- Brilliant water-based eyeglasses for the masses: No optician required Very Interesting (0)
- Court sides with ACLU; Parts of PATRIOT Act struck down This is an important victory for First Amendment enthusiasts like me. Wanna become like me? Read 1984, Animal Farm, or for a more modern book, Litle Brother. All are excellent reads and you won't be disappointed. At all.
(0)
"Ho Ho Help me!"
December 13, 2008
This is a bell ringer I did in my Personal Development class. The topic was: "Ho, ho, help me!" came the voice from the chimney.
"Ha, Ha, help me!" came the voice from the chimney. Of course, I didn't hear it. I had my iPod playing rather loudly, listening to Bing Crosby. The guy can sing, let me tell you. Anyways, the voice in the chimney tried again to get my attention, but it was futile. Ole Bing wouldn't let him. So the voice took a different approach and started singing "Here Comes Santa Clause". He sounded not entirely unlike Bing. I took out my earbuds and listened again. That definitely was not Bing. So I looked up in my chimney and saw him. He was a big guy, but he wasn't wearing a red coat. It was black though that was probably from all the soot in my chimney. So I yelled at him.
"Santa?"
The large, black object moved and wriggled and said in a deep jolly voice, "Yeah, kid, it's me, Santa." So I jumped up and down with glee; Santa finally showed up!
I went to get a rope and then lassoed his foot. After several tugs, he finally came loose, plopping down in the hearth. After the soot and dust cleared there he was, just as I had imagined him: large round man, read coat covered in soot, and a black tobaggon. Many might be surprised by the tobaggon, but I knew it was because that red cap of his was no use in keeping him warm when flying around 80 mph. I helped him up and went to get his cookies and milk. He ate and drank, then set the plate and glass aside. He pulled out a cigarette and lit up.
"Now, to business", he said.
I showed him where my parent's keep their jewelery, and he put that in his bag. He pulled out a $100 bill and gave it to me (The last few years they had been counterfeit but this year he promised it wasn't). After the exchange he walked out the front door but not before joining me in a duet of "Silent Night". I heard his car rev up and then he was gone for another year. Me and Santa do this every year. It's sort of our Christmas tradition. I heard another voice from the chimney: "Ho, Ho, Ho. Jacob, help me!" But I knew it wasn't Santa; I just saw him leave. A red cap fell. Santa must have left it in the chimney for me. I picked it up and put it on. Then I sat back down on the couch with my new hat and my $100 bill and listened to Bing wish me a merry little Christmas.
2 Comments
All is lost
November 25, 2008
Today, I found out that my calendar service I Want Sandy will be going offline.
This sucks. And this isn't the only bad thing that's happened with my organization structure. Jott went public a while back and is now charging for being able to send hands-free email and text to others. I'm trying to find an alternative to Sandy as I really like being able to just tweet or text her something and she'll take care of it for me. I don't have to remember anything anymore. Oy.Stikkit is also going offline as it was part of the same company that hosted Sandy. I was hoping to write a program using the Stikkit API. Now, I'm not going to be able to do that either. Everything is moving over to Twitter though I'm not sure what will be kept and what will be thrown away. If Twitter keeps both services up and running, I shall do a small dance. More than likely however, they'll trash both and just use a small portion of code out of both for their service. Oh, this sucks.
Zero Comments
- The World's Fastest Clapper Apparently this dude holds the world record of 721 claps per minute. For those without quick math skills, that averages to be around 12 claps per second.
That's pretty fast. (0)
Ubuntu
November 13, 2008
I am pleased to say that I finally completed the jump into the Free Software universe: I have installed a libre (though it is gratis too) operating system called Ubuntu. It is quite different than Windows though Mac users won't be too surprised by the file system. For example, there is no "Local Disk". It's called "home". This also effects the document's location. In Windows, a document that is located on the desktop might have a location of "C:/Documents and Settings/Jacob/Desktop/foo.doc". In Ubuntu, however, the file would be "/home/jacob/Desktop/foo.doc".
Unfortunately, I cannot completely move over to Ubuntu yet. I have hundreds of documents stored on my Windows that have to be moved over. I also can only have wireless internet in Windows (
) though I'm working on getting it to work in Ubuntu. I also can't print yet, though I am also working on it. With so much to work on you might wonder why I even moved over? Well, it's an ethical decision. Software should be free to move around and be changed by anyone. Read the wikipedia article for more information about why I, and millions more, have switched.
Zero Comments
