Thursday, April 27, 2006

Feeling my inner QVC

I saw a product yesterday that made me want to roll on the floor laughing.  I had stopped at a corner store and as I was checking out I saw the oddest product.  It was a hybrid of two products most people would never associate with one another.  That is until some inventor saw a need and filled it.  (I assume this inventor was the type of person Jeff Foxworthy keeps talking about.)  I give the following QVC pitch which I know they will want to jump on immediately.
 
"Have you ever been sitting there trimming your nails when someone hands you a beer bottle but no opener?  What to do?  Enter the nail clipper beer bottle opener.  Never again will you have to stop your daily grooming to have a beer.  You can even get yours with a picture of you favorite NASCAR driver on it.  Act now and we will also send you a matching NASCAR coozie.  Be the envy of the trailer park.  It can be yours for just one payment of $2.95 (*mumbled faster than a NASCAR race* plus $24.95 shippingandhandling. OffernotvalidinMaineCaliforniaoranywherewithpeoplegoodatmath)."
 
I can see it now, phone lines all over the south jammed with people asking if you can pay with food stamps and Camel bucks.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Random babbles of the sleep deprived...

It is a little past 1am and I am beyond bored off my ass. Tiff is out with friends and I finally got Jasmine to bed at 11 after her bout with a mean little stomach bug. I was watching TV but lets face it, late night TV is a wasteland. I am too lazy to channel surf and there are only so many times you can see the same CSI re-run. One would think I would be fast asleep at the moment considering the most sleep I have gotten all week is a 6 hour stretch and that was only by sleeping through the alarm. The messed up part is I know there will be no sleeping in for me tomorrow either as Tiff has to work and I need to change the oil on the Honda.

I have no idea what to write about. I could complain about gas prices. I could make fun of stupid people. I've surfed around the net but nothing piques my interest at the moment. I know I should be up in arms over something or inspiring my readers to new planes of thought but to be honest all I want to do is sleep. Yet I keep typing instead...

Have you noticed all the noise in the blogsphere? Everywhere you go someone is saying, "Look at me! My life is important!" (this blog being a fine example of such) Really though, what makes our thoughts so important that we should be heard? Why should I be heard over all the others? A walk through the blog realm is a mind boggling thing. Some talk politics, others religion, and some even document their every bodily function in revolting detail. Why? More importantly, what will come of this? Will the world be a better place because of my babblings about politics, God, and stupid one-liners? Will they ever devise a Margarita that will mix itself when you are feeling too lazy to drink? Will I ever stop putting stupid rhetorical questions in my blog? Will someone please stop letting me post after midnight?

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Rant-o-matic

I've got a few things on my mind today.

First, I've been reading through the news about Jill Carroll, the reporter held captive in Iraq for 82 days and released at the end of March. The media praises her for her bravery, surviving what many others have not. I join with them in this. She held on through what had to be hell. In order to be released she had to make an anti-war propaganda film "supporting" her captors. Again, I support her in this, it was a do or die situation. Now many in the conservative half of the blogshpere and parts of the media are blasting her, saying she was a willing participant. I don't give a rat's ass who you are or what your political alignment is, this is a human life we are talking about. She was an American just out doing her job and got kidnapped by the same thugs who behead unarmed Americans because they are too weak and spineless to face someone who might have a chance of defending themselves. They offered her freedom for saying some mean things about the president and the blog thugs fault her for taking them up on it? This pisses me off so much there are not words in the human vocabulary to describe it. What if she were your daughter, sister, or wife? Would you rather see her say some mean things about your president or see her head being severed with a dull knife while the blood gurgles down her throat and her screams become a death rattle? For the love of God, shut the fuck up.

In other news (trying to bring the blood pressure down a notch), my pit minion (yes D, I am stealing your topic) posted an interesting point about how MTV will edit the words "gun" or "rob" from any video they air but not words like "faggot" from the old Dire Straits song "Money for Nothin'". So, hate speech is ok but for the love of God if anyone mentions a gun and it is so bleeping gone. You can show boobs as long as you blur a two inch square over the nipple. Ass is cool as long as there is a thin string up the crack. Drugs are also cool. Maybe it is (to paraphrase Afroman) "...because the FCC got high." I am not generally a fan of censorship anyway but for the love of Pete, if you are going to censor things make some consistent rules. At a high school party I helped chaperone they played "My Hump" by the Black-Eyed Peas. They changed one lyric from "my lovely lady lumps" to "my lovely little lumps" while leaving in "what you going to do with all that breast inside that shirt" and "what you gonna do with all that ass inside them jeans." I know, in one verse of the regular version she uses the "little lumps" lyric but you could hear the splice where the DJ had inserted "little" over "lady".

I guess what drives me most crazy is the "slippery slope" concept used by most nay sayers. "Marijuana is a slippery slope to Crack and Heroin" or "Gay unions are a slippery slope to all of our children becoming gay" and my all time favorite "Stopping illegal immigrants is racist and a slippery slope to closing down our borders and not letting anyone in." Who gets to draw the line where that slope begins? Where is the ledge? Why is it that only the least informed and the most intolerant get a voice? For instance, why is it only police and fear mongers get to inform Dateline about MySpace? Where are those actually good enough at statistics to show how your child has a far better chance of being raped by a family member than anyone they meet online? All I saw were adults freaked out that their child had a MySpace account and saying they would make their child delete it immediately. God forbid their child have a place to vent. It would be far better for them to bottle all emotions and maybe kill themselves than have their name on the net.

Ok, I have vented enough for now. Next time we return to our regularly scheduled bullshit.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Google Page Creator Beta

WARNING: High geek content in this post!

Today Google sent me the email confirming my Google Page Creator Beta account has been created. Of course I logged on and immediately dove in. Within ten minutes I had a nice clean page up including a photo, links section, and a decent layout. See here.

The interface was simple and allowed quick editing of the basic features the average user would use. I must state here that this is for simple page creation only. While it does allow some basic editing of HTML most of the design elements are controlled by the simple CSS based layouts. The code created by the editor is pretty clean although I am disappointed they used a DOCTYPE of XHTML 1.0 Strict and then failed to configure the page layout to even fully meet the XHTML 1.0 Transitional standard (according to the XHTML Validator).

The Google Pages site allows each user up to 100 MB for hosting their pages and images. This is sufficient for the casual user to post photos of the kids, vacation time, or whatever else strikes their fancy. From what I have tried so far Flash and other embedded files are not fully supported.

Final Verdict: Google Page Creator Beta is a good solution for someone wanting to post a simple webpage with photos and not much else. The simple, clean interface is great for the casual user and it doesn't require them to understand HTML or own a domain. It publishes far cleaner code than FrontPage and the CSS is coded to work with most CSS capable browsers.