing and decorating for longer than we care to talk about. She was one of the very first employees of the original Michael's craft store, working directly for Michael Jeffrey in Store #1. In fact, Michael tried to talk young Cindy into foregoing college and becoming a buyer for him.

Unfortunately for her bank account, but fortunately for Yellow Bug, Cindy turned down the offer and flitted off to college, where she met the other half of the team (being me). I'm a technology guy from the Old School (I actually had a Commodore 64), and I'm a consultant for a specialty consulting firm. My job is to look confused and fix the printer.

We've got two kids, one dog, and a few moderately healthy house plants. We've watched far too much Monty Python, Start Trek (TOS purists), and Marx Brothers and it has permanently warped our senses of humor.

Next post - something actually interesting and helpful!

NOTE: THIS POST WAS NOT MADE BY FORMER COLD WAR SPIES WHO PERFORMED A CERTAIN SERVICE IN JAKARTA. PLEASE DON'T TRY TO FIND THEM.

SINCERELY,

THE FEDERAL WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM