0524 a pound is a pound, isn't it?

I’ve been reading articles about keeping the mind sharp as one ages and quite often I see a tip about learning something new keeps the mind active. So this past weekend, I found out that a pound of feathers weighs more than a pound of gold.

How? Glad you asked.

Feathers are weighed in Avoirdupois weight (AV) and gold is weighed in Troy weight (T). A grain of feathers weighs the same as a grain of gold. An AV pound is 16 ounces and is 7000 grains. A T pound is 12 ounces and is 5760 grains. So a pound of feathers weighs more than a pound of gold.

I can’t wait to use that in a bar bet.

0519 asian chicken

Mike and I met for our weekly bible study (every Wednesday at 10:30am) and went to lunch at Coco’s in Lakewood.

I had the Asian Chicken Salad, which left me wondering: How difficult is it to find Asian chickens?

0508 bill

An old friend contacted me and we went out for dinner to talk and catch-up. Bill and I attended high school together. Most recently, he was an editor for "Institutional Investor" magazine in New York. He was a writer for "Wine Spectator" before that.

Yes, he resides in New York now. He was spending a few weeks with family. He has a sister who still lives in the area.

0503 farmville

Zynga, the company that produces several online games that can be played through Facebook, has come up with a way to make the game-playing experience smoother and easier for someone like me.

One of the games is FarmVille. It’s designed in such a way to get you to come back often. There are two forms of currency: FarmVille Coins and FarmVille Bucks.

Farmville Coins are easy to get and accumulate. Plant crops by paying to plow and seed, then harvest (after waiting the appropriate amount of time). The revenue from harvesting is more than the cost of plowing and seeding, so it’s a way to make FV Coins, which can then be used to “buy” some items for your farm.

Unfortunately, some items can only be obtained using FV Bucks. FV Bucks can be “made” only two ways. You can get one FV Buck fr every 1-2 days that you log in to the game, or you can buy some with REAL currency, using a credit card. I avoid sending credit information over the Internet, for obvious reasons. So I’ve made myself content with generating the FV Bucks slowly.

Zynga came up with a third option that subdues my paranoia. Cards with FV graphics are now available at Target, 7-Eleven, Best Buy, and GameStop. This allows someone to purchase a card at a retailer using cash, thus avoiding any exposure of credit information. A $10 FV card has a code (exposed after scratching off a cover) that will credit your account with 55 FV Bucks. Sweet.

I was talking to a friend (also on FarmVille) about stuff and the conversation changed to the cards. I asked her if she saw them. She replied that she did and, “What kind of loser would get one of those?”

I replied, “So this wouldn’t be a good time to ask you to pick one up for me?” Lol.

I got a card on my own a few days later. :D

0501 assyrians

After service at SBCC was my bible study group. We’re going through the Book of Isaiah right now. The section we’re in is “God’s Judgment of Assyria”. One of the women had difficulty pronouncing “Assyrians”, so she substituted another word every time she had to read a verse with the word in it.

What was the other word? “Australians”. It was difficult keeping a straight face when she was reading.