Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-09-19

  • Yaaaaaa! GO STEELERS!! (sorry ATL peeps!) #
  • is about 95% back from reinstalling Windows over the weekend. Acronis: die in a fire! #
  • Holy crap… Dexter McCluster is FAST! #
  • is taking the skinheads bowling… #
  • sez :"If you don't got Mojo Nixon then your store could use some fixin'…" #
  • We're #27 We're #27 http://tinyurl.com/2bykw3p #
  • Chloe says: "My momma's got more stories than Uncle Remus!" #
  • "They're saying 'Boo-urns… Boo-urns" #
  • Wooo! The Tar Heels got STUNG! 🙂 GO JACKETS! #

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FRIDAY FUN: “Message in a Bottle”

The Police first played “Message in a Bottle” in public on a BBC TV show called Rock Goes To College on February 21, 1979. Here they are, live from Hatfield Polytechnic:

If you get a chance, check out other Rock Goes To College clips on YouTube. It was an interesting concept for a show: the BBC would find an up-and-coming band and arrange for them to play at a university, usually giving tickets away free to students. They’d then air the show live on TV and radio simultaneously, which allowed people to watch the show on their TVs and use their home stereos to provide a big, booming sound that televisions lacked on those days.

Other bands featured on the show include: The Boomtown Rats, AC\DC, Rich Kids, Cheap Trick, Ian Dury & the Blockheads, George Thorogood, The Cars, Average White Band, Joe Jackson, The Specials, Tom Petty, UB40, The Motels, U2, Stiff Little Fingers, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and The Stranglers… whose set was only 5 songs long; the band walked off the stage after the BBC refused to give tickets to local non-students. The band played whatever minimum number of songs that were required in the contract and refused to play any more for “elitist audiences”.

Mad Men: “The Summer Man”

This episode begins with Don alone in his apartment. He is now keeping a diary, and we hear his thoughts via his narration. He talks about his drinking problem, and how it’s affecting his work. He talks about how little he writes, and how he wishes he would have finished high school. We then see him having an early morning swim (and having a coughing fit whilst doing so!) and then getting dressed and heading into work. On his way in, he asks Ms. Blankenship, who has just gotten cataract surgery, for Bethany’s phone number.

mad_men_s4_e8_01

Meanwhile, Joey and the boys are up to their old antics. SCDP has apparently gotten a new vending machine, and Joey has gotten his watch stuck in it while trying to get a Clark bar out for Ken. A couple of the women, including Peggy, stand and watch as Joey and Stan pick up and drop the machine, and Harry offers the guys ideas for getting the watch out. They create such a ruckus that Joan comes to investigate. She orders everyone back to work, and Joey replies to her with a sarcastic “sorry, mom!”. Joan asks him to repeat that, and Joey asks her what he was supposed to do. She tells him to call the complaint number and “let an adult” handle the situation. Pete then walks into the hallway, asking what all the noise is, as he was on an important call. Joey tells Pete that Joan was “handing out demerits”, which makes Joan call him into her office.

In her office, Joan tries to dress down the cavalier Joey. But when she says that Stan might be better at his job than Joey, he asks her what she does around the office, “besides walking around like you’re trying to get raped?” He then calls her a “madam from a Shanghai whorehouse” and leaves the office. Peggy then walks in, attempting to use Joan’s office as a shortcut. Joan snaps at her and tells her to stop doing that, and that she could “use the extra steps”. Peggy, seeing that Joan is upset, quietly apologizes. Joan leaves.

Continue reading “Mad Men: “The Summer Man””

COOL APP: MozBackup

I got my current computer as a Christmas present in 2008. At the time, I didn’t have a copy of the installation media for x64 Vista… so I couldn’t do the “reformat the computer to clean off all the crud HP installed on it” thing like I normally would. And by the time I did have a copy of the media, I was so far along that I didn’t want to do the reformat. I then did an in-place upgrade to Windows 7 back in October 2009. Over time, several niggling (but hard to diagnose) issues cropped up, and this past weekend I reformatted the old gal and started over.

Like most folks, I do a lot of stuff on the Internet. And nothing is as important to me as my Firefox profile. Not only do I have saved passwords and a browsing history to keep, I also have tons of extensions and UI tweaks that would take forever to redo. That’s why I fell in love with MozBackup:

mozbackup

As the name suggests, MozBackup backs up your entire Firefox profile to a single, handy file. It’s a stand-alone app that requires no installer: just download, unzip and run. The entire process of backing up your profile only takes around 6 mouse clicks, and restoring everything about your browser takes just 6 clicks more. And not only did MozBackup restore the stuff I expected it to, it even restored all of my GUI tweaks after the reformat!

MozBackup works with Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, Flock, Postbox, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite, Spicebird, Songbird, Netscape, and Wyzo and is freeware (even for commercial use).

Check it out here!

Why KFC runs out of chicken

I’ve written about this before on this site, but the “why does KFC run out of chicken?” question just keeps popping up all over the Internet. I figured I’d do a recap of that old post, in hopes that the new post title might show up in search engines and spread some answers. Also, keep in mind that I worked for KFC over twenty years ago, so things obviously might have changed since then.

There are two instances where your local KFC might be out of chicken.

In the first case, they’re simply out of cooked chicken. This is actually a common occurrence.

Original Recipe chicken is cooked in a huge pressure cooker. It’s a giant machine, and every KFC I’ve ever been in only had one cooker. I don’t remember the exact capacity of the cooker, but it was something like 12 pieces of chicken per rack, with 5 racks total per batch. Each batch took around 16 minutes to cook, so therefore your average KFC can cook somewhere around 240 pieces of Original Recipe chicken per hour.

Continue reading “Why KFC runs out of chicken”

The Friday Roundup

– UNC is considering installing rails on the 8,500 bunk beds on campus after a woman rolled off one and died recently. No word on whether the “university” is considering requiring binkies, naptime and Baby Einstein videos as well.

– Remember Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who went nuts and left down the emergency slide not too long ago? Well, it seems that two different government agencies have interviewed everyone who was on that plane, and no one – not a single passenger or crew member – backs up Slater’s version of the story.

– One of the huge downsides to the smoking ban in restaurants here in North Carolina is there’s no longer that informal barrier between smokers (without kids) and families (with kids). So now you go out to eat and someone’s demonspawn runs around yelling and screaming, making dining out a far less pleasurable experience than it once was. However, a restaurant in Carolina Beach is fighting back, banning screaming children from the premises. Can I get an AMEN?

– When you were a kid, did you ever sort through a box of Lucky Charms to get a bowl full of mostly marshmallows? Well, sort no longer, my friends: a company is now selling bags full of just the marshmallow bits. Prices start at $7 for two 7 ounce bags of the glorious stuff and go all the way up to $400 for a 95lb bag. Man, if I ever win the lottery, I’m so buying a 95lb bag of cereal marshmallows!

– For some time now, I’ve been for abolishing the penny and nickel. It’s just simple math, folks: it costs the US Mint 1.7¢ to make each 1¢ coin, and it costs the mint 9¢ to make each 5¢ coin. And not only that, pennies and nickels are basically worthless. I challenge anyone to go to a store and find anything for 1¢ and anything for 5¢ that isn’t “penny” candy! But don’t just take my word for it, watch this video from a guy who understands economics… and talks really fast:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77C47XYm_3c&feature=player_embedded

Mad Men: “The Suitcase”

This episode begins with Harry handing out tickets to a screening of the rematch between Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston. He gives the tickets to Pete and Ken, but makes the newer SCDP employees pay for theirs. Harry laughs at Danny and calls him a Jew, to which Danny asks if Harry’s Hollywood friends know that he talks like that. The gang then argue over who’s going to win the fight. Don walks in, gets his ticket, and puts $100 on Liston. Harry invites him to dinner and drinks at The Palm before the match. Don says he will be there, then orders people working on Samsonite to follow him.

After Don walks in his office and asks Ms. Blankenship to get him and Roger dinner reservations at any restaurant except the Palm, Peggy, Stan, Joey and Danny walk in to give their pitch for the luggage company: a commercial with Joe Namath. Don calls celebrity endorsements “lazy” and says that he doesn’t care for their execution of the ad. When Peggy insists that Dr. Miller says that women buy suitcases, Don asks everyone else to leave the room. Once alone, Don tears into Peggy, who stands there and takes it, and then leaves.

mad_men_s04_e07_01

In her office, she finds flowers and a “gift” from Duck: business cards for “Philips-Olson Advertising” in which she is listed as “Creative Director”. She calls to thank him, and he begs her to join him at his female-centered agency. Happy at first, Peggy soon figures out that Duck is drinking… and has been fired from Grey. She tries to console him, but Duck says that he’s falling apart.

Continue reading “Mad Men: “The Suitcase””

Big Brother moving to North Carolina?

I wanted to write a long, beautiful treatise against this, but I just can’t. I read the article and was just too shocked, stunned and gobsmacked to write a single word about it. So I’ll just let the article speak for itself:

If you are taking a painkiller, law enforcement wants to know about it.

The N.C. Sheriff’s Association met with a legislative study committee Tuesday to discuss ways sheriffs can access pharmacy records of people taking high-powered painkillers like Percocet, Vicodin, Xanax and OxyContin.

Eddie Caldwell, a lobbyist for the N.C. Sheriff’s Association, said they want to set up a system to stop overdoses.

No legislation has been drafted but the association and the oversight committee plan to present a package to the General Assembly in 2011 that will outline what kind of power they want. It will stipulate how deep into the public’s medicine cabinets they will reach and what law enforcement officers will do with the information.

Between this, warrentless searches of electronic devices and Obamacare, I’m really starting to wonder what fucking country I live in these days. It’s all the more shocking because this comes out just days after Fidel Castro admitted that the “Cuban model” isn’t working any more. So, just as one of the worst dictatorships in the Western hemisphere shows signs of loosening up… the Land of the (Formerly) Free shows signs of cozying up to Ingsoc.

Big Brother

If you check out the Gaston Gazette link below, be sure to check out the comments. “I think it’s time for a lawsuit”, some say. I say it’s time for a Second American Revolution! That, or are the islands ready yet?

via the Gaston Gazette.