Amex

I finally got my BlueCash card in the mail yesterday. Its nice and all, but then i read about the "Express Pay" feature. Since the card is mostly clear, you can see a little rfid chip and antenna in there (much the same as in my school ID, maybe a bit smaller) just waiting to disseminate my creditcard info to whoever can get close enough to my pocket with a reader. Alright, fine, lets assume that no one has a reader, that the 'encryption' (whatever it may be) is secure and that I am exempt all unauthorized transations (as is the case with all my cards). GREAT! Now I don't have to take my card out of my wallet anymore to pay for stuff (I probably still have to take it out) and I don't have to sign a recipt anymore either! I'm gonna have so much more spare time that I think I'll take up rythmic gymnastics. Oh wait, there's only like seven places that have the infrastructure to read these cards? And three of those are all in AZ? And another three are at participating locations only? Well that's fine I'll use it when I'm at sheetz and save so much time that I'll be able to take up ryth.

This site has some pretty cool visualizations of sorting algorithms.

You know its hot when...

OK, here's mine:

You know its hot when you get into the car after work and your dirty gladware from lunch pops open like its in the microwave, billowing once-congealed-now-liquified smelly lasagna leavings everywhere.

So lets see who's got the best definition of hot. The winner gets one of my used gladware containers.

New Verizon ad

I dunno if you've seen this or not, but I just saw a new Verizon ad on TV lastnight. Its about two wireless phones who are brothers, leaving Japan to make their way in the world. The one phone is having the time of his life making calls and sending text messages over Verizon's network. One day the brothers finally meet again and the Verizon brother asks what the other has been up to. The other phone can't answer because it is searching for service, and the announcer comes on and says "how can two similar looking phones be so different?" Now, if you've been keeping up with my views on what Verizon does to their phones, you know this pinches a nerve right at the base of my neck. Its almost as if they're trying to rub in my face the fact that they specially manufacture SIMILAR LOOKING phones that do not have the same feautres.

Nice little storm

I got out of the metro lastnight just in time for the absolute bedlam that was downtown Silver Spring. I hadn't really seen much of the storm, just some clouds before and some light rain after. However, on the streets over half the lights were out; and those that were still on were flashing or on an altered cycle. I headed over to east Silver Spring and they seemed to be flush with power. So I bought 25 dollars worth of gas (for a civic, ridiculous) and headed back west to get on 29 north. It took me a good 20 minutes to pass 2 cross streets and turn right on 29. I think that was pretty good, since cedar still had a working traffic light at 29, I have no idea how we would've made it without one. Northbound was a fairly steady pace, since there weren't any lights on and we were the bigger road, we just drove through the intersections. Everytime I did I hoped the next one had power, since I was getting closer to home and didn't look forward to eating frozen hotdogs for dinner. Finally after New Hampshire the lights were on and traffic mostly returned to normal. All I have to say is that people are unreasonable, selfish and crazy when there's no authoritized mediation between them. Good god we live with morons.

mraz

So I downloaded my "Mr A-Z" on tuesday. My first impression was that its not great. On second inspection though, I'm going to upgrade it to not fantastic. It just seems to be an album that you need to listen to until you like it. (and since i already shelled out for it, I've kinda obligated myself to do so) The digital booklet insert is kinda fun (interesting photography and compostion), and the two bonus tracks are alright. Also included was the wordplay music video. The basic premise is that he's playing the song in the countryside and gets stoned by a growing number of malcontent peasants. It kinda leaves you with a feeling of "what the fuc... ah whatever"

Death by lasagna

So I finally gave in to the taunting of the frozen lasagna in my freezer. Every time I would open the door, he'd be in there saying "You know you can't handle me. Just shut the door and walk away." And just as I'd do it, I'd hear him yell through the last little crack before the seal closed "That's right, Beeoch!" Anyway, I cooked him lastnight. That cockey son-of-a-bitch. He was tastey too, but I'll have to admit. He was right. I couldn't handle him. You know those really big lasagnas? Yeah, those family sized ones that are so big you don't know what to do with yourself? Those are for chumps. This one was a party sized lasagna. I stuffed myself so full it hurt to sit. It hurt to stand. It hurt to think about eating more. And it hurt to put away what I couldn't finish. Needless to say, I didn't die from lasagna overdose. And I filled five gladware containers to the brim with lasagna. I guess my next few meals will be Italian for a little while.

Death from above

So I read about the meteor that won't kill everyone in 2035. That's not to say that it won't kill people. Just not EVERYONE. part of the article I read was talking about the probability of a strike and said:

A frequent flier probably would not want to board an airliner if there's a 1-in-10,000 chance it's going to crash,"

Which got me thinkin, what is the chance an airliner will crash? A little searching turned up this site. Which had a nice chart of bad things. Its nice and fun to look at and think about how safe you really are. Especially on those occasions you start wondering what would happen if the moon hit the earth. WHAT??? Its not crazy to wonder.

Hack me baby.

So I 'hacked' my phone. Not exactly, but its still kinda scary messing about in config menus. Basically I find the volume to be insufficient (especially in the car) and wanted a way to turn it up. Using the volume up/down keys it maxes out at 7, which doesn't really seem like much. After a bit of searching I found these instructions:

v710 Volume Hack
This reportedly works on most v710 handsets, but some are already at max. It worked greaet on my personal handset:

* Enter the "Opcode Menu" by pressing: MENU 048263 * (you'll have to enter it rather quickly).
* Enter 54* and press OK. This will suspend the phone and dim the backlight.
* Press the external camera button to turn the backlight back on. You will see "SUCCESS". Press BACK.
* Enter 5*0*15 and press OK. This will max out the system volume of the handset. You can use any number from 0-15 as the third digit, but even at level 15, the phone could be louder.
* You should see SUCCESS. Press BACK.
* Press CANCEL to exit the Opcode Menu

Apparently other people felt similarly. I only changed it to 10, I'm not greedy. I guess I haveta use the phone in the car to see if its loud enough. But this is the kinda thing that I shouldn't have to do to customize my phone settings. It really cheezes me off that rushed production and carrier restrictions turn a very nice product into a poorly executed phone. Read this, its pretty much dead on with all my beefs about the phone. Don't get me wrong, its a fine phone (the best that Verizon offers) but it could be so much more.

Update
Send this letter to your Congressperson.

Isaac's Three Laws of Robotics

A robot must risk his neck for his brother man, and may not cop out when there’s danger all about.

A robot must be a sex machine to all the chicks, except where such actions conflict with the will of his main woman.

A robot must at all times strive to be one bad motha-shutchyomouth.

HAHAHA. HA. HAHA. Oh, COME ON! That's funny shit!

screw you.

link

Goin flying soon?

Here, check this out. Its a site that is all about how airliners are badly designed and that our government is, and has been, full of douche bags. Make sure you check out all the tabs and topics, very cool stuff. (not just the plane crashes, though those are cool too)

Update
Ah shit. I've never had a problem with flying (except for the air quality and morons on the plane) but after reading a bunch of these articles I'm thinking maybe I should be afraid of flying. Someone please chime in with a good counter-argument.

If its not scottish, its radio disney

So this showed up in my iTunes music store today. Ugh. Bowling For Soup has remade several songs from "a hangover you don't deserve" and "drunk enough to dance" for use by radio disney.(incidently those titles are why I bought the albums) Now you can hear songs that sound like something you've heard before, but are now about candy and puppies instead of drinking, sex and drugs. Sweet.

Update
Also, looking around in the "Disney artists" Vanessa Carltons top 5 downloaded songs are: "white houses" appears twice and "big yellow taxi" twice. Oh, and just so you know "big yellow taxi" is by Counting Crows. I don't know why I find that so amusing.

This place is dead anyway

Are you guys f-in kidding me? Well, I guess Google is done organizing the information on earth. Now they're working on the moon. P.S. Go zoom all the way in.

Season two

Wow. I checked yesterday and nothing. But today I ordered my copy of Arrested Development Season 2 from Amazon. Now I just have to wait till October 12th.

"Guns don't kill people, people do. But I think the gun helps."

Speaking of going around shouting 'BANG' that's what England's army is doing for its training exercises. Seems they're right out of blank ammo. "Well we're out. We only had three bits and didn't expect such a rush"

Turbo tap

Mmmmm... two second beer. Perhaps the speed is worth the countless Irishmen who've died watching Guinness handled in this manner.

Toronto Laws

You can't drag a dead horse down Yonge Street on a Sunday.

Mobile UI

This is really cool. I only wish they'd get on the freaking bus and start making the devices to put it on. I mean come on, is it so hard to make a pocket pc moble phone that folds the touchscreen display and isn't the size of your grandmother's purse? Anyway, SHARK is way better than whatever special alphabet you have to learn to write with a stylus now. I'm not saying that i'm getting rid of my keyboard or anything (I'm still waiting on gesture interfaces) Man do I like alternative input developments. Too bad voice recognition seems so stale.

Hot leather seats...

By the way, it sucks going to work on Monday morning and finding your office is basically a sauna at 87 degrees. I'm pretty sure that's hotter than it is outside.

Crashing anyone?

Oh baby. This movie is funnier than a one legged midget rodeo. Actually, I'm not sure how funny that would be (maybe not funny at all), but this movie is good. Although I am fairly disappointed with myself. The whole time I'm thinking "who is that girl? I've seen her before." Turns out yeah, I have seen her before. In 'The Notebook' and in 'Mean Girls'. Goddammit, I'm a moron. I used to be good at this. Oh well, good job Rachel McAdams you stumped me. I guess I owe you a coke.

I need to buy a parcel of land.link

Hate your mobile phone?

Check out this brittish guy who's selling his phone on ebay:

But don't let me put you off, it has some really good features like "Airplane Mode".
Using Airplane Mode you can disable the phones ability to receive or make calls, texts or email whilest leaving the phone on so that you can look at the screens crappy walpaper and get hassled by the air stewardess for not turning your phone off. The added advantage of this mode is that, when you arrive at JFK, your battery is flat.
Sat in the taxi, you really need to make some calls to let your business associates know that you've landed, but wait! No charger lead!
Whilst you're sat there in incomunicado, you can reminisce about the bad old days where you would merely turn your phone off.
The best is yet to come...
How do you turn airplane mode off? I couldn't find out from the manual and had to trawl the net. I found the answer in a forum whereby some chap with a similar phone was obviously as irate as I.
Apparently you have to hold the power button down for more than one and a half seconds but for less than two seconds as the latter turns the phone off.
Which sick, criminally insane, Motorola B*STARD dreamed that up!?
"Oh, I've turned it off again, damn!" Now another wait for about five minutes while this chunky phone boots up. "Hello Moto" it declares in a cheesy voice, yes hello again. Glad you could make it.
Let's try again. No, not long enough. "yeah I'll be with you in a minute.". Not long enough again, oh sh*t, it's turned off again! "Yeah, make that five minutes" "Hello Moto"
Pulling the battery doesn't work.
Neither does pulling the sim card
Twenty five minutes of this lunacy was what caused the crack in the outer screen. I threw it accross the room in disgust.
The threat "If you don't come out of Airplane Mode right now, I'm going to kill you!" was the only thing that worked.
Perhaps the speech recognition part of this phone has not been completely removed.

Link

Whoa, my moxie bonuses are, like, inexcusable.
kol

So I pre-ordered the new Mraz album. There's definately something odd about pre-ordering digital media. Its not like they're going to run out of copies and I need to reserve mine before they begin the mad rush to the display case. Also, I bet they've got the files already. All those Itunes Admin Geeks are grooving to such sweet rythms as: Geek in Pink and Mr. Curiousity. Meanwhile I can't even listen to a preview of the music I've already paid for. Course that's all speculation.

Today's firedrill item

So I've decided that whenever there's a firedrill I'm going to drive to the store and buy something I've never bought before. Today I got some Klondike bars. Yeah, I know, I've bought Klondike bars before. But not YORK PEPPERMINT Klondike Bars! Damn straight, bitches. They're terribly refreshing.

Update Verdict:
Get some.

There is a man outside my window.

Nico-beer

Ok, this I don't need. I drink enough beer already without having a chemical addiction to it. On the other hand, this might be just the ticket for the already-chemically-addicted who live in Montgomery County.
nicoshot

Obsolescence rolls on

Are you guys KIDDING me? I just got one of these on Monday and on Wednesday you decide the format isn't what it used to be called? I was feeling all current with my phone for the first time in three years, and then they send an intergalactic jester with an invisible proclamation. Sorry little Transflash card, you're old news.
link

Dry T-Shirts

Come on, you know you love the Strongbad.

Plug me in

Oh man, I can't wait to get my hands on this.

In a civilized society, civilized individuals would not engage in "primitive," violent, behavior. As such, it would make little sense that anyone would want to play, let alone, invent a game such as Taser Tag. Fortunately, we do not live in a so-called civilized society.

Or maybe we're just bored. It looks like it'd be really fun with like 5 people wandering around a mall and you could sneak up behind someone and give em some juice before running away.

Here comes the 9:40 from Boston into Piss-Me-Off-Central

±Important Information
On August 1, 2005, the charge to receive TXT Messages will increase from $0.02 to $0.10 per message. This will apply to domestic and international TXT Messages (and, if applicable, to any TXT messages in excess of the monthly allowance for Verizon Wireless’ TXT Messaging bundles). The charge for sending TXT Messages, both domestically and internationally, will not change.

hmmm... Seems like the cost for data transmission (especially antiquated and inferior data transmission) should be going down, not quintupling.

trans-goodness

Holy mother of mayo! My Transflash card arrived today. Now i can store up to, but not exceeding (except for 10MB), 256MB of foolish chicanery on my phone. I just need to figure a way to transfer files to and from my phone. *ahem Bluetooth* Here's a picture of it. I thought it was going to be small, but this is ridiculous. That's not it on the right (that's the compactflash adapter) Its the smaller one on the left that's half the size of my thumbnail.

holy crap holy crap

i can't even start. Go here and look at the pics.

Flickr

This is an great tool to search through the Flickr postings. Just do it, you'll see.

Where does a 500 pound bear sit?

This is awesome if true.

Gimmie

fun signage

This is the poster they have as you're waiting in line a the Chilotle. Seems they're trying to move away from the mexican "fierce deuce imminent" thinking and more into the "Sacrelicious" market. Also note the slogan "that which is good."

Death by spam

So i hooked up my Thunderbird with a new extension to check my hotmail. Its been a while since microsoft broke my last one and i expected there to be a few emails there. How many? 572? oh ok. WHAT? FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY TWO UNSOLICITED EMAILS sine 5-31-05? Oh yeah, you guys have bang up junk mail filters. This is the kinda shit that drove me to google.

Bubble wrap commercials

There's this insurance ad on tv where a man leaves his house in the morning and all his neigbors are covered in bubble wrap. He finally goes into I think nationwide, and comes out covered in wrap. You know the one i'm talking about? Its on all the time and you hate it. (if you have tivo get lost) anyway, i can't help thinking about another insurance ad that i never see any more. Its for aig and can bee seen here. This one makes fun of a guy who is bubble wrapping his car because he's afraid of dealing with his insurance should he get into an accident. These two ads started at nearly the same time, so the second couldn't have been retaliatory. I can't help feeling that nationwide (or whoever the first one is) paid off aig not to run the add any more because it makes them look stupid. Anyone else notice that?

Update
I saw that commercial again lastnight. Turns out it was for AAA insurance. Highly effective advertising guys, highly effective.

Good times

So i took a trip down to school and had quite the holiday weekend. Here's a little account i've written about friday night. It ends a bit abruptly cause i got tired of writing.

---

Its really funny how many people I see when I go down to school for a visit. We had just finished playing asshole and people were wandering outside to listen to the music and see who else was on the greens. I had, apparently, taken my shoes off sometime during the course of the game. I went outside and took one step off the sidewalk into the grass. As my foot came down a sharp pain shot through my heel and I immediately raised my foot again. (No doubt with a look of surprise and apprehension on my face) It was as if there had been a razor blade propped up in the grass and I had just walked over and pressed my heel into it. I was a little peeved because now it would hurt while I walked. I hopped back inside and sat at the foot of the stairs to take a look at it. I could feel that the wound was in the very center of my heel and it wasn't an easy spot too look at. I sat and used my hand to press lightly on the area, hoping that would take away the sting. As I withdrew my hands from either side both were coated with blood. I knew this could be a problem and I began to ponder my options. First I could hop outside and try to find someone who could help me, which might have been quite a lot of work. I decided to go with option two: lay on the steps and wait for someone to walk into the house.

It didn't take long. I heard the door open and I called out "Do you live here?" Whoever it was said "Oh god, hold on." And she promptly produced Jess (who's house I was laying in). I'm fairly certain that this was much more efficient than trying to find her myself would have proved. Jess suggested that we adjourn to the bathroom and I rose keeping my foot in the air to try and keep it from dripping too much. I then climbed the stairs doing my best not to get blood on the wall or hand rail on the way. I failed. Its not very easy to climb stairs with one foot and no hands while you're drunk and bleeding. I had sobered up quickly but was becoming less coherent as I bled. We made it to the shower without too much more trouble and the water began to wash away the red. I don't know the dialogue verbatim during this part so I'm going to have to make educated guesses about how it happened. I also visually remember it in third person since most of the time I was looking at the wall trying to gauge how black it was. Jess got some hydrogen peroxide and said it might hurt a bit. I replied "just do it I can't feel anything." It was true; the cut hadn't hurt at all since I first saw my hands at the bottom of the stairs. So we spent a few minutes pouring the sterilizer on the cut and washing the result away. The shower floor which had been a red whirlpool now converted into a bubbly mess. The H2O2 had reacted and was obviously doing its job. I had never seen bloody bubbles 6 inches deep before. My face was cold and I began to concentrate more on my vision, trying to gauge how much longer I could stand. I didn't want to fall, but I also didn't want to be a wuss and ask to sit down before I needed to. I think I guessed about right. "Oh god, you're pale" "Yeah, I don't think I can stand any more" "Ok put your head on the rug there" So I knelt down and put my head on the ground with my feet still in the frothing shower. It felt wonderful. I could feel the blood rushing to my head as a wave to the breakwater, splashing and saturating the capillaries. "Jeremy you're still bleeding a lot" "Ok but I feel much better now" "Oh god, should I call you an ambulance?" "No, just call public safety, not an ambulance" In retrospect this was the stupidest idea ever and Jess must have decided that since public safety would have taken one look at me and just called someone else. They don't do injuries. "We don't have any bandages so I'm going to put a lot of Band-Aids on it, ok?" "That's great" I think most of the time in between these statements I was apologizing about all the blood and thanking anyone.

So I was taped up and Jess convinced me to hop to an extra bed. I was still worried about bleeding on things and even more so when Jess told me to put my foot on a pillow. She finally made me believe it was an old pillow and ok to elevate my foot with. "I'm a good clotter" "Ok" They must have thought I was delirious. "No, really I'll work on it" In all honesty I have always been a good clotter and was very proud of how quickly I could close a wound. So I spent the night with attentive nurses bringing me saltines and water and making sure that I was doing alright. I'm still not sure if I should have gotten stitches but the cut had mostly stopped bleeding by morning (though it had gotten through one of the four Band-Aids during the course of the night.) So now I'm hobbling around doing my best not to disturb it as it heals. All I can say is thank goodness for responsible and caring friends.