February 2004 Archives

Today's funny bit comes to you from the U.S. Government. Here is a letter from John D. Dingell (D), a representative from Michigan's 15th district, to Dr. Gregory Mankiw, the Chairman of the Council of Econimic Advisors in the Executive Office of the President. Rep. Dingell is responding to some confusion in the definition of "manufacturing". Read the whole letter here, it's hilarious!

If anyone has a spare ICBM, please put me out of my misery by launching it at: 34� 44' 45" , -92� 16' 14" or 34.7461 , -92.2708. That's my present location in meat-space. And I'm bored-- so very bored. Just about everything I'm responsible for at work has been shut down, or I've had to cripple in some way. Now I just sit around like the Maytag repairman waiting for something to break. Thanks to Maporama for providing the neato GPS coordinate info. *sigh* I've even run out of cool stuff to post to my blog.

While you are awake, check out some of the artwork by my co-worker Phil's friend Stephen. He and Phil did a 3-D comic strip called Mr. Bun and he has recently put the site back up with some other 2-D artwork. It's here.

From a friend at the office, Elliott Middleton:

A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the shepherd: "If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"

The shepherd looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing flock and calmly answers: "Sure. Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his AT&T cell phone, surfs to a NASA page on the internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location, which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. Then the young man opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of complex formulas. He uploads all of this data via an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the shepherd and says: "You have exactly 1586 sheep."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my sheep" says the shepherd.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then the shepherd says to the young man: "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're a consultant." says the shepherd.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answered the shepherd. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew; to a question I never asked; and you don't know crap about my business... Now give me back my dog."

Woohoo! This morning the brand new Krispy Kreme opened at 5:30am. I was there by 6:45am along with three TV trucks and 4 radio station remote vans. It was quite a scene, man. I bought two dozen glazed and brought them into the office. All 25 glorious varieties are available here in order to whet your appetite.

Check out the new Unemployment Countdown over on the right sidebar. Found it here, and it was pretty easy to implement.

Yep, aside from fighting with Wallgreen's, my insurance and MedCo health, it's been a slow day at the office. So I created a new Fark AudioEdit. Listen here, or view the thread here (it goes live 2/11 at 5:15 am EST). The theme was to come up with a Valentine's day gone wrong-- all I could think of was a nasty double date with Judge Judy, Bender from Futurama, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Stewie from The Family Guy. Enjoy!

This simply defies description. I'm still not sure how I even found this site, but it's dogs barking Beatle's tunes. The full site is here, and here are direct links to Love Me Do and I Saw Her Standing There. You'll need the Real player to hear them.

Wonder where I've been for the past few days? I've been doing audio edits for the competitions on Fark. It's kind of like a Photoshop This contest, but with audio instead of pixels. I post under the name "sazarac", and my most recent shoddy creations can be found here, here and here. Sad, but at least I'm not hacking the source on that Smack The Penguin game-- there are about a million variations on the web now.

This Valentine's Day, why not tell the corporate profit mongers that created this holiday how you really feel! Make your own inedible Valentine Heart Candy (courtesy of ACME Labs).

Well, long time no post for me. Things have been busy. Last week I went to Delaware to visit MBNA about their buyout of our portfolio. It was a bit of a white-knuckler getting from BWI to Newark due to nasty weather, but our driver perservered and we arrived in one piece. Finally, it was a very informative trip.

As karma would have it, the Check Engine light came on in my car the day before I left for Delaware. Fortunately it was just a loose gas cap and low fuel pressure, and the light went out yesterday without a $100 trip to the dealer.

This weekend I finished my taxes, as my W2 came in from work. I think this is the earliest I have gotten them done in years-- hopefully I will get my refund soon. Alice is still doing well, but I want to get her in surgery as soon as I have the money.

Today I upgraded to Movable Type 2.661, which has additional safeguards that make it hard for spammers to leave spam comments on entries. You can only post comments from the same IP address once every 60 seconds.