Misc

These are possibly things that don't fit anywhere else. More likely these are things that need new categories invented for them.

Consider this news item read by the news-reader:

An armed robbery at the KFC in Orleans last night, two employees were not hurt, but the suspect got away with an undisclosed amount of cash.

Neat. Nice. So what's wrong with it?

Well, ignoring the breathy news-reader sentence-fragment at the beginning, the main problem is their reference to the suspect. I hate when the media and the police talk about the suspect. The suspect did this, the suspect did that. What they mean to say is that the perpetrator did this, or the perpetrator did that. Once they catch someone, they suspect that he is the perpetrator.

Semantics? Maybe -- but we should try to use language as precisely as possible.

Another true story.

Phone: ring ring

Me: Hello

Person on phone: Hello, may I please speak to $PERSON?

Me: Speaking

PoP: Hello, my name is $NAME, and I'm calling from Bell. We are just calling to thank you for being a loyal Bell customer and to ask if everything is working properly with your service?

Me: Everything's fine as far as we are aware.

PoP: Great. The purpose of my call today is to ask you if you get a lot of unwanted telemarketing calls?

Me: Um... nope, I think this one is the first one in a while.

pause

PoP: I'm not an unwanted phone call, I'm calling from Bell!

Me: Sure, but I bet you are about to try and sell me something, right?

PoP: Just to see if you need any additional services.

Me: If you are going to try to sell me something, that counts. Well thanks for calling, but I think we are happy with the service that we receive from Bell and we'll leave things as they are. Goodbye!

Phone: click

Surreal. I'm not an unwanted phone call, I'm calling from Bell! I wonder if they get taught that as a response, or if she was just thinking quickly.

Of course, now I'm curious as to what she would have tried to sell me.

I was watching Beat The Geeks on TV yesterday. The guest geek was a "Toy Geek", who had thousands of action figures. As all geeks periodically do, the Toy Geek was given ten seconds to say whatever they wanted to say to the world. The Toy Geek had this to say:

America, when you buy these things, for God's sake take them out of the packages. They're toys! Play with them!

Right on. It always amuses me when I'm looking for cars and I run into someone who thinks he is a hard-core collector, mumbling about how this card is mint, and this car will be worth so much, and that car will be worthless -- I always say to them that with the thousands of each example being made, the odds that any particular car will retain any kind of value is microscopic. The look on their faces when I say I open the blister packs can be priceless. I tell them that they should thank me, that by opening my cars I am increasing the scarcity of theirs, fractionally increasing the value of their cars.

Now I'm not advocating ramming them into each other like we all did when we were kids -- but come on. Open them, play with them, and keep them in nice storage containers. They are toys!

I pass along this link entirely without comment.

Even though I really really want to.

We gonna get wet up here, we gonna.

What does the Cash for Life have in common with rust stains on your car?

Fan-tastic!

Those of you who don't watch TV in Ontario won't get that. But it turns out that Fantastic cleaner will clean rust stains off of painted metal and plastic. Really really well cleaned off, too.

From the how-about-that-department... I punched the term 'Crusade' into my fancy music stealing software and it offered me what appeared to be .avi files of the B5/Crusade episodes. However, open source bites again -- my client was unable to negotiate a session with the host of these files, meaning I couldn't see for myself.

I wonder what the copyright status of such transfers would be. I mean, I already have all the episodes downstairs on video tape... and I'll definitely buy a DVD set if it ever gets released.

Lum the Mad has resurfaced. I always thought he had a well written viewpoint on things going on in the gaming world, a world I didn't really understand.

Good to see he's back (well, he's been back quite a while, I only found him today).

Found a discussion on online gaming subscriptions, related to this picture of subscriptions for various games over time. Much of the discussion revolves around how such-and-such a game is boring:

I am told that EVE has the same exact problem. Like repetitive space mining with a pretty view? You're happy!
The "you are captain of your own ship" space MMORPG doesn't seem to have been figured out yet.

I think that the problem here is that the more real these games get, the more likely that the games will involve an increasing amount of tedium and boring activity -- real life has nothing to do with lurching from one exciting adventure to the next. Real life is sitting in your space ship for three months while traversing the void of space. Real life is doing drills and cleaning routines for months on end while your aircraft carrier slowly sails around the world.

Personally, though, I don't see the attraction of these games. I'd probably pay a small monthly fee to play Diablo II/Expansion online, but not much -- and probably not for long.

Tired of all those speed trap tickets? Have you tried overly complex radar evading gadgets that do nothing and come with a useless guarantee? Well, we have a program -- a simple program -- that can guarantee that you will never get a radar or laser issued ticket again! And all without having to buy complicated and expensive gadgets or huge books! That's right! With our simple program of behaviour modification, you will never again be issued a radar or laser ticket -- ever! Just think about it: no more photo radar! No more random speed traps! No more trips to the court house grasping for technicalities! No more speed fines! And best of all -- no more drivers insurance! Our program completely eliminates the need to pay your insurance company hundreds, or even thousands of dollars per year! Just think what you can do with all that extra money! You'll feel better, you'll look better! You might even eat better!

How?

Read More:Tell Me How -- Quickly!

I think Grapes did this a previous year, but I can't remember for sure. Still funny, though.

Grapes always did get the best email -- the only thing in my inbox these days is notification that MyYahoo! will stop forwarding spam to my pop account. I keep meaning to complain because I am not even getting any spam in that account. Nobody loves me, except for the Mandrake Club.

I had this really keen April 1 joke to play on you, but then I thought that instead I'd play dead for a month and see if anyone noticed.

So far, the cat is the only one to comment.

Proof that Grapes has a sense of humor.

Read More:not that we ever doubted

I bought some chocolate M&M's today.

Read More:Delicious details follow.

I bought some chocolate M&M's today.

Read More:Delicious details follow.

A list and summary of episodes of Reboot. Originally from YTV.com

Read More

A list and summary of episodes of Reboot. Originally from YTV.com

Read More