Month: August 2008
Most Intense Upgrade Ever
I jailbroke my iPhone today. It’s the first time I’ve literally sweat using a piece of hardware. I’ve pulled out RAM from a computer in use to prevent it from catching on fire, I’ve hot swapped drives and flashed at least 20 BIOSs. I’ve frozen hard drive, and whacked them against tables to get actuators moving again and once dove across a room to remove a screw driver that’d fallen into a CPU fan. Nothing compared the exhileration of possibly destroying a $550 to replace phone in the course of jailbreaking a phone so I could get an unsigned app to get rid of the stupid “Stocks” icon. Oh, and also for the possibility of allowing me to use my phone as a wireless highspeed modem by tethering it to my laptop. That too.
Fuck Comic Sans… again
I was shuffling through the pictures I took during camp so I could start uploading them to flickr and remembered this little gem:
Yep, a napkin dispense with text in Comic Sans. There should have been a note below
We did the above sign in comic sans because our research shows people like it as a way for businesses to be “fun”. We also chose it because it looks sloppy and poorly made like the food you’ll inevitably spill on yourself. Mouthbreather.
The idea of using comic sans in any professional setting is ridiculous moreso on a napkin dispenser and this rage has led me to a new term: fontracide. If you find a good example of fontracide I strongly recommend you add it to del.icio.us or flickr.com with that tag.
Argument Site Name
As I promised many moons ago, I’m going to get my debate and argument site going but first I need a name. These are some of the one’s both available and vaguely germaine:
Fatmanlogic
Debatewarrior
Logicwarriors
Debateblender
Logicblender
Ragefueledlogic
Rulesofenragement
Dumbcorker
Idiotcorker
Debaterocks
Suggestions?
128 kbps vs. 256 kbps
I’ve started moving my stuff from camp to home and after 2 hours of lugging I settled in to enter 2 months worth of Pepsi Stuff points I’d picked up off the ground. I purchased a song that’d be stuck in my head and as I listened to it I realized I’d downloaded previously after it’d gotten stuck in my head about a year prior, one was 128 kbps while the other was 256 kbps. I’d always assumed the two were identical until the 2nd movement when I noted the tell-tale gurgle of a cluster-fuck of algorithms trying to make sense of 15 instruments in small groups playing across a four octave dynamic range.
This changes everything. I’ve spent years borrowing albums from the library copying them at 128 kbps and returning them and compared to the clarity of a slightly better sampling rate everytime I listen to the string part of “Cantus In Memory of Benjamin Britte” I may as well be listening to an infant gurgling peas while playing with a blender full of carbonated AstroGlide. Gha…. There goes my vacation.
Patch Victory
I enjoy a good auction. I enjoy running one even more. Auctions are battle of wits and represents a very strong suspension of disbelief from the audience with the I’ll-pay-this-much-if-you-convince-me-it’s-worth-that-much methodology as the cornerstone of success. Normally I shoot for 50% above regular market value as my target price for a given items and there are a few ways to help this along:
1) Every item is special – it doesn’t matter if you’re selling something out of a God damn gumball machine, the what-ever you’re holding is unique the audience just needs to know why.
2) Convince the bidder that they’ll be taken down a peg in the eyes of a cruel and calculating God if they let the bid stand with someone else on an item they’ve bid where the high bid is less than the combined value of their wallet and retirement.
Anyway, I’ve set a new personal record. A patch that normally sells for $8.00 sold for $42.00. I win.
Unprotected Surfing
A gentlemen at camp liked what we were doing and purchased us some wireless N stuff so the staff could do work in more places. The problem has been that the DNS service we use is not acting correctly eliciting the following:
Joe: Terry, you can access facebook, are the dominican monks that guard the Internet on strike?
Me: The DNS service isn’t working, you could go to hothotsluts.com without being stopped.
Joe: Really? *wait* Damn, hothotsluts.com doesn’t exist. It should.
Me: Hold on… I now own hothotsluts.com.
So, I’m now the proud owner of hothotsluts.com, I’m not sure where I should direct it. In other news, we discovered that hotsluts.com does indeed exist and with a byline “sluttier than you could ever imagine” I don’t know how they’re not #1 on the slut charts.
There it is
Me: Well, that explains why I couldn’t find my belt. I was already wearing it.
Secret Wisdom of the Provos
During the week, one or two Scouts in the provo got seven merit badges each. I mentioned that I was impressed:
Provo: Do you want to know our secret?
Me: Sure….
Provo (whisper in ear): Jews pwn n00bs.
Fun at Doylestown Hospital
So, the day started out great, with crispy bacon in the Dining Hall and everything. I thought I could slip away from the shackles of karma, but I couldn’t. One of the provos destroyed his ankle while waving at Andy Clarke. Injury often stalks those who wave to the Briton. I, being the only one with a car, got to drive the fellow to the hospital but with the caveat that it was after a pit stop. The Economist’s Technology Monitor had been updated so about 45 minutes later I made the 200 foot walk to take the kid to the hospital. I was worried that he was faking his sprained ankle so I made several jarring stops, based on the volume of the screams he wasn’t faking it.
On arrival, we sat in the ER waiting area surrounded by people with funny conditions. Funny uh oh, not funny ha ha. We played hide and go seek with our radios in the waiting room. After a two hour wait, he went to get an x-ray and we tried for a group shot but weren’t allowed. Andy and our next got our charge a large collection of Hannah Montana stickers for being such a brave little Scout. I look forward to seeing how this ends.