FRIDAY

And I hope everyone has a good weekend. I have been going in at 05:00 so as a result I get out early and get to start the weekend. Lots to do, but I wanted to pass this on. I think that Microsoft is starting to hear some footsteps behind them...

Tuesday

WOW. You can watch all of MTV's videos now online. Very cool.

FRIDAY!!

I really enjoyed this from the head of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division:
"Apple had a big launch of a new product, and they launched at scale in a lot of new countries with a lot of new operators," Bach told BusinessWeek. "This quarter, RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) is having its big launch, and at some point we'll have our big launch.
So after RIM and Apple spend millions of bucks developing a new device that changes the industry, Microsoft will come along, rip off their ideas, and still manage to make a clunky, ugly ass knock off. They just don't know when.
HERE is a kind of interesting article on how much revenue the iPhone is really bringing in.
HERE is a guy that wrote an app for the iPhone and made $250,000 in the first two months. Daing! I think Stove should port "Warren" to the iPhone. :-)

I liked this one...

I usually don't get into these ad's so much, but I liked this one....

the iPhone will fail!

I saw this blog entry from a Microsoft employee a long time ago and bookmarked it like he said to. He, being an employee of MS, knows everything and could see the inevitable failure of the iPhone. He said to bookmark the page so we could look back in Dec. of 08 at how he had predicted the epic failure.
Bookmark this page and come back in December 2008 if Apple sells anywhere near the 10M phones they're targeting
Apple sold 6.9 million phones THIS QUARTER. Add that to the 6.1 million original phones sold and you are already over the top. We still have the holiday season before his deadline.
So feel free to stop by and tell him how silly he really is looking right now.

tuesday

Remember the Enzo that became famous when Eddy Griffin crashed it onto a barrier? Well it got restored. Nice. If you can't afford the $1.2M, you could always build your own lambo in the basement and then cut a hole in the foundation to drag it out.

It looks like my hours got changed a bit. We have been going in at 5:00 instead of 5:30 off and on for the last six months because we are short of supervisors more times then not. We went ahead and changed it to 5:00 every day so I don't have to keep checking every day and changing my alarm and stuff. That is actually a good thing. It is nice to get off at 1:30.

Monday

I had the day off today. Nice. Worked on the shop cabinets. I wound up buying some oak off of craigs list today. It is used oak as seen in the photo. I need to trim out the cabinets that I am building and I can use this stuff for that, so right there it was worth it. Now I need to unload it and find a place to put it.


I think that Apple forgot something on this Macbook. It is the "B" key in case you did not figure it out.

Sunday

HERE is a guy's feedback page. He is a great vendor. Lots of positive feedback. Lots of nice camera equipment and laptops. Oh, he was a TSA employee. Ya, know.. the guy that takes your luggage at the airport and puts it on the plane. You can't lock your bag because they have the right to break the lock. You can't sue the airline or TSA because they make you sign away your rights there too. He was only caught because he tried to pawn off a $50K camera that he stole from from CNN. I guess he thought that a $50K cameras are on eBay all the time and nobody would notice it. HERE's the story.

I am SICK of Iowa City. There was a robbery here. The local rag reported the story. Notice anything missing from the following information:
The store's clerk said a subject entered the store and demanded cash, and at some time during the encounter, the suspect displayed a black handgun. No one was injured.
The suspect fled on foot to the north along Gilbert Street with an undetermined amount of cash. The victim described the suspect as a man between 25 and 30 years old, about 5-feet-7-inches tall, wearing baggy pants, a hooded sweatshirt and a bandana over his face.
In case you don't live in IC and have not figured it out here is what was missing. He was black. The police report said so. But in Iowa City it is okay to say that the gun was black, but not the perp. Welcome to extremeliberaltown, USA. I am not a conservative any more then I am a liberal, but too much of anything is just bad. Except pizza.

Friday

Here is something you don't often see on eBay. A car with this: Two custom built jet engines, hand built from polished stainless stell, were fitted around the Keith Black Nitro Hemi
HERE it is.

Thursday

HERE is a history of pranks at MIT. Funny nerds.

Wed. Service pack 2.4.1

I found this on boingboing. GREAT STUFF.

Wed.

This poor guy. He bought a black iPod for his daughter. The earbuds were white! And the store would not fix the problem! How was he to know that even thought the first 100,000,000 iPods sold had white earbuds that his would too? Just because they are an icon of a generation?

too funny

Sooo the new Macbook launched today. Pretty cool. But what about the $800 price tag that was reported on the net? Well it did not happen. And the best part is that the guy that started the rumor is taking credit for it and saying that he was right. He said that Apple would launch an $800. Well, the cinema display launched today was $900. So I guess in his mind a monitor for 900 bucks is the same as a laptop for 800. Talking about the Cinema Display he said...
It’ll be available in November for $899 — presumably making it the rumored $800-range product first reported here last week.
Yea, you were right on the money there, dork.

Tuesday

Let's just get this out of the way right now. If a valedictorian had given her speech and praised Buddha or Allah or Rocky the Flying Squirrel, that would have been okay because we are free to worship whomever we wish in this country. But this student had the NERVE to praise Jesus Christ. What was she thinking. Can you imagine if we had denied graduation to a student because he praised Allah what an uproar we would see.
I drove by the old neighborhood on the way home from work today. I saw Steve in the garage and stopped in. Steve is the son in the Kim family. They were great neighbors that came from Vietnam. He and his wife and son live with his mom and dad in the house across the street from out old house. He asked me if I wanted to see the baby so I came in to see his son. WOW. They had another 'yute. Little girl. Cute. As I was leaving he said how he wanted to get out of there, but mom and dad are about ready to retire and he works for a company that makes car parts here in town and so he is not so sure about his future with them. I feel really bad for them. The house is paid for. I would sell it NOW for whatever I could and get the hell out. A year from now the neighborhood will not be any better. They are slapping THREE more habitat for humanity houses on the block. Did I mention Habitat for Humanity SUCKS? That makes about 8 or 9 now. I think I would get what I could for that house and go buy while the market is depressed. They might have to pay $30K or something. But if they did a loan that would probably be less then our cable bill. They bought the first house built on that block as part of their American dream. They had no idea that Iowa City was getting ready to take a dump on that part of town. Nor did we. That was a very expensive lesson.
Ok then. I am done. I am off tomorrow so I hope to get some stuff done in the shop and if I do, I will post some pictures.

FRIDAY!

I just got done doing a double at work. In at 5 a.m. out at 7:30 p.m. Long day to say the least. While at work a woman told me a story about my old neighborhood. It seems her brother in law works for Habitat For Humanity. If I have not mentioned it today, Habitat For Humanity SUCKS!! I digress. Seems they were building YET ANOTHER house by our old house and the cops came by to tell them to stay inside because somebody was running loose with a gun. Thank you Iowa City for killing a really nice neighborhood.

So if you are Comcast and you already have a ton of bad PR and now your guy floods a woman's kitchen with sewage, wouldn't you pay the extra $3,000 NOT to have this all over the internet? What are they thinking? I am sure they will spend $3k left and right on ad's. STORY The woman just wants her stuff fixed and if they had, nobody would have ever heard about this.

HERE is the most fugly car I have seen in a long time.

Great FARK tag: Former Mad Magazine cover artist takes job as Houston PD sketch artist. You have to click on the link and see the photo before you LOL.

-So the new Blackberry Storm is out. Cool lookin' phone indeed. But if you are going to get people to leave the iPhone, what better way then to show it with the iPhone screen and interface pasted over your phone? Too funny. STORY

{ More)Tuesday

I have the day off and have a lot to do. So that is why I am sitting here playing THIS game. The best I have gotten was a 42. How did you do?

HERE are some pretty cool photos.

Sunday

HERE is a great story about Chuck Yeager.

Sat.

In case you need more proof that Bill O' is a total ass-hat.. here you go.

We have the window and door out of the house that we replaced when we built on. It was supposed to go to a relative about a year ago, but that never came about, and I really want them out of the garage. I was going to give them to Habitat for Humanity, but I would rather smash them to bits and then pay to take them to the landfill. So I thought why not try Craigslist. I put $100 on them both just to move them out. I posted last night and had 3 people wanting to but them. I guess I should have asked more, but they will be gone, and I will have $100 bucks.
Listing HERE. (thanks, Stove!)

Friday

I have been getting through a killer cold, and hope it is on the way out. I have to work this weekend.

-Here is the Sarah Palin debate flow chart.

-Ever wonder what those CNN guys are doing with all of those laptops? Here is your answer.

-Remember that flying car from the 80's? It could be yours!

record this..

Leo posted about the threat of the iTunes store shutting down. I was thinking about the whole deal. Here is my point of view..
When the record companies were losing there collective asses to illegal downloads, they did not know what to do. They could not figure out a solution, so they just sued NAPSTER. Everyone said not to do it, but that is all that RIAA knows how to do. They screwed themselves in doing so. Now they have NO control because they spread it out all over the world. Along comes Apple and says that they will do the work to set up the HUGE servers needed to handle selling billions of songs. They will do what they do best and make it easy and fun to download songs when nobody else could do it. Now that over FIVE BILLION songs have been SOLD, the record labels are not happy. They want more. They were happy with the setup when they thought they were going to go out of business. They wanted to control the price a few years back. They thought that a flat $.99/ song was great when they were getting $00/song.
So instead of fighting the movement, why don't they just jump on board? I am talking about doing away with CD's. The number one seller of music in the USA is a computer company called Apple. Screw the CD's. Look at how much money they spend making them. Shipping them. Shipping them back when they don't sell. Shipping them back to the store again to be sold at a cheap rate. Mary used to work for Handleman Co. They supply CD's to Wall-world (formerly the largest seller of music) and Kmart and the likes. She used to drive a company car to stores and unpack CD's that were shipped there and put them on the racks. Handleman's stock has dropped like a rock (see the graphic) over the last five years.

They tried to do digital downloads but they could not figure out how to make it work and they eventually dropped it.
There are consumers who can't figure out how to download music. Fortunately those same people don't really buy very much music. The vast majority of all music is purchased by young people. How many 14 year old kids don't have an iPod or iPod wanna-be? How many of them don't know how to download a song? There are some folks (chime in here, Stove) that just like to have thousands of CD's. I can appreciate that. I like collections. But if somebody likes music that much and has that wide of a variety of taste, do you think they will stop buying music because they are stubborn? There are people that still want to listen to LP's. They hate CD's. Did that stop the record lables from changing over? No. They still had control over what was shipped to the stores. They got to re-sell the same damn songs all over again on CD's. That was all good. But now the control freaks known as RIAA are cranky.
Let it go. Handleman was a huge corporation and they are going under. Let them go. Close the plants that make CD's. Thousands of people on the payroll. Let them go. Embrace the technology. Save the money it takes to print CD’s in different languages. A few people won’t get it. The kazillion dollars you saved will more then offset those few people who can’t figure it out.
Just my take on it.