Random Acts of Blogging
A Holiday Gift Guide Worth Reading
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007
‘Tis the season for the unending streams of lists – The Top 10 Outrageous Moments of 2006, The 40 Most Offensive Celebrity Arrests of 2006 (categorized by offended ethnic/religious group), and of course the always reliable List of Dumb Holiday Gifts You Can Buy on the Internet. If you’re like me, you dread the arrival of these lists, but find yourself compelled to look. Much like passing a traffic accident on the road, or receiving a hyperlink to a picture of Britney Spears getting out of her car at a nightclub.
So trust me when I tell you that I feel your pain. Really, I do. And I completely understand your skepticism when I tell you that this list, created by Matthew Baldwin of the Dallas Morning News and the very entertaining Defective Yeti blog, is different. Not different in an “every single one of these damn things says their different” kind of way. No. This one is more of the “made me seriously consider clicking through to some of the products even though I read this at work and would probably earn myself a visit from the corporate internet police for doing so” variety.
Let’s face it. At this point, you’re going to click on the link, if for no reason other than the insane curiousity you’ll feel if you pass it by. So providing a couple of examples isn’t really necessary per se; it’s more of a credibility thing. I wouldn’t want you to think I intentionally steered you wrong. After all, how can one resist a list that contains The Beer Belly (pictured above-left):
The beer belly [is] a polyurethane “bladder” that straps to your stomach, allowing you to sneak up to 80 ounces of hooch into your favorite sporting event. . . . The company has a companion product for women that fits into a bra and has been christened “The Wine Rack.”
Still not convinced? Perhaps you’ll enjoy the USB Humping Dog (pictured below-right):
Plug the adorable plastic puppy into the side of your laptop and he’ll enthusiastically thrust away, thereby reducing your already ADD-addled attention span to mere picoseconds. And it’s a dog! That’s humping! What could possibly be funnier?
If you like those, you’re sure to enjoy the Barbie Doll with Pooping Dog and the Breath Capture Test Tube. Go ahead, give it a look!
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | Comments Off on A Holiday Gift Guide Worth Reading
I’m baaaacck….
Sunday, December 31st, 2006Sorry for the hiatus, folks – I’ve been on a whirlwind Disney vacation with the wife & kids for the past two weeks (web-photos & review to be posted soon, as soon as I find some time – the home video was the first priority, since the kids enjoy watching that).
Anyway, I came home to roughly 3,500 emails (1,600 of them in the “not spam” category), of which a few contained blog worthy posts. If I’d been home, these would likely have been separate entries, but I’ll just list them here for your amusement/enjoyment:
— First, for those who live in or near Garwood, NJ, the band I play in, Midlife Crisis, will be playing at Crossroads on January 13th. The setlist is mostly 70’s rock. The volume is mostly loud. Come on down & check us out.
— Someone sent me a link to an online archive of TV shows. All I can say is, “Oh, my!” Some of the shows (e.g., “24”) have been taken down for copyright reasons, but many, many others are up there. I’d say I’m surprised this site isn’t more popular, but then if it was, I’m guessing it would cease to exist. Consult your ethics manual, and then click at your own risk…
— For folks who enjoy such things, the History of Pop Music in 4 Chords. Warning: Contains Journey.
— Regarding Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, 2006 (“You”), a really awesome quote from Zach Klitzman, a student at the University of Pennsylvania (reprinted here without his permission):
This is awesome; now I can write on my resume that I was selected as Time Man of the Year.
Good point, Zach. Maybe I’ll do the same…
— This from a guy named Rob McKay on the Huffington Post:
It is 60 degrees on December 18th in New York City. I’m hardly relieved I didn’t have to bundle up my daughter and trudge with her through ice and now to go see “The Nutcracker” today. The temperature is terrifying. I want to crack some sense into the nuts who tell us there’s nothing to worry about.
Ozone, schmozone. Just enjoy the balmy weather.
Bush won’t even use the term “global warming.” He occasionally makes reference to the world’s “climate change.” Conservative politicians and pundits chalk up global warming to the next liberal bully pulpit, a rehash of “political correctness” or outcries from the “feminazis.”
He goes on to give the standard schpiel about how global warming is real, the consequences dire, and how anyone who says anything differently is a neo-conservative, radical, religious Christian.
Guys like this really, really get under my skin. Not because I don’t believe that global warming exists, or that humans are causing it. But because a single warm winter in a single city proves absolutely nothing about global warming. And to suggest it does is to go down the slippery slope of having to explain why a particularly cold winter in a different year or different city (anyone out there from Denver?!?) isn’t equal evidence to suggest that the problem has magically disappeared.
No big deal when we’re talking about warm winters, but it’s guys like this who were standing in the flood waters of New Orleans 16 months ago, telling us how Katrina was nothing compared to what’s coming, and how each successive hurricane season is going to get worse and worse because of global warming. So now that 2006’s season has gone down as one of the calmest on record, the folks who should still be screaming about levee repair have no argument to make, and the folks who want to divert that money to other priorities are probably singing like songbirds on Capitol Hill.
Making the right argument with the wrong data is dangerous. It inevitably damages your credibility, especially in the long term. And global warming is a long term problem.
— For those who haven’t seen it yet, the full video of Saddam Hussein’s execution by hanging is now floating all around the web. To be honest, it’s not nearly as graphic as I feared it would be, but it does show the actual moment of death, so if that kind of thing makes you squeamish, click away…
— On a somewhat related note, I found this cool site that allows you to download local copies of flash video from sites like YouTube and Google. It’s pretty simple – you type in the URL from YouTube/Google, it gives you a download link from which you can do “Save Target As…” or whatever your browser calls it. The resulting file is an FLV file, which I was then able to play on my hard drive using this free, FLV player.
(For those who are wondering, I keep a folder on my hard drive of historically significant documents, pictures, videos, etc. I thought Hussein’s execution ranked as one of those, so I wanted a local copy. This seemed the easiest way).
Anyway, that catches me up. How was everyone else’s holiday?
Categories: Political Rantings, Random Acts of Blogging, Tech Talk | 3 Comments »
What Kind of Accent Do You Have?
Saturday, December 2nd, 2006Well, this is pretty impressive. 13 questions & no audio involved, and this thing not only figured out that I speak with a Northeast accent, but that I’m “from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island.”
| What American accent do you have?
Your Result: The Northeast
Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak. |
|
| Philadelphia | |
| The Inland North | |
| The Midland | |
| The South | |
| Boston | |
| The West | |
| North Central | |
| What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes |
|
Categories: New York, New York, Random Acts of Blogging | 6 Comments »
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Tears…
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006For anyone who thinks their kids’ pictures turned out badly:
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 4 Comments »
A Picture Worth a Thousand Words (and a quarter)
Wednesday, November 15th, 2006This gave me a chuckle:
(Hat tip to Wil Wheaton)
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Music to Work By…
Wednesday, October 11th, 2006My employer, Bank of America, is offering free online equity trades to qualified customers. Great.
We’re handing out snappy looking T-shirts with a big $0 on the front on the streets of New York. Terrific.
We’ve rented a bunch of double-decker tour buses and a combo band to sit on the upper level of each one and play snappy music to go along with the snappy T-shirts. Cool.
We’ve parked one of these tour buses on 50th Street & Rockefeller Plaza, where lots of people can walk by, hear the music, get a T-Shirt, and eventually sign up for the service. Ingenious.
Here’s the downside: 50th & Rockefeller puts the bus right outside my office window, which means I’ve been listening to snappy music for the last couple of hours with no end in sight, AND I don’t even get a T-Shirt!!!
Grrrrrr……..
Categories: New York, New York, Random Acts of Blogging | 1 Comment »
Virtual Bubblewrap
Sunday, August 20th, 2006Whatever you do, don’t click on this link unless you have a lot of time on your hands…
Remember – I WARNED YOU!!!
(hat tip: Cranky Robert, from the Simple Tricks & Nonsense comments section).
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Welcome to the Year 2176…
Friday, June 2nd, 2006Quick – when was America born? 1776, right? They made a really big deal about her 200th birthday in 1976, after all. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw a link to this site: www.americas400thanniversary.com.
Turns out it’s not some Star Trek inspired wormhole into the year 2176, but rather a celebration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, VA, the first permanent setttlement in the New World (well, OK, the first permanent settlement by Europeans in the New World – the Indians were already here if I remember correctly).
Now, I’m all for anniversary parties, especially when the anniversary number has two whole zeroes in it and all, but the 400th Anniversary of America? Isn’t that just a bit disingenuous?
I wish people would just call things what they are. So Happy 400th Anniversary to the town of Jamestown, VA. Join us a month from now for America’s 230th. I hear they’re having fireworks this year…
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 1 Comment »
My Inspirational Poster Entry
Sunday, May 28th, 2006Since everyone else seems to be doing one of these…
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Random Thought for the Evening…
Monday, April 17th, 2006Flipping channels over the weekend and coming upon one of those infomercials, I was struck by this thought: What if one of these products was actually a real breakthrough?
I mean, what if the vaccum cleaner they’re touting actually IS a thousand times better than any other vaccum cleaner out there? What if the diet pill they’re going on about really DOES make you lose weight with no exercise or change in eating habits? We’d probably all ignore it, right? A really, really good idea might be lost forever in a sea of shlock.
Maybe we should nominate someone to buy one of everything, test it out, and report back to us. Any volunteers?
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 1 Comment »