Author: Jim Cofer

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A FRIDAY RANT: Google

Can I just rant for a minute here?

I’m SO FREAKIN’ SICK of seeing things like this on Internet message boards:

“Don’t use Microsoft software. They’re evil. Use Gmail instead. I use Gmail for my email, Google Voice for voicemail, Google Domains to host my small business, Google Apps to edit work-related documents, Google DNS for name resolution and, of course, Google for searching. I couldn’t be happier!”

Really? Seriously? You let Google index your email, transcribe your voicemail messages, scan and index your business website, scan and index your business documents, keep track of every DNS lookup your perform, and keep track of every search you make… and you’re happy about it? Google knows more about you than your wife and mother combined, yet whenever Windows wants to “phone home” to see if any important updates are available you scream bloody murder… Seriously? How naive are you, really?

Sometimes the mind boggles.

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Mad Men: “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”

This episode begins with an amusing scene: Don is in a meeting when his phone rings. He picks up the phone, but no one is there. The phone on the table by the sofa starts ringing, but no one is there, either. Ms. Blankenship walks in the office and tells Don that he has a phone call, but she didn’t know if she should tell him about it or not. Don, exasperated, tells her it’s okay to tell him about phone calls, but not to keep asking if he wants coffee after he’s said no once already.

mad_men_s4_e5_01

Don finally gets his phone call. Walter Hoffman, who writes the advertising column for the New York Times is on the phone, and he wants a comment from Don about rival firm Cutler Gleason and Chaough taking the Clearasil and jai alai accounts. Don says that he doesn’t talk about old accounts, and when Hoffman mentions a snarky quote from Ted Chaough about Don “looking in his rearview mirror and seeing me”, Don says that he’s never heard of him.

Don then goes to a partner’s lunch, where Pete announces that his has gotten the interest of Honda, who is looking to change agencies for their motorcycles advertising. Lane mentions that it’s a $3 million account at present, and that the company wants to expand into automobiles. Roger kills the fun by saying that SCDP will not do business with the Japanese. Pete starts to object, but Roger cuts him off, saying that he used to have a lot of friends, but those friends were killed by Pete’s new “yellow buddies”. Bert cuts him off, and Roger storms out of the room. The remaining partners tell Pete to go ahead, and he says that he’s been advised to read The Chrysanthemum and the Sword to learn about Japanese business culture. Don tells Joan to get everyone a copy of the book.

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Random Hottie: Elizabeth Logue

So last night I was messing around on the Internet, like you do, and came across this:

Elizabeth Logue 01

She’s a model from the late 1960s named Elizabeth Logue. If you were around in the early 1970s, you might remember her better from this:

Elizabeth Logue 02

Yes, she was the beautiful girl from the opening credits to Hawaii Five-O. I remember her as one of the very first girls I found pretty when I was a kid.

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Veeeerrryyy interesting!

Check out this photo from the current gathering of Anglican African bishops in Uganda. That’s the Archbishop of Canterbury on the far left (heh) in the front… but check out the second from the right in the front row:

Source: BabyBlueOnline

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-22

  • Where is Lawn Guyland? #
  • Wait… Laura Schlessinger is still on the air? #
  • Latest Wii Fit measurement: 201.5 lbs. COME ON BODY, JUST 1.6 LBS. TO GO! #
  • Ah… Apple’s software for Windows STILL sucks. #
  • Did you know that Stephen Colbert’s father and two older brothers died in a plane crash in Charlotte? Me either. #
  • My man Mike Wallace looked good tonight! 🙂 #

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Identify this!

Guess what this is:

Squid Skin

Give up? It’s the skin of a deep sea squid, photographed by Australian researchers earlier this year. When I first saw this picture, I was taken aback at how beautiful it is, how it looks like some exquisite, hand-made fabric. And, come to find out, the squid’s skin is like that for a reason. As this nifty article points out, squid have the ability to change color to camouflage themselves from their enemies, and how it all works is pretty nifty. In fact, this article notes that squid might be able to send each other secret messages using this system which would be invisible to the naked eye. Cool!

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COOL SONG: “Once I Had A Love”

You ever hear a song, think “that’s nice”, and file it away in your memory… and then hear the song years later and think “wow, that’s pretty cool!”

Such is the case with me and the song “Once I Had A Love” by Blondie. The song was the basis of the later megahit “Heart of Glass”. But whereas “Glass” was much influenced by the Disco movement, “Once I Had A Love” is more of a rock and roll song, with a nifty reggae\ska beat. Many of the sounds that would by made by synthesizers in “Glass” were made by guitars in “Love”. And, most interestingly of all, the words “heart of glass” do not appear in the original at all. Where Debbie Harry would later sing “had a heart of glass”, in this version it’s “was a thing of the past”.

Have a listen:

Also, I had no idea the line “soon turned out, to be a pain in the ass” (heard in both songs) was such a big deal back in the day. Apparently the song was banned from Australian radio completely. In the UK, the BBC demanded an edited version of the song, and when the music video was played on Top of the Pops it faded out before the last verse.

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FRIDAY FUN: A Cavalcade of Cover Songs!

Here’s a few of my favorite cover tunes!

We’ll start with Eve Plum’s version of Duran Duran’s “Save a Prayer” (stick with it to the very end, that’s my favorite part):

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIQIL-KUG-E

I also like 10,000 Maniacs covers of “Sally Ann” (The Horse Flies) and “Everyday is Like Sunday” (Morrissey) and “(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville” (R.E.M.), but can only find “Rockville” on YouTube at the moment. Amazingly, all three covers are from the same Candy Everybody Wants EP:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpIxOPUxIt4

Something funny: Most everyone knows that 10,000 Maniacs also covered the Patti Smith Group’s “Because the Night”. Many fans also know they covered David Bowie’s “Starman”, and the post-Merchant Maniacs an OK job covering Roxy Music’s “More Than This”. But the Maniacs are also responsible for one of the worst cover songs ever, of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. The recording I heard was live, and Natalie Merchant sang something like “When routine gets hard, and la-la-la is low… la-la-la-la-laaaaa and la-la-la don’t grow… and la-la- our ways… take a different approach”. Whoever sang backup then took over, and Merchant would only join in the chorus. It was pitiful!

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TRIVIA: Lasts and Crashes

The world of IT and consumer electronics is littered with dead and dying technologies. Here are a few “lasts” from the world of home entertainment:

LAST 8-TRACK TAPE: 1988’s Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits was the last 8-track made by a major label, although Cheap Trick offered their 2009 album The Latest in 8-track format on their web store.

LAST VHS MOVIE: David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence was the last VHS film distributed by a major studio, way back in 2005.

LAST LASERDISC: In North America, the last laserdiscs released by a major studio were Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow and the Nicolas Cage stinker Bringing Out the Dead, in 2000.

LAST VIDEODISC: Laserdiscs looked like LP-sized CDs. Videodiscs came in a plastic sleeve and sort of looked like a giant floppy disk. The last major videodisc release was… a documentary about itself called Memories of Videodisc in 1986.

Another last: the USFL was a professional American football league that operated from 1983 to 1987. The last USFL player to retire from the NFL was Philadelphia Stars punter Sean Landeta, who signed with the New York Giants in 1986 and played for various teams until 2006. He officially retired in 2007. Quarterback Doug Flutie, signed by the New Jersey Generals in 1985, was the last non-kicker to retire, in 2005.

Now, two interesting stories about airplane crashes:

– In the 1980 film Nine to Five, three secretaries kidnap their sexist, overbearing boss. Another secretary, Roz (played by Elizabeth Wilson) asks too many questions about his disappearance, so the kidnappers send her to a language school in Colorado with vague promises about a future transfer to France. In the film, Roz is seen walking onto a TWA 747. This is the same aircraft that would crash in 1996 as TWA Flight 800.

– Carowinds is an amusement park here in the Charlotte area. It’s unique in that the park straddles the NC\SC border, so different laws may apply depending on where you are in the park. The park has (had? I’ve never been) a tall observation tower that pilots use (used?) as a landmark to find Douglas Municipal Airport (now Charlotte-Douglas International Airport). On September 11, 1974, the pilots of Eastern Airlines flight 212 became obsessed with finding the tower because they had been goofing off for much of the flight, and the plane crashed short of the runway. Many died, including the father and two older brothers of comedian Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. Also, this crash was the first time that doctors noticed that passengers wearing artificial fibers (like rayon and polyester) were usually burned much more severely than passengers wearing natural fibers.

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The “Wednesday is now Thursday” News Dump

– Regardless of what you think about gay marriage, can we at least agree that Judge Walker’s decision is horrible law? After all, this is the same judge who said that Prop 8 supporters “had no standing” for an appeal? (Pssst, Judge Walker… if they have no standing for an appeal, how were you able to rule on the case in the first place?)

– Here’s a picture of a koala that was hit by a car traveling at 50mph:

Koala

Don’t sweat it: the koala was not injured… at all. Not even a scratch! Read more about it here.

– Kathy Parker just wanted to fly out of Philadelphia International Airport on August 6. But she was randomly chosen for the “thorough search”. TSA agents found a couple of prescription bottles and one asked if a diet pill worked. Another started reviewing the Walmart and Kohl’s receipts she had in her purse. But then agents found a deposit slip and several checks in the side pocket of her purse. Since the checks were “large” (around $8,000) and numbered almost sequentially, the TSA agents decided that she must be running some kind of embezzling operation. Philadelphia police were called and Parker was questioned. After 30 minutes, she was “allowed” to board her flight. Read more about it here and wonder whatever happened to the Fourth Amendment in this country.

– Speaking of the cops, Atlanta police were called to a college campus thanks to an umbrella that looks like a samurai sword. It’s not known whether the campus was Georgia Tech or Georgia State, but in the cops’ defense there was an actual samurai sword attack on the Tech campus back in February. Still, it seems a bit much for the SWAT team, though.

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