If Enron and WorldCom are proof that the system works, what are Bear Stearns, FNMA, FHLMC, and AIG?
Edited to add Ron Paul and the Chamber of Commerce
- Z
Zobar's Journal
My Podcast Link
09/23/2008 11:42 #45769
on sober analysisCategory: hell, handbasket
Mr. Bernanke, how's the economy?
If Enron and WorldCom are proof that the system works, what are Bear Stearns, FNMA, FHLMC, and AIG?
Edited to add Ron Paul and the Chamber of Commerce
- Z
If Enron and WorldCom are proof that the system works, what are Bear Stearns, FNMA, FHLMC, and AIG?
Edited to add Ron Paul and the Chamber of Commerce
- Z
09/18/2008 11:51 #45722
what's the deal?! with? microsoft?!Category: a series of tubes
I'm going to take an unpopular position: I liked Microsoft's ads. I don't even like Jerry Seinfeld, but I liked the idea of Bill Gates as a warped Dave Thomas. I liked the idea of two out-of-touch dudes trying to reconnect with America in the most awkward way possible. They weren't funny. They weren't supposed to be funny. They were weird, but I guess weird doesn't sell.
Here's an even more unpopular position: I kind of like Bill Gates. He's really chilled out since Steve Ballmer took over. He no longer sounds like some college sophomore who's just discovered Ayn Rand. Now he's just some dude you might find hanging out at a bridge tournament in grungy jeans. [True story: my brother-in-law played him at bridge, and won.]
But of course people hated the campaign so they're scrapping it for something that's clever but predictable: a bunch of people who are not John Hodgman, with not-combovers and wearing not-business suits, being not-pathetic, and holding up signs that say "I'm a PC." Lame.
- Z
_______________
ps. Yes, I'm famous for being lazy. I think that's worse than being famous for being fat.
Here's an even more unpopular position: I kind of like Bill Gates. He's really chilled out since Steve Ballmer took over. He no longer sounds like some college sophomore who's just discovered Ayn Rand. Now he's just some dude you might find hanging out at a bridge tournament in grungy jeans. [True story: my brother-in-law played him at bridge, and won.]
But of course people hated the campaign so they're scrapping it for something that's clever but predictable: a bunch of people who are not John Hodgman, with not-combovers and wearing not-business suits, being not-pathetic, and holding up signs that say "I'm a PC." Lame.
- Z
_______________
ps. Yes, I'm famous for being lazy. I think that's worse than being famous for being fat.
09/13/2008 11:18 #45662
swedish wheatballsCategory: food
I made a meatloaf last night and it smelled like hot dogs. I don't know how something like that even happens. )-:
Natalie Dee is funny in a way that is difficult to explain.
'dead in the eyes and coming for you specifically'
- Z
Natalie Dee
is funny in a way that is difficult to explain.
'dead in the eyes and coming for you specifically'
- Z
paul - 09/13/08 20:10
My brother just told me that he saw the article/picture with you and (e:dragonlady) in the paper. I never saw it, why didn't you guys post it?
My brother just told me that he saw the article/picture with you and (e:dragonlady) in the paper. I never saw it, why didn't you guys post it?
james - 09/13/08 14:16
I had a difficult time explaining to myself why some of her stuff made me silently giggle.
I had a difficult time explaining to myself why some of her stuff made me silently giggle.
09/04/2008 21:27 #45576
potpourriCategory: misc
1: WANTED: Stats geek to hang out with hot babes. Inquire within.
2: Q: When did Russians start being awesome? A: Once you click this !!!
3: The problem with me in living in the suburbs across the street from a very expensive private high school, is that I just don't have any empathy for anybody around here. A kid from the school was driving his Audi hatchback like a dickweed, and the person he cut off and/or tailgated followed him until he parked [in front of my house] and started yelling at him. Then her shirtless, shoeless husband started getting all up in the kid's grille. And as the argument got more heated, I realized I wasn't on the side of the kid or the 'adult'- I was really just hoping for mutual assured destruction, and maybe some fire. Instead, police were called and, in true Kenmore fashion, three squad cars showed up.
Moral: Don't be an asshat in front of my house, unless you have the courtesy to catch fire.
4: 'I forgot to opt out' email marketing is in some ways worse than spam. You can't mark it as spam in good conscience. I have a mailbox called Unimportant and a rule set up. The rule got so long that I had to split it in two due to a bounds error/distributed infinite loop in Gmail [good work guys]. My shit list:
5: Everybody seems to be talking about Chrome. I like that it keeps track of your most often visited sites, but I don't think that's enough to set the world on fire.
6: Cloud computing is keen but I wish it wasn't all in beta. Google App Engine is very tightly integrated and free, but how much can you do when you don't have write access to the filesystem and all your requests, responses, and database records need to be under 1MB? Amazon Web Services don't care about file or transfer size, but their database isn't totally online yet. And when Yahoo gets into the game I'm sure it will be totally awesome except that nobody will realize that it exists.
- Z
2: Q: When did Russians start being awesome? A: Once you click this
!!!3: The problem with me in living in the suburbs across the street from a very expensive private high school, is that I just don't have any empathy for anybody around here. A kid from the school was driving his Audi hatchback like a dickweed, and the person he cut off and/or tailgated followed him until he parked [in front of my house] and started yelling at him. Then her shirtless, shoeless husband started getting all up in the kid's grille. And as the argument got more heated, I realized I wasn't on the side of the kid or the 'adult'- I was really just hoping for mutual assured destruction, and maybe some fire. Instead, police were called and, in true Kenmore fashion, three squad cars showed up.
Moral: Don't be an asshat in front of my house, unless you have the courtesy to catch fire.
4: 'I forgot to opt out' email marketing is in some ways worse than spam. You can't mark it as spam in good conscience. I have a mailbox called Unimportant and a rule set up. The rule got so long that I had to split it in two due to a bounds error/distributed infinite loop in Gmail [good work guys]. My shit list:
5: Everybody seems to be talking about Chrome.
I like that it keeps track of your most often visited sites, but I don't think that's enough to set the world on fire.6: Cloud computing is keen but I wish it wasn't all in beta. Google App Engine
is very tightly integrated and free, but how much can you do when you don't have write access to the filesystem and all your requests, responses, and database records need to be under 1MB? Amazon Web Services don't care about file or transfer size, but their database isn't totally online yet. And when Yahoo gets into the game I'm sure it will be totally awesome except that nobody will realize that it exists.- Z
paul - 09/19/08 14:11
I don't know how I missed this video before. It was awesome. Where are the Reagan videos like that, lol.
I don't know how I missed this video before. It was awesome. Where are the Reagan videos like that, lol.
tinypliny - 09/04/08 22:35
Awesome video. Pure and distilled undead awesomeness! The real question is how in the world do you locate all these eastern-european/estonian/russian videos? I have this sneaking suspicion that you are somehow subscribed to an exclusive cross-global cult underground RSS feed.
The word dickweed reminds me of the company Milweed that used to market the tiny memory footprint downloader "wackget". I think the company died. Their website got taken over by one of those bazillion fake search-engine type of deals. I guess it must be fun to call the police and see them wreck havoc on idiots. I want to be able to do that someday - or maybe not because the idiot situation itself might be rather stressful. I am so torn!
Ha! While you conscientiously sort through marketing and spam, people with very little brain space (like yours truly) indiscriminately hit the spam button the minute they see an email that doesn't belong. I guess its bad for business in the long run but I just can't find the energy to actually go through a whole e-bale of marketing to find out who is genuine and who isn't. I am not sure my spam-button happy attitude helps any.
Is cloud computing what I think it is? Even you don't have a powerful processor, other processors on the network "cloud" share your workload? Or is this something else completely?
Awesome video. Pure and distilled undead awesomeness! The real question is how in the world do you locate all these eastern-european/estonian/russian videos? I have this sneaking suspicion that you are somehow subscribed to an exclusive cross-global cult underground RSS feed.
The word dickweed reminds me of the company Milweed that used to market the tiny memory footprint downloader "wackget". I think the company died. Their website got taken over by one of those bazillion fake search-engine type of deals. I guess it must be fun to call the police and see them wreck havoc on idiots. I want to be able to do that someday - or maybe not because the idiot situation itself might be rather stressful. I am so torn!
Ha! While you conscientiously sort through marketing and spam, people with very little brain space (like yours truly) indiscriminately hit the spam button the minute they see an email that doesn't belong. I guess its bad for business in the long run but I just can't find the energy to actually go through a whole e-bale of marketing to find out who is genuine and who isn't. I am not sure my spam-button happy attitude helps any.
Is cloud computing what I think it is? Even you don't have a powerful processor, other processors on the network "cloud" share your workload? Or is this something else completely?
08/29/2008 10:55 #45495
born a ramblin manCategory: misc
1. In the United States, the word that precedes 'historic' is 'a,' not 'an.' 'An' precedes a vowel sound, and the 'h' is not silent. If you have thought enough about it to decide to use 'an,' you will probably also think enough about it to not pronounce it like a bad Shaw character. It ain't none of mine if you want to do that on (e:strip), but if you're someone who writes for a newspaper, you and your editor should both maybe have half a clue.
2. The last time I went grocery shopping I saw the potatoes labelled as 'pommes de terre,' and I thought that was kind of funny and evocative. Then my brain took a left-hand turn at 'noms de guerre' and ended up at 'pommes de guerre,' which sounds mischievous and awesome.
3. When I was a kid we had three pear trees and more pears than we knew what to do with. If you were on our shit list, we'd ring your doorbell and run away, leaving a grocery bag of like fifty pears on your porch. The ones that fell off the tree and rotted, we would dispose of by playing pearball ['poires de guerre?']. A soft underhand lob, an aluminum baseball bat, a spray of sticky mess. I wonder why I was always the pitcher?
4. We also had an apple tree that never produced any fruit worth eating for as long as I can remember. This summer - with my mom in San Diego and me mowing her lawn - it's apple armageddon.
...ramble on-
- Z
2. The last time I went grocery shopping I saw the potatoes labelled as 'pommes de terre,' and I thought that was kind of funny and evocative. Then my brain took a left-hand turn at 'noms de guerre' and ended up at 'pommes de guerre,' which sounds mischievous and awesome.
3. When I was a kid we had three pear trees and more pears than we knew what to do with. If you were on our shit list, we'd ring your doorbell and run away, leaving a grocery bag of like fifty pears on your porch. The ones that fell off the tree and rotted, we would dispose of by playing pearball ['poires de guerre?']. A soft underhand lob, an aluminum baseball bat, a spray of sticky mess. I wonder why I was always the pitcher?
4. We also had an apple tree that never produced any fruit worth eating for as long as I can remember. This summer - with my mom in San Diego and me mowing her lawn - it's apple armageddon.
...ramble on-
- Z
joshua - 08/29/08 11:47
Z is correct with respect to pronunciation in the United States. "An" is only used when the following "h" is silent. For example - I gave an honest effort at giving a shit about work today. We don't say "an hawnest effort." Still though, both uses are commonly acceptable and used in print (unless Z is reading it!). Typically I think it is a bit douchy to use "an historic" as it sounds forced in almost every instance. Maybe it reflects our lack of refinement? Hah. In almost every case speakers mute the hard H in historic in that case, thus unknowingly conforming to the standard I've already mentioned.
Pronouncing the "h" in herbs, I gather anyway, is a British English pronunciation. I don't think about foreigners' pronunciation in that level of detail. I can understand being a little self-conscious of it though - people just want to say it correctly, that's all.
Z is correct with respect to pronunciation in the United States. "An" is only used when the following "h" is silent. For example - I gave an honest effort at giving a shit about work today. We don't say "an hawnest effort." Still though, both uses are commonly acceptable and used in print (unless Z is reading it!). Typically I think it is a bit douchy to use "an historic" as it sounds forced in almost every instance. Maybe it reflects our lack of refinement? Hah. In almost every case speakers mute the hard H in historic in that case, thus unknowingly conforming to the standard I've already mentioned.
Pronouncing the "h" in herbs, I gather anyway, is a British English pronunciation. I don't think about foreigners' pronunciation in that level of detail. I can understand being a little self-conscious of it though - people just want to say it correctly, that's all.
tinypliny - 08/29/08 11:28
I am conflicted about the a and an all the time. I pronounce the h in words like Herbs. You don't. I don't want to sound like I am using wrong grammar, but sometimes, it just depends on how conscious I am of being in another country.
I am conflicted about the a and an all the time. I pronounce the h in words like Herbs. You don't. I don't want to sound like I am using wrong grammar, but sometimes, it just depends on how conscious I am of being in another country.
tinypliny - 08/29/08 11:26
Your title reminds me that I have not heard Grave Digger in a very long time. :::link:::
This weekend is going to be a Grave-Digging extravaganza.
The first search for Pommes De Guerre turned up this: :::link::: -> Apparently a popular thing to be thrown onstage at rockstars.
I am ambivalent about my liking for pears. I used to like them. I like pear juice. But I am not sure I like them so much any more. They rot easily and don't keep for long.
Your title reminds me that I have not heard Grave Digger in a very long time. :::link:::
This weekend is going to be a Grave-Digging extravaganza.
The first search for Pommes De Guerre turned up this: :::link::: -> Apparently a popular thing to be thrown onstage at rockstars.
I am ambivalent about my liking for pears. I used to like them. I like pear juice. But I am not sure I like them so much any more. They rot easily and don't keep for long.
Just an update they have come out with a couple "I'm a PC" ads, by the way that idea of everyone going around saying that was used in another ad and was taken (i think) from the Movie Malcolm X there is a part in it where all sorts of people go around saying "I am Malcolm X". I myself was hoping for better but it isn't bad. In on add He does say something about not being hip.
I just saw the one about the shoe store not more than a week ago. It's like a mini Seinfeld about nothing that includes Bill Gates. I find it hilarious!
This is the first time I saw the one with the family, and holy crap is it long! I'm glad I stayed with it though, I cracked up when Bill Gates did the robot dance.
I like Bill Gates too. I named one of my favorite server's Billy after him. Not that I like microsoft or windows. Just him, as an icon. I actually prefer him 100,000,000 to 1 over Steve "I am a stuck up shit head" Jobs - whose products I prefer (minus the cut, copy, paste missing in my iphone) - oh the irony.
I think the keyword is Famous. Who cares what your famous for. Collective memories are so fickle. Public memories don't exist. So yeah! You are famous!!! :D
PS: The second ad was slightly more funnier than the earlier one. :)
On Tv this was two adds it ended around the Theft and said to be continued. I liked the ads because they where different but they aren't funny. I think that what they need to do is some how come up with a parody of those MAC ads but it would be tough those ads are awesome and funny all at once. Who they need to get is who ever did the beer ads that mock out other beer ads. Like when the Budweiser dog jumps off the truck to another beer truck as an example. Like maybe they could show some guy who thinks he is hip taking his computer into an apple store so he can have all his files switched to the New Mac he is going to buy and there are little things that shows he isn't as hip as he thinks he is. Then as they switch files he loses documents and it doesn't work or something along those lines, the tag line could be something about. Windows Isn't hip it just works and does what it is supposed to do. Even though you can use Windows on Mac's from what I have read most people don't.
When I first saw it, I thought it was a campaign relating to Bill Gates' charity foundation, and at any moment I expected to hear Seinfeld say something cute like "Hey Bill, what's up with that malaria thing?".