Off Topic

Just found "Get Human." A cheat sheet for how to bypass the bullshit automated phone tree when calling big companies for help. Sweet.

Holy shit. It blew my mind. The best movie I've seen in a long time. I have to see Shaun of The Dead and all that other stuff now.

Has anyone ever had to read this pile of shit? I had to write 10 "journal entries" on it today, it took me 4 hours just because the thing is so damn boring. I can't read more than 15 pages at once without having to stop. I want to jump in front of a moving truck after reading it. I asked my mom, who loves to read, if she had read it, and all she could say was "I hate that fucking book". And I found a 10 line runon sentence. Aren't there more important things to teach in school?

Article to keep in mind next time you ship: Shipping Company Reviews Best Package Shipping Company - Popular Mechanics

Interesting piece of history - how they transported the A-12 to Area 51. (the A-12 aircraft was the precursor to the SR-71 Blackbird) http://www.roadrunnersinternationale.com/transporting_the_a-12.html

Today through a newspaper supplement article I've learnt about Chloe, the 10 year old kid who has a rare disease that only suffer 12 people in the planet. There are millions of people suffering in the World, so why care, you may think. One of the reasons making this case worth our attention is that there's an investigation going on, they know what gene is causing the disease and they know they might be able to produce the missing substance causing the problem. They estimate that the whole process until a cure is produced would cost about 200,000€. The important part, as I see it, is that contributing to this investigation we're opening the door to finding cure to other di…

For another sign of technological and cultural changes, the first signs of todays LA quake seemed to start with Twitter posts and then spread to traditional media. Here is an example.

Hey Everyone, I just wanted to thank this community. Head-case has been an incredible wealth of knowledge for me, having guided my foray into high fidelity audio. I joined Head-case in 2008, soon after discovering that head-fi was overwhelming and nearly impossible to garner useful information from. I then spent the next couple of years lurking and reading, eventually leading to several (blind, but somewhat informed) purchases. I've been enjoying music through the same set-up for the past 4 years or so. I haven't been here in a while, but I decided that it was about time to offer my gratitude to the community that built my headphone system - quite literally, as my hea…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14906669/

So folks really want to work there? No kidding!! Just hope my staff doesn't get any bright ideas!! #1 place to work....and for good reason!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHu3hXSl7M4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHu3hXSl7M4

Does anybody use Earthlinks DSL-based local phone service?Impressions? QOS? Is it great? Does it suck? It just came available in my neighborhood. I would so enjoy saying goodbye to ATT. I currently use Earthlink for DSL. It's fine. Nothing extreme to report good or bad.

Article in the Tuttle Times, and a transcript of the email exchange. Having worked a help line before, I can only sympathize for poor Johnny.

Happy musical birthday

Being in the software industry and with most of our customers being developers we don't run into that many stupid customers but man today I think we found a nominee for retard of the year. We recieved an email from a customer that was having problems placing an order on our website, the first thing I do is check the credit card processing log to see if the card was rejected. Low and behold it was but the funny part is that he tried to place the order 14 times with the following in the "card holder name" field: platinum Pplatinum Mastercard Master card platinum :laugh:

Maverick Thai general does the hand-grenade waltz - Yahoo! News

Anyone going this year? You know you want to, since MC Hammer will be there.

Yeah that's right, post your masterpieces here. Here's me: And I bet you can guess who this is.

I miss him. I hope he's alright. Two of the last things he posted were: that he was sick that he was famous Here's to hoping it's more of the latter than the former.

Damn. Just...damn.

CNN sells Zite to Flipboard http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/05/technology/flipboard-cnn-zite/index.html No good deed goes unpunished.

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=160489198&m=160489358 I don't know if many of you know about the well, but it's where I got my ideas about what community can be like online. It's a "hippier" version of what I've aimed to create here. Howard Rheingold is one of the great visionaries of online community, and he gives an interesting, short interview about the well. It's now for sale, but I imagine it will end up disappearing, and that will be a sad day.

Not a political endorsement or argument by me in any manner, just pointing out something interesting. I've just read through an great essay by my favorite author, David Foster Wallace. He's a post-modern type who's written lots of short stories, non-fiction, and one totally over the top novel called Infinite Jest. His main skill is bogging his literature down with meaningless details only to hit you with simple but seemingly revalatory facts (probably only revalatory based on the general mediocrity of what came before.) Despite that, I still love reading anything he writes. Guess I like the pain . So in 2000, Rolling Stone contacted him to join a media tour for a ca…

Debbie and I are in the process of looking for a Siamese cat or kitten. I figured I'd throw it out the HC crew to see if anyone has a connection or suggestions. In my previous relationship I owned cats for over twenty years so I am familiar. I've always wanted a Siamese, so now seems the time. Let us know.