How many 5 yr. olds...?

Ahhh... the internet. I love questions like these, posted on The 2+2 forums.

Good drunken debate from a few nights ago.

The question: How many 5 year-olds could you take on at once?

The specifics:

- You are in an enclosed area, roughly the size of a basketball court. There are no foreign objects.
- You are not allowed to touch a wall.
- When you are knocked unconscious, you lose. When they are all knocked unconscious, they lose. Once a kid is knocked unconscious, that kid is "out."
- I (or someone else intent on seeing to it you fail) get to choose the kids from a pool that is twice the size of your magic number. The pool will be 50/50 in terms of gender and will have no discernable abnormalities in terms of demographics, other than they are all healthy Americans.
- The kids receive one day of training from hand-to-hand combat experts who will train them specifically to team up to take down one adult. You will receive one hour of "counter-tactics" training.
- There is no protective padding for any combatant other than the standard-issue cup.
* The kids are motivated enough to not get scared, regardless of the bloodshed. Even the very last one will give it his/her best to take you down.

I set my magic number at 30, but upon reflection, I think I could take on a few more. How many could you take on?

Louisiana drivers - failing to merge

On the way to Monroe this weekend I had my camera out, and a lane merge was approaching. I saw that a large group of people were ignoring the merge signs so I got out my camera and snapped a few pictures. Here is a pic of the biggest idiot I saw before the merge. His shirt had a big ranger logo on the back, and he was apparently off to fish somewhere... somewhere he needed to be so badly that he had to stay in the right lane well past each warning sign to merge.

This ignorant fool is towing a boat. However, he apparently thinks that God has graced him with an open lane while everyone in the left lane is slowing down. He doesn't realize that everyone else is going so slow in the correct lane because of the other people just like him that are selfish enough to think that they don't have to merge and that someone should/will let them in later. He and two other cars wait until the last minute to try and get in, slowing all the traffic to a stand still while another cars stops... fully... on the interstate...to let them in.

Some good did come of the incident. I got a pic of his license plate. So, maybe one day they'll come across the site and see their truck and realize their folly. I doubt it, but hey, it could happen. Here's their license plate #.

Here's another pic of how close they actually were to the lane merge barrels.

One of my biggest pet peeves involves people who fail to merge early on the interstate. A sign will be posted at least a mile ahead of time saying "Lane ends. Merge Left", or some such business. Yet, some people don't think that the lane ending should bother them. They speed right up until the orange barrels and flashing lights are four feet ahead of their bumpers and they cut people off and slow everyone down.

I'm not really sure why some people think they're so special that they don't have to merge when everyone else is. It's almost as if they think that it's a miracle. The sea of cars in front of them is parting, so they speed right on up past those people who have moved into the upcoming open lane. God has clearly chosen them to get to their destination in hurried fashion.

What actually ends up happening is that everyone else has to slow down to let them in. So, those people who are passing everyone else in the right lane (in this particular case) were only passing because someone else had already tried the merge late maneuver and slowed everyone down.

If everyone would merge early, people wouldn't have to slow to 25 MPH to let these morons over at the last minute. Everyone would only have to slow to the speed limit posted during the construction, or maintenance or whatever incident has caused a lane to be closed.

The weekend in Ruston

Well, Ladies and Gents, this weekend I made another trip to Ruston and as usual it turned out to be full of pleasantry and jollailities (that's not really a word, I know). I managed to get over to campus while Katie was at work Saturday morning and visit the computer lab.

It seems that they've seen fit to put the student technology fees to work. They've upgraded all the computers in the lab to include pentium 4 processors and 15 inch flat screen monitors. I was impressed... not by the technology itself, but by the fact that they finally sprang for a new set of lab computers in ALL the main labs on campus.

Of course, the computer science lab has had LCD monitors and new computers for quite a while now thanks to a few professors making a push and a new department head. That's to be expected though. We're the computer guys. We actually need the computers to be decent.

Anyways, while I was on campus I saw that the grounds crew had done a great job planting tulips around campus, more specifically, in the quad. They were great looking orange and yellow tulips in each of the four flower beds that sit on the main walkways in the open square in front of Keeny Hall, the library and the bookstore. I call it the quad. Here's a pic of the flowers.

Later that day we went to Monroe for a little bit of shopping ... and for a change of scenery too, I guess. We went to Target and the Pecanland Mall. I managed to snag a few shirts at Target, and a new cologne at Dillard's in the mall. For those of you looking for a new cologne, Armani Black smells great.

We got back into town later that afternoon, piddled for a little bit while Taylor got ready to join us, and then went to play some pool at Shenanigans.

Ahhh... Louisiana. The state for $40,000 public funded Harley Davidson Ford Trucks for Officials

That's got a nice ring to it. It should be our motto. After all, we're footing the bill for this truck in some small way.

Have a look at the article, or let me show you the good parts:).

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The state has purchased a $40,000 pickup truck for Insurance Commissioner Robert Wooley — a Ford F-2 that sports red flames on its sides, heated seats and a six-disc CD player.

In a letter to the Division Administration, an arm of the governor's office, explaining the purchase of the F-250, Wooley touted the Harley-Davidson designer edition's handling and reliability. The letter did not explain the need for the CD player, privacy glass, a diesel engine, a seat warmer or the truck's Harley-Davidson motorcycle logo.

Someone loved cell phones a little too much

Comment spam and MT-keystrokes

Historically, I've gotten 50-60 comments a day of spam alone. Since installing MT-keystrokes, I've not had a single piece of comment spam. I hope this trend continues...and I thank the author of MT-keystrokes for the nice implementation.

MT-Keystrokes helps in the fight against Movable Type Comment Spam

For those of you who may have a blog running movable type, there is a new tool available to help you in the fight against comment spam. It's called MT-Keystrokes.

Basically, it checks for user input by way of keystroke before it will allow a comment to be posted. This should work because currently most comment spammers do not enter their messages manually. They have programs that will detect the comments.cgi file and post data to that cgi file, automatically posting without hitting any keys on the keyboard. Users of your site, on the other hand, actually sit there and type out their comments, so they should be unaffected.

I'm sure there will be a way around this for comment spammers, but for now it seems like a good idea. I'll test MT-Keystrokes out and post some results in a few days.

Cingular, why do you taunt me so?

Lesson learned (without reading the rest of this post): Keep a record of all complaints and the names of people you talk to at customer service centers. If I wouldn't have had the name of Tom (My Cingular Customer Service Rep), I would've been given the run around. Also, it'd be a good idea to keep a note of what was said during the convo for future reference. Also as a last bit of advice I got from my Dad a while back... if talking on the phone doesn't work, write letters. It's hard to ignore something that's in writing, but it's easy to say no over the phone or by email. I was directed to someone who was supposedly her supervisor but was definitely a stutterer, which only made me more irate.

How I cancelled my Cingular contract after 30 days:

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about my current cell phone having poor coverage at my house. At the time I was able to convince Cingular, my cell phone provider, that since I started working with them well before the thirty day limit on returns was up, I should be able to cancel my contract as if it were still under thirty days. After all, they're the ones who kept telling me to wait and see if their current fix-all solution fixed my problem.

They told me that I could cancel my cell phone contract, but only if one last possible solution didn't work. They told me they'd call me in a week to walk me through the necessary steps, but I never got a call. Tom, my friendly service rep also said he would call in a week (the day before tech support was supposed to call) to see if matters had improved.

Neither call came on time, and the only call I did get was from Tom. He apologized for not calling on time, but he'd had a family emergency of some sort and didn't get into work the day before.

Anywho, tonight I started the cancellation process. I called the 1800 number and talked to the first customer service rep I was directed to. She said she wasn't able to authorize the cancellation without charging me the $200 early termination fee. I tried to tell her that Tom had OK'd it with his supervisor and that if she could look at my notes, he probably made a note of it on my account. Well, he didn't make a note, and I was tired of arguing with her. So, I asked to speak to her supervisor.

I tried to explain my situation again. I repeatedly told him that I understand the normal policy is that after 30 days, I'm stuck with the phone and the contract, but Cingular Customer Service told me that I was OK'd to have my early termination fee waived. He wasn't having any of that, so I started telling him the names of the people I spoke with. When I started name dropping, I asked him to look up the employees name and find out if I could contact him. He started looking, and finally came up with the employee number de Tom, and his manager's name.

He told me he'd e-mail his manager and let her know the situation and that she'd get back to me. However, since I've had three people from cingular make promises about calling me back only to fail to do so on time, or even call at all in two cases, I asked him for the manager's number if it was available. I ended up actually getting her number and calling her directly, long distance, in California.

She remembered the conversation, made me repeat the story of what happened and finally cancelled my contract and waived my termination fee.