Found in my scrapbook

joke: I know this lady who was looking through her trashcan on the floor in her office and this guy walks up and asks her "what are you looking for?" she says "I'm looking for the emails I deleted, the computer said they were in the waste basket"
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Reminds me of the time, about 15 years ago when I was working in tech support and, on a call with a client helping him with a PC software application, I asked him if he was "in DOS". He said, no, he was "in Dubuque, Iowa". I immediately muted the speakerphone and the programmer I had with me laughed so hard his chair literally flipped backwards out of my cube. - anon

Static Electricity causes fire!

From the BBC, so they can't be making this up...can they?

An Australian man built up so much static electricity in his clothes as he walked that he burned carpets, melted plastic and sparked a mass evacuation.

Frank Clewer, of the western Victorian city of Warrnambool, was wearing a synthetic nylon jacket and a woollen shirt when he went for a job interview.

As he walked into the building, the carpet ignited from the 40,000 volts of static electricity that had built up.

"It sounded almost like a firecracker or something like that," he said.

The phases of new car ownership

It is often said that you should never buy the first model year of a new car design because it’s more likely to suffer problems. Wait a while so that the manufacturer gets the kinks out is the common sense advice. But where’s the fun in that? And if you don’t jump in now, you miss out on: “The phases of new car ownership”

1. Initial excitement and pleasure at being ‘unique.’ You’re the first on the block with this cool new car, and you know everyone is looking at it, wondering what it is, and wishing they had one.

2. You start to see other cars like yours on the road. It’s exciting! Seeing other buyers validates your own purchase decision; you didn’t make a bad decision buying something new and unusual.

3. You start to notice more cars like yours. From a once in a while kind of thing, seeing a car like yours on the road becomes commonplace. You notice that not all the drivers are cool like you; in fact, a lot of them are rather common, boring and ugly people. You start to worry that other people will think you’re like that too.

4. On your drive to work you see three cars just like yours; two of them the same color. You start wishing the car wasn’t so popular. “I wanted to be unique!” you tell no one in particular. You spend time calculating how many days are left on the lease.

5. “That old thing? Oh, I got rid of that months ago.”

Heard across the cube

the field is boolean... .true and no.

A or An?

Everyone know's the 'a' and 'an' thing;

I have an orange.
I drive a car.

But what do you do if the word is actually an abbreviation or letter combination that you 'spell' out, rather than pronounce. Don't follow? Consider a model number: HD-28. Is it:

I own a HD-28
I own an HD-28

As I see it, the 'H' is pronounced (according to the dictionary) āch (thanks to David The Brilliant for figuring out the macron.) So it's an 'a' sound. Shouldn't it therefore be: "I own an HD-28"?

UPDATE: Turn's out there's an answer (guess I was asleep that day in English class): A or An?: Words beginning with h, o and u sometimes begin with a vowel sound, sometimes a consonant sound. Cool huh? I love the Internet (today.)

What's a macron you ask?

I thought it was a unit of measurement, but it's the name given to the line above a letter used as a pronunciation guide:

A diacritical mark placed above a vowel to indicate a long sound or phonetic value in pronunciation, such as (ā) in the word make.

The suffering of some people in the other part of the world

Something odd in my mailbox today:

I, AS A STUDENT OF UNKNOWN SCHOOL IN THIS WORLD. I NEED YOUR HELP TO DEVELOP MY EDUCATION THAT'LL BE BEST FOR MY KNOWLEDGE AND FUTURE.

I KNOW NOBODY KNOWS ALL THE REALITY OF LIFE THAT'LL SHOW THE SUFFERNES OF SOME PEOPLE IN THE OTHER PART OF THE WORLD. I'M SURE YOU'LL TRY TO UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.

I APPRECIATE YOUR WEBSITE. PLEASE,ANY HELP YOU WANT TO RENDER SEND IT
TO THIS ADDRESS: [...] NIGERIA.

I'll have what he's drinking...

This article on hand washing should not be read before shaking hands, dinner, or eating at a party. But I liked the piece at the end about urine therapy (the idea that drinking your own piss is good for you), that notes:

"even egghead ambient pioneer Brian Eno tried it once. Can it be a coincidence that his first album was titled Here Come the Warm Jets?"

It's on T.V.

"They always want you to think outside the box, then when you do, they say, 'What the hell's the matter with you?' "
said Mr. Legan, writer for a rejected show called "The Cell," a situation comedy about terrorists in the US.

"My friend said, 'Hey dude, something's wrong with our plane. We're on TV,' " recalled Jorge Santiago, 24, a passenger on the Jet Blue flight with damaged undercarriage. Passengers were able to watch the newscasts on seatback screens.

Housebroken Hurricanes

"From 1970 to 1995, there weren't that many hurricanes, and the ones we had were nice, well-mannered, housebroken hurricanes that stayed out to sea and didn't make a mess," said Hugh Willoughby, a hurricane researcher at Florida International University in Miami. [CNN Sep 23. 2005]

Voting Goes to the Dogs

WELLINGTON, New Zealand --It was almost inevitable New Zealand's election would turn into a dog fight when you look at one of the country's 2.83 million voters -- Toby the Jack Russell terrier.

Toby became a registered voter when his owner, Peter Rhodes of Queenstown, completed an enrollment form in the dog's name, giving his occupation as "rodent exterminator" and his age as 28.

[...]Electoral Enrollment Center manager Murray Wicks was more angry than amused that an application filed by a dog had slipped through the center's checking system.

"It's an offense, and whoever's done it will be in the hands of the police," he said.

Partying Like A Dog

PET PARTY MIX

2 c. Cherrios
2 c. Nabisco Spoon Size Shredded Wheat
[...]
1 c. dog treats (Pupperoni, Jerky Treats, Beef Bites, etc.) cut into 1/2 inch pieces

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. [...] Real bacon imparts the best flavor, but party mix prepared with Bacos will remain fresher-tasting longer and does not require refrigeration.

"Real bacon imparts the best flavor" How do they know?

Texadus

As people evacuate the area, television anchors remain on top of the story;

"The devistating hurricane is expected to make landfall somewhere between the Mexican border and Louisana... most likely Texas."

Which leads some to wonder; what else lies between Mexico and Louisiana?

God doesn't play dice -- Albert Einstein

Heard on Air America Radio today about Hurricane Rita:

Looks like God is improving his aim; this one's heading straight for Bush's house!

AIMless Chat Of The Day

Me: The guy at Best Buy yesterday had a nametag that said he was a Photologist. It said so on his name tag. Is that pronounced "photo - logist", or "pho - tologist" ?

TheTiredOne: the latter, I'd assume

Me: but isn't a pho - tologist a fake tologist? and what's a tologist anyway?

TheTiredOne: \Pho*tol"o*gist\, n. One who studies or expounds the laws of light. PHO-tol-o-gist

Me: it's a real word?!! S**T!

TheTiredOne: ROFL. That's a neat title actually... go around saying you expound the laws of light ...

Me: I thought it was one of those dumb made-up words or phrases that stores like to stick on employee's name tags like; 'Hi, I'm Toby, Have A Nice Day,' 'I'm Mario, How Can I Serve You Better?' and 'Hi, I'm David, I Don't Give A F**k'
I'm going to be a gavologist and expound the laws of gravity; or the laws of burying dead bodies. I'm not sure which it is.

TheTiredOne: gra•phol•o•gy Pronunciation Key (gr-fl-j) n. The study of handwriting, especially when employed as a means of analyzing character.

Me: John Roberts will be a Bushologist and expound the laws of stupidity

TheTiredOne: wow, I found the word used

Me: Holy c**p! I’m only 20 days behind having an original thought!

The other White Meat?

A friend who shall remain nameless has a taste fetish. It seems he pretty much doesn't like any meat except chicken nuggets.

Nuggets.

Not fingers. Nuggets.

Fingers are stringy he complains; he much prefers his meat ground up and then molded into globs of uniform consistency.

He's going to love this. Someone has invented a process to turn dark meat into white meat. Here's how:

1. add excess water to ground-up dark meat to create a kind of meat soup.
2. spin the mixture in a tub at high speed.
3. Centrifugal force separates the mixture into layers of fat, water, and extracted meat.
4. mold extracted meat into breast-like patties of all-white meat.

Why go through all this? Turns out most dark meat produced in the United States is exported to Russia and the Middle East.

But as the article asks: [Who] in the world would be interested in fake white meat anyway?


I have an address right here..

Someone buy this man a thesaurus

"...the people of New Orleans have got to understand there's a lot of people working hard, and they're making good progress.
-George W. Bush [Sep 2, 2005]

"We're making progress. It is hard work. It is hard work to go from a tyranny to a democracy."
-George W. Bush [Sep 30, 2004]

Bless Your Heart

Did you know that in the South you can say anything nasty and mean spirited you like about a person; as long as you add 'Bless Your Heart' to the end of it?

It's easy! Try it yourself!

She's as ugly as the back end of a cement mixer, bless her heart
He's incompetent and stupid, bless his heart

You obviously have nothing better to do than read this, bless your heart.

Window basher

Yesterday I pulled up at Staples, and as I was about to get out noticed out of the corner of my eye a little flying bug thing on the door window. So I swatted it, and missed. So I took another three or four swats at it, getting more aggravated as I continued to miss it; until I realized that the little critter was on the outside of the window.

I must have looked like a damn idiot to anyone watching me hitting that window...

Nude Politician Races

Dateline New Zealand: Legislator Keith Locke, the Green Party's foreign affairs spokesman, said he would do a nude dash if rightist Act Party leader Rodney Hide won a parliamentary seat in the Aukland suburb of Epsom.

Now he has to do it; Hide romped home with a 3,200-vote majority.

Which makes you wonder: if more politicians promised to run nude as the result of an election, would this increase or depress voter turnout?

Unfortunate Choice of Words

Flock is a social web browser; it's supposed to add features specifically designed to make writing, editing, sharing and displaying web content faster and easier. However, it's creator used an unfortunate choice of words when describing other web browsers:

“The problem is that the web browser has remained fairly stable over the last 10 years...” says its creator, Silicon Valley-based Bart Decrem

Number One

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