April 2006 Archives

... so I could fire them if they didn't show up to work on Monday.

I just wish they'd stop calling it "A Day Without Immigrants", since they're trying to also sucker American "supporters" and students to join in.

Why are they doing that? Because the ones we'll really miss are the ones who are here legally, doing really productive work and making good on the American dream -- legally.

Nobody will notice if some shit-job doesn't get done for a day, and that "nobody noticing" doesn't make for good headlines.

Via Grrl Still Kickin':

Mario Brothers as a live action event.

Live life like you're gonna die
Because you're gonna
I hate to be the bearer of bad news
But you're gonna die

-- "You'll Have Time", William Shatner

Driving home tonight from work, I turned left onto 9W south instead of my normal right to go north. I had to go to the strip mall just south of the bridge and deposit a check at the ATM. That's where I was, when I heard the accident.

I didn't understand the sound at first, and it wasn't until I was leaving the ATM that I realized why I hadn't recognized it. It wasn't a normal "car-on-car" accident. It was "car-on-motorcycle". No grinding of two frames as they try to occupy the same space. It was more of simply the sound of the bike crashing into the ground by the guardrail. And the sound of the driver, landing a short distance away.

I never saw him move.

I won't say that he's definitely dead, but I will say that since they put his non-moving body in the back of the ambulance, and that ambulance hung around for some time before rolling slowly away, that I'm guessing it didn't go well for him.

He's just riding down the road and then his life was, presumably, over. Snap your fingers, and it happens randomly, just like that. Wrong place, wrong time, and you don't get to come home tonight, and your family gets that phone call, or that visit from a friend, that changes their lives forever.

I say this not to be morbid, and if you, gentle reader, knew the man in question, you have my heartfelt sympathies. I didn't know your friend, but clearly he had two friends with him at least who were all out enjoying a beautiful day for a bike ride. I had the top down on my convertible as well. It was one of those days, and he was enjoying it with his friends. May we all spend our last moments in life on a sunny beautiful springtime day doing what we enjoy in the company of friends.

Life is short. And every day that you don't tell the people in your life what they mean to you is a wasted day. What did you learn today? What did you accomplish today? If the answer is "nothing", you've wasted another day. And the number of days you get is limited. Who knows what the limit is, it's random, so don't bother saying to yourself "I'll do that later". Later may never come.

I never knew the guy on the motorcycle. But I think I'll be thinking about him for a long time to come.

With floor tickets for Madonna at Madison Square Garden going for as much as $354.50, one has to ask yourself, are the prices of concerts maybe, just maybe, getting a little out of fucking hand?

What else can you do with $355? (and let's face it, the figure is even higher... you're going to get stiffed for Ticketmaster's anal-rapeage percentage markup for tithes, there's going to be tax, etc., just figure $400 a ticket, and then you're probably bringing a date, so double it). So what else can you do with $800?

• Fly to Europe
• Buy a computer
• Buy a complete collection of Madonna CDs and play them really loud on a brand new stereo
• Hire a hooker who looks a lot better than Madonna, but who will dance for several hours to your Madonna CDs and lip-sync just like Madonna will, only the "finale" of the show is a lot more intimate, and probably more satisfying

I'm sorry, I just don't get paying that much money for anyone. There's only one band out there that I've ever said "I'll pay whatever it takes to see them," and that's Pink Floyd, and ya know what? $355+taxes/tithes per ticket might actually make me rethink that vow. Because when I said it, how could I have possibly conceived that a single concert ticket could ever cost that much money?

At work, I just got a Treo 650. Given that the form-factor of the Treo is not at all ideal for telephone use, a headset is a necessity. The standard (rather, sub-standard) "bud" headset that comes with the unit is every bit as crappy as one might expect it to be.

On the other hand, the Plantronics Voyager 510 that Vassar got me to go with it positively rules. I don't know exactly what its weight is, but I know that I wore it to work this morning, and then started messing around rewiring in the crawl-space behind three racks. Two hours later, I was done cabling, and only then did I remember I'd been wearing the headset the entire time. It's light enough that I'd simply forgotten it was even there, which (in my opinion) is an ideal situation.

I've always been a fan of Plantronics, ever since my days working in a GTE call center, when I had a choice between a Plantronics unit and (ack!) a Hello-Direct model. Plantronics has never done me wrong, and near as I can tell, this Bluetooth model is no exception.

I've been making a list of what shows I have to tell my Time-Warner DVR not to delete until I tell it to. Why? Because Saturday I fly out to San Jose to the MySQL Users Conference. The catch? I'm bunking on Jeremy's couch for the week, and he's long since given up on any sort of television or cable service in his house.

I'll be supplementing, to a limited extent, what I miss from the iTunes Music Store, but it looks like the only shows I watch that iTMS sells are Lost and The Apprentice. So things like West Wing, Sopranos, Big Love, 24, What About Brian (great new show by the way, you should watch, really), Boston Legal, to a much more limited extent American Idol (I've been sucked into that vortex by D, damn her to hell *grin*), and Survivor, are all going to have to either be downloaded illicitly, surreptitiously watched at some kind soul's place, or otherwise stored until I get back (and hopefully, keep myself spoiler-free for a week.... which reminds me essentially that if there's anyone else with a West Wing or 24 fetish in the Bay Area, I'd really like to hang out with you Sunday or Monday night, especially if you're rockin' the HD).

Sunday afternoon, I'll be making a pilgrimage over to Bay101, and hopefully playing in their Sunday afternoon limit tourney. I much prefer no-limit to limit poker, but, eh, you take what you can get. If there's any poker players who want to tag along, let me know.

ZD has an article which says that some investment group is seeking to have a resolution voted on which would essentially make the Class A stock and the Class B stock "equals" in terms of voting power. The theory being that the Class B stock, which is only held by three top Google executives, holds far more voting power than is accounted for in actual shares held.

Now, here's the kicker, the article points out, "By their ownership of 86,753,907 shares of Class B common stock, three of the company's executives (Eric E. Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin) controlled 66.2 percent of the total voting power of all the company's shares...even though they owned only 31.3 percent of the total shares outstanding," the proposal says, according to Google's filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

So, wait... they have 66.2% of the voting share? How the hell does this investment group expect this referendum to pass? "Yes, I'd like to give up my control of the company voluntarily"? Seriously, even if every single shareholder except the top-three voted for it, it would still only be 33.8% of the votes, a clear minority.

Weird the way people will waste their time on fruitless pursuits.

From IMDb News:

Hollywood star Michael Keaton has angered bosses of the Pittsburgh Pirates, his local baseball team, by telling them how to run the club. The Batman Returns star, who was a guest of the struggling team at their match on Monday, hit out at owners for not spending enough money on top class players. The Pirates' payroll is currently the fourth lowest in the majors, and has been reflected in a string of defeats, prompting a Keaton backlash. He says, "Look, I'd do it, too, if I were a businessman. But, at some point, you've got to win. I think fans have been gracious. And maybe not vocal enough. Maybe not vociferous enough with their displeasure. That's my opinion. I fear they (club owners) will take advantage of the good will of the people who continue to show up. For my money, that's disrespectful. At some point, you either have to write the check or do something and not assume, well, we're OK."

I dunno, Michael, maybe if people like yourself who could clearly afford tickets would stop scamming freebies by being "guest of the club", they'd have more money in the coffers to buy talent.

The most expensive ticket I could find for the Pirates is $210, for those "we kiss your ass" seats right behind home plate that are always on TV. Now, if Keaton can't afford $210, then he has seriously squandered that money he made. So maybe, just maybe, if he wasn't grubbing tickets off of them, they'd have just a little bit more money in the bank to spend on stuff.

I'm not saying that maybe $1000 worth of tickets (if he came in a party of four) is going to make or break the Pirates (at least it shouldn't) but I think it's pretty disingenuous to one hand talk about how money - and the spending thereof - is such a problem, but then demand freebies which take away money-making potential from the team in the first place.

As seen on JWZ's blog:

Seriously... maybe, just maybe, it's time to kick the entire public education system to the curb, when we have an excellent student, a straight-A student, a student who is pretty much what every teacher shows up in the fall hoping that they'll catch a glimpse of let alone teach... when such a student is thrown into suspension because her highlights are a little too red.

And seriously, look at that picture. Do you think those highlights are anything that could be considered "distracting"? The fuckwits in Marshall, Missouri think so:

An administrator at Bueker Middle School said the girl's red highlights were distracting to other students.

School officials said there is a rule at Bueker that hairstyles that are distracting to the educational process are not allowed.

So what has Kristen learned:

• She can be unique - just like everyone else.
• The ruling class are morons.
• The ruling class, as morons, will make idiotic rules.
• It doesn't matter how much you succeed, what matters most is that you conform.

If those highlights are "distracting" then I don't know how the hell I got through high school with that teacher who had the crazy-ass "half-brunette, half-grey" hair-do that every school has at least one of.

Someone in the UK want to order me a few of these and send them my way?

OK, I'll admit it. I'm addicted to Sons & Daughters on ABC. It's partly improv dialog, but it's definitely some of the funniest stuff on television.

Definitely worth checking it out.

I got my copy of Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime II CD today. As I was reading the liner notes, I notice this funny thing:

Photcreds: Too come Too come Too come Too come Too come Too come Too come Too come Too come vToo come Too come Too come Too come Too come Too come

The "v" in there is actually in the credits. Although anyone who's used a word processor knows what happened:

• They blocked out where the photo credits would go in the liner notes
• They misspelled "to" in "to come"
• They copy/pasted it over and over again to use the right amount of room, accidentally not hitting CTRL on one of the pastes, leaving a "V" in there from the malformed CTRL-V
• They never followed up and put the photo-credits in.

Oops.

While picking up some random household supplies at Target today, I looked up at the TV screens in the music section and saw a music video for a Rob Zombie song I'd never heard before. Lo and behold, Rob has a new CD out, Educated Horses.

Is it Hellbilly Deluxe? Nope. Is it Sinister Urge? Again, nope.

Does it kick ass, though? Hell, yeah.

Dear Lazyweb,

I remember reading an article a couple years ago about this guy who got a complaint from his users that "they couldn't reach any site greater than some number of miles away," and he mocked them because "networks just don't work that way", and after a couple days of poking and prodding he discovered that, lo and behold, the users were right, they couldn't reach sites greater than some number of miles away. Much investigation ensued, with some really wonky error being at fault but having exactly the described effect.

In the spirit of April Fools, (because this is not an April Fools gag, and see my post two posts down about that disclaimer) ... does anyone have a link to this story?

UPDATED: Here we go. Link to the story.

The weather is warm.
The storm windows are open.
The breeze is blowing through the house.
The Miata has been jump-started after a long cold winter in the garage.

Life is good.

I'm as much a fan as anyone of really well-done April Fools gags. (Google Romance comes to mind). However, an April Fools prankster oversteps their bounds when they say things like, "It's a shame this happens on April Fools Day because nobody will believe it," and then of course, when you click the link, it is, in fact, an April Fools joke.

Because (in my not-so-humble-opinion) April Fools jokes are supposed to hook you in with their believability (or, in some cases, their downright outlandishness, such as the Wireless Extension Cord), but what they're not supposed to do is acknowledge April Fools day and be like "this isn't an April Fools joke", and then actually be one.

That's just silly, IMHO, and shows weak imagination. But, of course, it was a /. article, what can I expect?