Odds ‘n Sods:

To follow up on a post I made on Monday, I mentioned this article: Justice Department Pays Linkedin $500,000 For Unlimited Access To Your Personal Information, wherein I noted that the company name: “Carahsoft” sounded suspicious, since “Carah” is an anagram for “Hacar” which of could be spoken “Hacker.” On Tuesday a reader wrote to mention that the company’s founder first named his daughter Carah. (Like the company, Carah Abod is now in her early 20s,) It is noteworthy that Carah (with a trailing “h”) is an extremely rare name–both as a given name and as a surname. So this begs the question: Did Craig Abod bestow that name as a sort of hacker’s inside joke? Or was it actually an old family name that was passed down? (If so, then I’ll issue a full retraction.) But given the nature of his business, I suspect the former rather than the latter. It might be interesting to dig a bit deeper into Abod’s past and the meteoric rise of his DC Beltway company. One interesting tidbit: Carahsoft is more than just a software VAR company. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is probably a NSA Proprietary a duck. The company’s spotless Wikipedia page looks Teflon coated.

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Reader Emily L. suggested another All-American tool manufacturer: Suncast makes a variety of home, lawn, and garden tool, all made in America. She says: “They offer a line of snow tools as well which are available at many local home improvement stores such as Lowe’s, Home Depot, Costco, Ace Hardware, and others.”

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Dan T. liked this: Canadian man uses hybrid vehicle to power home during outage

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H.L. sent: Colorado Democrats blamed for $80 Million hit to economy by pushing out gun firm Magpul

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Eric in Illinois sent this video: Man’s snow storm bread and milk freak-out goes viral