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Last night on The Biggest Loser, they were getting quite ridiculous with the sponsorship censorship.

They are obsessed with blurring-out any logos, slogans, or names of brands that are not approved to be on the show.  If someone is wearing shoes that the show doesn’t want to be seen, then those shoes are blurred for the show, so that you can’t tell what brand they are.

If someone, anyone at all whether foreground or background, is wearing a shirt with a logo that is not okay, then it is blurred.  If they are showing a segment from inside someone’s house, you’ll see pictures on the wall – but some of the pictures will be blurred.

I don’t know if they have signed some contracts with corporate sponsors that dictate that they have to remove any competitors from the show.  That is a pretty strict contract, if that’s what they are enforcing, so I hope they are getting some good money for the effort that they have to make.

Or another reason could be that they are hoping to extort extract some money from companies. “We have a very popular show, but your products aren’t being shown because you’re not paying us any money.” or something like that.  Inadvertent product placement would be a legitimate concern on a reality TV show, because the average people that appear on the show don’t necessarily know or care with which companies the show has agreements. The people just wear or use what they normally do.

If you’ve seen The Biggest Loser lately, you are very aware that product placement matters a lot to them. The show has at least one very obvious product placement part of the show. It’s meant to appear as just another segment of the show, but we can instantly tell when a product-placement segment is beginning. They’re not fooling anyone.

The reason for this post was a certain fuzzing-out that occurred in yesterday’s episode. When Sione was going home, they showed the vehicle that was driving him to his house. They fuzzed the logo (or badge) in the middle of the vehicle’s grill, ostensibly to hide what brand of vehicle it was.

But it was a Cadillac Escalade!

Just hiding the logo on any Cadillac made in the last few years will have no effect, because their grills and overall shapes are distinctive. The show fooled no one.

Plus, they forgot to mask the word “Escalade” that was visible on the side of the SUV.

Cadillac has done a good job in designing the exterior of their vehicles. I can think of some vehicles, mainly sedans, that most people would not be able to identify without their badges. But Cadillacs do not fall into that category.

For that reason, I think TBL is going by some letter-of-the-law contract, because it is pointless to disguise only the Cadillac badge on an Escalade.

On a somewhat related note to my last post – 12:01 is not the start of the day. The new day starts right at midnight, 12:00.

I heard an ad recently that something was going on sale as soon as possible on such-and-such a day, and the ad specifically said 12:01 AM. But what day is it between 12:00 and 12:01? If the current time is half a second after midnight, isn’t that the first part of the day? What about a quarter of a second? You could keep going and going and the only way to have a definitive answer is to say exactly 12:00, or 00:00 for our military friends.

And since 12:00 is midnight, it must be the start of the new day (i.e. it’s early, not late) and must be AM, not PM.  Unless you use the military time of 24:00, in which case midnight is the end of the day.

I usually try to file my taxes in the middle part of the tax season, sometime between late February and mid March.  I don’t want the stress of last-second tax filing.  This year, due to several factors such as a new baby, this blog, and other projects, I found it was late March before I began doing my taxes.

My normal method is to start my taxes when I get my W-2, in early February.  I do most of it then, let it sit for a week or two, and then finish it.  I find that if I forget about it for that week or two, then it is easier to see things I missed or did wrong the first time.

My goal this year, after starting late, was to finish them while it was still March.  I saw I should be getting a refund, so I wanted to get that sooner rather than later.  Next year, I hope to owe a little bit, so I may plan to finish the taxes in March, but not file until April.

Anyway, it wasn’t until April 1st that I found the last two documents that I needed.  I thought that was an appropriate day to file the returns, as I could them make some comment about how the government tax policy is a joke or something.  I clicked the e-file button at about 5 minutes to midnight.  Being on dial-up, my computer took 6 minutes to file.  So my taxes were officially submitted at 12:01 on April 2nd.  Rats.

“God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. ”
– Genesis 1:8

Since this week’s topic seems to be germs, and since my wife bought a 5-pound tub of cookie dough from Costco, I thought I would write that cookie dough is much better before it is cooked.

It is not necessarily a contrasting opinion from my previous post about using paper towels to open bathroom doors. The difference is that one is risky with no reward and the other is risky with a decent reward. Why risk something if there is nothing to be gained? That is why I don’t want to grab bathroom door handles with my bare hands. Or why I am mildly concerned that everyone in the bathroom touches the sink faucet to turn on the water, washes his hands, then touches the freshly-contaminated faucet handle to turn off the water. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of washing your hands?

I am a fan of the automatic faucets, and I have been known to take the suds from my hands and wash the non-automatic faucet handle so that it will be clean for me to touch after I rinse my hands. And I do not pull the paper towel handle with my hand – usually some part of my arm between the wrist and elbow.

But, all that aside, I do enjoy raw cookie dough, even though that term is redundant. Cookie dough, as any dough, is raw. If it were cooked cookie dough, it wouldn’t be dough anymore. It would just be a cookie. I do occasionally think about salmonella as I am eating a spoonful of sugar-and-chocolate goodness. But these days, as long as my cookie dough doesn’t have tomatoes or peanuts or pistachios, I should be okay. Besides, most large-scale food companies use pasteurized eggs, especially for ice cream and eggnog.

I have fond memories of mom’s KitchenAid mixing bowl filled with cookie dough. My favorite was the chocolate chip with M&Ms. My guess is that only a third of that dough ever made it into cookies. It, like hot fudge, was best served on a spoon.

One interesting tidbit: salmonella is named after the guy that discovered the bacterium – Dr. Salmon.

Another interesting thing I learned is that the edible parts of the egg are clean; people get salmonella from dirty shells. From which end of the chicken did the egg come? So wash the shells just before use, and that should be the most help.

I was going to write a post about how annoying the hot-air hand dryers in public bathrooms are, and how I wish every restroom offered paper towels as an option at least. But, as is often the case with the internet, someone has already written about it.

If you don’t want to leave Some Blog Site, here are my sentiments: hot-air dryers are bad, paper towels are good, and continuous-roll towels are scary.

If a bathroom has only hot-air dryers, how can you wipe up a spill? Especially if the spill is on the edge of the sink and if you lean against the sink it will soak right into your clothes at sink level and make you look incompetent (okay, that’s the right word) at using a bathroom.

If a bathroom does not have paper towels, what are you going to use to grab the door handle and remain clean of hand? Especially with small children who insist on beating you to the door and touching as much of it as they can before you get there and tell them “Do NOT touch the door. Let me open it. Slow down. No… don’t…I will get the door!”

The other option is to stand by the door and wait for someone else to open it as he enters the bathroom so you can slip out before the door closes or at least get your foot in there so you can kick it open the rest of the way.  And hope no one else is watching.

No, I was not this concerned about germs and public places before I got married. I was happily oblivious to the dangers that are out there.

“I shall wash my hands in innocence, And I will go about Your altar, O LORD,”
– Psalm 26:6

Why does it take so long for me to do my taxes? Why am I so unmotivated? It’s not like I don’t have any incentive, as I’m getting a decent refund.

Normally, if someone would say to me “Fill out this form and get these numbers to agree and I’ll give you $500”, I would get that done fairly quickly. I suppose to make the analogy more complete, that person first would have taken $5,000 from me.

I don’t like getting a refund in that it means I gave the government too much money. Every year that I get a refund, I increase my exemption by one. This year, I bumped it up by two since we added a child to the family.

It always made sense to have the exemptions correct so that I don’t give the government an interest-free loan. But now it makes even more sense, what with various states refusing to pay people their refunds. Why give the government an interest-free loan that they might not repay? Why give them more money than you need to, when you might not even get it back?

Another item from tax season: be very careful when buying individual stocks that you do not buy shares of a partnership unless that’s what you really want. Because if you buy shares of a partnership, such as Calumet Specialty Products Partners, then you get a Schedule K and have yet another form to complete for your taxes. So if there is an LP or LLP after the company name when you are looking at ticker symbols, then beware.

Or maybe you like filling out extra forms for your taxes. I, though, was unpleasantly surprised when the K-1 arrived in the mail.

“But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made.”
– Matthew 18:25

This is Some Blog Site’s review of chocolate cereals.  Not the traditional chocolate cereals, aimed at children or certain younger siblings, but the newer varieties: normal cereals that have added a chocolate (or chocolatey) twist.

My results, in order of recommendedness (the first cereal is the most recommended):

1. HBOwrcc – it has medium taste with the best nutrition
2. CChex – it has the best taste with the worst nutrition
3. SKCD – it has the worst taste with the worst nutrition

The descriptive phrase on the Special K box is “chocolatey pieces”: not real chocolate, but some chocolate-like substance.  I tried a piece of chocolatey just by itself, and it didn’t have that much flavor.  The worst part was that it left a waxy coating in my mouth.  It was very disconcerting.  The waxy feeling is not so noticeable while I’m eating the cereal normally (flakes, chocolatey pieces, and milk), but it’s at least in the back of my mind.

How can I give two cereals the worst nutrition?  Chex has more sodium and more calories, but Special K has more saturated fat and more sugar.  Which one is worse depends on what your nutrition needs are.  But either one is worse than Honey Bunches of Oats. Note: all nutrition information is based on 3/4 cup for a serving.

The key?  Special K has high fructose corn syrup, whereas Honey Bunches of Oats has just the regular corn syrup.  And Chex has just corn syrup colids but no high fructoseness.  Syrup solids?  Aren’t those mutually exclusive?