800lb gorillas

Of social media:

An interesting article about Facebook 'locking in' its Internet dominance – which was commented on with a link to a 2006 blog post about MySpace including, “MySpace won’t be beaten by a feature-rich competitor. It’s a marketplace, and marketplaces need critical mass.” Facebook has certainly hit critical mass – you can’t argue with the numbers: in December Facebook recorded nearly 112 million unique visitors in the United States, compared to 57 million for MySpace and 20 million for Twitter, according to Comscore. But if something better comes along (understanding that initially it can’t possibly be bigger, unless it’s Google), will you shift your allegiance? Has the site become such an essential part of your life that you’re technologically "locked-in"?

Of the chili cook-off:

The special chili always wins, doesn’t it? Last Wednesday there were many red (meat) chilis, three vegetarian chilis and two green chilis. I intended to bring a vegetarian chili – I made a big pot of chili and then Jesse and I had some for dinner. Then all of the sudden I no longer had a big pot of chili to transfer in to my brand new red 4QT crock pot… so I had to bulk it up with meat. I generally use spicy pork sausage but I was a little short on that so I added some chopped bacon to the mix. Yummy! Anyway, my favorite of the chilis at the cook-off was the green one that wasn’t too spicy. It had chicken in it and also (I think) tomatillos. It reminded me a bit of the green tomatillo salsa at JV’s taco shop in San Diego - which I HAVE to visit when I'm back next month. And the overall award went to… the green chili that I loved. Jesse wasn’t thrilled (mostly because he wanted me to win). He thinks that green chili (with chicken!) isn’t really chili. And I agree – it’s really more chicken tortilla soup sans tortilla. Merriam-Webster says chili is: 2 a : a thick sauce of meat and chilies. So I guess it IS chili… and I like it… but does that make the "special" chili an 800lb gorilla? I don't know, I was just trying to come up with a title would allow me to blog about social media AND chili.