Jim Long - @newmediajim - is a professional photographer who's usually assigned to cover the President/White House, so he goes all over the world and posts some interesting shots. Also a really nice guy.

If you like the American version of "Being Human", which I do, Meagan Rath (@meaghanrath) and Sam Huntington (@SammyHuntington) are pretty active. They're both funny, Sam a little more so IMO.

@wordnik, if you're ... well ... a wordnik.

Adam Savage from the Mythbusters - @donttrythis. - as well as Grant Imahara, @grantimahara. Jamie Hyneman is there too but his Twitter name is @JamieNoTweet and that's pretty descriptive.

All the well-known celebrities I listed are verified by Twitter as being the "real people". So far, so good.

(If Lindsey hadn't already mentioned @thebloggess, I was going to. Also, long live the @sockington army!)

In response to KKW's question, What makes your skin crawl?:

(I'd never heard of "blue waffles" either so I steeled myself and opened the photo. And I laughed out loud. Hard to believe even kids would think that's real.)

For me: Scorpions. They do more than make my skin crawl; they make my whole body vibrate and NOT in a good way.

Another one: Knuckle-popping/cracking. Popping/cracking any joint really, but the one most people use is their knuckles and it.makes.me.crazy. I've had to take brief unexplained breaks from meetings at work when someone gets going on it, especially if they're sitting next to me.

I know it feels good to some people but, if I'm around, FORTHELOVEOFGODSTOPITPLEEEEASE!!!

In response to lms4life's question, What's for dinner tonight?:

I never eat breakfast and I skipped lunch so for dinner I'm treating myself to home-made chicken pot pie and butterbeans at my favorite meat-and-three.

In response to Not Marlo's question, Are you a computer ...:

At the moment, I have five windows open. One of them is Firefox, wherein I have 15 tabs open. To be fair, though, seven of those are Dooce threads I want to read.

In response to KA's question, How would you react if a ...:

For a while a long time ago, I worked in the office of a church. Yes, really. Yes, me. Stop it.

I became close friends with the pastor, assistant pastor, and the vicar and everything was fine. We were working on a big "do" for Easter, and when we were finished on night, the vicar, M, wanted to go for coffee. Over that coffee, he told me he was gay.

Like @Lo_the_Phoenix's situation, he was married for years and had two kids in middle school. He adored his wife and kids but had come to a point of not being able to deal with keeping the secret anymore and had to tell SOMEone.

We went out for coffee after work semi-regularly after that, mostly for him to vent and to try to figure out how best to break the news to his family and what he was going to do afterward, because he felt he'd need to leave the church and leave the area.

We went out and (he) talked about it so often for so long that his wife, bless her heart, started calling my house when he wasn't home at night. If I answered, she'd hang up; if my husband answered, she'd ask for me, hang up if he said "just a minute", and ask where I was if he said I wasn't there.

When I told him his wife was starting to suspect he and I were having an affair, he knew he had to tell her. He tried to be gentle about it but it was ugly, very bad.

He did in fact leave the area and I lost touch with him. I've googled his name a few times and nothing ever comes up.

Anyway, if another friend or a family member ever came out to me, I think I'd be fine with it.

In response to slappyintheface's question, What was the last thing ...:

In terms of real money: Take-out at Arby's for late night supper with my sister.

In less tangible terms: This morning when the alarm went off, I paid for the late night I spent gabbing and laughing with my sister.

Marked as great 2 times

In response to amanda17's question, What shows up on a ...:

Like others have said, it depends on how extensive a check they're willing to pay for. When I was a cop we all had to take a turn through the odious task of background-checking recruit applicants and, as you might imagine, that was pretty thorough.

In response to ThePeanut's question, How long do you keep food ...:

I cleaned out my freezer this weekend although it hadn't been on my agenda. Saturday, my old fridge went belly-up and I had to buy a new one. Gee, that wa$ fun. But still, yay for Presidents' Day sales!

I was surprised to find some stuff in the freezer that I'd forgotten I'd bought.... a long time ago. The old stuff went out, but I was able to save some sandwich bread and bagels - just let them thaw out and what I eat in the next few days is fine and the rest will get pitched.

For what it's worth, if you can put your hands on a Seal-a-Meal or some other vacuum bag sealer, they do a great job at avoiding freezer burn.

In response to loupgarou's question, What is that smell coming ...:

FWIW, I'll add what my BIL (who used to work for Roto Rooter) told me: Please don't ever use caustic stuff like Drano. If it doesn't work - and he said you'd be surprised how often it doesn't - and you have to call a plumber in, he now has to put his hands into lye or other corrosive/burning material and, even with gloves on, that's some bad stuff.

In response to chinacatamy's question, What's your favorite ...:

Going by my Pandora and Sky.FM accounts and what's "favorited" [I really hate people who make non-verbs into verbs, don't you?] on my OnDemand:

(showing my age) "solid gold" and folk rock - oldies from the 50s and 60s.
Also, New Age, especially Sky's Relaxation channel - GREAT for work.

I also love good bluegrass but instumental only. I never developed a taste for the vocal style of bluegrass but really enjoy a well-played acoustic guitar and/or fiddle and/or banjo and/or dobro and/or mandolin, etc.

As for popular music, I began to lose interest in the '70s and then disco drove me away from Top 40 and I've never gone back. As a rule, the only current stuff I know is whatever's making the news.

Marked as great 1 time

All of jan001's Answers »

In response to Geege's question, I'm having sunscreen ..., kdiggs said:

My sister gets a rash when she uses sunscreen.
It seems to be mostly a process of trial and error - there is one kind of sunscreen made by Coppertone that she can use - she'll stick with that until it's discontinued, then begin the search again.

In response to beannie's question, Why are you in such a hurry?, beannie said:

On Saturday someone actually passed me, on the left, as I sat waiting to drive across a busy street! Come on, I was there all of 30 seconds patiently waiting for a break in traffic. I thought to myself, why are you in such a hurry? Is it really worth risking your life and mine to wait for a minute for traffic to clear?

When my daughter was at daycare I would see parents rush their kids all the time. At the end of the day, this poor kid has been in care ALL DAY LONG and all they want to do is eat their banana. Do you not have 5 minutes to wait for her/him to finish her/his snack?

At the grocery store, do you need to pile items on the belt before the person ahead of you has put all their items on? That happened to my husband yesterday. After that, the woman rammed her cart into him as he tried to pay.

This time of year is harried. We all have places to be, bills to pay and time is short. But, it isn't that short. Let's be kind to one another, our families and ourselves. Slown down for a minute and take a breath!

/end rant.

In response to singlemama's question, Met a very nice guy the ..., jan001 said:

@Mme_Wong - I thought of the SNL "Red Flag" commercial too. 8D

I'm with those who see a caution flag, but not necessarily a stop flag. When my husband and I decided to get our divorce, I offered to be the one to move out since our place was literally right across the street from his law school. I continued to live there, though, till I found a place and it did take a few weeks as I recall. We slept in separate bedrooms. Most of the time. (Ironically, that was one area of our lives together that survived everything else until we actually did live apart.)

Since he's told you the GF is moving out this weekend, that's pretty definite and clear. If in fact she does so on that schedule, I'd feel better about him. OTOH, if she doesn't, and if there are new and different excuses as to why not, that caution flag might turn red for me.

In response to victoriasauce's question, You find a wallet in a ..., CrisLawson said:

I'd return it to the customer service desk at the store (where presumably the person lost it.) I don't see any reason why I need to look in it...unless I want to have a bit of self torture and encourage my (bad) desire to take whatever money is there.

Since I try to avoid temptation...no. I can't look. It would hurt too much to know that I'm missing out on X amount of money because I'm too good to steal.

In response to skinnylove's question, If a child breaks his/her ..., Beth99 said:

I think you need to call CPS. Sit with the knowledge for a day or 2, write yourself some notes or talking points so that you can get across the points that concern you in a concise way, and then make the call.

Others have said that CPS complaints are a compiling issue - maybe your call will be the first, or maybe it will be the "one more" needed to take the file to the next stage of the process.

Good luck to you. Those kids are in my thoughts, and I hope things work out for them.

In response to Pandora Has A Box's question, What are the bio-ethics, ..., Squeaker (deleted) said:

My ultrasound tech said I could totally shoot out twins... "Look at all those follicles!" That probably sealed the deal.. if this kiddo makes it, then no more. But, if not.. we'll try again. And I'm really worried I'll get twins. I think it would be NEAT.. but exhausting.

I'm pro-choice... but I don't think I could abort one twin over the other unless one was not viable. There's just more questions as to "why" and "which one" that would riddle me with guilt.

I'm with @blasi... I'm not sure how else to say it better than she already did. But, bottom line, it doesn't sound like her reasoning is logical/rational... it's more selfish... and the second she got pregnant is the second where she can't be selfish anymore.

In response to LittleWeeOne's question, How much was a gallon of ..., jan001 said:

Make some room for me, @bigdogmomma -- my first memory of buying gas for my own car was $US.32 too. By then I'd been driving probably about 5 years and I'm sure (god, I hope) I put gas into my parents' cars during that time, but the memory was for my OWN car which happened in ... '73...? Oddly, I could be wrong about the year, but I have a very clear image of the numbers on that gas pump and feeling ever so adult.

In response to Amanda Patchin's question, Did you know that the ..., bluecat said:

@checho this puzzles me as well. I know if in some weird alternative universe I had a kid here in Singapore, I would just go to the US embassy and register that kid as an American citizen. And wasn't John McCain born in Panama?
I do think that Trump is "running" only to get more attention for his reality show. Who is paying him to beat the birther drum?

In response to Heather_O's question, What do you pay for Health ..., girlplease said:

I don't actually know. I do know the policy though.

$1,600 out of pocket. We always meet it for our child.
$400 deductable. Me and our son always meet that quickly.

90% in network. Covers everything including infertiliy (amen for that), mental health, physical therapy, etc.

And this is why I deal with the madness. Sick child + mom who needs the healthcare when crap happens = worth the madness.

In response to Graphicartist84's question, Has anyone (young or old) ..., paginatrix said:

I've had ageism from both directions. When I was 26, I was an assistant city editor at a newspaper -- and the highest-ranking woman in the newsroom. This led to much freaking out on the part of many people.

My colleagues were mostly cool (most journalists don't really want to be managers, and are happy with bosses who solve problems and let them pursue good stories, which is what I did). Older men could be clueless, but if I didn't get huffy I could usually work with them OK. However, members of the community could be pretty hideous. One woman threatened to call my mom when I wouldn't hire her as a freelancer. One man demanded to speak to an older, male editor when I didn't give him the answer he wanted. I was furious, of course. It was like a lot of people here are saying -- the world couldn't see past my age combined with my female-ness. I swore I would never to that to anyone.

Now, at the ripe age of 46, I find that younger workers can be so incredibly condescending to coworkers of my age. Sheesh. Yes, I'm starting to get crow's feet. They don't affect my brain in any way. Really.

I switched some time ago to graphic design. My skills are completely up to date, I like hearing new ideas, I love to learn new things, and in many ways I really don't feel that much different than I did 20 years ago.

Yet the tone of voice I get sometimes! (Oh, shoot, I'm sounding like my mother.) But really. Some of the 20- to 30-year-olds I meet think that simply because they are smart, they should be in charge. And that because they are young, all their ideas are therefore new and fresh and good. And many are often resentful when they can't just walk in someplace and get lauded and promoted a few months later. It's not that they're not smart or that all the ideas are foolish -- just that it's unrealistic to expect the world to stop and cheer for you all the time.

They don't get that there's a vast difference between smarts and experience -- that you can have one but not the other, and only with time do you get both.

So I guess I would hope that we all try to remind ourselves that all of us have great things to offer -- that youth + experience is a powerful combination, and we'd be smart to make better use of it.

All of jan001's Favorite Answers »

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jan001

Before I decide whether or not to accept an invitation to a conference in June, I'd love to know where you shop for best airline fares and discounts on hotels. (a little more info inside)

Heather's "Couch Game" post made me grin recalling a couple of games my sister and I made up when we were little, which probably made our mom wonder about us. Were there any games you and your siblings made up, or any you've seen your own kids invent?

Do we already have a DoCo Group for Computers/Internet? I've looked and didn't see one but could have missed something...? I'm happy to start one if people are interested; just don't want to double-up if one already exists.

Have you used/Do you use Google Checkout? It's asking for some kind of sensitive information to set up checkout and I'm just not 100% sure about this... (more inside)

Calling all Android users - I joined the club last night when I bought a new cell phone! So dish please: What apps are total must-haves?

Computer/video games aimed at girls. [more inside]

Who here uses the CF (compact fluorescent) curly-style lightbulbs? I know the plan is to phase out the other kind, but the light the CFs give off is ghastly. [more inside]

Jon, Mihow, Whomsoever: Is anybody else reporting Page Not Found errors in Community, but only in specific circumstances? (more inside)

What are these little desktop diversions called? Where can I buy one? (details and link to a photo, inside)

Your opinions please: I've received an unexpected small birthday gift from a woman who works for me and am not sure how to reciprocate or even WHETHER to reciprocate. Naturally, it's not quite that simple. Details inside!

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