Recall : Certain Cleviprex (clevidipine butyrate) injectable emulsion

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Little shards of steel hurt like hell when they get embedded under your skin. They’re usually harder for me to pull out than simple wood splinters, and they always leave a nice red welt even after they’re gone. I can’t imagine how much damage little shards of steel would do if they would got into my bloodstream.

The Medicines Company said they are going to pull eleven lots of Cleviprex (clevidipine butyrate) injectable emulsion off the market immediately. It turns out that “visible particulate matter… has been observed in some vials during a routine annual inspection.”

Even though “the particulate matter comprises sub-visible inert stainless steel particles of around 2.5 microns. When present in low numbers as observed, particles of this size are not known to constitute a health hazard”, they’re still doing the right thing and pulling them all off the market.

The recall is specifically for “lots 68-407-DJ, 68-408-DJ, 71-101-DJ and 71-106-DJ”

Drop ’em in the Biohazard bin ifya got ’em.

Here’s the link to the official FDA recall.

Recall : Specific Hazelnuts made by Willamette Shelling

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114,350 lbs of Shelled Hazelnuts are being recalled by Willamette Shelling. That’s 51.87 metric tons! The company recently found out that a few of their Hazelnuts may be contaminated with Salmonella, so they’re doing the right thing and yanking everything that was processed at the infected facility off the market.

Salmonella is such a fun organism. In addition to causing fatal infections in kids, even in perfectly healthy people it offers a multiple choice option of fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. If it really likes you, it gets into your bloodstream and busts out an infected aneurysm for you, endocarditis and maybe even a touch of arthritis.

Fun!

The products in the recall “were packed in 25 lbs. and 50 lbs. corrugated boxes with lot code numbers 296091A, 299091A, 300091A, VH3696BO, and 310091A. Those corrugated boxes bore the following brand names: Kunze Farms, Evonuk Oregon Hazelnuts, Canadian Hazelnuts, and Firestone Farms”

If you have ’em, chunk ’em.

Here’s the link to the official FDA recall.

No posts on 12/17/09

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Nothing was posted yesterday because I was helping my poor wife recover from some previously scheduled outpatient surgery.

She’s doing muuuuch better today, though. It’s wonderful (and scary) how far medical science has come since I was a kid.

Back to it!

Local Federal Building For Sale. Slightly Used.

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Saw this today on my drive to work. The local Federal Building is up for sale.

Federal Building For Sale

Federal Building For Sale

Um… guys? Where are you going?

New mega agency wants to make sure kids are eating right

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Federal Committee alert! A new mega-agency, calling themselves the “Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children”, is planning on bringing the pain to a restaurant near you!

The IWGOFMTC (yikes) is a group of reps from the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture), the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), the FTC  (Federal Trade Commission), and the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). You would think when all these heavy hitters get together, it’s because something epic is about to happen. Something along the lines of a mega-disaster asteroid-covered-with-space-ebola is about to smack the earth. But noooooo.

The IWGOFMTC on December 15th “proposed tentative nutrition standards for food marketed to children… the voluntary guidelines would cover food marketed to children up to the age of 17 and place restrictions on products that contain significant amounts of sugar, sodium and saturated fat.”

Voluntary guidelines? The USDA, the CDC, the FTC and the FDA are all just going ask restaurants to change? It’s going to all be voluntary?

Their “voluntary guidelines” are pretty surprising….

“…advertised foods must not contain more than 1 gram of saturated fat per serving and not more than 15% of calories; no more than 13 grams of added sugar; no more than 200 mg of sodium (this level would be interim and over time should be reduced to 140 mg); and must be trans fat free.”

So a bunch of government based heavyweights decided to get together to fight a new “problem” and they’re doing it “for the children”. This looks and sounds a lot like the beginning of something like the Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center. You ‘member that mess? When they spent tons of money and wasted thousands of hours in congress and the end result was that CDs would need to have a “PARENTAL ADVISORY” sticker on them? You ‘member?

What’s great about all this is that they’re already specifically targeting Yum! Brands, Chuck E. Cheese and IHOP “for their lack of initiative in adhering to meaningful nutrition-based standards for foods marketed to children.” (Yum! brands would be KFC, A&W Restaurants, Long John Silvers, Pizza Hut, Wing Street, and Taco Bell.)

They’re going after Taco Bell for not having nutritious food for children. I rest my case.

The proposed nutrition standards that they’re working on “are expected to be published in the Federal Register in January, at which point they will be open for comment with possible implementation by the summer of 2010.” They’re also going to be looking at “foods that are advertised on children’s programming, especially on children’s cable networks.”

“Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said now is the time to act, pointing to the growth of web sites and games that are just as effective as television in reaching children. “No matter what standards we create, we’re probably not going to stop kids from liking Cheetos,” Ms. Sebelius said. “But if a kid gets diabetes when he’s 18 partly because when he was younger he only ate the foods he saw everyday on TV and the Internet, that’s not his fault. It’s our fault.”

Um… actually, according to the little Oompa Loompa yelling into my ear, that’s the parent’s fault if the kid grows up chubby and can’t fit into his pants. Mom and Dad need to tell porky pig jr to cut back on the food or the little ADD ankle biters on the playground will make his life a living hell. Government shouldn’t have anything to do with that.

Here’s the link to the Food Business News Article about the IWGOFMTC.

Progresso now sells… menudo?

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Progresso now sells Menudo? In a can? In the soup isle? In a mainstream grocery store?

Progresso now sells Menudo

Progresso now sells Menudo

Does. Not. Compute.

I’m glad this is happening though. Someday soon I expect to see Chicken Mole in the frozen food isle too. I shudder in fear at this, but I know it’s going to happen.

And of course I bought a can. I’ll let you all know how it goes.

Tiger Woods is the only story on Fox (Mobile) News

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Seems like Fox News mobile thinks there’s only one story worth covering. The website has changed, but for a few hours, this is what you would see…

Tiger Woods on Fox Mobile

Tiger Woods on Fox Mobile

That’s pretty damn sad.

Monday Morning Music : 12/14/09

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Every Monday I’m going to start posting some music to start the week off on the right foot.

Today’s jam is by Kraak & Smaak – Squeeze me

(No) News stories the mainstream media missed 12/12/09

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No updates this weekend…

A 5 gigabyte bandwidth limit? Completely unrealistic.

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This post is for the wireless division at Verizon, AT&T and Sprint. Specifically, those people in the wireless division who came up with the idea to limit online use to 5gb before charging “extra” for “excessive use”.

I don’t think they’ve used the internet in a long while.

The first thing I’ll start with is system updates. This isn’t an extravagance of any sort. You must update your system to keep your computer safe and secure from new problems and exploits that appear online. I’ll start off with a basic install of Snow Leopard on the Mac as an example.

The current updates for a fresh install of Snow Leopard with iWork and iLife installed are 1.04 GB. This is to update iMovie, iPhoto, Mac OS X, iTunes, iWork, Remote Desktop Client, Xcode and a HP printer. A secondary update of Java, Safari and AirPort Client after the initial upgrade is just 125.7 mb (which using convertunits is .12 gb). Even if we assume only one single system update like this per month, we’ve already blown 1.16 gb out of our 5 gb monthly limit.

Now let’s download some free media. Not much… just what’s available in the “free” section on itunes every week. At this time, there’s a free copy of the TV series “The Cleveland Show” and “Phineas and Ferb” and the free music is from The Bravery, Augusten Burroughs, Zeri, Joe and David Archuleta. The total for two TV shows and five music files is 236.4 mb. Assuming the selections are consistently this size per week, 236.4 mb times four weeks is 945.6 mb, which converts to another .92 gb per month.

.92 gb plus 1.16 gb makes our current total 2.08 gb used.

Now let’s talk about YouTube. You tube videos are fun to watch, and everyone has been on the site a few times a week. So let’s ballpark only three videos per day and we only visit YouTube 5 days out of the week. That’s a perfectly reasonable 15 videos per week. Assuming the videos are around five minutes a piece and are watched in HD, that’s a ballpark of 22.9 MB per video. 22.9 times 15 is 343.5 mb per week. 343.5 mb times four weeks is 1,374 mb, which converts to 1.34 gb.

1.34 gb added to 2.08 gb takes us to 3.42 gb used so far.  Only 1.58 gb remains.

Attachments in email is next up on the list. I’m talking about powerpoint files and slides that are 2 to 5 mb that you need to send to business partners or just friends you would like to see a presentation. Lets say you only send two attachments a day four days out of the week. And that each attachment is 5mb. 8 attachments per week times 5 MB a piece is 40 mb. 40 mb per week times four weeks is 160 mb, which converts to .16 gb.

Add .16 gb to 3.42 gb and we’re at 3.58 gb used.

And finally let’s look at movie previews. Looking at a movie preview in quicktime at 720p (midrange high def) is around 100 mb each. There were around 60 movie previews in November alone on the Apple Movie Preview site, but let’s say I only viewed 1/3 of them: 20 movie previews per month at 100 mb. Thats 2,000 mb which converts to 1.95gb.

1.95gb + 3.58gb = 5.53 gb

And that’s how you can go right through a 5 gb limit.

This isn’t taking into account any antivirus updates, downloading any torrents or posting any twitter, facebook or personal blog entries. This doesn’t take into account reading through and downloading images from any photo-intensive websites or uploading your own videos to YouTube. This doesn’t take into account watching full streaming videos from Netflix or playing online with your Xbox, Wii or PS3.

And this ballpark calculation doesn’t even touch on downloading music or movies that has been purchased from Amazon or iTunes or updating the other applications that are installed on the computer.

Using Email, YouTube, watching movie previews, updating your system software and getting free and legal music may sound like a lot of bandwidth to those companies that grew up in the punchcard era,  but people do a lot more than just send email and SMS texts nowadays.

It’s not constant 24 hour use that chews through 5gb of data. It’s just simple, modern use of the internet.

The problem is that the only way I see this outdated 5 gb cap changing is if one of the big wireless companies realizes there is a big market if they move their baseline upward, and takes a bold move to expand their 5 gb cap to at least 10 gb or more.

Barring that, it’s going to take a company with some very serious capital to push the existing wireless companies aside to start a new high-cap wireless service. That’s pretty much going to have to be Telmex or Google at this point.

In the meantime, the only other option is to hunt down a free wi-fi spot and pull up a chair.

Oh, and before I forget, here’s the current list of updates required for a clean Windows 7 install with Office 2007 also installed. I’m in the process of calculating exactly how big the total download update is, but I’m pretty sure it’s a little less than the 1.04 GB of mac updates but much more than 500 mb.

——————-

Definition Update for Microsoft Security Essentials – KB972696 (Definition 1.71.735.0)
The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2)
Update for Microsoft Search Enhancement Pack
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB969679)
Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 (KB969682)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB969613)
Security Update for Microsoft Office Visio Viewer 2007 (KB973709)
Security Update for Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 (KB957789)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB972581)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB969559)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB974234)
Security Update for Microsoft Office Word 2007 (KB969604)
Update for Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 Help (KB963670)
Windows Live Essentials
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB954326)
Security Update for Microsoft Office Word 2007 (KB956358)
Microsoft Silverlight (KB974331)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB951944)
Update for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 Help (KB963669)
Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System Help for Common Features (KB963673)
Spanish Language Pack – Windows 7 (KB972813)
Update for Microsoft Office Word 2007 Help (KB963665)
Security Update for Microsoft Office 2007 (KB951550)
Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 (KB959997)
Security Update for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 (KB951338)
Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB967642)
Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Help (KB963678)
2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Security Update for Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 (KB950130)
Security Update for 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB960003)
Office Live add-in 1.4
Update for Microsoft Script Editor Help (KB963671)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB936514)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB956828)
Definition Update for Microsoft Security Essentials – KB972696 (Definition 1.69.725.0)
Update for Internet Explorer 8 for Windows 7 (KB976749)
Update for Internet Explorer 8 Compatibility View List for Windows 7 (KB975364)
Security Update for Windows 7 (KB975467)
Update for Windows 7 (KB974332)
Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool – October 2009 (KB890830)
Security Update for Windows 7 (KB974571)
Definition Update for Windows Defender – KB915597 (Definition 1.69.725.0)
Update for Windows 7 (KB974431)
Security Update for Internet Explorer 8 for Windows 7 (KB974455)
Security Update for ActiveX Killbits for Windows 7 (KB973525)
Security Update for Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package (KB973923)
Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 8 for Windows 7 (KB976325)
Update for Windows 7 (KB976098)
Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool – December 2009 (KB890830)
Office Genuine Advantage Notifications (KB949810)
Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 (KB973593)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB973704)
Update for Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 (KB976416)
Update for Microsoft Office Word 2007 (KB974561)