Open Source Products Very Few People Asked For

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No, I'm not kidding.

Via robotwisdom

Lindsay Lohan and Robert Altman. May/December doesn't cover it.

Today's CPSC Recall: The Not a Walking Stick

You will see, Watson, that this is no ordinary walking stick. Note the pouch full of darts and the fiendishly clever bamboo gunsight! I wrote a monograph on this particular piece of South Seas devilry...



Name of Product: African Blow Dart Guns

Description: The blow dart gun is a 51-inch long decorative wooden tube with an attached pouch containing five darts. The brown, bamboo-shaped gun has a black, small barrel-like container attached to the top.

Hazard: Consumers may have mistakenly purchased the dart guns thinking it was a decorative walking stick, posing the risk of injury if someone used the gun for its intended purpose.

The real danger of refueling: sitting in the car.

The cellphone-blows-up-gas-station story is an urban legend, but the dangers of refueling are real, if remote. The Petroleum Institute's page on static electricity risk has some advice: don't get in your car while the tank is filling up.

There's also some fine security camera video of a very lucky person barely escaping incineration in a static-caused fire.

One-Click Horking

Hi there. I'm going to talk to you today about website programming. You aren't interested, but maybe you should be, because your bank sucks at it.

Today I cancelled a credit account that had been paid off a long time ago and was no longer useful. Before I called them up, I looked at the website for my account to make sure that everything was clear and that no pending or recurring charges would show up.

The account statement looked like this:

Available Credit: [redacted]

Current balance: $0.00

Minimum payment Due: $20.00

Previous Balance: $0.00

Last Payment: $58.97, 3/5/2005

I immediately saw that I had a $20 payment due, but missed seeing that my balance was zero. Oh crap, how long has that been due? At least since March! Better pay that last $20 before I cancel. I clicked on the "Make a payment online" button.

( that's when it got funny )

Then again, after what torgo_x told me about Non-Euclidean Math at Banks (make him tell you this story some time), I shouldn't be surprised.

The punchline is that the credit account was a Citibank credit line offered through Amazon.com. LOL INTERNET!

My Corporate Anthem

From 1998 until 2000 I worked for a dot-com. kraq, lesboot, and amorpoeta did too; that's where I met them. It was a pretty damn good job. I learned a lot there, met some people who are friends for life, got paid pretty well. It was unspeakably horrible right at the end but not until then.

Typical for places like this, it went from 25 to 500 people during my tenure there, and odd things happened as a result. Bizarre and incompetent people were hired, including a Business Communication Course Writer who couldn't find the ampersand on a keyboard and applauded himself after he urinated. Salespeople went into the field to push products that did not and could not exist. One employee sent poems to everyone to encourage us, including a hymn to customer service called "May I Help You?".

One day it came time to completely reorganize the technology department, which not only made the product but also supported all the other employees' computer use. Everything was going to be turned upside down, new groups were formed, responsibilities shifted, and most important of all the whole procedure for tech support was to change. My boss prepared a presentation on all of this material.

At the meeting, though, we didn't go right into that. After the CEO had told us how big and wonderful these changes were, another employee stepped up. This guy was a teacher with a master's degree who wrote courses for us. He was also a model and actor, and a very ...enthusiastic guy. He had with him a guitar. He was wearing a cowboy hat.

At this point a more sensible person would have made cramping motions and fled the room, but I was hypnotized. What the hell is Rob about to do? He introduced himself by saying that we were about to have a lot of changes in our workplace that would be hard to understand and probably annoying, so he was going to help us into it with a song. Strum, strum, grin. And off he went. It started something like:

Come gather around employees
Of this company we share
I've got a song to sing to you
Because I know you care

Mike wrote down a policy
Tom and Alec did approve
We're gonna change Technology
'Cause the company's on the mooooove

I think I may have destroyed a ceiling tile with my mind at this point.

Tech support is different now
Everyone's got to change
We're going to move together
Together and forever
Just like you and me cowboy
Out.. on.. the.. RAAAAAAANGE

There was a silence that that of the grave when he finished. Then the CEO began clapping and laughing enthusiastically and most of the people in the room did also. I concentrated on keeping my vagus nerve from going into a spasm and stopping my heart.

I should have realized then that it was time to get out of that place. Later on we had horrible power struggles, the departure of the useful and crowning of the incompetent, and then finally a tragic dénouement involving an anti-semitic CFO, his crypto-nazi stooge, sexual and racial harassment, mass resignations, email break-ins, and fraud. The company changed it name and then spectacularly shit the bed a year or so after I left.

That guitar should have been enough, though.

waving from the peanut gallery again

So there's this woman I met at a party a couple years ago, and have talked to by email maybe three times since. I got a crush on her when we met and we got along okay but it was pretty clear that she wasn't going to be my pal or anything. But I thought she was so cool! Pretty close to my age, did a lot of interesting things and had an unusual background, smart and fun and full of surprises. The kind of person you just feel good after meeting. And then I forgot about her.

Because of one of the movies I knew she'd helped make came up in the conversation tonight, I e-stalked her tonight to see what she's about. Shit. No wonder she was out of my league. Not only does she have three real degrees from a good school, but she's produced about 10 movies and has her own movie company. I guess I should feel privileged that I got to buy Tupperware from her.

Reminds me of the last such person before that, who was a consultant type I met at a job. She had a Harvard Econ degree and had already sold out of one company and bought a house in L.A. and was attractive and fun and nice and wildly successful and whoosh off she goes on the wondertruck!

Hello there, ladies. I am a system administrator who tells funny stories and cooks a good quiche. Have some coffee.

I generally hate these things but hey. Dork!

Via nefas, the You are Such a Dork Chain Letter "Meme" Thing:

List 5 reasons you are a dork. And make them good reasons. Justify them. Explain them. Be loud and proud of how big a dork you are! Then pick the 5 biggest dorks you know and have them do the meme.

1. My job title is "Senior Unix System Administrator".
   
   
2. I am a licensed amateur radio operator.
   
   
3. My first career was rock critic and arts journalist.
   
   
4. I went to work for AOL as an online "Guide" in 1991 because I was spending too much money playing their online D&D game and needed free access.
   
   
5. I laugh out loud, geeksnorting, at the cleverly multilayered cultural references in Umberto Eco's novels.

Hm, five biggest dorks I know? Competition here is stiff, so I'll just kinda pick five of the people I know, almost all of whom are dorks of some type.

mendel
eyeteeth
the_silent_one
turnip
joyfulagitator

Y'all are tagged.

Craigslist personals quote of the day

http://orangecounty.craigslist.org/w4m/84361135.html

i am a single asian girl who is looking to meet a special gentleman in my area for friendship or more.. my expectation is high and i wont settle for less. i would like to meet someone who is smart, confident, strong and fun to hang out with.(loves travel and eat out is must) you need to be successful in business and personal life, able to manage your time and money. i do not want to hear your "i have this and that" "ive done this and that" stories. so please do not try to impress me with your story that i dont really believe anyways.

i am not looking for a sugar daddy or financial support from you so dont try to show off your $$$ either. but if youve never bought a car for your girlfriend, please dont bother. my guy should be capable of doing so whether youd do it for me or not. (if you thought that i am a gold digger or/and dont understand what i mean on here, obviously you do not have the same value or lifestyle as i do, so please dont bother.)

please, no players, one night stand seekers or cheaters.

She's right. I don't have the same lifestyle or "value" as she does! Anyway I can't afford more than a one night stand. Glad to hear she's not a gold digger, though. Gosh, that would be awful.

She'll end up with one of the guys who ends his ads "no fatties", and she'll get chlamydia. But it's all part of the career choice, I guess.

"Never trust a whore who says they don't want money. They're the most expensive kind." —William S. Burroughs