Posts filed under 'Main'
Senator Robert Ford of Charleston, South Carolina (go chiefs!) – it’s my opinion that you’re a fucking idiot.
Why do I think he’s a fucking idiot? Because if I had posted that sentence on a blog hosted in South Carolina, I’d be guilty of a felony and facing up to 5 years in pound me in the ass prison. That is, if his latest bill on profanity actually passes. In addition, I have to say that it’s my opinion so that this isn’t portrayed as slander.
Up here in the northern states though, we’re familiar with the constitution (seriously Mr. Ford, you should read it. Can somebody send him a copy with the relevant parts highlighted?) and we know that it protects free speech. That means I’m allowed to say words like Fuck, Shit, Damn, Ass, and well here’s a list of all the rest.
Granted using these words makes my writing sound less professional and more juvenile, so I often don’t. Since I can’t use them in a business setting either, they very rarely find their way into my vocabulary. In fact, save for hockey games, poker night, and deer camp, it’s pretty safe to say that I really don’t swear. It’s just nice to know that I can say FUCK if I want to. fuck fuck fuckity boo boo kitty fuck.
Seriously? A 5 year, $5000 felony? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me! Do the people who voted for you know what kind of crazy bills you’re proposing? How would you even enforce that on the internet? Sounds to me like it would drive the web hosting and technology companies right the fuck (see, how I used a swear word there to enhance the meaning of my thought?) out of South Carolina.
I’m all about protecting the children too, but trying to shelter our children and hide them away from bad things isn’t the way to do it. You don’t need a law to protect your child from profanity, you need a 10 minute discussion at the kitchen table. Odds are your kid will be able to teach you some words you haven’t even heard of.
January 15th, 2009
News was just released that Steve Jobs will be temporarily stepping away from Apple. This means their stock is going to lose a TON of money.
But does that mean apple will be any worse?
It’s too late to sell your stock if you still own some, but I’m thinking of buying more after it crashes. This will be a definite long hold, but I think as a company Apple is still solid and won’t lose that much with Jobs walking away.
What do you think?
January 14th, 2009
As Noslang.com – my internet slang dictionary and translator continues to grow, I often find it necessary to branch out into other forms of slang. So far, I’ve branched out into british slang, drug slang, and bad words.
Thanks to a ton of submissions though, I was finally able to branch out into World of Warcraft slang. I saved them all up, and today I am proud to launch WoWslang.com – the World of Warcraft Slang Dictionary. So go ahead and check it out. I’d love to hear your feedback.
January 8th, 2009
Hey Google… When I mistype a word in one of your URLs (like “adsese” instead of “adsense”), I get sent to a custom error page that looks like this:
Instead of making me re-type the URL, why not just say “Did you mean, Adsense?” and let me click it to go there.
You already have the technology, and it would save me a ton of time. I can’t count how many times per day I type the wrong URL as I bounce between gmail, adsense, adwords, analytics, docs, alerts, calendar, etc. Hell, I spelled 1 of those words wrong while typing this draft.
It’s just a suggestion, and it’s yours to implement freely – but I wouldn’t say no to some free swag when you do implement it 🙂
January 8th, 2009
I’ve always had one major complaint about social networks: They’ve created multiple Ryans, and I sometimes lose track of which Me is Me when it comes to certain sites.
When I first started using sites like Facebook or MySpace I was only friends with my real life friends and there were no problems. I could post pictures of parties and concerts and other places that people in their mid to late twenties go without worrying about any repercussions. I didn’t have to worry about what pictures I uploaded, what I said about people’s pictures, or what I bitched about on my blog. I was even able to tell the punchline to dirty jokes like “why doesn’t Barbie have any kids?”
Today though, I can’t do that.
Over time I saw my MySpace and Facebook profiles grow from just my friends to include family, co-workers, family of friends, other businesses, and even clients from work.
After all, you can’t deny a friend request from a client when you’re still hoping they’re going to sign a huge deal right?
Now, my accounts are all polluted. I stopped being Ryan and started turning my social network pages into corporate web pages. They’ve all become Ryan the professional, and I think that’s what will inevitably kill off social networks.
I’m noticing the same trend with lots of my friends – both real friends and MySpace friends.
Those who aren’t making their profiles more professional are going to soon regret it. I still see profiles of high school teachers that include pictures of them in their underwear, but for the most part people are learning not to do this anymore.
In fact, we recognized very early into identity.net that there was a strong need for users to have “multiple me’s.” The “me” I linked from my company web page was different from the “me” at this blog, which had nothing in common with the “me” that you see at the bar on Friday nights listening to country music bands.
That problem is still facing all of today’s social networking sites. Creating several MySpace accounts is a pain, and the Lori Drew case has shown us that creating one under a “nickname” so that it can’t be found could be cause for the FBI to come knocking at my door. I certainly don’t want that, so my only current choice is to not post the fun pictures, jokes, and blog entries that I’d like to share with my friends.
That solution is also “no bueno.”
Most teens (as I observed my 17 year old cousin here in Dallas do) just move from one platform to another. They started on friendster, moved to MySpace, and are now all over Facebook. When I ask why, it’s always a reason that has to do with having too many mixed friends on one of the sites.
But they can’t site hop forever, and they’re running out of alternatives. It’s only a matter of time until the next MySpace or Facebook “killer” comes along, but will it suffer from the same problems too? And when it does come along, which “me” will I create an account with?
For that matter, which “me” is really “me?”
December 29th, 2008
I was talking with Jeff from hockeynews.net the other day and he brought up an interesting statistic. Compared to other countries, the US has 6X more retail store front per capita than anybody else.
We’ve spent the last decade putting a starbucks on every corner, and nobody’s realized that we have way more retail stores and fast food places than we need. It makes sense too. I have 3 McDonalds within a 1/4 mile of my house and 2 Marathon gas stations on my corner. There’s 2 Gamestops within a mile of me too.
There’s simply not that much demand anymore. With the economy strong and mortgages easy to get, we not only bought houses we couldn’t afford but we started up a whole bunch of redundant businesses too and crammed them into places where they shouldn’t be.
The retail industry is going to fail too, but it won’t be next. There’s a few others going to collapse.
The final nail in the auto industry’s coffin was when the banks failed. That’s why you see the big3 eliminating financing and leasing.
That leads me to believe that credit cards will be the next to fail. As more Americans get laid off they’ll start putting more and more on their credit cards. It won’t be long before they let the credit card bill go into the trash can with their mortgage payment.
When that happens, the retail stores are going to take a big huge hit.
Lots of markets need to be corrected, and it’s going to be an ugly road out of this recession – we’re still on the downslope.
December 19th, 2008
buy gabapentin online Update: I’ve done a followup to this post titled: the future of microformats.
I wrote a while ago about openID and how companies want to say they support it without supporting it. It seems that the same thing is happening with lots of other formats. One in particular is hCard.
There’s tons of sites out there that “support” hCard. By support, I mean that they publish an hCard for you of your data. In theory, this will allow you to take your data with you anywhere you want. If I want to leave MyBlogLog, or Twitter, or Flickr, I can simply take my hCard to another site and create an account there with all of that information. In a more quixotic use, you could even just update one account and the others would pull in that hCard at set intervals. It all works well in theory. In theory though, communism is a great system. In the real world, it doesn’t work. Neither does hCard – yet.
The problem with hCard is the same problem with openID – everybody wants to be a provider, but nobody accepts it. As of this blog post I’ve found a total of 2 websites that allow me to create an account with my hCard. Bragster and getSatisfaction – and even those are somewhat buggy and don’t pull in all the fields that they possibly could. Where are the Google, AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo offerings that will let me import an hCard. What about MySpace and Facebook?
hCards are very easy to deal with, so who’s going to step up to the plate here and start accepting hCards?
December 17th, 2008
The Detroit Lions are 0-everything. (see, this post works whatever week you read it) Combine that with the fact that Michigan’s unemployment rate is almost in double digits, and it’s no surprise that the Lions were about 7,000 tickets short of selling out again – for the 3rd home game in a row.
So, per NFL rules, the game won’t be showed within 75 miles of the stadium. If you’re unfamiliar with Michigan that means the game is only on TV on the far west coast, and near the UP. Nobody’s watching it.
If I turn on Fox right now, they’re showing an infomercial for some weight loss smoothies.
This policy clearly doesn’t work for a variety of reasons:
1.) I guarantee you Fox will get more ratings and advertising revenue showing a losing team instead of an infomercial. I know the ads were already sold, but this will impact future ad sales when people realize their Fox ads won’t be seen in select markets.
2.) Nobody drives 75 miles to go see a Lions game – period. Most Lions fans come from within 25 miles of the stadium. That’s where most of the people here in Michigan live. The radius is way too big, and you’re just hurting fans who live up north and can’t get to games anyway.
3.) Not showing the game hurts attendance. Seriously. TV is the NFL’s biggest marketing device. When kids and parents see other kids and parents having a great time at a game they decide to buy tickets. Hell, even watching games increases people’s interest in it. The team also gets a chance to show ticket packages and deals during the broadcast. When you take games off of TV, casual fans completely forget about the team. Those are the fans you’re after to buy tickets – the die hard fans already have them and aren’t giving them up because the team sucks.
Come on NFL, get with the picture and ease up the blackout rules – it will help you in the long run. Just look at the Chicago Blackhawks of the NHL. For as long as I can remember their owner has blacked out games near the stadium. When he died and his son ended the blackouts he noticed that attendance went up. Way up.
Building awareness of your teams is the best ticket seller there is. Hiding them away to just a Monday morning box score won’t put more fans in the seats. It will sell more weight loss smoothies though.
November 23rd, 2008
With 11 games down and 71 more to go the Detroit Red Wings are 9-2.
With 7 games more to go the Detroit Lions are 0-9.
If the Wings continue to lose 2 out of every 11 games, they’ll finish the season with 18 losses.
Anybody want to take bets that the Red Wings finish with less overall losses than the Lions this year? What are the odds of that in Vegas? I’d take that bet.
November 12th, 2008
Somebody just stole the spare tire cover off of my jeep – while it was parked in my driveway – with 2 other cars behind it.
That marks the 7th time in the last year that somebody has tried breaking into my car, stole something off of my car, or wrote on one of my friends cars with marker while they were all parked in my driveway.
I can’t take it anymore. I’ve made up my mind that I’m moving away from all of the trash that lives here.
Allen Park used to be a nice suburb of Detroit, but with the housing market tumbling it’s nothing but low income families moving in – and I’m noticing a huge difference.
On a side note, anybody want to buy a very affordable house? Allen Park is a nice suburb of Detroit….
November 8th, 2008
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