Rocket Chocolate

At the local 7-Eleven, I spotted a box of Rocket Chocolate. I had to give it a try.


Rocket Chocolate is pretty simple, chocolate with caffeine.

According to Energy Fiend, Rocket Chocolate has ~42mg of caffiene per piece. That’s not a lot. Most sodas and energy drinks have much more.
The flavor is OK, but not something I’d crave. To me, the Rocket Chocolate tastes like a dark chocolate truffle with a hint of mint and a little bitterness. Not unpleasant, but not lip smacking good.
I think they would be great to keep at your desk for a quick pick-me-up when you don’t have time for a cup of coffee or soda. More for the casual caffeine user, not the hardcore energy drink aficionado, like my brother. In his world, these would be fairly weak sauce.

Altoids Chewing Gum – Pining for the fjords?

Everyone has a brand of chewing gum they prefer. For me, I like Altoids Chewing Gum. The small tin package is nice, the amount of gum in each little piece is good and it does a great job of freshening my breath. I’ve never really like breath mints, so Altoids Chewing Gum is a great solution.
Over the last several years, I’ve grown accustomed to having a tin in the car and the office so I can chew before I head to a meeting after eating or drinking coffee. Recently, I noticed that I couldn’t find the gum anywhere. After looking in at least a a dozen supermarkets and drug stores, I’m convinced that Altoids Chewing Gum has gone the way of the dodo bird and is longer a product I’ll find easily on the shelves.
I went to the Altoids web site to find out what’s going on, but the Altoids site is all Flash and completely full of lame, bereft of any real information. They didn’t reply to an email I sent them via their contact form. More lameness. Finally I found out that Altoids are made by Callard & Bowser, and that Callard & Bowser is owned by Wrigley. I called the Wrigley 800 number and they informed me that the Gum was NOT discontinued and is still in production and just tired from a long squawk. The customer service person was nice and tried to look up where I could buy the Altoids Gum in my zip code and was amazed to find that there was no place. She suggested looking online.
After a bit searching the Google, I determined the best place to stock up was at Amazon. You can pick up a ten pack of Altoids Chewing Gum for between $15-$20. That’s a pretty good price. I was routinely paying $2 a tin at a store.


Now I have 10 tins of my beloved Altoids Chewing Gum and am considering stocking up even more. I like the Spearmint and Peppermint flavors, but not the Cinnamon. I can’t seem to find Wintergreen anywhere. If you can find Wintergreen, please let me know.

The New Year

I got a note from my friend Sanjay that I had not posted for a while. He’s right.
There are a lot of things I could write about, but for some reason I can’t get into the groove of The New Year.
Both my personal and professional worlds have been stressful for the last few months and I’m a bit ‘overextended’. Nothing terrible, but enough that I need to focus on staying healthy and relaxed. On the bright side, I’ve been getting more sleep and exercising more. But I’ve been spending less time on the computer, and obviously, less time blogging here.
Time to shake off the cobwebs and get rolling again.
Here are a few things I have enjoyed that I would like to share with you:
Motherf***ing Parking Ticket
Caffiene can cause hallucinations
Make chicken stock using supermarket rotisserie chicken
The truth about marriage
Go play Left 4 Dead, you can add ‘cruftbox’ in Steam
For Left 4 Dead fans, Boomer’s Day Off

666 Photo Meme

I was tagged earlier this week by Sean Bonner with the 666 Photo Meme. With this meme, you go to the sixth page of your Flickr stream, post the sixth photo, and choose six more people to be tagged.
Here is the requisite photo:

Middle Fork Idaho Rafting - May 2008

That is a photo of the rafting trip I took with friends in Idaho in May. I had a fantastic time and was blissfully disconnected from the outside world for four days.
I am tagging the following six people to continue the 666 Photo Meme: Little Kenny, Jason Toney, Octopushat, Squidly, Cyril, and Steve Lodefink.

The end of Movember – Mustache Removal

Movember is over and the mustache is gone. Thanks to the help of everyone, we were able to raise $1,242 for Prostate Cancer Research. You can donate for a few more days if you want at my MoSpace.
Here is the final photo of the mustache before removal.


Michele and girls were eager for the mustache to be removed. Here is the video of Michele shaving the mustache off.

Movember Mustache Removal from Michael Pusateri on Vimeo.

Thanks again to everyone the contributed, participated and offered encouragement!

Site Problems

The virtual private server I use to host this and other sites was hacked again. I’m still not sure how they are getting in, I assume its a vulnerability in some software I’m using.
Please pardon the dust while I do some work on the back end to move things around and do some long overdue upgrades.

Movember, Part Deux

I wrote previously about growing a mustache for charity and I have been overwhelmed with the support.
I’d like to thank Miles, Knob, Drew, Micah, Charles, William, Mom & Dad, Robert, Garen, Laura, Pat, and Mr. P.
Special thanks go out to Little Kenny, Rich, Brian, Brad, and MK for their large donations.
If you would like to help, you can visit my MoSpace here and donate. The money goes to the Prostate Cancer Foundation, a non-profit (meaning tax deductible!) organization.
My co-workers have had to see my mustache all month and were very supportive yesterday when they all showed their support! For those that don’t know me, I’m the guy in the tie…


I’m not sure who instigated this, but I think Ben (famed author of Jump Leads) was involved.
Update: It appears that Joe was the instigator. Many thanks Joe!

Free Wifi at McDonalds on the iPhone

I was in McDonalds waiting to order my coffee when I pulled out my iPhone to check the internets. A wifi hotspot popped up and this is what I saw:


It seems that AT&T bought Waypoint, the wifi provider, eariler this month and we are seeing the fruit of that acquisition. Free wifi for the iPhone? I’ll give it a try.

I entered my mobile phone number and got a message to wait for a text message.

Sure enough, the message arrived almost instantly.

Clickety-click…

And boom, I’m on the interwebs. In about 10-20 seconds…
No login.
No registration.
No ads.
No headache.
Just some sweet, sweet wifi provided in a way you can actually use it easily.
Props to AT&T, Waypoint, and McDonalds for quick work on creating a great service. I’m going to check at the local Starbucks today if it works the same. If only I could register my phone with T-mobile Hotspot to work the same way, I’d be in heaven.

The View of Los Angeles from Runyon Canyon

Two weekends ago I went up to Runyon Canyon with family to see Los Angeles. It was the weekend of the fires in Sylmar and the Triangle Complex fire near Chino.
From the top of the canyon you can see the entire LA basin from the Ocean to Downtown to Hollywood to the San Fernando Valley to the Westside.
I took photos and made them into a Quicktime VR so you can pan around and zoom in and out.


Thanks to Sean & Tara, the Twitluvahs for showing me the spot.