The Mercury News business section includes this article about Cold Stone Creamery and how they’re moving up in Entrepreneur magazine’s list of fastest growing franchises.

Cold Stone attracts customers by offering a twist on conventional ice cream cones and cups: custom-mixing premium ice cream with a choice of edible frills including marshmallows, coconut flakes, Gummi Bears, M&M;’s, pistachios, bananas or bits of Kit Kat and Snickers bars. The ingredients are swirled together atop a refrigerated granite slab — the “cold stone.”

First-timer Ginny Cullen, a real estate agent from Morgan Hill who visited a Cold Stone Creamery last week, opted for chunks of pecans mixed in to a heaping serving of butter pecan ice cream.

“I didn’t know they did all this,” Cullen said between bites one recent afternoon at a Cold Stone outlet at Westfield Shoppingtown Oakridge mall in San Jose. “With the quality and everything they do, I will be a repeat customer.”

Something I didn’t know until today was that Cold Stone was not the first to use the “cold stone” concept – Marble Slab came first. I wonder about the history there.

Nice to see a story about the San Francisco Zoo that doesn’t involve the death of an animal – with two elephants and a gorilla, it’s been a hard couple of months for them. Today, The Chronicle’s Patricia Yollin relates the story of the zoo’s 4 giraffes moving to their new habitat, the 3-acre “African Savanna”.

As the giraffe move began, zoo veterinarian Jacqueline Jencek said any number of things could go wrong. For example, a giraffe could slip and fall, hurting its head or breaking its leg, or a human could be kicked.

“The larger the animal, the more challenging and worrisome the move,” she said. “There’s some adrenaline going on today. It’s quite dangerous what we’re doing.”

The article features a couple of pictures of the giraffes checking out their new home.

You can now declare your opposition to four more years of chimpitude by purchasing a variety of “No-Brainer!” logo products from CafePress. Many thanks to Shawn Crosby for the fantastic design!

I’ve added $2.00 to the base price of each item; that amount will be donated to the Kerry “He’s Not Bush” campaign.

My distinguished former employer has added my personal email addresses to their spam list. This makes things rather difficult since I have unfinished business with them. I guess I can’t be shocked by the impersonal corporate mindset anymore, but this goes beyond that; someone had to add these addresses to the corporate spam list, ensuring that my messages—sent for a legitimate business purpose—will be routed to the recipient’s spam folder.

Unbelievable.

Former (and future?) Giant Andres “Big Cat” Galarraga says he’s overcome a second bout with cancer and is ready to play in the bigs again.

Beaming and looking healthy at a news conference, the 42-year-old Galarraga said wants to get back to the majors so he can reach 400 home runs. In 18 seasons, Galarraga has 398 homers. The first baseman known as “The Big Cat” hit .301 last season with 12 home runs and 42 RBIs for the San Francisco Giants. He also played for Montreal, St. Louis, Colorado, Atlanta and Texas during his career.

“I will play for anyone to get the home runs I need to reach 400,” he said.

Hmm… JT Snow is out for knee surgery, and San Francisco needs a power hitter…

Sometimes you have to go with instinct.

At the store on Sunday, while walking across the lot to Safeway to get my usual lunch (soup from the soup bar, sourdough roll, single-serve bottle of apple juice) I was approached by a woman asking for money for food. As usual, I politely declined without giving it much thought.

A few minutes later, while ladling out my soup into the to-go container, I had a second thought. After glancing out the door to see if she was still there, I dished up a second container of soup and then picked up an extra roll and juice. I went through the self-checkout line and bagged the two meals separately. When finished, I looked at the receipt and noted that the total was around $6 or $7–less even than a meal at an inexpensive sit-down restaurant like Taxi’s.

I left the store, found the woman in the parking lot, and handed her one of the bags.

The look on her face was more than payment enough for the food.

c|net News.com is reporting that Microsoft will begin producing a version of Windows for “high performance” supercomputers, such as those running at Lawrence Livermore.

High-performance computing once required massive, expensive, exotic machines from companies such as Cray, but the field is being remade by the arrival of clusters of low-end machines. While the trend could be considered an opportunity for Microsoft, which has long been the leading operating-system company, Linux has actually become the favored software used on these clusters.

Now Microsoft has begun its response, forming its High Performance Computing team and planning a new OS version called Windows Server HPC Edition. Kyril Faenov is director of the effort, and Microsoft is hiring new managers, programmers, testers and others.

Am I the only one who remembers Microsoft’s foray into pen computing in the late 80s/early 90s? They produced a barely-working version of Windows 3.1 with pen input features for the sole purpose of driving startup GO out of the market and out of business. Once done, the initiative was quietly abandoned. In this case, though, these high-performance clustered machines are quite happily running various flavors of Unix and/or Linux, and I can’t imagine the engineers responsible for these machines deigning to let Microsoft crash (yes) the party.

Chip off the old block: A 6-week-old Asiatic lion cub makes his public debut with Dad at Chessington World of Adventure in Surrey, England.
(What would I do without SFGate’s Day in Pictures?)

Cameroon has arrested a Nigerian woman who was found carrying more than 200 dead parrots, a customs official said on Tuesday. An attorney who will be handling the woman’s defense said they will most likely take an approach long known in British law circles: “They’re not dead! They’re just sleeping!”

(David Parrish/TopFive’s Current Events)

To: The bastard who somehow obtained my check card number and used it for a shopping spree in SoCal over the weekend

From: Me

Message: Thanks for once again proving to me what a terrific bank I use. They’ve already put the money back into my account, and since you only had the number and not the actual card, the stupid retailers who let you charge with just a card number are going to eat the charges.

Oh, and I hope you die.

Glenn Dickey says the Giants should prepare for a big purge, and pretty soon.

In the recent past, Giants general manager Brian Sabean has done a good job of strengthening the team with midseason acquisitions but that’s unlikely this year because the Giants need too much help, and they need it right now.

“Realistically, trades don’t get made in April and May,” Sabean said. “We’re evaluating our team right now, and the first thing we’re doing is internally, to give players who haven’t played much a chance to see what they can do.”

The article briefly profiles several promising Triple-A players who may appear in the lineup later this season.

Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, recently gave this commencement speech to graduates at his alma mater, William & Mary College.

I am honored to be here, I do have a confession to make before we get going that I should explain very quickly. When I am not on television, this is actually how I dress. I apologize, but there’s something very freeing about it. I congratulate the students for being able to walk even a half a mile in this non-breathable fabric in the Williamsburg heat. I am sure the environment that now exists under your robes, are the same conditions that primordial life began on this earth.

I know there were some parents that were concerned about my speech here tonight, and I want to assure you that you will not hear any language that is not common at, say, a dock workers union meeting, or Tourrett’s convention, or profanity seminar. Rest assured.

I attended one of Rita‘s many graduations some years ago, where the guest speaker was former Texas governor Ann Richards. Ms. Richards had just been defeated, in a rather ugly campaign, by future one-and-out President George W. Bush. This has nothing really to do with Jon Stewart giving an address at William & Mary, but it’s customary to try to relate these links to personal experience, even if it’s a stretch.

Cursor-B-Gone!

(Flash)

Ever wanted to know what that bloke meant when he called you a bloody pillock? Well, now you can find out. Hours of nattering entertainment.

Glenn Dickey of The Chronicle is the latest to call for Barry Bonds to bat 3rd, adding his voice to a number of others.

The reason for the change is less to protect Bonds than to maximize the offense for the top part of the lineup. The Giants have to get production from the top five spots because they have three weak spots in the bottom of the order, including the pitcher. Neither of the Giants’ shortstops, Neifi Perez and Deivi Cruz, hits enough to be anything but a reserve, and the same is true of the three mediocrities the Giants shuffle in the outfield.

Perhaps the truly embarrassing weekend sweep by the Pirates will be enough to motivate some change in the lineup.

This AP story (via SFGate) tells about small, family-owned California dairies where

farmers add new twists to old traditions, or create California originals with local flavors. Many welcome visitors for a tasting, sometimes within view of the cows that produced the milk.

“California cheese is where wine was in the 1970s,” said Nancy Fletcher of the California Milk Advisory Board. “It’s really gaining recognition for its quality.”

The article closes with an extensive list of cheesemakers.

All of which reminds me, I need to buy a lottery ticket tonight. If I won, I could afford all this cheese…

We got a little turned around this morning. Instead of hiking through the redwoods, we played at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. I’d never been there and Jen hadn’t in some years. We both had a good time, though I waited for her as she rode the Giant Dipper coaster, and she waited for me as I walked through “Fright Walk”, a Scary Farm-style spookhouse.

Got a little turned around again on our way out of Santa Cruz – who would have thought that an Auto Club travel agent wouldn’t have maps in her car? But we worked that out and drove home by way of Highway 17 through Scotts Valley. Nice drive.

Just got back from the Sunset Celebration Weekend event at Sunset Magazine’s offices in Menlo Park. I’ve been thumbing through Sunset for as long as I can remember–mostly interested in the before-and-after remodeling pictures at first, but now I read the whole thing–so it was quite fun to actually get to tour the place where the magazine is created. We saw the test kitchen, working gardens, toured the Glidehouse and checked out the vendors. Managed not to buy anything, and Jen picked up an entry to a get-your-recipe-published contest, specifically for cheese-based dishes.
We’ll be heading out in a few to spend the evening in Half Moon Bay and probably check out Big Basin Redwoods State Park before coming home tomorrow afternoon.

Part of losing my job means I have to give back my lovely new Dell Latitude D600. I’m copying all my personal stuff off right now and will be wiping it and returning it later this afternoon. :sniff: As a consolation, and because my new persona as a semi-independent contractor really requires it, I’ve just ordered a Dell Inspiron 600m notebook. This is the consumer equivalent to the Latitude D600, identical in nearly every way. It should be here in a week or so and then I’ll be mobile again. Until then I’ll be tied to the Frankenbox at home.

For all that Dell refuses to upgrade their in-house BlackICE installation (oops, was that proprietary information? So what are you gonna do, fire me?), making extra work for the Desktop team any time there’s a security emergency, they do make very nice machines. Jennifer loves her desktop and I couldn’t be happier with the Latitude–hopefully the Inspiron will continue that tradition.


Edit: Just discovered this useful page which describes, in exhaustive detail, the steps and gotchas to installing various flavors of Linux on the 600m/D600.

Tech news site BBSpot is reporting on the approval by the International Grammar Standards Organization of the first new punctuation mark since the exclamation mark was added in 1914.

“Language is dynamic. It changes daily,” said IGSO President Colin Thomas, “We felt a new punctuation mark was long overdue to help with the changing language.”

Editors and English teacher worldwide are scrambling to update style guides and lesson plans to incorporate the new mark. Most felt that IGSO would reject the quartercolon.

Keyboard manufacturers, however, anticipated the move and have already begun shipping keyboards with the quartercolon instead of the back tick, which no one uses anyway.

Ms. Truss will no doubt issue an updated edition of her book to cover the quartercolon.

I don’t know exactly what this is, but it seems to be a stealth promotion for Burger King.

Opera, maker of the fantastic Opera Web browser, have released the next major version of their browser: 7.50. This is a simultaneous release for Windows, Solaris, MacOS, Linux (Sparc, PowerPC, i386), and FreeBSD (i386). Usual suspects Slashdot and The Register haven’t yet posted reviews, but early feedback in the opera.beta newsgroup has been quite positive. I have already downloaded the new version and will likely install it later today or tomorrow.

Well, the hammer fell today. I was laid off along with about thirty others. Another twenty or thirty get to stay on for a month or so to wind down operations. The Mountain View office is closing and all Desktop operations are moving to Atlanta.

Based on a message I wasn’t supposed to have read last week, I had a pretty good idea this was coming, but that doesn’t make it very much easier.

So, I’ll be officially in the job market starting Monday. I’ll probably see if I can pick up more hours at the store to make up a tiny bit of the difference until I find something new.

Whee.

A confluence of factors has caused spikes in wholesale prices for key ice cream ingredients including milk, vanilla, and cocoa, leading to higher ice cream prices for consumers this summer, reports this AP story carried by the Chronicle.

Although large manufacturers can absorb some of the higher production costs, consumers can still expect to pay more for everything from pints in the grocery store to cones at the stand and push-pops off the truck.

How much more? Estimates vary from 6 percent to as much as 20 percent or more, depending on region and product.

A pint of Ben & Jerry’s is going up 8 percent, the most in the company’s 26 years. Klondike bars will cost 10 cents more per multipack, according to manufacturer Good Humor-Breyers Ice Cream.

We have an ice cream maker but use it very rarely because it’s a pain. This might be an excuse to get it out again.

CHP cracks down on speeders on I-280 (Mercury News )

Be forewarned: The California Highway Patrol has dispatched a “speed team” to a stretch of 280 between Mountain View and San Bruno with instructions to pull over and ticket vehicles going even 5 mph over the posted speed limit this afternoon.

The crackdown is part of a larger Bay Area campaign by the CHP moving from place to place that is aimed at getting motorists to ease off the accelerator a bit.

I did go that way for the first few months at Network ICE, when I was renting a room in Pacifica before we found and moved into our apartment in San Mateo. It is a beautiful drive, and people do indeed drive way too fast on parts of that freeway.