There's a bunch of squirrels running around in the backyard. I really should get a bird feeder and one of these for the hours of entertainment it would provide.
Category: WTF
Idle Conversations on AIM
Posted by – March 16, 2007
A friend and I, idly speculating on what we'd do if we ever won the lottery (assuming we bought tickets) :
ytrewq78: buy your entire neighborhood, raze it, then build a mcmansion. ;)
Thav: naw, but I'd throw block parties quite often. :)
ytrewq78: aw, come on. you could play the evil real estate developer who's trying to kick the plucky old lady off the land that's been in her family for generations.
Thav: there aren't any of those in my neighborhood.
ytrewq78: fine. pay a plucky old lady to move into the neighborhood first.
Thav: ahhaha.
ytrewq78: and then when she still won't sell, build a gaping hellmouth all around her property.
Thav: "Hi, here's $50k, move into this house so I can play out an evil fantasy."
ytrewq78: exactly.
Thav: "GET OUT! OLD WOMAN!"
Thav: "You're weird."
Thav: "and you're now $50k richer, thanks."
ytrewq78: hehe.
Thav: "AND GET OUT! OLD WOMAN!"
ytrewq78: see? it's a perfect plan.
ytrewq78: and you would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for those damn kids and their f****** dog.
The conversation then devolved into randomness about badgers.
Mozilla is definitely taking the wrong road here.
Posted by – January 18, 2006
So, I was browsing through my RSS aggregator this morning when I came across this Slashdot article describing how Firefox developers are adding a "feature" to upcoming Firefox versions to ping a site when you click on a link, so sites can track what links you follow. This bugs me both because of the privacy implications and because it's not a W3C specification. This is no better than the stupid games Microsoft played in the past with non-standard additions to Internet Explorer.
I'm not amused. In the case of internal sites, you already have that information in the logs. In the case of external sites, it's really none of their damn business which links I follow -- if I link to Google or the best blonde joke ever, it really isn't any concern of mine whether you follow it or not. While it appears that FF devs are going to provide some kind of visual notification, they don't plan to have an option in the interface or when first clicking a "ping" link to turn it off, since they apparently argue that most users would turn it off. News flash: If you have a feature that most users would turn off if given the choice, perhaps you shouldn't include that feature!
Fortunately, you can still go into about:config and disable browser.send_pings, which is something I plan on doing on every machine I've got access to. I've also written a Greasemonkey user script which pulls every link tag in the document and does .removeAttribute() on "ping" if it exists. I'll be posting that later today when I get home from work and have a chance to put up a small page for it. I see no reason to make it any easier or less expensive for web sites to track my every move, especially when it takes me off their site -- it isn't any of their business.
Firefox has generally had a good track record on privacy, user control, and standards adherence. I do hope they reconsider this course of action rather than push ahead with such an ill-advised "feature."
BlueHippo
Posted by – January 8, 2006
The last few days I've been seeing advertisements on the History Channel for "Blue Hippo," which appeared to be a company hawking low-quality PC hardware. So, naturally, I hit up Google to see what I could find out.
Wikipedia offers a very illuminating writeup:
BlueHippo Funding, LLC is an installment credit company for customers with poor credit, offering them computers, flat-screen televisions, and similar items, at usury pricing that garnered it CBS MarketWatch.com's 'Stupid Investment of the Week' label because "Blue Hippo targets credit-impaired borrowers, hoping they also are math- and shopping-impaired." The company has encountered several complaints with the Better Business Bureau; as a result, the Greater Maryland Better Business Bureau issued a consumer alert against the company within eight months of its founding.
Given these comments and their prominent statement that "bad credit is okay" in their advertisements, it certainly appears that they are trying to take advantage of those who can least afford to be taken advantage of, as well as those who simply aren't particularly financially savvy. Personally, I think that's outrageous.
Although people certainly need to be responsible for their use of credit, I do wonder if part of the problem is simply that many people aren't particularly well-educated when it comes to financial issues. I can't speak for other schools, but it's not a topic that was covered in particular depth in my grade school education. I think we spent about 2-3 weeks in 8th grade civics learning how to balance a checkbook and that was about it. When I think about it, some kind of accounting class (which should cover a lot of this) really ought to be a required class.
Of course, it would also be helpful if financial institutions had somewhat more stringent requirements for handing out credit. The last few years, it seems like having a pulse is the only qualification required...
This is pretty cool.
Posted by – December 2, 2005
It's a pity they didn't actually run this X-Box 360 advertisement, although I can see why they didn't. It's creative and amusing, though.
It’s a… wovel?
Posted by – November 3, 2005
This is twisted in its brilliance. I'm seriously thinking about buying one -- it's cheaper than a snowblower, faster than a shovel, and probably won't destroy my body for three days like shoveling the 12" of snow we got last year did. :)
A short note on comment spam…
Posted by – August 14, 2005
Although I doubt any of the comment-spamming morons will actually read this entry, I just wanted to note that spam comments are deleted just as soon as I come across them... assuming they avoid the moderation queue. I'm not paying money for this site just to provide you with a way to improve your pageranks, jerks.
I suppose now I'm going to have to find a plugin or something to add rel="nofollow" to all hyperlinks in comments, just in case anything gets through...
Okay, this is a bit much…
Posted by – July 20, 2005
An article posted in the Ars Lounge yesterday:
Teaching group to consider banning word "fail" - Yahoo! News
I can understand not wanting to demoralize kids, but really, that's taking it a little bit too far.
On the other hand, this presents some amazing possibilities for amusing euphemisms. I am not, for example, deaf. No, I'm just experiencing deferred hearing! (Deferred until my next life, presumably...)
What else can you come up with? I rather like "he's not dead, he's deferred breathing."
XaiaX's comment about "deferred employment" is great, too.