That would explain the crankiness of some co-workers. Full story. Link via BB.
Newly Discovered Planet Hurt by Wal Mart Addition
Scientists have discovered a new planet out past Pluto, and have named it Sedna. But apparently somebody’s already discovered it, as there is already a Wal-Mart on it.
You’ve got 30 Minutes to Make Your Picks
If you want to get your Yahoo! NCAA Pick ’em picks in, you’ve got 30 minutes to do so. And if you sign up, feel free to join my group. Group ID: “92718”. Password: “ub”, and we can see who’s good at randomly guessing and pretending to know what they’re doing (I know it’s probably not me).
Update: Too late to get the pick ’ems in, but if you’ve already done it, feel free to join my group and see who gets bragging rights :-).
The Funniest US Senators?
This is pretty good. Zug.com sent letters to all 100 senators pretending to be a 10-year-old boy dying of cancer. He asked them what their favorite joke is. Some responded with cheesy, but funny, jokes, while others didn’t respond at all. Funny stuff.
Hollywood needs to police itself before blaming others
The piracy wave vexing Hollywood has hit particularly close to home for one studio, The Smoking Gun has learned. Secret Service agents last month raided the Los Angeles home of a Fox Entertainment employee suspected of involvement in an online conspiracy to distribute pirated films like Old School, X-Men 2, and The Matrix Reloaded. According to the below Secret Service affidavit, more than a dozen illegally duplicated movies were actually housed on a Fox computer server (along with pirated computer software and games), where they were accessed by members of a “warez” group trafficking in such bootlegged material.
It just makes me laugh when all the Hollywood studios are paying all this money for ads and wasting time during the Oscars to tell people not to pirate, and they can’t even police their own employees.
Bend school dance shut down early because of naughtiness
Saturday night, the annual Sadie Hawkin’s Dance at Bend HS was closed down early because the students at the dance were getting a bit too cozy:
“Quite honestly it’s like having sex with your clothes on,” said Mary McDermott, a teacher and the school’s activities director, describing the style of dancing.
Apparently there were signs on the doors said no freak dancing and no grinding (like high schoolers are going to read that stuff). Now, I understand their reasoning for wanting them to not do it, but it just reminds me of the old lady when I was growing up that used to walk around school dances with a ruler and make sure you were 12-inches apart when you were dancing. By being bastards about it, they’ve all but encouraged it from happening as much as possible in the future. Ask the offenders to leave — forcefully if you have to — but don’t blow the rest of the dance for everybody who are there to just have fun and be social.
What gets me is that I know Bend HS, and all the other high schools in Bend, have a tropical-themed dance every year, and they let that go on when the women and men are about as close to naked as you can get in public. At least the folks at Sadies had their clothes on.
Update: Link to story added. Duh…
For the man who has everything
Go buy him a yacht and a remote control to drive it with. It’s only a cool $4,495.
More jobs coming in to US than going out of it
Apparently other countries outsource to the U.S. more than we outsource to them.
The value of US exports of legal work, computer programming, telecommunications, banking, engineering, management consulting and other private services jumped to $131.01 billion in 2003, up $8.42 billion from the previous year, the Commerce Department reported.
Imports of such private services-a category that encompasses US outsourcing of call centres and data entry to developing nations, among other things-was $77.38 billion for the year, up 7.94 billion from 2002.
So there’s over a $50 billion difference? Granted, this isn’t an industry-specific study, but it is interesting to think about, and enough, really, to quiet some of outsourcing’s opponents (I don’t really not what to think about it, so don’t ask me).
Are hyphenated Yahoo names that rare?
Almost a year ago, I posted a conversation I had with a “Yahoo Admin.” He IMed me because he was supposedly looking out for my best interests when he noticed my Yahoo profile name has a dash in it, and was making sure nobody hacked into my account. Apparently they’re very rare lately, and aren’t allowed to be created when you register with Yahoo anymore, and haven’t been for a while (nor are IDs that start with numbers). I registered with Yahoo years ago when they still allowed it. I don’t remember back then why I decided to put in the dash, but I think it was because I just registered my full name (with a space) so when they setup the profile system, they put in a hyphen. Anyway, apparently I’m special <shrugs>.
The only reason I mention it is because I had yet another person asking about it today, even offering me “favours” for it. I didn’t ask what that meant, and I’d prefer not to know, but told him I’d sell it to him for $8,000. He wasn’t interested, nor was I in selling it, but I figured if I throw it out there for an obscene amount of money, maybe somebody will bite and I can pay off my medical bills.
So I make this offer: If anybody out there is so hung up on having a Yahoo profile name with a dash, it’s all yours for $8,000 USD. I already have registered the name without the dash, so if somebody’s really wanting the hyphen, it’s all yours for the asking price.
Update on 3/1/07: OK, I’ve let this thread go on long enough. I was cool with it until people started acting like I was encouraging and endorsing this. Comments are now closed.