Sunday, November 30, 2008

Our Monday Morning Waste of Time!

This is absolutely the single greatest waste of time on the web ever!

I guarantee it or your money back!

Waste time, watch this!

CLICK HERE!

Friday, November 28, 2008

They just don't get it!


The pictures are from a Google image search for private jet interiors.

GM's reaction to the criticism provoked by asking for truckloads of federal tax dollars while flying around in private jets, GM has asked the FAA to prevent public tracking of its jets!

Story HERE.

FAA Tracking Info HERE
. [Many sites use the FAA data.]

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

This brings back unpleasant memories!

The men's dorm that I lived in my freshmen college year had one of these odd things on every floor, the only showers available. I don't know who 'Bradley' was but I hate him. I thought it was creepy then -- and seeing it again only confirms that I was right!

I just happened across the photo on the web.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Dah!

The head of GM flew from Detroit to DC to appear before Congress to explain why GM needs billions of taxpayer dollars. He made the flight in one of GM's private jets. That might be part of the explanation.

Am I the only one who has never heard of a Interrobang‽

The interrobang, ‽, is a nonstandard English-language punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of the question mark (also called the interrogative point) and the exclamation mark or exclamation point (known in printers' jargon as the bang).

¡
The little thing above is proposed as a punctuation mark to indicate sarcasm. As in:

I think the interrobang is a great idea¡

Friday, November 21, 2008

This is kind of fun!

Minnesota Public Radio has an excellent website showing the difficulties of recounting ballots. You get to vote who gets each disputed ballot and view the vote results. (The voter signed the ballot above, which you are not allowed to do in Minnesota. MPR obscured the signature for privacy reasons.)

View disputed ballots here: MPR

Now that's comedy!

St. Paul, Minn. — As an election judge, Diane Follmer's job is to count sorted ballots and place them in stacks of 25. And sometimes, the counting takes over her verbal skills.

"You begin to speak in numbers. When someone at the table sneezed yesterday, instead of saying 'Gesundheit,' I said, 'Seventeen.'"

Minnesota Public Radio

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Maybe I should just buy gas.

We stopped at the gas station today for a hotdog.

Young mother getting herself a soda. Daughter, maybe 6 or 7, busily pulling cups out of dispensers and throwing them on the floor. Mother's only response, "Do you want ice?"

With hotdog in hand, I was waiting to pay. One the the clerks picked up a telephone and announced over the outdoor speakers. "Please put the nozzles back on the pumps. All of the pumps have stopped working." Pandemonium ensued.

Extreme Mash Potatoes

Putting the word "extreme" in front of something does not necessarily make it exciting, or even interesting.

Tonight the Discovery Channel aired Extreme Loggers.

The loggers were were neither extreme, exciting, or interesting.

They used mules. That didn't make it extreme, just outdated.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Pick a team!

The dogs and I often go to the gas station for lunch. The hot dogs are great! The donuts are fresh! And the Cokes are really cheap!

I never counted but there must be thirty soda fountains -- places where you press your cup of choice against a metal thing and soda comes pouring out.

Several times now I've noticed people who put soda from three or four or five fountains into a single cup. Not things you would expect -- root beer and Diet Pepsi and 7Up, combinations like that.

Yuck!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

I HATE CHARTER

Did I mention that I HATE CHARTER!

No Internet connection yesterday so I did all of the selfhelp things.

Then I called Charter. They have one of those awful voice-activated help systems! After 20 minutes of it telling me to do the same things that I had already done, it decided I needed to talk to a real person.

The real person had me redo all of the things that I had now done twice. He then decided to schedule a service appointment. While he was doing that, he discovered there was a service outtage in my area!

Wouldn't you think that would have been the FIRST THING he would have checked? Or the FIRST THING the automated sytem would have checked.

The video part of the cable went out later in the afternoon. It all must have come back up in the wee hours of the morning.

Did I mention that I HATE CHARTER!

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Send caffeine! Buckets of caffeine!

I'm so tired my teeth hurt!

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

from the back cover:

The Puppy Bomb, by James Lynch, follows Texas Ranger Jonah LeClaire as he investigates the bizarre and gruesome deaths of several Texas state troopers. All the victims were blond, blue-eyed, and muscular, and in their youths were all members of an all-boy, after-school club called the Lettermen. LeClaire investigates the murders while babysitting a trooper who might be the next target; or is he the primary suspect? Every turn deepens the mystery, as LeClaire uncovers the kinky history of the Letterman, but even the victim’s sordid pasts don’t compare to the bizarre present. As yet another trooper disappears, motives become more elusive and the killings become more vicious. Lynch’s The Puppy Bomb masterfully weaves the nuts and bolts of a first class whodunit with the titillating backstory of male bonding gone terribly wrong. Told with wry wit and twists and turns galore, The Puppy Bomb keeps you guessing and wanting more, while entertaining every step of the way.

[The legal stuff: Copyright 2008]

I paid to have an 'editorial analysis'

The first recommendation from the editor was to change the title, because people would think it is a children's book. You know, like a book for toddlers about puppies exploding! Say 'Goodnight Gracie.'

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The book writing goes swell!

The book selling not so much so. You have to have a literary agent to be published by a traditional publisher. Not been able to get one of those.

You have to be published by a traditional publisher to get into bookstores. The Catch-22 part.


You have to have a publicist. Being dyslexic, I have trouble spelling "publicist" much less finding one.


I do plan to send free copies of the book to regular visitors -- so decide on an address that you want to use.


The book is a mystery, with sexual content, strong language, and -- this will shock some of you -- profanities and vulgarisms.


While trying to sell the first book, I am working on the second in the series.


There will be a third.

Collectively, they will make good presents, and doorstops.


[The legal part: Cover protected by Copyright. Subtitle registered trademark. Image used by permission.]

Things are tough all over!

Home values in Zipcode 90210 have fallen 3.10% this year.

That is a lot less of a decline that many places.

But the home values are so high that -3.10% is still lots of money

With the average price of a home in 90210 at $2,930,000, the average decline is about 90K -- the price of a good Mercedes. I feel so sorry for those folks!

Thursday, November 06, 2008

"Rooster arrested in Benton, Ill."

"Police Chief Mike O'Neill says the rooster has been bothering people lately, trying to keep them from getting where they want to go."

I live in an area where people can be outsmarted by fowl!

That actually explains a great deal!

Full article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch/The Southern Illinoisan

Gas is $2.05 here!

They must be giving it away in Missouri!

Gas is always cheaper in Missouri than on our side of the Mississippi River.

Even though the oil refineries are in Illinois.

Even though if you turn right instead of left when you get off the freeway -- on the way to my house -- you end up in an oil field!

But then, what about the price of gas ever makes sense?

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Your canceled check will be your Thank You Note

I sent a check for $1,000 to a church in Missouri in memory of an uncle who died about ten years ago.

I sent it four weeks ago.

At least, I guess, they're not wasting money on stamps.

Monday, November 03, 2008

Our Monday-morning waste of time? What else? Political humor.

Jay Leno

"Hey, I watched 'American Idol' last night, the Barack Obama show. Did you all see Barack Obama’s infomercial? It was called “American Stories.” You know why they called it “American Stories”? I guess it sounded better than 'Barack Obama Running Out the Clock.'"

"Here's the amazing part, this is true, it was the highest-rated show on NBC last night. NBC's already talking to Barack about picking it up for 13 more episodes."

"And after Barack Obama, I watched John John McCain's ad on TV. I thought it was McCain's ad. Turned out it was just Wilford Brimley for Liberty Medical. 'Check it often! Check your blood sugar!'"

"And McCain says he's ready for Halloween. McCain says he's going to wear a Barack Obama mask and go as a socialist."

"And Republicans now say that the $150,000 worth of clothes they bought for Sarah Palin will probably go to a charity. Charity, is that a good idea? Isn't that kind of counterproductive? I mean, you're going to give a homeless woman your spare change when she's wearing a Dolce & Gabbana jacket and Jimmy Choo shoes, you know?"

David Letterman

"John McCain was on Larry King’s show last night, and it got kind of awkward when Larry had to tell John McCain that 72 percent of his ex-wives were for Obama."

"But on that show, Larry King and John McCain looked like two guys who would be fighting over Cloris Leachman."

"And how about last night, when Barack Obama had his half hour infomercial TV special. I mean, thank God! It’s about time this guy got some media coverage, don’t you think?"

"But I thought it was one of those heartwarming infomercials. It had a wonderful ending. In the final scene Barack Obama is adopted by Angelina Jolie."

Jon Stewart

"In Senator Obama's quest to become the president of television, Obama bought a half-hour infomercial and ran it during prime time on seven different networks. Opening with actual footage of amber waves of grain [on screen: opening to Obama's infomercial] presumably to demonstrate he's the type of guy you want to make a beer with."

Conan O'Brien

"I've noticed a number of athletes are now endorsing candidates in this presidential election. Barack Obama has been endorsed by Patrick Ewing and Charles Barkley, and John McCain's been endorsed by Ty Cobb and Jim Thorpe."

"Joe the plumber was supposed to appear at a John McCain rally today, but didn't show up. Yeah. So, apparently, the guy really is a plumber."


Jimmy Kimmel

"Obama is ahead in every major poll. One online gambling site has him as a seven to one favorite to win. They're saying the only way Obama could lose this election right now is if they made him bowl for it."

"The governor of California is the actor and former body builder, Arnold Schwarzenegger. He announced that he opposes Proposition 8. Proposition 8 is the proposition in California that would ban gay marriage. ... Arnold also opposes Proposition 14, which would require all Governors of California to speak some English."

Sunday, November 02, 2008

New widget

I deleted the Twitter widget. The military might find it dangerous, I just found it boring.

I added a widget for fivethirtyeight.com, the meta poll site. I will leave it up for a few days.

Saturday, November 01, 2008

A new demogrphic?

Actually, maybe it's a sociolographic????

Anyway, one thing that distinguishes Red States from Blues States is the Starbucks/Walmart ratio.

From FiveThirtyEight.com (a meta polling site):

Starbucks:Walmart ratio is exactly what it looks like: take the number of Starbucks in the state and divide by the number of Walmarts. While there is a connotation that Starbucks is a place where liberals go and Walmart is a place where conservatives go, it's probably more strongly correlated to population density. There are rarely Starbucks sitting out in the middle of farmland, and you can't have a Walmart on every corner of a big city.

Either way, though, lots of Starbucks relatives to Walmarts is a good sign for Obama. The ratio in Oklahoma is one of the lowest in the country.

From TS Perspective:
Top 7 highest Starbucks to Walmart ratios:
Washington (13.6:1)
California (12.5:1)
Oregon (8.4:1)
Nevada (8.0:1)
Hawaii (7.4:1)
Colorado
New York (4.6:1)
All of these states will/should go to Obama on Tuesday.

Now the bottom 7:
Arkansas (0.19:1)
Mississippi (0.29:1)
West Virgina (0.41:1)
Oklahoma (0.41:1)
New Hampshire (0.42:1)
Alabama (0.44:1)
Louisiana (0.51:1)

Except for independent leaning New Hampshire, you get the picture.