Wow. My brother Ben Maller will be hosting the pre-game, halftime and post-game shows for the NFL’s American Bowl. Congratulations Ben! (What is the American Bowl?)

Today I noticed a link from dollarshort.org in a posting about hives, food coloring and frankenfoods. I first “met” Mena who runs dollarshort, during the blogathon. I’d been reading her site for a little while and decided to IM some words of encouragement in the middle of the night. I then ended up pestering her for the next two hours. At the time, the blogathon site was not working, but I promised to donate $25 to Guide Dogs for the Blind, the charity Mena was blogging for. I had forgotten about the promise and I still can’t find the blogathon link to credit her, but I kept my word and just donated the $25.

One comment Mena made in her posting got me thinking. She provided a disclaimer that she wasn’t going to get “all government-conspiracy” in her comments speculating on the number of people with hives. I started to wonder how many rational people might also be starting conversations this way? I frequently disclaim my beliefs about the dangers of Nutrasweet and Food Coloring, partly because I’d rather not be lumped in with the UFO and government conspiracy crowds.

I do believe various food-additive and environmental chemicals are causing harm that we may not quantify for another decade. Most problematic chemicals are discovered when they cause cancer or some other decidedly lethal reaction. I found Red food coloring was affecting my moods for days after eating it, moodiness is not something people tend to measure. Since cutting the chemicals out of my diet, I’ve been healthier and happier with far fewer mood swings. Even the chemicals turn out to be totally safe, which I doubt, I still can’t come up with a good argument as to why I would want to eat fake sugar or any food with enough dye to be used as ink.

If you are using Windows, this page should fix your QuickTime plug-in so you can watch movies again.

Apple published a tutorial about how to update web pages to automatically install the QuickTime Active X plug-in for Windows. Microsoft’s last service pack disabled Netscape-style browser plug-ins so upgraded users could no longer view QuickTime files from web sites.

I was back on Google for FXScript and FXBuilder this afternoon. Now I’m not again.

Wierdest thing. Yesterday I searched Google for FXScript, and I came up first. Then I searched Google again for FXBuilder and came up first again.

Today I’m not even there anymore. They much have switched to an older link database or something.

Quite a week. Both my brothers visited, Ben has been to New York several times, Mike hadn’t travelled much. It was great having them here, even if we didn’t see half of what I wanted to show them. I wasn’t able to get much work done, but I should be caught up in a few days.

In addition to my brothers visiting, my DSL line finally died for good. This was expected and I’ve already got a new line ordered from Verizon but it won’t be turned on until Sept. 11. In the meantime I’ve got three machines sharing one 56k modem connection. I’m still waiting on a cable modem, my landlord won’t let Time Warner upgrade their equipment for some reason known only to him. I’ve actually got a ‘case worker’ at Time Warner who returns my calls. Someday I’ll write out a full history of my broadband saga, which continues to be quite a ride.