Category Archives: News

The Boss is hawking stuff?

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First, it appears that Bruce came out in favour of Barack Obama on his website.  Nice, I personally think he’s the best choice for president myself.  Not Obama, Bruce of course.  Wouldn’t he just be totally cool as President?

Then I see that maybe his credibility is not quite what it used to be, since here he is selling us on Microsoft Vista Service Pack 1….  doesn’t quite have the same zing.  I should mention that I can only assume that this is in fact a video of Bruce Springsteen, I can’t actually watch it since I’m at work and I should be working instead of writing this.

Enjoy.

***** Update

Oh lordy, now that I have actually seen this video with my own eyes, my weak take on sarcasm above does not cover it.  This video is so bad I couldn’t watch more than 40 seconds.  I can’t believe they made this.  It makes Microsoft look so uncontrollably bad, so much worse and uncool (if that was possible), just producing this video just sold at least 2 million more Macs.  Oh my god.  I’m ashamed to say that this stuff pays the bills for me….

First day on the job

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As a consultant I can empathize with this guy quite a bit. He was starting his new job, and needed directions on how to get there. Pretty reasonable. Stopped at a convenience store to ask the clerk how to get there, and made a simple comment as he was leaving.  The clerk heard what he thought was him basically admitting he “came to blow up the place”.

Needless to say if he was asking for directions to the balloon factory there would not have been any issue.  However, this hapless gent had asked for directions to the local nuclear power plant.

So, the police and FBI were called and the plant was evacuated of 500 people for four hours while a search was conducted of the premises.

Apparently what he did say was:

He told FBI agents he was a contractor reporting for his first day at the plant, and said that what he told the clerk was that he “hoped he wouldn’t blow up the place” because of his inexperience, police said.

Oh man, there’s a good first impression to make on the new boss eh?  At least there’s lots of time to get to know your new coworkers while you are standing around outside the building, waiting to see if it will blow up or not.

Beer Panic

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Now pipe down! SETTLE people. Indoor voices! It is not the time for these shenanigans.

Apparently some of you got a little crazy after my post yesterday about the potential beer shortage and thought you would go and steal some beer. A lot of beer.

We have been here before, there is no reason for any silliness. Beer supplies are fine, there’s no reason to get all Mad Max apocalypsey on us. Yes the climate is warming, sure. It’s not all doom and gloom, it may be warmer but then you won’t need a jacket.

Victoria’s Bitter indeed

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A scientist in New Zealand manages to make me sit up and pay attention to his dire global warming message by hitting me right where it hurts: in the liver.  Apparently this global warming thing is going to make malting barley hard to grow where it currently grows.  The only saving grace here was this report was focused on farmers in New Zealand and Australia, and not Canada, but it’s not hard to imagine it here, now is it?

That would definitely put a kink in my climate change survival plan.  If the climate is going to cook us to death in a dusty hellish wasteland, I was really planning to just sit on a lawn chair (or dirt chair as they will soon be called) and drink beer, watching Rome burn so to speak.  Now beer will also be (somehow more) expensive or (GASP!) nonexistent?  If that’s not enough to get your fat ass into a Prius, what is?  This is beer we are talking about folks!

Getting Fit

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Well the quest for fitness continues.  We were inspired by a few folks Nikki to start doing the P90X workout.  There’s lots of stuff on the web about it, but the safest thing I can say about it is that it’s really tough.  It’s 90 days long, 6 days a week of crazy hard workouts.  Every morning takes at least an hour, sometimes 1.5 hours.  The unexpectedly nice thing about the DVD-driven workouts is you can’t really take it that easy when you know the next exercise is coming along in 1 minute or so.  If the same workouts were described in a book they probably wouldn’t be nearly as effective.  We are definitely enjoying it, but have a looong way to go yet.

On the decidedly lighter side of the exercise spectrum, Wired has a couple of articles about the new exercise game coming out, Wii Fit.  It’s basically a platform you stand on and perform various exercises in response to the game.  It keeps track of your weight and personal bests, and you workout to earn new games to exercise to.  I guess there’s a market for this somewhere but it definitely sounds, er, lightweight.  Maybe there’s a sense of accomplishment from unlocking new areas with hard work, just like in a regular video game, but the actual physical conditioning doesn’t sound very intense.  Now if they had some Wii motion sensing dumbells with selectable weights, you may have the beginnings of something then.  The game could encourage you to push yourself much like a personal trainer could, but in the warm embrace of your living room.

I don’t see this replacing P90X anytime soon.  Besides, that Tony Horton guy is just way too corny and funny.  He is still cracking us up, but maybe that’s just sleep deprivation and fatigue.