Gasoline – Cheap at $4.00 per gallon
By Brian | May 11, 2008
My Uncle Walter, now retired in Florida, sends me about 50 Internet jokes a month (kinda makes you remember 1997, no?) Anyway, this one was the first in a very long time to actually make me smile. Not so much a joke, just a little perspective:
| Item | Current Cost per Gallon |
| Gasoline | $4.00 |
| Lipton Iced Tea | $9.52 |
| Ocean Spray | $10.00 |
| Gatorade | $10.17 |
| Diet Snapple | $10.32 |
| Water | $21.19 |
| Whiteout | $25.42 |
| Brake Fluid | $33.60 |
| Scope Mouthwash | $84.48 |
| Pepto Bismol | $123.20 |
| NyQuil | $178.13 |
| Printer Ink | $5,200 |
Let’s hope the first alternative fuel car doesn’t run on printer ink, huh?
Categories: Money Talk | 2 Comments »
Paging Melanie Foreman…
By Brian | May 8, 2008
I’ve just been informed that Mel (Melanie to all you Google fans out there) Foreman wishes to be mentioned on my blog.
Since this is the first time anyone has made such a request, I figured the least I could do is comply.
Mel Foreman – this post’s for you!
Categories: University of Pennsylvania | 1 Comment »
R2D2 gives new meaning to Blu-Ray…
By Brian | May 6, 2008
For anyone who has $2,800 to spend on a DVD player:
http://www.nikkoamerica.com/nhe/dvd_projector_video.html
(I’m looking at you, Bennion…)
Categories: Movie Talk, Tech Talk | 1 Comment »
Sorry, Blogger – Two strikes and you’re out
By Brian | May 3, 2008
For those who wondered where I went again, Blogger took another 5-day hiatus on me. Once again, no explanation and no response from any help groups, e-mails to support, etc. It seems to be up & running now (maybe it’s because it’s almost 2AM?), but I’ve officially lost faith in this previously reliable service.
My next tool of choice is WordPress, which I’ve heard good things about, and also comes with instructions on how to install on a Yahoo server. Step 1 is to create a MySQL database in Yahoo, which I (believe) I’ve successfully done. Step two is to login to that database. Right now, Yahoo is giving me a “server is not responding” message when I try to login. I called Yahoo tech support and got an actual human, who theorized the potential problem for me, reset the database and allowed me to try again. The problem persisted, but I haven’t had time to call them back during normal (Pacific time) business hours. Still – that’s more responsive than Blogger has been for me.
So here’s my plan (I know – who asked me? Leave me alone – it’s my blog & I’ve been silenced for 10 of the last 12 days. I can ramble if I want to…): I’m going to chase down the problem over at Yahoo. If I fix the problem there and Blogger starts working consistently again, I’m willing to retroactively forgive Blogger and declare the problem to be on the Yahoo side. One more Blogger outage without a Yahoo problem, though, and I’m done.
My educated guess tells me that this isn’t Yahoo’s problem, though, because Blogger is only trying to FTP to the site – it’s not using any database functionality. And I’m able to FTP to the site using Yahoo’s tools, as well as my local copy of Microsoft FrontPage. So the likely answer here is that I’m dealing with two problems, and only one of the companies is helping me solve one. Not quite a high bar for customer service, but beggars can’t be choosers…
More to come (hopefully…)
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | Comments Off on Sorry, Blogger – Two strikes and you’re out
The Gaffe Machine claims its latest victim: Miley Cyrus
By Brian | April 29, 2008
OK, seriously? I saw a passing headline on the train this morning about Miley Cyrus posing nude in a magazine, and I couldn’t believe it when I saw the actual photo. This is considered a nude photo? This is even considered risque? Or even remotely inappropriate? I realize different people fall at different places on the prude-o-meter, and I mean no disrespect, but seriously – don’t we see more of Miley (and just about anyone else) when they’re wearing a swimsuit? On a public beach?
What we have here is another manufactured story, churned out by the Gaffe Machine, so reporters can fill their column inches or air time with another celebrity “Gotcha!” Everyone wants Miley to do something scandalous, so they can news catalog her with Brittney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.
Don’t believe me? Every news article I read about this so-called scandal contained at least one paragraph that mentioned Brittney and Lindsay. Let’s think about this seriously for a minute, shall we? Between the two of them, Brittney and Lindsay have been drunk drivers, on drugs, married and divorced several times, in rehab, involved in legal and sometimes violent altercations with both family members and members of the press, and more. Miley Cyrus posed for a picture by a world-famous, well-respected photographer that exposed her bare back. On what planet is this considered even remotely similar?
The ultimate irony, though, was the quote from Disney Channel spokesperson, Patti McTeague:
Unfortunately, as the article suggests, a situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines
<smacks forehead> Wow. The Disney Channel is criticizing someone for exploiting Miley Cyrus in order to make money. Wow. Just….Wow.
Categories: News and/or Media, Words about Music | 5 Comments »
Bush Conducts More than Just War…
By Brian | April 27, 2008
Hat tip to Kushol Gupta for this link: President Bush conducting the U.S. Marine Band as they play Stars and Stripes Forever. Apologies for the outside link – CNN doesn’t provide embedding technology (at least none that I could find).
Anyway, is it just me, or does Bush look more comfortable conducting (badly) than he ever has speaking?
Categories: The World Wide Weird | Comments Off on Bush Conducts More than Just War…
The things you find when you’re packing…
By Brian | April 27, 2008
As some of my loyal readers know, I’m about to move out of my house for 4-6 months to undergo a major home renovation. As exciting as it is, it means this weekend is dedicated almost entirely to packing up every single thing we own, so we can move it into a storage container on our driveway while the wrecking ball has it’s way with our beloved home.
It’s amazing the things you find when you have to physically handle every single one of your possessions. This one’s for Jeff Porten:
(Click image to enlarge)
That, my friends, is the manual for the Fat Mac (now with 512K of memory; hard drive not yet invented). The actual machine itself is in the guest room closet, right next to the ImageWriter printer. That closet is on tomorrow’s list – maybe I’ll post some updated pics here when I get to it.
Oh, and just so everyone doesn’t think I’ve gone over to the dark side, this was on the same shelf:
(Click image to enlarge)
Ah yes, Windows for Workgroups and MS-DOS 6.2. Man, those were the days… ;-)
Categories: Tech Talk | 4 Comments »
Problem Getting into Webkinz World?
By Brian | April 27, 2008
If you’ve got kids, and they’re anything like my kids, then Webkinz world is a familiar place. Both of my sons login regularly to feed and play with their virtual pet, and to complete the hourly, daily, and specially highlighted tasks that can earn them KinzCash, with which they can buy their pal anything from food to furniture to medical attention.
So imagine the disappointment when, suddenly and without warning, a visit to the Webkinz URL, http://www.webkinz.com/, started returning an HTML error and wouldn’t let them on the page? I mean, it’s like the kids’ equivalent of Blogger doing down for twelve days!
Anyway, Webkinz technical support here with a solution. Use the following URL:
Voila! Problem solved.
For the geeky, tech folks out there, here’s what’s going on: the main URL, www.webkinz.com, is receiving a parameter that tells it what location you’re in, for the purposes (I believe) of displaying the site in your native language. But the programming logic that interprets this parameter is not working, causing the “Error on Page” message. By deep linking directly to the United States/English page (www.webkinz.com/us_en/), you bypass this faulty logic and proceed directly to the site itself.
It’s been about a week now, and no one at Webkinz seems to have noticed, even though the number of kids logging in has to have dropped dramatically (has everyone figured this out on their own?). As I said earlier, it’s like someone decided that customer service and technical support were just going to shutdown around the world, and no one told me…
Anyway, enjoy your Webkinz. I’ll accept my fee in KinzCash…
Categories: Family Matters, Tech Talk | 7 Comments »
Random Acts of Blogging – 4/27/08
By Brian | April 27, 2008
OK, so I’ve been away a while, and the list of things I’ve wanted to blog about has grown steadily. So away we go:
1) If you don’t watch The Daily Show with John Stewart, you really should. It’s funny every single night. But this past week or two, Stewart has been on fire! Here he is after Barack Obama was called an elitist:
The whole thing is funny, but the best part is around 7:25 or so. Here’s the money quote:
Doesn’t elite mean good? Is that not something we’re looking for in a president anymore? You know what candidates, come with me (to a different camera:) I know elite is a bad word in politics; you want to go bowling and throw back a few beers, but the job you’re applying for, if you get it and it goes well, they might carve your head into a mountain! If you don’t actually think you’re better than us, then what the &%*#&@ are you doing?
2) If someone from 1984, having just read Orwell’s book, time travelled to 2008 and took a New York commuter train one morning, they’d see more than half of the people with their eyes closed, in various degrees of consciousness, wearing the same white ear phones in their ears, and probably assume we were all being fed the same government-issued doublespeak. What’s funny is how wrong they’d be. Sitting on a train with 100 iPods, I wonder what the odds are that any two of them are playing the same song? I’m guessing it’s close to zero.
3) A colleague of mine pointed out to me the other day that MIT disproved time travel in 2005 by holding a time traveller’s convention, to which no one from the future showed up. Pretty convincing evidence on the face of it. If time travel is to ever be invented, you’d think someone would pop in to say hello, no? Famed scientist Tina Fey, formerly of Saturday Night Live had the perfect rebuttal:
A student at MIT is hosting a Time Traveler Party this week with the hope that people from the future will show up…too bad people from the future already know the party sucked!”
The only thing I know for sure after reading about this is that if anyone does invent time travel in my lifetime, something will almost instantly occur that will give me a killer headache.
4) SamuriFrog, the excellent blogger over at Electronic Cerebrectomy (WARNING: Link is typically not safe for work), recently posted two pictures that sum up the sad state of intelligence in our country today:
Man…there oughta be a test you need to pass before you can write protest signs…
5) Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to New York City was capped off by a mass held at Yankee Stadium. First, a quick conversation between my wife and I:
My wife: Wow, the stadium looks beautiful. I bet the Pope is impressed. Me: Honey, he practically lives in St. Peter’s Basillica! My wife: Good point
Then, of course, there are the New York Post and the New York Daily News, who could not resist the ironic headline:
The Post: “Communion Vendors Bring the Host to the Most.” Daily News: “The Sermon on the Mound.”
Gotta love New York…
6) And finally, Britain’s Office of Government Commerce, or OGC, recently unveiled it’s new logo:
Seems harmless enough, right? But then they started putting it on mousepads, pens, and the like, and people got a chance to see it rotated 90 degrees:
Wow…that’s quite the, er…um…well…what’s the word I’m looking for? Well, I guess you’d have to say it’s quite a boner, now wouldn’t you???
Categories: Political Rantings, Random Acts of Blogging, The Future is Now, The World Wide Weird | Comments Off on Random Acts of Blogging – 4/27/08
Blogger’s Back . . . AGAIN!!!
By Brian | April 27, 2008
After another 5-day outage, Blogger appears to be back & publishing again. Forgive me for being cynical, but we’ll see how long it lasts this time.
And for what it’s worth, still no response to my Blogger support e-mail request, nor any mention of it on Blogger Buzz or any of the message boards I’ve been able to find.
Oh, and lest you think I’m only bashing Blogger here, I went to Yahoo’s support page (my site is hosted at Yahoo), filled out the form, and got a Failure to Deliver e-mail back, telling me that the e-mail address the form used doesn’t exist in the Yahoo domain.
What gives? Did the world agree to abandon all tech support while I was asleep one night?
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | Comments Off on Blogger’s Back . . . AGAIN!!!