Category: Technology

213 Things Skippy is not allowed… – Revisited

June 6th, 2008 · · Politics, Technology 2 comments - Tags: , , , , ,

I was flipping through my bookmarks and came across this gem. Some of you may not get all of these, or they may be a little ‘weird’ for your taste. Personally, I find this list totally hilarious.

Here’s a sample:

127. “No Drinking Of Alcoholic Beverages” does not imply that a Jack Daniel’s ® IV is acceptable.

128. “Shpadoinkle” is not a real word.

129. The Microsoft ® “Dancing Paperclip” is not authorized to countermand any orders.

130. “I’m drunk” is a bad answer to any question posed by my commander.

These are just a few of the hilarious items I can’t believe were tried/questioned/etc. Please go check out the site to read the rest of the list and hopefully laugh a little while you’re at it – I know I did.

Damn Spam – Snopes.com

June 3rd, 2008 · · Technology 2 comments - Tags: , , , , , ,

You all know how much I HATE spam – especially on phones. This afternoon, I was forwarded another piece of crap (possibly by accident) that is a prime example of how stupid people are:

Keep an Eye on your license plate.
From a State Office:
Pass it on to those you know. Thanks

A woman said her son found his license plate missing so he called the police to file a report. They told him people were stealing the plates to get free gas. Given the rise in gas prices, people have taken to stealing license plates, putting them on their car, then getting gas and running. The gas station will have “your” license plate # and you could be in trouble for “pump and run.” Check your car periodically to be sure you still have a plate. If you should find it missing, file a report immediately!!! Keep an eye on your license plate! Make sure you always know it’s there! When the license plate is reported as the “drive off vehicle”, it’s YOU they contact! Be aware!!!! Be aware of your license plates, most of us never look to see if the plates are there or not.

Sounds almost reasonable, does it not? Guess what? It’s NOT true. I understand that people are stupid and love to be “in the know” about every little conspiracy, but this is not one.

However, while gas theft is on the rise and there have been instances of pump and runs by vehicles bearing stolen plates, the situation warned against in the e-mail is not epidemic. There has not been a sudden sharp upswing in the number of gasoline drive-offs where stolen tags were involved, and even among reported pump-and-run cases, thefts facilitated by stolen plates are still fairly few and far between.

Now, know that I say people are stupid, not a person. Generally speaking most of us are intelligent. Especially in a one on one setting. It’s when we’re together as a group or sending out these mass emails that we get dumb and believe stupidity.

For those of you who are not aware, there is a site that specializes in tracking these junk emails and proving them true/false/possible. They also take care of a great many ‘urban legends’ and such as well. The next time you get some of this garbage, please go to Snopes.com and see if you can find something about the subject. Normally they have at least one entry, and sometimes several that are in relation to whatever crap happens to be in your subject line.

Yes, I was ranting a little. Please show your intelligence and spread the word about this kind of garbage. Also, for the love of God, don’t forward it to anyone.

It’s time for some shameless plugs, boys and girls!

May 21st, 2008 · · Illinois, Jaycees, Mount Vernon, Podcast, Technology 2 comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Yes, this post is purely for advertisement of whatever I want. I pay the bills, I can do that.

First off, the Mount Vernon Jaycees meet every Wednesday evening at the Old Train Depot. For those of you not aware, it is located at 2nd Street and Broadway on the East side of Mount Vernon, Illinois. We start things up at 7:30PM, and are generally done with the official meeting by 8:30.

This past Sunday (5/18) the Mount Vernon Jaycees held a training session for the entire South Region of the Illinois Jaycees. Illinois’ President Tanya Lee was here helping with the training. While she was here she presented VP Kevin Fradelos with the “Outstanding Fundraising Project” award for the first trimester of 2008. This was a result of the fundraising event held to assist two local families. At this event as well, she named Mr. Fradelos as South Region Director.

Next up, I would like to mention the podcasts I have been putting up for your enjoyment. Kevin, Emily, and I get together most Fridays and record ourselves chatting about various topics. I know the content is over-the-top occasionally, but we keep it pretty toned down except for a few obscenities from time to time (Mom, this means you won’t want to listen).

The first 3 podcasts have gone over quite well with over 50 plays/listens each. Unfortunately, the last two I haven’t been able to track as my stats program spazzed out on me. Please go, listen, and let us know what you think. Make sure you go listen to Kevin at his site, bigkev.us as well. He puts on two more shows during the week Monday and Wednesday. They are generally interesting, even if he’s not always right.

Finally, I would like to mention Blubrry.com. Blubrry is one of the places this podcast is listed, and offers many services/advice for free. Recently, I had some questions regarding Kevin’s RSS feed, and the stats from my site that Blubrry tracks. Within 24 hours (on a Sunday) I received an email from the CIO of RawVoice (they own Blubrry) with an explanation and suggestions for how to fix my issue. THAT ladies and gentlemen is service. I am shocked at the time, politeness, and from whom I got a reply. All of this from a FREE product for an unknown such as myself. Please go have a look around over there if you haven’t yet.

Thanks for reading all my plugs, and keep reading – there’s more to come I’m sure.

PS – We’re now on iTunes.

Local News and other things

May 20th, 2008 · · Illinois, Mount Vernon, Technology, Twitter No comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I razz the local papers about not deeply covering news, or going too in depth with “Susan visited Mary on Sunday”. In all seriousness, they do a decent job covering a large area to maintain their readership.

Lately, I have been perusing the web to see what else is out there for someone who lives in a small town or region to keep track of local happenings. I’ve come across two such sites that I think have a lot of potential – Topix.com and Outside.in. (Disclosure: I am included at both sites)

Topix seems to be mostly a search engine that finds listings for a particular area or town, and does a pretty good job of listing related stories or topics. While researching how well they did for Mount Vernon (we’re pretty small), I found links to WPSD in Paducah, KY. Naturally I assumed at first glance that the programs running the site didn’t really know how far away that is like most attempted local sites. I was wrong. The link was to a story that station did regarding a boy who drowned recently at a graduation party. Pretty good job in my estimation.

Outside.in is mostly a blog aggregating site. Unfortunately, I seem to be the only blog registered for Mount Vernon, but I did look for other southern Illinois towns. There seems to be plenty of interesting writers in larger cities and some other towns. Hopefully blogging will pick up and continue, further adding to Outside.in’s reach and coverage.

Those are my recommendations for local news/reporting. Go start a blog and submit it to outside.in. I need some company! 🙂

Another site that I found recently is thesixtyone.com . The Sixty-One does a great job in allowing users to find, pick, and choose what music is popular there. The opportunity to get noticed on a fairly broad scale by actual music fans should be appealing to most any artist trying to make their way. I almost forgot to mention – there are actually some good tunes on there.

Twitter is a great way to keep up with your friends, interesting people, and even follow events where people are ‘tweeting’ updates. Some people just follow people they know, and their group keeps updated on what everyone is doing. Following celebrities gets you a little insight into their lives. Sadly, some celebs probably use ‘ghost’ writers like in any other medium. Finally, people tweet from events like SXSW, Apple announcements, DefCon, and many more. It can keep you up to date if you don’t have the ability or time to watch the actually event.

Give these sites a shot and see what you think.

The Podcasty Goodness is doing well

May 12th, 2008 · · Illinois, Mount Vernon, Podcast, Technology No comments - Tags: , , , , , , ,

Since I’m involved with Kevin on the Friday Night netcasts, I repost them here after he posts them on his site. I’ve been watching the downloads and plays in my statistics since I started. Things started pretty slow, with only a couple of downloads each.

Within the past week, downloads are over 50+ each. Yes, I know, still very small-time. However, we are starting from nothing, so this is exciting to us.

I noticed a sharp uptake after I started using Blubrry.com as a distribution outlet. Kudos to them. Of course, we would like to be listed on iTunes, but I don’t have the ability to register since I use Linux.

In short – thanks to those of you who downloaded, and let us know what you think.

Don’t forget that Kevin’s podcasts are not kid-friendly, not even Friday Nights.