Month: March 2007

The Wisdom Of Children

A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids’ Table
MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.
DAD: O.K.
GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.
DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.
UNCLE: I’m having sex right now.
DAD: We all are.
[…]
How College Kids Imagine the United States Government
THE PRESENT DAY
—Did you hear the news, Mr. President? The students at the University of Pittsfield are walking out of their classes, in protest over the war.
—(spits out coffee) Wha— What did you say?
—Apparently, students are standing up in the middle of lectures and walking right out of the building.
—But students love lectures. If they’re willing to give those up, they must really be serious about this peace thing! How did you hear about this protest?
—The White House hears about every protest, no matter how small.
—Oh, right, I remember.
—You haven’t heard the half of it, Mr. President. The leader of the group says that if you don’t stop the war today they’re going to . . . to . . . I’m sorry, I can’t say it out loud. It’s just too terrifying.
—Say it, damn it! I’m the President!
—All right! If you don’t stop the war . . . they’re going to stop going to school for the remainder of the week.
—Send the troops home.
—But, Mr. President! Shouldn’t we talk about this?
—Send the troops home.

Thanks Waxy for the link.

March 21, 2007

Lessons Of The Obvious

If you’re going to hire a hitman, make sure the guy you’re looking to hire isn’t an FBI agent.

March 21, 2007

Google Link Dump

Just some random links that were Google-related that I thought I’d share with you here:

A couple of good Google Map Usages: hotspotr for finding WiFi hotspots and MapMyRun which I’ll be using once I start training again soon (first time since the surgery).
Speaking of Google Maps, there are some places in the world where you can zoom in really close on Google Maps.
Google Answers is long dead, but uclue.com has started up with nine of the 12 most prolific answerers from Google Answers (link via Waxy).
With some creative searches in Google, you can find MP3s or passwords and other juicy info.
Google’s doing a bunch of cool things with their custom home page but instead of linking to all of them here, I’ll just point you to Lifehacker’s good roundup.
Google Webmaster Central is a great resource for folks trying to keep tabs on how Google indexes their site, but if you’re looking to see who links to you, you can get some really detailed answers

Speaking of Google, at tonight’s COWPU meeting we’re going to be talking with Andre Jensen of Global Strategies International about search engine optimization, so hopefully I’ll see some of you there!

March 21, 2007

Come and Stalk Me

If you’re looking to stalk me, I’ve had a MySpace profile link on the left side of this page for quite a while. I now have profiles setup in a couple more places:

I’ve probably setup accounts at the various other social networks at one point or another, but these will undoubtedly be the only ones I ever (if at all) use (if somebody can make a piece of software that will allow them to manage all their social networking profiles from one place, they’ll be rich). But don’t expect me to post a ton of stuff on any of the sites other than maybe some professional information on LinkedIn (maybe someday they’ll fix that site so that putting in “97701” as zip code won’t show me as living in Eugene). Generally, if it’s worth posting, it’ll probably be posted here, so don’t expect anything dramatic on any of those sites or expect me to reply to messages to me via those sites (you can use the contact form on this site for that).

Feel free to add me as a friend on those sites if you actually know me or want to stalk me.

March 20, 2007

Random Videos

Here are some random videos I’ve come across recently but just haven’t had the chance to link to (videos after the jump):

(more…)

March 20, 2007

I’ve Had Bad Days At The Office…

…but nothing like this:

JUNEAU, Alaska – Perhaps you know that sinking feeling when a single keystroke accidentally destroys hours of work. Now imagine wiping out a disk drive containing an account worth $38 billion.
That’s what happened to a computer technician reformatting a disk drive at the Alaska Department of Revenue. While doing routine maintenance work, the technician accidentally deleted applicant information for an oil-funded account — one of Alaska residents’ biggest perks — and mistakenly reformatted the backup drive, as well.
There was still hope, until the department discovered its third line of defense, backup tapes, were unreadable.

Thanks Cheryl for making me feel that when I screw up, there’s always somebody who’s done it worse.

March 20, 2007