Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Licking Douglas Adams Addiction

The current US first class postage rate is 41c, which means the next rate increase will probably put it at 45c, or maybe 44c. Let's petition the Post Office to raise rates to 42c RIGHT NOW, just so they can issue a Douglas Adams stamp.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Crank Up Your Thermostat

For many years now, scammers have been telling us not to set our thermostats too high, because "Setting your thermostat higher doesn't make it get warmer any faster". Of course, we all (including the scammers) know this is a lie. Here's why: thermostats are often located in drafty hallways. When the heat turns on, these hallways get warm quickly (convection heating), and the thermostat turns off EVEN THOUGH THE REST OF THE HOUSE REMAINS COLD. Of course, the overheated hallway's heat eventually passes (via much slower conduction) to the rest of the house, at which point the heat finally turns on again. This process repeats, but the house is heated much slower than if you'd just cranked the thermostat to begin with. This winter, crank your thermostat to keep your house warm. And maybe crank it just a couple of extra degrees just to show the scammers that their stupid little lie never worked.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Hugh Laurie: American Folk Singer?

On the British comedy series "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" (you have to use the quotation marks as Steven Fry often points out), Hugh Laurie often pretends to be an American folk singer, with ludicrous and humorous folk songs. Although this is always played for laughs, his 4th series tribute to Steffi Graf is really quite amazing. After hearing it, I think Hugh Laurie would make a better American folk singer than most REAL American folk singers. Of course, most Americans hear Hugh Laurie's American accent from that House show, but I think he missed his calling.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Why Blogging Sucks, Part II

A good card for people who blog (including me) would be: NO ONE GIVES A RAT'S ASS WHAT YOU THINK!!!

Friday, December 7, 2007

Let's Do The Time Warp Again

When I first started blogging, I decided that one of the features I wanted was the ability to time-delay posts-- in other words, write a post one day, but not have it show up until a few days later (I wouldn't want to unleash these pearls of wisdom to the world TOO fast ::GRIN::). I eventually ended up writing a Perl script that uses Google's gdata API (the Perl script itself mostly just calls curl -- the only real challenge was figuring out how to do labels, since Google's API doesn't mention these) and using the Unix at command for scheduling. This appears to be working (I'm actually writing this post on December 1st). The sad thing is that I enjoyed working on this blog-delay code more than I enjoy writing blog entries... It's sorta like the kid who likes the box better than the present, sigh!

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Songs of Flatland

The perfect song for a 3-dimensional being entering FlatLand would be Take My Breadth Away.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Hart 2 Hart

As a Netflix member, I've noticed that virtually all DVDs are one-sided. This is mostly so the DVD creator can screenprint one side to tell you how cool the DVD is and why you should buy it (something that's kinda lost on Netflix subscribers-- by the time I see the DVD in-person, I've already decided to watch it!). However, a few DVD manufacturers opt to use the full capacity of the DVD by burning video on both sides. Oddly, Ive only found 2 TV series so far that do this: Newhart (the old Bob Newhart issue, not his Vermont-based dream show that hasn't yet been released to DVD, sadly), and Reba. Reba stars Reba McEntire, but the characters name is Reba HART, and two of Newhart's characters have made guest appearances on the show (Julia Duffy and Peter Scolari). Its weird that the two shows with double-sided DVDs both have HART in them, hmmmm. I wonder if Hart 2 Hart has double sided DVDS ?!

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

The Bitch Is Back

In 1957, the Russians launched Laika (a female dog) into space. She was expected to die when her air supply ran out. The Russians lost track of her capsule, and its never been found. Although its probably one of the pieces of space debris orbiting our planet, there's a more sinister possibility (Leah Rewolinski also mentions this in one of her Star Wreck novels). What if Laika was rescued from her capsule by an intelligent race of dogs (possibly from Sirius, the dog star ?), and is even now guiding an army of intelligent dog soldiers to Earth to seek her revenge. Man, that would be a BITCH!

Monday, December 3, 2007

.ws does NOT mean website

The scammers who sell .ws domains tell us that ws stands for website. WRONG!!! It's the country code for Samoa, which used to be known as Western Samoa (thus the .ws). Even though ICANN has defined a few new top level names, such as .AERO, .WS was NOT one of them. I believe the WS scammers should be punished by being forced to refund all the money they've ever received because of this fraud, and should be banned for life from ever selling any other domains. Who's with me ?

Sunday, December 2, 2007

That Big Gray Little Brown Book

I have a very short ... hmmm... what ? errr... attention span. I can never get through novels, and I don't even like reading long short stories-- if it's over 10 pages, I wont bother (I once made an exception for Beggars in Spain, and throughly enjoyed it, but that's just because Nancy Kress is an outstanding writer!!!). that's why I was deliriously happy when I found Little and Brown's (that's the publisher's name-- the actual book is big and gray) Barlett's Book of Anecdotes (they're more famous for their book of quotations, but those are too short even for me!) . It's really a reference work that's not meant to be read straight through, but I broke the rules and read it anyway. Its FANTASTIC!!! Each anecdote is like a little tiny story of its own, and its only 1/10th to 1/5th of a page. Even the longest stories are only half a page long!. Its like having a book of 1000+ short stories. The only thing that might beat it is The Complete Peanuts Collection -- over 17,000 short stories that are mostly pictures. WOW!

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Why Blogging Sucks

The initial concept behind blogging was that it let people POST content to the web, instead of just read what others had posted. Of course, anyone with half a brain and an ISP could post using FTP, but this was apparently too hard for the average person. Honestly, if you're too dumb to use FTP, your opinions are probably not worth hearing. Of course, things like trackbacks and comments have made blogs a LITTLE more useful, but I can't believe that most people still think of a browser textbox as the right place to edit a document for the web. SHEESH!