Mobile Tele-Marketing

I heard some seriously bad news today. Apparently, telemarketers are going to start harassing us all via our cell phones. Today, cell phones out number land-line phones, even if it is only a small margin, and the telemarketers are looking to score once again. Now, I subscribed myself to the do-not-call registry, and I added the block on my phone service for the house, and yet, I still get calls from these horrible people. And then today, I hear from my brother-in-law that they are going to target my cell phone.

Before, it was annoying. They would call at all the wrong times, and you couldn't just politely get off the phone. You had to hang up, or they would go on and on and on. But now! It's not enough to be annoying and harass me.... Oh no, now they are going to cost me minutes!! I have a lot of minutes, and I have free evenings and weekends ,but still, my anytime minutes are precious to me, and I am paying for them. I don't need to pay for someone that I DID NOT WANT TO TALK TO CALLING ME AND USE MY MINUTES!!

I am just waiting on that first call.... Whoever is on the other end. Be prepared... I am going to make you go home and cry to your mommy, or at least wish you could! You have been warned!

Bible 101

Reading through Michael Williams blog today, and came across an entry he had linking to a story on Yahoo! about some sort of ghetto-style eating contest. The funny part though was that someon who is calling themselves a "Reverend" (A term that should only be used to describe God, BTW) says, and I quote:

"Watermelon, back in the days, was a good food for African Americans, according to the Bible, but at the same time, it had an attachment with slavery and bondage ties," the Rev. Carl Johnson said.

Now, I don't claim to be a Bible theolgian, but I know that watermelons are not mentioned in the Bible, let alone, African Americans. It's this sort of uninformed speaking, and reporting that causes so much of the bad stereotyping of Christians and Christianity.

Next time, Carl, read and study and think BEFORE you speak.

Wouldn't You Know?

Apple has now bundled more power into the Mini for the same price. It would have to do that shortly after I bought one. Sometimes it pays to wait. I'm not complaining mind you. I love my machine, and I don't regret getting it when I did, or the price I paid.... But, it sure would be nice to get a better machine for less. Take a look for yourself.

My mini has 1.25GHz processor, 40GB Hard Drive, 512MB ram, DVD-RW/CD-RW, Bluetooth, and airport, wireless mouse and keyboard. I paid a little over $900 for mine in total. Now, a better machine can be had for less. Now, I can get a 1.42GHz, 80GB Hard Drive, 512MB ram, DVD-RW/CD-RW, Bluetooth, airport, and wireless keyboard and mouse for about $800.

Those of you on the fence about getting a Mac need to really consider this deal. I love my Mac, and could never use Linux or Windows as my main OS anymore.

Disney Fonts

I found a great collection of Disney fonts.

Sounds of Saturn

Ever wonder what sounds a planet makes? Me either, but I found this from NASA. They have recorded radio waves emitted by the auroras of Saturn. These are similar to Earth's northern and southern lights. Sounds like something from a cheap sci-fi film, but I think it would make some great Halloween atmospheric music. For those interested, here are the details.

batari BASIC

Reading MAKE:Blog today and came across this site. Now, I have a way of creating Atari 2600 video games. Reminds me of the time that I used to want to work for PSYGNOSIS and write Amiga video games. Of course, a friend of mine got into the video game business, and I have since come to my senses that it is a tough business to be in, and not as glamorous as some may believe. In any case, I thought that this was cool, and I may have to tinker around with it some.

Mac OS X 10.4.2 Software Update

Beware! That is what I wish it would have said before I performed the update to my Mac Mini. After the update, everything seemed to be fine. Then, as fate would have it, the batteries in my Apple bluetooth mouse went dead. So I replaced the batteries, and my mouse quit working. Well, not entirely. The button still worked, but the mouse no longer tracks. I tried quite a few things, but nothing seemed to fix the problem. So, I am now using an extra Apple Pro wired mouse on my Mac Mini until I can find a resolution to the problem. Anyone out there with a similar problem and a fix for it, please let me know.

Classic Car

Captured this classic car while at MGM Studios last week. I just love this shot. What do you think?

Back from Vacation

We had a great time this past week at Disney World. We got some rain, even a little bit from Hurricane Dennis, but nothing that kept us from having a good time. Probably one of the coolest things was being the last people out of Magic Kingdom (except for the workers). My daughter and I had a lot of fun running up and down the streets with no one around. It was great! I got some good photos then too.

Useful Google Map Hack

Found a really cool Google Maps hack today. It shows the map and satellite images superimposed over one another. It is quite cool for locating stuff on the aerial shots. You can adjust the transparency, and can swap which is on top, either the satellite or map images. Just need to hack this a little more so you can enter an address to jump to, instead of the pre-defined city list. It does provide a way to enter latitude/longitude coordinates, but I really don't those all that well.

Microsoft Gator, Part Duex

I knew it! Slowly but surely, Microsoft will work towards using Gator to collect customer information. Microsoft's Antispyware software has downgraded Claria, and now the recommended action when it is detected is to "Ignore". Conspiracy theorists, have your fun with this one.

Going On Vacation

My family and I are going on vacation for a few days. We are going to do a week of Disney. That should tide us over for another year. The kids are really excited. I am too. I am going to do the Richard Petty Experience while I am there. That is going to be a lot of fun I think. I am also planning on creating a cool DVD of our whole week using my new Mac Mini. I've been using it to create little short videos the past few weeks, and this vacation video is going to be a lot of fun.

So, you won't be hearing any from me for a week or more, unless I find a free wireless hotspot while I am down there. The Mac is coming with me.

Astrologer Sues NASA

I heard about this story today. An astrologer has sued NASA over the Deep Impact probe which collided with a comet. According to Marina Bai, the astrologer in the lawsuit, this collision "ruins the natural balance of forces in the universe".

This is just what we need... another frivolous lawsuit. The scary part, given the way these types of lawsuits go, she could very well win. Remember the McDonald's Hot Coffee Lawsuit? And there is the case of the obese teenager who sued them because they failed to inform him that he could get fat from eating McDonald's food. All of these sorts of cases just irritate me so much. We end up wasting all sorts of tax dollars and court time with these cases that should just be thrown out before they even get a chance. It really needs to be stopped before it ever gets to a court to dismiss it. Lawyers should really weed these sorts of cases out, but the sad truth is there are so many lawyers, one of them is bound to take the case, no matter how far-fetched the claim.

We need serious reform in this area. Any takers?

Code2HTML Bug Fix

Corrected a bug in the Code2HTML widget today. Turns out I needed to escape the $ symbol in strings passed to the pbcopy command line utility. In a case where you have something like "$()" in the code stream that is converted, it is removed from the resulting pbpaste command utility. The string "$()" is apparently interpreted as some sort of expression, which in this case results in nothing, and so the string is removed from the pasted output. Fixed the bug by escaping the $ symbol in the output stream.

Kudos to afuna for finding this one.