Hot Sauce Emporium and other various stuff...

After being on the road for most of last week (one of the trips was to a client site in southern Virginia, where I saw a goat standing on top of a parked car in someone's driveway), I'm back in the office today. That's right, today is Sunday. Hopefully I'll be home before the Sopranos starts. But for the sake of procrastination, here are some links I amassed over the weekend:

• First and foremost, I don't know why it took me so long to discover this place: the Hot Sauce Emporium (previously profiled by the Hot Sauce Blog). I was in Eastern market Saturday afternoon when I walked by it on 7th Street SE - next to Ben & Jerry's and Montmarte restaurant. I casually strolled in to the small storefront, where I was welcomed with shelves and shelves of varied hot sauces from around the world. I was in heaven. Naturally, I question the economic viability of a store in extremely sought-after real estate that sells nothing but hot sauce. Which is why it is our duty to make this place successful. I urge all of you - visit this place as soon as you can and buy as much hot sauce as you can afford. You can never have too much.

• Now on to sadder news - it appears the storied Rolling Rock brewery in Latrobe, PA is shutting down for good. Anheuser-Busch, which recently acquired the "Rolling Rock" brand, plans to shift production to its plant in New Jersey. This is too bad - the only reason I drank Rolling Rock at all was because it was brewed in Latrobe. Hometown pride, I guess. I mean, let's be honest - Rolling Rock tastes like whiz-infused Monongahela water. Nevertheless, this was a huge loss for an already moribund region - I predict that Latrobe will turn into a ghost town within a matter of months. I, for one, am never going to drink Rolling Rock again, and I urge you to do the same. (Incidentally, if you've ever wondered what the "33" on the back of the bottle means, here's an accurate explanation.)

• I've got 3 new time wasters to share. The first one - an interpretive history of dance - is brilliant. (Apparently, it's the most viewed clip ever on YouTube - I'm clearly a bit slow on the uptake.) However, the omission of Footloose is an unforgivable oversight.

• Second - gay, blind...whatever. Climbing Mount Everest is still an accomplishment.

• The third link is a bit harder to explain. I'll defer to the Washington Post: "From the Japanese scientist who brought you the 'Bowlingual,' a device you strap to your dog that claims to translate his barks into English, comes this site, which ties in to the 'Da Vinci Code' craze... Using 'forensic' techniques, this guy analyzed the facial structures of Leonardo da Vinci and the Mona Lisa and extrapolated what they would have sounded like. When I first heard of this, I said, to myself, 'Please don't let it look like the Conan O'Brien shtick where he has moving lips in still photos of people like President Bush and has them saying outlandish things. Please don't let it look like that.' Of course, it looks like that."

• Finally, I have 2 e-mail accounts: a Gmail account, which I use almost exclusively, and a Hotmail account, which I give out to potential spammers and people I don't like. As you probably know, Hotmail, which is rapidly losing market share to Gmail and other providers because of its vastly inferior technology, has embarked upon a series of "upgrades" to better compete. Well, when I logged into my Hotmail account yesterday, I got the following screen. I find it poignant that Microsoft has to resort to "Whoops!" to explain why they're getting pumelled in the web-based applications market. I'm tempted to click on the "Tell us what you think" link to let them know how crappy Hotmail is, but I have to get back to work...