Crackbaby scratchpaper

Bye-bye, blogspot

2006-02-25T23:44:00.000-05:00

Welp, I done with blogspot and I'm moving this blog to oranchak.com, a more customized WordPress-powered blog. See you there!

Don't Hassel the Hoff

2006-02-11T15:13:00.000-05:00

Oh, sweet Lord.

Apparently the Aussies are crazy for David Hasselhoff, too. Enough for Pepsi to take notice with this ad campaign.

Is it a joke? A career? A joke wrapped inside a career? A career wrapped inside of a joke wrapped inside of a career??? (more evidence here)

It spins my noodle.

What good is Caller ID?

2006-02-08T08:53:00.000-05:00

In a recent TWIT episode, Kevin Mitnick described a new service called SpoofCard that gives you some interesting new abilities when you make phone calls, all by using a special kind of calling card:

How can I change my voice?

SpoofCard offers the ability to select a Male or Female voice when making a call. The feature works in real-time and allows the caller to speak in a normal tone while the person on the other end will hear the changed voice.

What are the advantages of Caller ID spoofing?

Caller ID spoofing gives business professionals the ability to manipulate their identity to their choosing and stay anonymous. Caller ID spoofing is also valuable in defeating popular telephone services such as "*57 Call Trace", "*69 Last Call Return", "Anonymous Call Rejection" and "Detailed Billing". Private Investigators will find Caller ID spoofing valuable for pretext calls.

Now, we can all be one of the Jerky Boys!

Ghost in the machine

2006-02-07T14:56:00.000-05:00

When you stare at data long enough, patterns emerge.

(click for full)

Yeah, I need to get out more. But the glowing box of light resists my feeble efforts.

Math fun

2006-02-02T22:53:00.000-05:00

The Hairy Ball Theorem!

(insert Beavis and Butthead laughter here)

Foodthulhu

2006-01-31T13:47:00.000-05:00

A great idea from Jon: H.P. Lovecraft meets bizarre vintage food adverts:

It was very peculiar, but as the little boy uttered his petition there seemed to form overhead the shadowy, nebulous figures of exotic things; of hybrid creatures, crowned with horn-flanked disks.

Those who described these strange shapes felt quite sure that they were not human, despite some superficial resemblences in size and general outline.

The odor of the fish was maddening; but I was too much concerned with graver things to mind so slight an evil, and set out boldly for an unknown goal.

(thanks to boingboing and accordionguy for mashup fodder)

Try the veal

2006-01-30T15:05:00.000-05:00

(15:03:11) Frank: Did you hear about the penguin in a santa suit who went to the psychiatrist?
(15:03:21) Frank: diagnosis: bipolar!
(15:03:34) Frank: tip your waitresses...
(15:03:48) Frank: I'll be here all week...
(15:03:52) David: <insert cricket chirps here>

Ultimately, EVERYBODY just wants to makes music.

2006-01-30T14:28:00.000-05:00

Remember 80s movie staple Rick Moranis?

You loved him in Ghostbusters. And Little Shop of Horrors. And the Honey, I Shrunk the Everything series of flicks. Well fast-forward a bit from the 80s (a VERY long bit, come to think of it) and you'll find that he's released a country music album, of all things, named "Agoraphobic Cowboy".

(his site | his explanation | amazon reviews)

Dumbest moments in business

2006-01-26T06:54:00.000-05:00

(via Business 2.0):

Winner, Dumbest Moment, Outsourcing
Told you we shouldn't have rented that list from the Department of Homeland Security.

Blaming a mailing-list vendor for providing bad information, JPMorgan Chase apologizes for sending a form letter about its credit card services to an Arab American man in California addressed to "Palestinian Bomber."

Another good one:

Winner, Dumbest Moment, Public Relations
Men, on the other hand, have a charming self-destructive quality.

Speaking at an ad industry event in Toronto, WPP Group's worldwide creative director, Neil French, says there aren't more female creative directors "because they're crap" and they eventually "wimp out" and "go off and suckle something." French speaks from a stage decorated as a hunting lodge while being served drinks by a woman in a skimpy maid's outfit, of whom he asks, "Could you lean over a bit more?" Two weeks later WPP accepts French's resignation.

The ghosts of BASIC past

2006-01-23T13:55:00.000-05:00

Click the button for resurrected geekery.

Update:

From Jerry:
"What goose did:

Once upon a time, there was a great sinus who lived in a large goose in the clouds.

I'd really like to hear the rest of that story."

Pluto brings out silliness

2006-01-22T20:59:00.000-05:00

The New Horizons mission finally launched, after many false starts and delays. And it brought out not only the great feeling of human achievement, but more importantly some goofiness in our instant messaging chatter:

(12:52:26) Chris: aw snap! they are delaying for clouds
(12:52:39) Chris: it's a freaking rocket guys
(12:52:47) Chris: clouds are not a problem
(12:53:39) David: dammit
(12:53:49) David: oh no, we might hit an endangered bird species up there or something
(12:53:56) Chris: why does god hate pluto
(12:54:11) Chris: oh yeah...the whole "underworld" thing
(12:56:58) David: LOL

...

(Chris getting excited as we hear that the launch is actually happening for real this time:)

(13:53:25) Chris: ooh, they might be good to go at 2 PM
(13:53:30) Chris: GO! GO!
(13:53:56) Chris: GO on weather
(13:55:38) Chris: light that freakin candle
(13:56:14) Chris: man, i should have seen if i could have gone over to mission ops
(13:57:44) Chris: look out for teh birdz!!!!!11
(14:00:40) Chris: OH YEAH!
(14:03:37) Chris: sweeet

...

(the day after, i saw an article about
the spacecraft's cargo containing the ashes of Pluto's discoverer Clyde Tombaugh):

(11:17:22) David: i had no idea
(11:18:27) Jon: neither did I
(11:18:42) David: the plutonium is going to bring that dude back to life
(11:18:56) Jon: ...as the Incredible Hulk
(11:19:05) David: HULK SMASH CHARON!!!!

Haven't you wanted to do this?

2006-01-22T20:53:00.000-05:00

(via PostSecret)

Before you leap...

2006-01-18T15:15:00.000-05:00

From Michelle:

"At least San Francisco is trying to keep people from jumping!"

Here's another view I found on Flickr:

Nanotechnology...

2006-01-16T21:11:00.000-05:00

...is now a dietary supplement??

"Mesosilver is 0.9999 pure silver in colloidal form, a true silver colloid. All natural mineral supplement in the form of nanoparticle colloidal silver."

Are they actually making money off this?? The link appeared in the Adsense advertisements above. Of course, I'm giving them some potentially free business by talking about them. What a scam!

1000 reasons to love Japan

2006-01-16T21:07:00.000-05:00

Reason #625: Arnold Schwarzenegger explodes out of a woman's head in a commercial.

Symptoms of fatigue

2006-01-16T20:49:00.000-05:00

Kathryn, who woke up for a while last night due to Iris screaming, tells me at the gym today that she's "looking forward to going home to relaxate."

Reminds me when I was sleep deprived in college, riding the bus to campus and thinking that everyone was speaking a weird new language that only makes sense again when you get enough sleep.

But one of the best is Jim's boot camp story, wherein he reached out to receive candy offered by the fatigue-induced vision of a woman in a blue dress. He was supposed to be practicing hiding in a ditch with his machine gun. Apparently his drill instructor was not happy to be seeing him jumping out of the ditch for treats.

Sunday funnies, the remix

2006-01-15T13:15:00.000-05:00

Click for info and full comic.

Spam subject du jour

2006-01-12T11:10:00.000-05:00

The subject of some cheesy Web marketing scam I received in my inbox recently:

"My Darling, Is That Manure Stick You Have On?"

Geckos with friggin' LASER BEAMS!

2006-01-11T15:19:00.000-05:00

I and several other BKA folk are working on some SBIR proposals to try to fund some research and development in our little shop, and I found some interesting proposals that were already awarded.

DARPA, which has a reputation for funding some freaky stuff, awarded one to a company with some interesting wording in their abstract: "The ability to efficiently utilize the large surface area of entities such as buildings, tanks, and ships as active, intelligent skins will allow these assets to become part of a larger, highly-responsive, complex nervous system in mission critical scenarios."

This title won the funding award despite breaking trademark: "Printed Electronics Processing for Structural Integrity (PEPSI)".

And CES would have been a much more interesting consumer electronics conference with items such as the "Highly Scalable Low Loss Fast Tuned True Time Delay Module Based on Dispersion Enhanced Photonic Crystal Fibers".

Science fiction? "Distributed Collaborative Planning and Control for Undersea Surveillance using Swarms of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles." Big Brother goes swimming!

And who would have thought the humble gecko could inspire the next generation of robots? "An essentially new research thrust on studying the climbing capability of the gecko has been of major interest. The ability to not only climb walls but also hang upside down from the ceiling has postulated many research questions. In addition to this, the gecko has the added advantage of having dry, self-cleaning, dynamically modulated adhesive feet. These advantages give unlimited life in sticking ability, unlike modern adhesive materials (i.e. tapes, glues, etc.). Recent studies indicate that this is actually achieved by small intermolecular forces known as van der Waals forces. This force, which occurs when unbalanced electrical charges around molecules attract each other, is individually miniscule, but the effect of several million collectively produces a powerful adhesion. An effective adhesive material would probably have to utilize a multi-level micro structure design that would engage the surface so the naturally occurring van der Waals forces could be maximized. The development of this new material would incorporate understanding at the nanoscopic scale of the fibers and/or microstructure of both the gecko feet and the proposed adhesion material. The major technical risks will be in the development, fabrication, and adhesive efficiency of this type of material."

Today, on "Internet", part 2

2006-01-04T15:54:00.000-05:00

(15:41:11) Dave: i think i typed a bush-ism accidentally
(15:41:24) Dave: writing up some sbir crap on the wiki, i tried to type "easily"
(15:41:29) Dave: and ended up typing "easible"
(15:41:38) Jon: HAH HAH HAH
(15:41:58) Jon: see? modern society makes ya dumbpid!
(15:42:01) Dave: it'd be a good name for a company :)
(15:42:07) Dave: Welcome to Easible
(15:42:32) Jon: that'd be a good name for a ranch out in nevada...
(15:42:29) Dave: oh, i saw an ad for some meds for bi-polar patients
(15:42:34) Dave: it had the worst drug name ever
(15:42:38) Dave: it was called "Abilify"
(15:42:47) Jon: oh yeah, that stuff
(15:42:59) Dave: it makes you able! so it abilifies you!
(15:43:00) Jon: pharmaceuticals have all kinds of stupid names like that now
(15:43:28) Jon: "Ask you doctor about Pubella!"
(15:43:32) Jon: "No, I don't think I will..."
(15:44:39) Dave: LOL

Today, on "Internet"

2006-01-04T13:55:00.000-05:00

(13:04:32) Jon: internet thread of the day:
(13:04:59) Jon: I noticed a news headline about Philly celebrating Benjamin Franklin's 300th birthday this month
(13:05:07) Jon: So I looked him up on wikipedia
(13:05:20) Jon: read through all this stuff about him that I either had forgotten or didn't know
(13:05:35) Jon: at the end there's a fiction category
(13:05:40) Jon: one of the lines:
(13:05:51) Jon: "Franklin surprisingly appears as a character in Tony Hawk's Underground 2, a skateboarding video game. Players encounter Franklin in his hometown of Boston and are able to play as him thereafter."
(13:05:54) Jon: o_O
(13:06:09) Dave: ROFL
(13:06:12) Dave: that's awesome :)
(13:06:25) Jon: didn't expect to read that line ever :)
(13:06:41) Dave: that rules
(13:06:55) Jon: it does sound pretty cool :)
(13:07:11) Dave: now i wanna play that game
(13:07:24) Dave: and, they should make a spinoff that lets you play as all sorts of historical characters
(13:07:31) Dave: sigmund freud shreddin' up the asphalt
(13:07:34) Dave: with his wicked moves
(13:07:43) Jon: don't forget socrates!
(13:07:49) Dave: hehe
(13:07:57) Dave: he's a sk8 poseur
(13:08:26) Jon: they should do a contemporary version too, where you can play Bill O'Reily, Jesse Jackson, Jerry Falwell, etc.
(13:08:36) Dave: hahaha
(13:08:39) Dave: jery falwell
(13:08:42) Dave: i'd buy that game
(13:08:46) Jon: hells yeah!

This says it all

2006-01-04T13:45:00.000-05:00

The International Coal Group executives celebrating their initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in November 2005; a precursor to today's news of the 12 West Virginia miners that perished.

The Infotainment soundtrack

2005-12-31T08:45:00.000-05:00

The creative brief in the first Gulf War had more to do with the
conflict of cultures and ideologies--it was the Islamic or Arabic
East versus the West, and so the conflict was set in those tones.
The second time it was more like they were trying to promote the
war the same way they would promote Terminator 3--it was like
"Battle of the Megaheroes." So the first time what I delivered
was vaguely militaristic and vaguely Arabic simultaneously. And
the second time it was just Techno-Ali vs. Frazier-IV,
we're-going-to-knock-the-crap-out-of-them music.

- Peter Fish, composer, on his work for CBS's Iraq war coverage.
Quoted in "Music at 6: Scoring the News, Then and Now" by
Carter Burwell in the Fall 2003 edition of Esopus Magazine.

Replacement for rotations of "It's a Wonderful Life"

2005-12-26T15:29:00.000-05:00

Joanie brought us the destined-to-be-a-Christmas-classic Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (the non-MST3K version). We all managed to endure the entire movie, famous for being on many "worst movies" lists, via our own lesser brand of MST3K-style audience participation. Not much beyond the movie itself says it better than these caps:

"Think of the Martian children!"

The laziest men on Mars.

The intrepid Martian leader. With built-in plumbing.

Anyone got a pipe-wrench?

Beware the man-eating furries.

Mere children cannot escape the powerful robot.

Santa succumbs to the power of the Martian conquistadors.

What's your boggle, Geraldo?

So, it turns out this movie is in the public domain, should you be interested in such a fine cinematic feast.

Iris vs Technology

2005-12-25T20:07:00.000-05:00

And your young shall be calmed by the loving warm glow of shiny new technology:

Thanks, Oma and Opa, for the cool new portable DVD player!

Diaper the halls

2005-12-24T23:56:00.000-05:00

The earlier diaper-related post had an interesting consequence with AdSense. The following ad came up at the top of the page tonight:

Dunno where they figured diapers were involved, but the link simply pointed to an eBay search for wreaths.

Merry Christmas

2005-12-23T23:59:00.000-05:00

Down the road from us is a house that looks like it could be straight out of rural West Virginia. Chickens in the yard, junk strewn about, little shacks, a chicken coop, etc. In true houseblinger style, the residents there have decked out their property with all sorts of christmas lights and ornaments. Kathryn spotted lit snowman figures there mounted in a circle on top of what looked like a partially above-ground septic tank. So, naturally, we've now coined the term "Septic Snowmen". If I ever started a band, that would be the name!

Incidentally, it was Frank that reminded me about this story, since his screen name is "septicfields".

The diaper anchor

2005-12-23T14:17:00.000-05:00

To do some Christmas shopping, I went to the ghetto-licious Toys-R-Us here in Roanoke recently (you know, the one where the shelves never have anything on them, and you feel like you're walking through an abandoned hospital instead of a toy store). On the way to the store, I walked through the parking lot for David's Bridal. I looked up and saw their brightly lit sign. I looked through the windows and saw the immaculately presented wedding gowns. And, I looked down and spied a soiled diaper right in front of the store.

Perhaps it is there as an omen to keep your wedding dreams grounded in harsh reality.

Ode to modern Christmas shopping

2005-12-16T16:58:00.000-05:00

"What a wonderful world this is! I click a mouse somewhere, bits
fly through optics, go to some undisclosed place, money
electronically changes hands, and then atoms in useful
arrangement are flown in airplanes and hand-carried to my
doorstep. When you think about it, this is miraculous."

- Robert W. Lucky, in "Reflections", IEEE Spectrum Magazine,
November 2005. The writer had purchased a new laptop computer
online.

Best tattoo ever

2005-12-12T22:51:00.000-05:00

The Mandelbrot Set!

(via "Revenge of the Tattooed Nerds")

I was obsessed with the Mandelbrot set when I was a kid. A friend of mine (Wes) showed me a Mandelbrot set program on his Commodore 64 as well as the computer magazine article that posted the algorithm for it. Determined, I ported it to BASIC on my Apple //c. I succeeded but the machine at the time didn't have the chops for speed, so some of the sets took all night (or multiple days) to render. If that wasn't geeky enough, later on in my high school career I made a similar Mandelbrot plotter on my TI-85. Nowadays, an everyday web browser can render the Mandelbrot set more quickly than I ever could, even in JavaScript.

What's the big deal? Well for me the fascination was that something so complex as the Mandebrot set could be represented by such a simple-seeming equation: z = z² + c. I think the beautiful imagery that arises from such a simple equation explains its enduring appeal. It is one of the things that really inspired me to get into more math as a kid (such inspiration was of course much evaporated by the time I got to college).

A very interesting modern variation is called the "Buddhabrot":

The Buddhabrot is featured on complexification.net, a fascinating "gallery of computation" focusing on very cool mathematical eye candy, including some algorithms that are featured in the wonderful xscreensaver program. Xscreensaver is the evil eye candy screensaver that runs on my Linux machines - the program is a fantastic gallery of fun algorithmic displays put together by Jamie Zawinski, one of the original Netscape luminaries (he helped write v1.0 of the Netscape browser for Unix - nowadays he seems to have given up on software altogether by running a nightclub in San Francisco).

Speaking of Mandelbrot variations, this one's pretty. Ooh, shiny. (via this fractal gallery). Puts my monochrome (green and black) Apple //c fractal display to great shame.

More Christmas humor

2005-12-09T12:03:00.000-05:00

From Christina:

Old Man Winter 2005

2005-12-09T11:55:00.000-05:00

To celebrate our recent snow and ice days, Diana sends the awesome classic Calvin and Hobbes "Grotesque Snowmen" series:

Some of those were new to me!

Save some for the rest of us!

2005-12-08T07:57:00.000-05:00

From Kathryn's parents:

More info on the book if you're curious:

Glass, Robert R., and Phillip B. Davidson. Intelligence Is for Commanders. Harrisburg, PA: Military Service Publishing Co., 1948.

Pforzheimer: "Although basic, fundamental, and somewhat outdated, the book nevertheless has valuable insights into the critical relationship between the commander and his intelligence officer."

One of 'em don't bounce so good...

2005-12-06T22:38:00.000-05:00

From the youth gym at the local gym (gym-within-a-gym), back in August, via camphone.

As Iris would say, "wanna play bouncing-da-ball?" (the same phrase she uses when she sees kids playing soccer)

Give a man a phish

2005-11-20T21:18:00.000-05:00

Well, my sense of invulnerability to the constant email barrage of ebay and online banking phishing scams has eroded tonight. I've won the humiliating scarlet "I" (for Idiot) for being suckered by a (seemingly) new scam that forced me to change my eBay password after realizing I was so easily duped.

Here's the email I got:

My first thought was "hmm, I never asked anything about any sports memorabilia". So instinctively I want to know what the hell is going on with my ebay account - did someone ask a question via my account without me knowing? Is someone going to bid on a thousand dollar baseball jersey with my PayPal account? Like a lemming, I click on the item number link, and I get the "ebay" login screen. At this point I'm still thinking "I better log in and try to find out if someone's hacked my account." It fails my login a few times, but then succeeds, because I think the third attempt is the REAL eBay login page - the other login screens were part of the scammer's site recording my username and password (the link was http://signin.ebay.com-ws.org/signin.html -- as soon as I saw that com-ws.org domain, the jig was up.)

*Sigh*. So stupid. Ah well, I changed my password before anyone could do anything with my account. And I'll know better for next time. Meanwhile, there's an online bank that really needs me to "update my security info." They are really interested in all my credit card numbers, too. I better go log in and give them the updated info!

UPDATE:

A related quote:

"If you give a man a phish, he has a stolen credit card for a day. If
you teach a man to phish, he will eat three square meals daily for a
lifetime; perhaps served from behind bars, but he will not go hungry."

Continental drift

2005-11-08T19:21:00.000-05:00

A while ago, Sean made this funny typo in an email:

"Sorry for the incontinence."

It was very unique and hilarious at the time. I blogged about it thinking I was preserving a unique moment. But to my surprise, today I found that there are many references to this very typo:

Google Blog Search results

More proof that we all think the same!

Cultural education

2005-11-04T15:02:00.000-05:00

I rediscovered an old one from Chris:

ANIME:

Japanese animation. Full of people that look like ^_^
[Ex: I only watch anime with tentacles in it. ]

Link of the day from Josh

2005-11-03T12:23:00.000-05:00

The Gallery of Bellydancing Librarians!

"But man -- and woman -- do not live by information alone. At night, our gal trades her Birkenstocks for beads and serves her adoring public's entertainment needs with the music and dance of the Middle East."

Keeping up appearances

2005-11-03T11:26:00.000-05:00

Even in the midst of the Katrina disaster, fashion reigned supreme:

And this one will win your pity for the poor, poor ex-FEMA head:

There are more emails here. (mirror link)

Where are they now?

2005-11-02T12:13:00.000-05:00

Friend of mine back in the college days ended up making a name for himself doing Artificial Intelligence programming for video games. Here's an old interview with him I recently found.

When we were taking classes together I was always impressed (and admittedly jealous) with how little preparation he needed in order to ace everything every class threw at him. The boy was scary smart!

And apparently all that computer gaming we all did during those college years paid off for him. In those days it was stuff like X-Wing, XCOM, Doom, and Wing Commander. On 486's with 100MB hard drives. And we liked it!!!

Before diving headlong into the video game industry, Pranas worked on Virginia Tech's CAVE project. He gave me a tour of the CAVE system once (it's an experimental virtual reality setup). I still remember my stomach turning from the perceived motion induced by the 3D projections.

The reason for fall

2005-11-01T21:08:00.000-05:00

Tonight, while we watched the wind blowing leaves off the trees, Iris came up with the perfect explanation for why the leaves were falling:

"The trees are mad."

Wednesday funny

2005-10-26T09:42:00.000-04:00

I occasionally receive Scott Adams' Dilbert newsletter, and the best part of it is the "quotes from In-duh-viduals" section. Here's the one for this month:

INDUHVIDUAL QUOTES
==================

Here now, some quotes from Induhviduals, submitted by DNRC field operatives. Apparently the most confusing concepts for Induhviduals are anything involving body parts, beverages, food, or animals.

"It's so cold I'm getting goose nipples!"

“I'm as full of vinegar as a Christmas turkey.”

“You can stop kicking this dead whale down the beach and find another hobby horse to beat to death.”

"One man's trash is another man's garbage."

“I think I was speaking to Tom, and if it wasn't Tom I'm sure it was someone else.”

"Check the pulse on the temperature."

"He's making a mole hill out of an issue."

"Don't look at me in that tone of voice!"

"I home school three children and am expecting a forth!"

"This is the worst headache I've ever had in the history of my head."

"Imitation is the sincerest form of mockery."

"The squeaky wheel gets the worm."

"You're not the smartest peanut in the turd."

"I'd give an arm to be ambidextrous!"

A close second is the "True tales of In-duh-viduals" section.

The new Smeggy

2005-10-24T21:30:00.001-04:00

It's a used 2005 Hyundai Sonata that was repossessed from a rental car company that went out of business.

Words to live by

2005-10-24T21:30:00.000-04:00

Very useful advice from Jon:

The first law of kung fu is don't fuck up your kung fu.

Monday funny

2005-10-24T21:29:00.000-04:00

Monday funny

From Diana:

I'm sure every exam-taker has experienced this effect. In college I had a computer science exam for the Data Structures course. One of the last questions was "Draw a B-tree." In the last few minutes of frenetic desperation, I drew a picture of a tree, complete with trunk, leaves and branches, and wrote the letter B right in the middle of it.

Hippo balls

2005-10-22T22:10:00.000-04:00

An auction by our friend Christina:

Hippo Balls

"Shipping will be 37 cents to the contiguous states as we will be slapping your balls in an envelope and mailing them to you."

2005-10-18T22:27:00.000-04:00

Iris has a new name for her favorite stuffed kitty, a black and white stuffed cat that Joanie gave her a while back:

Humble Bay Dee-Dee.

We have no idea where that came from. Kathryn went to get Iris out of the crib one morning recently, and Iris kept saying "I want Humble Bay Dee-Dee! I want Humble Bay Dee-Dee!" while pointing to the stuffed kitty, which she had thrown out of her crib.

The only thing I can think of is that she sometimes calls her kitty her "baby". She'll say, "Look, I'm holding my baby."

Foggy smeggy breakdown

2005-10-18T13:50:00.000-04:00

So the update to the car saga is that we went to the dealer this morning and there is about $5000 worth of damages to my car. We brought Kathryn's car in too because her check engine light came on (which is the same business that started the slippery slope which led to the demise of her Forester - and her new car is, well, NEW!!!!)

We talked to a car salesman there, and he had the perfect car salesman name:

Monte Looney

He moonlights as a motorcycle racer, so maybe he belongs to the same name club that Dick Trickle belongs to.

"Mr. Looney, meet Mr. Trickle."

Obstacle course

2005-10-16T23:10:00.000-04:00

I drove to the Washington D.C. area Thursday for a Friday morning technology demo with a potential customer. But apparently there were funky forces at work trying to prevent me from going anywhere, at least in a timely fashion.

It was smooth sailing on I-81 up until around mile marker 220 near Staunton. A column of thick black smoke became ever larger, and the traffic ever slower.

At mile marker 221, traffic was at a complete stop. After about 10 minutes there, it was clear that no one was going anyhere. The ominous black smoke continued to pour up from the horizon. A cascade of emergency vehicles drove past me on the right in the breakdown lane. So, I called around and eventually listened to the VDOT advisory via their 1-800 number: "Tractor trailer accident is blocking all northbound lanes. Find an alternate route." Not much hope for progress in that recommendation! So I figured I'd pop into the I-64 exit which was right there, and find a back road to dump me out further up on I-81 past the accident. And I figured I should tell SOMEONE the news since few people there probably knew what was going on - so I did manage to tell one carload of travellers the news before fleeing on my detour. I looked at all the other cars waiting and thought, man, we live in the information age but I'll bet no one knows what's going on right here on the road. Giving up on the quest to spread the news, I selfishly hightailed it down I-64. But I only got about a minute into the detour before seeing yet another huge line of cars just sitting
on the interstate.

About a half hour later, cruising at about 2 MPH, I passed the root cause (a fender bender blocking one of the lanes). I found the back roads for my detour, and things started to look good again. A while later on local news stations, I found out that VDOT was expecting the cleanup job to take over EIGHT hours! Must have sucked to be sitting there the whole time.

Then, when I was near Manassas on I-66, I started to see some of those construction alert signs. One of them says "CONSTRUCTION AHEAD. EXPECT DELAYS." The other says "I-66 CLOSED. DETOUR AHEAD." The whole interstate is closed? Great. Well I got near the exit mentioned as a detour point, and people still cruised past it, wandering ahead into the funky construction wilderness. The hell with that - I took the detour. So, another delay, but nothing major. And I finally got to the hotel.

My hotel in Arlington was close to a mall with a movie theater, so I took the opportunity to see Serenity, which turned out to be quite good. The dialogue and sense of humor in that flick make up for the usual fare of sci-fi cliches peppered within. It was refreshing seeing some good, entertaining sci-fi for a change that wasn't completely dumbed down and turned into garbage.

Anyway, I went back to the hotel after the movie, and added some final touches to the technology demo for the next morning. The next day, I found my way to the parking lot at the demo site and then discovered that the meeting had been cancelled! Turns out, a participant had called in sick with chest pains, so the meeting was off. I ended up meeting with Sean for about a half hour, but was back on the road in no time. It was nice being on I-66 in the middle of the morning, since it hasn't had time yet to turn into a parking lot. The drive back was completely uneventful until I could see the Troutville/Fincastle exit, about a half hour from home. I thought, cool, I'm making good time, and I'm home free once I pass this exit. Then my engine seized up and lost power. My car started to slow down. The accelerator made the engine noisy but not faster. So I drifted into the breakdown lane and the steering wheel locked up as the engine shut down. Turning the ignition did nothing other than make a whining, spinning sound. Great.

I called AAA's emergency roadside service and set up a tow. A while later, a motorist assistance officer pulled up and I told him everything that happened. He noticed that I was hanging around in the underbrush in the ditch on the side of the road. So after I told him I was standing down there because I wasn't fond of the idea of idiots falling asleep at the wheel, or the visual of tractor trailer retread flying off the wheels and beelining towards my skull, the officer said, "Well, bears have been known to hang out here. Plus, I'd be worried about snakes down there. There's nowhere safe to stand!" Wonderful.

About an hour later the first tow truck arrived. It was a flatbed type. But the schmuck couldn't figure out how to load my car onto it. And he wouldn't even give me a ride. On top of that, he didn't even have the correct information about where I was broken down (though to be fair this was a communication problem between me, AAA, and the towing company). Strangely, I had been very calm and patient throughout this entire trip of delays and it wasn't until this guy wouldn't help me that I started losing my patience. So about two hours later, the second tow truck arrived from the same company. The driver, who co-owns the business, was surprised that his employee couldn't figure out how to load my car, because as it turns out the procedure is not very complicated or mysterious. Anyway, this driver was extremely helpful and knew what he was doing.

We dumped ol' Smeggy at the VW dealer and I met Kathryn and Iris there.

What an incredible way to spend a huge amount of time accomplishing absolutely nothing!

Later, I found some more information about that tractor trailer accident at Staunton. The amazing thing was that no one was killed.

Pun of the week

2005-10-10T14:50:00.000-04:00

So bad, it's good!

Source: Chris M. via Fark

O' the humanity

2005-10-09T22:52:00.000-04:00

Can you believe that these people SERIOUSLY believed themselves to be the SUPERIOR race?!? Just look at them!

A sad thing is realizing that the photo is not that old (70s-ish?).

Photo credit: screencap from the Errol Morris documentary The Thin Blue Line.

Treemaps rule!

2005-10-07T13:08:00.000-04:00

KDirStat is a fantastic KDE-based utility for managing files on your machine. It very quickly locates your hard drive hogs so you can easily archive or delete stuff you no longer need. Great for freeing up HD space.

There is a Windows port of this, too, called WinDirStat. I like it a lot better than SequoiaView, the first treemap-based visualization program I used.

There is a lot more treemap geekery here if you are interested in the technique.

Signs of the times

2005-10-07T12:02:00.000-04:00

Wicked Pissah

2005-10-05T17:10:00.000-04:00

I'm heading home from an interesting trip to Connecticut for work with a Navy sub training system project BKA is involved with.

Anyway, coming up, I connected in Philly. This airport ALWAYS manages to screw something up. I'm sure there are plenty of stories like this one.

As soon as I get to the Philly airport, the departure boards say my 6:20 pm flight to Providence, Rhode Island is delayed to 7:10pm. So I hang out in the food court in the terminal. Around 6:30 i head towards the gate. Meanwhile the electronic departure boards still say my flight doesn't leave until 7:10pm. At the gate, there's nothing showing my flight number. I sit for about 10 minutes, thinking that there's some time to kill before they start boarding. Then the lady at the counter calls out "hey is there anyone else here for the Providence flight?" I raise my hand, say "Me!", and walk towards the counter. She says to me "Your flight left at 6:30".

It left?!?

The lady alleges that the gate folks don't have access or authorization to change the board info. A British couple that had been waiting around since 3pm (they flew in from Manchester, UK) had the same fate. Luckily she gets me a boarding pass for me for an 8pm flight the same night. A British couple that had been waiting around since 3pm (they flew in from Manchester, UK) had the same fate.

On top of all that, as I walk to the other terminal to catch the later flight, I pass the electronic board again. Which STILL says my flight is leaving at 7:10 even though it isn't past 7:10 yet AND the plane is airborne.

It at least gave the British couple and I something to commiserate about after we got seated next to each other on the 8pm flight. And it was fun talking about England.

On an unrelated note, this is the most unexpected phrase to hear coming out of the mouth of a Navy submarine captain during our meeting this morning: "Fluffy muffins."

(It was an example of what kind of goal a commanding officer would set for his subordinates).

Blogworthy quote

2005-09-20T14:30:00.000-04:00

IMs from Josh:

my old ex-boss starts a conversation with: "I work with shittossing thumbless monkeys"

and you say i love bitching ... and leading people on with my bitching. :)

ApeDance - the prequel

2005-09-20T12:21:00.000-04:00

OK so it is apparent that Steve Ballmer likes to use the "Crazy Car Salesman" persona when hawking Microsoft, as shown clearly by this video (WMV 873kb):

If the WMV doesn't work for ya then try the flash version.

Only geeks will appreciate this.

2005-09-13T16:35:00.000-04:00

A message from a coworker:

I'm glad you all are doing this. I thought a grep was something that grew on a vine to stomp on and make wine.

Thanx for all your help!

Eureka!

2005-09-06T00:13:00.000-04:00

I wonder if this is a common toddler story...

Kathryn, Iris, and I are enjoying our nice Labor Day dinner on our newly finished deck improvements outside. We're all talking to one another and at one point Iris looks at me and says "Momma" (which she does every now and then - she calls Momma "Dadda" sometimes, too.) So, Momma corrects her by saying to her, "No, he's Dadda; I'm Momma". Iris turns to me with a jubilant look on her face and cries out "DADDA!" To match her mood, I cry out "EUREKA!" And she replies, "No, I'm Iris; you're Dadda!"

Quote of the day

2005-09-02T11:20:00.000-04:00

"The chief danger of an air raid, he said, was splintered glass
from windows. Thus, when one hears the siren one should get a
drink, lie down on a couch and put two pillows over
oneself--one pillow over the eyes and the other over the
groin...if the eyes or groin were injured, life was not worth
living. It was good advice for any groundling in the age
before atom bombs; and I took it."

- Theodore White, recalling advice given him by cryptographer
Herbert Yardley during White's reporting stint in China during
the early 1940s.

Link of the day

2005-08-23T10:57:00.000-04:00

Today's comes from Josh:

Adult Big Wheels!

The site reminded me of when I was kid. We just moved to Fort Bragg and I decided to take my Big Wheels for a spin. Well I didn't stop at the end of our neighborhood and I ended up following a four lane highway for a while until the military police picked me up. They dumped me in the back of their truck to take me to the station. I remember it nearly fried me because it was bare metal cooking in the hot sun all day! I got dropped off at the station and my parents were called in.

I think they had already been looking for me and saw me in the back of the truck while they were driving around trying to find a kid cruising in his Big Wheels.

It's a wonder I'm still alive. Must've been some wanderlust since we had just moved from Chicago (Fort Sheridan).

Iris isn't Big Wheels age yet but she's close...

Monday bits

2005-08-15T15:01:00.000-04:00

Great quote:

"You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at least he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he *must do*. . . ."

- Ursula Le Guin, from A Wizard of Earthsea.

And in the spirit of ruining the mood created by such a fine quote comes the following discovery by Josh:

DogCondoms.Com!

Optical illusion from hell

2005-08-03T23:41:00.000-04:00

This one will make you ill: (click here)

Great quote

2005-07-12T11:33:00.000-04:00

"The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing
Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native
purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He
must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption
which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak
and degenerate race of beings."

- Edward Gibbon, "The History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire"

Cheaper than flying

2005-06-30T22:37:00.000-04:00

I've been having mindless fun lately submitting interesting locations found in Google Maps to the Google Globetrotting site. Click here to see the locations I've submitted.

One of my favorite finds is the Post-It note I found in Thailand.

More armchair Baghdad tourism

2005-06-23T14:55:00.000-04:00

Via Google Satellite maps I am having fun locating and identifying interesting things in Baghdad (click on the images to see the location within Google Maps) --

Monument to the Unknown Soldier: (more info and pics)

Grande Mosque:

No idea what this one is:

The Shaheed Monument: (more info and pics)

The Abu Ghyriab palace in Baghdad (home of Cobra Base, headquarters of Coalition Joint Task Force-7): (more info and pics)

Republican Palace (Saddam's office): (more info and pics)

Baghdad

2005-06-22T13:36:00.000-04:00

Google Maps went international yesterday with additional satellite imaging.

What is this structure in Baghdad?

Living with Saddam

2005-06-20T17:01:00.000-04:00

How much you wanna bet that there will be a bizarre sitcom based on these kinds of stories?

From the article:

The soldiers also said Saddam was a "clean freak" who washed after shaking hands and used diaper wipes to clean meal trays, utensils and table before eating. "He had germophobia or whatever you call it," Dawson said.

The article said Saddam preferred Raisin Bran Crunch for breakfast, telling O'Shea, "No Froot Loops." He ate fish and chicken but refused beef.

For a time his favorite snack was Cheetos, and when that ran out, Saddam would "get grumpy," the story said. One day, guards substituted Doritos corn chips, and Saddam forgot about Cheetos. "He'd eat a family size bag of Doritos in 10 minutes," Dawson said.

The good ol' days

2005-06-17T15:19:00.000-04:00

Click the image to see a video clip of a commercial showing a younger William Shatner hawking the ol' Commodore VIC-20. (1MB WMV)

"The Wonder Computer of the 1980s!"

(I'm such a poseur because I grew up on the boring old Apple IIc rather than the cool Commodore that the COOL kids had!)

Verdict!

2005-06-13T16:26:00.000-04:00

22 minutes until the Jacko verdict is read. Lots of IMing going on at work right now. Chris mentioned the CNN feed at APL showing an overhead helicopter shot (shades of OJ).


[16:24] backlyte: OH NOES! they are losing the heli feed
[16:25] doranchak: the overhead shot looks like the "entourage heading to court" (caption on cnn.com)
[16:25] backlyte: ok, it's back. shew...though i was gonna miss some of this exciting "low speed non chase"
[16:25] doranchak: ROFL

Buttery boxing gloves

2005-06-13T12:13:00.000-04:00

I bought an extremely useful web development reference from Visibone recently. It was probably the best $30 I've spent on web development in a long time! Lots of extremely useful information packed into a easy-to-access space. It came with a cover letter from the company owner filled with dramatic inspirational language that I got a chuckle out of for being a bit over-the-top. Some funny examples:

I cannot imagine what wonders you will create on the web, what new forms of online usefulness you will define, what bright visions you will arrest into pixels.

This excerpt is funny, and very true:

The tools and technologies available for this job are numbingly, embarrassingly difficult. The design software, the formatting standards, the codes and symbols. Using them is like building a ship in a bottle with buttery boxing gloves.

I just can't stop

2005-06-10T16:56:00.000-04:00

Double-meaning aside, that ratty sign sure does add to the greenery, eh?

From Jerry, in a post related to Episode 3 of Star Wars (which I am again seeing tonight, this time with Josh, Stacy, and Jon):

I still prefer my Yoda somber and somersault-free.

Speaking of Star Wars, I'm
reminded of this pic I saw in a recent FARK photoshop
contest:

In case you never saw the original:

Random Friday bits

2005-06-10T12:35:00.000-04:00

Tom Cruise's recent ongoing freakshow continues to attract people's interest. Check out this photoblog for an example: (link)

Some of the related blog quotes have been hilarious:

“I like Tom Cruise now. His insanity has come to the fore. He had no personality before. Now, he’s like a member of your family.

If your family had an crazy uncle who was liable to take a dump on the Thanksgiving turkey. “

and

It doesn't take Bill Frist to diagnose bipolar disorder from afar in this case.

Here's a pretty funny Star Wars script: (link)

The importance of Proper Capitalization was conveyed to me by one of the quotes from bash.org:

I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse

Pulp Fiction in 30 Seconds, As Re-Enacted by Bunnies! (link)

Some older quotes from Overheard in New York (link) that got me interested in that site:

Woman #1: Ah, look at those beautiful puppies.
Woman #2: Puppies are bullshit.

--Bay Ridge

and

Dumb teen: Hey, look at this! It says "Train for jobs in beeyotch."
Smarter teen: Fool! That word is biotech. Why you gotta be ignorant all your life?

No escape

2005-06-09T22:48:00.000-04:00

There is no escape from the Michael Jackson circus (link). A few minutes ago, I got one of the trojan horse emails the article describes:

Last night, while in his Neverland Ranch, Michael Jackson has made a suicidal attempt.

They suggest this attempt follows the last claim was made against the king of pop.
46 years old Michael has left pre-suicid note which describes and interpretes some of his sins.

Read more... <-- this appears as a hyperlink

I automatically clicked the button like a dumbass (expecting a spammer site of some kind; curiosity got the best of me), then quickly cancelled the browser request, thankfully before anything happened.

On a related note, because of all this Jacko attention, I learned some new British slang related to child molestation: "Kiddy fiddling". The Brits are having a field day with Jacko. I think there is a lot of attraction to seeing the mighty American pop culture machine take a big dive.

I just can't wait to see his picture in the California online sex offender registry. Makes me wonder if there are office betting pools across the country right now bubbling over with anticipation...

Bloody weather

2005-06-09T14:02:00.000-04:00

Well my weather forecast extension for Firefox looks quite depressing at the moment:

That's all the way through Monday! Daaahhhhh!

Finding from Josh

2005-05-25T16:19:00.000-04:00

Despite being between jobs, Josh still finds time to conduct useful research.

Example 1.

Exaxmple 2.

Example 3.

Example 4.

Commune with the fallen

2005-05-22T22:07:00.000-04:00

He's closer than you realize.

Zabasearch

2005-05-18T13:57:00.000-04:00

Ok so zabasearch is a bit scary due to how much info is being made available. But it does turn up some interesting results for certain searches:

Search 1

Search 2

Search 3

Search 4

Search 5

Honoring George Lucas

2005-05-17T13:04:00.000-04:00

To celebrate Star Wars Episode III opening this week:

Jon: "I bet they're ...chewy! Har har har!!!"

You can find the recipe in this book, The Star Wars CookBook: Wookie Cookies and Other Galactic Recipes (by Robin Davis)

Harvesting the ghosts of geek past

2005-05-15T19:10:00.000-04:00

Two geeky items -

1) I was a big Sandman (Neil Gaiman) fan in my youth - now he and his collaborator Dave McKean showed their new movie MirrorMask at Sundance this year (it's been called "Labyrinth for the 21st century"). I saw the trailer for it last night and it looks very surreal and interesting.

2) Remember The Dark Crystal, the underappreciated Jim Henson fantasy with a cult following? Well apparantly there is a sequel in the works.

Cool site

2005-05-13T09:51:00.000-04:00

"Omnipelagos finds the shortest paths between any two things"

For example, there is a link between Smegma and Ann Coulter:

Smegma

[Smegma among humans] edema. Adherence of the foreskin to the inflamed and edematous glans penis is one cause of phimosis [4]

Phimosis
incidence reports and widely varying post-neonatal circumcision rates reflect looseness in the diagnostic

Circumcision
[Reasons for circumcision / Religious and cultural circumcision] a set of texts explaining Islamic law that most Muslims view as authoritative. Most Muslims believe that

Sharia
[Freedom of Speech / Domestic justice] many Westerners can be driven into attitudes reminiscent of, or actually partaking in, Islamophobia

Islamophobia
[Examples of Islamophobia] Ann Coulter: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

Ann Coulter

Oddly, as discovered by Jon, there is no link between butt and crack, though it should be obvious.

Invasion Force

2005-05-12T08:14:00.000-04:00

Google Maps found a UFO!

(from Google Sightseeing)

Iris during our Mother's Day trip back from Ft. Lauderdale / Boca Raton

2005-05-10T11:04:00.000-04:00

Test of mobile blogging

2005-05-10T08:41:00.000-04:00

Test of mobile blogging

Mobile blog pic!

2005-05-09T21:38:00.000-04:00

Personal question

2005-05-09T12:51:00.000-04:00

So Kathryn, Iris and I are coming back from our really fun trip to see family down in Boca Raton, Florida, and we're going through security at the airport in Fort Lauderdale. After removing our shoes, throwing our bags on the conveyer belt for the scanner, and going through the metal detector, the guy watching the xray machine turns to me and asks, "do you have a tool?" He was referring to a socket wrench or similar (in a bag that wasn't even mine), but the question completely threw me off due to its simultaneous vagueness and innuendo.

Then they noticed and confiscated the half-inch long sewing scissors buried in a tiny sewing kit Kathryn had in her bag. Even the security guard leaned over and quietly admitted to us that he, too, thought the whole thing was stupid. No doubt that our sewing scissors are going to appear in one of these eBay lots. Kathryn: "I'LL CUT OFF YOUR BUTTONS!! DON'T MAKE ME DO THIS!"

Poor Iris, she was so tired when we got onto the planes (from getting up so early in the morning). But overall she did very well. She even managed to nap while lying on our chests. I think we've over-conditioned her for flying. She seems to like seeing new things.

My favorite bit of airport security is the recurring sign that says "DO NOT EVEN *JOKE* ABOUT BOMBS!! WE TAKE THIS STUFF SERIOUSLY!" To be fair, I did read the story about the idiot that joked "Be careful with that! I have three bombs in that!", which is probably the idiot that made the sign happen.

And speaking of tools, a tidbit from Frank:

One of the tips we've heard to encourage little boys to go to the bathroom (#1) is to toss in a Cheerio as a target. So now I say to my wife "I gotta go sink a Cheerio..."

Addendum to previous post

2005-05-04T14:16:00.000-04:00

Speaking of "Lost in Translation"...

Finally, somebody got it right

2005-05-04T14:09:00.000-04:00

Long ago, when Altavista's Babelfish service was relatively new, it was fun to pump sentences into it and cause them to be translated back and forth between multiple languages and back into English. This produced many hilarious phrases. I tried making a web form that would accomplish this automatically using some cheesy URL hacks. But it didn't work consistently. Someone finallly made a much better version of this idea. Some sample results:

"I'm a little tea pot, short and stout."

translates to

"They are a small POTENTIOMETER, short circuits and a beer of malzes of the tea."

"a cookie is just a cookie, but fig newtons are fruit and cake."

translates to

"biskuit has expert of biskuit, but Newton von Fig is fruit and hardens."

"When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore."

translates to

"If the moon fixes its eye like a great vector of Fleischpie of the vector of Pizzapie, is the lover."

Cool Google Maps hack

2005-05-02T22:18:00.000-04:00

Someone figured out a way to merge Terraserver data with Google Maps. The best bit, though, is that you can get a Firefox plugin called Greasemonkey and a DHTML script to make it happen in your own browser:

Someone's hacked a totally custom map into Google (Chicago Transit Authority maps) and he's used a Greasemonkey script to integrate it directly into the regular maps.google.com map. If you've got Greasemonkey installed (on Mozilla), then right-click on this script: topo_monkey.user.js, and select "Install user script".

Then, reload Google Maps, and you should see some new options (Terra, Topo, and Urban) appear next to Map and Satellite.

Why does this kick ass? Because Terraserver did not have as cool of interface as Google Maps for scrolling/zooming/browsing the maps. And now it does with this little Greasemonkey script! But I predict that Microsoft will shut this interoperable capability down somehow since all the eyeballs will be looking at Google Maps instead of Terraserver.

Albums of the week

2005-04-25T22:03:00.000-04:00

Nine Inch Nails: With Teeth: I got a chance to listen to a preview of this album. It makes me miss Trent's glory days (Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral seem much more inspired to me, probably because I was much younger when I heard them. Listening to TDS instantly transports me back in time to my more care-free college days). The single The Hand That Feeds, however, is the gem of this new album.

Chingon, Mexicon Spaghetti Western: At the very end of Kill Bill Volume 2, the first part of the credits roll showcasing the actors in a montage of scenes from both movies. The Chingon song Malagueña Salerosa plays during this, and it is one of the best songs from both movies. Chingon is a Robert Rodriguez side project - basically the result of traditional mariachi music slapped around into a rock and roll format. Great stuff! The Chingon version of Malagueña Salerosa is a rock-ified version of an old mariachi song. After hearing it the first hundred times, I was desperate to find more Chingon songs but alas at the time nothing was available. Until now!

Easy Star All Stars, Dub Side Of The Moon: Not a new album, but new to me - before listening to this album I naturally chalked it up as a novelty tribute album (a la Fade To Bluegrass: The Bluegrass Tribute to Metallica). But the mixture of reggae/dub music and the classic Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon goes way beyond the novelty of mere tribute by becoming a damned perfect blend of styles and standing very firmly on its own.

Abuse chambers of the stars

2005-04-20T15:17:00.000-04:00

More fun with Google Maps: Apparantly, this is Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch:

(click to see the original)

Sightseeing via Google Maps

2005-04-18T14:41:00.000-04:00

Click the images to see the originals in Google Maps.

Grand Canyon:

Good Marketing = You Can See It From Space:

Disturbing fandom:

The aliens are among us:

Lots more here:

Google Sightseeing

McFreedom

2005-04-18T14:00:00.000-04:00

This pic says it all.

From a photoshopping contest on Worth1000.com:

Fun with Google Maps

2005-04-06T14:59:00.000-04:00

Someone noticed the word "Dave" on one of Google's satellite images, which Google now includes in their amazing "Google Maps" service. It was mentioned on Google Blogoscoped, an interesting blog of Google-related news.

Click the image above to show the real thing.

Movie of the week

2005-04-04T23:59:00.000-04:00

In the last few weeks there have not been very many good movies to choose from, at least not until Sin City opened (which I'm looking forward to seeing). So when Kathryn and I had a date night on Saturday, we chose to see The Upside of Anger. It kind of sneaked into theaters without a lot of fanfare - presumably for not being very marketable blockbuster escapist fare.

imdb | rt

It is a sort of suburban aristrocrat-angst white yuppie dark comedy but with a thoughtful screenplay that contains a lot of humor and interesting dramatic tensions. The performances by the actors are fantastic, especially Joan Allen's performance. Despite the sort of contrived implausible ending, and the inevitable "character redemption" arcs, the movie was a mesmorizing blend of fine acting and a dramatic, poignant, and humorous story. It definitely satisfies my need for a feel-good family story, at least until I can utterly destroy any remaining warm-fuzzies by basking in the debauchery of a blood-soaked revenge movie such as Sin City.

Funny quote from Clint Eastwood

2005-04-04T23:41:00.000-04:00

"Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right, you meet the same idiots coming around from the left."

Admittedly, posting someone else's thought in this blog did not take me much thought either.

Fahrenheit 451, the local version

2005-04-04T14:19:00.000-04:00

I used to work in Fincastle, VA, so the following comic got my attention:

Choose your fate wisely

2005-04-03T23:12:00.000-04:00

Spamtrick

2005-04-01T07:36:00.000-05:00

This one's been around for a while - spammers are now using ASCII art in an attempt to get past our spam filters.


 wwb      aap                                                        ge kvb                                                                                                               
gof       ihl kby                                                  hsisaswp    qfurtjk          etgbmosgc                                   
 hg      eae                                                      meo oy cbh  jvk   xdv         tw                                          
 ynx     hy   qnv    buqki      pmkw ln   tb swd   mysah           pu wa      n      qc         pvmqmjr                                     
  kkr   cmb   sbd  dxx   lep  kegm ywwg   trd    kwc   sbr          yakr            gs         vkhcmlqyt                                    
  xbw   cvh   ctd        hkq  wp     dp   oy           qxp            ffjbe      fxcb                  ev                                   
   lkv xfb    kst  tnxptmwbi  jj     ut   gy     mkjqjqwkh            wd wmd   kqd                     th                                   
    ud bf     udj pha     pj  hq     yn   er    hvk     hy        av  pa  ir  srn             teq      aa                                   
    vcdpt     gvu  kw    bth  ueqj  ehb   wx     pa    ngv        ufr nv shk pja  vmuqty  jx   javyvugoj                                    
     fyq      qno  wicdlk  yq   htyy yp   gq     hucsdg  fpt       mrdvtar   iphpfvlfcqs  duw    kwqnb                                      
                                     qa                               cc                                                                    
                              accq xukb                                                                                                     
                                 hmj

With all of these tricks at their disposal, you'd think spammers would be able to find a more legitimate purpose in life. Alas, it shall not be.

Album of the week

2005-03-30T21:54:00.000-05:00

Prodigy - Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned

Lately I've been on this mellow yuppie downtempo electronica kick that is my generation's equivalent of easy listening. Stuff like Morcheeba, Zero 7, Thievery Corporation, etc. So I finally shocked some sense into me with the latest Prodigy offering. Yum!! Very brash and catchy. Only Prodigy can take riffs from Love Buzz (remember Nirvana's Bleach?) and Michael's Jackson's Thriller and turn them into something new and interesting.

Engrish.com finding

2005-03-24T21:51:00.000-05:00