Yawn! Good morning, Apexians, and welcome to Friday. Hope you’ve got some fun stuff planned for your weekend? Me? I’ll be working. In a couple of hours, we’re scheduled to receive a dumb-truck full of gravel. My rough calculations show that I’ll be hauling about 100 wheelbarrow loads from the top of our driveway 200 feet to its destination in the backyard. All while I have a sore arm. Yeah, it’s going to be a long weekend.
Before we go our respective ways, though, here are a few fun money stories from around the web. Enjoy!
The food expiration dates you should actually follow. [The New York Times, so possible paywall] — “Here’s the first thing you should know: Expiration dates are not expiration dates. Food product dating, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture calls it, is completely voluntary for all products (with the exception of baby food, more on that later). Not only that, but it has nothing to do with safety. It acts solely as the manufacturer’s best guess as to when its product will no longer be at peak quality, whatever that means.” [I am saving this one to send to people who freak out about three-day past-day mustard.]
How the George Foreman grill changed history. [Men’s Health] — “The boxer reportedly wasn’t interested but after playing around with his own recipes finally agreed to some unique terms for a celebrity spokesman: He wanted a back-end cut on sales. Salton would cover the up-front costs and Foreman would take 45 percent of all profits, period. Dreimann agreed.”
How to build your own Nintendo Switch at home. [imgur, of all places] — “The key to a project like this is extreme patience. This took about a month and then some to bid on parts, find inexpensive sellers, and wait for ground shipping from China. In the end it was still worth it to me. This was a fun project to keep me busy during the quarantine while not breaking the bank.”
When your fictional pandemic becomes reality. [TOR] — “Sometimes, you’re haunted by your own stories. I wrote ‘So Much Cooking’ in 2015: in it, a food blogger describes cooking in quarantine during a pandemic, feeding an ever-increasing number of children she’s sheltering at her house with an ever-decreasing supply of food.” This is kind of amazing.
Lastly: here’s a two-year-old YouTube clip in which Gary Cook does the “to be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet…in the style of a vlogger who’s uploading his breakdown to the internet. I think it’s a clever idea done well. (One hilarious thing to note: At the time I write this, this video has 19,968 views, 3100 likes, and one dislike. One. I find that funny.)
That’s it for now. See you again soon!