Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Stop with the emails!!!
Of course, this emails was about the Golden Compass. A new children's fantasy movie similar to Narnia, in which each character has an animal spirit guide... and blah, blah blah. The biggest concern people have is that the author is a huge atheist. In the movie, he kills some sort of Lion character (the symbolic Christ character in Narnia), and people are all up in arms about it. People are worried that their kids are going to get attached to this movie, and then when they get older, the values in this movie will make them give up their Christian background, and go the way of the atheist.
Let me say this, mine, nor anyone I know's religious beliefs were shaped by a children's book/movie. I didn't realize that those books had religious undertones until I was much older. My boss is an atheist, and he read the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe when he was a kid, how could he turn out atheist?
The whole thing is just dumb to me. If the argument was that the director is a huge atheist, and we shouldn't take our kids to the movie so we don't support this guy, I would still have a problem with that, but I would at least understand the argument. But the argument that this movie is going to turn your 7 year old into a non-believer, is beyond me.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Yellow Ledbetter
My favorite part has to be "Potato Wave" or "Make me Fries!".
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Pandora Station
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Caught this on Digg
The article can be summed up in one line and a picture: "One of the supervisors called a Walmart and ordered the cake. he told them to write: 'best wishes Suzanne' and underneath that write 'we will miss you'." This is the cake the received:
Sunday, September 30, 2007
*77
YOU MUST KNOW *77
I knew about the red light on cars, but not the *77. It was about 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon, and Lauren was driving to visit a friend. An UNMARKED police car pulled up behind her and put his lights on. Lauren's parents have always told her never to pull over for an unmarked car on the side of the road, but rather to wait until they get to a gas station, etc.
Lauren had actually listened to her parents advice, and promptly called *77 on her cell phone to tell the police dispatcher that she would not pull over right away. She proceeded to tell the dispatcher that there was an unmarked police car with a flashing red light on his rooftop behind her. The dispatcher checked to see if there were police cars where she was and there weren't, and he told her to keep driving, remain calm and that he had back up already on the way.
Ten minutes later 4 cop cars surrounded her and the unmarked car behind her. One policeman went to her side and the others surrounded the car behind. They pulled the guy from the car and tackled him to the ground. The man was a convicted rapist and wanted for other crimes. I never knew about the *77 Cell Phone Feature, but especially for a woman alone in a car, you should not pull over for an unmarked car.
Apparently police have to respect your right to keep going to a safe & quiet place.
You obviously need to make some signals that you acknowledge them (i.e. put on your hazard lights) or call *77 like Lauren did.
Too bad the cell phone companies don't generally give you this little bit of wonderful information.
*Speaking to a service representative at **Bell ** Mobility confirmed that *77 was a direct link to state trooper info. So, now i! t's your turn to let your friend s know about *77.
Send this to every woman (and person) you know; it may save a life. This applies to ALL 50 states.
The letter seems genuine. Trying to give out valuable information to people to use in case of emergency. It has all the elements, personal experience, technical backup and genuine concern for women everywhere.
But something struck me wrong about the letter, so I looked up the *77. This is the email I sent back to everyone in the chain that I could find.
That is definitely 3 buttons on a phone that people need to know about. Another 3 buttons that people need to remember are:
911
According to The North American Numbering Plan (NANP), the regulatory committee for regulating area codes, exchange codes and vertical service codes (anything that starts with an *) *77 is designed to allow customers to activate the anonymous call rejection feature of their phone. (*87 to reactivate it). You can read about other vertical service codes here. This feature is disabled on most cell phone carriers since this feature is handled at the routing substation and would involve sending thousands of updates to all cell phone routing towers for this to be accomplished. If you don't believe me, go ahead and try it. As far as the "Bell Mobilty" representative. Bell Mobility is a Canadian wireless provider, similar to AT&T Wireless/Mobile. Canada's numbering plan is also regulated by the NANP, so I doubt this works in the great white north either, but since I don't have a Canadian cell phone, I can't neither prove or disprove this, but I do know, that it doesn't work in America.
I worked for some time in the telecommunications field. I've also worked for quite a while in the internet, long enough to learn that you shouldn't trust everything you read on the internet, especially in chain letters.
But in all seriousness, the 911 feature works on ANY cell phone. Whether or not that cell phone currently has an active phone plan or not. 911 will still work, even on a deactivated cell phone. Don't get me wrong, if your cell phone doesn't have a signal/service (bars) you can't call anyone, but if it does, you can still call 911. So if you have an old cell phone that you don't really use any more, but that does work, I would recommend throwing it in the glove box of your car, or giving it to a teenage driver or anyone who doesn't have a cell phone to ensure that they can call the police in any emergency.
So turns out that this nice, genuine letter is completely fake. Go ahead, pick up your cell phone and dial *77, no police, or interstate trooper hotline.
My other problem with this letter is this. Chain letters are most often fake. There are designed to get passed across the internet by some PR agency to promote their product, created as phishing schemes to get people's personal information in order to steal their identity or designed by some well intentioned citizen but will most likely will go horribly wrong. What people don't really realize is that those chain letters are a great source of working, current email addresses that SPAMMERS can use to add to their contact list. Go ahead and look back at the last chain letter you received. I'm sure you'll see the names of the 20 people that got it when you did, and the 20 people that got it when the person that sent it to you go it. and the FW line from the person who sent it to them and on and on. On the chain letter sent to me, there were at least three dozen valid email addresses. And people wonder how they get on some of these mailing lists.
The other thing I wanted to say is to remind people that the internet is not a credible source. Just because you read something in an email, or you saw it on the internet, doesn't mean its fact. People walk by the tabloids every time they checkout at the grocery store and read about Britney Spears giving birth to alien twins while in the bathroom of some nightclub, or the dog that was born with a goat head or whatever, and they immediately know that its false, but for some reason, people believe the internet to be fact.
Don't believe everything you read!!!
/end rant.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Avast Ye Matey!!!
Trouble getting married?
Friday, September 14, 2007
Kenneth Fosters August 30th Letter
He was sentenced to die by lethal injection on August 30, 2007. This is a letter he wrote about his experiences from the day before.
While I don't really know how I feel about the death penalty, this is some really interesting stuff, and makes you think about it.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Vespanomics
Monday, September 03, 2007
Marching Band does OK Computer
This is the University Arizona Marching band from last year. I think if more bands, especially high school, played stuff like this, they would attract a lot more people to play in marching band than actually do. Maybe they wouldn't get beat-up and made fun of as much, because they are playing cool, modern music, instead of Vivaldi, or Beethoven, or something equally boring to modern youth. Probably just wishful thinking, either way, this was pretty awesome to watch.
All songs as far as I know are from OK Computer. I know I heard Paranoid Android, Airbag and Fitter, Happier. I didn't quite like Fitter, Happier, the voiced were too on-beat and forced. The real song is more just like someone talking. But I guess its hard to get a couple hundred band geeks to talk in unison while marching. The trumpet solo in the second part is pretty amazing too
Thursday, August 30, 2007
PostSecret This Week
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
While You Were Out
So, I've told Mary many stories about the strange things about my family, and I've tried to warn her, but I'm not sure that she ever takes me seriously. I try to warn her that at all extended family functions, we all tend to gather in the corner and talk amongst ourselves rather than mingle with our cousins. Or that my mom does some pretty amazing things to save a few pennies, closes the closet doors so you don't have to A/C the air in the closets, or saving old jam jars to use a glasses. No matter what it is, I'm not really sure that Mary ever takes me seriously.
Well, this weekend we went to Kentucky to visit Mary's sister, as I'm sure you know from this. Anyways, we had my dad drop us off at the airport, but before we left, my mom asked is she could go over to our house and try out or recumbant exercise bike. Since we turned up the air to like 90 while we were gone, I told her that she would need to go over and turn the air down so she doesn't roast in there. When we got back, she mentioned that she did if a couple times and that she sort of liked it. Mary and I go home and start to unpack and put things away, etc... all the sudden, Mary stops and asks me, "Why are all of our closets closed?". You see, most of the time, the closet in the study/den stays open since thats where all of our supplies are; paper, stamps, etc. Same with the bedroom closet. I think about it, and it dawns on me... finally, I have proof. My mom went through our house and closed all the closets so that when she turned the air down to 80 while she worked out, we wouldn't have to pay to cool the air from the closets. I'm not sure if this is funny to anyone else but me, but I think its hilarious.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Pearl Jam Censored by AT&T
On Sunday, Pearl Jam played a concert for Lollapalooza, and AT&T agreed to webcast their concert on their "Blue Room". During their rendition of Daughter, they wandered into a version of Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall, which they often do. During this rendition, Eddie changed a few of the words. He sang "George Bush, leave this world alone!" and "George Bush, find yourself another home!" AT&T decided that these 2 phrases would be deemed offensive by the public and cut them out of their webcast.
Now, many of you who know me, know that I love Pearl Jam, so any story about Eddie, Stone, Matt, Mike, and Jeff is bound to grab my attention. The other thing that grabbed it, is that Pearl Jam is turning this into a Net Neutrality issue. For those of you who don't know what Net Neutrality is, let me try to explain it.
Basically, the phone/cable lines that the internet currently runs over are getting used quite often, and the more and more people that have websites, and the more people that use the internet, those lines are just going to get more and more backed up. Now before you go thinking that your email is going to take a few days to show up, let me state something. Currently it takes milliseconds for data to travel around the world on the internet. Even if the lines get backed up, it just means that its going to take 3/4 of a second for your email to get to your Japanese penpal, rather than 1/2 a second. But eventually, there is going to need to be an upgrade. Anyways, the phone companies, including AT&T, want to create a new internet backbone, basically an internet freeway, which will be bigger and better than the current phone/cable lines. This is great news for the internet, now everyone will be able to get their information quicker and everything will work better right? Wrong. The phone companies want users to pay a premium for their content to roll across these higher quality lines. Which means everytime you request information, your ISP will look at who you are requesting it from. If it's from some big corporation, that can afford to pay for the higher bandwidth, then you get your information lightning quick. But if you are just getting your info from some random hole in the wall website, then your traffic is going to get thrown onto the old phone system.
This means that the ISP is inspecting your data, and determining if it is worthy to get to you quickly. In my opinion, this goes against everything that the internet is based on. Take for example Google. Google is probably one of the biggest internet search engines in the world, but it was started by 2 college students in California. If this was in place back when they were developing their search engine, companies like Yahoo and AOL would have already paid for the faster service, and they wouldn't have the capital to have that luxury. Even though their search engine could search the web super quickly and get the information you needed, it would take much longer for the data to get to your computer, compared to the search results from AOL or Yahoo, so even though AOL and Yahoo have inferior products, because their results can move across the web faster, it appears that they are faster. If this was the case, why would anyone start using Google when its slower than the others. This could/would happen to ever facet of the internet. Why use Tom's MySpace when Yahoo personals are way faster?
The beauty of the internet today, is that anyone can come a long with an idea, and have an equal footing with their corporate competition. If the phone companies had their way, this would no longer be the case.
Anyways, back the Pearl Jam. The decided to make their issue an example of what could happen if you let companies like AT&T decide what information gets to your computer. If they decide that this content may be offensive, even though there is no legal precedent or law preventing it, then you don't get it. The net neutrality concept is called that so that ISPs continue to stay neutral, and the phone companies don't get to look at the information moving across it's wires, and they just let everything through with equal priority.
If you'd like additional info about the Pearl Jam AT&T thing, see this, or you can read about Net Neutrality
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
756*
Hank Aaron didn't even like to take vitamins, because he felt like it gave players an unfair advantage. Also, I read an article a couple days ago about 6 ways Bonds cheated to get the home run record, and none of them are steroids. I don't really agree with him, but it's an interesting read. Anyways, I definitely think there should be and asterisk in the record book for Bonds' home run record, and this shirt is a great way to say that. We'll see if I end up picking it up.
ps... I found another, this one is even better:
I Don't Feel like Dancin'
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Do dogs live in bullet time?
Do things that take us 30 minutes really take them 3 and a half hours? When I tell him to sit, does he hear sssssssssssssssssssssiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!, like 45 being played at 33? And what about watching TV with my parents? Does sitting down and watching America's Got Talent take 7-14 hours of their life? I don't think I can sit through that. I barely can stand to watch the Hoff for 2 hours, and thats on tivo fast-forwarding through the boring parts. And then sleeping, if the time theory is true, then he has successfully slept for more than a day. Which is pretty amazing. He must think that humans move really slow, but I guess he moves that slow too, I'm having a hard time balancing space time in 1/7th the speed. What about when my parents go to work? They are gone for more than 2 full days, which is an amazing amount of time to spend holding it and not going to the bathroom. And what about going to the bathroom? To him, that probably runs a good hour or so. When was the last time you had a nice, calm, relaxing hour long bathroom break? Just a thought.
ps... for those of you who don't know what bullet time is... watch the Matrix, or see here
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Favorite PostSecret from last week
My Sister's Kid
My sister Raygon cuts hair. She's up at her house in Idaho and they are about to have some big party or something at their house and her husband decides that he needs a haircut. So she goes into the bathroom and buzzes Andy's hair. Andy jumps in the shower and Raygon starts getting ready in the mirror in the bathroom. My nephew is playing in their bedroom so he doesn't mess up the house that has been cleaned for this big party. (I'm probably getting some of the details wrong, be every writer has to write his own story, right?) So as Raygon is getting ready, she hears the clippers turn on, on my nephew Kaleb say, "Haircut, haircut!" Turns out, he wanted to be just like his mom. So, they decided they had to just shave his head completely, but before they did, they snapped the below pictures, good thing he's not a girl.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Money, Money, Money
So it seems like all the problems that I have with my jobs always have to do with money. Which I feel is strange, since I don't really consider myself a money-motivated person, but so it is.
At my old job, they were rolling in money. My boss constantly bragged about how much the company was making, or how much they were going to make from this deal. Or how he just saved the company thousands of dollars by being a cheap ass on this deal or that, which was all fine. I'm fine with a company bragging about its success. My problem was that when I felt like I needed some more money because I was trying to qualify for a better house, all I was told was that I could work some extra hours, and maybe make some overtime, even though I was a salary employee. And on top of that, I saw the company cut corner after corner. Not paying for Microsoft Windows licenses, buying the cheapest computers known to man, finding the cheapest (not most reliable) vendor for every service, cutting back on employee benefits, keeping employee salaries ridiculously low, because it's easier to hire someone new with no skill set and train them than to keep someone that already has it. It wasn't until I threatened to quit, that I was offered an almost 50% pay increase. Which I feel like was a slap in the face. Before they couldn't afford to pay me more, I had to earn it. But now that I was going somewhere else, I was offered a HUGE increase. Obviously they believed I was worth more, they just weren't willing to pay me more, until I quit. Needless to say I left, and haven't looked back. Well, I guess I've looked back, but mostly to say, "Man I'm glad I don't work there any more."
So now I'm at my new job, and we are an internet startup, so our funding comes from investors. When we were running low on money, everything is hush, hush. The engineers don't get to hear anything about whats going on. Management is way to busy to talk to us, they can't tell us anything about their conference room meetings, but when we finally did get funding, look out. They started spending money like it grows on trees, because I think to them, that it does. My boss goes out and immediately buys each of us miniMacs and new monitors, and while I am grateful for the new computer, I would have much rather just had a laptop that I could take home and work from, but our opinions aren't solicited. I think the larger problem though, is that they spend money on useless items. Each of the engineers was purchased a video camera so that we could carry it around and make recordings and upload them to the website. The decree: "One video per week or it gets taken away" was issued, but some of my coworkers have never upload videos and they still have a camera. Then I walk in one day, and my boss and I each have new Sidekick phones. This is so that we could keep in touch with work a little better. We did the pre-paid, month to month plan. After 2 months, we started running low on funding, so we stopped paying for it. So a couple hundred dollars was wasted on the phones themselves, which we no longer use. So then, my boss decides that he doesn't want to have the sidekick + his cell phone, so he decides to go and a buy a blackjack. He's going to use it for work, so he uses the company money. Since he's not starting a new plan or anything, the company just gets to eat the $400 cost for the phone. Which he already has one of that he doesn't use. Then a few weeks ago, he decided he needs the i-Phone, and he needs it for work, so work has to pay for it. Its ridiculous. It happens that way with everything around here.
So I don't know what I'm looking for in a company. I don't think my problems here are worth quitting over. I get paid well, and I feel like I have things to do, and I enjoy what I'm doing, but sometimes it just bugs. Hope I don't get Dooced for saying so, but I had to vent.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Another Cover
Chris Farley Lives!!
Friday, June 22, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Yahoo 404
Monday, June 18, 2007
Why you should never let your girl take off her seatbelt
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Powerpoint Tips
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Real Life Mario
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Where is the Internet
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Bolton on the Daily Show?
I think the theme is that Jon Stewart was wrong. I counted Bolton calling him wrong at least 5x. Crazy. And I didn't know that Stewart was wrong about Lincoln. I saw the interview with the Lincoln author that told him how he had people who ran against him. I guess she was wrong. Bolton knows all.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Drumline
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Woot off!!!
Friday, March 16, 2007
I'm So Excited
read more | digg story
Friday, March 09, 2007
Horrible Dunk
This guy wins the award for worst dunk in a dunk contest... he even manages to take out a cheerleader... I'm glad everyone laughed at him.
The Office + Hot in Here = good video
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Steve Carrell and Stephen Colbert : Even Stepvhen
read more | digg story