April 3: National Chocolate Mousse Day

Just back from voting

hope that those will elections going on today, have or will make it to the polls.

What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

When I was five years old, my two sisters, my parents, and I lived in a canvas tent on the side of a mountain in Western Montana for a month and a half. During that time, and with the help of our extended family, we built most of the cabin that would become our family vacation home. One of my jobs, which I took to with great enthusiasm, was to pound every nail that held the plywood flooring to the log beams on the second story. We barely got the cabin roofed-in in time for my dad to report to his new Army post, and, as I like to say, 40 years later we're still putting the finishing touches on it.

snip...

In interacting with my clients, who are, in general, not very handy around the house, I've been fascinated to observe the different strands of tension and awkwardness surrounding the process of ceding control of what was considered, not too long ago, to be the birthright and responsibility of a male homeowner.

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/what-being-a-handyman-has-taught-me-about-male-insecurity/274426/

Interesting.....

HBO admits piracy is a ‘compliment’ that doesn’t hurt sales

While some companies are looking to end piracy across the entertainment industry, one major player doesn’t think it’s quite the crisis it’s often made out to be. HBO’s hit show Games of Thrones is the most-pirated TV show on the Internet with more than 4 million illegal downloads per episode, however the company’s programming president Michael Lombardo believes piracy is a “compliment” to the show and has actually helped sales. In February, Game of Thrones season two was released to record-setting DVD sales, becoming the company’s biggest first-day home video release with sales of 241,000 units, an increase of 44% over season one, and sales of individual episodes reached 355,000, up 112% from season one.

“I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it is a compliment of sorts,” Lombardo said to Entertainment Weekly. “The demand is there. And it certainly didn’t negatively impact the DVD sales. [Piracy is] something that comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network.”

Despite being the most pirated show on television, Games of Thrones is also the network’s top money-maker.

“If you look at aggregate of international and DVD sales — which are the two revenue streams we look at since we’re not selling it domestically on another platform — yes, absolutely, in terms of shows we have on now,” Lombardo said.

http://news.yahoo.com/hbo-admits-piracy-compliment-doesn-t-hurt-sales-035946132.html

April 2: National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day

Ex-Rep. Akin Doubled Staff Salaries After Defeat

Former Missouri Congressman Todd Akin roughly doubled his office payroll after losing a campaign for U.S. Senate.

Salary figures available through the online tracking site Legistorm.com show Akin paid his 14-person staff nearly $400,000 in the final quarter of 2012. That's twice as much as the $200,000 quarterly payroll that Akin averaged through the rest of the year.

Former Akin communications director Steve Taylor said Monday that the bonus essentially was a separation package for staffers who lost their jobs because of the Republican congressman's defeat by Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.

Taylor said Akin's staff had a rough final few months. He said staffers were inundated with hateful messages by people upset by Akin's remark that women's bodies had ways of avoiding pregnancy in what Akin described as "legitimate rape."

http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/ex-rep-akin-doubled-staff-salaries-after-defeat

Nine Things You Didn’t Know About Your Easter Candy

It takes just six seconds to create the popular Marshmallow Peep. When it first debuted in 1953, it took 27 hours to hand-create each edible yellow chick. But now Peeps get cranked out of machines at 3,500 per minute and four million per day.

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/06/nine-things-you-didnt-know-about-your-easter-candy/#ixzz2PCJxK3kq

April 1: National Sourdough Bread Day

April 1, 1976 – Apple Inc. is formed

Apple Inc., formerly Apple Computer, Inc., is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Cupertino, California[2] that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software and personal computers. Its best-known hardware products are the Mac line of computers, the iPod music player, the iPhone smartphone, and the iPad tablet computer. Its software includes the OS X and iOS operating systems, the iTunes media browser, the Safari web browser, and the iLife and iWork creativity and production suites. The company was founded on April 1, 1976, and incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. on January 3, 1977.[6] The word "Computer" was removed from its name on January 9, 2007, reflecting its shifted focus towards consumer electronics after the introduction of the iPhone.[7][8][9]

Apple is the world's second-largest information technology company by revenue after Samsung Electronics, and the world's third-largest mobile phone maker after Samsung and Nokia.[10] Fortune magazine named Apple the most admired company in the United States in 2008, and in the world from 2008 to 2012.[11][12][13][14][15] However, the company has received criticism for its contractors' labor practices, and for Apple's own environmental and business practices.[16][17][18]

As of November 2012, Apple maintains 394 retail stores in fourteen countries[19][20] as well as the online Apple Store and iTunes Store.[21] It is the second-largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization, with an estimated value of US$414 billion as of January 2013.[22] As of September 29, 2012, the company had 72,800 permanent full-time employees and 3,300 temporary full-time employees worldwide.[4] Its worldwide annual revenue in 2012 totalled $156 billion.[4]



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.