Use this handy calculator to figure out how much your illegal hoard is worth.
Month: August 2005
b3ta Link Dump
One of my favorite e-mail newsletters (one that provides a ton of content for this site) is the weekly e-mail sent out via b3ta. It’s always full of great links, and here are a bunch that have shown up in the last two newsletters that I haven’t had time to just blog individually.
- The Triple Tofu Tower — a parody commercial for a Vegan super-sized fast-food joint.
- In follow up to an older post about office warfare, here’s a site that offers a few more weapons (the site’s, currently gone over it’s bandwidth allocation — if anybody has a mirror, feel free to share).
- Cool looking super-slow-motion video clips.
- DateLance.com a site created by some of the guy’s friends who really think he needs to get a date.
- Tech Support Woes (fun Flash animation)
- Cursor Thief, a brilliant but infuriating little flash game.
- The ketchup-crapping robot
Enjoy!
Just So I Don’t Forget The URL
As many of you know, I manage the Bend Blogs site. In my search for software to power it, I wanted something that was PHP-powered, and preferred a MySQL back-end. I also wanted something simple, and I came across lilina. It’s simple, and it works, but not as cleanly or as nicely as I’d like. Version .7 is powering the site right now, and I considered moving the site to a more up-to-date lilina-variant.
At this point, however, I think I’m just going to ditch lilina. Why? Because with a bit of work, I can get the whole thing working as an actual blog, powered by MovableType (which is far easier for me to work with), displaying local blog posts as blog posts on bendblogs.com with comments, permalinks, archives, etc… , as well as a combined RSS feed for all. How? With reBlog, which I REALLY wish I would’ve found a few months ago when I threw bendblogs.com online.
So expect an overhaul of bendblogs.com sometime in the near future. Otherwise, if anybody has a blog I should add to the site, let me know. I’m up to 91 right now, and I’m sure I’m missing some (I know I’m missing some, as some folks requested their site not be listed, which is fine), but if you have any to send over, comment here.
My First Legal Threat
Actually, it wasn’t so much of a threat but just a sternly-worded letter telling me to remove information that was slanderous to their client. Since they didn’t give me the URL that had what they were referring to, I couldn’t find anything in regards to their letter on my site. So after a few e-mail exchanges with the lawyers, I figured out which little comment they were referring to (it wasn’t anything I wrote, it was a comment on the site), and removed the comment. While generally I’d fight to keep comments, I wasn’t really in the mood considering the nature and the content of the comment.
If you’re wondering the entry in question that had the naughty comment, the entry is here.
So this site is now less one comment. But since, thanks to unintentionally-good Google placement about a TV show I don’t watch whose third season starts tonight, I’ve getting more than enough comments on some of my other (older) entries to make up for it.
Something New For the Periodic Table
A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest chemical yet known to science. This new element has been tentatively named “Governmentium”.
Governmentium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton like particles called peons.
Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.
A tiny amount of Governmentium causes one reaction to take over four days to complete when it would normally take less than a second.
Governmentium has a normal half-life of four years; it does not decay but instead, it undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.
In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.
This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to speculate that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypocritical quantity is referred to as “Critical Morass.” You will know it when you see it.
When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element which radiates just as much energy since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.
Thanks Yoleen for that.
That Was Random
I have to admit that I’m actually occasionally reading a LiveJournal site (other than JWZ‘s): Customers Suck. Dealing with the tourists here in Sunriver, I’ve dealt with my fair share of idiots (people driving the wrong way around the circles are always entertaining — and dangerous), but today I got a very random phone call. While I generally don’t answer the phones here, I do on occasion when we’re busy. Here’s how the conversation went…
Me: Hi, this is Jake, how can I help you?
Confused Old Feller (further known as COF): I’m trying to get a hold of the Newport News Better Business Bureau.
Note for the Geographically Inclined: Newport News, VA, is nearly 3,000 miles from here.
Me: Sir, you’ve called Sunriver, Oregon, which is several thousand miles from Virginia.
COF: Well that’s what the informational lady gave me as a number. So you can’t help me?
Me: Probably not.
COF: Fer christ sakes…the phone system’s always been in the toilet since they broke up Ma Bell.
Me: Knowing a bit about the history of the breakup of AT&T, and how it’s actually benefitted customers, for the most part, I just bit my tongue…
COF: So you can’t help me then?
Me: If you wait a minute I may be able to get online and see if I can find the number, if one exists?
COF: No, don’t worry about it — I don’t trust the Internet. Naybe you can help me with the question I had.
Me: Oh, this outta be good… Sure, go ahead, and I’ll see what I can do.
COF: Well, I’m seeing these ads for Government land sales, and if I send it $20, I can get a listing of land foreclosures in my area where I can buy dirt cheap land. Oregon’s listed as one of the states where this land is available. You know anything about this?
Me: Where did you get the ad?
COF: It was on a sign, hung on a post down the street from my house.
Me: Shaking my head… Sir, it’s more than likely a scam, as that information is generally available for free from your local government.
COF: Do you have their number?
Me: Banging my head…. No sir, I don’t. I’m in Central Oregon, and don’t know a thing about the government on the East Coast.
COF: Isn’t it the same as yours?
Me: Last I checked, we have different state governments.
COF: Silence
Me: Is there anything else I can help you with?
COF: So you don’t think I should send these people money?
Me: No, sir, I really don’t.
COF: Why not?
Me: Really, sir, since I don’t know a thing about government foreclosures and land sales in your area, I really don’t know. It just sounds like a scam. But go ahead and send them the $20, and let me know if you strike it rich.
COF: I’ll be sure to do that. Thanks for all your help!
Me: No problem, sir, you have a nice day.
Inglish Mad Ezy
Editors Note: This one caused the spell check to throw a fit…
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as “Euro-English”.
In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.
The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of “k”. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f”. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.
Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”.
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensiblriten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.
Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.
Thanks Susan for the funny.
Move Over “Vagina Monologues”
Here comes “The Holy Phallus.”
Update on 8/16: The Reviews are in (thanks Cheryl).
This Is An Accident Waiting To Happen
So apparently the astronauts that are on the space shuttle Discovery are going to have to repair their own ship. They’re going to have to do something no other space crew has done: send a astronaut beneath the shuttle to repair filler sticking out between the tiles on the ship’s belly.
I’m no expert at all this stuff, but while they are in (roughly) zero gravity in outer space, they’re going to be orbiting Earth, right? That means they’re be traveling through space really stickin’ fast while they’re doing this repair. There is obviously little room for error. It just makes me think of something I heard on the radio this morning: It’d be like if you were flying down the highway at 100 mph and realized your tailpipe was a bit loose, and wanted one of your passengers to crawl under the car (as you continued to haul tail down the highway) and fix it.
I just hope they all make it home safe.
Lots of Local Clicks
Just for kicks, I looked through some of the totally meaningless click totals on some of the posts from some of the local bloggers over on ORblogs, and I think it’s official: Jon has by far the most clicks on a single post with 65 clicks (as of this writing) on his post about the local Donald Trump urban legend. That topic also garnered Shannon 11 clicks on a related post. The most I’ve ever done was 30 clicks on a post entitled “Don’t Have Sex With The Babysitter” which goes to show you what people will click on over there. For other locals, it looks like Grumpy Forester had a 20-click post, Jon got 14 on his brew site, and Chris got 11 on one of his.
I also looked at the overall post click total for each of our sites, and it looks like the top-five rounds up like so:
Now, if you think I have a lot, realize I have nothing on Jack Bog whose sitting at 4,428 post clicks. I have no idea if he has the most post clicks on there (I’m sure you know, Paul), but he certainly has to be pretty close to the top.
On a semi-related note, I added several more blogs and journals to BendBlogs today and plan on updating the site to a updated version of the software and some point, and hopefully hacking together an RSS feed for the thing. We’ll see how it goes and how much time allows (in other words, don’t hold your breath). I do need to clean out some dead links, but that’s another project for down the road.