Subject: Washington Mutual Informs You January 21, 2005
Posted by Owen in : Weird , 1 comment so farGot this obviously fake email message today. I inform you, does anyone really talk like this? C’mon, people (especially Banks) earnestly don’t talk like this! Grammar lessons should be obligatory to follow for scammers. (Of course, I probably shouldn’t give them any ideas.)
Sister Act January 21, 2005
Posted by Owen in : Weird , 3commentsI was waiting for a flight at the San Francisco airport recently and was sitting watching people walk by. I was watching the cleaning lady go by. She was a young black woman with a huge poofy afro wearing gray maintenance coveralls and was pushing one of those trash carts in front of her. I watch her reach into one of her bags and flick a switch. Suddenly, a old Michael Jackson song starts blaring. I watch as she starts to dance Jackson’s famous dance moves as she emties the trash cans. Do a little moonwalk, lift up a trash can, spin around, dunk it in the bag, slide to the left. I felt like I was in the middle of an old 80s movie like Blues Brothers or Sister Act or something. I wouldn’t have been suprised if everyone in the waiting area spontaneously broke out singing about the virtues of air travel. Whoever you are, you made my day.
Parenting? What’s that? January 20, 2005
Posted by Owen in : Website , 1 comment so farHere’s a email I received a few days ago (I love her (misspelled) use of titillated–classic):
Hello - I am a mom of an 11 year old computer savvy girl. She and many of her classmates -all 11 & 12 year olds have profiles with you. I am shocked and horrified by what these kids are doing. The anonmomity of the computer gives these kids a lot of power to do things that are disgusting and age inapppropriate. It’s obviously not that hard to LIE and say they are 13 years old and start a profile. These kids are not monitored enough - though I TRY - so the information and the sites they create are sick, and X rated. Unfortunately with kids growing up so fast and exposed to things way beyond their scope of understanding and coping, they are titallated by what they can do. And sites like yours give them the opportunity! SHAME ON YOU!!!
It really bothers me how little parenting some parents want to do. Sending me a nasty email isn’t going to accomplish anything! What does she think I’m going to do? Stop running my website and throw away my livelihood? Ask for a credit card number and call three references to verify someone’s age (which may I add is essentially illegal to do in the United States)? C’mon! Do some parenting and talk to your kids. If they use the Internet they will do things you don’t approve of. And if they don’t talk about such things on the Internet, their friends will tell them. You can’t keep them locked up forever. Accept that the Internet has changed things and learn to accept it. Kids grow up fast these days, and there ain’t nothing you can do about it.
A Good Way to Start the Week January 10, 2005
Posted by Owen in : Life , 3commentsI have some good news. I finally got to meet all my neighbors. The bad news is that it was at 5 AM. The fire alarm went off. The continuous ear-splitting wail combined with a rapid strobe light in my bedroom created a very unpleasant way to wake up. I go outside and nothing whatsoever is happening so I went back to sleep. Just as I fall asleep at 6 AM, the alarm from hell goes off again. I go outside again and nothing is happening, so back to bed. By then I’m too awake to fall back asleep but I try anyway. Then the damn goes off again at 7:45, I give up and go to work. I was the first one here too!
Put the Mac Aside? January 9, 2005
Posted by Owen in : Work , add a commentJeremy Zawodny nicely summarized my frustration with my Mac when he discussed his reasons for switching back to Windows. It’s true, too. I just don’t feel as productive on my Mac as I do in Windows. Office sucks, browsing the web is slower (I did a side by side comparison, and my PC loads almost everything substantially quicker), lots of apps aren’t as polished on the mac, and so forth. The lack of keyboard accessibility in general on the mac sucks. The only thing I really like in OS X are the Mail.app program and AdiumX. Both of those programs are better than anything I’ve used on a PC.
While Macintoshes are much more elegant and pretty than Windows, there are some areas they could really improve. If 10.4 doesn’t improve upon many of my complaints, I’m going to be very unhappy.
LA River January 9, 2005
Posted by Owen in : Life , add a commentHooboy, the river outside is getting full… I’m almost thinking about moving my car out from the-below-river-level parking garage… another foot and my car will be underwater. I read they had more rain in the past 3 months than they normally get in a year.
I Wrote This January 3, 2005
Posted by Owen in : Internet , add a commentHere’s some pretty funny political cartoons.
Also, on an unrelated note, I was walking up the stairs in my apartment building and I noticed that someone dragged their Christmas tree down four flights of stairs instead of putting it in one of the three elevators. How do I know? There was a carpet of pine needles left on the floor in their wake.