I seem to forget about these every year until J sends me a link (yeah, I'm not sure what else he does all day long either but that's neither here nor there). NEway, these are truly so-sad-they're-funny blurbs about really poor business people / decisions. VERY funny stuff.
The 100 Dumbest Moments in Business - 2005 Edition
Is it only a matter of time? Stay tuned.
Well, today's my birthday which means another year is in the books.
And thus He said that all was good in the land and the peoples of the world celebrated in joyous fashions reserved for kings and emperors.
Holla Back! :-)
For the second time in under a week, inclement weather supposedly caused Rte. 22 to grind to a slow crawl making my commute over twice as long as the norm. I think that blaming inclement weather is about as accurate as saying "guns kill people" when, in actuallity my redneck friends, it's PEOPLE that kill people. Inclement weather doesn't cause traffic delays, PEOPLE do.
What's becoming more and more obvious to me is that a vast majority of these SUV's in the valley are 2-wheel-drive! For all of you cheap bastards that bought a gas-guzzling SUV with 2-wheel-drive, WTF were you thinking?!? You probably own a V-6 Camaro or Mustang too!
In regards to the gentleman in his Mercedes G-Wagon doing 20mph with no one near him on Rte. 22, for shame! That thing can climb Mt. Everest for God's sake, move your ass!
I just finished Michael Crichton's newest book, State of Fear. I'll preface my recommendation by sharing my existing fondness of Crichton's books as good, fairly quick reads with fairly good science. Most of his books (and, yes, I have read most of them)are a great balance of plot, character and science all packaged in a nice, pulpy exterior that facilitates completion in a single weekend.
That being said, this book is a MUST read for EVERYONE and that's not mere hyperbole. Sure, the story itself might not be the best you've ever read but it's the relevance and outright contradiction of many commonly held public beliefs which struck me as fascinating. I don't want to give any more away because I don't want you to have too many expectations as you read it for fear that you will simply find what you think you're looking for (which will mean more when you finish the book).
NEway, I recommend it. Don't read the synopsis on the back, don't read any reviews (I haven't yet) don't ask me about what happens, just read it and tell me what you think.
I just read through this month's issue of pop. sci. and damn, it was a pretty neat issue. The cover reads "The World's Fastest" and the feature article outlines everything from the fastest tectonic plate to the fastest a human has ever traveled. Some things were admittedly mundane but I found the fastest temperature swing, rainfall and snowfall unbelievable.
Temperature Swing - Loma, Montana saw a rise of 103 degrees Fahrenheit between January 14 and 15, 1972. The low was -54, the high 49.
Rainfall - Between July 25 and 26, 1979, tropical storm Claudette dropped 43 inches of rain near Alvin Texas.
Snowfall - 75.8 inches of snow fell in Silver Lake, Colorado between April 14 and 15, 1921.
Sidenote - the world's fastest roller coaster (when it debuts in April of this year at Six Flags in Jackson, New Jersey) will "blast from a standstill to 128 mph in 3.5 seconds", damn.
Also, for Jon, there's an article on everything you need to build your own media center PC ... I know you're looking into it right now.
I know I already promised to get a decent post up hear to tell everyone what new hardware / software I got to digitize my entire CD collection. I don't quite have that post together but I MUST share my surprise at Musicmatch's ability to label some of my more obscure music CD's. Sure, it slipped on some imports and I hardly have a heavy independent label presence in my library but, overall, I am very impressed.
I was MOST impressed with a shot in the dark I took on my old Mechwarrior II game CD that came with my old Sidewinder joystick. It took it in stride so I moved on to the Ghost Bear Extension Pack for Mechwarrior II and it labeled everything on that CD without a hitch as well.
For those that use Musicmatch for their digital music collection, what is the most surprised you've been when you've asked it to auto-label your files? Have you had a similarly good experience or has it been nothing but frustrating?
I was unlucky enough to answer a call from a client with a "printer issue" this morning. After 45 minutes, all of the problems were resolved. If it wasn't so sad, the call and subsequent events would have been a comedy of errors. Luckily, I don't handle billing. I help clients, I mark my time down, I move on.
Somehow, this client had not once, not twice, but thrice failed to check the cable between the printer and the computer. This is not rocket science. I happened to ask her to check that cable right after I made sure the printer was turned on and there were no error lights on it (which was my very first series of questions). I asked again later after exhausting most other possibilities, still, the client said that she just checked and everything was solid. Only after another 15 minutes of futility did she FINALLY re-check the cable and, of course, up pops the "new hardware found" balloon in Windows.
I hope she can explain to her boss that she just cost the company quite a bit of money for her stupidity.
Hmmm, whatever would I do with a post where no one can comment?
hmmmm ... (devilish ideas abound)
SO, NY baseball teams have, once again, spent a ton of money in the offseason. I'm not here to judge. Quite frankly, I couldn't care less how much they spend on their payroll.
Granted, it's far too early to tell with any certainty but, who do you think had the better offseason thus far? I leave "better" intentionally vague and open to interpretation. If you'd like to consider image, finances, ability, age, historical performance, etc. be my guest.
I just ran to Burger King for lunch. While I was in the car, I heard the last half of From a Distance by Bette Midler. Hahaha, I honestly laughed out loud. Sure, I knew I hated that song and all of Bette Midler's work but, damn, I couldn't stop laughing. I'm laughing now just writing this. What WERE people thinking?!? Hahahaha.
You may or may not have noticed that I was on quite a posting roll. I don't think I've ever posted for an entire work week and, truth be told, I had planned to post on Sat. and Sun. as well but I became a bit under the weather. In addition, I managed to persuade AMEX to let me buy some more toys with my dashing smile. Those toys also took up more of my weekend than I had planned. Fear not, I'm back.
I'll try to put together a nice post on exactly what hardware / software I got together this past weekend but as of this moment, I don't have anything prepared. Work was actually pretty hectic today and when I got home I had an email waiting for me from a web client that said "ah, there seems to be a very old version of the website up and none of the links are working". Yeah as if it wasn't bad enough that I saw four clients in one day, one of which I saw after hours trying to get their mission-critical healthcare app. back up so they could perform their medical procedures on tomorrow morning's patients, then I had to get on the phone and bitch at a web host who performed a server upgrade and didn't happen to warn anyone. Yeah, it was a bit stressful today but it all worked out and everyone was extremely appreciative for my help today. That really DOES make it all worth it sometimes ... but most of the time it's the money, j/k :-)
This is the first I've heard of the plans for the next xBox in quite a few months ... not because it's necessarily recent news, I just haven't checked into it for a while so we can avoid all of the "I can't believe you didn't know that already" stuff. NEway, the article is here.
I found this tidbit pretty interesting ... "And nine months ago, the company [Microsoft] unveiled a new development platform for game makers called XNA, which will allow PC and Xbox gamers to play together online – and plug the Xbox 2 controller into the PC." How crazy is that? I can't say I ever even thought about playing Halo2 against PC users but that's a pretty crazy idea if they can pull it off. There's plenty of other info. that makes the article above is worth reading.
On a related note ... if you haven't checked out Microsoft's XP Media Center Extender for xBox, it's pretty freakin' cool too (if it works as described) and I'm hoping that a large amount of that technology makes its way into the next generation xbox. From what I gleamed from the article above, it sounds like it just might.
Well, it's been a while but it's poll time again. This isn't going to be easy. You'll have to throw caution to the wind, live dangerously, expose your deepest, darkest secret to the world. Think you can handle it? Here goes ...
Name your biggest musical guilty pleasure. (Feel free to list a Top 3 if you're having a hard time narrowing it down to one.)
Do you slam dance to Styx? Do you get wiggity wack with Kriss Kross? Have a deep affection for Enya? Maybe a love affair with Neil Diamond? Let's have it.
I'll try to post my response by early afternoon tomorrow.
I went out on a limb and saw stage beauty tonight at the nineteenth street theater. There's really only one reason I even knew about the film and that's because Billy Crudup shares the headline with my girl Claire Danes.
I'm betting that most of the world will never see it considering there was near zero advertising and no major theater releases. That's really too bad. I enjoyed it. Sure, it was a bit slow at times but it was funnier than I anticipated and Crudup and Danes were phenomenal. Maybe I was too open-minded because Claire Danes was involved but, as far as dramas involving Shakespearean characters go, I thought it was worthwhile.
After upgrading to Trillian 3.0 on my work laptop this morning, I proceeded to "hide" my contact lists for all three chat clients I use (ICQ, IM, MSN). It was an option on a right-click menu so I thought I'd check it out. Unfortunately, once hidden, there is no "show" option. SO, I went in search of answers. I hit up google and Trillian's tech support forum. The only thing I found was a post from a guy that had the exact same problem. No solutions. SO, I went putzing around with Trillian.
Lo and behold, I found a manual fix and posted it for all to see so that other people don't have to suffer the intense, almost crippling frustration I experienced at work this afternoon :-) Here's the forum post.
I was checking out a couple new trailers today when I stumbled upon one for Kicking and Screaming. Coming from someone with a modicum of coaching experience, it looks funny enough for me to consider paying the money to see it in the theater.
After I got over the slapstick comedy of the trailer, I was saddened to realize the state of affairs in youth sports. No, I'm not talking about over-competitve parents or over-zealous coaches. I'm talking about the fact that this movie is about soccer of all things. Whatever happened to baseball as America's pasttime? I'm so sick of this soccer thing.
Apparently, it's huge in many communities and the kids love it. Maybe that's because the kids are so damn ADHD that they can't pay enough attention to learn a game as intellectually stimulating as baseball. I can teach an orangutan how to chase after a white and black ball and to try to kick it into a net. What I can't teach him is how to go down and away with a change up if the batter is over anxious and a foot off the plate.
ah, happy new year ... that's all I've got for now but I wanted to make sure I started off the year on the right foot with posting :-)