Monthly Archives: July 2005

No Card!

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Another entry in the ‘Things to remember’ category:

When going on a photo safari, make sure you have a memory card in the digital camera.

Ginny and I went out to the Morton Arboretum today to wander around and take some pictures.

After walking about 3/4’s of a mile on one of the paths, I wondered why my camera didn’t have the normal ‘number of shots left’ display.

I tried to preview the shots I had taken and I got the disheartening message “NO CF CARD”.

<sigh>

I had thought I had taken about 30 pictures already … some of which I had high hopes for. Sadly, the camera transfered them to /dev/null.

Luckily Ginny had a spare 256mb card with her … so I was able to get SOME shots.

Half Blood Prince

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I’m about halfway through ::amazon(“0439784549”, “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince”):: and I must say it’s better than the last book. Much more readable and, at least in my opinion, on par with Ms. Rowling’s previous books.

I recommend it.

[tags]Harry Potter[/tags]

Don’t Smile(y)

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… or Microsoft will sue you 🙂

United States Patent Application: 20050156873

Methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons allow a user to adopt an arbitrary image as an emoticon, which can then be represented by a character sequence in real-time communication. In one implementation, custom emoticons can be included in a message and transmitted to a receiver in the message. In another implementation, character sequences representing the custom emoticons can be transmitted in the message instead of the custom emoticons in order to preserve performance of text messaging. At the receiving end, the character sequences are replaced by their corresponding custom emoticons, which can be retrieved locally if they have been previously received, or can be retrieved from the sender in a separate communication from the text message if they have not been previously received.

Ok, there have been some pretty silly patent applications in the past … Amazon’s One-click, etc … but this borders on the ridiculous.

via: Grocklaw

[tags]Microsoft, patent, smiley[/tags]

Scotty has been “Beamed Up”

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James Doohan, who played chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in the original Star Trek and subsequent films, died early July 20 at his Redmond, Wash., home, the Associated Press reported. He was 85.

– Sci Fi Wire — The News Service of the Sci Fi Channel

Although he really didn’t do much other than Star Trek … I, for one, shall miss him.

Ginny and I were recently watching “Trekies”, which is a documentary on the Star Trek fan phenomenon, and there was a wonderful story that Mr. Doohan related … it was about a letter he received from a very despondent woman who was considering suicide … he told her that he was going to be in their city in a few weeks … and that she should come to the convention.

This continued for many years … each time, Mr. Doohan told her that she should come to the next convention.

For a while Mr. Doohan didn’t hear from her … but then, out of the blue, he got a letter from her indicating that she had just graduated from college with a degree in engineering.

Pretty cool.

Warp speed James … warp speed.

[tags]Scotty[/tags]

My plan to make a million

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Here’s my plan to make a million bucks …

  • First, I’m going to take midrange.com public
  • Then do some good juicy corporate fraud
  • Go to court on a SOX violation
  • Get it overturned on a technicality
  • Retire to Maui on a big golden parachute and some book deals
  • I’ll also do some high level, ‘concept’ consulting, the kind of consulting where companies pay me big bucks and I give them reports that are abstract and obscure … they sound really really good, but are essentially meaningless

Good plan, eh?

I’m Hurt

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Some idiot tried to add a link to his gambling website on the midrange resources website.

Obviously I rejected it … but after I rejected it, I got this reply…

The link to your web site has also been deleted
Hate you
Jim
—– Original Message —–
From: <_____@midrange.com>
To: <_____@moneyballinsider.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2005 4:10 AM
Subject: Your link has been rejected.

> Your link:
>
> http://www.moneyballinsider.com
>
> that was submitted on 13-Jul-2005 has been rejected
> for one of the following reasons:
>
> 1. Unsuitable content.
> 2. Duplicate URL.
>
> If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
>
> David Gibbs
> _____@midrange.com
>

I sure hope this guy realizes how devastating this message was on my ego and psyche?

NOT!

[tags]Idiots[/tags]

Stupidest Lawsuit

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… a transit company is suing a group of ten cleaning women in France, because they are car pooling instead of continuing to use their service … The transit company lawyers call that “unfair and parasitical competition.” They are asking for damages, including fines and — believe it or not — confiscation of the women’s cars.

– GROKLAW

Uh huh … yeah. Right.

This falls under the: We know we can’t provide good service, so we’ll just sue the competition into oblivion … and if we can’t sue the competition, we’ll sue the end user / consumer.