Jiffy Lube scam
Joel Grover did a 3 month investigation on Jiffy Lube and discovered that 5 out of 9 stores didn't do the work they charged him for. Upper management would not speak to them, he says, because it wasn’t to their benefit. When they tracked down the district manager, he denied his identity!
I-580 inferno
James Mosqueda, 51, was driving a gasoline truck along 580 through Emeryville Sunday morning when it skidded out of control, flipped on its side and exploded. He walked away from the site with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported. The fire was reported at 3:42 AM. The governor has declared a state of emergency and BART is offering free rides and free parking today. The Mercury has a good write-up on it. Read more...
The video this guy took is better than what I'm seeing from the news agencies. I was on this stretch of freeway less than an hour before, coming back from a party.
FHM's 100 sexiest people
FHM has released their top 100 sexiest women of 2007. I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed. Of the 100 women listed here is my top 5.
- Scarlett Johansson #3
- Angelina Jolie #8
- Elizabeth Hurley #79
- Charlize Theron #30
- Elisha Cuthbert #17
Warming times
Someone (ok it was Shannon) recently asked me if I was more emotional or more logical. I answered her by telling her that the pork loin she had just taken out of the refrigerator would warm according to Newtons law of cooling. We know the temperature of the refrigerator and we know the temperature of the room so if we can figure out the rate by which the mean warns up, we following newton's law of cooling and can determine exactly how long it will take for the loin to reach room temperature. Anyone who disagrees with Newton's logic is STOOPID! I know, I exaggerated for dramatic effect. She waited about five seconds and told me I was definitely more emotional. LOL.
Technically, I guess you could argue that the formula isn't as precise as it could be since meat has a pretty complicated structure but we're talking about a rough time estimate here. I probably should have been smarter than to have committed to a statement trying to tie something abstract (a formula) to something concrete (a pieced of meat) but it sounds like that alone may have answered her question. I was thinking more along the lines of people who might thing that peanut butter proved the existence of little gremlins that acted to heat the meat while we weren't looking.
Incidentally, it looks like its going to take several hours for that loin to warm up. I've included a graph (created using Google spreadsheets) and values using the formula from wikipedia along with the k value stolen from Dkuropatwa's roast.
A2=(35-70)*exp(-0.4377*A1)+70 Hour Temperature 0 35 1 47 2 55 3 61 4 64 5 66 6 67 7 68 8 69 9 69
Men in Black
Operation Homecoming is a documentary from PBS chronicling the war from the perspective of the people on the front lines. The clip below is an animated sequence from Colby Buzzell's story "Men in Black".
Code Guardian
This is a really cool animation set in WWII by Marco Spitoni. The second part was posted on YouTube separately. You can visit his site to download the original movies in their entirety or see any of his other films over at YouTube like
The Hunt (2001) or
Join The Empire (1998).
Twitter
What's the difference between email and instant messaging? You might say that instant messaging is, well, more instantaneous than email. In that same vein, twittering is to blogging what instant messaging is to email. Like blogging, tiwttering tells the world what you're up to. Like instant messaging, it does it in a more brief and instant format. You can even use your instant messenger client to update your twitter status by sending a message to a user name twitterim. Twittervision lets you see, graphically, the twitter status updates. So, "What are you doing?"
Divine Nectar
The DVD release of Divine Nectar, a film by Tallulah Sulis, is May 3 on Utah St in San Francisco. They have a trailer on their website.
Masturbate-a-thon
The 7th annual masturbate-a-thon happens May 26 at the Porn Palace on Jessie Street in San Francisco. This year's events will include all new record categories. Proceeds from the event go to the Center for Sex & Culture.
MapMyName
MapMyName dot com seeks to measure the number of people on the internet virally. People register on the site and pass the link onto their friends. The number of users grows exponentially and in less than a month they plan to have everyone on the internet registered. The video on the main page explains it all.
Smile in Simlish
In this video Lilly Allen does her Smile song but she does it in Simlish. How cool is that?
Blogger resources
Most bloggers are constantly trying to improve their writting. Here are a couple sources of information for doing just that.
Identifying file types
Identifying files on your system is usually pretty straghtforward. Files typeicaly have an icon that gives users a clue as to what program they work with. Sometimes however the icon that's displayed is unfamiliar to us. Here's what you can do to get some information on unfamiliar files.
The first thing you want to do is identify the extension of the file. The extension is the part of the filename following the period. In files like "apple.doc" or "banana.doc" the file extension is "doc". If you don't see the file extension it might be hidden. To un-hide the extension open a file folder, select "Tools | Folder Options... | View" and make sure the "Hide Extensions for know file types" is not checked. Once you've determined the file extension, you can look up the extension at the following web site.
Menino: 2007's big brother
Thank you Thomas M. Menino for turning 2007 into 1984. Boston is filtering websites on Boston's free wifi. It looks like the reporters without borders people are going to have to update their "Internet-Censorship Championship" chapter of the Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents; adding Boston to the likes of China, Vietnam, Tunisia, Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan. Users trying to access boingboing.net will find themselves out of luck. What would make Menino target
boingboing.net of all sites? Boingers didn't hesitate to post articles on the whole
mooninite mess when that was going on. Surprised? Don't be, with or without the Helen Lovejoys of the world screaming "Won't somebody please think of the children?", censorship is always political. Even if these two items are completely unrelated, there's no telling what the future holds. Someone's making decisions about what people should see and what they shouldn't.
This cool little
Everyone Knows Your Name
This is a public service announcement about online predators.
Date: 03.09.07 Agency: Merkley+Partners Client: AD Council Product: Online Predators Title: "Everyone Knows Your Name" ISCI: ZMLY-7501 Length: :60 Audio: Stereo
Baldwin phone message
According to news sources, Alec Baldwin left the following message on his 11 year-old daughter's phone on April 11,2007. The transcripts are also available online.
Here's another one of those cool head replacement web sites. This one is for lollapalooza. My
Bacon
As Burning Man draws closer, the seemingly limitless amount of time evaporates into our workdays and brief weekends spent doing something other than working on those all incredibly intricate costumes we said we were going to do. Looking down the barrel of the last four months or so before I wonder what new costumes I'll have with me on the playa.
Will I find myself scrambling through Humuhumu's instructions on building a bacon costume or will I take less arduous route and pick up a bacon scented tux?
Monkey sex
I'm sure you've heard the expression "monkey sex". What does it mean? This video should clear that up. Also, is sex better with a Brazilian? These
Australians seem to think so.
Praise the happy sailors
The subtitles may not be accurate, but at least they're funny.
Yes, I'm sitting, happy sailor,
Richard Gere, oh please stand down.
Poo on him, insults a builder
Arse! The joy of left hand love.
But we ate your poor corn salad,
As a bribe to help us screw.
From celestial crabs descending,
Pie for Maureen, round her shed.
Two expressos tempting us.
By her lawn shall sheep be dead.
All our strings and all out balls,
Of pure cod are fashion-ed.
How to feed 100 dogs
These dogs are so well behaved. Notice how they don't touch the food until they've been given the command.
How to get out of a car
Learn how to get out of the car without showing your hoo-hoo. I hope Britney Spears doesn't see this video.
Performance monitor
Is your machine running like a snail? Monitor your system's performance with perfmon. It comes with windows! To use it select "Start | Run..." and type "perfmon".
The three colored bars on the screen represent different parts of your machine. The yellow bar indicates how hard your memory is working. The blue bar indicates how hard your hard drive is working. The green bar indicates how hard your processor is working. Short peaks in performance are normal but if any one of the bars reaches 100% and stays there for an extended length of time, then you have problem. If this happens to you, try to identify the source of the problem. Does it occur when you run a particular program? Does it occur when you do something specific in that program? Does it occur every time? It might be helpful to reboot your machine so that you can eliminate variables introduced since the last time the machine was started. You might want to close down other applications so they don't cloud the results. Eliminate the extraneous variables and narrow the problem down to a consistently reproducible series of events.
Free web
I received an automated call from MetroPCS Monday night. The wanted to let me know that my service plan now included unlimited MetroWeb service. I had decided that I wasn't going to pay the extra $5 per month for the service but since they were giving it to me for free I thought I'd give it a try. What they had actually done was roll the feature set down so that, if I wanted, I could get the features I was getting before for $5 less. So I tried using the service and immediately realized that it wasn't working.
I called the San Ramon office, to tell them about the call and how the service didn't seem to be working. They explained that they were resetting the option on my plan and that I should reboot the phone and see if it was working. I suspect they thought I had called them on the cell phone because they were surprised when I asked them to wait on the line while I did so. When the phone rebooted it was behaving the same as it was before. I read the error to them again "Error: Unable to resolve hostname" and they suggested I come so that they could look at the phone.
I knew their drill, I'd gone through it before. They keep handing me different reconditioned phones until I stop coming back. I decided to avoid this if I could by calling their 888 support line. They asked me to reboot the phone and when I asked him to wait on the line he told me I should leave the phone off for 5 minutes before powering it back on. Clever.
I went to the store after work and it was just as I had expected. We went through 2 phones. When I left, I had a web page but when I tried the browser again from home I got the same error as before.
I tried the service again this morning and received a variety of errors including the one from the night before. I did however manage to navigate my PC's browser to get to the website they use on the phone. It's WAP so it looks like html in Firefox. In IE it just tries to download the file.
Incidentally, I tried the ##2769737 code to see if the Web Sessions settings in this phone were any different from the ones in the last phone, and they were not. There's "MPC" session. I've included the settings below. The zeros in the Gateway IP are blank when you go click on the setting itself.
Gateway IP 1: 000.000.00... Gateway 1: wap.metropcs.net Gateway IP 2: 000.000.00... Gateway 2:
July 2007 Wired
Xerox was running a promo where they printed your July issue of wired with your picture on it. It looks like I missed the promo but you can still use their tool to create your own wired cover.
Lone Sausage
If you haven't been to Spike & Mike's Festival of animation in a while, Lone Sausage Productions is the perfect place to get your fix of off beat animation. Check out their journal section for information on other interesting animations.
Kirk Cameron pitches creationism using a banana.
10 strangest non-porn sex scenes
Sand & Cotton has the list of the 10 Strangest non-porn sex scenes. They're scenes so strange, you won't be able to look away; and yes, the Team America clip is included (though the vid seems to be unavailable).
This guy goes postal trying to do a "Print Scrn".
Elton John improvises on the spot to make music out of an oven manual.
It's going to be another 12 Galaxies the Friday after next (Apr 27). The second installment of Extra Action's Spring Trilogy starts at
Industrial Chic
The Crucible is hosting their Industrial Chic Fashion and Art Show tonight from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM. Admission is $15. They're just down the street from Oakland Metro which is hosting Extra Action at 9 PM.
Dancing Matt
In 2003 Matt Harding, a 30-year-old from Connecticut left on a vacation. While on his trip, he got an idea from a friend to shoot himself dancing from wherever he went. When his video hit the internet it drew the attention of Stride long-lasting gum. Stride agreed to sponsor him for a second trip so that he could make another video. At the end of 2005 he left on his second trip. This time, his trip was 6 months long, through 39 countries and all 7 continents. I've included the outtakes video below. Others are available on his site.
That guy who dances on the internet? No, not that guy. The other one. No, not him either. I'll send you the link. It's funny.
Custom credit
Shortly after BofA purchased MBNA, they send me a letter telling me that my Linux Fund credit card with the cool penguin cartoon on it would be discontinued. My credit card would be converted to one of their mileage plus cards and that they would no longer be donating to the open source movedment. Instead, the money would go into an account that I could use to purchase things from their catalog. I'm not going to miss donating to the linux fund, though I admit it made me feel good inside. I am going to miss my penguin though. I suppose the mileage system gives me more control over what I want to do with my points. This whole thing made me wonder though. If they've made the points so flexible, why they do the same thing with the image on the card.
This Sweedish owned bank in Estonian does just that. They allow you to design your own custom credit cards. Hopefully BofA will pick up on this so I can get my penguin back. They should have implemented card customization first so that people's custom credit cards would continue uninterrupted but whatever, I suppose uninterrupted business isnt importantant for organizations like banks. Here are a couple of examples of their credit cards.
The living camera
Stephen Wiltshire has never seen Rome from above before. In the Rome documentary, he's given a 45 minute helicopter flight and has 3 days to draw a panoramic view of Rome's city center on 5.5 yards of paper.
Mocha
Mocha stars in "His first Broccoli!" If you think that's adorable, check out this baby duckling from cute overload.
A little extra action
The Extra Action Marching Band is playing this weekend at the Oakland Metro. The show starts at 9 PM, doors open at 8 PM. It's $10 to get in. Their last show was really fun, I can't wait to see them again. For more info check out my
related
blog
posts.
Daryl and John coming to town
Hall and Oates are coming to Mountain Winery in Saratoga Aug 3. They were #25 in Rolling Stone’s List of the 25 Undisputed Guilty Pleasure Bands
Someone mixed footage of Bush and the U2 song and came up with this cool video.