I once worked for a sausage factory and divided my time between shipping and the brat line. The chap I worked with was named Ever. That time is one of the toughest, for I worked for the Wurst boss, Ever.
Month: January 2007
Quote of the day
From Fergus and the Druid, W.B. Yeats
“A wild and foolish labourer is a king,
To do, and do, and do, and never dream.”
We’re so focused on doing, on completing and accomplishing and advancing that we forget to dream. Heck, many of us forget how to dream! With no dreams, there are no goals, thus no plans, so life becomes a wandering morass of unconnected and empty (if completed) task lists. So many of us dream of kingship, so it seems.
Seattle, The Viaduct, and Life In The City
Here’s my response to this article/survey (online at the Seattle PI).
The Question:
What’s the best option for the viaduct?
Gov. Gregoire seems to have resuscitated the possibility for a tunnel to replace the
Looking over the debate, the mayor only seems to be concerned about the beautification aspects of this whole debate. I’m bothered by the fact that few folks are mentioning the economic impact of tunnel construction, how we will mitigate the effects of this roadway being inaccessible for nearly a decade, or, of course, the justification of the extra expense. The tunnel hasn’t been sold to me, at least.
Personally, I’m worried that this project has not been thought through. The economic impacts for areas such as Ballard and immense, and haven’t been publicly addressed/discussed. Mayor Nickels has not addressed many of the valid criticisms of his plan, and certainly hasn’t made a case for the tunnel option being better. The only I see in the tunnel is the beautification of the waterfront. A great thing, don’t get me wrong. I’m just not convinced that it’s worth the other costs incurred.
Quote of the Day, Thanks to Google
“The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.”
– Thorstein Veblen
This drives home a point that I’ve often meditated on; why is it that that exploration only whets the appetite for further exploration? I was once told that we’re close to knowing all there is to know. What a load of rubbish, eh? That was some time back (junior high, methinks). Well, whatever. What’s really amazing here is how powerful this is. So many folks think that the purpose of research is (simply) answering a question, finding the truth. Yet, the more you learn, the further you seem to be from the truth. Perhaps it is within the quest for knowledge that we learn how far from the truth we really were. Eh, sounds good…
Acquistion Timeline
Here’s a little gem put together by the folks at shmula.com. It shows all the acquisitions by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo over the past few years. It’s a very well done and thought provoking thing. Thanks to Marketing Pilgrim for featuring this.
Great Bumper Stickers
Some are quite dumb, but a few are cute/clever.
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>>Subject: Great Bumper Stickers!
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>> 1) (On an infant’s shirt): Already smarter than Bush
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>> 2) 1/20/09: End of an Error
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>> 3) That’s OK, I Wasn’t Using My Civil Liberties Anyway
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>> 4) Let’s Fix Democracy in This Country First
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>> 5) If You Want a Nation Ruled By Religion, Move to Iran
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>> 6) Bush. Like a Rock. Only Dumber.
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>> 7) You Can’t Be Pro-War And Pro-Life At The Same Time
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>> 8) If You Can Read This, You’re Not Our President
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>> 9) Of Course It Hurts: You’re Getting Screwed by an Elephant
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>> 10) Hey, Bush Supporters: Embarrassed Yet?
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>> 11) George Bush: Creating the Terrorists Our Kids Will Have to
Fight
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>> 12) impeachment: It’s Not Just for Blowjobs Anymore
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>> 13) Give Bush a Blowjob So We Can Impeach Him, Too
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>> 14) America : One Nation, Under Surveillance
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>> 15) They Call Him “W” So He Can Spell It
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>> 16) Which God Do You Kill For?
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>> 17) Cheney/Satan ’08
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>> 18) Jail to the Chief
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>> 19) Who Would Jesus Torture?
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>> 20) No, Seriously, Why Did We Invade
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>> 21) Bush: God’s Way of Proving Intelligent Design is Full Of Crap
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>> 22) So Many Christians, So Few Lions
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>> 23) Bad president! No Banana.
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>> 24) We Need a President Who’s Fluent In At Least One Language
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>> 25) We’re Making Enemies Faster Than We Can Kill Them
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>> 26) Buck Fush
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>> 27) Rich Man’s War, Poor Man’s Blood
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>> 28) Is It Vietnam Yet?
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>> 29) Bush Doesn’t Care About White People, Either
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>> 30) Where Are We Going? And Why Are We In This Handbasket?
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>> 31) You Elected Him. You Deserve Him.
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>> 32) Frodo Failed. Bush Has the Ring.
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>> 33) Impeach Cheney First
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>> 34) Dubya, Your Dad Shoulda Pulled Out, Too
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>> 35) When Bush Took Office, Gas Was $1.46
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>> 36) The Republican Party: Our Bridge to the 11th Century
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>> 37) 2004: Embarrassed 2005: Horrified 2006: Terrified
New Phisher Scam
A scary new phisher exploit (pointed out by Deb at WXPnews.com). Eeek!
Phishers get deadly serious
Phishers have traditionally used trickery and deception to gain access to your personal information and, subsequently, your money. But now they’re resorting to threats of violence; a recent phishing scam purports to be from a professional hit man who’s been hired to kill you, but will drop the contract if you give him enough cash. Read more about it here:
http://www.wxpnews.com/DRML9K/070116-Phishers
iPhone-esque device – from LG
Engadget has a cool piece about LG’s iPhone-esque device. It convinces me that the format developed for the iPhone will be very popular. I haven’t had a chance to really research this, so I don’t know if this uses Symbian, Windows Mobile, or what. We’ll see, I guess. Not too much to excited over, but something interesting, nonetheless.
iPhone & LG KE850: separated at birth?
Two sparsely-buttoned large, touchscreen phones: the Apple iPhone, and the LG KE850 (which already won the International Forum Design Product Design Award for 2007). Separated at birth, or possible lawsuit number two for Apple? You decide.
Thoughts on Sony
Sony didn’t learn from Beta format mistakes
Sony isn’t letting the porn industry use their BlueRay format? I’m amazed at their short-sidedness here. Adult Entertainment was one of the key drivers for several industries success. It was key (as Scoble points out here) in VHS winning the format wars. Plus, it was one of the early winners when it came to profit making on the net. Someone might want to the let Sonys exec’s know that they’re locking out a $57 billion industry.
On a mildly related note, I received a Sony Reader over the holidays. I’ve played a little bit with it, and am going to spend some significant time op-testing it over the next few weeks. Already, though, I’ve two complaints. Number one, no backlighting. So, while I’m waiting for the train to come on a dark platform, too bad, so sad. I think this was a gross oversight. It might save a bit on battery life, but I can think of way too many times that the backlight would be critical. It certainly will keep me from using this for my latenight/can’t sleep reading. Also, I wonder why it doesn’t have a touch screen. I don’t know the price points here, but if it doesn’t add too much to the sales price, they should seriously consider dropping one of those in. That could also expand the functionality of the device.
I’m becoming a Google devotee. The way they’ve updated the personal homepage is top notch. It’s clean, concise, and easy to tweak: a marvelous combination! I’ve also been enjoying the range of options available for the toolbar (point of clarification: I use Firefox 2). I just discovered the RSS feed “adder” (bad grammar, spelling, etc, but you know what I mean) and have been enjoying easily adding feeds to my page. Yahoo was getting quite cluttered, and the blasted cute graphics were driving me nuts.