Monday, September 28, 2009

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Flickr Gallery

A new thing on Flickr is the Flickr Gallery. You can assemble photographs by other people into a gallery which you can then share. It's pretty cool. I assembled a few racing pictures I have favorited over the years into a gallery which you can view here.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

I Dig Time Lapse

Timescapes Timelapse: Mountain Light from Tom @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

A chat conversation

Walter: I've just been signed to play DT for the Panthers.

me: That's a death sentence. You'll be walking on an artificial knee in two months.

Walter: It's like fighting Mike Tyson during his prime...I may get close to death, but I'll get well compensated for it.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

eBay Revenge

I'm sure I'm not the only person that has done this. Whenever I am bidding on something I really want on eBay and I get outbid I will make one more bid just to make sure the guy that beat me has to pay a dollar two more. I'm sure the other bidder doesn't notice but it makes me feel better. I have found that generally when you get outbid on eBay that the other person's maximum bid will be more than 99 cents more than your highest bid. So if you make one more bid just for petty revenge you are pretty safe and you won't have to buy the item, just drive up the other guy's price. Sometimes this will backfire and you'll end up winning, which is OK because it's only one dollar more than you were previously willing to spend. The best result is that you'll be highest bidder for a little while until the other guy, if he wants the item more than you, logs back on and makes another bid. That's a double win for you because you not only are forcing him to pay more buy you are siphoning away his valuable time when he logs on and bids again. Take that!

Friday, September 18, 2009

The Revolution will be Streamed

Check out the video below. This woman had her credit card interest rate jacked up to 30% and she decided to tell Bank of America to go screw. Amen, sister. I did that a few years ago. I had a credit card that I had a few thousand dollars on and my interest rate was 15%. At some point the interest got jacked up to 25% and I was paying as much as I could and I wasn't able meet the minimum payment. My balance went up and up and it was mostly due to fees and interest and grocery store purchases because I was using the card to buy food because so much of my funds were going to make payments. Eventually I just stopped making payments. The account was sold to a collection agency, my credit went in the toilet but eventually I paid off the $5000 interest free. Well, not interest free, I think a significant amount of what I owed was from when I got raped by the high interest. I wonder what would happen if a large number of Americans cut up their credit cards and closed their bank accounts and joined credit unions? I've already done that. Join me. I've had a credit card at my credit union for over a year now and my interest rate hasn't fluctuated at all from the starting rate of 14.5%

The First Harry Potter book

After years of holding out I finally listened Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Melanie and I listened to it while driving around Lake Michigan during out August vacation. J.K. Rowling and David Sedaris were the two authors we agreed that we both would enjoy.

I'm glad I entered the book version of the Harry Potter stories in the audio format because I probably wouldn't have finished this book if I had been reading it myself. It was an enjoyable time passer in a car going down an interstate but it's not something I would spend hours on in my reading chair. Honestly, it wasn't that great. There were a few scenes that were wonderful and there are some great characters but as an overall work it was a little weak. The plot twist at the end was cheap and the universe she created has a lot of holes in it. She never really reconciled to me the problem in the Harry Potter universe: the disconnect between the world of the Muggles and the world of the wizards and witches.

The reader, Jim Dale, did a marvelous job bringing the book to life, although the voice he adopted for Hermione caused me to laugh a couple of times. I did notice that his performance was recorded before the movies were made and the characters Professor McGonagall and Hagrid sound almost identical to how they sound in the films. If I remember correctly the audio book was recorded well before the first film was made. I wonder how much he inspired the creation of the characters vocal styles for the film?

Monday, September 14, 2009

9/12 Anti-Obama Protesters

Wow, I guess the 12th of September would have been a good day to go to Wal-Mart because, judging from this slideshow Wal-Mart's usual shoppers were in Washington D.C. this weekend.