Quite Possibly the Worst Job Ever

YES YES YES!!!!!!!

NSFW becasue of language...

San Francisco is made of Jello!?

I knew it!

Link

Oh those tricky people...

As you know, I work on Saturdays at RClick. Well, yesterday at work (while fixing a computer for Merril Lynch), I came across a rather unusual sticker on a graphics card inside this particular computer. It read: "Warranty Void if Broken". Usually when a sticker says this is when it is over a screw hole that would let the usuer gain access to part of the device or over a seam on a device, but this one was different. This sticker was not ever any such thing. It was just stuch to a rather unpopulated part of the PCB (printed circuit board). When I say unpopulated, i mean that there were a few traces (little conductors inside the board) and no resitors, diodes, capacitors, or anything. It was strange, but then I thought, "Why whould they put a sticker here?". I came to the conclusion that this particular company put the sticker there because they were saving themselves. As it says, "Warranty Void if Broken", so if the card was broken, the terms stated in the warranty were null and void. Tricky, tricky people...

Attention: Your Laser Printer is Out to Get You!!!!

It's true. Your color laser printer is doing you a disservice. Apparently certain color laser printers put tiny yellow dots on everything you print that tell when you printed something and the serial number of the printer. Not only can this be used in investigations, but if your school ever found out about how to read the dot code, you may never be able to use the excuse that you left your assignment in your printer and conveniently forgot it, but that is between you and me (so if you plan to use that excuse, make sure you are using an inkjet). Here is a list of printers that have the "yellow dot" feature enabled. Oh, and you can easily see the dots by printing something, then scanning the document and using Photoshop, set it to CMYK, and then adjust teh curves and the hue/saturation of the indiviual channels. Maybe it is time to put on your tin foil hats..and ditch your color laser printer.

ESA must have failed math...

Check out this study done by the EAS (Entertainment Software Association) here (.pdf, so have Acrobat handy). Now, get out your handy dandy calculator. You don't need anything special, just a cheap calculator. Now, lets take a journey through the "2005 Essentail Facts" document.

The first thing you should draw your attention to is the pie chart of the ages of people that play videogames. Lets see here...Under 18 (35%), 18-49 (43%), and 50+ (19%). Let's brush the dust of that calculator and plug some numbers in. By golly, it adds up to 97%...which must mean that the other 3% of gamers are fetal. Wait, that doesn't make sense...

Lets move on to the next page: Genders of people who play videogames. Take a look at the chart: 55% male and 43% female. Now, do a little calcualtions and OMG, it adds up to 98%. Apparently there are 2% of the people that play videogames are hermaphrodite...wait, what!?

EAS surveyed 1,500 households to come up with this information, but unfortunatly they failed math. If you look at some of the other numbers, some are closer to 90% than 100%....and there are also some of the graphs that are over 100%. It is pretty disapointing to see this kind of stupidity in the world today.

Grandma vs. Mercedes

I just had too much randomness to put into one post. Here is the runoff...

This pretty much made my day...Grandma vs. Mercedes

An Italian man awoke from a two year coma he was put into from a car accident...only to say that he heard everything people said around him. Check it out here! How crazy would that be to hear the doctors say that they are going to pull the plug, but you can't say or do anything.

This is the first website hosted on a PSP. I really want one just because of all teh cool stuff you can do.

Now, this is really strange. Apparently you lose most of your immune system when you go into zero gravity. So getting even a minor sickness could be fatal.

MI6's first website. I'm suprised it took this long with the popularity of James Bond. You would think that a government agency like SIS (formerly known as MI6) would have a website. Now they do...

Ok, I swear I'm done for today...

Rainy Day Blogging

This is going to be a really random post, so bear with me.

I want to start out this post with something that proves the Japanese are crazy. You have to check it out here. How could they subject Nasubi to such torture? I'm amazed he was able to survive on contests, but it did make for good TV, right?

Well, today pretty much sucked. It was cold, rainy, and dark practicly all day. I am drained on days like this, so getting through the day was a little hard to do today. By some stoke of luck, I don't have any homework. No homework at St. Margaret's? How lucky am I?

You may know that I am kinda, sort of a computer nerd. Well, my hard drives are dying on my main computer, so I went and ordered 2 300GB Seagate 7200rpm hard drives. I thought it might as well upgrade and go a little overboard. I only have about 200GB of stuff on my computer right now, but I thought I should go big or go home. I will have roughly 600GB of storage (a little less because the NTFS filesystem takes a piece). Well, I got the hard drives in the mail a few days ago and found that one of the drives was damaged. I'm getting another one from Monarch Computer in the mail. It should be here any day now. Oh, and if you are buying any kind of computer part online, make sure it is a reputable company. Monarch Computer, ZipZoomFly and Newegg are my favorites. K, I'm done being nerdy for now.

In the absense of anything productive to do, I decided to find some interesting websites that would pass the time. I came up with some suprising results. The first site I came across is a gem. It is called Opacity and is a photojournal of old, raun down, and abandoned buildings. These building range from insane asylums to power plants. It is really quite facinating. The second site is a little wierd, and even made me ask the question "Why?". It is called the Common Census Map Project. The idea is to draw a map of the country based on the public's votes. It is an interesting, but at the same time I don't see the need. We have had the state lines in place for a very long time, why is there a need for change? Anyway, there is my randomness for today (or tonight rather). Tune in tomorrow for more.

Along came a comment...or four

I was in a particularly philosophical mood, so I decided to look around the internet for something witty or laugh-out-loud (lol for the uber 1337 folks out there) funny. Alas, I came up with nothing. I have to admit that I spent about 3.36 minutes, but by then, I should have found something. I was let down until I came to my blog, and by golly, there was some material just waiting for me. Now, you may be wondering what kind of material I am talking about because my blog is really not that interesting. Well, you didn’t look close enough, my friend.

As I perused my blog, I came upon comments of praise that were left by especially nice people. I don’t happen to know these people, but they were nice enough to drop by and give me some positive feedback. I would like to take a look at a couple of these.

The first comment I thought would be appropriate for this is one by a dear friend of mine by the name of “gizmo”. I do not know this fellow, but he dropped by and left a comment on my blog. He apparently enjoyed my blog, but that was not his intent on commenting. Out of the 25 words, only 2 pertained to my blog. The other 23 words (with a link and a rather amusing smiley) was an invite to check out his website about “california mortgage refinancing”. Now, I do not have a mortgage, as my father procures the money for the house. I was a little confused by this, but then it hit me: this kind gentleman (I am only speculating here, it could be a woman) was giving me this link to aid my father and potentially relieve a little of the burden of paying for the home. Needless to say, I was touched.

The next comment that drew my attention was one by my good friend “supper blogger”. Before I go on, I have to comment on his name. Now, a fellow with the internet handle “super blogger” must be the king of blogging. I decided to look at his blog, butmuch to my dismay, it was empty. I must not be 1337 enough to read such blogging. He too was kind enough to drop by and leave me a comment. He said that he enjoyed my blog immensely and that he would bookmark me. Now, I was deeply honored that such a distinguished blogger such as him would bookmark such a lowly blog such as mine. He must have seen the comment by “gizmo” and decided I needed some more help with the necessary payments that come along with owning a home. He also left me a link, but this time to a website for “home owner insurance”. This was a very kind gesture, seeing as insurance is a necessary thing to have these days. I was very appreciative.

Then I stumbled on a comment by a gentleman by the name of “ts”. He must have seen the other comments that “gizmo” and “super blogger” left me. He thought my problem was more severe than excessive home payment problems, but that I was just not making enough money. I was pleased that he was kind enough to help a guy out, but at the same time I was disappointed he did not comment on how good my blog is. I guess it stood out to him that I need more income.

I saved the best for last. An acquaintance of mine named “eddhunor75875806” left the comment to end all comments. My good buddy not only guided me to a wonderful website, he included 4 links to it. I guess he figured that even if I was mentally challenged, I would be able to find my way to salvation…or just a new laptop. Sure it is a pyramid scheme, but it was free, right? In any case, I was glad he took time to give me the secret to free stuff. Of course I clicked on the link (all 4 of them actually) and installed all 6 “friendly programs” so that I could attain a “top of the line” laptop for nothing. It was funny, but once the install was finished, my computer was acting like a fat man running on a very hot day with the humidity of 98%. In other words, it felt a little slow. I then filled out the form to guarantee me a laptop (I even included my Social Security number, just to be safe). Again, I was very appreciative of his kind intentions.

Golly, I want more comments like these!

(oh, in cae you were wondering, these comments have "magicaly" disapeared from my blog)

Edit: How ironic? as soon as I post this, "shopper" dropped by with a very similar comment. Sorry to say, it got lost in the world wide web.

A not so typical trip to work

Most of you know I work on Saturdays at RClick, which happens to be in Costa Mesa. I would have usually taken the Toll Road, but since it costs a small fortune, and I had plenty of time to get to work, I took the 405. It is a pretty usual drive up to work, until I hit MacArthur. As you may know, MacArthur is a rather large street with fairly high traffic flow. Well, I get off the 405 and I'm driving in the right lane of MacArthur. I pass a light and then all of the sudden, I see this black Mercedes pulling out of the airport...going the wrong way! At this point, there is this wall of cars (with me in the front, in the right lane) closing in on this black Benz. I look over at the guy next to me (who happened to be driving a Civic) and he looked back with this look like "Oh Sh*t". Now, the guy driving the Benz decides it is a fun idea to swerve through all the lanes, which then made me even more nervious, because he was making his way back to the right lane, my lane. I was going to take a picture, but thought against it because I didn't want to die. His little escapade happened to catch the attention of the police, who gave chase. Now there is a black Benz and about 3 police cars going the wrong way on a very busy street. I have never been in this situation before, so I was a little scared and pretty unsure of what I should do. I could either stop or put my A4 into Star Trek mode at "Warp Factor 6" (there is a "S" button that actually makes the car faster, just in case you were wondering) and pull some crazy driving skills. It would have made the story better if I had chosen the latter, but I did indeed stop. The elderly gentleman and the cops passed me and about 25 other cars. I looked in my rear view mirror and saw that another 2 cop cars were waiting for him at the next light. It isn't very often you get to see an old guy driving a Benz on the wrong side of the road with 5 police cars trying to stop him. I'm actually a little dissapointed I didn't snap a picture...