We were at the Chinese market the other day and I ran across this unfortunately named delicacy: “Pasture Cake”

Now, I suppose you can’t expect the Taiwanese to know that a pasture cake is a cow turd, but it’s hard not to associate in my mind.

Then Chu-Wan translated it for me: It’s really “Cow Grass Cake”. How is that better???

Having never heard of this, Chu-Wan asked her father about it this evening. Apparently, Cow Grass is the latest health food craze in Taiwan, second only to pomegranate juice. No, it’s not figurative name, either. It really just is grass that cows eat. Not just any cow-eating grass, either. There are certain types of “famous” cow grass that grows in Taidong, and people make special trips there just to eat it.

Why?

Why is this considered healthful?

Well, just look at a cow. He’s big. He’s strong. All he eats is grass. Apparently in the Taiwanese mind it stands to reason that a person eating cow grass will grow big and strong like a cow. Perhaps it’s true, but I think the phrase “dumb as a cow” has to play in this equation somewhere, too.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Loonies, Psuedo-science, Science, Taiwan

Video chat, that is.

Finally got the chance to try out iChat AVs much touted ability to conduct a three-way video chat. My in-laws recently upgraded their Mac Mini to OSX 10.4 and with my MacBook being the only computer between us power enough to initiate one, we tried it out.

It worked pretty well. There was a little bit more audio lag/feedback than we usually get in the standard chat, but not so bad as to make the conversation difficult.

That leads me into a comment that I got my MacBook back from Applecare (for the second time) yesterday. This time they only replaced the following:
APP-607-0199 ASSY, HEATSINK, M42 (1.0mmConnect

I hope that means this time they know what it takes to fix it. Last time one of the things they replaced was APP-603-8071 ASSY, HEATSINK, M42 – let’s hope this one is more successful.

It still boots up with those nasty color bars once in a while, even though the Genius Bar told me that was fixed with 10.4.7 – he was clearly wrong. Now I’m told it will be fixed with 10.4.8. It doesn’t look like a software problem to me, it happens at what appears to be before the OS load.

While on the subject of changes, a few weeks ago I grabbed a bluetooth keyboard, and today I hooked the MacBook up to an external monitor. Now with two screens it’s almost using my PowerMac G4 – except the MacBook has a lot more power. I just need to find a bluetooth trackball.

Since the new 5.5th Gen iPods came out, the Apple store online has had some great deals on refurbed iPods. I bought Chu-Wan an iPod Nano for under $100 and it’s really just like new, so I decided to break down and buy myself a 30Gb iPod with Video. It should arrive by the end of the week.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Applecare, Blog, Computer, Family, Kids, Mac, MacBook, OSX, Taiwan