If you know me, you know I'm a fan of good hummus. Store-bought hummus is occasionally OK, but making it at home is much, much cheaper and usually yields tastier results.

Thanks to Dreena Burton's entire chapter on hummus in her most recent cookbook, we've been able to try a lot of different types of hummus in recent months. While traditional hummus uses the mighty chickpea (garbanzo bean), we've really enjoyed some of the alternatives. The black bean and orange hummus is one of our favorites. It's unlike any hummus you've ever tried and the light citrus touch makes it irresistable. Last night we made a white bean hummus with basil and thyme that's really good on top of cherry tomatoes. We also enjoyed their roasted red pepper and almond hummus, while our daughter likes the kid hummus. We still have a peanut-sesame hummus to try.

What's your favorite hummus concoction?

A while back we started shopping around for a copier/scanner/fax/printer. We really wanted the fax part above all else; we've got a printer so unless it does something special then we don't need it.

That device I mentioned? I would call it an "all-in-one". But! Some people might not, apparently.

As a random example this HP printer is an all-in-one... but it lacks a fax. This HP printer is an all-in-one... with a fax. That's, uh, clear!

Can I make a suggestion? Devices without a fax could be called Three-in-Ones. It may upset a few people but it'll make shopping for these things easier. And isn't that what's important?

There's only one reason, really: there's an entire paradox named after him.

It doesn't hurt that Let's Make a Deal is still entertaining after all these years. GSN shows plenty of old episodes, and trying out pricing games from 35-45 years ago is juuust a little more challenging now than it was then.

Most Circuit City stores are pretty similar. Not identical like Best Buys, but relatively similar. This morning, though, I had to go to one and I was compeltely thrown off. It was entirely different than any other Bircuit Bity store I'd ever been in.

First of all, it just didn't seem like they had all that much stuff. Secondly, the layout was confusing. To pick up a USB card reader, I was directed to computers and eventually stumbled my way to one display that seemed to have nothing but cards and card readers. But, it turns out, the card reader I was looking for was on another display, halfway across the store. Of course!

The checkout process at Circuit City has always been a bit confusing ("Sure, you can checkout anywhere there's a terminal... if you can find someone!"). Here, it was only confusing because they put the checkout counter in the front corner of the store, easy to miss when walking in, even though it's pretty large. Then, after checking out, I expected to be able to walk out a certain way, only to realize that, no, there's no door there. Unlike other Circuit Cities that have two or three sets of doors, this one only has one. No wonder they had a greeter at the front -- she also made sure that no one walked into a glass window thinking it was a door ("Everyone thinks they can go out that way" she told me. Great design!).

So, that's Circuit City in 2008 for you. Generally unimpressive, poorly designed, and only occasionally decent with their pricing.

It's time to come clean and admit that I sometimes shop at Aldi.

For those who aren't aware Aldi is perhaps the ultimate in generic grocery stores. Everything is house-brand, outside of one or two random special purchases, and prices are generally really cheap. Trader Joe's is essentially the same model (and owned by the same company here in the US) but with arguably higher-end stuff.

But back when I was a kid, Aldi had a bad reputation and with good reason. Our local store was always a mess, the lighting was bad, and the products were a little scary. Things have seemed to improve lately; we got a newish Aldi in town and it's clean, well-lit, and the stuff is pretty good.

Perhaps my favorite find at Aldi remains their chocolate chip cookies. Their Belmont brand is identical to Matt's, one of my favorite store-bought cookies. They're the same thing in a different package. Same company. Same everything. And yet, they're $1-$2 less.

I can deal with that.

1. Irish hip-hop
2. Polish hip-hop
3. Polish jazz
4. This
5. A piece of brownie that's accidentally become stuck to the top of an Oreo
6. The way my daughter does yoga
7. McCain campaign ads (entertaining in their amateurishness/stupidity, not good)
8. This video, which never, ever gets old
9. This video, which probably will get old (quickly)
10. Leaving off a tenth item, just to annoy people

I have to admit that I failed to reach my goal this year.

With the Olympics ongoing I decided to make a rather simple goal: to watch none of it. Zero. The main reason is, simply put, I don't care. Sports, nice. 8 gold medals for Phelps, nice. Bird's Nest, nice. Putting aside China's human rights policies to watch people do tough athletic moves, nice. Et cetera.

But I failed. Between yesterday and Friday I believe I saw about 10 minutes of the Olympics... in between bouts of falling asleep on the couch. To balance it out I'll try to watch 10 minutes of C-Span, okay?

Dear Gmail,

Please stop classifying almost all of my mail as spam. I've had to slog through thousands of real spam to pick out all of the false positives over the last week or two. It hasn't been fun and I know I've missed some. What's the deal, Gmail? You've been so good up to this point!


xoxo,
Ryan

You know, it's just not working out. Sure sure, Austin's got some great culture but... given that a county in Texas, albeit a small one, is allowing teachers to carry concealed firearms in the classroom, I think we're about through.

And there was that whole "crappy President who screwed up the country" thing too, of course.

But seriously - this quote is scary:

"When the federal government started making schools gun-free zones, that's when all of these shootings started," [school superintendent David Thweatt] wrote on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's web site.

Yeah, might as well give everyone guns so we can have shoot-outs. GREAT IDEA.

I wasn't aware of it but apparently yesterday was Brownie Day.

Around 9pm or so, my wife got a hankering for brownies. 25 minutes later, we enjoyed some still-warm brownies. (They're pretty easy, aren't they?)

And then, some Ryan MacMichael guy posted a tweet asking if 11:55pm was too late to make brownies. He also answered himself (odd) and said, "Nope!" ...Which is true. It's never too late. (Hopefully they weren't outputting strange stream when finished.)

Coincidence? No. So I hereby decla... what? What's that?

Oh. I regret to inform you that yesterday was not Brownie Day. I've been informed that December 8th is National Brownie Day. Yesterday was actually nothing but August 13th and today happens to be National Creamsicle Day. The Daily Ping regrets the error.

Oh my.

The Brown Corporation, Ltd. offers the amazing Shit Box, a portable cardboard toilet. It comes with biodegradable "poo bags." And since 2008 is the International Year of Sanitation, don't you think you should be adding one of these puppies to your car emergency kit?

It definitely gives The Bumper Dumper a run (hah!) for its money.

[via Bob]