General
Craigslist Rant
The latest great rant on craigslist. It’s actually almost a month old, but who’s counting…
Thanks to Vinnie for the link.
It’s Pi Day
Today, March 14th (3/14), is π (Pi) Day.
While this post missed 1:59 AM, you can celebrate it at 1:59 PM, I won’t tell.
Forbes Highlights the Haters
Forbes Magazine has published the Top Corporate Hate Web Sites.
The following nine sites—there were ten, but one went unexpectedly dark during the editing of this story—are the crème de la crème of online rage. Note that we substantially cleaned up some of the posts, editing out odd capitulation schemes, iffy grammar and plain incoherence. Apparently blinding anger does not go hand in hand with dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s.
The companies hated on:
KB Homes
PayPal
Allstate
Microsoft
American Express
Wal-Mart
Verizon
United
UPS
Paris Hilton’s Info Put on Public Display
Paris Hilton had her Sidekick hacked not too long ago. Now - all of her Sidekick info has been put on display. I link to Engadget because that’s where I first read about it, and I’m pretty sure people will keep putting mirrors up for you in the comments section.
FirstAdopter.com doesn’t like any of this one bit, letting everyone know it’s just tabloid journalism to spread this around and it’s an invasion of privacy. While we may not be sure that it’s an attack on Paris’ privacy, as she has virtually none in the first place - it is a complete invasion on any of the other celebrities listed in her notes or address book, as much of the contact information has been confirmed by Drudge and others.
FirstAdopter.com is not alone in thinking this is irresponsible, just read Engadget’s comments and look for some by Christopher MacManus.
But many point to something else: her pictures and the quality of the shots. Not the quality of the camera itself, but the pics that were in there. Perhaps these were filtered? Planted? Could this all be another publicity stunt at the expense of others’ privacy? It’s a possibility, no doubt. Do keep in mind that a model’s cell phone pics do have a good chance of looking better than most cell phone pics out there, especially when said model is in some of these pics naked, and making out with another girl. While some point to the flattering pics, others also point out that the website that sells her sex tape is in her notes.
So while Paris’ “invasion of privacy” remains in question, the other celebrities certainly had to turn off their cells or abandon their email accounts. If this was planted, Paris may be forefront and center in the public eye once more, but she’s certainly burnt a few bridges, intentionally or not.
T-Mobile, Sidekick’s carrier, should expect a good number of lawsuits from this. This will probably make many hesitant about keeping online contact lists. I’m sure you’ve gotten a few emails with invitations to those before, and I’m sure many will think twice about responding to them the next time they receive one. Of course, few people out there have so many others wanting to call them to say hello (or prank), but that won’t stop anyone from thinking about the “what ifs”, even if the “if” doesn’t exist.
Blog Changes
So - new system here, slightly new look, although I’ll modify that more soon.
Besides the new look, the most obvious change might be the lack of hockey posts here right now. That’s because I’ve converted The Ice Block back into a hockey blog. While that’ll be beefier than the normal blog, I’ll leave that discussion there. However - if you’ve linked to vodkafish.com simply for the hockey posts, you may want to change your links to The Ice Block. One other note - the hockey posts will be back here soon. You’ll get a dose of all my stuff here on vodkafish.com, including any other future blogs I may start…
Some other notes:
Don’t bookmark any inside pages here right now. I’m not a fan of the urls that ExpressionEngine produces. I will be modifying it.
I’m trying to seamlessly move the feed. If anyone notices any interruption in the rss feed, please let me know.
Hey look, finally have a contact form - it’s up in the right corner currently.
There’s a real registration system here, with profiles and such. Feel free to sign up, helps you avoid my spam filter as I make it more aggressive.
I will be re-adding links soon. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about you.
More to come soon, this transition obviously isn’t “complete”, but I couldn’t help but get this started now. Perhaps we’ll consider this vodkafish.com ver 2 beta.
Take a Nap
Working? Tired? Falling asleep in that meeting? Go take a nap. Seriously.
The Wired story.
I’m not the kind of person who could fall asleep anywhere other than my bed unless I’m completely exhausted, but I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?
So What Now?
This nation was completely engulfed in the election for months taking breaks only for things like the World Series.
Some other heated issues were thrown into the election like same-sex marriages and some marijuana reforms (Montana approved the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes).
So what now? What will politicians and/or the media attempt to smother us with after the election settles? Some new/old “heated” issues? The “war on terror” (that thing needs quotes more than anything else) or perhaps it’s time for a little blonde girl to get kidnapped?
Any predictions?
The Sleep Schedule
Go home tired.
Fall asleep for part of baseball game.
Wake up, see most of game.
Not tired anymore, stay up late.
Wake up late, very tired.
Go home very tired, repeat process.
Need to get out of this.
Internet Reminder
Whenever I’m wondering why we all participate on the this internet thing, I always wind up getting some sort of reminder about how great it truly is. Today’s reminder is brought to you by this Ebay auction.
Convention Updates
So things have been alright here. The biggest thing people notice is… there are no people. While tons may have come into the city for the convention, even more seem to have left to avoid it, and commuters are taking their vacation times to avoid it as well.
Best scene: I’m walking home and there are about eight cops on the sidewalk gathering for whatever they’re gathering for. As I’m walking by the crowd, directly to my right I hear a thud. Cabbie slams right into an SUV (looks like an officials’ car). Nice. All the surrounding police shout “ohhh…” and start walking away shouting one guy’s name while laughing. Everyone else around there starts laughing as well at the rookie abuse. Nothing like a little extra-security-in-the-city humor.
So I snapped some pictures the last couple of days.
Here are some eerily empty streets in the morning:
Looking up Ninth Avenue
Looking Down Seventh Avenue
Cops and horses aren’t actually an uncommon sight in Times Square, although there’s rarely more then two, and now there were a handful scattered around. I always love it when tourists come to the city and are shocked to see horses walking (and crapping) around Times Square. Apparently they didn’t think we allowed animals other than rats here. They’re close to right.
Hey! It’s Erik Estrada! What’s up Ponch? There are a slew of bike and motorcycle cops around actually. We saw a pack Saturday night of over 20 motorcycle cops, and there are a few bicycle stops around that usually have at least 15+ bike cops parked there. And look who else is there - the Naked Cowboy. See, not everyone is staying home this week. Some New Yorkers obviously have work too important to let any silly convention get in the way.
This girl was arrested. I never got the real story why. I think it was because some of her hair was green since no one had a good reason. Someone said it was because she was biking, but, of course, this bystander was on her own bicycle. There were a few others with bikes around and at least one of them said “bicycling against oil wars ” on the back of it. Then a few other people biked by. So I’ll take this crazy guess it wasn’t because she was biking. This same bystander then started yelling at the cops about how people are allowed to bike in the city. Apparently they already knew this because they didn’t arrest her.
So I then asked another person. He mumbled something incoherent. Great help he was. I then walked to someone else who was talking to other people, looking like she was filling them in.
“Do you know why she was arrested?”
“Yes, because they’re all facists”
“Oh really?”
“They’re like this everywhere…”
“Where are you from?”
“L.A.”
“Well thanks for filling me in about my own city’s cops…”
“They’re just arresting people for no reason…”
“No one else was arrested, she must have done something.”
“No, they’re just looking to arrest anyone who’s…”
“Listen, they’re doing their job and ignoring all these other dopes yelling at them, she did something and no one here admits it. Go back to L.A. if you don’t appreciate it.”
She then huffed and we walked away from each other. I tried to get this other girl’s attention because she was a radio reporter with a mic and a bag around her shoulder but she was running all over the place and it was hot and time to keep on moving. I really can’t stand some of these out of town protestors. You want to say your thing, fine. Don’t tell anyone here “how it is” though, you have no clue.
Now this guy I had no problems with. He wasn’t yelling at anyone. He moved from spot to spot and simply stood there with his banner. Almost everyone saw him, knew what he was about and on one was bothered. He also gave me a good picture. Thanks guy, for that you get a link: www.veteransforpeace.org. I’m not a veteran, but peace never sounds bad.
See - I wasn’t lying - it’s not just the Naked Cowboy, people are still working hard here in NYC, and we all can’t just take off because of the convention. Go get ‘em Spidey.