Sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful, always a good time
I’m in the market for an old Macbook Air for Kyra (to use for school). I found what seemed to be a pretty good price on eBay, until I looked at the fine print in the description:
Umm… it works “really well” but the screen is broken? Clearly this guy’s definition of “really well” is a little different than mine.
The first computer I bought cost $2,500. It was an Apple IIgs and it was awesome. The year? 1990.
A year later I sold that and bought an Intel-based PC. It screamed along with a 33MHz i386 processor and 4MB of memory. Two thousand clams.
Last night I read about the Cubox. It’s a cube two inches on a side, and it’s a full desktop-capable computer with HD video output, 3D graphics, networking, wireless and Bluetooth connectivity, USB outputs, a SATA connection for an external hard drive, yada yada. In short, it’s probably a thousand times more powerful than my first computer. The cost? $45.
Isn’t technological progress wonderful?
Today I’m getting a bunch of spam messages from someone who’s a very bad spammer. They apparently forgot to set up their “Robomail” software, because all I’m getting in the emails is a list of the variables they could use to construct their spammy goodness.
Come on, man, if you’re going to be a sleazy spammer, at least figure out how to use the dang software.
Ahh, Pandora ads. Check out the fine print for this one, which is apparently some kind of low-testosterone treatment that you apply to your armpit.
My favorite part is the sentence that begins If you expect another person to have direct skin-to-skin contact with your armpits…
Uhh… is that some kind of weird fetish I don’t know about?
Quote by a friend:
Amazon has everything.
Except cool neckties.
As someone who values a really sweet obnoxious necktie to accent an otherwise dull grey suit at church, I’m always looking for the next silk accessory that’s covered in paisley or bright flowers or (my favorite) tie-dye. I enjoy the Jerry Garcia ties that Kohl’s sells, and I wish I could go to Amazon and find something equally awesome. Alas, despite a gazillion ties available in the store, they tend to be pretty dull.
I don’t want to look like a banker.
I’ve always been fascinated by the transcendental number pi, so I thought it was really cool when the first 100,000,000,000 digits of pi were transformed into art via a random walk.
(Click for a larger version)
This image represents pi in base-four notation, and each subsequent digit determines the location of the next pixel. Zero means “move down”, one is right, two is up, and three is left. We start at the point marked start and proceed through a hundred billion digits, eventually coming to finish. Although this is hardly a rigorous mathematic proof of the randomness of pi’s digits, the fact that there’s no discernable pattern here is a pretty strong indicator that the digits are likely random.
Math as art is so cool.
I love lyrics like this on Pandora:
We have this little stuffed hedgehog that I think Zack got around the time he was born. His name is Hedgie (naturally!) and for some reason he cracks me up. Zack still keeps him in his bed, not because he’s afraid of the dark and needs a stuffed animal for protection, but just for nostalgia.
Zack suggested that perhaps I could take a nice photo of Hedgie so we could use him on our computer desktop backgrounds. So I had a little photo shoot just now. I think the pictures came out nicely.
Long live Hedgie.
I have a client who I’ve been working with for almost 12 years. I know a lot of people there, and over those years I’ve seen a lot of changes. I feel like we have a great relationship of trust and mutual support, and I’ve always done my best to provide the very best service for them.
All of a sudden, this week someone in the Legal department decided that we have to slam the brakes on all of the projects we’re doing because there’s no contract with Zing! I explained that I’d signed contracts in the past– probably years ago– but since no one can find them, they felt that we needed to get something in place before we could possibly continue working together.
Last night they sent the contract. It was horrendous– clearly the work of a corporate legal team who wants everything weighted in their favor, at the expense of the little ten-man company who’s working with them. The indemnification clause prevented me from suing them even in cases of “gross negligence or willful misconduct”… in other words, they could intentionally sabotage Zing, and I would be powerless to sue them. Nice. They also required that Zing carry five separate insurance policies with a minimum coverage of over $12 million. Umm, what?
I wrote a lengthy email identifying all of the clauses I felt were unfair or unreasonable, to which they replied that well, it was certainly my choice to stop working with them. Since they’re a long-time client and provide significant revenue for Zing, it’s not like I’m going to walk away. On the other hand, I’m not about to sign a contract that’s clearly unreasonable. I already went through this legal showdown with Google a few years ago (their contracts are even more lopsided). I may be a small business owner, but I’m not a pushover.
In the end, I decided to reword and strike various parts of the contract before I signed it. That should make things interesting– will they accept my changes, or is this the start of a big negotiation? Of course I had to print two copies and physically mail them… thanks, lawyer-type people, for keeping things back in the Dark Ages before we had email and electronic signatures. Sheesh.