Sasquatch Hunter

Facebook's Assault On Privacy

2010-04-22T10:58:00.002-05:00

So Facebook is having their annual F8 conference this week to announce new features to the site and changes in how to develop applications. Among the mostly mundane and superficial changes like changing "became a fan of" to "like" Facebook has continued their goal of turning information you intend to share privately with friends into public content which other companies will pay them to see.

The latest development is changing how user data is handled by application developers. Until now, any information you posted to Facebook was generally visible to the developers of applications you used (like Farmville) and they were allowed to keep it for up to 24 hours after you used the application. This include your name, where you are, who you're friends with and, in some cases, if you shared it your email address and phone number. As announced this week this 24 hour restriction no longer exists. The information they collect about you and your friends is now theirs to hold on to indefinitely to use and share (and sell) as they see fit.

So, to combat this and keep your privacy private. Here are the steps to change your seeing to make yourself more secure when using these apps.

From your facebook page go to Account > Application settings
Change the Show select box to Authorized
Click the "x" next to any applications you do no use on a regular or are simple things such a quizzes or surveys. (quizzes are generally just nonsensical apps the developers make to trick you into sharing your information with them)
In the popup click "Remove" and the "Okay"
Rinse and repeat

These steps will make it so that the developers of these applications can no longer see your information you are sharing with friends. But there's one more aspect to what you share with applications that most people don't know about. That's what information you share with the applications your friends use.

There are a number of applications which also collect information on you when your friends authorize an application that you may have never heard of, let alone authorized them to see your information. These steps will protect you from sharing this information with them.

From your facebook page go to Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites
Next to "What your friends can share about you" click "Edit Settings"
On this page uncheck ALL of the boxes and click "Save Changes"

From just a quick skim of the checkboxes you can see the MASSIVE amount of information developers can get from you whether authorized them directly or not.

There are many, many more holes is Facebook's default security and privacy settings and I encourage you all to explore and change these settings as you see fit. This is a company who is in the business of making your information more public and you should ALWAYS make sure they are not making it more public than you want it to be.

On-Screen Keyboard Widget using jQuery-UI

2010-01-15T09:13:00.012-06:00

One Last Update: It's been a good while since I gave a good update on this project's state, so here's the deal. I started this project to fulfill a need I had at the time and opensourced it so someone might have a something to start with to fulfill a similar need. Turns out Mottie had a similar need and found this a good starting point. He has now built an on-screen keyboard widget much better than anything I had intended to develop. This post is staying here for reference, but I highly recommend going over to Github and get the latest version of Mottie's branch instead.

A while back I came to a project which I was developing for a small touchscreen device with a limited Linux install which may or may not have a physical keyboard attached. While our overall plan for the project was to not have any forms to fill out and thus no requirement for a keyboard, we saw a potential need down the road and rather than wait until we must have it I set out to see what kind of touchscreen keyboard jQuery could make possible.

Now, as a touchscreen with no keyboard is a very limited need in the jQuery world there were very few examples out there and none that took full advantage of many of the things build into jQuery UI. So, I new pretty early that I'd be building something from scratch. I wanted it to not just be a function you call that happened to use jQuery, but rather built as a true widget much like the datepicker built into jQuery UI. I also wanted it to be very customizable: resize with the reset of the page, have multiple keyboard layouts, even allow users to define their own keyboard layout. After a little planning and a couple days of coding here and there I came up with this:

Qwerty Text:
Qwerty Password:
Qwerty Text Area:
Dvorak:
Alphabetical:
Numeric:
Custom (HEX):
Custom (complete junk):

With a simple jQuery call and a few additional lines of css you can have any keyboard layout you could possibly need.

$('input[type=text], input[type=password], textarea')
    .keyboard({
        layout:"qwerty",
        customLayout:
            [["q w e r t y {bksp}","Q W E R T Y {bksp}"],
            ["s a m p l e {shift}","S A M P L E {shift}"],
            ["{accept} {space} {cancel}","{accept} {space} {cancel}"]]
    });

It has been tested on most browsers supported by jQuery UI and works. ~~At this time the keyboard will center itself top-to-bottom on the left side of the screen, this is a feature I plan to change so that the keyboard appears from the field you are actually editing.~~ I have they entire source available for download at both jQuery Plugins and Snipplr. Feel free to give any feedback you may have.

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

Update: It seems something in Blogger's style are forcing the keyboard to only appear at the top of the page. I'm working on it quickly, until then you are able to scroll to the top when it appears and use it.

Update: Fixed!

Update: After a little more tweeking, the positioning of the keyboard works much better across the board. All sources have been updated.

Cascading Select Boxes using jQuery

2010-01-12T15:37:00.008-06:00

Today, we came across a need for a set of cascading select boxes to filter through a list of Organizations, Territories and Location. When I've come across this need in the past I tended to use ajax calls to load a new list into the select box based on the selection. While the ajax option is good for very large sets of data to keep the initial load time of the page down, it creates a few minor issues for smaller data sets.

Returning a short list of options via ajax can be slow due to having to make a separate call to the server.
Additional requests being sent to what may already to a taxed server
There can be a good amount of server-side code that needs to be written to handle and respond to the ajax requests.

For our smaller data set we felt it would be more beneficial to start by loading all available options during page load and use jQuery to quickly filter and show only the options we need from the options already loaded into the browser. I came up with this function to do just this.

function cascadeSelect(parent, child){
 var childOptions = child.find('option:not(.static)');
 child.data('options',childOptions);
 
 parent.change(function(){
  childOptions.remove();
  child
   .append(child.data('options').filter('.sub_' + this.value))
   .change();
 })
 
 childOptions.not('.static, .sub_' + parent.val()).remove();
}

I was shocked at the ridiculously small amount of code needed to provide this functionality. After pre-building may page with a form containing the select boxes and added a class to each option in the child select to define which option from the parent it was associated with ("sub_1" where parents value is "1"), simply call the function with the parent and child defined as jquery objects:

cascadeForm = $('.cascadeTest');
orgSelect = cascadeForm.find('.orgSelect');
terrSelect = cascadeForm.find('.terrSelect');
locSelect = cascadeForm.find('.locSelect');
 
cascadeSelect(orgSelect, terrSelect);
cascadeSelect(terrSelect, locSelect);

And voila:

Organization:
Territory:
Location:

I've posted a full sample html at Snipplr. Feel free to comment and give suggestions there. As with all my code it's licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Feel free to consume and improve accordingly.

Update: ::face-palm:: In my joy of completing a task that seemed to good to be true, I posted this before realizing it was to good to be true. At this time I've only had a chance to test this code in Firefox. After an attempt to show it off, it appears to not work properly in WebKit browsers and maybe others. I will run it through the full gauntlet soon and do by best to ensure cross-browser compatibility for all browsers officially support by jQuery.

Update 2: After a little work and a better understanding of what doesn't work to "hide" options in browsers other than Firefox, I now have code that does just as I explained above but works cross-browser. I have updated the code above as well as the full example on Snipplr. Again, please feel free to give any feedback you might have.

Confirmed Working:

Firefox (3.6 RC1, 3.5, 3.0, 2.0, 1.5, 1.0)
IE (8, 7, 6 SP2, 6)
Safari 4
Opera (10, 9)
Chrome 4

JQuery: Scrollable Table with Frozen Headers

2009-06-11T11:41:00.039-05:00

After much difficult searching to no avail, I finally have completed a jQuery based process to create a scrollable table with fixed headers. The following code requires the header rows to be within a "thead" tag, the table body in a "tbody" tag and the entire table in a tag with the "overflow" style set to "auto" or "scroll".

This script creates a new table cloning the "thead" section and attaching it to the absolute top of the containing element so that it does not move when the containing element is scrolled.

As always I release this script under Creative Commons license, and is compatible with all browsers which are compatible with jquery except for Firefox 2.0 (a few minor alignment issues i plan to fix when i have time).

EDIT: Code Move to Snipplr

Tested and working with:

Internet Explorer(Win) (6.0, 7.0, 8.0)
Firefox(Win, Linux) (3.0)
Safari(Win, Mac) (3.0)
Chrome (Win) (2.0)
Opera (Win) (9.6)

Tested and having issues with:

Firefox (All) (1.0, 1.5, 2.0)

Edit:

It was brought to my attention that I forgot to include an example. So here's a quick and dirty one. I've tried to mark it clearly in the source so it will be easy to grab.

Build and style your table inside a div that has a limited height and "overflow" style at auto
Include the function above in your scripts
When document is "ready" call "scrollableTable()" function with the container of the table (".scrollContainer") and, if you choose, the class name to be applied to the new header as arguments.

I will try to type up some better documentation on this and clean up the code a bit, but in the mean time please let me know of any issues you may run into so that I can fix them soon.

Column 1	Column 2	Column 3	Column 4
data 1	data 2	data 3	data 4
data 1	data 2	data 3	data 4
data 1	data 2	data 3	data 4
data 1	data 2	data 3	data 4
data 1	data 2	data 3	data 4
data 1	data 2	data 3	data 4
data 1	data 2	data 3	data 4
data 1	data 2	data 3	data 4
data 1	data 2	data 3	data 4
data 1	data 2	data 3	data 4
data 1	data 2	data 3	data 4
data 1	data 2	data 3	data 4
data 1	data 2	data 3	data 4

Update 10/27/09:

This project has fallen by the wayside due to lack of time and a redesign of the site I needed this script for anyway. I may get back to it later, but in the mean time, I've moved the code to Snipplr (link above). Feel free to further comment there. I would be happy to include any contributions/bug fixes anyone may have or link to a derivative work anyone else may be working on.

On Patriotism

2008-08-12T12:39:00.004-05:00

No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot. If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn’t. I claim that difference. I am the only person in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism.

- Mark Twain

Free mp3 player for all

2008-05-30T08:22:00.019-05:00

So I got tired of never being able to find a simple and free Flash mp3 player for my site so I just built one. I'm throwing the code into the wild under Creative Commons, so if you want it, it's yours. I'm also making the original FLA available too, so you can customize it more if you'd like. Undone MP3 Flash Player Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported SWF - ~~FLA(source) - Doc~~ - ZIP (Source)

<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" style="" id="audio0" name="audio0" src="unMP3.swf" quality="high" wmode="transparent" flashvars="songUrl=song.mp3&autoplay=0&color1=999966&color2=002233&txtColor=778855" width="175" height="25"></embed>

FlashVars: Required-

SongUrl - required - URL of mp3 file to play

Optional-

autoplay - (default: 0) set to 1 to autoplay when movie is loaded
Color1 - HEX value of color for player background and progress bar
Color2 - HEX value of color for load progress bar and play button
txtColor - HEX value of color for text and border of player

_{Jonathan Coulton - Code Monkey}

The tradition of liberty is all

2008-05-15T11:30:00.003-05:00

"Before we know where we are, we shall have the full apparatus of totalitarianism. This young boy is a living witness to these diabolical proposals. The people - the common people - must know, must see. There are great traditions of liberty to defend. The tradition of liberty is all. The common people will let it go. Oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life - that is why they must be led..."

- Mr. Alexander - Clockwork Orange

Pentagon Plans to Develop Green Zone With Condos & Malls

2008-05-05T19:44:00.000-05:00

Forget the rocket attacks, concrete blast walls and lack of a sewer system. Now try to imagine luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad. That’s all part of a 5yr. development “dream list” or what some dub an improbable fantasy to transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone from a walled fortress into a centerpiece.

_{Army Times - Via Digg}

Really?!?!?! What the fuck??? $5 BILLION to build a mall, hotels and condos in the Green Zone!!! IN IRAQ!!!! That's 5,000,000,000 dollars. That's money well spend. This is a five year plan, put together by the Pentagon. Which means at least five more years over there, spending our money over there, as our streets fall apart, our gas and food prices go through the roof and our borders stay porous and unprotected.

Now to be fair, when we went in, I did feel we needed to go in, because many believed Iraq was a threat, many of us did believe they had the weapons, and many did believe they had something to do with 9/11. But we took out the government that would have been a threat. Though I'm not sure enough to say the weapons were never there, we did not find ANYTHING. And it has been proven they had NOTHING to do with 9/11.

Now, to stay there, we're told that we are there to promote democracy and freedom. This is not democracy or freedom. This is a nation telling another nation, which they are occupying, what their local economy and government needs to do. If this was democracy and freedom their government would have the freedom to decide what commercial centers are built and who would be building there. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be the Marriot Hotel chain. It would be local business owners, where the money would stay in their economy. It would the local Iraqis working in and owning the shops. It would not be a bunch of Americans bringing their westernized shopping centers.

“When you have $1 billion hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbors are.”

Why are $1 billion just "hanging out there"??? If you have 1,000 paid employees lying around you either put them to work or send them home. Instead of building an amusement park for the people who are not Iraqis that are living there, how about we give control over to the elected officials of that government and let them decide what is best for them. If they want us out, which they have said repeatedly they do, then we should get out. If they choose to elect the leaders which do not agree with our vision, then that is too bad. If that is what they choose then allow them to have it.

"Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad, perhaps, in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?" A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

This is not, or maybe it's "should not be", what we are over there for. We are claiming to be over there helping people rebuild their lives, not to run it for them. Let them rebuild their lives and get the hell out of their way.

Under the Pines

2008-04-25T13:05:00.004-05:00

It's that time again. Another Samsquinch trip this weekend. Here's some inspiration to make you wish you were there. _{Jonathan Coulton - Under the Pines} Photos when I return. _{P.S. Don't tell Leah, but I borrowed her swf.
P.P.S. I built my own mp3 player.}

I'm an internet star

2008-03-27T18:11:00.000-05:00

Ok,not really, but I was talked about on Popsiren this week. WTF? They were talking about a Greasemonkey script I made to make Digg and Instapaper work together. I've made a couple more, check them out here. Also, check out the ladies over at Popsiren. It's a great new Rev3 show about culture, tech and DIY.

Strolling Down Highway 61

2008-01-14T11:32:00.000-06:00

I can't figure out how or why i haven't posted about this yet. thesixtyone is a social music discovery site/game. It's a user/band submitted listing of music, currently mostly small and unknown artists, where the listeners "bump" songs they like. Each bump you hand out costs a certain number of points depending on the popularity of the song (more popular costs less), but if a song becomes more popular after you've bumped it you are awarded points for finding them early. So far I've discovered a number of artists I probably would have never found otherwise, I'll list some below. Design-wise, it's a great looking site and the perfect use of AJAX. when you are listening to a song you can still browse the site without the song stopping or pausing. If your are a lover of fine music, head over and see what you can find. If you are an artist who loves making music head over and start uploading. My profile Artists I found: Alexa Ray Joel Wonkavision We Were Pirates Meiko

2007-12-28T02:14:00.000-06:00

No matter how many times I see 25th Hour, this scene blows my mind every time. Along side the ending monologue by Brian Cox, this is definitely one of the best scenes from any movie in the last 10 years, if not ever.

Best Music I Discovered in Aught-Seven

2007-12-27T14:58:00.000-06:00

Over the last year, I've found a huge amount of new artists. A great, new punk band doesn't come along every day, so I expanded my musical taste a little. Some of these have been around for a while, but I just found them. Check them out, you just may enjoy them too and to see my latest discoveries check out my Last.fm page. In no particular order: Lily Allen Feist Coconut Records The Concretes Damien Rice The Format The Kooks The Polyphonic Spree The Relationship Spoon Recent Discoveries I've yet to pass judgment on: Sara Bareilles KT Tunstall Dirty Pretty Things Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Best Live Sets: Flaming Lips Shiny Toy Guns** _{**As much as I can't stand their cd, This was shockingly one of the best sets I've seen in years.}

That time of year again

2007-12-25T21:17:00.001-06:00

Merry Christmas all. Lock yourself inside tomorrow and avoid the nightmare of the day after Christmas return lines. If I don't come up with anything witty to say between now and then, happy new year and enjoy the next week of work while I sit on my butt at home on vacation.

Stand and be heard

2007-11-26T11:50:00.000-06:00

"When the government fears the people, you have liberty. When the people fear the government, you have tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson I'm tired of hearing everyone piss and moan about all of the problems they have with the government. The conseratives are mad because of the "liberal" majority in Congress and the liberals are pissed at the "conserative" president. Everyone freaked out when the power in Congress shifted from Republican to Democrat, everyone thought there would be some mass correction of all the "wrongs." Now a year later and the Democrats are playing to the Republican leadership more than the Republicans did. It's no longer about left v. right, Republican v. Democrat, conservative v. liberal. If anything, it's authoritarian v. libertarian. I don't mean the registered Libertarian party, I mean everyone, anywhere who supports the freedoms and liberties guaranteed to us by both God and the Constitution. At war or not. National threat or not. The laws and cultural changes being made now are removing these liberties from the people and giving the power to the government. Whether these laws are abused by this leadership, the next, or one a hundred years from now, these are the laws and cultural attitudes that create authoritarian governments, both fascist and communist. Everyone gripes about the way things are being handled on both sides, then crawling into their safety zone of Paris Hilton and E! News. It's one matter to be "entertained" by such outlets, but it becomes an issue when an entire nation is so infatuated with such mush that they can do nothing more than sit and make armchair quarterback comments about what's right and wrong with our nation. If laws like the "Patriot" Act and the National ID act are not fought, every citizen can be tracked, under surveillance and possible imprisoned for the simple exercise of practicing these rights. Update: Exhibit A

Talk like a Pirate day

2007-09-19T15:33:00.001-05:00

I don't think this is what they meant. Oh, well.

New Layout

2007-09-07T22:48:00.001-05:00

I felt the need to renew the layout. Needed a change.

Google Map hacks all around

2007-08-11T01:42:00.000-05:00

Greasmonkey script I made. Adds a link to Google Maps for "Get Coordinates." Let me know what you think.

Schwartzman Rulez

2007-08-08T19:04:00.000-05:00

Jason Schwatrzman (Of Wes Anderson movies fame) just released an album under the project name Coconut Records. It is absolutely a great album. Go check it out NOW. myspace.com/coconutrecords youngbabyrecords.com

DiversaFest rocks your face off

2007-08-01T20:03:00.000-05:00

After four days, I have finally recovered from DFest. Flaming Lips RULED. Shiny Toy Guns put on a great live show, even if your not a fan like myself. Found a lot of other great bands, check some of them out.

I don't want to be an old man anymore....

2007-07-21T19:48:00.000-05:00

I gotta get back to the good life. "You lot. You spend all your time thinking about dying, like you're going to get killed by eggs, or beef, or global warming, or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible: that maybe you survive." - The Doctor

Welcome XBMC Script visitors

2007-01-02T14:57:00.000-06:00

Hey to everyone here because of my xbmc script. This is just my personal blog. Nothing special here, but if you want to leave feedback on the script this is a good place to leave it. Thanks for visiting.

A Short Update

2006-12-28T01:53:00.000-06:00

Had a good Christmas. Waiting for New Year's. In the middle of a 12 day vacation, glad not to have to go to work for a while. Going camping in 3 weeks.

This is me, Luke and Lloyd...

THE bandwidth test

2006-08-15T15:35:00.000-05:00

"The site allows you to select servers to ping from around the [world] on an interactive map and graphically displays connections as they travel with varying speeds along the way. It also lets you store results of tests for your computer and sort them by date, time, speed and distance." read more digg story On a totally unrelated note... would you buy the software of a company that gives these kinds of threats?

War of Tribulation

2006-08-12T01:55:00.000-05:00

I've felt from the beginning that the latest skirmish with Israel and other nations in the Middle East was more than just another everyday religious war that we are used to seeing from that region. And I'm probably completely nuts, but I found this passage a few weeks ago and started to blog it but didn't find time. Now as more and more people seem to be joining and appearing in the battles it's lining up even more than I first thought. All of my notes are from info found on Wikipedia and here's a map to help visualize. I'm not saying that all of the nations mentioned will be part of the battle, but I do think that it tells us that large amounts of people will be coming from each of these nations to try to destroy Israel. We've just heard of Iranians found among the dead Hezbollah, as well as help for Hezbollah from Syria and long hostility from Egypt toward Israel. I feel it's only a matter of time (maybe weeks) until these other groups become more clearly involved. Anyway, please read on and let me know your thoughts.

Ezekiel 38 [My notes]

1 The word of the LORD came to me: 2 "Son of man, set your face against Gog, of the land of Magog, [Gog and Magog dwelt North of Israel, perhaps Lebanon or Syria?] the chief prince of Meshech [Current day Russia] and Tubal [or Tabal, currently Eastern Turkey]; prophesy against him 3 and say: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal. 4 I will turn you around, put hooks in your jaws and bring you out with your whole armyÂyour horses, your horsemen fully armed, and a great horde with large and small shields, all of them brandishing their swords. 5 Persia [Iran], Cush [or Kush, Egypt] and Put [or Phut, Libya] will be with them, all with shields and helmets, 6 also Gomer [Azerbaijan] with all its troops, and Beth Togarmah["house of" Togarmah, Russia, Ukraine, Armenia] from the far north with all its troopsÂthe many nations with you. 7 " 'Get ready; be prepared, you and all the hordes gathered about you, and take command of them. 8 After many days you will be called to arms. In future years you will invade a land that has recovered from war, whose people were gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate. They had been brought out from the nations, and now all of them live in safety. 9 You and all your troops and the many nations with you will go up, advancing like a storm; you will be like a cloud covering the land.

Dear Senator, I wanna be illegal!

2006-08-11T20:51:00.000-05:00

"A Maryland resident petitions his senator and asks how he can become an illegal alien."

read more | digg story

Pirated Vinyl

2006-08-11T01:52:00.000-05:00

In an attempt to become the most vile music pirate that ever lived... read more | digg story

Weezer is 'Done' - Again

2006-07-12T22:09:00.000-05:00

According to this MTV interview with Weezer's Rivers Cuomo; WEEZER is done.

read more | digg story

South Parks Scientology episode up for an Emmy!

2006-07-07T14:01:00.000-05:00

NORTH HOLLYWOOD, Calif. One of the Emmy nominees for best animated program is the episode of "South Park" that's said to have angered Tom Cruise and Isaac Hayes. The episode called "Trapped in the Closet" implies that Cruise is gay and makes fun of Scientology.

read more | digg story

Website taken down by Scientology after being dugg

2006-06-20T14:14:00.000-05:00

This is the lastest development in the "Scientology vs People with brains" battle. Here's a mirrored link of the original in case you missed it. "Codebot.org was given a takedown notice by the Church of Scientology after getting 2800+ diggs. Here's the discussion from the original link: http://digg.com/links/Amazingly_Scary_In-depth_Look_at_Scientology_" read more digg story

Amazingly Scary In-depth Look at Scientology!

2006-06-17T23:32:00.000-05:00

"I researched Scientology for my college graduate studies project and here's what I found. They are a dangerous cult that employ spies and a variety of dirty tricks to intimidate, scare, and threaten their critics, all the while bilking million of dollars from their followers. A video follows." Here's a good article on the creepy bastards known as Scientologists and what they "truely believe".

read more | digg story

Blasphemous, Treasonous Psycho-hose Beast gets Pwn'd

2006-06-12T23:56:00.000-05:00

It's getting closer

2006-06-12T00:12:00.000-05:00

BOOOOOM!!!!

2006-05-13T01:51:00.000-05:00

A car ran into our apartment building tonight. This is what the door looked like afterwards.This is the big gaping whole where the door once was. No one was in the car when anyone got outside. They ran off but some kids in the front of the building said they were a bunch of 20 year old kids running away. The after this whole ordeal finally ended, we were walking back to our apartment and some guy was sitting in his car with a bloody face. We called the cops on him. When the cops go there his got belligerent and they fought him to the ground and cuffed him. I talked to the cops and brought the kids to talk to the cops but this guy wasn't in the car that hit us. So we had some guy arrest but wasn't the guy in the car. He was drunk in his car with a butcher's knife, so I think he needed to be arrested anyway. It's been a wild night. Oh, here's them loading the car on the wrecker too.

Surprise! The War On Movie Piracy Isn't Working - RIAA & MPAA

2006-05-03T19:18:00.000-05:00

"Software companies and their shill groups have been spreading around reports on the "cost" of piracy, which are made bogus by their assumption that every pirated copy of software equates to a lost sale, which simply isn't the case. Now, the MPAA has joined the fun"

read more | digg story

More DMCA restrictions

2006-04-24T00:34:00.000-05:00

"For the last few years, a coalition of technology companies, academics and computer programmers has been trying to persuade Congress to scale back the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Now Congress is preparing to do precisely the opposite."

read more | digg story

Crisis Diverted

2006-04-14T01:22:00.000-05:00

"There cannot be a crisis today; my schedule is already full." - Henry Kissinger I was going thru some of my old files on my computer today and found an old random quote generating web page I made. This was one of the random quotes it gave me. I realized how absolutely true this is to how everything is at work now. Surely it won't stay life that much long "Champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my shame friends." - Edward Norton - 25th Hour

Samuel should hire a new agent

2006-04-04T21:54:00.000-05:00

This has to most definately be the worst peice of shit movie I've ever seen. I just had to share this stupid ass trailer. SNAKES.... ON A PLANE

HSDPA Reaches 7.2Mbps

2006-04-04T00:00:00.000-05:00

Nortel and QUALCOMM have successfully achieved the industry's first 7.2 Mbps HSDPA mobile data calls. The tests achieved data downloads at speeds up to four times faster than most current fixed broadband connections....The calls covered frequencies in all commercially available UMTS spectrum currently used by mobile operators throughout the world.

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Could Danger be moving to cingular!!!

2006-03-24T20:55:00.000-06:00

Danger, maker of the sidekick, may be moving to cingular but no offical word as of now just speculation. That means many fans of the T-mobile sidekick may have to get used to Cingular Sidekick? I find this interesting. We shall see what develops

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RIP Chef, Screw Isaac Hayes

2006-03-23T13:03:00.000-06:00

"So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun!....Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies... You have obsructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail!" - South Park Studios in Statment to The Church of Scientology after the "Trapped in the Closet" episode was pulled from the schedule last week.

Update

2006-03-22T15:51:00.000-06:00

It's been a while so I'll update to apease the masses. We just got back from our trip to L.A. It was very nice. Here's the rundown.

While we were there we went to the Getty Center

It was cool We also went to this kick-ass music store and bought up the vinyl. We spent a day driving to Vegas Ate a good burger on the way back to L.A. Went to the walk of Fame This made me sad

That's our trip photos hope you enjoy.

nVidia Launches Go-Force 5500... FOR YOUR PHONE?

2006-02-13T13:45:00.000-06:00

If you ever thought about processing a 10 mega pixel image or play quake 3 at 30FPS on your phone, nVidia has a new chip out that does that.

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What's this white crap?

2005-12-05T20:34:00.000-06:00

Presently Monitoring: Fetch the Compass Kids By The Danielson Famile

I've been working on this post for 3 days now. I know, it's sad. And I still have nothing to say. It's finally snowing. Drive in first gear. I'm afraid I can't be credited for finding this quote. I stumbled upon it as i was checking on a heated debate of political correctness on Dr. Frank's site. - "The one thing euphemisms all have in common is that they soften language. They portray reality as less vivid. And I've noticed Americans have a problem with reality; they prefer to avoid the truth and not look it in the eye. I think it's the one of the consequences of being fat and prosperous and too comfortable. So, naturally, as time has passed, and we've grown fatter and more prosperous, the language has gotten worse." - George Carlin

Pat Morita, Mr. Miyagi of 'The Karate Kid,' dies at 73

2005-11-25T12:56:00.000-06:00

Actor Pat Morita, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of the wise and dry-witted Mr. Miyagi in "The Karate Kid," has died. He was 73.

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Courtney Love's a crack whore

2005-11-21T10:31:00.000-06:00

The trip is over and we all three survived, believe it or not. We saw many a strange sight, heard many a strange sound, and buried much of our sanity with pipe tobacco and a ziplock, but we survived none the less. We hiked miles thru forest and a dried up creek. We found bigfoot's home-made mouse trap. And finally setup camp and built our fire. Oh, and Luke was armed to the teeth. I found that it's quite scary to wake up to the sound of footsteps outside your tent, a loud knocking like a rock on and tree, and not be able to see anything except something hunkered down, moving past a rock. It's a very liberating feeling to be out in nature. The only responsibility is to keep the fire burning. To lay under the stars listening to Coast to Coast AM. It's something everyone should experience often.

Sasquatch, here we come.

2005-11-18T15:47:00.001-06:00

Today after work myself, Luke and his buddy Joshua are off to hunt us some bigfoot. We'll be spending the weekend camping out and looking for the great beast. We shall be armed with a handgun, knifes, and probably a burnt stick. I shall try and keep the old Mo'Blog up-to-date with any interesting photos or videos of our findings. Wish us luck, and may the force be with us all as Mace guides us on our journey.

Rock 'n' Roll Ain't Noise Pollution

2005-11-11T01:12:00.000-06:00

These are the latest additions to the collection. Two great albums. Collecting vinyl is quite the addictive hobby. I'm still keeping my eyes peeled for some Weezer and Violent Femmes. If you know where they might be pretty cheap other then eBay, give me a heads up. Next weekend I'm going on a trip with Luke to the Washita Mountains down south for a bigfoot hunt. I think it's going to be interesting. If we have phone service out there I'll be sure to keep my blog and moblog updated with pics and maybe videos. Maybe I'll find the concrete proof that bigfoot actually exists and be able to collect that million dollar reward that is out there for proof. That'd be pretty sweet. Latest things added to the old iTunes playlist: Rancid - The full discography Ramones - 9 Albums The Clash - Full discography Stubbs the Zombie Soundtrack The Shins - Oh, Inverted World The Pixies - Best of... Motion City Soundtrack - Commit this to Memory The Sex Pistols - Nevermind the Bollocks Social Distortion - Self titled New York Dolls - Too Much Too Soon Sonic Youth - Evol Black Flag - Damaged STP - Discography AC/DC - Discography The Presidents of the United States of America - Love Everybody As you can see I've been busy. Hold music is turning into "Holiday" music and the ornaments are starting to line the aisles of various retail stores, and the only thing that I enjoy about a commercialized Christmas has hit the shelves, Egg Nog. The sooner all this "holiday spirit," or greed as I tend to see actually play out, is over the better. Why is it that the holiday gets longer every year. I can understand starting to shop and decorate for the holidays in the days following Thanksgiving, I the remaining month until Christmas there's a lot to get done. But come on, the kids don't even start to dent their Halloween candy piles and we're already stocking up on bulbs for the evergreens. I guess what ever they can do to make a little more money a little earlier must be better for every one. In case you haven't heard, don't buy CD's from the bastards at Sony/BMG. They require you to install software on your computer to listen to the CD on a PC, they don't they you what the software really does, and the software is so badly made that it leave GIANT security holes in you computer and is nearly impossible to uninstall without rendering your CD drive unusable if you manage to uninstall it at all. So I'll say it loud...FUCK THE RIAA. If you really want to hear the music get it from the internet. iTunes will do as you're refusing to have to install Sony's crap, but why not just say to hell with them all and download it from limewire, soulseek or a torrent. I think I'm caught up on my ranting for a while. Check back periodically, as there are sure to be many to follow as many have preceded this one.

How the MPAA killed the movie theater experience

2005-11-05T11:34:00.000-06:00

"And the movie industry is wondering why people are no longer spending as much on going to the movies and buying the overpriced popcorn as they used to." Great read, it's going to be everywhere soon.

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What a day

2005-10-31T16:19:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was quite a day. We awake at 9:30 to the power in the house shutting off and back on again many times over a number of mins. Finally it stops and the power stays off, so we get up and call AEP who says it is going to be about 2 hours before we get power back. So I take the dog down, and on my way back up I realize how creepy my silhouette looks from the emergency lights behind me.

Cool, eh? So then we go out driving since a house without power is of little use to use and we happen upon what appeared to have caused it. I don't know what, but I know this fire truck and the fifty others that were around it before I took this pick had something to do with it. Anyway, after it stopped raining, we were quite bored so we decided to go to the flea market. The one placed you can go to see all of the useless junk and toothless freaks you'd need to see in a lifetime. At times though they are gold mines of great stuff. We happened upon many a record booth and had to raid through each, and boy did we come out ahead. Here's a short list of what we found.

The Beatles - Abbey Road
The Eagles - Hotel California
The Rolling Stones - (an old hits record I don't know the name of)
The Beach Boys - Endless Summer
Billy Joel - 52nd Street
Huey Lewis and the News - Sports
Fame - Soundtrack
Judy Garland - Live
The Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams

I Think that's it. But we got them all for about $20. Quite a steal if I say so myself. And just to clarify, 7-9 were Jamie's picks not mine. So then we go home and are bored because even with all these great albums we have nothing to listen to them on due to a certain dumbass who destroyed the needle on the one we had. Thanks Von. So we get to info to buy a new needle and go looking for one. After looking for quite some time we realize that we will be waiting at least a week to order one. So instead of waiting to order a needle for a record player that probably doesn't work, we through cation to the wind and buy a brand new one, straight off the shelf and out of the box. Sounds great. So we conclude the evening by going to dinner and then going home. We immediately setup the new turntable and listened to many a record. After a couple of hours we decided not to wear the thing out so quick and just watch TV. Quite a day, and probably not what you want to be sitting and reading while you're online but I didn't make you. I'm currently jamming out between The Presidents of the United States of America - Love Everyone, Which is their newest and Local H - As Good as Dead. Two Great Albums check them out. I'll probably close this evening with going to my pal Luke's with Jamie to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre with him and his wife. I hope it's not too scary. Fair all hallows eve to all.

Color Perception Is Not In The Eye Of The Beholder: It's In The Brain

2005-10-27T18:49:00.000-05:00

"First-ever images of living human retinas have yielded a surprise about how we perceive our world. Researchers at the University of Rochester have found that the number of color-sensitive cones in the human retina differs dramatically among people by up to 40 times yet people appear to perceive colors the same way." Finally a little closer to proving my theory that our brains may perceive colors differently from person to person. Our brains may perceive red 2 totally different ways, so as if my brain was able to sense your brains perception of red it could be the way that my brain perceives blue. What's more, how do we know that may brain wouldn't perceive your brains perception of red as the pain of a broken leg. Ok, that may be going a little beyond. Very interesting.

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Southeast 101 forever

2005-10-26T18:26:00.000-05:00

Currently jamming out with Ace Troubleshooter By Ace Troubleshooter

I've been back to downloading more music. I found the Fallout Boy CD, and I was pleasantly surprised. From the sound of their single, I figured they'd just be another My Chemical Romance. I found they are somewhere more in the vast expanse between Alien Ant Farm, Jimmy Eat World, with but a hint of My Chemical Romance Sprinkled on top. Very much worth a listen. But for now I'm taking a break back to a little old skule Ace. Not much else going on.

Insert Own Title Here

2005-10-17T09:11:00.000-05:00

Yesterday seemed like a really long day. We were intending to clean, get groceries and then just hang around but we decided to go garage sale hunting for a while. We got a champagne stopper for $1 and a CD Dr. For 2 bucks when they usually are anywhere from 25-50 at store, I thought it a good buy. We found this kick-ass BeeGees record player. It was one of the old ones from the 70's that was the carrying case with lid and everything. Very cool, but not $25 cool. We also found someone building this cool looking house above in the middle of a neighborhood of nothing but old homes built in the 50's. I found the contrast very cool.

We also went to see Wollace & Grommit. I guess you have to be a fan of the shorts to like it. I didn't like it that much, except for a few funny insinuations. Nothing else really exciting this weekend, just hanging around. Off to the work week we go.

"Jar-Jar makes the Ewoks look like fucking Shaft."

AMD beats Intel in September US retail desktop sales

2005-10-14T15:53:00.000-05:00

"Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) captured a 52% share of the US retail desktop PC market in September, according to Current Analysis." And it begins. Finally, consumers are doing the homework and seeing how much of a better processor AMD makes. As long as the focus in computers becomes more about multimedia, AMD is going to slowing come out on top.

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The Gift of ADHD

2005-10-13T09:17:00.000-05:00

"Studies suggest that many of the traits kids with ADHD exhibit can be expressions of deeper gifts: powerful imagination, searching insight and unusual intuition...in other words get off the ritalin" Cool article. It make total sense as too why my mind wanders so much. But since when is Ty Pennington the ADHD poster child?

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The Death of Innocence

2005-10-12T14:33:00.000-05:00

And you thought that Full house was a wholesome family show. I challenge that thought and after watching this you will too. Those guys had some pretty damn dirty mouths to be edited around. I found out today that the O.C. Supertones played their very last show ever on Saturday. I hadn't heard much of them in the last couple of years but was suprised to hear they finally broke up. If you've got a couple hundred bucks you might be able to get a signed poster from them off ebay, their site says they're supposed to be auctioning their equipment off sometime. Even as i type this i'm finding the news of the iPod video finally being announced. Surprisingly it looks like the old iPod. Comes in 30GB and 60GB, the 60GB hold 150 hours of h.264 video. HOLY CRAP! It looks like it's completely replacing the old skool iPods. And even more shockingly, $299 for 30GB and $399 for the 60GB, i wouldv'e thought at least $400 for the smaller of the two. Go check it out. I'm off to see if theirs anything new in iTunes 6, and try to find some Supertones mp3s for free.

Nu toonz

2005-10-10T18:00:00.000-05:00

Currently Kicking it to: The Great Depression By Blindside

Went to that fair for a few hours on Sunday. Looked at all the freaks and toothless rednecks. That sure was fun. Walked around there for a while and had a good funnel cake. A lot better than the one last year that tasted like they hadn't changed the oil for at least a week or two. I found tons of new music this weekend. Found both of Blindsides lastest cd's. Found 3 Jimmy Eat World Albums, 2 before they even released Bleed American. Got all four Guster albums. Found the Lastest Dropkick Murphys, and got the Insitute album but haven't listened yet. Blindside is rocking my face off as we speak. Well back to work. Two hours left. O Joy.

One-Legged Roller Derby

2005-10-07T08:31:00.000-05:00

Last night we were watching good old America's Funniest Videos and we saw quite possibly the WORST video ever. It's started out with a group of people, presumably family, standing around on rollerskates teaching one of the adult family members how to skate. In classic Funniest Video fashion the young woman they are teaching loses her balance, begins the arm windmill and kicking her feet out in front of her. However, instead of her slamming her ass straight to the concrete one of the other members quickly runs to her rescue and catches her from behind. Then as he is helping her regain her balance so she doesn't fall further, HER LEG FALLS OFF. So here stands this poor amputee girl, helpless as she is still off balance, with all of her weight still dependent on the guy behind her, one foot in a roller skate and a nub of a leg flailing in the air as another member of the family picks her leg back up. But instead of rushing to help her strap it back on, this young fellow stands the leg up straight on the skate and rolls it across the drive way to she how far it would roll before it fell over.

Remedial Kick-ass

2005-10-06T08:57:00.000-05:00

Yeah a day off. I'm off the phones again at work. Gonna start watching the firefly series since I put them on DVD.

Church - "Tucker, there's thousands of languages spoken on earth." Tucker - "Yeah, but only one that kicks ass, and that's the one we're teaching. English 101: Remedial Kick-ass" - RVB Episode 63 - The hard stop

The Death of Digital Entertainment

2005-10-03T14:31:00.000-05:00

From Boingboing.net: "Twenty suicidal congresscritters are calling for the speedy adoption of a broadcast flag, trying to unmake the work that the courts did this past May when they killed the initiative. The broadcast flag says that all digital TV technology has to be approved by Hollywood's bought-and-paid-for regulators, and the rubric for it is that if we don't give Hollywood this unprecedented veto, they'll stop making stuff available for digital TV. Note that no one in Hollywood has ever promised that they will produce DTV high-def content if they get this dumb rule -- this isn't even very convincing blackmail." Basically this is going to kill inovation of computer and entertainment technology. They're trying to control how we watch TV and movies. If your from the Tulsa area call or email John Sullivan now. If not check out this list and see if your rep is on here and call them. If you don't know what to say use this template. Don't let them build big government to control what we do with the entertainment and technology devices we pay for.

Casa Bonita, la la la la, la

2005-10-01T20:51:00.000-05:00

It's been an odd week. Lots of ups and downs. Nice to have most of the week off, but not so nice is the occasion. We went to my wife's grandmother's funeral yesterday. It was pretty rough, she was a great woman, who touched many lives. Went to a friends wedding today, which happened to be at the same time my wish for an AWESOME day storm was granted. It was lots of fun driving down 66 hardly able to see out the windshield, even with the wipers on high, and hitting the 3 inches of water across the road in Claremore because they have no drainage what so ever. I was sad to see that Casa Bonita is closing and even sadder when I wasn't able to go one last time for endless cheese enchiladas. We went to see Serenity last night. I was glad to finally see a new movie that was both original and good, two things very few movies have either of lately, let alone both. We've also found that mixing water and vinegar together and pouring them on the pee stains will stop the dog from peeing on the carpet as much. On to the rest of the weekend.

I fought the lar, and the lar won

2005-09-28T23:54:00.000-05:00

Just another day it seems. Just finished watching Intermission. Great movie. You've got to see it. But the Irish accents are pretty thick, so some of you may need the subtitles for a little while. I'm almost done transferring my entire music library to iTunes. As much as I hate it, apple seems to be doing a little better than Microsoft in integrating the services. It's nice to have my podcast auto download and to have it all all in the same program as my music. I think I want to go see Serenity. I've not seen more than a few mins of the Firefly series and I'm usually not big on the Space Sci-Fi genre but this one looks pretty cool. It seems to have the classic wit, character development AND action of most Joss Whedon projects. So we shall see. It's getting late now, though. I'm feeling a little bowling ball-ish. Stay away from the cough syrup kids.

Ingenious $100 Laptop at MIT

2005-09-28T17:28:00.000-05:00

Not only is this laptop cheap, but its design is very well thought out. The battery doubles as a handle and the shoulder strap is the power supply and plug. Also is made of rubber, thus seals to protect from water dirt and other elements. Definately a great idea. The initial purpose is for schools in the US and children in undeveloped countries, but w/ the tablet and ebook capabilities, I'd buy one just to have for trips and such. Even better if they'll be upgradable.

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Lazy Saturday

2005-09-24T14:49:00.000-05:00

Obviously we're busy today.

It actually has picked up quite a bit. I've taken more calls in the last 2 hours then i did in the first four, but that doesn't say much.

You like my racing chicken. I added the racing stripe, flames and his racing number.

Doesn't look like we're gonna see anything of the hurricane. I was hoping to see some good storms come from it. We only had about 2 good rains this year and those were a few weeks ago. I want to see a decent day time pouring. The kind that floods the streets for a few hours.

My own Happy Tree Friend

2005-09-24T09:58:00.000-05:00

This is why...

Work is really slow today. in 2 hours i've only taken 4 calls. From my last call until my break was almost 45 mins and i didn't get a single call. Cool. I'll update this post more at lunch.

I need to slow down

2005-09-21T14:51:00.000-05:00

I sit on my last break of the day, needing to get my stats down, make schedules for the lead snad call 2 customer back...all in an hour and a half. wish me luck. I thought It'd be easier for a while going back to the phones. Man, did i forget what it's like having to watch the stats all day. "You can't fool all the people all the time But if you're trying, If you're lookin', If you're lucky You can always fool a few"

Eat this, Metallica!

2005-09-20T19:36:00.000-05:00

"In preparing to self-release our new album, we thought long and hard about how best to use the internet. Given our unusual history, and a long-held sense that the practice now being demonized by the music biz as “illegal” file sharing can be a friend to the independent musician, we have decided to embrace the indisputable fact of music in the 21st century, put our money where our mouth is, and make our record, Little By Little…, available for download via Bittorrent, and at our website. We’re not streaming, or offering 30-second song samples, or annoying you with digital rights management software; we’re putting up the whole record, for free, forever. Full stop. Please help yourself; if you like it, please share with friends." Harvey Danger just released their new album for free thru bittorrent. If you like Harvey danger or have never heard of them check it out. Maybe more good bands will catch on.

uuuuuggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh

2005-09-19T12:05:00.000-05:00

There's just some times of day that should only happen once per day. I've realized this today. Like, why is there a 5:00 that's dark outside? It's not right. I don't mind 2 11:00's, 2 12:00's or even 2 3:00's so far as the dark one is the second one. My finger is almost healed. Still tender but pretty much healed.

The Chicken that Laid the Transparent Tac

2005-09-16T18:10:00.000-05:00

I've got a hottie!

2005-09-16T08:47:00.000-05:00

There's an ant in the champagne.

O, joy. I get to go back to the phones for a couple of week. At least it's not all bad. Now i get off at a decent hour.

I've been reading some of the stuff coming out of the Tokyo Game Show. Pretty interesting stuff. The Revolution controller was finally revealed. It's a one handed controller that can sense multi-directional motion and tilting. So that means all the flailing around you did as a kid to make Mario jump higher actually works now. The Gears of War screens look beautiful. And the 360 was official announced to launch on Nov. 22, KICK ASS!

But nothing comes easy

To the children of heat We bake in the back yard We take to the street They gave us a life-time supply of defeat We crumpled it up And threw it back at their feet We take off running They're hot on our heals The squares are coming So run for the hills They want us to hide To suppress and conceal All the dangerous things that we feel

The wetness

2005-09-14T00:00:00.000-05:00

It suddenly started pouring unbelievably hard. It hasn't rained like this in a couple of week, at least not since me and Jamie went driving about in it a while back. I love when pours rain, I wish it would rain like this during the day time. I can't remember the last time we had a good, hard, day rain. It's cool to just sit hear and listen to the continuous thunder strikes. Then there's a few that sound like they are just down the road, very quick loud cracks, and some that are miles away, long, low, rolling rumbles. I can hear the apartment rattle on the crackly ones. I was watching Going Tribal tonight and he was at some tribe becoming a shaman and learning how the shaman of the tribe use hallucinogenic drugs to "enter the spirit world" to ward off evil and heal people. I found myself thinking, how absurd for people to believe that every sickness and bad thing that happens to them is because of an evil spirit. But then I began to wonder what would they think of us and going to the doctor to take medicine to get rid of a "cold" or "flu" or even "multiple personalities" when we really should have a shaman just chasing the evil spirit away? But I digress. I've got work tomorrow, but only a couple of hours, then I'm off to a doctors appointment with Jamie. The thunder is setting off car alarms now, so I'm gonna just sit and listen, and bid you ado. "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids...Damn long ears trying to take Easter from Jesus." - Peter Griffin

Holy crap.

2005-09-12T00:02:00.000-05:00

I think today is the first time since everyone stopped thinking about it that I realized how terrifying and surreal it was to watch the towers fall. It's weird to think it has already been 4 years. Here's a HUGE satellite pic I found of the site. It was taken on Sept 23, 2001. Only click on it if you have broadband, it's over 14MB. It'll take a while to load, but an interesting look back.

Cripples Can Do Stuff Too

2005-09-11T12:25:00.000-05:00

Watch this. What were these parents thinking? that's right the original 80's commercials for everything from Little Caesar's Pizza to the NES. RetroJunk.com

What's wrong with being sexy...?

2005-09-11T11:09:00.000-05:00

Did nothing. I didn't think i would. The bottles didn't last half way thru the movie with that game. And it ends up that it' only able 2 1/2 regular sized bottles in each, not much at all. I was pretty relaxed though, and my finger didn't hurt to bad for a while. When i wa tking the dog out to pee, i was walking along and looked down and there was this really weird looking bug. I only caught a glimpse of it, but it looked kind of like a spider running along but then it jumped with it's grasshopper legs. I didn't stick around to see it was hiding it's butterfly wings to come after me. We rented Grosse Point Blank and Trainspotting last night. we've never seen either and they are supposed to be really good movies. So i will probably spend the day watching them, doing laundry and hopefully cut my hair.

Are you cool?

2005-09-10T22:42:00.000-05:00

OUCH!!!! This really hurt. I cut it on a sharp dog food can, really deep. Bled like a stuck pig, it did. This ought to that the edge off. Time to try a quick Dazed and Confused drinking game. You take a drink every time they same "man." Oh, it's gonna be fun.

Nothing exciting

2005-09-09T16:00:00.000-05:00

Just sitting at work on my lunch break with nothing to do, so I decided to post. I had my head phones w/ me and remembered that I had Muddy Chucks, Slowndowns and Anitas anger so I'm listening to them on my phone. Me and Jaime found an absolutely HILARIOUS show, on FX of all places. It's about 4 friends that own a bar in Philly. People die in the bar, it gets robbed and people find out their grand fathers were actually Nazi officers as other craziness ensues. I couldn't believe the actually cuss on basic cable now, who knew. Today is pretty slow. Not many questions cuz a lot of the reps are either gone or in training. Should be slow tomorrow too, so I'm working on a "Book of Knowledge" for all of the leads to make everyone smart. I got new contacts so I can see, and my left eye doesn't feel like it's on fire anymore. I can see that I'm boring you now so I'll go.

Driving Blind

2005-09-07T23:19:00.000-05:00

Am I the only person who thinks Criss Angel is one crazy mofo? The guy sets himself on fire, drives Mandy Moore's car blind folded in LA and his levitation make David Blaine look like a trick shop bitch. And why is he on A&E, I thought it was supposed to be documentaries and stuff. Check it out, it's a pretty cool show. Peter Griffin vs. Fred Schneider. Top 500 Songs of all time. There's 23 Beatles songs on this list, five from The Clash, seven Hendrix, and only ONE Abba. Who made this list. "Be that girl, Watch that scene, Digging the dancing queen." Apparently the new Motorola iTunes phone was launched today as another Cingular exclusive. Nothing really cool about it other then it's made to play mp3, but so is mine which looks cooler and has a better camera anyway. Jamie's been asleep since about 4:30, so I'm just watchin TV. I've got to go to the eye doctor on Friday because I've had these for over a year and they're starting to tear. Titanic 3-disc special edition? Can't they just let this movie die already, and why are they doing an alternate ending? What they fix the whole and finish the trip? I guess I have nothing more interesting to say right now. Outtie.

Holidays rock...

2005-09-05T03:19:00.000-05:00

It's nice having a three day weekend once in a while. Sweet I have off tomorrow too. We cleaned all morning (afternoon for normal people). Then we laid around and watched movies all day. Dazed and Confused is still hilarious. Tomorrow I'll probably just lay around, watch some new RVB and catch up on the latest TWIT. Maybe I'll find some kick ass news to post about...probably not though.

Looking back...

2005-09-03T23:54:00.000-05:00

It's midnight, I'm sick and I'm watching some show on Discovery about Champ, the "American Lock Ness monster." I've spent the last 2 hours reading 3 years of my own Xanga posts. It's very weird and reminiscent to think back that far. I go back and see where I was at that time in my life. To see who I was hanging out with, how work was going and how I got to where I am. There's a lot of things I wrote about that I absolutely can not think of why I let myself get to that point and other that I can't believe I put out there for the world to see. But no matter how bad the memory or how much pain I was in I can't bring myself to delete a single post. I think that it's like a history book of my life. All the wonderful things that happened, all the bad things that happened, and the just plain uninteresting things. I don't understand why, but I spend so much time reading up on tech news, I've become a digg addict. I spend so many hours at work that it seems unbelievable at times that I can have a life outside of work. Don't get me wrong, I've got a good job. I like most of the people I work with, and it's nice to have all the new faces around to help us out. I just find myself running the entire floor for 9-10 hours a day answering questions, making schedules and missing my breaks. I think it's great some of the new friends I've found. Some that are generally good people, fun to talk to and to make great acquaintances. Others, I find that they are so much like myself in ideals, taste, politics and lifestyle that I didn't think was possible. I can't help but want to go out, as I hear the sirens outside, and find out what drug bust, man hunt or other shady activity is happening. I find myself with an uncontrollable urge to gain knowledge, I don't care what, just to fill my head with information that I might be able to put to use at a later date. I guess I've always had this problem, as I look back at all the times my wife has looked at me like I'm absolutely insane for knowing some totally random fact, like that their is actually a city in Turkey called Batman. It's really funny to watch crazy Mongolians on TV go totally UFC on each others asses. For some reason I find myself wanting to go for a walk thru our neighborhood. I think I might go do that for a little while. EDIT: o yeah, One of my buddies at work is in the last good punk band in tulsa, try and check out Anita's Anger, they rock. I think i will listen to them and The Slowdowns as i walk. Perphaps a little muddy chucks in the mix as well.

The storm rolls in...

2005-08-30T15:39:00.000-05:00

I can't help but think how amazing it would be to see all of THIS first hand. Total chaos and destruction.

My very own Vista Theme

2005-08-30T01:22:00.000-05:00

I finally did it. I took everything I loved about the Windows Vista beta (the aero theme) and moded my XP to look just like it, and I did it WITHOUT having an additional theme application, such as windows blinds, being installed. I will admit this much, I did not create the black longhorn visual style myself, I was actually able to find that online as an install without using the app it said I had to use. Go to DeviantArt.com and they have the visual style for download. The hard part was matching the system icons. I was able to rip them from the shell32.dll of the vista beta to use them, then using StyleXP I was able to set them as the icons. Since all StyleXP does is change the registry to update these paths I was able to find in the registry where they were changing them. A simple export from the registry, uninstall of all StyleXP-esque apps and merge the exported registry file and VIOLA! I understand that many of you will not understand a word I just said, nor will many care, but if you would like some assistance in this process yourself (or just the files to do it) shoot me a gmail.

Hey there's ego in my way!

2005-08-25T16:23:00.000-05:00

Now Kicking It To: Assingear High Speed Scene by High Speed Scene

I'm sick of scrapin' by Sick of paying my dues I'd rather pay for chips and beer Found it at vintage stock. Quite a find. Couldn't find it on the torrent searches so you'll have to buy it, so here's the link. They've got some pretty cool videos at their site too. Check them out or you will die.

Freebord: snowboarding with wheels

2005-08-20T13:39:00.000-05:00

A skateboard redesigned to have lateral motion. Gives effect of snowboarding. Just click the link, you'll see. And you thought it hurt to wipe out on the slopes. check out the videos. My guess is that this might catc on and we'll start seeing it in Xgames in a few years. I sure hope this guy got a patent.

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Pacman comes to life virtually

2005-08-20T10:51:00.000-05:00

Maybe an idea for them to start on for XBox 3? I can tell you playing any fps, especialy halo on this would be sweet.

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Meet HVD - 1 Terabyte of Storage, Twice as Fast as a Hard Drive

2005-08-16T21:48:00.000-05:00

HVDs - Holographic Versatile Discs, can store up to 3.9 terabytes of information (that's nearly 4000 gigabytes). Their transfer rate is also twice that of modern-day hard drives. Could these not only replace DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, but even harddrives? They are almost ready to start rolling out commercially at 1 terabyte per disc. Now should we just skip the blu-ray/hd-dvd battle or what?

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High Speed Phones

2005-08-12T16:07:00.000-05:00

Vodafone Italy and Nokia have successfully made the first data connection with HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) obtaining speeds of 1.5 Mbps. It's coming. Broadband speeds from cell phones. Cingular is already set to have about 20 markets launched with HSDPA by the end on 2005 and in all markets by the end of 2006. (tentatively)

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The Linux video game console that never was

2005-08-12T01:23:00.000-05:00

The Indrema was a open source video game console that was to be released in 2001. Just think of the impact this would have been on the video game world! Yet another great console idea that never happened.

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Ebay-style banking?

2005-08-04T15:34:00.000-05:00

Are you a better lender than a bank is? Richard Duvall, who helped launch Britain's largest online bank, Egg, thinks you are. His new venture, Zopa, is an eBay-like website that lets ordinary citizens borrow money from other regular Joes -- no bank needed. Pretty cool.

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The Destruction of the First Amendment

2005-08-03T01:05:00.000-05:00

"NBC announced today that the M.A.H.R. (Mothers Against Hard Rock) Foundation is trying to outlaw The Used and My Chemical Romance from 45 states across America." It's funny that people keep spending all of their time on shit like this instead of spending it paying attention to what their kids are doing.

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The Coolest Win XP Theme Ever

2005-07-30T11:54:00.000-05:00

Bet you can't guess what I got. Figured it out yet? oooo, colorful... Ok, so I snagged a copy of the Windows Vista beta and here are my thoughts. There is very little of what was promised that actually made it into the current version. No 3D interface. No evidence of a revolutionary new file system or networking protocol. But hey, that black task bar sure does make a cool looking theme doesn't it? Finally, IE gets tabbed browsing. That's about all IE7 has going for it. It's really confusing and annoying for the menu bar to be under the navigation keys. I see no good in consolidating Go, Refresh and Stop all into one key to the FAR right. You really do need those separate. It finally supports RSS...sort of. To add an RSS feed you just click the icon and it adds it to your favorites, but you might as well just do that with the main page itself. It only lets you open the feed like you would any other favorite place, the biggest difference between that and the current version is that it'll style even unstyled RSS feeds and make them readable in the browser. All in all though, it really needs some sort of aggregater so that you can check many feeds quickly in more of a list format. IE tried to make a few steps forward, in the end I feel that the overall change is a few steps back. Firefox whoever still works smashingly in Vista. It still runs astonishingly faster, you can do better tabbed browsing and it at least has the extension system allowing for better RSS aggregation. And you thought the current save as screen was big and annoying. The new one is even worse. Even at 1024 resolution it takes up almost the entire screen. I do like that it adds the ability to have a folder tree on the side like in Win Explorer but most stuff that would be saved would only need to be saved in a few subs of the root documents folder. I kind of see where they were trying to go with it but it ended up just being too much in the long run. It'd make a good optional feature for people who need it but it would be great if you could toggle it off at some point. One other great thing is on autorun CD's, it gives you the option of whether to run the autorun or not. If you don't need the program right then you now have the option not to run it. The Conclusion: Vista is the coolest looking Windows theme ever made and at this point that's all that it seems good for over XP. I'll stick to XP for now, at least until software companies finally make the destined move to Linux.

Bluetooth™ controlled camera - A camera on wheels

2005-07-28T15:45:00.000-05:00

Sony Ericsson's new Bluetooth™ controlled camera, ROB-1, can move around freely, steered wirelessly by the joy-stick or keypad on your mobile phone or as for P900/P910 with the touch screen, enabling you to see on your phone screen exactly what ROB-1 is looking at. This'll go great with my s710.

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The Possibilities and wonder of WUSB

2005-07-27T22:42:00.000-05:00

not really something new, just and article explaining the ideas and possibilities of WUSB (Wireless Universal Serial Bus). imagine a LAN taking place within a 10m radius with speeds of 480mbps.

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Doom Trailer

2005-07-26T21:36:00.000-05:00

First teaser really shown to the entire public. May not be a peice of crap.

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The Aristocrats

2005-07-21T19:44:00.000-05:00

This new movie by Penn Jillette of "Penn and Teller" showcases over 100 comedians telling the same joke. A joke formerly only known as an inside joke told by comedians to comedians and never told in public. No nudity, no violence, just unspeakable obscenity. So profane AMC has refused to show this movie.

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I want a quilt

2005-07-20T16:17:00.000-05:00

This is the sweetest peice of bedding ever. A full size quilt made entirely out of Crown Royal bags.

Xbox 360 launching November 4th!!!

2005-07-16T22:00:00.000-05:00

Via engadget: Itâ��s not entirely clear where they scored this info, but Xbox365.com is reporting that Microsoft is going to launch the Xbox 360 on November 4th. 112 days and counting...

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work

2005-07-15T13:56:00.000-05:00

Politics, politics Too confusing Politics, smolitics Too confusing

Lazy eye

2005-07-14T23:10:00.000-05:00

"I heard that one of Shannen Doherty's eyes is off center because it's trying to escape."

The COOLEST keyboard on Earth!!!!!

2005-07-14T14:47:00.000-05:00

This is pretty slick, a keyboard using OLED or electrophosphorescence to display keys.

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Firefox 1.0.5 is available

2005-07-12T15:22:00.000-05:00

Firefox 1.0.5 is available for download. It is not beta anymore.

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