Monday, March 20, 2006

California Donor Registry

I always hated the cheap pink "DONOR" dot that California had you attach to your driver's license to become an organ donor; the silly thing would peel off within days. I just got my renewal notice, and they've had a great idea: you can now register as an organ donor online, at anytime.

P.S. Just in case anybody reading this someday gets my organs: I'm sorry I didn't take better care of them.

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Sunday, March 19, 2006

Software that can suck it.

Ebay. "Enter your response here. No HTML, asterisks, or quotes." Just like Commander Data, Ebay can't handle contractions. I guess I'm just left to wonder exactly which software package had a security bug that made them disable quotes. (Don't tell me: There's a 99% chance it's MS Outlook.) I can't even say "Ebay's retarded" without getting my message rejected for having the apostrophe. And oh yeah, Ebay's interface sucks so many kinds of ass. Ebay, you can suck it.

Gmail. My dad gets a LOT of email regarding his work, and the result is his account is now full. There's no easy way to cope with the problem of having a full mailbox in Gmail. He can't find and delete the largest attachments: you can't find the size of ANY email, in fact. (Their position is: "You'll never need to delete another message.") The "XXXX MB of storage and growing" message has gone up about 1MB in the last week, so that's no help, either. I keep telling my dad, "I'm sure Google will roll out more storage on the April 1st anniversary of GMail" but I think he knows I'm lying. Gmail, you can suck it.

Thunderbird. Guess why my dad can't just use Gmail's POP connection to organize and store his email? That's right: Thunderbird crashes (or maybe just goes really slow) when it tries to manage that many messages. Thunderbird, you can suck it.

Firefox 1.5. Good job on adding the extra crashiness, guys. As far I can tell, the response in forums so far has been "some extensions may cause instability". Great...any idea WHICH extensions those are? I do have a few extensions, but they're all pretty mainstream. I keep filing talkbalk reports, and assume others are doing the same, but so far most reports of instability have been brushed aside. Maybe the talkback reports are going to a Gmail account that's using 2705 MB. Firefox, you can suck it.

Blogger. Who the hell wants their publish time for a message to be the time the first draft was ever saved? Answer: Some retard at Blogger, who, incidendtally, can suck it. (Bonus suck it: These words are not in Blogger's spell check dictionary: "Google", "Gmail", "Blogger".)

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Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Freaky photo of Bush with autistic kid


By now, you've certainly seen the video of the autistic kid who got a chance to play for four minutes in the last basketball game of his senior year and scored 20 points. It's a shoo-in for the feel-good video of the year, and it's only March.

Bush met with the kid today, but the optical illusion in the photo of Bush hugging the kid just freaks me out.

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Monday, March 13, 2006

How to tell if you're under the thumb of the man.

When downloading software, if the website presents a "Your download should begin shortly; if not, CLICK HERE" message, if you actually wait instead of clicking immediately, then you're a tool of the man.

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Saturday, March 11, 2006

California's 24th district: Gallegly drops out!

A surprise retirement by the republican candidate for my district, Elton Gallegly:
Friday’s retirement announcement by Republican Rep. Elton Gallegly, just hours before the filing deadline for the June 6 primary in California’s 24th District, was a surprise to just about everybody — including, apparently, the people who work for him. Staffers at his district office in Simi Valley said they were unaware of the congressman’s decision until they received his press release.
Looks like our chances for taking back the 24th just got a little bit better.

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Friday, March 10, 2006

Cityscape flash game (Like the GROW games)

Remember the Grow series of games? Here's a game along the same lines: Cityscape. I haven't maxed this one out yet, but it already seems harder that the Grow games--in Cityscape, there are eighteen items to place, and you get no feedback on which items have been maxed out. My best score so far is only 38/60.

(Thanks, kendrak!)

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Thursday, March 09, 2006

Faith-Based Homeland Security.

Establishment of a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the Department of Homeland Security.

Let me repeat that: Bush just established a Center for Religious Homeland Security. Honestly, I'm kind of hoping that I went insane a while ago, and this is all just happening in my imagination.

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Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Tivo goes to subscription only model

Tivo is going to a subscription-only pricing model: the hardware is now "free", and there are no more lifetime service contracts. They're going to make all their money through monthly subscription fees. (You can prepay up to three years for a small price break.)

I really like Tivo--they've got some pretty slick software, and I was thinking of getting a Series 3 Tivo when they eventually comes out. But I'll have to revisit that decision, because this new pricing scheme kind of bugs me.

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Tuesday, March 07, 2006

The hunt. for a pirate ARRRRRmband!

A few weeks ago, I saw Sean Bonner's post "Get Ye To Pirates!" on blogging.la where he bragged about picking up a "I (HEART) PIRATES" black wristband at Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean ride. When I heard my friend Todd was going to Pirates, I asked him to pick one up for me.

When he returned to work, he casually mentioned, "I dropped something off in your cubicle." I expected the armband, but instead, there was a crumpled and torn treasure map on my desk! I grabbed Michael and Chase in the hallway to help me out. We spent the next ten minutes on the quest--over the River of Engineerial Pain, past the Managerial Cliffs of Insanity, and finally deep into the 3rd Cube of Death where the armband was hidden. ARRRRRRR!

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Thursday, March 02, 2006

Splash Back

Splash Back. Quite addictive.

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Bush's boots

Bush wears cowboy boots adorned with the presidential seal. Those are the real boots. Seriously.

I know what you're thinking: "That must be photoshopped!" Nope.

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Winter Olympics Roundup

Well, the 20th Winter Olympics are over, but I didn't get to a lot of half-written blog posts on the subject. So as we say goodbye to Torino mascots Neve and Gliz, here are my final thoughts:

Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through the Olympics: An out-of-shape Bode Miller, in an interview after his last race, said "It was really positive, really positive. I had a great time. I had a lot of fun. I was out a lot. Despite what everybody thinks, I didn't get drunk very often and I never drank the night before the race". He took the opportunity of a lifetime and instead partied like a spoiled American on his first Eurotrip. Miller also said, "My goals weren't to be the best in the world. I don't want to win the overall World Cup. I wasn't trying to." I guess he was very successful at that.

Olympian most likely to share a name with a character on The Sopranos: Joey Cheek

Dumbest Olympic rule: There's no Women's ski jumping, because it is bad for their health. (also, there was no women's marathon until 1984, for the same reason!)

Saddest story of the Olympics: Kimberly Derrick competed (and lost) the same day that her grandfather died of a heart attack.

And finally, at least they finished: Dead F'ing Last, celebrating last place finishes in the Olympics

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