February 6th, 2009 by Stinkhead

I think the Onion gets right to the issue here. Will someone think of the children? Our nation’s girls will be obsessed with an impossible body image of a skinny waist and a huge head.

Posted in advice, cringe, Girls, gripe, kids, toys, video | Comments Off on Negative impact of Bratz Dolls – via the Onion

January 26th, 2009 by Stinkhead

My 17 month old son likes to come up and randomly hit keys on my laptop, hoping to start a song or video or hear a system beep. This past weekend, he hit some key combination that rotated my desktop by 180° He couldn’t tell me what he hit, and I had no idea how to switch it back. Not only was the screen upside down (see pic) but the touchpad moved the cursor in the opposite direction than what I was doing. I was able to hold the laptop upside down (typing upside down) and google how to rotate my desktop display. I found it pretty easily. (Most results were in response to people in a similar situation) For future help, (or a sweet prank to play on an sunspecting victim) hit Crtl + Alt + (arrow key) (note, this is for at least XP, not any older)

Posted in baby, cringe, gripe, kids, picture, toddler | Comments Off on Baby flips my laptop display

January 19th, 2009 by Stinkhead

When you have a baby and the two of you are on your own, your dinner options are limited to begin with –and every now and then you need buffalo wings. It doesn’t help that my wife isn’t a big wing fanatic to begin with, so most of the opportunities to have wings are when I am flying solo. (That was a terrible wing pun) As you know, it’s tough packing the little one in the car to go get food, and then come right back home (much less feeding and tending to a baby when you’re up to your elbows in that sweet, sweet BBQ sauce).

Two of my favorite wing places are Wing Stop and B-dubs, and they don’t deliver. (and don’t get me started about how the DC area is in sore need of their own B-Dubs)

So I started exploring these places that deliver wings. I know what you’re thinking, but there is good news and bad news.

I’ve had some success and some failure, but now I’m on a real mission. Here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to invite some guys over and order wings from a few places and get a consensus to see who delivers the best. Some may be local, so I’d love to hear from you, which are the best in your neck of the woods (and who to avoid)

This isn’t part of my official trials but here are two findings so far:
Armands Chicago Style Pizzeria (with locations in DC-MD-VA and one in DE) has great deep-dish style pizza, but their wings are the best I’ve had delivered so far. The trick is that they arrive hot. Really hot. The first time I ordered their wings, I had to wait a minute or two to dig in. This is not the experience with other places. The wings are also huge… they don’t skimp ya. I’ve ordered their wings a few times now, and other guests of mine have said they were top notch as well.

Wing Street (a division of Pizza Hut) was not too good. To be fair, I ordered their boneless wings, and they were pretty crummy, I should try traditional style wings from each place to see, but these were just like chicken nuggets from McDonalds. On top of that they didn’t include any ranch or bleu cheese or anything. That’s a crime. The ordering process was difficult too… the minimum order for delivery is $10, but 10 wings is $8. (20 wings is $15, but too many wings for one guy) so I ordered some bread sticks. Those were also sub-par.

This is my second lousy experience with Wing Street… the first was when I originally tried to order from them, but because there was a Pizza Hut in closer vicinity to my house, they would not deliver to me. However that Pizza Hut didn’t have the Wing Street menu… so that’s when I went to Armands…

So anyway, let’s be scientific… I’ll order Medium and Hot wings from several locations (I might have to throw in a carry-out from Wing Stop just for control group purposes) but I’ll stick to traditional style bone wings, to be fair.

Then I’ll report on the findings.

But please chime in with your own experiences and local favorites… help another dad out there who’s looking to fulfill a wing fix when his arms are full.

Posted in advice, article, cooking, cringe, gripe, review, wings | 1 Comment »

January 8th, 2009 by Stinkhead

UPDATE: 3:40pm on Thursday January 8, 2009

I just received Good News, regarding the future of Thrift Stores, eBay, consignment sales, Salvation Army etc. They’re going to be fine, as long as they don’t sell recalled items…

Click below for The Official Word from CPSC

Washington, D.C. – In February 2009, new requirements of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) take effect. Manufacturers, importers and retailers are expected to comply with the new Congressionally-mandated laws. Beginning February 10, 2009, children’s products cannot be sold if they contain more than 600 parts per million (ppm) total lead. Certain children’s products manufactured on or after February 10, 2009 cannot be sold if they contain more that 0.1% of certain specific phthalates or if they fail to meet new mandatory standards for toys.
Under the new law, children’s products with more than 600 ppm total lead cannot lawfully be sold in the United States on or after February 10, 2009, even if they were manufactured before that date. The total lead limit drops to 300 ppm on August 14, 2009.
The new law requires that domestic manufacturers and importers certify that children’s products made after February 10 meet all the new safety standards and the lead ban. Sellers of used children’s products, such as thrift stores and consignment stores, are not required to certify that those products meet the new lead limits, phthalates standard or new toy standards.
The new safety law does not require resellers to test children’s products in inventory for compliance with the lead limit before they are sold. However, resellers cannot sell children’s products that exceed the lead limit and therefore should avoid products that are likely to have lead content, unless they have testing or other information to indicate the products being sold have less than the new limit. Those resellers that do sell products in violation of the new limits could face civil and/or criminal penalties. When the CPSIA was signed into law on August 14, 2008, it became unlawful to sell recalled products. All resellers should check the CPSC Web site (www.cpsc.gov) for information on recalled products before taking into inventory or selling a product. The selling of recalled products also could carry civil and/or criminal penalties.
The agency intends to focus its enforcement efforts on products of greatest risk and largest exposure. While CPSC expects every company to comply fully with the new laws resellers should pay special attention to certain product categories. Among these are recalled children’s products, particularly cribs and play yards; children’s products that may contain lead, such as children’s jewelry and painted wooden or metal toys; flimsily made toys that are easily breakable into small parts; toys that lack the required age warnings; and dolls and stuffed toys that have buttons, eyes, noses or other small parts that are not securely fastened and could present a choking hazard for young children.
The agency has underway a number of rulemaking proposals intended to provide guidance on the new lead limit requirements. Please visit the CPSC website at www.cpsc.gov for more information.

Posted in article, baby, CPSIA, cringe, gripe, kids, linky | 1 Comment »

December 12th, 2008 by Stinkhead

This is terrible news. Their prices were usually ridiculous, but they were the only toy store at the mall. You will be missed.

But as someone pointed out, why not use their crazy 50% – 70% off sales to give a little bit more to Toys for Tots?

KB Toys.com

Posted in advice, cringe, event, gifts, good deals, gripe, kids, news, shop, toys | Comments Off on KB Toys going under–

September 28th, 2008 by Stinkhead

The experts and pundits keep saying that it’s impossible to have a total economic collapse… but you can’t help but wonder… what if the economy did fall apart?, What would happen is suddenly the global market says “We don’t want your money” and then everybody starts thinking “this money is no good” Once the electric company or the beer store decide that money is no good, you’re pretty screwed…
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in advice, article, crafts, cringe, DIY, gripe, how to | Comments Off on How would we survive a total economic collapse?

August 4th, 2008 by Stinkhead

This morning, the Consumerist features a parent’s tale of woe as they purchased the Banzai Water park, and found the actual set up to be much much smaller than what’s pictures. Click to see the comparison.

Do you have any similar mishaps where what you got looked nothing like you thought you were getting? Share in the comments section below.

Posted in advice, cringe, gripe, kids, linky | Comments Off on Oh how the packaging deceives…

June 29th, 2008 by Stinkhead

Precious Snowflake

The trend of over-rewarding our collective children: being critical of their criticism, and homogenizing all acomplishments, big and small, essentially protecting the “losers” so we don’t hurt their self esteem, has finally generated a back-lash!

For me it started back when my teacher wife was told that she wasn’t to use red marking pens when grading her students’ work… for it might hurt their self esteem, so she is to use Purple or other colors. Give me a got-damn break… but little did I know that was merely the tip of the ice burg… here are two examples directly from the Times article, I’m about to point you towards….

A recent production of Snow White at a primary school in Japan featured 25 Snow Whites, no dwarfs and no wicked witch, as parents objected to one child being picked out for the title role. In Sweden a boy was prevented from handing out invitations to his birthday party at school because he was “discriminating” against the two classmates he did not invite.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in cringe, gripe, linky | Comments Off on We “Thought of the Children!” a little tooo much

June 4th, 2008 by Stinkhead

really?

Posted in cringe, gifts, gripe, picture | Comments Off on Hallmark rips off ICanHazCheezburger??

May 22nd, 2008 by Stinkhead

My son is nine months old, and we just had his first major illness. Violent vomitting (not baby spit-up, this was the real deal) and explosive diarrhea. He had a slight fever so my wife took him to the doctor. They prescribed a liquid medicine to give him. Here is the time line of incompetance. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in advice, baby, cringe, gripe, picture, review | 2 Comments »