Captain's Log

Cherry Limeades and Slurpees

This post might have been better at the beginning of the summer, but it's still really really hot here. If you are looking to cool down and get something to drink, here are my two favorite options: Cherry Limeades and Slurpees.

I got hooked on Cherry Limeades this summer after a few visits to Sonic. You end up getting a ton of ice, but that's made up for by how great they taste. You can find the recipe here (not a direct link). It's basically Sprite, some cherry juice, ice, and a whole fresh lime. They mix the Sprite and cherry juice and then squeeze the lime juice into the drink and drop the limes in. Those flavors work really well together and taste much better together than apart. (I originally used 'synergy' to describe this, but that word is misused too much. It should be benched until people stop screwing it up).

I've always loved Slurpees. I normally end up getting a Coke slurpee over most of the other flavors, because the others are often too sweet. One problem with Slurpees is that you can get a wide variety of quality depending on how well the store is running the machine, and it often happens that the flavor you want isn't always available. A Slurpee that is too watery is no fun. Add in the fact that Cherry Limeade flavor beats any Slurpee flavor, and you can see why Slurpees have fallen to #2 on my summer drink list. The one point where Slurpees excel is temperature. They are kept at 28 F in the machine and are much cooler than any plain liquid drink. So if you just want to cool down Slurpees are probably a little more effective.

Also large drinks are $0.99 at Sonic until the end of the summer (normally $1.49) so go grab one while it's hot and they're cheap.

Disconnecting a USB device

In Windows XP if you want to disconnect a USB device you can right click on the tray icon and follow that up with about 2-3 more clicks. I just discovered that instead of right-clicking you can left click the icon and you get a popup menu which will disconnect any connected device. I know to some of you this may seem trivial, but it was a revelation to me. Instead of thinking "Why did they use this horrible interface that takes so many clicks to unplug something?" now I can just do what I need to do quickly.