There are a few Mexican/Chinese hybrid restaurants here in Arizona. One I know of is quite good.
There was also a Chinese restaurant here in Maricopa that had the best pancakes in the morning, and the place was always packed in the morning, even at $6-7 a plate for pancakes and eggs.
The owner sold it, and the new owners did away with the breakfast menu. When I asked what happened to the breakfast menu, they told me it was a Chinese restaurant, not a Denny's.
I just couldn't figure out why a business owner would *throw away* an income stream like that. Made no sense to me ...
I'm actually planning on trying Etsy in the near future.
I've tried both really upscale and low end markets, for what it's worth, and overall, done about the same. When I factor in the cost of a space, I come out ahead at the low end markets. There's a "farmer's market" near me that is basically a giant yard sale on the local rural convenience store's parking lot and my best days have often been there -- and it only costs $4 a weekend.
Plus at the upscale markets it seems as if there's always drama. I'm not sure why.
Sorry to be so negative earlier re: the beadwork. (Am actually awake now ... *sigh* ... maybe I should just go awol from the internet completely.)
Summer, do try selling your beadwork AT work. Every little bit helps. If you already have beads, you can make up some necklaces, offer to make other designs -- and don't forget that if a premade necklace doesn't sell, you can always dismantle it and you'll only be out the cost of the bead wire. You can make something else that might sell with the same components.
I just spent last weekend breaking down a whole bunch of jewelry that hadn't sold all winter at the swap meets. This satisfied a primal urge to destroy something (my mood is pretty ... pissed off ... at the moment) and I then sorted out all the beads, figured out what I had, and made some other things in different styles. The creative work following the destruction helped my mood immensely. Maybe they'll sell better ...
You know, that inscription almost sounds as if it's something a child who is first learning to write would do. Write the whole alphabet, and then some simple sentences. Maybe they were making a gift for someone, to show their prowess writing?
If you're having problems with Moveable Type, I can't imagine that Wordpress would improve things. Is the problem flaky code or flaky server, though?
Has anyone here had experience with the current flavor of Wordpress and/or available mods on a high volume site? I mean, *really* high volume, like thousands of PV/hour or greater?
Unless they've improved the code a lot in the last few years, WP is not workable for high volume without some mods. It's a resource hog and I had issues with the database corrupting when when things got busy. Better code may be available now, I dunno. I was last working with WP about three years ago and threw my hands up eventually after it crashed and burned the umpteenth time.
For point of reference, when I had WP on the site, FFNews was getting 2500 pv/day or so. And I had to regularly fix it. Traffic was spikey and whenever we got a spike it went boom. This was in 2006, though, so the code might be better now.
(Firefox News runs on Article Live. I am not sure that would be appropriate for Making Light, but it's fairly stable unless we, say, get hit with xx,xxx pv/hour. The databases themselves rarely corrupt, but sometimes the server goes boom.)
I once dealt with a particularly dense bill collector:
BC> Is Mr. Lastname there?
Me> No, he's not, may I take a message?
BC> Are you his wife?
Me> No, I'm his girlfriend. May I take a message?
BC> Is MRS. Lastname there?
Me> Wait, wait, there's a Mrs. Lastname? Ooooooh, kinky!
Hnnh. Re: fandom sites and geocities closing down -- I may be able to play host to some fandom sites. I'll take a look and see what I can do and post more here later.
And most sites that rely on ad revenue are taking a BAD hit with the economy. A lot of the better paying internet advertisers were banks and car companies and airlines ...
# 70 New Times is our resident leftwingnut paper, but they do have a few fairly good investigative journalists and they've written about Arpaio quite a few times. I think they also have an article worth reading about his treatment of the TB patient.
My read of Arpaio is that he's power mad, he isn't afraid of politicizing a public health issue, and he has little to no compassion. He's not afraid to play dirty. And he loves to go after groups and individuals who can't fight back, like illegals.
His department is the sole law enforcement for a couple of cities, and all unincorporated areas, in Maricopa county. It'll be ... interesting ... to see what he does if/when panflu hits here.
I'm not sure what to think of this -- I have a couple of swine flu articles up at my site, and most of the articles are showing Adsense ads for grocery store mail order deliveries from major chain grocers. Safeway among them.
Would delivering groceries by mail/UPS/Fedex help or hinder quarantine? *scratches head* It'd keep people home, but the postman could be a disease vector and he'd be visiting every home and handling every package.
My ... favorite? ... conspiracy theory re: flu is that the swine flu was created by BigPharma because BigPharma stands to make lots and lots of money from the flu outbreak. Follow the money and all that.
Mind, I don't believe that theory is at all likely, but it's more plausible than terrorists.
Re: books & viruses
Maybe I'm being irrational, but I make a point of not touching the magazines in the doctor's office. God only knows what the last person was carrying when they sneezed all over last year's tattered Newsweek ...
Ginger, I don't think we can extrapolate a CFR from those numbers because we don't know how many undiagnosed or unreported cases there are.
Though you can make some interesting extrapolations in the other direction. Mexico's reporting approximately 150 suspected deaths. A CFR of 2.5 gives you 6000 cases, a CFR of .5 gives you 30,000 cases, a CFR of .1 gives you 150,000 cases.
Given they seem to think the index case was sometime in March, I'm not sure which is worse -- 1 case to 150,000 cases with a very low CFR (but wildly contagious and resulting in lots of fatalities because EVERYONE gets sick) or a higher CFR, slightly less contagious, but a lot more lethal and already spread all over the world.
Note: Mexico's numbers are probably off the mark. I have no idea if they're too high (some of those 150 aren't flu victims) or too low (unreported deaths) but they're probably not right.
Re: H5N1 and a 70% CFR -- let's cross our fingers and hope that swine flu doesn't meet up in a pig with H5N1 somewhere and make a lovechild. There will be lots of virus particles floating around if this thing takes off in, say, Indonesia ...
Link: http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2009/04/28/20090428mcsoswine0428-ON.html
It strikes me that arresting illegal aliens, who have likely been here for far longer than the incubation period, is not something that should be the sheriff's priority during a pandemic. Srsly.
*headdesk*
Sheriff Arpaio here in Phoenix is managing to spin this into an anti-illegal-alien thing. As one would expect. Equipping all his sheriff deputies with masks and gloves (good) because they might encounter infected illegal aliens (err ...)
(I am honestly wondering what publicity stunts Arpaio might try to pull once this thing hits Maricopa County. See forced quarantine, tuberculosis patient, Maricopa County jail, no charges ever filed. He does love the publicity and he's got his tent cities all ready to go ... thank goodness I do not live in Maricopa County, though I work there. The thought of Arpaio having say over who gets quarantined is ... unsettling.)
Flu virus can survive for a fair amount of time, but the exact time it lives in the environment really varies. Typically, cold and dry is better than hot and humid (for the virus) and what it landed on matters too.
It can survive hours to, under perfect conditions, weeks. *shrug*
I saw a recent report somewhere today that "the authorities" also think the incubation period for swine flu may be up to seven days now. If that's true, schools and workplaces will need to be closed for at LEAST a week to break the chain of transmission if an outbreak occurs.
I have asthma.. Bonus, I'm on methotrexate and prednisone for rheumatoid arthritis, and so my immune system is crap. Pneumonia? Oh, yeah. Been there, done that. It is absolutely miserable ...
(I figure if I get the swine flu at a time when modern medicine is overwhelmed, I'm basically screwed. I WILL get pneumonia. The common cold gives me pneumonia. If they're triaging victims due to scarce resources, the decision about me would likely not go in my favor ...)
I'm worrying myself by solving for "X" here.
Mexico has 149 officially reported dead. We can't determine a CFR (case fatality ratio) from that because we don't know how many are sick. However, we can make some interesting extrapolations if you apply CFRs to that number.
Rounding it up to 150 dead gives you 6,000 cases @ 2.5% CFR, which was the CFR of the 1918 pandemic.
At .5% CFR (seasonal flu) you have 30,000 sick.
Of course, there's no guarantee that Mexico's reporting the numbers correctly (and a lot of suspicion they may not be, because of sheer confusion, if nothing else).
In either case, we're past the point at which we could stop it. Which everyone has been saying. But ... still, it's worrisome.
Also, I have seen several bloggers observe that the flu isn't growing exponentially like it did in 1918 and using this to claim it's not as contagious. I turned this around in my head a bit, wondering what other factors might be at play if we assume it IS as contagious ... and one thing that occurs to me is that families are smaller now.
Could the slower rate of growth have something to do with families that are a few people rather than a dozen? Used to be, you had three generations including several kids in one family. Mexico still has its share of large families, but I suspect they're a lot smaller than they used to be.
So, for example, Dad comes home with flu and infects the wife and six kids and gramma and grandpa and spinster aunt Bertha in 1918 ... then they go out in the community and infect two people each, who each go home and infect a family with a dozen members ... vs. the same scenario today, with dad coming home, and infecting mom and two children and that's it.
Anyway. Something I was mulling over today.
I'm sorta preparing for supply chain disruptions. If everyone in the world's sick, or caring for the sick, or having child care issues because schools are closed, that could rather put a monkey-wrench in deliveries of necessities. Plus, there's always the potential for quarantines, rational or not.
Dried rice and beans ... nom.
See this article:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aEsNownABJ6Q&refer=home
Specifically:
"The first case was seen in Mexico on April 13. The outbreak coincided with the President Barack Obama’s trip to Mexico City on April 16. Obama was received at Mexico’s anthropology museum in Mexico City by Felipe Solis, a distinguished archeologist who died the following day from symptoms similar to flu, Reforma newspaper reported. The newspaper didn’t confirm if Solis had swine flu or not."
Ack.
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