The Fred Tales are coming, trust me

Fred Thompson is playing at running for President, and there's already lots of talk that he doesn't have the fire in the belly to really put forth the required effort. But there's something that I haven't seen mentioned yet. Fred's been an actor for many years, since 1987. He's done lots of film and TV projects. Now, anyone who's worked on a set knows that sets are always hotbeds of gossip and intrigue. There are always stories of temper tantrums and grabass. Fred was single through most of that time, and has been known to have an eye for the ladies (just look at his current wife). So I'm expecting anonymous crew members to start peddling their Fred Thompson stories a little later this year. Will the media be able to resist the combination of Presidential politics and Hollywood gossip? Oh, I think not.

Adventures in Homeownership

Something's not right here. I'm sitting in the dining room, and the dishwasher's running in the kitchen. It's draining, and I heard a sound that I never heard before. Kind of a weird sucking noise. Normally, when the dishwasher drains, it just drains into the pipes under the kitchen sink. This time, I went over to look at the sink, and noticed that hot water from the dishwasher was coming out of the dishwasher air gap next to the faucet. Yes, I had to search for what that thing is called. There was some icky bits of black stuff coming up out of the air gap's vents, too. My question to the Gathered Intelligence: what does this all mean? Does it need fixing? Dori would love it to mean we need a new dishwasher, by the way, but let's not enable her unnecessarily; we've already replaced our water heater this year.

Update: Many thanks for the comments, public and private. The consensus seems to be that the hose or fitting from the dishwasher to the air gap is clogged with post-dishwasher gunk that's built up in the past 7 years, and just needs cleaning out. I'll get under the sink and try that. Dori will stand by, quietly praying that the dishwasher will spontaneously combust for no good reason (she really dislikes it). I suggested that we could maybe get a new dishwasher next year.

Simple Spark

This is cool. There are a zillion Web applications out there, and many of them look to be really useful. But how do you even discover them all, much less try them out or read reviews? Simple Spark tracks and categorizes Web applications, and they've begun to add reviews, too. They're listing over 3,000 Web apps at the moment. Check it out.