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Grandparents column revisited

My grandmother (mom's mom) recently passed away at age 90, so I wanted to display this article I wrote about my grandparents six years ago. At this point, I still have my dad's parents to spend time with, which actually, I hope to do tomorrow.

(This column was originally published in the Crawfordsville Journal Review on March 19, 1999)

There are at least 56,828 things to do during spring break. If you have a credit card, or know how to use a stolen one, the number grows exponentially. But there is one activity that rarely gets a lot of hype this time of year.

I know who you called last night

I would assume you aren't naive enough to think your cell phone records are still private. True, I can't just pay a company to find out who you called, but ... oh wait. I CAN do that!

Chemistry, in letters, and a lot of time

If you are familiar with the Periodic Table (and if you aren't, please have a chat with your chemistry teacher soon!), you might be interested to know that someone has compiled a list of English words that can be spelled with chemical symbols.

No, the person wasn't me. Actually, the computer did most of the work, but Dr. Nandor's Exhaustive Chemical Words Pages shows a multitude of ways to combine elements to form words.

Stop looking for those lost license plates

How many different types of license plates are there in the world? I'm not sure, but if you are ready to do a hand count, you could start at License Plates of the World. You will find a ridiculous amount of license plates; not just current ones, but past plates as well. There are also ways to purchase some of the plates, if you happen to be the type of person who is missing that 1930s vintage Montana plate.

'The Developers' listed with major distributor

Baker & Taylor, a book distributor with service centers located throughout the United States, is now listing "The Developers" for retail.

For over 176 years, Baker & Taylor has been providing quality information and entertainment services. The company is a worldwide distributor of books, video, music and games.

From the Archive

Find your favorite meaningful (or meaningless) quotes

They say a random quote is like reading obituaries from an 18th century newspaper on the other side of the world. The information is worthwhile to someone, but probably not the person actually reading it.

All right, so I made that up, but regardless, meaningful, unique quotes can be difficult to come by, unless you are perusing Food for Thought. The site is billed as "A Collection of Heretical Notions and Wretched Adages compiled by Jack Tourette."

I'm not the only one looking for ridiculous websites

For Christmas, I received one of those Page-A-Day calendars to keep on your office desk. Normally, when I have one of those, I pull off about two months' worth at the same time because I completely forget about it. And I still do that for the newest one I own, but this one is a little different. This calendar is full of odd and wacky websites, which of course, is great research for my columns. I'll highlight some of my favorites here, and try to give a little bit of info when necessary.

Happy 1,000 visitor, whoever you are

Sometime on Oct. 12, the 1,000 unique person made it to my website. I wish I would have had sirens sounding, fireworks exploding and music playing, but I didn't. It was too much work to figure out the exact person anyway.

Now, the 1,000 unique person is a little deceiving. From the way the statistics are displayed, a user is unique every day. That means each day I check to make sure what I posted makes sense, it counts me again.

Helping or something to that effect

Fold out a brown cardboard box.

Add five strips of tape - three long ways, two short ways - to the bottom.

Stack a layer of canned goods, maybe some baby food and toiletries, followed by a layer of clothes or towels or another random packing item.

Seal the box with five more pieces of tape, load it and be ready for another.

Crawfordsville residents weren't moving, but they were following a recipe for others who were. No one really knew who they were helping, but the cars of goods rarely stopped last weekend at the Hoosiers Helping the Heartland drive.

How to use your cellphone

Some people walk around with a cellphone like it is the actual meaning of life. "Cellphone, please tell me again your perspective of good versus evil." Oh wait, maybe the person was just talking to their philosophy classmate.

Anyway, I've come up with some simple tips that probably most of you won't agree with, but I think it would make the world much more livable.

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