I Should Be Sleeping

Don't Read the Feed That Bites You...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:53:00 +0000

ATTENTION: I Should Be Sleeping has changed locations!

The new URL is http://www.familygreenberg.com/index2.php.

Or, you can simply go to http://www.familygreenberg.com/, and you'll be redirected to the main page.

For those using RSS Feeds, the new RSS feed is http://www.familygreenberg.com/index2.php/feed/.

For those who are really committed, there is also now a comment feed. It can be found at http://www.familygreenberg.com/index2.php/comments/feed/.

All of the old pages from this blog will live on in perpetuity (or as long as Blogger keeps them there), so links and Google searches will continue to function as before.

Betcha Can't Bury Just One...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:15:00 +0000

This sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but it's apparently true: the inventor of the Pringles potato chip can died last month, and his ashes were buried in a Pringles can.

Seriously.

It was a Dark and Stormy Night...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sat, 24 May 2008 13:13:00 +0000

From Eric Swanson of the Penn Band, we present a dramatic reading:

I stood there on the stoop, staring down at her, and she stared back. Her promise of return had last year seemed an eternity away, and yet now it felt as if the interim had been removed by the vacuum of time, and we stood in a single unbroken moment. Though her question rattled around in my head, I could make no response, intoxicated by her presence. Her flowing green dress seemed to whisper with the promise of tomorrow, while her red hair spilled from under her fashionable beret like a waterfall of late afternoon sunshine. Again she spoke, her angelic voice shaking me out of my hypnosis, shaking me to my core.
"'I said 'Would you like to buy some cookies,' sir!," she repeated.
Yes, I thought to myself... yes I would like to buy some cookies.

What??? What were you thinking about?

You should be ashamed of yourself. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go take a shower...

Jeff Porten Buries the Lede

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:01:00 +0000

So I pay my daily visit to The Vast Jeff Wing Conspiracy (highly recommended, by the way, if you're not already a regular reader...), and I see the title of his recent post: Back in TidBITS, and Jeff gets Boinged.

So right away, I'm thinking, "Wow...Jeff has shared too much. I hope this is safe for work." Then, I click on the link to his TidBITS article, and I read the first line:

When I was reporting from CES in Las Vegas last January, one of the more interesting technology experiences I had was away from the show floor, back in my hotel room.

Oh lord, this doesn't look good. But, we persevere:

There were a few dozen local and cable channels . . . most amusing: the $40 daily package for both wireless Internet and the entire library of, ahem, adult entertainment.

Ugh...maybe I shouldn't be reading this on my lunch hour, and just check it out at home. After the kids go to sleep. And maybe the wife. Ah, what the heck, let's keep reading:

But I had other options, in case . . . the remote control was too far away from the bed.

Note to self: point out to Jeff that nothing, repeat, NOTHING should substitute for a remote control. Especially in an article like this...

I love technology, but this is just whack

Alright, enough of that. I'm kidding, of course. The article is actually about the social implications of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. Here's a quote that's much more representative of the article:

We have been carefully and methodically trained to believe it's our fault when important technologies make us feel inadequate and incapable. We have accepted the creation of a category of digital have-nots, who either rely on tech-savvy friends and family, or who do without.

But too often, the "value" [of entertainment content] is based upon an indirect conspiracy to make it difficult or impossible to use the media you've already paid for, making the end result a tax on the technological have-nots."

Jeff makes a very interesting argument here. If the tech-savvy of the world can (legally) access content for free, is it fair that the non-tech-savvy have to pay for it? Are the content providers simply taking advantage of their ignorance, rather than serving them better by showing them how to access it, or making it just as easy for everyone?

I hesitate to comment before reading Part 2 of his article, but I'll throw out one question for Jeff to chew on in the interim: Is the form factor of entertainment content really independent from the content itself? If I buy a Spider Man 3 DVD, am I really buying a license to watch the movie whenever and however I want (akin to purchasing a single-seat software license, where I can copy the software onto multiple devices as long as I only use one at a time?)? Or is the form factor more like a service level (akin to paying extra for the service package to that software, where I get more features/service for paying the extra price)? So perhaps the DVD is a service level that includes the "carry it with you and play it whenever/however you want" feature, while the On-Demand version only comes with the "watch it on this TV as many times as you like for the next 24 hours" package.

Food for thought...

Illinois Highway Closed due to Stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 20 May 2008 03:08:00 +0000

Actually, Double Stuff:

Police say a trailer loaded with 14 tons of double-stuffed Oreos has overturned, spilling the cookies still in their plastic sleeves into the median and roadway. Illinois State Police Sgt. Brian Mahoney says the truck’s driver was traveling from Chicago to Morris on Interstate 80 around 4 a.m. Monday when he fell asleep at the wheel and slammed into the median.

Mahoney says no charges have been filed but both lanes of traffic remain closed while authorities remove the cookies.

The only thing better would have been a school bus full of kids following behind him to stop and clean up the cookies with their tongues. That or a milk truck...
(Hat tip: Eamonn O'Callaghan)

Deconstructing the Democratic Stump Speech

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sun, 11 May 2008 06:47:00 +0000

With his recent victory in North Carolina and draw in Indiana, Barack Obama has all but sewn up the Democratic Presidential nomination, despite the fact that we seem to have agreed, as a country, to ignore that fact for the next couple of months so the mass media news networks can continue to run high-drama 24-hour coverage of the remaining primary elections and, quite possibly, the convention itself.

At any rate, Obama gave a victory speech in North Carolina the other day that many are hailing as his first speech as the presumptive nominee, rather than a Democratic primary candidate.

I found pieces of it fascinating, and wanted to deconstruct them here.
By way of disclaimer: while I'm often branded a "conservative" (sometimes correctly, sometimes not), I have not decided who I'm voting for yet. If I was forced at gunpoint to choose right now, though, I'd probably choose Obama over McCain. But that's purely on the "inspiring leadership" metric, which is all I've really heard so far, and not typically near the top of my list when I actually cast my vote in November. I hope that colors the following as more of an independent analysis than a right-wing slash & burn piece. I suspect that some people will never be convinced, though. Ah well, don't say I didn't warn you.

On to Obama:

This fall, we intend to march forward as one Democratic Party, united by a common vision for this country, because we all agree that at this defining moment in our history, a moment when we are facing two wars, an economy in turmoil, a planet in peril, a dream that feels like it's slipping away for too many Americans, we can't afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out George Bush's third term.

I've heard this theme from many prominent Democrats over the last couple of weeks (most recently, from Howard Dean, Chairman of the DNC, on The Daily Show with John Stewart). John McCain was on The Daily Show the next night, and said very matter-of-factly that there are many issues on which he disagrees with the President (torture, the way in which the Iraqi war was waged, immigration, campaign finance reform) and others on which he agrees with the President. It strikes me as a very simple task for John McCain to define himself as different enough from George W. Bush to negate this line of attack, once we get to the general election campaign this fall. If the Democrats are counting on it, as they seem to be right now, I believe they're in some serious trouble.

Somewhere along the line, between all the bickering and the influence-peddling and the game-playing of the last few decades, Washington and Wall Street have lost touch with these core values, these American values.

And while I honor John McCain's service to his country . . . his plan to win in November appears to come from the very same playbook that his side has used time after time in election after election.

Yes, we know what's coming. I'm not naive. We've already seen it, the same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all their ideas, the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives, by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy, in the hopes that the media will play along.

The attempts to play on our fears and exploit our differences, to turn us against each other for political gain, to slice and dice this country into red states and blue states, blue collar and white collar, white, black, brown, young, old, rich, poor...

... this is the race we expect, no matter whether it's myself or Senator Clinton who is the nominee. The question then is not what kind of campaign they will run; it's what kind of campaign we will run.

This is the passage that made me fall off my chair. Just 19 days ago, I, too, complained against this kind of dirty politics. In my complaint, though, I said this:

I document this today, the day of the hard-fought Pennsylvania primary, because I know people have short memories, and once the media changes the national conversation, others will call me crazy for suggesting what is common knowledge right now. And that is this:

On April 22, 2008, Barack Obama has already been called unpatriotic, racist, unqualified, unprepared, inexperienced, beholden to lobbyists, elitist and Muslim. Hillary Clinton has been called a liar, a hypocrite, a war hawk, over-emotional, contrived, out of touch and willing to rig elections with changes to primary rules and reliance on super delegates. His health care plan has been criticized for leaving millions uninsured. Her position on NAFTA has been criticized as being inconsistent with her previous votes on the subject. He's been accused of a willingness to mollycoddle world leaders. She's been accused of fear mongering.

And all of it, every single bit of it, is coming from within the Democratic party. There's no conceivable way to blame any of this on John McCain, Karl Rove, or the RNC. They have wisely stayed on the sidelines and watched the Democrats feast on each other, well on their way to throwing away an easy victory in November for the third time in a row.

I went on to predict that come September/October, the Democrats would be criticizing the Republicans for using these same tactics, despite using them so vociferously themselves in March/April. Apparently, I was wrong. It didn't take until September/October. It's happening right now. Barack Obama seems to believe he can convince me that all of the nasty, bogus, dirty-politics attacks he's endured over the last couple of months have come from the John McCain's "side."

My friends, I'm still not sure how calling people bitter is considered elitist. But talking to me like I can't remember more than a few weeks of history? That suggests a perceived intellectual superiority that, quite frankly, boggles the mind.

More:

The other side can label and name-call all they want, but I trust the American people to recognize that it is not surrender to end the war in Iraq so that we can rebuild our military and go after Al Qaida's leaders.

I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.

...and Carter did, and Clinton did. Odd how he left out the two most recent Democrats, huh? Particularly when those two engineered perhaps the two most famous handshakes in the history of the White House Lawn? Maybe it's because Carter's award-winning handshake led directly to the assassination of one leader, and did nothing to create peace for Israel in the subsequent 30 years? Or maybe it's because Clinton's ventures in personal diplomacy with hostile leaders also led to an assassination, this time of our ally's leader, not to mention that little deal with the North Koreans, which we recently learned they began violating before the ink was dry? Or, quite possibly, because Carter is back to demonstrate additional "wisdom" by meeting with the leaders of Hamas, despite requests from the State Department to stay the hell out of the way?

Also interesting that he didn't say "like Reagan did," given that his well-documented personal meetings with Gorbachev led directly to the end of the cold war and the dismantling of the Soviet Union.

I sure hope this bit was about political spin because, otherwise, Obama's in serious need of a history lesson.

Allow me to repeat the summary point of my April 22nd post:

In 2000, the Democrats were running a sitting Vice President to an extremely popular President with a few big character flaws. All Al Gore had to do was be "Bill Clinton without the oral sex," and he would have walked into the White House practically uncontested. Instead, it was insanely close, and Gore walked into a series of White Castle's, rather than a single, White House.

In 2004, the Democrats were running a war hero and sitting senator against a highly unpopular president who was strongly advocating for a highly unpopular war. Again, they blew it, and John Kerry took a swift boat back to Boston.

Now, we're in 2008. 70% of Americans think the country's on the wrong track. For the third time in a row, the Democrats are in a position to walk away with this. It'll be interesting to see if they find a way to screw it up again...

Bobble me...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sun, 11 May 2008 06:06:00 +0000

XMBaseball.com, some kind of weird joint venture between Major League Baseball and XM Satellite Radio is currently running two web promotions. The first is a robo-call where you can have Derek Jeter or David Ortiz call your house at a particular time and basically recite a MadLib with your chosen name(s), hobbies, favorite sports teams, etc.. My son Avery would probably get a kick out of it, but when I typed in all the info, I was told that Derek can't say the word "Avery," and asked if he could call without mentioning a name. No thanks, robo-Derek, the effect would most certainly be lost. And of course, if he can't say Avery, he can't very well say Brandon, lest he upset Avery. Catch-22...

Anyway, the other web promotion is a feature that let's you Bobble head anyone you want. That one's easier. Ladies & gentlemen, Bobble-Brian:

Gasoline - Cheap at $4.00 per gallon

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sun, 11 May 2008 06:02:00 +0000

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?

Paging Melanie Foreman...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 08 May 2008 05:16:00 +0000

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!

R2D2 gives new meaning to Blu-Ray...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:39:00 +0000

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...)

Sorry, Blogger - Two strikes and you're out

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sat, 03 May 2008 05:48:00 +0000

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...)

The Gaffe Machine claims its latest victim: Miley Cyrus

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:08:00 +0000

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.

Bush Conducts More than Just War...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:18:00 +0000

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?

The things you find when you're packing...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 06:09:00 +0000

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... ;-)

Problem Getting into Webkinz World?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 05:52:00 +0000

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:

http://www.webkinz.com/us_en/

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...

Random Acts of Blogging - 4/27/08

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:54:00 +0000

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???

Blogger's Back . . . AGAIN!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:51:00 +0000

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?

Democratic Politics Enters the Realm of Ridiculousness

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:45:00 +0000

(NOTE: Blogger went down again, right after I made my previous post. It's been down ~~one~~ ~~two~~ ~~three~~ ~~four~~ five more days at this point. The following post was written on 4/22)

I document this today, the day of the hard-fought Pennsylvania primary, because I know people have short memories, and once the media changes the national conversation, others will call me crazy for suggesting what is common knowledge right now. And that is this:

On April 22, 2008, Barack Obama has already been called unpatriotic, racist, unqualified, unprepared, inexperienced, beholden to lobbyists, elitist and Muslim. Hillary Clinton has been called a liar, a hypocrite, a war hawk, over-emotional, contrived, out of touch and willing to rig elections with changes to primary rules and reliance on super delegates. His healthcare plan has been criticized for leaving millions uninsured. Her position on NAFTA has been criticized as being inconsistent with her previous votes on the subject. He's been accused of a willingness to mollycoddle world leaders. She's been accused of fear mongering.

And all of it, every single bit of it, is coming from within the Democratic party. There's no conceivable way to blame any of this on John McCain, Karl Rove, or the RNC. They have wisely stayed on the sidelines and watched the Democrats feast on each other, well on their way to throwing away an easy victory in November for the third time in a row.

Come September/October, though, when the same questions are still being asked, many of the people who are responsible for the above will be in front of cameras, condemning the Republican Attack MachineTM for it's deplorable treatment of the Democratic candidate and it's willingness to distract Americans from the "real issues." And what's worse, those of us (and yes, regardless of who I vote for, I will be among them) who point out that the candidate did the very same thing to his/her opponent in the primaries will be accused of irrationally endorsing the failed policies of George W. Bush. No, I don't know why. But mark my words, it will happen.

For the record, I think Hillary has been more guilty of this than Obama. If you read the above lists carefully, you'll notice that his attacks on Hillary have been at least tangentially (and sometimes directly) tied to politics and policy, whereas her attacks on Obama seem to suggest that this man, who has a long history of public service, has secretly harbored racist, elitist, anti-American tendencies that are just now coming out as he's running for President against Hillary.

It was the most recent exchange, reserved for today, the day of the Pennsylvania primary, that made me finally blog about the topic (hat tip: Power Line). Here's the campaign ad currently running for Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania:

Note the imagery of FDR, JFK, the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl harbor, Soviet aggression, gas shortages, Osama bin Laden, Hurricane Katrina and home foreclosure. In 30 seconds. From a woman who has consistently accused the Bush administration of governing by fear.

Obama's response shows video of Bill Clinton speaking at a 2004 campaign rally:

Now, one of Clinton's Laws of Politics is this: If one candidate's trying to scare you and the other one's trying to get you to think, if one candidate's appealing to your fears and the other one's appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope.

Now tell me John McCain isn't on the sidelines taking notes...

Oh Blogger, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:17:00 +0000

Yes, world, the long and horrible wait is over.

On the afternoon of April 14th, after posting a humorous entry on the Plainview Library's schedule of events, I went to edit my recent post & found that Blogger wasn't letting me FTP files to my server (the specific error, so the Google Gods pick this entry up, was "Your publish is taking longer than expected. To continue waiting for it to finish, click here"). That happens from time to time, and given that they interact with hundreds (thousands?) of third party hosting services to do FTP publishing, I can imagine that fixing it would be a complex task. But this time, the lights went off for SIX WHOLE DAYS!.

The message boards lit up with people complaining about the problem and threatening to migrate to WordPress or the like. This particular thread got particularly vitriolic, especially after a Blogger Employee suggested that users 1) Read the help file on FTP publishing, 2) clear their browser cache and cookies, and 3) "Head to the kitchen, grab some comfort food, and then try again a little bit later." Poorly worded post, to be sure, especially given that this was the only response from Blogger itself on the whole thread (or on any other thread I could find). Even the official Blogger blog, Blogger Buzz, didn't mention the problem - not even in their most recent post entitled Updates and Bug Fixes for April 18th.

I realize Blogger is a free service, and you tend to get what you pay for in this world, but this was truly frustrating. And I say that as someone who was just going through the normal blogging withdrawal. Others on the messageboards were complaining about lost business, missed media opportunities, difficulty communicating with their customers/business partners, etc.. Blogger (and Google in general) have historically been very responsive to problems, both within the company and by making use of the "Army of Davids" that their user base represents. This time, though, they acted as if they weren't even aware of the problem. I even went to the "Contact Us" section and filled out a problem report, for which I was promised I'd get an e-mail response. I'm still waiting...

In any case, the problem seems to have subsided - at least for now. If I vanish for another six days, though, you'll know why.

Oh, and if you've arrived at this page because you're having the same problem and you were hoping I'd shed some light on how I solved it? Well, I waited for it to go away and eventually it did. How's that for entirely unhelpful?!? If anyone has a better idea, please leave it in the comments? Thanks...

Library Schedule Hu-Hu-Hu-Humor

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:09:00 +0000

Big ol' tip of the hat to Mike Starr, who passed along today's schedule for his local library, the Plainview - Old Bethpage Public Library. Here's a quick summary (emphasis mine):

10:00 AM-SENIOROBICS
10:30 AM-SENIOR BOOK DISCUSSION
11:00 AM-SENIOROBICS
3:30 PM-Girl Scouts Troop 3051
3:30 PM-Hospice of New York
6:30 PM-NATIONAL OVARIAN CAN COALITION NY LI DIVISION
8:00 PM-National Stuttering Association
8:00 PM-National Stuttering Association

You can't make up stuff like this...

Yankee Stadium Construction Espionage

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:58:00 +0000

This has to be my favorite baseball story of the year so far.

It seems that a construction worker from the Bronx, Gino Castignoli, who is also a Red Sox fan, took a job on the construction team for the new Yankee Stadium, with the express purpose of burying a David Ortiz Red Sox jersey in one of the stadium's concrete slabs in order to jinx the stadium and the Yankees. After that one day on the job, he quit, stating that he would never set foot in Yankee Stadium even if they "gave him free tickets" and "let him sit in George Steinbrenner's box."

Alas, two anonymous co-workers ratted him out. On Saturday, a team drilled for five hours in the offending concrete slab and found the jersey under two feet of concrete. The shirt, tattered from the jackhammers but still easily recognizable as a Red Sox jersey, will be auctioned off by the Jimmy Fund to raise money for Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The Yankees will contribute a Yankees Universe T-shirt as well, which will benefit Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Here's the best part, though (you have to watch the embedded video in the article to catch this). Hank Steinbrenner, George Steinbrenner's son and principal owner of the Yankees, had this to say about the incident:

I hope his coworkers kick the [expletive] out of him

And Mr. Castignoli, who has no remorse about the incident whatsoever, responded thusly:

Tell Hank he can come meet me if he wants to try - and tell him to bring [catcher Jorge] Posada, because he's the one Yankee I can't stand.

This is the kind of stuff that makes the Yankees & Red Sox one of the greatest rivalries in all of sports. As for jinxes, well, Boston fans know all about jinxes, now don't they? Not to mention, as long as there's stuff like this in the building, the Yankees will be well protected. As Derek Jeter said in a recent interview, "the ghosts don't have far to go - just across the street."

Go Yanks!

More Song Graphs

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:05:00 +0000

This post about graphs that represent well known songs has quickly become one of my more popular posts, so I figured I'd pass along a link to a few more song graphs. These are cute, although there are not nearly as many as the first link...

Enjoy!

A-Rod Attacked in Fenway Park

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 03:24:00 +0000

Tip o' the hat to Ilya Burlak for pointing out this unbelievable story. Seems a Bristol, CT middle school took their kids on a class trip to Fenway Park in Boston. A red-tailed hawk, who nests in an overhang near the stadium's press booth, suddenly decided it didn't like one of the students very much. It swooped down, talons extended, and scratched the scalp of this innocent, 13-year old girl, drawing blood but not seriously harming the girl (see picture).

Here's the kicker. The girl's name? Alexa Rodriguez!

As Ilya says, you just can't make this stuff up...

The New, Volatile Stock Markets

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:13:00 +0000

If you follow the financial press, or watch a financial news network like CNBC, you've heard a great deal lately about how volatile the stock market has been lately. Every day, it seems, the Dow Jones Industrial Average seems to either jump more than a hundred points, or dip more than a hundred points. People who, well, let's just say, people of a certain generation have been waxing philosophic about how a hundred point move on the Dow was unheard of in their day, and now it happens all the time.

This got me thinking: are we just enamored of large numbers? The DJIA is, after all, an average, so the number of points it moves on any given day isn't as important as the percentage change that move represents. And, when the Dow was 6,000 (late-1996), a 1% move only represented a 60 point shift. Today, with the Dow over 12,000, the same 1% move represents 120 points. Perhaps there were lots of 60 point shifts twelve years ago but no one remembers those as clearly as the triple digit shifts they see today?

Here's a telling graph:

The above trend lines represent the average daily shift in each of the three major indexes for each month over the last ten years. In January, 2008, for example, the average daily move for the Dow (up or down) was 1.27%. In the same month, the S&P500 moved an average of 1.31% each day, and the NASDAQ moved an average of 1.40%. As you can see by the trend lines, these numbers are higher than they've been for around five years, so there is some justification for all the bellyaching of recent months.

That said, it's not nearly as bad as it was back in 2000-2003, particularly on the NASDAQ, where average daily shifts regularly topped 2%, sometimes even 3% or 4%.

This graph might be clearer:

It's the same data, but the daily averages are grouped by year, rather than by month. Here, we see that averaging together all of 2008 so far (January through March), this year is indeed more volatile for the Dow and S&P500 than any year in the last 10, except for 2002. For the NASDAQ, though, it still pales in comparison to 2000-2002, and is even slightly more stable than 1999. Comparing the two graphs, we see that 2000-2003 had some high (>2%) months and low months, so while the peaks were worse than what we're seeing now, the year-long averages balanced out. This is telling as we remember that 2008 still has 9 months to go, so the overall annual average might settle down quite a bit before it's done.

Bottom line: yes, the markets are volatile. But no, this isn't some calamitous event that we've never seen before and, in fact, in some cases it has been much worse. Also, my point from above still hold some water, I believe. Larger ordinal numbers create a bigger psychological impact than the changes of years past. Our memories are short enough as it is, and a constant stream of triple-digit changes help to cloud those memories even further.

At any rate, I hope you're all enjoying the (bumpy) ride...

How People Found Me - March Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:55:00 +0000

The Categories

Category	March Count	February Count
Technology	250	220
Billy Joel	122	181
Celebrity Look Alikes	54	58
DSL	44	39
Overrated Films	40	26
Family	23	20
Accent	22	17
Adult/Porn-Related	21	15
Bill Moffit	16	0
Disney	15	9
Politics	15	21
Pizza	15	4
Sleeping	12	6
Cal/Stanford	10	13
The "I Should be Sleeping" Song	9	10
The Simpsons	9	10
Penn	7	11

Queries were once again up slightly this month (768 vs. 733). The category list is pretty much the same as well - technology, Billy Joel, Celebrity Look Alikes, etc.. The only surprises were Bill Moffit (one post on his death from me yielded 16 queries, and quite a few top Google results), a 67% increase in Disney-related queries, and a 300% increase in Pizza-related queries (because of Este Pizza's re-opening).

The Referring Sites

This month's Referral site of the month award goes to burlaki.com, who was responsible for 18 pageviews all on its own. Also, I got 19 pageviews from something called playlist.com, which I believe has indexed the one and only MP3 that's on my site. Popular month for the Muppets, I guess...

The Keywords

All told, 768 queries resulted in hits to Familygreenberg.com in March (35 more than were used in February). Here are some of the more entertaining samples:

We start with our most popular category, Technology:

Query	Rank / # of Results	Comments
anheuser busch powerpoint templates	>500 / 14,900	Someone's working a little too hard on their party favors, no?
how would you position microsoft to compete with ibm	13 / 831,000	Well, Microsoft makes software and IBM makes hardware, so I'm not sure I would. Also, both companies seem to be doing pretty well on their own, no?
is there a hidden moon in excel spreadsheet	>500 / 9,370	A hidden moon? Maybe they're talking about Excel, the 1980's adventure video game?

Next, we move to our second most popular category, Billy Joel:

Query	Rank / # of Results	Comments
billy joel good night my angle	>500 / 1,240,000	If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times: I Should be Sleeping - best friend of the poor speller!
billy joel sucks in concert	4 / 139,000	This is notable because it's the first out of thousands of search queries that was decidedly negative. Needless to say, this person's query result disagreed with his implicit assumption.
when the curious girl realizes she is under glass bill joel	2 / 151,000	I can say with a fair degree of certainty that I know the lyrics to every song Billy Joel has ever written. That said, I have no idea what this person was looking for. . .

And then there's always the weird & wacky:

Query	Rank / # of Results	Comments
whens the world series	2 / 54,600	The baseball season started on March 31st. Here's a guy/gal who really likes to prepare ahead of time. . .
what is the longest wait for a ride at magic kingdom	13 / 43,400	The one in which your 5-year old needs to go to the bathroom right as they approach the ride. Trust me. . .
baby greenberg.com	11 / 17,100	Heh. . . this person definitely wound up at the wrong web site. . .
jimmy buffett lyrics and bicycle	>500 / 153,000	<Scooby-Doo 'Huh???' sound> Bicycle? Got me . . .
air force bloopers	12 / 134,000	Oh yeah, gotta love the air force's blooper reel. Hey, here's the one where the pilot accidentally flies right into the plate glass window. . . Bwah, hah, hah. . .
awareness test bear suit; bear doing moonwalk	>500 / 178,000	These are both directly related to this post. I just find it funny how the queries look if you haven't seen the post.
cost of new addition to house	18 / 29,100,000	This is more strange than funny. We're currently undergoing a significant home renovation, but I haven't blogged about it at all, so it's strange that this query would have suddenly led to my site. Maybe a new Google Mindreading feature?!?
pontificating platypus	6 / 1,010	Coolest. Query. Ever.
este pizza	14 / 611,000	My favorite pizza place in Salt Lake City (note: I've never been to SLC) re-opened this month, and my site came up in 15 different queries just like this one. . .
balanced argument about war	>500 / 1,720,000	I'll take that as a compliment. So thanks, whoever you are. . .
were tic tacs ever 1.5 calories?	>500 / 22,000	Man, I hate it when the things you thought you knew turn out to be false. Disillusionment sets in, 1.5 calories at a time. . .

Our regular "Adult/Porn-Related" feature almost didn't make it this month, as the queries are getting, to be frank, rather repetitive and boring. Only one caught my eye as even worth mentioning this time around:

Query	Rank / # of Results	Comments
caught wearing mother in law lingerie	>500 / 379,000	Once again, someone out there has problems that Google just isn't going to solve. . .