A reminder for those who may not be aware, but we are in the midst of recovering from some hardware problems, so we ask your patience while the site's database functions are restored, which will probably take a few more days. We had some more downtime earlier, apologies for that. And we've gotten a couple of reports of fake AV ad dealies which are obviously sketchy at best, so I've yoinked the ad code until this can be straightened out. Apologies for that as well.

I looked out upon my shoveling handiwork this morning to see that a good deal of our sidewalk had iced over during the night, making it a very hazardous looking skating rink. This set off a mission to find rock salt, which turns out is in extremely short supply at the moment, as there was none to be found in our local hardware store, the Home Depot, or any of the dozens of other places we tried such as AutoZone, a 7-11, and every gas station in the area. We'd completed the full circle and were heading home empty handed when we decided to try the local convenience store, which turned out to have a couple of bags left, in what seemed like a miracle by that point. We had to laugh at that point, because after driving about 20 miles for this, we finally found what we were looking for in what is literally the closest possible store to the BlueTower.

Links:	Thanks Ant and Acleacius.
Play:	Earth Taken 2. I Saw Them. Cash Quest.
Link:	Frank Gehry Is Still the World's Worst Living Architect.
Story:	McGruff The Crime Dog gets 16 years for having 1,000 pot plants and a grenade launcher. Thanks reddit.
Science:	UTMB scientists successfully grow human lungs in lab in just 3 days. More evidence that red wine and aspirin protect against cancer.
Images:	Video Game Renaissance 3.
Media:	Heavy Metal Gamer Video Blog: Flappy Bird.
Follow-up:	The Brief Wondrous Life of Zina Lahr. Thanks nin via Digg.
The Funnies:	ActionTrip Comic Strip: Flaps, Check.