Kid's life ruined by being teabagged!

Bush & Rummy

Bush claims "It's unacceptable to think."




Rummy: gets explained

Norm Mcdonald on Steve Irwin (daily show)

Wow...

Matt Lauer Corners Bush on Torture

PLEASE punch yourself in the head repeatedly (without stopping) if you helped to elect W.

Web-based video/audio editing

Video
Audio

Free Sounds to use

contortionist Kristina Kireeva shows off

Woah...

EPS vs Employee raises?

So the company I work for is doing quite well. The past several times that their stock's EPS what announced, it was higher than expected by the street. Yet somehow because we're supposed to have a flat FY07 we were all told not to expect much for raises.

I would've hoped that there would be some correlation between having a good current year and thus getting a raise. Now I come to find out that I also need to hope that we're forecasting a good next year.

I wouldn't be as upset about this whole deal if I had some reassurance that the executive staff were going to be dealt the same hand we're receiving. I've got the funny feeling that most of them (if not all) will still receive sizable raises despite the flat (aka maintain the current level of revenue) for next year.

Exploding Pig Head

Once upon a 4th of July 3 years ago...A pig roast was had. The pork was thoroughly enjoyed, but alas the swine's head remained. What to do? Aha said a fratboy! I've got something to get rid of the pig head. So he placed his explosive device in the pig's head, lit the wick and....watch the video to see what happened next.

Mac OSX Skin for RAZR V3

A very nice OSX skin for the RAZR V3. Almost makes me wish I owned a RAZR. Almost...

LINK

Exploding cupcake

One of a couple things that were blown to bits at a 4th of July event a couple years back....fun times :)

Be careful when you cyber...

Flybar 1200

Hillarious Fullhouse Spoof

Steve Irwin crocodile hunter Dead (Rip)

Fat kid on a diving board...

Funniest thing I've seen in quite some time.

Meebo

Meebo: a website interface for 4 major IM clients. Useful for use at work where typical IM ports are blocked.

Marilyn Manson on The O'Reily Factor

Very interesting interview.

Hump Day 8/23/06

Speed Reading has always sounded cool. Here's a 'useful' article on how to start employing such techniques during your reading.



16 Tips to Car Buying Success
Good article that provides seemingly useful info about car buying that may not have been explicitly spelled out in the past.

I Love Yoga!

I've had chronic back pain for a few years now. I've tried rest, heat, ice, chiropractors, and various exercises/stretches with very little in the way of positive results.

Then my girl Introduced me to Yoga. I (try to) practice Yoga at least once a week, and when I do so, my back feels amazing. It feels as if I don't have a back pain problem. Also, I feel completely relaxed/refreshed/etc.

When time permits I attend Midwest Power Yoga.

For a cheaper router you could try these: YOGAmazing or Yoga Today; both offer free daily/weekly video yoga workout routines for you to follow along with at home. Did I mention they are FREE?!

Food Lablel Lies

Excellent post about the various ways food labels try to trick us.
Link

acquiesce

I learned a new word today:

"acquiesce" = To consent or comply passively or without protest. See synonyms at assent.

USAGE NOTE When acquiesce takes a preposition, it is usually used with in (acquiesced in the ruling) but sometimes with to (acquiesced to her parents' wishes). Acquiesced with is obsolete.

10 tips for new Mac users, switching from Windows…

Some handy keyboard shortcuts for those going from Windows to Mac OSX.

Net Neutrality on The Daily Show

Daily Show Gov. Bush Vs. Pres Bush

This clip is hilarious!

CNN.com - Team adds iPods to coaching staff - Jun 16, 2006

Team adds iPods to coaching staff
"Team adds iPods to coaching staff"

Jay-Z reppin' HP computers

Come on Jay...I was sure you were a Mac fanboy like the rest of the rap community. I guess I'd pretend to like HP too if they were willing to pay me.

Check out the ad.

Flying without ID?

Apparently it is possible to fly out of at least one major airport without showing ID.

Background story of the @ sign

Where did the @ sign come from….

Click and find out.

Beaten with a dead Chihuahua

Who beats someone with an animal, let alone a dead Chihuaua?

“A woman angry that her new puppy had died pushed her way into a dog breeder's home and repeatedly hit her on the head with the dead Chihuahua, authorities said.”

via CNN

A couple cool pix...

Pic 1
Pic 2
Pic 3
Pic 4

666: 06-06-06 should you be worried?

Short answer, No.  Read on and check out the links below.

666 is commonly known as the Number of the Beast in Book of Revelation chapter 13, verses 17-18.

via Wikipedia

 

Source 1

Source 2

An Inconvenient Truth

I'm not the biggest Al Gore fan ever, but his new documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" looks pretty interesting.

“An Inconvenient Truth” captures Gore’s “traveling global warming show” and punctuates it with filmlets of his personal journey to show why, out of the world’s menu of issues, Gore has remained so passionate about the environment.

via Apple

Sidekick 3

The T-Mobile Sidekick 3 finally has a "firm" release date of July 10, 2006.

via Engadget

plusieurs choses

Intel Core Duo 2

Just read a review of this new chip at The Register and am absolutely salivating at the thought of a laptop version of this chip coming to the 2nd gen MacBook Pro. Hopefully this will be the case around X-mas time when I'm hoping to have my Mac in hand.

---

Dell XPS M2010

This "laptop" looks insane.

• 7.1 surround sound (8 speakers & a subwoofer)
  
• 1.3 MP built-in webcam
• 13 in 2 media card reader
• 20.1" widescreen
• detachable wireless keyboard
• Up to 4GB DDR2 RAM
• 200GB (2 x 100)7200RPM High Performance RAID Hard Drives

Final price if money were no object: $8412 Dang!

MacBook Pro Front Row cat toy

Hilarious video of a kitten being entertained by a MacBook Pro running Front Row.

Gmaps Pedometer

Cool website that allows you to plot out routes for running, biking, etc. It automatically puts in mile markers along your plotted route.

Check it out.

Why are HR departments plagued with slow turnaround time?

If an HR department calls to tell you that they are going to call you back by Friday the 26th at the latest with a job offer you'd be happy right? What if said HR department doesn't call when by Friday the 26th, what are you supposed to do then? Just assume that they got busy, forgot, died? How much time after their self-imposed deadline should you give them before: calling them back to see what's going on, calling them back telling them to stick it, telling yourself to forget it and they're not really gonna call?

If they say they are going to call, they had darn well better call you no matter what. If stuff happened on Friday the 26th, and then Monday the 29th was a holiday, HR MUST call first thing Tuesday the 30th. HR is one of the only departments I can think of that has the power to grab someone's life and dangle them by a string. Dangle them with hopes of a new career, higher salary, better benefits, a simple phonecall.

I've tried asking around as to why HR is so slow and nobody had a good answer. Everyone I talk to agrees that HR is horribly slow and that it's very unfortunate for the people trying to deal with them.

The last time HR was taking too long for something to happened I called a VP in the company. He made a call to HR and the very next day the process had proceeded another step. It's almost as if HR talks to people and then completely forgets about them...unless somebody higher up calls them and reminds them that they've still got somebody dangling, waiting...

Gooey carrots?

For the past 2+ months we've had a carrot problem in our house. The pre-cut carrots that we all know and love have been leaving us with a bad taste in our mouths. We've bought carrots from Aldi, Walmart, Pick N Save, and a few other grocery stores in the area and the majority have yielded the same result.

Inside the plastic bags I expect to find carrots and perhaps some water; but lately, we've found carrots, water, and "goo" of some sort. This is not a freak occurrence of one bag containing goo-covered carrots; this is my family repeatedly trying to buy "normal" carrots sans goo but then we get home and open the bag to repeatedly find goo. Granted...Sometimes there is more goo than others, but any unexplained goo is too much for my liking.

My mother emailed a carrot company to complain about the goo; she didn't receive any explanation, just four vouchers for free carrot bags. I've asked around and thus far I've been told that the goo is either a preservative, a mold, or a combination of both. I would love to hear the truth, even better I'd love to buy normal carrots once again.

In the mean time we'll be cutting up carrots sticks manually and/or putting out pre-cut carrots in a strainer and then rinsed prior to consumption.

Newegg shipment arrives

My Newegg order arrived today.
17-185-006 EXT ENCLOSR SCYTHE|NU350PS-OTP RTL 2
22-144-701 HD 250G|WD 7200 SATA2 16MB WD2500KS 2

Going to put together an external RAID 1 array with the two 250GB, 16MB cache, 7200 rpm, sata2 hard drives. :)


Been thinking about how "happy" I'd be if my picture and music files were somehow lost. I've been doing CD/DVD-R based backups very infrequently for some time now. Finally decided I should setup a RAID 1 array for all of my music and pictures. I'm also thinking of running a copy of Retrospect for the rest of my comouter's files. Gotta make sure to format as FAT32 so I can access the files from the Mac I'm going to get eventually, unless OSX 10.5 should have NTFS support built in....that'd be cool, but I doubt it.


Hopefully the traffic tomorrow afternoon will be tolerable. Gotta pack yet tonite so I can head right down to the Milwaukee/Madison area after work.

slow hump day

Very slow day at work. Then I was "rewarded" by getting to mow the lawn when I arrived home.

Wish these were mine today....well everyday actually.



Very cool Apple.com meets the Da Vinci Code mashup

Mac (Zealots) are now having some success convincing their Windows 'loving' bretheren to come over to the dark side. The article goes on to explain that the magic words, "You know Macs can run Windows now..." is the single most effective way to convince potential switchers.

Wisconsin's Most Wanted Sex Offenders

Week 2 in the new job assignment

So here are some of the news things I've got on my plate due to my new position at work:

1. SMS Training
   
2. Six Sigma Green Belt Training
3. Macrovision InstallShield Training (This is still tentative.)

• SMS will be a week long and two others guys are going with me. Can't wait for this because Novell ZENworks doesn't work for crap. Me and the rest of the IT department are beyond pissed off with Novell Application Launcher
  
• 6 Sigma will be 11 weeks long and start in August. I'll be the youngest of 3 IT staff trained in 6 Sigma.
• InstallShield Training: this is in the very early stages. An outside vendor was going to come in and help us with some things. Their initial questioned and their RFP after doing a walkthrough of our operation were about $60,000 different. Thus, me and another dude may get sent off for some training. One of the bosses thinks it'll be a much better investment. Granted it was mentioned in passing, but it was interesting to hear none the less.
  

MacSaber

My sister is the Star Wars fan in my family. That being said MacSaber is a pretty cool program.

Example 1 | Example 2

I'll add it to the ever growing list of programs that I'll check out someday when I get my own Mac. I'm trying to talk myself into being happy with a regular MacBook instead of the Pro model, so perhaps I'll end up with a shiny new Mac in my paws sooner rather than later because of the drastically lower price.

Teacher Lady Divorce Fund

As I mentioned in my previous post, I would absolutely love to own a Mac. I certainly wouldn't mind being another "Ultimate Switcher" like Stefan over at http://makemeswitch.blogspot.com/ . I applaud what Stefan did and the fact that he was able to achieve his goal. It’s truly amazing how helpful/generous people can be to complete strangers when the internet is the medium. I'm not here asking anyone to donate money for my benefit. I'm asking that money be donated to help somebody that is truly in need.

What follows is a description of what my girlfriend's mother has been through lately. She's not trying to be a switcher, but could certainly use some monetary assistance. If upon reading the below passage you feel like helping, please click the "Make a Donation" button and I promise that I will pass along all money donated to the school teacher in need.

My mother is a 54-year-old schoolteacher at a south-side, low-income middle school. She spent the last 29 years of her life married to my father. A year and a half ago he filed for divorce, which was also six months before he retired from his 26 year long career with the military. This divorce has cost her everything. She can’t even afford grocery’s most weeks. I am very close to my mother and made the decision to move back in with her and try to support her. Luckily, my job was able to transfer me into her city. The following passage is about her life, her struggles and all the sacrifices she has mad as a wife of a powerful military man and what it has left her.

My parents were both schoolteachers when they were married 29 years ago. Three years later, my dad had a change of heart and decided to enter the military. The next 26 years my Mom raised us kids, now 18, 21, and 24. She occasionally worked as a substitute teacher and had one or two full-time teaching positions. Unfortunately, the life of a wife in the military is anything but glamorous. We moved every year of my life and my Mother was the only thing that kept us together. My Dad would be gone for months at a time. We were all very proud of my Dad. Mom encouraged us to make banners and pictures and cut flowers for my dad before each homecoming. It was always an emotional day when he would return from his deployment.

The divorce has dragged on a year and a half and has left my mother bereft of everything. She hasn’t had any luck with lawyers and is currently on her second lawyer. She can’t seem to get anyone to stand up for her and get her any of the money she deserves. Instead the divorce just keeps dragging on, resulting in more debt building at a cost to the lawyers.

My Mom doesn’t know anything about law. My Dad has all sorts of connections from the military to help him find a good lawyer. As a result, my Mom, who had never been in debt a day in her life, is now in tens of thousands of debt to her lawyer. Each time she calls her lawyer to ask a question she is charged between $150 and $1000. Most of the time she leaves the conversation in tears. I am bewildered at the cost of lawyers and at the lack of empathy the system has. She wants to end this divorce, but my Father seems to keep dragging it on to make sure she receives nothing.

We have since found out that my Dad had been moving money from their accounts and moving it into bonds so my Mother couldn’t have any of the money and he is claiming that his Great-Aunt’s inheritance should be deducted from any of the money my mother should receive. The inheritance was given to our family 10 years ago. I believe most of the money was lost during the various economic busts during those years. I am writing this in hopes of finding some form of support for my Mother. I simply can not understand how a woman whom dedicates her life to her family is stripped of everything when the man of the house decides he wants to start a new life. Why should she be the one to carry the burden? She never was the one to spend any money. We always cut coupons and shopped the clearance rack. My

Dad was the one to spend the money. Now she is left without any money and forced to live a meager existence because of the inadequacies of our justice system. Why do we not value the life of a stay at home mother? What is my Mother supposed to do at the age of 54 with thousands of dollars in debt? This is supposed to be the time of her life when she settles back and watches her children at college and starts thinking of retirement. My mother will never be able to retire. She will have to spend every waking minute of her existence working. She has no retirement.

Mac Lust

I want a Mac. I don't need a Mac, but I REALLY REALLY want one.


The exact object of my lust is the MacBook Pro configured as follows:
# 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo
# 1GB 667 DDR2 - 1 SO-DIMM
# 100GB Serial ATA drive @ 7200 rpm
# MacBook Pro 15-inch Widescreen Display
# SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
# AirPort Extreme Card & Bluetooth
# Backlit Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English
# iWork '06 preinstalled
# 15.4-inch TFT Display

All this for $2,438.00! A lot of money...but bare in mind that I've been wanting a Mac for 4+ years now and have yet to purchase one. First I wanted to wait for the Intel switch, and now I'm waiting for OSX 10.5 to ship. It looks like this coming Christmas could finally bring me the Mac I've wanted for so very long.

I hop on the Apple website almost every day to look at what I'm missing out on. I fully configure the exact laptop I will eventually buy, even add it to the shopping cart, but have yet to actually enter my credit card info.

My better half is telling me to keep waiting and that I'll be able to get my Mac "soon". We're bothing living with our parent(s) at the moment, but have some things in the works that should transport us to our own house very soon. Due to the pending house purchase....I have a good reason as to why I must prolong my Mac lust.

Why does she have to be right?

Welcome!

Let's begin...