Every holiday season, I find myself in an egg nog debate with a friend/coworker/stranger about who makes the best egg nog. My family and I are loyal fans of Stewart's egg nog (the premium one, not that "light" crap). I've always immediately dismissed anyone else's rebuttal. I have given a couple other egg nogs a try, and in my opinion, they were nowheres near as delish as Stewart's.
So you know what this means? Yeah, that's right: egg nog taste test!
Obama had to have done better than Kerry here, right? Yes and no.
Despite all the talk about huge voter turnout across the country on Tuesday, we didn't notice especially long lines (or any lines, really) here in the Capital Region. Well, after taking a look at vote totals from this year and four years ago, it starts to make some sense.
In fact, the way the Capital Region voted this time around was kind of weird compared to the rest of the country. Let's take a look at the totals...
The forecast for tonight includes the possibility of snow accumulation (and it's snowy big fluffy flakes as we post this). It's being described as "rare" and "early" snow.
The Albany landfill is running out of space. In fact, it's expected to be full by the end of next year. The city has been trying to get the state DEC to approve an expansion of the facility, but the DEC bounced the first few proposals and said something along the lines of "Come on. You're not even trying."
So the latest draft proposal includes a few strategies for reducing the amount of garbage thrown into the landfill. Among them is something called "pay-as-you-throw." It's pretty much what is sounds like -- the more you throw out, the more you pay.
OK, so does that actually work? We went dumpster diving for answers.
So you spilled something on a dress shirt -- does it matter which cleaner you take it to? Will one place do a better job than another at getting the stain out?
We were curious if the cleaner made any difference. So we bought four identical white dress shirts, stained them with five different substances, and took one each to dry cleaners around the Capital Region.
A few months ago we posted a map that identified the NY/CT/MA area as a hot spot for neuroticism. Well, there's new research out this week that not only confirms that map, it conveniently ranks just how neurotic people in New York are (among other things) compared to people in other states.
The relative numbers of single men and women 25-34 in the Northeast.
A while back, prompted by a map we saw, we looked at the relative numbers of single women to single men in the Capital Region. The bottom line was that things didn't look so great for single ladies looking for a guy here.
But, wait! There's a new, probably better, interpretation of the data. And things are looking up for the ladies!
Pretty much whenever you hear people talk about how much a house costs, the figure used is the total sale price. And that makes a lot of sense -- that's how much someone's going to be spending.
But another way to think about housing prices is the amount people are paying per square foot. When you break it down that way, it's a little easier to make comparisons between different houses and locations.
In fact, real estate agents do this all time. Sure, you won't usually see it on a house listing, but ask an agent and they'll almost always be able to tell you what a house's price is per square foot and what the average per-square-foot price is for the neighborhood.
We were kind of curious about how the different cities around the Capital Region stack up on per-square-foot house prices. And as it happens, Trulia -- a real estate site -- makes it easy to find out.
You're paying for all the good stuff in here. Whether you use it or not.
We're all about supporting authors and musicians and stimulating the economy when you can, but with prices going up on basics like fuel and food, it's harder to justify splurging on extras like movies, magazines or the latest best seller.
But here's the thing: we're all paying for that stuff already. Whether you live in Albany, Saratoga, Guilderland or Schenectady you're paying for these things with your library tax. And no, renting doesn't release you from paying library taxes. Your landlord just builds the tax into your rent.
So if you're paying this tax anyway, how can you make the most of your library tax dollars?
Our last supermarket price check was so popular, we decided to give it another go. But to shake things up a bit this time around, we decided to find out which store has the best bargains.
So we picked a "basket" of 20 items that come in both name brand and store brand so we could find out how much we could save by going generic. And to make things a little more interesting, we tossed discount market Aldi into the mix. Here are the results...
After a few people posted comments about "underscooping" at Emack and Bolio's (the owner responds), we got curious about scoop size. And that prompted us to ask the question: when you walk into an ice cream shop and tell them to give you a scoop of ice cream, how much should you expect to get? Hmm. It probably depends, we thought.
So, we decided to collect some data. The AOA crew hit up five different ice cream shops yesterday and ordered one scoop of vanilla ice cream in a cup at each. Then we weighed those scoops with a digital food scale.
Who had the biggest scoop, the smallest, the most expensive, and much more subjectively -- the best tasting? Here's what we found...
If you're a married woman with a college degree in the Capital Region, there's a good chance that you have a job outside the home. In fact, the chances are better here than pretty much any other place in the country.
A trio of researchers recently released a working paper (pdf) that looked at census data related to women and education for the top 50 metro areas (fine print). And according to this study, 80 percent of the women with a college degree in the Capital region were in the workforce. That ranked first among the 50 studied metro areas. The region ranked almost as high for women with a high school degree -- it was 5th.
A comparison with other cities over time -- and a little bit about why things shake out this way -- after the jump.
There was that story this week about how city council meetings in Saratoga Springs are going paperless. And as part of that story, one of the city commissioners mentioned that city hall uses 475 cubic feet of paper every year.
That sounded like a lot of paper to us, but really, how much is it? So we decided to measure that figure against something we could relate to. And this being Saratoga Springs, we picked the track. The result, with how we got it, after the jump.
After hearing about the most-likely-only-for-show debate going on in the state legislature over a "gas tax holiday," we wondered where New York State's gasoline tax ranks nationally. So, we looked it up. Here's the top 5, which -- surprise! -- includes the Empire State:
The wheels on the bus go... well, you know how they go.
Now that gas prices have reached "Are you frakking kidding me?" levels, we were curious to find out if you could save a few bucks by taking the bus to work. And the answer is yes, sort of, maybe, it depends.
There's been some brow furrowing this week in the public health community after a study reported that life expectancies have actually started to go down in parts of the United States.
Thankfully, the Capital Region isn't one of those places. But how exactly does this area stack up when it comes to living a long life? We picked through the excel file so you don't have to...
It's been said that a good man is hard to find. And while we're not in a position to comment on the quality of single men in the Capital Region, we can say this about the quantity: ladies, if you're looking for a single guy, the numbers are against you.
The map above, from Richard Florida's WhosYourCity.com, lists the relative counts of single men and women in cities around the nation. As you can see, there are quite a few more single women here than men. But how many exactly? We looked up the census data to find out.
It's a pretty common trip for people in this area. But what's the fastest way? What's the cheapest? What's the best? We've done the math so you don't have to. The full details, including explanations, after the jump.
If you've ever bought milk at Hannaford, you might have noticed the person's name printed on the upper right part of the carton. It changes from week to week -- the last carton we bought said "CARL."
So, what's that about? Is the cow taking credit? (Unlikely. What sort of female cow would be named Carl?)
Well, we've finally gotten to the bottom of this mystery.
There's this interesting site called Walk Score, which tries to assign walkability scores to neighborhoods. So, we decided to drop 10 Capital Region locations into the site. Here's how they ranked:
(Scale is 1 to 100, the larger number, the more walkable)
AOA was curious about how much money people in the Capital Region have contributed to presidential campaigns. So, we looked up the data from the Federal Elections Commission and broke it down according to zip code groups (120, 121, 122, and so on) and candidates still left in the race (Clinton, Obama, McCain -- sorry, no Huckabee). Probably not surprisingly, the Capital Region has bet its money on Hillary...
We were curious, so we decided to find out. AOA put together a "basket" of 40 items that we thought could reasonably end up in most shopping carts in any given week. Then we checked the prices of these items at Price Chopper, Wal-Mart and Hannaford. Here are the results:
Ever wish you had a smart, savvy friend with the inside line on what's happening around the Capital Region? You know, the kind of stuff that makes your life just a little bit better? Yeah, we do, too. That's why we created All Over Albany. Find out more.
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Their economy can't survive on Jeagerbomb purchases alone. They need to up the import of hair gel, tanning beds, and striped shirts. But wait, think of all the out of state tuition SUNY Albany would then make!
It is unusually warm today -- like early Fall warm (the average high temp this time of year is around 50 degrees). 
... said Katherine about All hail the great State of Long Island