11/30/2012

Zing built a Facebook app for one of our clients, White Wave. It’s a recipe contest for Silk soymilk, and people are encouraged to submit their own recipes using Silk products. The winners receive a year of Silk or something, so it’s pretty serious. It’s been running for a couple of weeks, and we have a lot of fairly nice entries. And then we have Dean W.

This is awesome for three reasons:

1) It has nothing whatsoever to do with Silk. Bravo for entering a contest and not following the rules.

2) It involves bacon.

3) Hey, Statue of Liberty costume.

11/23/2012

That’s 32 gigabytes of USB storage, packed into a little guy the size of my thumbtip.

Remember when hard drives were the size of washing machines? Okay, me either, but I do remember my first 40-megabyte hard drive which was the size of a VCR and cost $600.

11/23/2012

You know it’s a great day when stuff like this shows up in the mail.

My first thought, upon seeing the packaging for this choice item, is the amazing model on the box. Here’s a woman who may someday become a famous movie star or politician. And when that day comes, she’ll be able to proudly point to the time when she got her big start… as a model for the SUPER AFRO WIG.

11/17/2012

I’ve been a fan of Ron Paul for a long time, and of course I’m bummed he didn’t get the presidential nomination this time around. After 23 years in Congress, he’ll be retiring at the end of the year. He gave a farewell address and asked some insightful questions that I think every politician– and in fact every American– should be asking.

Why are sick people who use medical marijuana put in

Why does the federal government restrict the drinking of raw milk?

Why can’t Americans manufacturer rope and other products from hemp?

Why are Americans not allowed to use gold and silver as legal tender as mandated by the Constitution?

Why can’t Americans decide which type of light bulbs they can buy?

Why is the TSA permitted to abuse the rights of any American traveling by air?

Why should there be mandatory sentences– even up to life for crimes without victims– as our drug laws require?

Why have we allowed the federal government to regulate commodes in our homes?

Why haven’t we given up on the drug war since it’s an obvious failure and violates the people’s rights? Has nobody noticed that the authorities can’t even keep drugs out of the prisons? How can making our entire society a prison solve the problem?

Why do we sacrifice so much getting needlessly involved in border disputes and civil strife around the world and ignore the root cause of the most deadly border in the world: the one between Mexico and the US?

Why does Congress willingly give up its prerogatives to the Executive Branch?

Why does changing the party in power never change policy? Could it be that the views of both parties are essentially the same?

Why did the big banks, the large corporations, and foreign banks and foreign central banks get bailed out in 2008 and the middle class lost their jobs and their homes?

Why do so many in the government and the federal officials believe that creating money out of thin air creates wealth?

Why can’t people understand that war always destroys wealth and liberty?

Why is there so little concern for the Executive Order that gives the President authority to establish a “kill list,” including American citizens, of those targeted for assassination?

Why is patriotism thought to be blind loyalty to the government and the politicians who run it, rather than loyalty to the principles of liberty and support for the people? Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it’s wrong.

Why is it is claimed that if people won’t or can’t take care of their own needs, that people in government can do it for them?

Why did we ever give the government a safe haven for initiating violence against the people?

Why do some members defend free markets, but not civil liberties?

Why are there not more individuals who seek to intellectually influence others to bring about positive changes than those who seek power to force others to obey their commands?

Why should anyone be surprised that Congress has no credibility, since there’s such a disconnect between what politicians say and what they do?

So long, Ron. You were a good man amongst crooks and liars.

11/10/2012

Thanks to Mom, I have an unusual sensitivity to spelling and grammar errors. I can look at a page of text (or programming code!) and somehow my eye picks out a single mispelled word. As I read sentences or look at billboards, I cringe at the problems with sentence structure and grammar.

So here’s one that just caught my eye:

“92% percent” is redundant. It’s like saying “$20 dollars” or “UPC code”. Come on, guys, you’re an advertising agency… hire a good copy writer.

11/09/2012

It’s 4pm on a Friday and I just hit Inbox Zero.

It’s been a while since I haven’t had any emails that needed answering… apparently this last happened in July.

Too bad my to-do list is still huge…

11/09/2012

Every two weeks, on payday, I use my online Chase account to send money to several employees. I use their free “QuickPay” service to transfer expense reimbursements to them, and they connect their QuickPay account to their bank so the money gets transferred electronically. Each time, I also send a couple of employees a full paycheck. However, QuickPay has a $5,000 limit so I can’t do it for everyone. It’s annoying, but okay, I understand.

Lately, every time I do this, I get an automated phone call from Chase asking me to verify that the transaction is valid. In some cases we’re talking about $50 or $100 for expenses. So I have to answer a bunch of questions about the car I own, the street address of my house, yada yada. I understand that if I add a new employee and pay them, it makes sense for Chase to verify that it was intentional to prevent fraud. Once. But every time? It’s the same people every two weeks, and often the same amounts (since their paychecks don’t change).

I finally got fed up with it this morning and called the Chase web team to see if that verification could be disabled. After literally ten minutes of the guy talking to someone else about it, he told me it couldn’t be done. But hey, I could sign up for Chase’s payroll service! For $10 a month I can do exactly what I’m doing now but it wouldn’t ask me to verify the payments.

Me: “So it sounds like your system is just annoying me, and you’re saying I can pay $10 a month to stop being annoyed.”

Chase rep: “Yes sir, that’s how it works.”

Nice.

11/08/2012

I’m looking for some new memory for a few of my servers, and I came across a really interesting product on Amazon. It says it’s 184-pin DDR PC3200 RAM, but I’ve never heard of memory chips formatted as audio CD’s…