You will never drive the same way again...
The Italian Job kicks butt! Poor Kevin, probably won't get to see this on a really huge movie screen. I think I'll go see this a few more times. I also want to take defensive driving courses and stunt driving courses.
I also recently saw Matrix: Reloaded... some good action but some yawning, too. Down with Love was clever and cute, I guess. Nice plot twist. X2 was also pretty good. Some good action, better effects.
And a pigeon has decided to nest on our desk. I swept up their nest-in-progress last week thinking it was just detrius that had blown into the corner but now there's more along with an egg. The cat chased the bird away from the nest and I chased the bird the rest of the way away before seeing the egg. Lori went and got some lint from the laundry room to surround the egg until the bird comes back.
Friday, May 30, 2003
Thursday, May 29, 2003
A Monopoly of Two...
AOL Time Warner announced that they aren't suing each other anymore today. Not sure how the deal worked out, but AOL Time Warner gets a check for $750,000,000. (They plan to immediately turn around and pay people they owe money to so they can decrease debt.) AOL Time Warner also gets to license Internet Explorer free for the next seven years. (Want to decrease some more debt? Fire all the Netscrape people. Netscape has sucked since like version 3. Bloatware extraordinaire.) And AOL Time Warner and Microsoft claim that they plan to work towards interoperability for their Instant Messaging clients. (About time!) And Microsoft will make it easier for AOL Time Warner to know how Windows works so that they can make their software work better.
AOL Time Warner announced that they aren't suing each other anymore today. Not sure how the deal worked out, but AOL Time Warner gets a check for $750,000,000. (They plan to immediately turn around and pay people they owe money to so they can decrease debt.) AOL Time Warner also gets to license Internet Explorer free for the next seven years. (Want to decrease some more debt? Fire all the Netscrape people. Netscape has sucked since like version 3. Bloatware extraordinaire.) And AOL Time Warner and Microsoft claim that they plan to work towards interoperability for their Instant Messaging clients. (About time!) And Microsoft will make it easier for AOL Time Warner to know how Windows works so that they can make their software work better.
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
As long as they spin off Mr. Case, too
Reports are that Steve Case has been speaking favorably of the idea of spinning off AOL from AOL Time Warner.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/918428.asp
Anything the NRA is against, I must be for
The NRA sent letters to its crazy wacko gun loving freak members saying that the media in the hands of fewer, larger companies could literally "silence your NRA." I'm sorry... how is this a bad thing? The NRA sucks. Plain and simple.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58964,00.html
Reports are that Steve Case has been speaking favorably of the idea of spinning off AOL from AOL Time Warner.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/918428.asp
Anything the NRA is against, I must be for
The NRA sent letters to its crazy wacko gun loving freak members saying that the media in the hands of fewer, larger companies could literally "silence your NRA." I'm sorry... how is this a bad thing? The NRA sucks. Plain and simple.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58964,00.html
Monday, May 26, 2003
Some American Idol callers could not vote...
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2003-05-26-idol_x.htm
"My daughter dialed more than a hundred times and couldn't get through," says Cynthia McGinnes of Chestertown, Md. "This is a show we all watch as a family, and I guarantee you we will never watch again. My daughter was in tears."Hey Cynthia McGinnes of Marylame -- you are an idiot for such a dumbass quote.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2003-05-26-idol_x.htm
Sunday, May 25, 2003
Now if I only had a million dollars...
We might see flying cars in my lifetime... http://www.msnbc.com/news/917634.asp
We might see flying cars in my lifetime... http://www.msnbc.com/news/917634.asp
Saturday, May 24, 2003
Thursday, May 22, 2003
Casual Photography
HP is developing technology that would be built into a pair of glasses, allowing you to be constantly taking pictures as you went about your daily life, and storing
them digital for later retrieval. It's kind of neat sounding.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-1009127.html
HP is developing technology that would be built into a pair of glasses, allowing you to be constantly taking pictures as you went about your daily life, and storing
them digital for later retrieval. It's kind of neat sounding.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-1009127.html
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Monday, May 19, 2003
The New York Times' Best-Seller List for Fiction this week... saw The New York Times Newspaper in its number 1 spot this week. hahahahahahahahahahahaha
Sprint PCS Sucks in Dallas/Ft. Worth, Denver and New York
Blowing Up Planes Made Easy
According to this article on MSNBC, all you need to do is ship something. Well, you ship a lot of legitimate stuff, and then you build a pressure-sensitive device, it goes on the airplane unscreened and Helllloooo, Lockerbie. Lame, lame, lame, lame. Makes me want to never fly again.
http://www.msnbc.com/modules/exports/ct_infobeatBIZ1.asp?/news/915539.asp
Sprint PCS Sucks in Dallas/Ft. Worth, Denver and New York
Blowing Up Planes Made Easy
According to this article on MSNBC, all you need to do is ship something. Well, you ship a lot of legitimate stuff, and then you build a pressure-sensitive device, it goes on the airplane unscreened and Helllloooo, Lockerbie. Lame, lame, lame, lame. Makes me want to never fly again.
http://www.msnbc.com/modules/exports/ct_infobeatBIZ1.asp?/news/915539.asp
Thursday, May 15, 2003
Ok, I think whoever came up with this is pretty brilliant... Basically, they pave a section of the sea floor. Rubber fins move back and forth with the tide. The fins create suction and pull air down, through turbines, generating electricity. The lack of moving parts means less damage to the marine ecosystem (if you don't count paving the ocean floor) and if they built the system under the Golden Gate bridge they could generate twice the energy required by the city at its peak energy need. http://www.msnbc.com/news/910115.asp
Robert Stack died today at home, 84. This is kinda sad. I never really watched anything he was in, but we were always trying to convince Wayne to act more like Robert Stack when we did stuff for the comedy show. I think we were re-enacting the crime blotter section of the school newspaper (which was silly stuff like campus safety workers baking cookies and leaving them unattended to go attend a campus safety meeting... long story short, burnt cookies, fire department, lots of smoke) All the "crimes" were incredibly minor which made the re-enactments even funnier, or sometimes, lame. But we kept telling Wayne to be more like Robert Stack. Unfortunately, he didn't know who Robert Stack was, so he'd rarely comply. But at least he had the trenchcoat.
Word Heard 'Round the World...
In Word, if you have autocorrect on and type "=rand()" then you get "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. "
But how well does it do in other languages? Thanks to Woody's Office Watch readers for the answers... http://www.woodyswatch.com/
Italian: "Cantami o Diva del pelide Achille l'ira funesta."
Translation: "Sing to me, oh Goddess of poetry, about the death-bringing rage of Achilles, son of Peleus." It's the first line of the Illiad.
Swedish: "Flygande bäckasiner söka hwila på mjuka tuvor."
Translation: "Flying snipes search rest on soft tussocks." Two of the words in the sentence, "bäckasiner" and "hwila" are misspelled but still understandable. The word "hwila" is an old form of "vila", in English "rest". It has not been spelled like that for maybe 90 years. Tussocks is used in the sense of a bunch of grass suitable for, well, for snipes to sit on.
Slovenian: "V kozuscku hudobnega fantail stopiclja mizar."
Translation: "In fur coat of wicked boy trips joiner and calls 0619872345." (That's a telephone number.)
Finnish: "Viekas kettu punaturkki laiskan koiran takaa kurkki."
Translation: "The sly fox with the red hair peeks from beyond the lazy dog." "The cunning red-furred fox was peeping from behind the lazy dog." Or something like that.
Spanish: "El veloz murciélago hindú comÃa feliz cardillo y kiwi."
Translation: "The fast Hindu bat happily ate golden thistle and kiwi." This Spanish sentence does not contain every letter in the alphabet (b, j, p, q, s, t and x are missing, and they're all common letters). Quite surprisingly, the orthographic check of word checks "kiwi" as wrong, and suggests substitution with "kivi".
French and Canadian French: "Servez à ce monsieur une bière et des kiwis. "
Translation: "Serve that gentleman a beer and kiwis."
German: "Franz jagt im komplett verwahrlosten Taxi quer durch Bayern."
Translation: "Franz dashes all through Bavaria in a completely neglected taxi." Contains all 26 characters of normal alphabet, but without ä, ö, ü, ß (=Umlaute).
Norwegian: "En god stil må først og fremst være klar. Den må være passende. Aristoteles."
Translation: "A good form must above all be clear. It must be appropriate. Aristotle."
Danish: "Quizdeltagerne spiste jordbær med fløde."
Translation: "The quiz participants ate strawberry with cream." The phrase "strawberry with cream"
Polish: "Pchnac w te lódz jeza lub osm skrzyn fig." Translation: "Push the hedgehog in that boat or eight boxes of figs."
Russian: Translation: "Eat these soft French rolls and drink tea."
Chinese: With Word versions up to and including Word 2000, if I type =rand(1), I get a paragraph of 5 sentences of the "brown fox" sentence - in English. But with Word XP, I get the translation of that sentence in Chinese characters, which doesn't make much sense. In Chinese we have over 6,000 frequently used characters (the total number is not known, but it is well over 10,000). So it is just impossible to check all of them at one shot. The strange thing is, we do not use space(s) after any punctuation mark. But with the sample paragraph, I can see that there are two spaces following each period (which is a tiny circle in Chinese, not a dot).
Traditional Chinese: In Word 2000 (Traditional Chinese - Big 5), the rand() function gives a sentence of 6 Chinese characters. The translation is, "Opportunity seldom knocks twice." This sentence does not represent all Chinese characters, of course, nor does it make use of all the possible radicals or strokes that go into writing Chinese characters. I can think of no reason why Microsoft chose this sentence. Of possible interest is that the final sentence in the string displays short one character as well as the sentence ending period, that is, it's an incomplete sentence.
Japanese: Translation: (Word 2002) "Word is the most useful word processor for the internet." Or "The most famous software for word prossesing is Word." Or "On the Internet, Word is the most used word processor." (Word 2000) "Word 2000 is a Japanese word-processor which is an epoch-making realization of a Japanese input/editing environment." Or "Word 2000 is a Japanese word processor creating a revolutionary Japanese input and editing environment." The Word 2002 version uses 4 roman characters out of 26 (w,o,r and d), 10 of 46 katakana (phonetic characters for foreign words), 8 of 46 hiragana (phonetic characters for Japanese words), and 2 of 1,850 general use kanji (Chinese characters). The final sentence is missing the final hiragana and the stop.
Brazilian/Portuguese: "A ligeira raposa marrom ataca o cão preguiçoso."
Translation: "The brown quick fox attacks the lazy Dog." More or less.
Hebrew: The phrase contains all of the letters, and it appears right-to-left, as it should.
Translation: "A curious fish swam in a pure sea, and suddenly found nice company."
Woody also points out that "Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz." is more efficient than "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." http://www.woodyswatch.com/
In Word, if you have autocorrect on and type "=rand()" then you get "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. "
But how well does it do in other languages? Thanks to Woody's Office Watch readers for the answers... http://www.woodyswatch.com/
Italian: "Cantami o Diva del pelide Achille l'ira funesta."
Translation: "Sing to me, oh Goddess of poetry, about the death-bringing rage of Achilles, son of Peleus." It's the first line of the Illiad.
Swedish: "Flygande bäckasiner söka hwila på mjuka tuvor."
Translation: "Flying snipes search rest on soft tussocks." Two of the words in the sentence, "bäckasiner" and "hwila" are misspelled but still understandable. The word "hwila" is an old form of "vila", in English "rest". It has not been spelled like that for maybe 90 years. Tussocks is used in the sense of a bunch of grass suitable for, well, for snipes to sit on.
Slovenian: "V kozuscku hudobnega fantail stopiclja mizar."
Translation: "In fur coat of wicked boy trips joiner and calls 0619872345." (That's a telephone number.)
Finnish: "Viekas kettu punaturkki laiskan koiran takaa kurkki."
Translation: "The sly fox with the red hair peeks from beyond the lazy dog." "The cunning red-furred fox was peeping from behind the lazy dog." Or something like that.
Spanish: "El veloz murciélago hindú comÃa feliz cardillo y kiwi."
Translation: "The fast Hindu bat happily ate golden thistle and kiwi." This Spanish sentence does not contain every letter in the alphabet (b, j, p, q, s, t and x are missing, and they're all common letters). Quite surprisingly, the orthographic check of word checks "kiwi" as wrong, and suggests substitution with "kivi".
French and Canadian French: "Servez à ce monsieur une bière et des kiwis. "
Translation: "Serve that gentleman a beer and kiwis."
German: "Franz jagt im komplett verwahrlosten Taxi quer durch Bayern."
Translation: "Franz dashes all through Bavaria in a completely neglected taxi." Contains all 26 characters of normal alphabet, but without ä, ö, ü, ß (=Umlaute).
Norwegian: "En god stil må først og fremst være klar. Den må være passende. Aristoteles."
Translation: "A good form must above all be clear. It must be appropriate. Aristotle."
Danish: "Quizdeltagerne spiste jordbær med fløde."
Translation: "The quiz participants ate strawberry with cream." The phrase "strawberry with cream"
Polish: "Pchnac w te lódz jeza lub osm skrzyn fig." Translation: "Push the hedgehog in that boat or eight boxes of figs."
Russian: Translation: "Eat these soft French rolls and drink tea."
Chinese: With Word versions up to and including Word 2000, if I type =rand(1), I get a paragraph of 5 sentences of the "brown fox" sentence - in English. But with Word XP, I get the translation of that sentence in Chinese characters, which doesn't make much sense. In Chinese we have over 6,000 frequently used characters (the total number is not known, but it is well over 10,000). So it is just impossible to check all of them at one shot. The strange thing is, we do not use space(s) after any punctuation mark. But with the sample paragraph, I can see that there are two spaces following each period (which is a tiny circle in Chinese, not a dot).
Traditional Chinese: In Word 2000 (Traditional Chinese - Big 5), the rand() function gives a sentence of 6 Chinese characters. The translation is, "Opportunity seldom knocks twice." This sentence does not represent all Chinese characters, of course, nor does it make use of all the possible radicals or strokes that go into writing Chinese characters. I can think of no reason why Microsoft chose this sentence. Of possible interest is that the final sentence in the string displays short one character as well as the sentence ending period, that is, it's an incomplete sentence.
Japanese: Translation: (Word 2002) "Word is the most useful word processor for the internet." Or "The most famous software for word prossesing is Word." Or "On the Internet, Word is the most used word processor." (Word 2000) "Word 2000 is a Japanese word-processor which is an epoch-making realization of a Japanese input/editing environment." Or "Word 2000 is a Japanese word processor creating a revolutionary Japanese input and editing environment." The Word 2002 version uses 4 roman characters out of 26 (w,o,r and d), 10 of 46 katakana (phonetic characters for foreign words), 8 of 46 hiragana (phonetic characters for Japanese words), and 2 of 1,850 general use kanji (Chinese characters). The final sentence is missing the final hiragana and the stop.
Brazilian/Portuguese: "A ligeira raposa marrom ataca o cão preguiçoso."
Translation: "The brown quick fox attacks the lazy Dog." More or less.
Hebrew: The phrase contains all of the letters, and it appears right-to-left, as it should.
Translation: "A curious fish swam in a pure sea, and suddenly found nice company."
Woody also points out that "Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz." is more efficient than "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." http://www.woodyswatch.com/
Monday, May 12, 2003
Well, *I* thought this was funny...
Monkeys are given a computer, and...
http://www.msnbc.com/modules/exports/ct_email.asp?/news/911508.asp
It's about time...
TiVO like functionality for radio...
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,58769,00.html
Monkeys are given a computer, and...
http://www.msnbc.com/modules/exports/ct_email.asp?/news/911508.asp
It's about time...
TiVO like functionality for radio...
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,58769,00.html
AOL and Dick Parsons
A really interesting, but really looooong article on Dick Parsons
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_20/b3833001_mz001.htm
A really interesting, but really looooong article on Dick Parsons
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_20/b3833001_mz001.htm
Sunday, May 11, 2003
Why do good things happen to bad people?
Stupid Jenna won $1 million on Survivor.
Dumb ad
Saturn's slogan is "It's different in a Saturn." I'd like to add to that "Different. Not good. Just different."
Kevin, if you're out there...
and I know you are... you should see Mr. Personality. Everyone looks like Kryten with different colored heads.
Stupid Jenna won $1 million on Survivor.
Dumb ad
Saturn's slogan is "It's different in a Saturn." I'd like to add to that "Different. Not good. Just different."
Kevin, if you're out there...
and I know you are... you should see Mr. Personality. Everyone looks like Kryten with different colored heads.
Friday, May 09, 2003
Home Front
After three reskeds, we finally met with our realtor Jayne yesterday night. Lori and I had pledged that if it got cancelled this time, it would be a sign from God that now wasn't the right time to be house hunting. We said a quick prayer before Jayne got there and then had a really nice 90 minute chat with her. We talked about what we were looking for and where we were hoping for. She said that she only works based on referrals and that she considered her clients like her "kids" so she wouldn't even show us anything in areas where she wouldn't be comfortable living herself. She gave us lots of good info and I took over a page of notes. We like Jayne. At the end, she suggested we pray as a group for the process, which I thought was really cool. God is surely watching over this process and so we prayed that we'd have the wisdom to understand His will and the intelligence to know what He had in mind for us.
Then we emailed dad who had been tossing around the idea of helping us with the down-payment. This morning he emailed back to say that we could count on 10% and that he already had a loan application in. The fact that he's showing confidence in our decision to start looking means more to me than the money. But the money is an incredibly close second.
We're busy the next few weekends, but starting in June we're going to start looking at homes. Woo! Jayne said last night's meeting was the easy part, so we'll see where things go from here.
After three reskeds, we finally met with our realtor Jayne yesterday night. Lori and I had pledged that if it got cancelled this time, it would be a sign from God that now wasn't the right time to be house hunting. We said a quick prayer before Jayne got there and then had a really nice 90 minute chat with her. We talked about what we were looking for and where we were hoping for. She said that she only works based on referrals and that she considered her clients like her "kids" so she wouldn't even show us anything in areas where she wouldn't be comfortable living herself. She gave us lots of good info and I took over a page of notes. We like Jayne. At the end, she suggested we pray as a group for the process, which I thought was really cool. God is surely watching over this process and so we prayed that we'd have the wisdom to understand His will and the intelligence to know what He had in mind for us.
Then we emailed dad who had been tossing around the idea of helping us with the down-payment. This morning he emailed back to say that we could count on 10% and that he already had a loan application in. The fact that he's showing confidence in our decision to start looking means more to me than the money. But the money is an incredibly close second.
We're busy the next few weekends, but starting in June we're going to start looking at homes. Woo! Jayne said last night's meeting was the easy part, so we'll see where things go from here.
Thursday, May 08, 2003
Sprint PCS sucks in New York
http://www.epinions.com/content_97118424708
and http://www.epinions.com/content_96650104452
West Wing
Ok, we had stopped watching this yawn-fest. Then we thought we'd see how Matthew Perry from Friends would do with his short guest-arc. Of course, then they fire the vice president, kidnap the president's daughter and kill a secret service agent. Yikes. I hope I'm not drawn in and hooked again.
http://www.epinions.com/content_97118424708
and http://www.epinions.com/content_96650104452
West Wing
Ok, we had stopped watching this yawn-fest. Then we thought we'd see how Matthew Perry from Friends would do with his short guest-arc. Of course, then they fire the vice president, kidnap the president's daughter and kill a secret service agent. Yikes. I hope I'm not drawn in and hooked again.
Wednesday, May 07, 2003
Sprint PCS sucks in Cleveland
http://www.epinions.com/content_95927570052
Sprint PCS sucks in Los Angeles
http://www.epinions.com/content_97178521220
http://www.epinions.com/content_95927570052
Sprint PCS sucks in Los Angeles
http://www.epinions.com/content_97178521220
From Lori... Watch this one first.... You only need to watch a few seconds to get the idea.
Supposedly it was found in a school video camera.
http://www.waxy.org/random/video/Star_Wars_Kid.wmv
Then, watch this one...
http://www.waxy.org/random/video/Star_Wars_Kid_Remix.wmv
Supposedly it was found in a school video camera.
http://www.waxy.org/random/video/Star_Wars_Kid.wmv
Then, watch this one...
http://www.waxy.org/random/video/Star_Wars_Kid_Remix.wmv
Is this for real?
I don't know which is worse... those crazy French people with Jerry Lewis or those Germans with their David Hasselhoff. Regardless, put on some popcorn, call in the co-workers, gather close around the monitor and click here:
http://www.hellonetwork.com/demo/toysclub/video.asp?speed=hook300
I don't know which is worse... those crazy French people with Jerry Lewis or those Germans with their David Hasselhoff. Regardless, put on some popcorn, call in the co-workers, gather close around the monitor and click here:
http://www.hellonetwork.com/demo/toysclub/video.asp?speed=hook300
Welcome Home, Kermit!
Henson family regains most of the Muppets assets. As Kermit would say "Yaaaaaa-aaaaaa-aaaaaay!"
http://www.msnbc.com/news/910418.asp
Henson family regains most of the Muppets assets. As Kermit would say "Yaaaaaa-aaaaaa-aaaaaay!"
http://www.msnbc.com/news/910418.asp
Sprint PCS sucks in Plano, TX
http://www.epinions.com/content_98068631172/s_~na
Sprint PCS sucks in Portland, OR
http://www.epinions.com/content_97676398212/s_~na
http://www.epinions.com/content_98068631172/s_~na
Sprint PCS sucks in Portland, OR
http://www.epinions.com/content_97676398212/s_~na
Instant IE Crash
This had to have been done by someone who hated their job... it's just way too easy. It also doesn't affect Macs. We tested it. :)
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/319360/2003-04-20/2003-04-26/0
This had to have been done by someone who hated their job... it's just way too easy. It also doesn't affect Macs. We tested it. :)
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/319360/2003-04-20/2003-04-26/0
Monday, May 05, 2003
Hooray... I'm once again in Kevin and Allison's good graces. In all reality, it's more likely they that weren't in my good graces, but that's all patched up. No more politics.
I read articles today in the L.A. Times (Sunday dead tree edition) on Finding Nemo and The Italian Job. Having seen the original several times as a child and not understanding much about it except that three little cars raced all over the place being silly, I am getting more excited as I hear more about the remake. Lori's free movie pass will get well used this summer, if I can help it. (Speaking of LA Times, I hate hate hate their stupid ads in front of movies. Not only that, but they need a new newspaper cover for the ad, the current one is several years out of date. The power scandals are so old news.)
I read articles today in the L.A. Times (Sunday dead tree edition) on Finding Nemo and The Italian Job. Having seen the original several times as a child and not understanding much about it except that three little cars raced all over the place being silly, I am getting more excited as I hear more about the remake. Lori's free movie pass will get well used this summer, if I can help it. (Speaking of LA Times, I hate hate hate their stupid ads in front of movies. Not only that, but they need a new newspaper cover for the ad, the current one is several years out of date. The power scandals are so old news.)
How's your driving? (Hillarious flash movie! Well done, too.)
http://www2.omnitel.net/smirlis/tmp/schule.html
http://www2.omnitel.net/smirlis/tmp/schule.html
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