Ah, autumn! The air is crisp. The leaves are slowly starting to turn. And those gentle signs of fall start showing up at your local grocery and drug store: the dates for the next flu shot clinics.

If you want to make sure to avoid the upcoming season's creeping crud, you might want to check out the American Lung Association's Flu Clinic Locator, available at http://www.flucliniclocator.org.

This quick search allows you to search by radius, zip code, and a range of dates. I did a quick search for places I could get a flu shot within ten miles of 90210, at the beginning of November. Walgreens dominated much of my search results, as it did for many of the tests I ran, but there were many other pharmacies represented too, such as CVS and Pavilions.

Information with the listings includes full contact information for the location, date of the clinic, a link to a map, and a brief note about the shots (details varied...

Yes, the digital TV switch was over a month ago, but you can still get converter box coupons! ... at least for the next couple of days.

Are you still missing out on a converter box? Did you get a coupon before but weren't able to use it before it expired? Head on over to https://www.dtv2009.gov/ and request another one. You have until tomorrow, July 31, at midnight to get a coupon. They'll be mailed out next week.

In one of the more interesting ways of celebrating the moon landings that I've heard about, SentForever is allowing people to transmit free messages into deep space. The messages are launched from a modified dish at British Telecom's satellite earth station (Goonhilly Downs, Cornwall, UK.) as SentForver noted in their
announcement, "When transmitted, these messages travel at the speed of light which is 670 million miles per hour. After just 8 minutes the messages pass by the sun and 5 1/2 hours later pass Pluto."

Of course these messages weaken as they speed through space, so don't expect those aliens outside the galaxy to understand ALL the lyrics to "Louie Louie." Hey, we have that same problem here, don't we? Hmm... To send a message you'll need to provide the service with your name and e-mail, your recipient's name and e-mail, and the message. (The privacy policy makes it clear that information provided is not shared with third parties.) If you...

NCSU Libraries recently launched North Carolina Architects & Builders, an online biographical/reference work covering builders in North Carolina. It's got information on about 170 architects and builders as well as information on "hundreds" of buildings. It's available at http://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu/browse/.

You can browse by name, work location, active years, building types, or trades (engineer, contractor, brick mason, etc.) I looked at the ones active between
1780-1789 and got four results. There's a snippet of biography in the search results but the real results are on each builder's individual page, like this one for John Allen. A brief biography is listed as well as a bibliography of mentions for the user.

If you're more interested in buildings, check out the buildings index on this...

Economy got you down? The North Carolina Cooperative Extension wants to help. It has launched a new Web site, NC Take Control, at http://www.nctakecontrol.com/. This site is designed to provide you with tools and information for coping with the economy.

The site is divided into a series of categories like Employment, Food, and Personal Finances. Most of the information is presented in downloadable PDF format but there are a few podcasts in here (which are available as MP3 files.) There's some information, questions to think about, and plenty of links to additional resources. The "Health Care Coverage for You and Your Family" PDF, in particular, gave a lot of options for health insurance.

Governor Bev Perdue actually launched a JobsNOW Web site in May for information about employment and business in North Carolina -- it's at  http://jobsnow.nc.gov/default.aspx...