We just made some hot curry. It was pretty much inedible. I feel like hell now.

Here is the latest safety bulletin from the lab:

Fall Safety Hazards

With the Fall season upon us, I wanted to remind everyone that the falling leaves and acorns can cause slippery conditions on walking surfaces, including parking lots. This can create hazardous conditions, particularly when wet weather hits. Please use special care when walking on areas near trees and when getting into and out of your cars. Thanks.

Yes, you read that correctly. Watch out for leaves and acorns.

There was an emergency call today at the lab. Some guy in one of the buildings came out of his office and saw another dude lying on the floor. So he did the responsible thing, ran back to the office, and dialed x3333 to report a “man down.”

Apparently, said dude had a twinge in his back. Since his office was too small, he walked out into the hall and laid down on the floor to do some stretches. I guess that looks like a “man down.”

Yesterday, I helped the technician that works on CDX-U, Jim, investigate a problem with the power supplies that run CDX-U‘s toroidal and vertical field coils. When we enable the power supplies, big switches in the basement close, connecting our field coils to the power supplies. Sometimes, the toroidal field (TF) switch starts feeling unhappy and it trips a breaker. So we have to go down stairs, hit the breaker, and watch the switch start working again.

So anyway, as we go down into the basement, which is cleaned out and well lit now that NCSX is going to be sharing the facilities with us, we pass a dead mouse in the middle of the floor. Jim tells me the mouse has been there for a good two weeks. It’s still there today, so I took some pictures of it.

It reminds me of the dead bird we found last year up on a girder in the ceiling the room where the Robicon power supplies are. That bird had been there for quite some time. He’s still there. He’s our watch bird.

The amazing thing about Boo Berry is that it appears to be marketed as a “healthy” cereal by General Mills. Anything that turns your milk purple or was inspired by circus peanuts can’t be healthy.

Of course, with all of this talk about Boo Berry, obviously we are going to have to try Franken Berry and Count Chocula. It’s only a matter of time before all of the old forgotten cereals from our childhoods are rediscovered and sampled. Even some that I never had when I was little, like CoCo Wheats and
King Vitaman. We used to be able to get King Vitaman at Food Lion, but I haven’t seen it up here in NJ. Fortunately, even though Quaker Oats doesn’t acknowledge King Vitaman on their web site, you can buy King Vitaman through the Quaker Oats online store.

On the last trip or two to the grocery store, Mike and I noticed the addition of 3 cereals in the cereal aisle, each for the low price of $2.50. The items of interest were none other than the Boo Berry, Franken Berry, and Count Chocula. Not having seen these products all year only to show up the month before Halloween makes me think they are “seasonal” cereals.

So, we picked up a box of Boo Berry. As appealing as Boo Berry seem to be as a kid (I never had it then), it manages to combine the worst aspects of Fruity Pebbles and Lucky Charms. Not only is it loaded with those little cruncy marshmellows that Lucky Charms has, instead of the plain toasted oat bits, the “meat” of the cereal is little purple ghost-things. The marshmellows are enough to turn your milk colors; I can’t imagine what the Fruity Pebble-like powers the purple bits might have over your milk.

I must admit, we did eat the box, though it was eaten more like a candy. I couldn’t stomach the thought of actually eating it with milk during anytime of the day, much less first thing in the morning.

The Boo Berry link is of unknown quality. It is blocked here at the lab because it is in the “Tasteless” category according to Websense. Makes me wonder, since the Boo Berry Worship Cult is not filtered.

One thing I noted during my cereal research this morning was the lack of information about these products on the General Mills web page. Certain cereals on the page (Cheerios, Trix, Chex, and Wheaties to name a few) are broken out as brands, while all the rest cereals are stuck under the “Big G Cereals” brand.

Another thing I learned in my cereal research was the origin of Lucky Charms:

The cereal was invented in 1963 by then vice-president of General Mills, John Holahan. Holahan claimed to have gotten the idea for the cereal when he happened upon some orange marshmallow peanuts, a candy common in circuses at the time. Holahan cut up several of the peanuts and sprinkled them over Cheerios, another oat-bit cereal, and he “knew we had a winner.”

How disgusting is that? Circus peanuts…