Zach Braff's blog

The main character from the show Scrubs has his own blog. It's worth a look. His latest post talks about his trip to Australia, where he saw a negative review of his movie "Garden State" on television. Another person he knew had the phone number of the host of the tv show, so he called her up to talk to her about it.

10 tips for Incoming Freshmen at Louisiana Tech University - Dorm Life

So, you've made the big step and chosen a college to attend for your education. Well, congrats, you've chosen a great school. You've got a few things to learn before you pack up your stuff and head out of your parents' house. These tips are intended to help you make a smooth transition to Tech, and to let you know what to expect in certain areas of college life.

Dorm Life:
There were only a few things that I was unprepared for when I got to Tech, and most of them had to do with making adjustments to living in a dorm. So, if you're going to be living in one of the older dorms (not the new, snazzy apartment/dorms), then here are a few tips you should use to help in being prepared for dorm life.

1) You'll need some kind of sandals to wear in the shower. Hundreds of other people will be showering in the same shower stalls you use. If you don't want the funk from everyone else's feet on the bottom of yours, use the sandals.

2) You'll have a twin size bunk bed in your room. These beds were designed to avoid the two C's of horror: comfort and copulation. The beds are just big enough fit one person, and hard enough that if you turn over with your mouth open at night, you may chip a tooth. They are made out of a special, space age material that is as hard as titanium, but as light as a regular mattress. You should enjoy the fact that your mattresses will be bulletproof in case of a gunfight. However, unless you enjoy back pain and a lack of comfort, you should invest in an "egg crate" foam pad or memory foam topper for your bed. You might want to stack 3 of them come to think of it.

3) Don't expect to do much studying in your dorm room. It's gonna be loud, especially during the day, and if it's your neighbor with the 1060 Watt subwoofer in his room, then most likely he won't hear you knocking at his door to tell him to turn his music down. What little studying I did in college was done in my dorm room. My GPA will support the argument that there are too many distractions in there.

4) I would advise against using the washers and dryers that are available on campus. Drive over to a local washeteria and use their machines. I always used the washeteria by the dawg house, and on a weekday I could get in and out with all of my clothes washed in about an hour. Tech's dryers will overdry your clothes, and possibly shrink them. If you're lucky enough to have a functional set of washers and dryers, you'll have to wash clothes at weird hours to be able to wash and dry in a reasonable amount of time. Your whole dorm will be sharing a few washers and dryers... it will be crowded. If you plan on being in your room while your clothes are drying, people can do what they like with your clothes. This includes stealing your favorite shirt, or if you're lucky, taking your wet clothes out of the washer, and setting them on something else so they can start a load.

It will be just as expensive to use the washers and dryers off campus. You can't use your tech express cards (your ID cards for use with meal plans, in the book store, at vending machines on campus, and for washers and dryers) off campus, so you'll do well to collect quarters for washing day. You'll spend the same amount of money, but you'll save time washing clothes in a low stress evironment where you can probably even study.

5) Plan to have an extra fan or heater on hand. When the weather changes, it takes a long time for tech to adjust to the changing weather. Take this month for example, some days it's 75 degrees, some days it's 55. They don't really set the temperature to account for this, it's a central heating/cooling system that blows air into your room from whatever air is pumping through the dorm's air ducts. So, when it's getting warmer in the spring and they're still running the heater, or if the A/C unit breaks, a window fan to bring in cooler air is a god send. It's hard to sleep when you're sweating like a pregnant nun.

6) Buy a small refrigerator to put in your room. This one should be a rule. If you want cokes for pizza, hot pockets to warm up in your microwave, or milk for a quick breakfast before class (or going back to sleep after deciding calculus could wait), then a small fridge is your only option.

7) Choosing a residence hall, and room is important. If you get to choose your room/residence hall, DO NOT choose a high floor. The elevators ALWAYS break. You can bank on at least one of the elevators in the high rise dorms being broken at any given time. This means that when you move in, out, or when you're just going about daily business, you'll be climbing up and down multiple flights. Also, consider that having a room right by the noisy stairs with noisy people coming in and out all night, slamming the doors will become old very quickly. There are three sets of stairs on each hall in Caruthers, Nielsen, and Hut, but only two sets of stairs in Cottingham (as best I recall).

Also, in choosing a residence hall I'd rank the guys residence halls as follows (I won't rate girls dorms because they're all about the same... all closer to campus and better than guys dorms):

1st Choice) Hut private room
2nd) University Park (The nicest, but most expensive & long waiting list)
3) Cottingham (Honors dorm - well worth it... big rooms)
4) Caruthers
5) Nielsen

8) You might want to shower and use the restroom at odd hours (late at night or early in the morning). Most people shower in the morning and at night, before bed. I'm not sure if it's a normal experience, but on our floor, the football players enjoyed showering with the curtain open, partially out of the stall. I, however, did not share in their enjoyment. So, I waited, along with most of the other people I knew on the hall, until late to shower.

Using the restroom goes the same way, but for a different reason. I chose to use the restroom earlier in morning. You see, by the afternoon, many people have made the trip to use the restroom, and the toilets and urinals are pretty nasty by that time. So, I would go right after I woke up, which is right after the janitors would get in there with circus strength cleaners and fresh rolls of toilet paper.

9) If you're a net junkie, like I am, consider getting cable modem service from Cox Cable here in Ruston. It's about $40/mo. if you buy the cable modem for $100 (It's 1.5 Mbits down, 128Kbits up). The network at Tech is always down and is very slow most of the time. With a cable modem, you'll have more freedom to download anything you want, without fear of repurcussions from the university admins, or slow downs because of other people on the network.

10) Don't throw out your old phone cards or used gift cards. It may sound like a strange tip, but let me explain. When I would leave to use the restroom, or go down to a friend's room, I would lock the door, sometimes forgetting to grab my keys. It also happened that my roommate would leave while I was in the shower or gone downstirs, and he would lock the door out of habit. When this happens, you can use a credit card (or old gift card, or phone card) that should be in your wallet to unlock the door. Just slide it between the crack of the door, and jiggle the handle as you bring the card between the locking mechanism and the hole in the side of the door frame where it fits. As long as the door isn't deadbolted, you can get in... with practice. It should also be noted that since you, or anyone else can do this, you should always deadbolt your door when you leave for extended periods of time.

The case for choosing a dorm for your first couple years of college:
The school has a requirement that you must have a certain number of hours before you can move off campus (when I moved off it was 80 hours). Many local students consider filling out a commuter form, telling the school that they live back home, while actually living in Ruston somewhere. That's what I did, but I'd been in dorms for two years already, and had just under the hours that were required. Get that idea out of your head though. You'll be excluding yourself from one of the best parts of college life.

You'll be able to meet people much more quickly in a dorm setting than in an isolated apartment complex, or rented house. You'll no doubt be able to make friends sooner or later, but dorms allow you to get to know people much more quickly through the activities they sponsor (i.e. intramural sports, video game tournaments, etc.). In addition to being able to meet people more easily, you'll be on campus, where you can walk to any class within 10 minutes. If you live off campus, you'll have to wake up earlier, and drive to class, look for a parking space, and end up still walk almost as far as the students who live in dorms. If you've got a meal plan, you can also count on having to spend extra time to drive to campus and find a parking spot close to the cafeteria or tolliver hall. This gets really old when you're hungry at your house but don't feel like going anywhere.

Apart from these two points, the main reason you should live on campus is money. Expect to pay, at the very least, $350/mo. for rent (for a two bedroom apt ... $250 for one person), $100 for electricity, $40 for extended cable, $30 for gas, $30 for phone. Most likely, you'll end up with $400/mo. in bills, and another $100-150/mo. in food costs. This does not include deposits for the first month. You'll end up paying a month's rent for a deposit before you move in, a $100 deposit for electricity, and smaller deposit for gas. On paper, it may look like your living expenses will be cheaper than paying room and board, but in reality it probably won't be, unless you have two or more roommates.

Pork-barrel bills... what are they?

According to CNN, the terms pork-barrel bill refers to "a longstanding Washington practice where lawmakers slip favored projects into various spending bills". That's a quaint little name for a terrible practice.

This came to my attention recently when I read that there would be additions to the omnibus bill that's going through congress that could make it illegal to manufacture a device that skips ads, whether they're at the beginning of DVD's, or while you're watching a pre-recorded TV show. This isn't really pork-barreling, but in looking at the omnibus bill online, I found a few quotes from John McCain, bashing the omnibus bill and those lawmakers who were using it to attach these pork-barrel projects for the people in their districts.

Here are a few of the comments he made (full press release at senate.mccain.gov).

It appears that the big spenders in Washington have all but stolen the credit card numbers of every hard-working taxpayer in America and gone on a limitless spending spree for parochial, pork-barrel projects, leaving the taxpayers to pay and pay. These big spenders view the federal budget as a virtual shopping mall where they can buy their way to re-election ... Mr. President, there is over $11 billion in unrequested, unauthorized, run-of-the-mill pork projects contained in the 1,182 pages of this conference report. Let’s go through some of the more interesting provisions:
• $7.3 million for Hawaiian Sea Turtles.
• $6 million for Sea Lions in Alaska.
• $1 million for Mormon cricket suppression in Utah.
• $325,000 to the City of Salinas, California, for construction of a swimming pool.
...

In fact, I strongly suggest that we change the name of this bill to "The Incumbent Protection Act of 2004".

I strongly agree with Senator McCain. I think attaching legislation to appropriation bills (that are "must pass" bills) is despicable. It takes advantage of the system we have in place to form the laws we live by here in the US. I will add that I think that anyone who abuses the system we have in place for approving laws should be removed from power. It's as simple as that.

It's a tricky situation though. Since the congressmen are passing legislation to award money to their constituents, those constituents are not likely to vote against their congressman when reelection time comes around. To me, this indicates that it is important to set up other penalties for those congressmen who continue to add extra legislation to these appropriation bills, that are essentially "must pass" bills. Do not fine them, do not censure them, remove them from the position they hold that allows them the opportunity to abuse the US legislative system.

I'm glad there are senators like John McCain who are standing up for ethical practices in congress. I hope President Bush takes note of the stand certain senators are taking, and will begin to veto certain bills, and push those people in his party to practice ethical legislative practices. Democrats are guilty of the practice also, and should work to avoid practices like pork-barreling.

Additional Articles concerning Pork-Barrel bills:
http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/gen/resources/pork/
http://www.rppi.org/porkbarrel.shtml

Thanksgiving pics

Yesterday in Longview I managed to sneak a few pics of the family. Here are a few of the ones that turned out well.

Candy and Grandma

Candy and Katie

Patsy, Moms and Pops

Pops and Erin playing tetherball

Sadie and her toy du jour

I'll post the rest of them in the gallery when I get some time and a faster connection... I'm on deathly slow dial-up at the moment.

Black Friday relived

This morning we managed to make it out to some of the "black friday" sales going on at all the stores here in Dallas. The only stores on our list were Best Buy and Fry's, but we ended up going to Circuit City because we were right there by it after going to Best Buy.

We didn't make off with any blistering deals like we have in previous years, but we didn't come away empty handed. I picked up a few mp3 players to try to sell on Ebay, and we also got two hard drives for personal use.

All in all, we did well. Noone cried. Noone was mugged or kidnapped, and there were only two minor arguments between Taylor and myself (he's mispelling our grandma's nickname and telling me I'm wrong... even though everyone else spells it differently, and have spelled it this way since before he was born). The stores were insane though, especially Best Buy, where they promote certain sales until 12 o'clock.

Now, I don't have much left to buy for other people for Christmas, and I get to spend the rest of the weekend with the family without worrying about everyone getting out and finding the deals they were hunting.

Thanksgiving 2004

I'm in Longview at the moment. We just finished eating a big thanksgiving Dinner, and we'll head to Dallas here in a few hours.

The sales aren't looking that great online, so I'm about to get off the computer. Happy thanksgiving.

Two new CD's to make

Here in a few minutes I'll be off to "Pie night" with Katie's family. Their tradition is to make everyone's favorite pies the night before Thanksgiving, and have them all for dinner. And by God, if I have to eat pies for dinner in the interest of keeping up family relations, I'll do it.

This trip also means I'll be spending a good deal of time in a car this weekend. So, I've decided to make a couple of CD's to tide me over.

First, I made a CD with the newer songs I have... the billboard stuff, and the new R&B stuff that Katie and I will both enjoy. Hoobastank, DMX, Willie Nelson (oops, how'd that get on there?), etc.

For the ride back though, I decided to make the funkiest CD I could throw together. I like to think that the songs I've put together are so funky that you'll need sunglasses and at least a light tan to enjoy them. John Lee Hooker, Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Joe Cocker... and the list goes on. It's great stuff.

I hope anyone who reads the blog has a great thanksgiving weekend.

Todo list.

I'm gonna post a few to-do's here in the next few days. I've got some time on my hands, and I think it will be a productive time for thinking of ways to spend any extra time.

1)Make a guide for college students who are coming to Tech (or any other college). Bookstore, campus supplies, money... etc.

2)Try to get everyone I know to comment on the guide and get people on the web to link to it.

2)Design a website that can be a source of information for people looking for all things southern (find a way to solicit content from people)... southern U.S., not Southern Vietnam, or Southern Hemisphere.

3)Pursue getting a resale certificate and some money to buy wholesale items.

4)Look into finding an appropriate subject matter for constructing a new portal. Advertise with google, generate traffic, and become slightly profitable with other advertisers.

Comments on Amazon.com products

I've been going through amazon.com to create a wishlist for my family. I know I'm a hard customer to shop for, and I don't really want anything big (besides a car or a new digital camera), so I decided to make a list of a few things I've been in need of. Dress socks, kitchen stuff, towels, etc. Well, in reading some of the comments for these items, I realized that there are some crazy people on Amazon... or they say some crazy things anyways. Here are a couple of the funny ones I've found.

$10 Towels Comment - "... If you have a second home, these are a must buy..."

Vacu Vin Vacuum Sealer - "... [I use this] not only for my wife and I, but for our 5 1/2 year old Doberman who had kidney cancer..."

Anyone looking for dress shoes?

I found a great deal on shoes via Ben's Bargains

Skechers is giving 25% off + free shipping with coupon code IPOD04. Timberland has 25% off + free shipping with code STARS.

I don't like the casual shoes that much, but their selection of dress shoes is very nice. So, if anyone else is in the market for a good pair of cheap dress shoes, visit their "skecher collection" page to look at their assortment.

Word from on high for the NBA brawl

Indiana's Ron Artest, Jermaine O'Neal and Stephen Jackson, and Detroit's Ben Wallace were suspended indefinitely by the NBA on Saturday for taking part in one of the ugliest brawls in U.S. sports history, a fight with fans that commissioner David Stern called "shocking, repulsive and inexcusable."

That's the latest. I have to say, I'm surprised that they've not spoken about the terms of the suspensions yet, and that Ben Wallace was included in the same group as those who actually assaulted fans. I do hope, however, that anyone who hit a fan or a player will be charged with assault, unless defending themselves.

Pistons-Pacer riot: thank you Ron Artest

If you haven't heard what happened last night at the Pistons-Pacer NBA game last night, here's a quick run down of the story. Ben Wallace was going up for a layup when Ron Artest, everyone's favorite NBA clown, fouled him hard from behind. Ben Wallace turned and shoved Ron Artest with two hands to his face/neck. The benches cleared, and both teams were involved in a minor scuffle. However, after the scuffle things got worse.

Ron Artest was calming down on the scorer's table when someone from the audience threw a full cup and him. Artest charged the stands, pummeling the fan he suspected of throwing the drink. Jermaine O'neal followed, along with several other Pacers and took all their NBA player rage out on the fans. The fans in turn took out their frustrations on the NBA players heads.

Here's a video of the event. It shows just how crazy things were. Before you watch, let me point out the most cowardly thing to watch for. When there's a chubby latino kneeling on the floor, watch carefully as Jermaine O'neal comes from off camera, and sucker punches him while he's still down and not looking toward Jermaine. He lays the latino out on the floor, and is again restrained by teammates.

There's no doubt in my mind that Ron Artest should be let go from his team. I also have no doubt that he will receive nothing more than a 3 months suspension. The other players on the Pacers team that were involved will hopefully receive the same. As far as Ben Wallace is concerned, I think he should get a 6-10 game suspension, which is an acceptable amount of time for a normal team rivalry scuffle. In this case, he should get a bit of extra time just for being a part of the cause for the riot.

The fans in the stadium, should they be identified as culprits in provoking or taking part in the violence, should face criminal charges and face bans from all sporting events in the NBA. The latter would be hard to enforce, but it should still happen. The bottom line is that on both sides of this brawl, there were people who could not control themselves. Any time you have a player or person who can't control themselves, you should never put that person back in a position to lose control. Players who lack restraint, and fans who lack restraint shouldn't be given the opportunity to let this happen again.

I'm interested to see what the NBA commissioner is gonna do in this case. I'll post results as I come across 'em.

Comment Spam has subsided

As I posted a few nights ago, my blog was getting hammered with comment spam. I would get about 20 ads a day, and my site isn't even remotely close to popular. So, the first step I took a few weeks ago was to set up a comment approval system, which did allow me to keep their spam from hitting the front pages of my blog entries. It also allowed me to spend time each day making sure I wasn't forgetting to approve legitimate commenters.

Now, as far as the fixes I put into place the other night. I think the only one that has made the difference so far is a change in the name of the comments.cgi file. It seems as if the comment spam people haven't figured out that parsing the comment html file for the cgi script would be a good idea, so they're looking for the default mt-comments.cgi file.

Well, I haven't received a single bit of spam since the other night, and I hope to keep it that way.

Nose Goblins

Katie and I made a trip to the local Sonic Wednesday night where we happened upon a special type of person, the nose picker.

We were in the drive thru, waiting at the window for our order to be handed out to us. I look directly in front of me at the guy who is parked in the space closest to us, and I notice that he's knuckle deep in his left nostril. I watched for a second in disbelief, then told Katie to have a look.

He stopped right before she shot a glance at him, and she said "Oh, he was probably just rubbing his nose". How naiive. If I didn't know better, I would've thought he was trying to touch the bottom of his brain to see whether it was squishy.

Then, to my delight, he started again, and I reached over and grabbed Katie's arm, pointed to him and said "Look, his finger is IN his nose". I got no further argument from Katie this time, because he had extracted a small object from his nose, and was examining it very closely. He then began the roll and flick maneuver, putting his hand casually outside his window, rolling his middle finger and thumb around until he had properly shaped his new prize.

All Katie could say after witnessing this unabashed public nose picker was, "He's gonna eat with those hands".

Shocking images

These images were taken after someone managed to get their car in a body of water, but managed to stay close enough to the shore to make an extraction attempt.

http://zattevrienden.realroot.be/depanneren.htm

Shotgun Rules

Everyone that has to ride with friends has at some point had occasion to call "Shotgun". For those of you who are not up on the full list of rules for calling shotgun, I've included a few official amendments to the original shotgun rules.

Amendment XXXIX: Shotgun Suicide If the Shotgun caller attempts to open the car door as it is being unlocked (thus causing it to stay locked), he immediately loses Shotgun priviliges for the upcoming ride, and a new round of calling Shotgun must be executed.

Amendment LII: The Rock Amendment
This rule states that once a passenger calls "Shotgun," he must also say, "No Rock." If the gunner does not say this, another passenger may call, "Rock." In this case Shotgun is awarded to the winner of a best of three, Rock, Paper, Scissors contest.

You can find all the rules, along with their amendments, at http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~starbug/shotgunguide.htm.

Black Friday 2004 leaks.

I've got a small army of posts running about in my head, so I need to get some of them out before there's a revolt. I'll post them individually for the sake of content searchability later on.

First, for those of you who enjoy shopping the black friday (the day after thanksgiving) deals, I've located a site that has some of the deals for the upcoming week: bf2004.com. I'd be wary of any deals that are posted that aren't accompanied by scans... just in case the marketing departments of these companies wised up and issued some fakes to keep an element of surprise.

Oh, and don't be too disappointed if you don't see everything that's on your list. My sources (my dad actually) said he read that a lot of companies are having trouble getting large shipments in before christmas, so they will have large amounts of inventory to move after christmas. That always means one thing - deep discounts.

I love her, whoever she is.

Whoever you are, oh creative one. I love you.

Here's the original site.

Finished product.

Comment Spam. Good news and bad news.

This little blog has been under quite a load of spam lately. It seems that these dirty, sniveling, bottom feeders known as comment spammers have chosen to target my site and thousands of others with comment spam.

That's the bad news. The good news is that now I can enlarge... wait, no, that's not it either. It's that I may have found a fix for it. At burningbird, I've found a "quickfix" for the comment spam. I've just applied the fix, and I'll post a finding of how the results turn out.

For the record, I get about 20 comments a day from people pushing poker sites, prescription drugs, and enlargement ads. I hope this will take care of most of them.

Biggest Scam on Planet Earth

What is the biggest scam on the planet earth? I bet you're thinking of something along the lines of the nigerian spammer scam, or pyramid schemes, or the electoral system. Well, if you thought of any of those, you'd be wrong.

The biggest scam that exists on this earth is the college bookstore and college textbook publishing system.

Scammer #1 - The University Bookstore
Let me give you a short example of what's been happening to me, and millions of other college students around the country for years. Just this quarter I bought a book: Basic Marketing - A global Managerial Approach (15/e). This eloquently bound set of processed trees cost me $123. I'll give you a few seconds to pick yourself up off the floor, dust yourself off and gather the proper expletives.

It isn't even the outrageous price that gets my goat though. It's the fact that when I sell the book back to the school bookstore, they only pay students half the selling price of the book. So, this Marketing book that I bought is only going to be bought back for $45. As an obstute observer, you will notice that $45 doubled results in a price of $90. But I thought you bought the book for $123, Mr. Jojometal, so shouldn't they buy it back for half of $123? Well, yes, but you see, when you buy a book and use it for a quarter, it loses some of it's value somewhere along the line. You can actually see dimes falling out of your book if you look closely enough.

So, let's review what's going on here. My book's value depreciated 25% in a three month period (my school is on the quarter system), apparently. The text isn't 75% of it's original size. The information isn't 75% accurate, or 75% up to date. It does smell 75% as good, but that's beside the point. Why on earth is my book suddenly worth 75% of the value it had 3 months ago? I still don't really know. Because for the next two years while the book is being used, it will consistently sell for $90. The university book stores will consistently make a profit on the same book, being bought by consumers, repurchased by the university and again sold to consumers. It suffers an initial, and steep, depreciation, after which it's value doesn't change, until the book store discontinues it because a new version of the book comes out. This brings us to the second party involved in the biggest scam on earth.

Scammer #2 - The University Textbook Publisher
So, where do the publishers fit into this equation of face-reddening madness? Well, you see, they have outrageously priced books. $123 for a marketing book that has the same information as the marketing book 3 years ago? Methinks I smell a bit of greed.

The publishers of these books also realize that they're out of the purchasing process that's taking place at universities. There's money to be made, and they're not part of it... something's wrong there. The books they sold two years ago are being bought and sold each semester, or each quarter, and they see none of that money. So, they devised an evil plan - to come out with "updated" editions of books. People will buy the new books, and they'd be back in the cycle, rolling in the cash of the hard working college students they so eagerly overcharge.

You may think to yourself, "It stands to reason that if they're updating the information in these books, that you should buy the new edition." You may also believe that elvis is alive, and that the Atkins diet will help you lose weight. You'd be wrong about all three. They don't update much information, elvis is dead, and you won't lose weight unless you actually exercise. Thems the breaks.

The book publishers change a few questions in the book, change some of the presentation of the material in the book (in most cases) and will reissue the book to universities. In turn, the university book stores then make the new and "improved" books part of your required book purchases, and thus validate the ridiculous practices of the book publishers.

One last note about the Universities' (apart from the bookstore) role in this situation... They also play a part in ensuring that students buy their books from the college bookstore instead of buying them from another store, or online. When you pay your tuition and fees, most people use loans or scholarships. For those students who get more scholarship money than they can use for tuition or those students who have loans that pay more than tuition each quarter, they get a refund about three weeks after school starts. So, if a student gets a $2000 dollar scholarship or loan each quarter, and his/her tuition and fees are only $1400, then that student will get a $600 refund check three or four weeks after school starts. This means that if that refund money is the only money the students expect to get, they'll have to wait three weeks into the quarter to get their books at another store. The other option the students have is to buy a "university debit card" with tuition and fees. You can put $2-300 dollars on your "university debit card" and use that money anywhere on campus, and buy your books at the university book store. That's the problem though, the students have two choices, either wait 3-4 weeks to buy books for reasonable prices (usually at the very least $15 below what the bookstore sells them for), or buy them from the bookstore before classes start. Obviously students are going to need their books for class immediately, so most students are forced to buy from the bookstore.

So, what is the solution to this problem? Pressure universities to stop buying new editions to books unless there are significant changes made to an old edition of a book. Encourage college bookstores to lower their prices. In addition, encourage universities to issue a temporary loan/scholarship refund, to students who wish to buy books off-campus at lower prices. This would allow students whose only extra money is from scholarships and loans to get cash to spend for immediate purchase of books for the first weeks of school. Promote a small loan from your school's SGA (Student Government Association) to students who would like to buy books elsewhere, but have to wait for loan/scholarship refunds. We're lucky enough to have one of these here at Tech, but noone knows about it.

Contact your SGA, or your favorite, irritable bookstore supervisor to voice your concerns.

I'm no undergraduate.

I'm graduating this saturday. Actually, as far as I'm concerned, I'm already a graduate. There will be no more computer science classes, no more physics, and most importantly, I will never see a calculus class again. I achieved all this in just under 8 years, with a cumulative GPA of .84. Well, it wasn't quite that bad, but it was longer than 4 years with less than a 3.0 (I can thank calculus and physics for that).

Regardless of the time it's taken, or how poorly I may have done in certain subjects, I have to say that I'm elated to be done. There are only a few more things I have left to do before I can formally graduate. I have to fill out exit interview paperwork for loans, and for the computer science department, and I'm free... until I find out whether I can get into the MBA program or not.

So, off to get that other stuff done, so I can be an ex-undergraduate (sort of like an ex-convict in many ways).

Tivo putting ads on TV screen during fast forwards

PVRblog is reporting today that TiVo will begin to place banner advertisements on your screen when you are fast forwarding - (via Slashdot)

This is ridiculous to me. In reading through the articles, I found an opinion that I agree with completely. Here it is.

Mr Guy says:

How does this make it less wrong?

The point is that if I want to attach a device to my television that translates every third word into Algonquin once the signal comes into my device it's none of their business. If I write a module for MythTV that allows me to change all the commercials in my LiveTV programming into mpegs of dancing midgets throwing pickles at a naked woman it's none of their business.

Their revenue stream and rights to artistic integrity end when they reach the consumer. At that point it's my signal in my device and as long as I don't rebroadcast it they need to leave me the hell alone.

on Wednesday November 17, @11:44AM (#10842994)

Whatever happened to people allowing me to do whatever I want with the products I buy? If I want to hack my xbox to play DVD's... if I want to crack the LCD out of my laptop and mount it on the side of my pc case... or any other such business, it's none of your business. I bought it, it's my property, so you're gonna have to take your corporate, intrusive, anti-consumer rights ideals and sit on them.

As a consumer who owns a replaytv, I would be absolutely appalled if replayTV tried to start slipping in ads all over my television screen. I bought the box, I pay $13/month for their service, and I do it so I can watch the few shows I like, on my schedule, without commercials. Luckily, I have one of the older models that automatically skips all commercials (with very good accuracy).

Improv Everywhere

I came across a site at plasticbugs.com that I really enjoyed. The site is the homepage for the exploits of a group called improv everywhere. They're a fairly large group of people who get together and do improvisational things in public places. They take pictures at these events, and write up the stories on their web page later. They're really entertaining to read. Here are a few of the situations I enjoyed.

The idea was that the group would buy a big group of gift certificates for about $10 apiece. They would pick out a complete stranger in a bar somewhere and have every member of the improv group go and tell him "happy birthday, thanks for the invite to the party". They would all pick out relationships they shared with this stranger, such as having gone to college with him at UNC Chapel Hill or having dated his sister. They created a fake biography for him, a name of course, and then would have a birthday party for him in the bar.

They organized a group of 25 people who each bought a gift certificate, and made the gift out to an imaginary person "Ted". One of the members then went into a bar and picked a person out, identified him to the rest of the group and announced that this was to be "Ted". So, throughout the course of the night, the rest of the members of improv everywhere would go up to "Ted" and tell him happy birthday, thanks for the invitation to the party, here's your gift... much to the astonishment of this stranger. You can read the full story and see the pictures here.

In another situation, the improv group researched an unknown band that would be at a local bar in the near future. The general idea was to make this band think they just had the best gig ever. They downloaded their mp3's, became familiar with their songs, and some even made shirts with the bands logo on the front. 35 people showed up to see the band, cheering the band on, requesting songs, and acting as if they were the best band on the face of the planet. Again, the story and details can be found on their website... and this story can be found here.

A few other situations worth mentioning... they had a famous Russian author Anton Checkov, appear at a book reading at barnes and noble. The hitch, that it wasn't Anton Checkov, and that Anton Checkov has been dead for over 100 years.

The other situation that I wanted to mention, which is my favorite so far, is called "The Amazing Hypnotist". One of the improv members pretends to be a hypnotist performing in Washington Street Park. He has a large group of other improv members (called "agents") planted in the audience. They would act as volunteers to be hypnotized. He pretends to hypnotize them all, making them do foolish things, and then he darts out of the park with his assistant without "unhypnotizing" the volunteers. The crowd's reaction is priceless. Check it out for yourself.

You can find a big list of their "conquests" on their site at http://www.improveverywhere.com/conquests.html

Finals...

As I'm in a school that partakes in the horror that is the quarter system, I'm taking finals this week (though I took my first last week). I took my Discrete math final today, and it was hard. I think I made a good enough grade to where I'll pass though. There were a few problems that I figured would be on there, but couldn't get time from the teacher to help with them, and the problems weren't in the back of the book. So, I hope things work out to where I will have a good enough grade to graduate this quarter.

Physics is another obstacle that's going to try to prevent me from graduating. I've got that test tomorrow at 9:30, so I've gotta get off of this computer and study... however futile it may be at this point.

John Lee Hooker - Crawling King Snake

I know that I've mentioned it once before on this blog, but John Lee Hooker is, bar none, the greatest blues musician I've had the pleasure of listening to.

Boogie Chillun' and Big Pimpin'

I was reminded of this fact after watching the last of John Lee Hooker. That's My Story. I only caught the last hour or so of the show, but I still enjoyed every bit of it. I got a few interesting tidbits out of it.

First, that the song Maudie was written for his ex-wife Maude. I've listened to that song many times and never been able to put a face with the song, but after seeing the show, I know who Maude is, and what their story was. It's really interesting to make connections like that, and get background on his songs.

The second interesting piece of knowledge that I came away with was that David Bowie's first band was called The Crawling King Snakes. This is another one of John Lee Hooker's songs. It's no surprise that John Lee Hooker's music inspired David Bowie, because he inspired so many artists, like the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and Led Zeppelin. It was a surprise because that particular song is one of my favorite songs, if not my favorite.

To anyone who comes across this, I hope you can procure yourself a little bit of his music. I'd recommend getting his older stuff though, it's more "bluesy". The newer stuff has a different sound.

I love commas

Katie has informed me that I love commas too much, to which I say, why yes I do. In fact, the commas that I use are very necessary, and provide readers of my materials with very small breaks, many of which are necessary in order to soak in the deeper meaning of my texts.

Mr. Comma Inventor, I salute you.

A year's worth of a woman (Pt. 2)

So, to finish up my posting about the anniversary of Katie and I starting to date, I'm gonna write about that last part of Thursday night.

I had a second surprise in store for her after surprising her with a few roses in her apartment. I tried to look around for small objects that would represent events in our dating relationship that stood out in my mind. I couldn't find that many objects that would relate to events, but I did manage to find a witch that represents a certain woman in both of our lives, but that's the only object I could find. I also got a little memo pad and wrote down all the good memories I could think of, the good events we'd been to, and the things that make me smile when I think about her (cheesy, I know). Anyways, I wrote all those down on little memo sheets and put them in a little box... I call it a memory box, she can call it whatever she wants. The memories went in there with the witch. As time goes on, if she wants to save ticket stubs, score cards for putt putt, pamphlets for events... she'll have a place to keep them all. I also made sure to give her extra memo sheets. So whenever she wants to recall a memory, she can write it down and stuff it in that box. Later, she'll be able to pull it out and reminisce about how she was feeling.

I would try to give her a blog, but she doesn't want one. That's basically the whole reason behind me having a blog. I can keep a record of what's going on with me, like a journal, and to keep myself interested, and keep anyone else who might read interested, I post other items I find on the web. Since I couldn't get something like that done, I thought of this as my way of keeping track of the memories that we have/will make together.

Oh, and later that night we went to the bus stop diner here in ruston. It's a new restaurant that opened in the old GreyHound bus station. It was the first day it was open, so service was slow, and the waitresses were extremely nervous. The food was good though, so we'll have to give them another few weeks before we make another trip over there. Oh, and a last comment about that place... the food is kinda expensive. It was 4.75 or so for a malt, if I recall correctly. I dunno what malt is, but someone somewhere is making a fortune off the stuff, I imagine.

Dragon Illusion

If this works, it's a really neat idea. There's a video you can download, but it's hard to tell if there's really an illusion, or fancy video effects.

Here's the link.

There's a link to the video on that page, and also a link to print out the dragon, and fold it yourself.

Jeopardy 1337 speek

While watching Jeopardy the other day, I noticed that a computer science major from Carnegie Mellon University wagered 1337 as his final jeopardy bet. He was trouncing his other college champion competition, and was showing off a bit. I thought it was pretty funny at the time, but funnier that Alex and most of America knew nothing of the matter.

Here's a link to a screen cap.

Nintendo DS

I decided to check around for availability of the Nintendo DS online. It seems that wal-mart has stopped offering their bundle. A few other online stores are still taking orders, but if they're gonna be in limited supply I doubt that they're actually gonna be able to ship any orders that come in between now and the DS's release.

If they're in really limited supply, there will be much money to be made on Ebay, myself included. I ordered two of the bundles, hoping that I could make some money on Ebay. So, Nintendo, don't let me down. I need to see a severe shortage.

Dell E173FP 17" LCD + Dazzle USB Reader $217 at Dell Home

Dell Home is running a deal on their E173FP 17-inch Flat Panel Color LCD Monitors. Add the Dell E173FP 17-inch Flat Panel Color LCD Monitor to your cart at $339, plus a Dazzle 8-in-1 USB USB Reader at $15. That brings your total to $354 - $87 automatic discounts - $40 off $350 coupon code BPDHZ0CHM?ZBLZ [Exp 11/11, 11:59pm CST] - $10 rebate [Exp 12/31] = $217 with free shipping. (via Ben's Bargains)

You have to add the USB reader to reach the $350 mark to get the $40 of $350 coupon to work.

Click here to go to Dell Home's page for the Dell LCD Monitor. You can find the USB Dazzle 8-in-1 reader through the search form.

A year's worth of a woman

Today marks the one year anniversary of my starting a relationship with Katie. In short, I'll say that it's been a great year. I enjoy every minute that she's around, and hope to make all the time we spend together from now on just as enjoyable for her as she's made this year for me.

In traditional style with gifts for special days, I played today by ear. I worked out a few plans in advance, but it's always better to wait until close to that date for opportunities to exploit. Last night, it turned out that I needed to borrow Katie's car to get to an extra class that was scheduled at the last minute. My brother and I share a truck, and he was already at work, so at lunch I took Katie's car and dropped her back off at work. I did my class thing, and picked Katie up from work at 5, then took her to her night class at 5:30. With her occupied for the next few hours, I finally had time where I could get out and get together my anniversary ideas.

My first idea was, of course, flowers. Instead of ordering them online I figured I could buy some locally and just decorate everything myself... get some colored stones to put in the bottom of a vase, get some flowers with baby's breath (the little white flowery junk that usually comes with roses). So, I got myself some roses, some red stones, a glass vase and made everything more presentable.

It happened that on my way back from picking up the flowers, I noticed that Katie had left her keys in the car. So, I thought that it would be nice to sneak over to her apt., set up the flowers, leave a nice little note, and sneak back out. So, she'd have a nice surprise waiting for her when she goes home. Well, that part of the plan went without a hitch. She appreciated, and was surprised by the flowers and also really enjoyed the note I left along with the flowers.

That's the first part of the plan, and the only part that I've completed and thus the only part I can really talk about. I hope she enjoys tonight's events as much as the flowers. I'll post again after everything's done... I don't wanna give up my surprise before it happens.

Team America: World Police Review

Let me get this out of the way now. This movie is a puppet movie. Yes, puppet actors. Marionettes if you wanna get technical. However, this is in no way a movie that's suitable for kids. It's rated R, and for good reason. The makers of the movie are the same people who created the south park cartoon on Comedy Central, which is a very funny show, but not intended for anyone who is easily offended by racial, sexual, or political humor. The movie uses language that would make a drunken sailor ashamed.

With that disclosure out of the way, the movie is actually very funny. There's a group of anti-terrorism warriors called Team America. They're out to police the world and hunt down and annihilate terrorists. On the opposite side of the spectrum you've got the terrorists, Kim Jong Il, and those dirty commies, the hollywood liberal activists. The movie revolves around Team America stopping an imminent attack with the help of a new recruit.

They parody the action movie genre, bash one major action movie and director by name, and take shots at all parties, regardless of their status as american or anti-american. This is part of what makes the movie so good. You get to see an exaggeration of the general groups/types of people involved in the war on terror and the people who comment on that war. This is the humor that I'd call "higher level" humor. It's the basis for the movie, and it sets up the smaller gags that are usually dominated with crass humor (which is still funny, like it or not).

This seems to be the theme with the movies/shows that Matt Stone and Trey Parker make. They always have humor of two types: a high-level somewhat sophisticated humor (mixed with social commentary), and vulgar humor. This movie is no different.

The humor/irony in the basic plot is the setting for the first type of humor. They created a group of people called Team America, who police the world looking for terrorists, with no regard for what happens to countries or people who get in the way. In addition, they created an opposition to them, the terrorists, hollywood liberals, and Kim Jong Il. When you're not realizing the irony in how true some of the parallels between these groups and real life are, you're getting a good dose of dirty jokes/gags. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I'm just making a comparison between all the movies and shows that I've seen that feature Stone and Parker.

Anywho, the real gem of the movie are the songs. "I'm so ronery", sung by Kim Jong Il, "America, @#$% Yeah!", and "The End of an Act" are my personal favorites. A close second to the great music would have to be the marionettes. They're all styled very well, with more expressiveness than I've ever seen using puppets.

Before I end the review, I can't go without mentioning Kim Jong Il. His character is great... due in equal parts to the great job the marionette creaters did with making him look so similar to the real Kim Jong Il, and Trey Parker doing such a funny Chinese (I know, it's North Korea) voice.

Kim Jong Il in his Castle of Doom

So, in closing, if you're over 18, and you've got a sense of humor that can appreciate political humor with a healthy dose of crude jokes and filthy language, then by all means, see this movies. It's a good movie, and might be worth the $7.25+, but is probably rental material if you have other better options, like the Incredibles or Finding Neverland.

Konfabulator goodness

There's a new product available to Windows users; the Konfabulator.

What's that you ask? Well, let me tell you, it's a software package that allows you to run "widgets", which are small little programs that run on the desktop. The konfabulator allows you to run these programs on your desktop, or if you're a developer, you can develop programs using javascript and XML.

The widgets that are available are useful in most cases. Take for example the weather widget (at the bottom right of the screenshot below).

Screenshot of my desktop with three widgets running

As you can see, the right side of the screen has a little grey, rounded square with clouds and weather information displayed on it. This is the weather widget. You can set it to display your area's weather condition. The other widget at the top left is just an analog clock, and the last widget on the screen is a picture frame (slideshow).

The widgets are pretty handy, and chances are if you don't think these are handy, one of the widgets that are downloadable from the konfabulator website will tickle your fancy. So, get the konfabulator and load yourself up with widgets.

Firefox 1.0 is out!

I can't believe I didn't think to post this sooner, but Mozilla Firefox's 1.0 release is now available for download!

It's sleek, shiny, and splendiforous.

Advantages over IE:

• Smaller


• Better Interface


• Not a microsoft product


• More Secure


• Extensions- plugins that allow you to add great functionality


• RSS feed integration


• Integrated google search


• Interface Themes


• Tastes 80% better than IE

You should download it and give it a try. You might not be used to it at first, but trust me, it will grow on you. Install adblock, flashblock extensions, and bugmenot and you'll never want to go back to IE again.

Web site outages... weird stuff

It seems like every time I'm trying to get some information, or trying to get something accomplished online, some little obstacle pops up to thwart my plans.

Tonight, I'm doing some christmas shopping, and trying to generate some ideas for gifts at the same time. Most of the web sites I regularly access are down though. I can't get to google, Ebay, MSN, any of the major sites that are on the net. I guess a central computer system on the net is down, or there's a major attack going on.

I'm of course not excluding the option that something has gone wrong at cox cable with a router or some funny business, but I'm able to view smaller pages like this one. So, I think it's a major hosting provider that's getting slammed, or having some trouble.

I'm at the mercy of the computer gods.

--Update--

No more than 30 seconds after finishing this post, I tried to search google. Completely oblivious to what my fingers just finished typing, my eyes saw the google search form at the top right of my browser, and immediately jumped into habit mode. I didn't even have time to post the thing. It reminds me of flipping all the light switches when the power goes out... argh.

Good Quotes

An expert is someone called in at the last minute to share the blame
-Sam Ewing

Maybe death and congress are inevitable, but death doesn't get worse every time congress meets.
-Joan I. Welsh

There are two times in a man's life when he shouldn't speculate: When he can afford it, and when he can't.
-Mark Twain

A generation ago, most people finished work and needed rest. Now they need exercise.
-Anonymous

Know thyself. Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive.
-Mayes

Forbidden fruit is responsible for many bad jams.
-Anonymous

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Another Wholesale Marketer post

My hope is that someone else in my situation (someone looking for a distributor or wholesaler to sell items here and there, or full time, on ebay) will come across this site and save themselves the trouble of fooling with a site like Wholesale Marketer.

First of all, let me just say that I went against a principle that I've always heard and heed less frequently than I should; that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Anywho, on with the show

1) Any reputable wholesaler or distributor will require a sales tax ID number or resale certificate to prove that you represent a real business, before they will sell you products.

They are required by law to do so (for taxes), and can exempt you from sales tax by doing this (because the idea is that you'll pass that tax on to consumers in retail). Look up distributors for your favorite products, you'll see that in order to order products you must fax, or email a resale certificate or sales tax id number.

My idealistic mind led me to believe that maybe there were wholesalers who would sell to the general public at a discount. After all, they'd still make a small amount of money through a large amount of transactions, and they wouldn't have to actively market the products... it sounds logical to me. To date though, I've not seen any evidence of such a company.

2) If a company can make more money by selling large quantities to other businesses, why would they be selling to you?

If a company actually has a large stock of products that are in demand, they could sell more products at a time by shipping in larger quantities to real businesses. Selling more products at a time would obviously allow them to increase their total sales (revenue). So, a company like wholesale marketer would be stupid to sell to individuals if their products were in demand, when they could sell to all small businesses who demand much greater quantities of products.

3) These companies know that if you had a resale certificate or sales tax, you'd be elsewhere getting actual discounts. So, they know you've got no alternative, and you're likely to pay.

You have to consider that the people atwholesale marketer know that people who subscribe to their site won't have resale certificates or sales tax id's. After all, if you did have a tax id or cert., you'd be buying things at REAL wholesale prices from major distributors. So, they play you. They say they've got all this great merchandise at a low price, but you must pay to see those prices (always a bad sign). Note: Don't even consider paying for a list of wholesalers.

4) Now that you've paid, you can see that they've got two types of products, good products at prices you won't pay, and cruddy products at prices that you MAY be able to exploit for profit.

After looking at most of the products, you will realize that there are two types of products available: crap that was probably bought at closeout prices because noone else could sell it, and overpriced brand name products (priced above what you could buy them for at your local wal-mart). You go in hoping to sell cameras or xbox games for a profit of maybe $5 apiece, but they've jacked up the prices so high that only a fool would try to sell them at above the "wholesale" cost. You have two options, lose $5 and close the account, or try to sell sterling silver platters, wooden chess boards, and other garbage that is barely below market value.

I suggest you do the first. Take a loss on the $5 and move forward with paperwork to form a business, which will get you a sales tax id or resale certificate. Here's a good starting point for looking for information on your state's laws regarding businesses: FirstGov's local and state business guideline gateway. You can now contact national distributors and "real" wholesalers for actual discounted merchandise to get your business off the ground.

I've just been played like a fiddle.

So, after my experience with Ebay, I figured that maybe I'd look into going forward with my plan of selling one or two items a week on Ebay. However, due to the time required for rebates to come back in, I might run short on money. After all, I am still just a college student.

In looking around for deals, I found out about a service that some distributors and wholesalers offer called drop-shipping. Basically, you place items on a web site, or auction site for sale and when a user purchases the item, you forward the order to a distributor. They will process the order, and ship the item as if it came from you. They'll usually charge a handling fee, and possibly another fee for each item you order. They stock all the inventory and do all the leg work post purchase, and they make a little more than they would have if they sold regular wholesale to small business. You just list the item on an auction site, or your e-commerce site. Both people are happy.

So, I wasted a lot of time looking around, but finally came up with the idea of starting to look for a company like this at the Better Business Beaureau's website. I found a company called Wholesale Marketers. They had a lot of brand name stuff, a well designed site, and had a professional look about them. They have about ten warehouses with a different selection of items in each warehouse. Each warehouse carries the same fee, but as you subscribe to more warehouses, you get more of a discount.

The only problem was that they didn't list the wholesale prices for any of their products, just the MSRP's... so I was gonna have to subscribe to see the wholesale prices. So, I looked around, and decided for 5 bucks I could take a gamble.

I paid my $5 subscription fee (monthly), and looked around at the wholesale prices for the electronics warehouse I had chosen to subscribe to. 10 minutes later, I was on the phone with customer service attempting to cancel my subscription.

The exchange went something like this:

I'd like to cancel my account.

"Let's see, lemme get your information."

That's bigolsucker@gullible.com, yes.

"Ok, let's see, you've got access to the diamond warehouse, and you've been a member for...*chuckles*... wow"

Yeah, it only took a few minutes to realize that your prices weren't gonna make me any money.

"I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna open up all the warehouses so you can take advantage of some of the other product lines we have."

But, you see... I wasn't happy with the prices.

"You know, a lot of other people subscribe to the diamond warehouse [diamond=electronics] initially and are disappointed at the discounts they find."

But, that's what I know... electronics.

"That's our lowest discounted warehouse, so I'm gonna let you have access to all of the warehouses for another month, and don't think you can make the money you want, you can cancel at that point."

My gears start turning... well, what can it hurt?

"I'm also gonna send you a list of the 100 top selling items."

What's this!? Extras!? Where do I sign!? You see, if you offered me a glass full of evaporated water for $5.99, I'd naturally turn my nose up at the offer. However, if, in addition, you were to offer a complimentary set of nail clippers with the purchase... I'd have a hard time writing the check fast enough.

"Ok, well, I'll send you an e-mail. I hope you have better luck this time. Have a good day."

I was baffled by this whole exchange. This customer service rep was amazing. Every dissatisfied comment I threw out was batted down effortlessly, as if they were crippled gnats buzzing around her head. She was surely a customer service samurai. I'd never heard such enthusiastic, suave double talk in my life... and she sounded so sure I'd be satisfied with their other warehouses. Now that I'm looking back, I honestly believe that if I had told her that I'd contracted herpes from their warehouse, she'd have had a topical creme suggestion on the tip of her tongue... at no charge of course.

Get a woman with a nice voice to tell me that she's gonna do me a favor, and maybe even reassure me... that's their ingenius plan. "Oh, sure it happens to everyone". Even the chuckling, and the perkiness. It was engineering in a laboratory somewhere I'm sure... the perfect formula for making me crumble like the walls of jericho.

Oh well, off to look at the other warehouses.

OrigamiBoulder.com

Genius, I say! Genius!

This artist has pain stakingly recreated every nook and cranny of a boulder using the ancient art of origami.

You can purchase these works of art from the artist's site directly.

Also, you should check out his collection of e-mails from visitors to his site. It's the true gem of this site.