Super Sunday
Today many Americans sit around their TV, stuffing their faces (two things I’m all for in celebratory situations.)
The thing is, they’re watching men play a game. A game the men are paid millions of dollars to play–far better pay than most doctors and scientists. A game many people are flat out fanatical over, almost religious.
I’m pro huge salaries for in demand jobs, and these qualify. But the fact that it’s so in demand… It kind of makes me go “what the hell?”
The internet is so weird sometimes
I use skype a lot for talking with colleagues, both via text and voice chat. I also use it to video conference with my parents now and then. I’ve always been a fan of IM (and now, twitter,) so I have often gone to “skype-me” mode, which lists you in a directory so people you don’t know can say hi.
This has been cool, a lot of people from china will talk to me a bit and the cultural differences are really interesting. It inevitably has it’s down side as well. There are often spammers. There are religious spammers, trying to get you to convert to Islam. There are lots of kids that will just try to call, or type without knowing your language. I’ve built up a pretty healthy block list.
Today I got one of the strangest ones yet, I think. Some fellow (at least by profile information,) named houssem-09 sent me the following text. This was his opening volley, mind you.
I’ll confess that younger girls tend to catch my eye more easily. I like girls my age and older as well, but young ones are best, like you.
My first thought was, oh, a spam. I get email spam that’s similarly nonsensical, but there were no links. Now I guess he’s trying to pick up virtual chicks or whatever, but my profile is filled out, marked as male, and even has a picture. So I reply “I’m male, also straight.” There was no response.
Was this just a spambot that forgot to send it’s links? A very lonely and confused man? A kid messing around? Who knows. I’m invisible on skype now. If you need me feel free to send a message, I might be around.
OpenID finally starts taking off!
In the past week both Yahoo! and Blogger have made announcements about supporting OpenID. Not only support, but if you have a Yahoo! or Blogger id, you now have an OpenID as well. I’ve got to say: about time!
What’s an OpenID? Basically It’s a way of authenticating yourself on sites across the internet. Microsoft tried to do something similar with their passport system, but the only sites that ever utilized it were Microsoft sites. If you use an OpenID, people will know that the comment on that website is actually you, as opposed to someone who just typed your name in. It’s also nice being able to use one unique id across a bunch of sites instead of creating accounts everywhere you go.
My site’s been supporting OpenID for what must be a couple years now. You can comment using it, and I can comment other places and identify as makesitgood.net. It’s pretty cool. With this new surge of people that are now able to use it, I hope to see it take off and become popular.
UFO. Are extra-terrestrials here yet?
There have been a flurry of UFO sightings in a nearby Texas town named Stephenville. The town is a couple hours south west of me. Normally my reaction to this sort of thing is something along the lines of “cool, wonder what that was.”
Stephenville paper story
Fort-Worth Star story
Telegraph story
Today I had a bit more reason to ponder.
Around 10 AM CST today I hear what sounds like a jet. It’s quite loud, so it’s either a very powerful jet going fast, or a more normal jet flying rather low. We have a lot of air traffic in my area, and I always enjoy seeing what’s going by. Sometimes we have military jets on test runs, sometimes it’s just a commuter that’s been forced lower due to weather.
Since this one was abnormally loud I wanted to catch a glimpse, so I darted out my back door and took a look around. Conditions were great, absolutely clear sky, visibility for miles and miles. Yet… there was nothing in view. I was a bit disappointed, but that happens sometimes. Especially in the case of the military jets, if they go supersonic you can be hearing things after they’ve passed you by. What was odd is I was still hearing the engine… and the loudness hadn’t diminished. I went out front, looked around, still couldn’t catch a glimpse of anything.
The sound continued to be audible indoors for nearly two more minutes.
I’d really like to know what that was. It was either going very fast, I’m blind, or it was very hard to see.
Iowa is making me sick.
Down to the wire and the candidates are showing their true colours. Those of mud-slinging, the other guys are crooks (or zombies?) so you better vote for me.
I have to applaud Fred Thompson for (seemingly) trying to stay out of the in-fighting.
“While all this hullabaloo is going on around me and everybody’s attacking each other and everybody’s talking about process and who’s got the most political ambition to drive them, I’m just going to stay steady up the middle with the same conservative, common-sense message that I’ve had and what I’ve always been in my political life from day one,” he said.
I know I’m an idealist, but to me it is rather shocking how much battle goes on within parties that are supposed to be working towards common goals. There is less of goals being thrown about than there is warnings should you vote for the wrong person. It’s not about who’s going to do the best job, or who’s goals are most aligned with yours, it’s about who you can’t vote for because of dirt and fear.
Truly a pitiful state for a democracy to be in.
QuickThoughts: Hacking, Leopard, Car
Hack the Planet!
Last night I watched Die Hard 4: Live free or Die Hard. What a title. The title didn’t actually connect well with the plot except for in the vaguest of ways. It was a great over the top action flick. Better not to think to hard about anything in it, just sit back and enjoy the choreography and effects. The acting was good, the characters weren’t completely flat, in short it’s probably the best you can expect of the summer blockbuster genre.
But what I did get a kick out of was the heavy computer security/hacking angle. No it wasn’t portrayed at all realistically. Technology and interfaces are catching up with the movie looks, then again they used nearly the same visuals they’ve been using for the last ten years. What was portrayed pretty accurately was the whole geek/hacker attitude and lifestyle.
From the early scenes, seeing the geek in his habitat (squalor except for high dollar tech and toys,) made me very nostalgic. I was that guy in high-school. I especially liked the scenes with Kevin Smith’s character. Very hacker/survivalist/borderline paranoid. Very close to reality. As I look around my office I see similarities. I’d like to think I’m a lot less paranoid and cloistered.
I definitely need to find my copy of Hackers to watch again.
The inevitable bashing of the newest Apple Product
I’m seeing a lot of gripes about Leopard. At first it was all about the blue screen on install (caused by a third party application that changes some core system functionality.) All I have to say on that one is: duh.
Techmeme has several recent links on Leopard being the “new vista,” which I find funny. It’s funny because they’re comparing it to vista because of bugs. I don’t doubt that there are bugs in leopard, but on my G5 iMac and my macbook I haven’t run into anything yet.
I haven’t run into a single error.
I use these both on a daily basis, so I must be doing something right. I use both machines pretty hard, lots of applications open at once, ram heavy and processor heavy tasks. I am sure there are flaws, but I’m surprised I don’t hit them. I develop software. I run lots of third party utilities. I write my own applescripts and automator apps to simplify workflow. Photoshop is regularly open, and occasionally Illustrator. What am I missing?
Oh well, no complaints here. It happens every release, I attribute it to Apple users being a very very vocal minority.
Say hello to Dagny
Friday I bought a 1999 Mazda MX-5 (Miata.) It’s Emerald Mica, which is basically a metallic British Racing Green. Tan top and leather interior. Check out the pictures here.
Handles really really well, plenty of power for it’s size, nice sound system and overall just a lot of fun. Looking forward to cleaning it up and tuning it better and better.
I also just bought a special harness for Duncan so he can ride along with no worries.
To Hollywood Strikers: Give it up
Box office sales have been in decline. Movie theatres are going out of business. People aren’t going to the movies as much. It’s not due to the acting.
It’s due to the writers. To be fair, it may be due to the other forces that get scripts greenlit, but the failing point is between concept and final screenplay draft.
So now the writers are striking. I find that hilarious. I’m sure there’s some great writers out there and they’re striking too for some reason, but the bulk of you are not needed. You’ve been doing poorly. I don’t mean to say you’re bad writers, just that because of culture, salesmanship, perseverance, or any number of factors we’ve been provided with extremely lackluster movies for the past several years.
Take a cue from the internet. Take a cue from popular fiction writers. Take a cue from some of the more popular TV dramas. We don’t want the same things anymore. You have to adapt or die. Striking is never an answer. Quit your unions, put your work out there on it’s own merits, sell yourself.
If you start putting out clever original scripts, or even really well crafted unoriginal scripts we will all thank you for it.
The funniest thing to me about this strike is that if they actually changed the model… you know, that the writers made royalties for actual views. Assuming we actually want to be fair instead of just “pay me more,” you’d have to adjust and pay network programming royalties based on ratings as well. Considering how many shows are aired simultaneously across the states a lot of writers would be making a lot less. Some would be ridiculously successful of course, and some would get the boost from online content… but the bulk of them would suddenly be making less. Sure you write for a primetime show, but no one’s watching it this week… you get squat. To me it sounds like the writers want the networks and distributors to take all the risk while simultaneously giving all the benefits to the writers.
I’m really curious who got this ball rolling. I’m all for paying excellent writers more, and I think it’d be great to do it based on who watches what… but there’s a lot of writers that don’t write well, and shouldn’t be getting paid well 