Chalk this one down in the I-wasn’t-really-watching column. It appears that the Olympic nativist controversy this time is concentrated on the Russians and their Aboriginal costumes/dance in the Ice Dance. In comparison, the Americans have gotten good reviews from India on their costumes/dance. Who are the culturally blind ones now, eh?
I’m in a class this week for work. It’s nice since I’ve been here about four months and now I can finally get qualified. The other nice thing is that after 15 years of playing with networks one way or another, I understand subnetting. In fact, I can subnet the crap out of any network you can name, even a VLSM. Hopefully I can remember this for longer than the final test…
Speaking of computer stuff, the below is completely done on a computer. No live shots.
The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.
Remember all those horrible things that could happen if you get on a plane with a water bottle? Well, the TSA doesn’t, they just let someone through the scanners with a filled waterbottle. Score another one for bureaucrat security!
From Reason, we read this story:
Officials say security screeners at a Bozeman-area airport failed to spot a gun in a passenger’s luggage last month, but the man turned himself in when he realized his error.
As anecdotal evidence, let me offer the story I heard of someone who put a loaded .22 magazine in a bag as part of a move. They managed to fly through 6 different airports before emptying the bag out at home and realizing the magazine was in there. This wasn’t a 6 leg trip, this was 3 separate trips through 4 different airports with loaded ammunition. We’re safe!
I have not yet seen Avatar (I will see it for the cinematography, not the whining, cliched storyline), but it’s looked like a really blue movie from all the screen caps and advertisements. Now, it turns out that a lot of people are really blue from seeing the movie:
A user named Mike wrote on the fan Web site “Naviblue” that he contemplated suicide after seeing the movie.“Ever since I went to see ‘Avatar’ I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it,” Mike posted. “I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in ‘Avatar.’ “
Welcome to 2010, where we can share our neuroses and attention whore through suicide threats across the world! Oh wait, we’ve been doing that for at least the last decade. It just goes to show that the more things change, the more the essential human stays the same.
Via /., I found this nifty examination of the whitehouse.gov site
Description. You want to read about the code structure of the new whitehouse.gov website on this historic Inauguration Day of the 44th president of the USA. The site is built on ASP.NET.
What follows is a lot of good discussion about how the site is built, how it could be done better, and even some nifty easter eggs in the form of links hidden in the JavaScript. The really fun part was the last line:
Finally, remember that the administration and President Obama were not the ones who wrote the code here.
Seriously. Either a) you’re not nerdy enough to notice all the stuff that was detailed or b) you’re nerdy enough to know that the Big Cheese never writes that stuff. Why do we need to start making excuses about who is doing what already?
Or at least this lady is:
When a 5-foot, 275-pound woman found out she had a tumor on her spine, she was told by her local hospital to go the zoo to have a MRI because a regular MRI machine could not hold her weight, MyFOXKC.com reported.
If you read the story though, she wasn’t told by the hospital to do that. After her fatoverly generous ass couldn’t fit in the regular MRI, one of the guys who was trying to help suggested an alternative. If she got some kind of recommendation from a doctor that said go use an animal MRI bed, she might have a beef but she doesn’t here.
I was going to laugh the whole thing off until I read the last line of the story:
“They should have machines that fit most everybody,†she said.
Guess what, they do!
After the BCS game last night, I don’t think I would ever want to win the Heisman unless my team was not playing in the championship game. After Bradford loses, that’s a 2 and 7 record for Heisman winners in the big game.
On a related note, I was listening to Mike & Mike on my way to work and Greenie was going on about how the one voter in the AP poll shouldn’t have voted for USC to be #1. Golic took the opposite view since the whole bowl system is arbitrary, there is nothing to prevent that voter from saying he thinks that USC would beat UF on a neutral field. Greenie then let loose this gem:
Having an opinion is fine, but…
And went on from there about how there is only one clearly right answer. Sorry, not true when it comes to opinions. If you’re arguing about a subjective system such as the BCS, anything can and should go because there are no guidelines to follow. Either having an opinion is fine, or it’s not. Greenie doesn’t seem to think any differing opinions are acceptable, which about sums up how most people approach life today. People are stupid.
And now they kill off Batman:
The superhero dies when he tries to stop his foe escaping by helicopter in the new comic Batman R.I.P.
Why in the hell do they feel the need to kill off everyone? The proposed replacements are /wristers, so that just makes it worse. 
Just off the cuff: Tonight is McCain “I humbly accept your nomination to be the Big Cheese” Night. It’s also the first night of play for the NFL.
I know which one is on my TV right now.