I can be quite particular about things, so when I find a product I like I am apt to purchase it repeatedly. The last few times I purchased shoes, I got two pairs and kept one pair boxed for the future. In the case of my favorite hand soap, I venture to Bath & Body Works annually around Christmastime and buy an ample supply, usually with an excellent coupon Mom finds for me. This past year however, my visit to the West Town Corners store in Altamonte Springs went quite differently. In addition to changing packaging and labels—apparently on all their products—they decided to discontinue several of the scents I enjoyed including my longtime favorite Moonlight Path. I was pissed. We drove to the nearby Altamonte Mall location and discovered the same thing. Based on my search online, it was no longer offered online either; the page describing Moonlight Path was removed from the site. I purchased no soap this past holiday season and am now down to the last few bottles in my reserve. Two of them are Moonlight Path and I am admittedly a little reluctant to open them. By the way, does anyone reading this article have access to a molecular analyzer? I would like for someone to reverse engineer the formula and produce Moonlight Path hand soap just for me. I contacted Bath & Body Works via the form on their website and gave them an abridged version of the above, sans the remark about reverse engineering their product. It did not take long for them to respond, but the news was not good for the Moonlight Pathers.

Dear David, Thank you for your email regarding the availability of the Anti-Bacterial Hand Soap in the Moonlight Path fragrance line. We regret to inform you that we do not currently offer this fragrance. We understand your disappointment in discovering that your favorite fragrance is not currently part of our product line. As an alternate suggestion, we recommend the Sweet Pea Anti-Bacterial Hand Soap. This scent consists of delicately scented petals of the sweet pea flower, blended with pear, loganberry, and fresh green rhubarb. To view this collection on our web site, please click on the link below [here] or copy and paste the URL into the address line of your browser. Be sure to visit our web site periodically as we often bring back discontinued fragrances as part of our Classics program. To view our current offerings, please click on the link below: [here] Customer feedback regarding our products and services is always welcomed and appreciated. We strive for excellence in both our merchandise and our customer experience, and we continually evaluate current and future trends, as well as customer response and reaction. Your opinion matters to us and will be part of the ongoing assessment of our web site offerings. We appreciate your interest in our products. Please visit our site regularly for exciting new products and great gift ideas. The chill of winter is still here but an Island Escape is waiting! Our three new Signature Collection scents will put you in a tropical state of mind; shop now by clicking here. Sincerely, Kim C. Customer Service Specialist Bath & Body Works Direct

I suppose I appreciate their Sweet Pea recommendation, but I really doubt it will be anywhere near as good. I am still too aggravated to venture in and try a few bottles. If and when I do, I will try to keep an open mind about Sweet Pea. If not, they will lose a customer and I will once again be on the search for the best hand soap. Any recommendations?

UPDATE: 10 June 2011 — It is official, Moonlight Path Anti-Bacterial Deep Cleansing Hand Soap is once again available! UPDATE: 05 July 2011 — Now that I have purchased and tried it, I can report that the scent, viscosity and color are all different. I still like it but it is not the same. UPDATE: 23 July 2011 — Related article: "The Moonlight Permutation"

— "Legacy" by Blow Up Hollywood

Recently Claire and I decided it was finally time for another day trip adventure. Our past four outings had been a success but we put things on hiatus for her second pregnancy. In early January, she suggested the Pebble Hill Plantation, 1251 US Highway 319 South in nearby Thomasville, Georgia. That sounded good to me, so on Saturday, 12 February at around 0945 we were on our way, cinnamon scones in hand, to the 3,000-acre facility. We arrived shortly after they opened and I could tell that the sunlight and temperature would be perfect for walking around and taking pictures. The main drive from the highway is a cozy, canopy road that winds around the structures to a parking lot at the Stable Complex (1928) and visitor center. Upon our arrival inside, the gentleman working the register greeted us and explained the fees. We each paid the basic $5 grounds access fee and added the main house tour for $10. After looking at some of the historical artifacts on display, we were ushered into an adjoining room to watch a short film about the plantation and the people who operated it during its 153 year history (1825–1978) before opening as a museum in October 1983. This room contained a vintage American Sterilizer Co. (AMSCO) of Erie, Pennsylvania safe-sized walk-in sterilizer, something that I had never seen before. After the film, it was time to meet the docent for our tour of the main house (1914/1936). Unfortunately, photography is prohibited on the house tour so I do not have any images from inside (see PHP Photo Galleries). The tour itself was interesting and covered the history of the building and the legacy of strong female mistresses who obviously ran the show back in the day. The house contains an absolute plethora of objects from the 19th and early 20th century including various equine artworks and awards, 33 John James Audubon lithographs and a photograph of President Dwight D. Eisenhower on the property during one of several visits here with his wife. At the end of the hour-long tour, we exited the main house and were now free to roam the grounds at our leisure and take photographs. We wandered from the trellis to Carriage Circle and explored the Tennis Court, Family Cemetery (1827) and Family Cemetery addition (1932). Moving south, we saw the Swimming Pool (1920), Bath House (1922), Arbor Tunnel and Maze. Moving around the house from the east wing to the front porch and eventually the west wing guest entrance, we next went to some of the other structures on the property. The oldest building at Pebble Hill is the Log Cabin School (1901), which has on its roof a neat statue of a cat sitting watch. Inside the schoolroom and playroom are the furniture and toys of the various children who lived here. It also contains a vintage Fire-Gun No. 1 fire extinguisher by American-LaFrance Foamite Corporation of Elmira, New York. Moving on, we saw the Overflow Cottage (1916/17), Kitchen Garden and Shed (1917) and The Waldorf (1929). The main floor of The Waldorf, built as the plantation laundry complete with living quarters, kitchen and dining room, houses some additional vintage equipment of interest. I enjoyed the "Wheel to Fire" mobile firefighting apparatus by O.J. Childs Co. of Utica, New York, the Tip Top Value cast iron stove and range (~1905–1920) by Southern Stove Works, Inc. of Richmond, Virginia and The Great Majestic cast iron stove and range (~1920) by Majestic Manufacturing Co. of St. Louis, Missouri. The Dog Hospital (1929) felt eerie and abandoned in the way things were arranged. It was almost as if a dog was going to appear and run up to us. Incidentally, I managed to capture one of my favorite pictures from the trip here. Next door, we passed the Firehouse (1929) and Nurse's Station (1929) before walking the main road around the horse paddock and Stable Complex. Twelve horses and mules live on the plantation today and several of them came up to us once we got closer. After visiting with a few of the curious horses, we walked inside through the Stable Complex to see the horse and cow barns, Tack Room, Dairy and Carriage Room. Already at the courtyard near the exit and having spent two hours wandering around, we decided that it was time for lunch and that the other buildings on-site could wait for another time. We left the plantation and continued north on US 319 into downtown Thomasville. After parking on the street, we walked up and down Broad Street looking for a good place to eat, finally settling on Jonah's Fish & Grits, 109 East Jackson Street. The restaurant contains a bit of religious artwork and some text on the menu about their namesake, but it was not intrusive. Claire ordered the Shrimp and Grits ($7.50) and I got the Fish and Chips ($7.80) with a cup of Grouper Chowder ($3.80), all of which were quite delicious. We returned to Claire's house where her three-year-old Elliot wanted to spend some time with me. After a thorough review of his favorite Transformers and Toy Story action figures, Elliot decided it was time to color. Armed with some of his Sesame Street coloring books, we sat at the dining room table and colored together for twenty or thirty minutes. It was an interesting experience for me, not being particularly comfortable with children, but one I think we both enjoyed.

Day Trips with Claire Smith The Georgia Plantation | The Florida Caverns Trip
The Big Bend Photo Trip Photographs  Pebble Hill Plantation | Florida Caverns State Park
Tallahassee Antiques Museum | Big Bend Photo Trip | October Day Out

I was working in my virtual Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard environment the other day and needed to transfer a file to my host system. I was amused to discover that the icon assigned to both my notebook and server was a large, beige CRT with a Windows blue screen of death displayed. This may be old news to the rest of the world, but it was new to me. Back in June 2007, Wired Gadget Lab posted a screenshot of the then-beta OS X 10.5 Leopard containing the icon that they termed an Easter egg. Author Charlie Sorrel ended the brief post by stating, "I hope this makes it into the final release, but somehow I doubt it." It did make it in and when Leopard was released on 26 October 2007, the icon drew some additional attention. Anil Dash found the icon distasteful and categorized it as passive-aggressive by Apple and lame. Engadget published instructions on how to change the icon to something "a little less condescending." Chris Owens read those instructions and decided to make his own icon to replace the one he termed "a little tasteless." Whether or not it is tasteless or passive-aggressive, I found it amusing even as a lifelong PC and Windows owner. While it is undeniably true that Windows has had a history of stability issues, these problems have been corrected in Windows 7 and are now a thing of the past. In the eleven months I have owned my ThinkPad W500 running Windows 7 64-bit, I have experienced solid performance without any blue screens. Sure, there has been an odd occasional issue, but none has crashed the operating system nor has it caused any. I was not able to get the Windows network map to display the Mac, possibly due to the nature of hardware emulation, so I cannot be certain what icon would display. Having combed through the available icon libraries including shell32.dll, imageres.dll and DDORes.dll, I am however confident that no sarcastic icons exist. At least publicly, who knows what Microsoft engineers have running on their systems. Perhaps it is an icon of an Apple LCD and Sad Mac.

When I got a BlackBerry in July 2010, one of the things I decided to try was Twitter. Up to that point, I had never really understood its purpose but it has proven amusing in the intervening 6 months and 24 days. At first, I followed anyone I was familiar with but found the deluge of irrelevancy too much to handle on the phone. I trimmed that list down to friends, news sources and a few others, none of whom tweet excessively. I also found Twitter particularly fun during group events like the Orlando Predators game and DragonCon 2010. I never imagined that I would use Twitter for any official purpose until last Saturday night. While driving east on Apalachee Parkway, I noticed the newly installed red light traffic camera capturing the eastbound approach was taking pictures of everyone passing through the intersection, myself included, despite the green light. While I was considering my action later at home, I remembered that the City of Tallahassee's official traffic account, @COTTraffic, had posted when that camera was activated. I looked up that tweet and decided to reply with my story. They replied at 0742 Monday morning saying, "I'm not sure but will check on that and let u know. Thanks for the info!" They replied again today at 1630. This is excellent customer service and I am sure that is due in part to the nature of social media. I was able to target my message to the appropriate recipient, or someone who could get in touch with the correct parties quickly, and at no time had to explain and re-explain my situation to a series of people who have no idea what I am talking about. I should note that this comment is meant generally, as I have no real experience dealing with the city. I replied almost immediately. To those behind the keyboard at @COTTraffic, well done!