Brilliant Weeds

Testies

Tue, 13 May 2008 09:46:03 GMT

Testies 1

Dear Microsoft

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 19:32:14 GMT

Dear Microsoft,

Thanks for being such a tremendous pain in my ass, specifically, with your Microsoft Word 2007. There are many aspects that are spectacularly inefficient and irritating, and the one that is currently making me mad is that you are using a new file type to save standard documents. Saving files as .docx instead of the more common (and frighteningly convenient) .doc is kinda like putting the transmission lever of a car in the back seat. It's stupid and a pain in the ass.

I was worried at first that your changes to Word would stop at the cosmetic and functionality, but you've also made it impressively difficult to access from other computers EVEN WHEN THEY ALSO HAVE MICROSOFT WORD 2007. So, thanks for that. I thought it was neat enough that you moved common functions around within the program, slowing the creative process by making me hunt around for simple things that used to be in very different places. Apparently that wasn't neat enough, though, so I applaud you for not stopping there.

It would have been even funnier if you'd taken away the ability to save files as the apparently (you wish) obsolete .doc extensions, because then at least I could be furious every single day, instead of just when I need to transfer work from my laptop to other computers.

Anyway, thanks for being such a pain in my ass. Also, good job on Vista. I like how my computer is as indecisive as four year old in the toy aisle of a department store. "Can I get this?" "Can I do this?" "Are you sure?" "Are you reeeeeally sure?" When I bought my laptop I described it with terms like "powerful" and "efficient." Thanks to you, I now get to use words like "scared" and "confused," which are much more fun to use anyway, especially for technology. So, thanks! Here's hoping the next operating system you introduce somehow incorporates cuneiform pictograms in the "help" section!

Love,
Sinja

Testies

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 09:06:41 GMT

Testies

Ya Just Gotta Have Love, Love, Love

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:03:01 GMT

How To Get The Best Seat In The House
You just cant make this stuff up, people. I guess you could, but the real life stuff is better. Like for instance did you know there is a cheap economical way to fly first class? All you have to do is die in flight, and the flight crew will drag your dead body to 1st class, tie you in with a seat belt and pad you with pillows. The Pillows are to keep you from being inured if you fall. Thoughtful folks! Thats class! First Class!

Chinese Politicians: Beware or Pay The Price
Did you know the remote Chinese villages they have had enough of corrupt politicians! Its true!! They have rioted in places and let the Chinese government know that they will not tolerate any more corruption from any political figures at all. Something else not tolerated is a dirty rotten political refusing to pay them bribes for votes. Nothing is more dangerous than an unbribed Chinese villager. Unless you are wealthy, I don't recommend running for office in China. Its a nice place to visit, but just don't stay there.

Kamikaze Bikers of Dutchland
Beware of elderly Dutch Kamikaze Bicyclists.., especially if you're a shop lifter. They'll nail you at great personal expense to limb and bicycle. I'm not sure if they use the same tactic on politicians or not, but perhaps they should. It would send a message like, "We're old, We're bad and we just wont take it any more" [insert theme song by T.S."We're Not Going To Take It", here]

Where da love, people? Where da love?

Daniel Tammet aka Brain Man

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 09:17:16 GMT

I recently followed a link on a search engine news page entitled "Brain Man." It took me to the Sixty Minutes TV show's video clips of their recent interview with Daniel Tammet, an extemely unique individual among us on the planet. His nickname Brainman came about from a Science Channel documentary about his savant abilities. Unlike Kim Peek, the inspiration for the Tom Cruise / Dustin Hoffman film, "Rain Man," with which most of us are so familiar, Tammet has consciously taught himself the social interactive skills that autistic people normally lack. This sets him in an even more unique category among savants.

He can explain how his amazing mind works to the rest of us.

Daniel Tammet has unbelievable abilities of memory and calculation of numbers. He broke a European record for reciting the numeric representation of Pi to over 22,000 digits. When you and I can barely remember our 4-digit ATM PIN, wouldn't it be helpful to understand how he does this? He can calculate 512 to the 4th power and spit out the answer faster than you or I could punch it into a calculator.

Tammet's descriptions of how he sees numbers in his own mind is a sublime vision that I can only personally compare to the scene in which Cuba Gooding Jr. is teaching Robin Williams how to fly in the film, "What Dreams May Come." Tammet apparently sees numbers with shapes and colors. His calculations are like a journey through and an instantaneous vision of the beautiful landscape in his mind.

While we mere mortals may never quite understand or ever duplicate Tammet's numeric visions, there are some earthly mnemonic methods you can employ to increase the capabilities of your memory with numbers. One method that I have tried myself involves assigning phonetic sounds to the numbers zero to nine, which then create words, and the words can then paint visual images of long numbers. This phonetic method is taught in "Advanced Mega Memory." It takes some initial motivation to learn a new skill, dedication to practice it, and then some tenacity to continue using it -- but I can certainly vouch that it works.

Daniel Tammet's story personally inspires me. Here are some additional links you may want to check out:

Born on a Blue Day - Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant
Daniel Tammet's memoir

Optimnem
Daniel Tammet's website

Brainman, At Rest in His Oasis by Sarah Lyall, New York Times
A well-written, recent update about Tammet's home life in Kent.
(registration required -- or -- bugmenot.com)

Autism, Autism Spectrum and Asperger Syndrome
wikipedia

Neuro Diversity - a great resource for parents and info on autism
Also: check out another version of the Ekman facial recognition game/test.

Daily Doses and Tiny Treasures
Blogdrive blogs written by parents of special kids

Three more movies I've seen and loved:

I am not worthy

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 15:30:39 GMT

In the United States, people are encouraged to ponder the things for which they are thankful from the day after Halloween until after the New Year holiday. Whether it is a religious or secular tradition, most people are thankful for things like good health, or friends and family. That's all very thoughtful and nice. However, I think we should expand our thankful attitude toward ubiquitous things in our standard of living in order to appreciate them more fully, especially when several billion people on our little spinning ball of mud don't have those things.

For example, people don't carve into their Thanksgiving Day turkey and exclaim, "Thanks be to Thomas Edison for the lights over the dining room table!" Certain things have become an under-appreciated given variable in the equation defining our modern life. One need only look toward the hundreds of thousands of displaced people in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to appreciate the more basic things on the heirarchy of human needs. Indeed, just open your eyes and look around the globe.

In that spirit of being thankful for common place things in my life, I wish to give thanks to Mrs. Ruth Graves Wakefield. Why? She invented the chocolate chip cookie.

Why do they call you Sparky?

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 14:10:56 GMT

Did you ever do something really stupid when you were a little kid? Kids do stupid things, I guess. I know I did a few unbelievable things before I started kindergarten (and then a few thousand stupids things since then). I really hated family gatherings, or when I'd bring someone new home, only to suffer through the embarassment of hearing the perenial story that began, "Remember when you did (something stupid)?" I think the only saving grace is that the stories were not published in the newspaper.

A weird little news story has made the rounds on local TV stations in Florida recently. It all started with a 3� year old boy being removed from a foster home by the Florida Department of Children and Families and a police report by the local county sheriff in north Florida, near Jacksonville.

The headline I first saw by the time this story made it down to central Florida was "Man Accused Of Shocking Toddler During Potty Training," which sounded horrible enough for me to want to read the article. Then I googled the horrible man's name in the article to see if there were any earlier news articles written about this story, with more details. I quickly found the local story, here.

Now, the horrible man's name is Paul Trotman, and he's an electrician. I only continue to call him horrible because he has been arrested on a charge of aggravated child abuse.

This news article has his mugshot and a video. Just click on the face that looks like Gimli from Lord of the Rings to see the TV news video clip. If you read the whole article, you can almost understand why Mr. Trotman did what he did and how it might have made some weird sense for him to do it, though.

The reason I say this goes back to the idea of stupid kid stories. Here's a direct quote from the news that will follow this little kid around until he's thirty or forty years old and why they'll call him Sparky at his office job:

Trotman, an electrician employed at the Kings Bay Naval Station, admitted using a transformer putting out 56 volts to shock the boy who had been intentionally urinating on electrical devices to see them spark.

Woo Hoo! Now you know why your office printer/copier is always broken.

Internet Superhighway= Internet Turnpike?

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 13:16:59 GMT

The Internet Superhighway! Similar to the famed Geman Autobahn, which allows you to travel as fast as your engine and vehicle will allow; with the internet, your computer is your vehicle, and your connection is your engine. Websites are merely stops along the ride, and you can get from one to the next just as quickly as your vehicle will allow.

Until now?

What if telecommunications giants like Time Warner, AT&T, Bell South, and Verizon had the ability to dictate whose websites load quickly and perform better based on who have paid for the bandwidth usage?

Well, they do.

     These telecom companies want to charge websites for the speedy delivery of streaming video, television, movies and other high-bandwidth data in an effort to be compensated for the cost of maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure that makes all this possible. How does this affect you? Webites such as Google, Yahoo, Amazon, etc. are not going to eat the cost of this service, they will pass this on to consumers. This means higher prices for consumers all across the economy, because companies will be charging more for online advertising.
     Not to mention slow websites for those who haven't paid up. Independent bloggers, webcomics, and similar low-budget sites will be the hardest hit, with viewer/readership levels sure to plummet, as well as smaller businesses who will lose business because the websites don't perform like their large corporation competitors.
     In April, a measure submitted by Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts was rejected by a House subcommittee that would have prevented these companies from being able to charge this. Let's hope that other officials get on board so that Congress may vote to prevent this from happening.

Move Along!

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 07:04:42 GMT

Nothing to be terrified of here, folks. Move along. Be ready to present your ID.

Rasta School Marm

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 06:16:31 GMT

According to the BBC News, 60-year-old school administrator Linda Walker has been afflicted by a rare neurological condition called Foreign Accent Syndrome following her recovery from a recent stroke. Walker, normally as bangers-and-mash Anglo as any Newcastle resident might be, no longer speaks as she had for much of her life and now speaks with a linguistic difference that some say sounds French Canadian and others say sounds distinctly Jamaican.

Linguistic abnormality (expressive aphasia) is fairly common with traumatic brain injury and stroke, but Foreign Accent Syndrome is something unusual. Listen to her speak in a videotaped interview. If she wasn't so personally upset about the situation in which she finds herself, it would be really funny.

I remember coming back to the states after living in Germany for over four years. I found that I had some trouble speaking English occasionally, but in my case I think it was just a matter of still thinking in German. I embarrassed myself on occasion among my friends with wacky grammar mostly, after I drank a few tasty beverages too many.

When you listen to Linda Walker speak now, with your eyes closed, you really can imagine her wearing a colorful Rastafarian knit hat. She's a sweet lady and I hope her health continues to improve. At the same time, if she starts smoking the ganja, growing her dreadlocks, and listening to Damian Marley, she might have some more explaining to do.

School Skip Day

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 04:12:26 GMT

Do you remember how great it was to get an official day off from school? Getting an unexpected day off from school, like when they had "snow days" in the winter, was even better. I rode around with Danny Bowen on his Dad's snowmobile until we slid sideways at an intersection. Then, we hit the one piece of gravel road that wasn't slickly suitable for our mode of transportation. I think I flew nearly 50 feet down-range when the Ski Doo stuck and flipped. I was launched through the air like an un-seatbelted Volvo passenger. I was punted from the ride.

Despite my grade school trauma, days away from school were always memorable and important. As a matter of fact, I found out something very cool and useful around my high school daze. I became Jewish.

I wasn't really Jewish, but being the little thug that I was, I did notice that all the Jewish kids got a number of days off because of their religion. Before long, I knew when Yom Kippur and Rosh Hoshana fell on the calendar. I skipped school on every Jewish holiday for three years and never caught any flack for it.

Today, if I were a kid in another circumstance, in another time and place, I would still be a school skipping little thug. Who the hell wants to be in school when they could be doing anything else?

The same is true for kids all around the world. It's universal, apparently. In Afghanistan, opium eradication days are days away from school.

It's a day out in the country for Noor Mohammad, as he stands in the middle of a field with a stick, beating energetically at the opium poppy plants around him.

"I like destroying poppies," he said. "It's fun to be away from the city for a day."

Noor, 16, is in the tenth grade at a school in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province. His one day trip to the country is part of an experiment being conducted by the government's counter-narcotics department in Balkh.

"Even with transportation and lunch, students come a lot cheaper than any other work force," explained Zabiullah Akhtari, a senior government official in charge of poppy eradication in Balkh. "We are going to use students several more times before the end of the poppy season."

"Afghanistan: Schoolchildren Used to Eradicate Opium Poppies"
by Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, Environmental New Service

So, yeah ... anyway. Right. That seems fun, too. A real field trip.

testies

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 08:20:08 GMT

Testies!

Bold Levels Of Truthiness

Tue, 16 May 2006 19:23:44 GMT

Oh, Michael Savage, will you ever stop? Or, like, use your damned brain for three seconds? Man, this guy has no idea what's going on.

Will our brown brethren, who are so nationalistic and so anti-gringo and anti-Anglo, be as enlightened as the European-American is? I don't think so. Do you?

Well, I'm sure glad I'm white and Anglo-Saxon. Because clearly, we are an enlightened and uplifted race, who would never judge anyone's intellectual or emotive capacities by, say, the color of their skin. Or their sexuality. Or their physical beauty.

Brilliant Future 001

Fri, 05 May 2006 02:46:13 GMT

Blogdrive WYSIWYG Entry Editor v. 3.57b

Welcome to the future.

MONROVIA, CA -- Blogdrive's Executive Vice President of Emerging Global Technology Acquistions division announced the launch of the 3.57b entry editor on the video conferencing multiscreen to the cheers of thousands of swag-wearing Blogdrivers at the Malaysian BlogCon2012 conference this evening. BlogCon Malaysia attendance has surpassed the Tokyo Auto Show in recent years.

After the Blogdrive acquistion of the Tawian-based Neural Network start-up, Hudyang, many blog pundits forecast the emergence of neural editors. Blogdrive has shocked financial market pundits with the 3.57b because it is the first low cost and functional product to truly work in the long-awaited I-wear market.

The 3.57b has not only been crowned product zero in the I-wear market by EEEI, but also its software has been rumored to be up for multiple awards for idiot-proofing among social networking and marketing industry groups. Blogdrive's own logo serves as the 3-button comand interface.

When one of the 121.3 million Blogdrivers is using the the 3.57b editor, they can compose in the language of their choice, preview and verify their entry on the heads-up display, and then simply process that entry with one touch on the Blogdrive logo. Tapping the orange control means cancel, blue saves draft, and green publishes the entry.

Blogdrive's Emerging Global Technologies division is currently working on the automatic classification of blog entries using the Neural Emoticon System Generator, but the roll-out of the NESG Blogdrive feature has been hampered by the recent inclusion of the bi-polar algorythm.

Cigarettes and a tan

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 09:07:12 GMT

I'll probably always think of her most in the spring. Perfect shape, beautiful eyes, perfect smile. Funny laugh. She was a neighbor. We shared cigarettes on a balcony together. We laughed a lot and spoke of silly things. Soon we shared more than just cigarettes. She was always a pleasure. Never played games. Never expected anything and lived strongly in the moment. (And always very clean I might add). She looked just like Betty Page, if Betty Page were a blond with long legs and a tan.

She died in the spring. Drugs. Ain't it just the way? Now I think of her often. Mostly in spring. Among my thoughts of her is juan that I wish didn't always come to mind, but I can't keep it out of my head. I hope she's not offended. I picture her and think, "I used to hit that."

P.S. Hope ya'll had a happy Easter!

Post-Katrina New Orleans Stupidity

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 21:41:18 GMT

Just in time for the start of the 2006 hurricane season, the Bush administration finally came out with rebuilding guidelines for New Orleans homeowners that will qualify their homes for federal flood insurance. According to the Washington Post, many homes will have to be elevated by at least three feet to qualify for insurance, a pre-requisite to rebuilding. Raising a house one foot costs about $50,000 minimum. Many homes are just not worth it.

Page two of the WaPo article reports something even more stupendously dumb concerning the flood insurance guidelines for the lower Plaquemines Parish with a pre-Katrina population of about 15,000 residents:

"Lacking such protection would make it extremely difficult to rebuild in the area -- new buildings may be required to be elevated as high as 35 feet to meet flood insurance requirements, officials have said -- and many believe it could lead to its virtual abandonment."

I added the bold emphasis to that quote to allow you to take an additional second to look back at the quote and re-read it. Go ahead, I'll wait right here for you.

When WaPo staff writers Peter Whoriskey and Spencer S. Hsu suggest that, "many believe it could lead to its virtual abandonment," do you think they were standing in the humid Louisiana bayou country imagining a sheet metal roofed and stucco walled home atop a set of pillars as tall as the ones used for the Acropolis?

Craving more dumb? Okay, I have more. In typical Bush administration logic -- the levees are still not repaired from last year yet -- but go ahead and move back home. "Oh, we're working hard on this problem," says Bushworld. The levees will not even offer the same non-protection as they did last year until June.

Do take heart. By 2010, the levees should be up to federal flood insurance guidelines, if the Democrusader's rubber stamp Congress can invest a few billion dollars on it now.

As long as you build a four-story tall tree house, you'll be safe from the hurricane's flooding storm surge, but the geniuses in the Bush administration that gave us Iraq as the 51st state probably forgot that a 35-foot-tall house might blow away from the winds of any hurricane. Doh!

The Sovereignty Sidestep

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 09:23:17 GMT

South Dakota's recent passing of legislation designed to pretty much completely outlaw abortion ruffled more than a few feathers and only served to fuel the ongoing national debate on the topic. It turns out that Cecelia Fire Thunder, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, has decided to take action on the topic, using tribal sovereignty as the basis for an argument to allow for the establishment of an abortion clinic if the anti-abortion legislation comes into effect.

One day is not enough

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 09:51:48 GMT

Tomorrow is "April Fool's day." Much like St. Valentine's day that has been co-opted by commercialism, April 1st has devolved in importance. Nowadays, it's like having everyone learn from the Discovery CaTV channel that desert rattlesnake actually tastes like chicken McNuggets instead of killing your own snake, like St. Patrick. We must preserve the sanctity of April Fool's day.

First of all -- in order for any snake species to taste like roasted chicken -- not only do you need a Ronco Rattle Snake Grill (tm) with upside-down and reverse technical manual instructions in a number of olfactory languages, like Ranch and Bleu dressing, but also a hot stone transcribed in Aztec heiroglyphs explaining in pre-historic terminology that a minotaur was not the mythological example or genetic precursor of a basket of Buffalo Wings at Hooters.

Meanwhile, upstate NY is also known for whine and vinegar. Perhaps Hillary Clinton is Balsamic. I wondered how she might weigh in on the immigration issue. I'm thinking ... hide and not comment. That's so all-american -- hide and not comment -- as it is not about the definition of is, dammit. No matter what a politician says about the immigration issue though, they're going to make someone angry. Same difference. Just do it.

If you're like Jessica Simpson ... 'Buffalo Wings,' 'Chicken of the Sea' and 'Hearts and Minds' do make people crazy. It is as frustrated as bribing the tooth fairy. But, why not build shoe factories in Indonesia with some of hundreds of millions of those Tsunami charity dollars? Homeless people need good shoes.

Why not just make food, itself, cheaper? Oil-rich countries should send food for Tsunami victims in converted oil tankers filled with wheat, and gas should be 42 cents per gallon in Jakarta, Bande Ache, and New Orleans. Iraq has just become an economic development zone for large corporations with some pesky lead acne.

When George Bush says, "Iraq is central to the Global War on Terror," does he really mean that Iraq is the new Al-Qaeda Disneyland? I know coalition forces travel in high-speed convoys just waiting for the surprise of an explosion. Perhaps we should just build a few cool rollercoasters in Baghdad and call it a theme park.

Why not just make more water safer to drink for more people? Someone could figure out a way to tow the Ross B-15 Iceberg and park it off the coast of Africa.

<shaman> No matter what your passion, getting off your apathetic ass and doing anything positive is going to work to improve your feeling of well-being toward yourself and everyone else.</shaman>

So, it's the thought that counts ... on April Fool's Day, too. So, go think up some foolish idea. As long as you don't harm yourself or someone else, go do something foolish on April Fool's Day. Put on a funny hat and then go cut your neighbor's lawn, or sweep his sidewalk, or wash his car.

Man that kid is ugly!

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 11:22:09 GMT

Doing some research, I visited myspace.com. *In my best Betty Davis voice* What a dump. More advertising then what was sufferable, popups and spyware offers galore. Sweeet! Several key areas had been down for several days, and after visiting their forum it seemed no juan was bothered by this. What luck!
I tripped over to the fairly new video section of the site which seemed to be filled with small clips of home-made videos. I clicked on "Top Videos". These included a guy holding down a friend, beginning to put his penis in his friend's face then deciding to instead spit on him, and then kick him in the ding ding. That was awesome! There was also a video of two black men fighting bare fisted in some backyard. Two thumbs up! There were lots of gross videos to be had. The best part about these videos is that you don't need the volume up at all, so you can still keep your ipod, cell phone or whatever else still attached firmly to your noggin' while viewing!

At times this world is so very ugly. (Why are there people like Frank?) Is myspace a reflection of what this world wants? Is it just the uneducated? How many are there? Are we allowed to kill them?
It seems that Cingular, Vivendi Universal and Disney have embraced myspace as a home for their advertising. Maybe after a fight video they could end it with an insert reading, "Brought to you by Disney; the happiest company on the Internet".

I'm sure that Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp. (NWS), Geoffrey Yang, partner with Redpoint and the other investors enjoy all that can be had at myspace, and are probably very proud of this dark child. After all, they're just some nice guys trying to make an honest buck.

There will be more to come. More myspaces, more nudity, more violence and plain old-fashion gore to be sure. They want sex and gore and they want it now!
The web will expose without prejudice the darker nature of what is human.

Can any of this be stopped? As my friend Rod Underhill (co-founder MP3.com) used to say to me time and time again when file sharing programs were becoming all the rage, "It's too late to stop it. The genie is out of the bottle, and the bottle is broken".

No, it will get uglier as people get uglier. The spammers will laugh the hardest.

When I was a boy I loved watching "The Little House on the Prairie". I loved Caroline Ingalls. I don't watch TV much anymore.

Video may appear at Blogdrive soon. I will try to help keep the black guys pummeling each other excluded.

The views expressed in this entry are that of its publisher and do not represent those of Blogdrive.com or NeverX, LLC. Thank you and have a nice day.

Testies3

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 01:48:22 GMT

Testies 3