Google Gumbo

Various musings on brief searchable topics

What is this page?

Every once in a while I think of something I'd like to share with people searching for certain keywords, but I don't have enough material (or time/motivation) to construct a whole page out of it or find somewhere else to put it. Or maybe I did and I don't want to link to it from my web page. So I put them here.

If you got here by Google, welcome; you may have to search for your term in the browser window now.

Stride Gum

Stride Gum is, IMHO, a farce.

Here is my story. I first found out about Stride from www.WhereTheHellIsMatt.com. Matt is this slacker-type dude who goes around the world to exotic locales and does this trademark dance. Pretty cool to check out. Stride wanted to sponsor him, and he accepted. Since I liked Matt, I bought some Stride gum.

Stride's raison d'etre, or claim to fame if you wish, is to have "long-lasting" gum. Ok. So let's test this.

I timed how long it took one stick of gum to get to the point where I was sick of it and wanted to spit it out of my mouth. Stride lasted 30 minutes. But I had no clue whether that was short or long. Usually I chew Trident but never timed it.

I couldn't find the Trident I usually chew (the original, somewhat frumpy, soft rectangular pieces). So I bought their razzle-dazzle stuff, I forget the name, but it is candy-coated squares in a blister package.

That lasted ten minutes. Score one for Stride.

I finally found my usual Trident, and just tried a piece. Put it in at 10:15 and it's 11:27 and I'm still going. It's definitely near the end of its useful life, but then again I thought that at the one-hour point. I definitely still get spurts of discernable flavor out of it.

So I declare Trident the winner over Stride by a mile. Of course, if this were a scientific test, I'd recruit five or ten people to chew on five different occasions, and probably write down taste perceptions at various milestones. But, I think getting twice as much on one occasion out of Trident than Stride is enough to convince me that Stride (which otherwise is an ordinaray gum, except for its way cool packaging) is not worth it.

Shoot. I should have saved the packaging to put Trident in.

Investment Seminar Notes

I wrote up some notes once for giving an investment seminar to beginners.

Anti-Itch Medication

An excellent topical anesthetic (i.e. something that reduces pain on the skin), suitable for mosquito and other insect bites, is a product offered by Soothing-effects.com. This product is made from a thick, solid mixture (the consistency of wax) of neem oil and tea tree oil applied from a convenient container much like a Chapstick container, suitable for storing in the pocket. You rub the material on your mosquito bites and the itch goes away, and everything remains dry, unlike most commercial topical anesthetics (which tend to be liquid). It works quite well and I recommend it. The lady at Soothing Effects custom made this product for me; if you write them an email and ask for the anti-itch mixture she made for me, they will make one for you, too.

eje(a)ewanco.com