Man, Are We Dumb

You know those ridiculous gasoline prices that we are presently paying?  You know... because of rising costs, hurricanes, and such?

 

Well, I'm here to tell you - consumers are DUMB.

 

IRVING, Texas - Exxon Mobil Corp. had a quarter for the record books. The world's largest publicly traded oil company said Thursday high oil and natural-gas prices helped its third-quarter profit surge almost 75 percent to $9.92 billion, the largest quarterly profit for a U.S. company ever, and it was the first to ring up more than $100 billion in quarterly sales.

 

Net income ballooned to $9.92 billion, or $1.58 per share, from $5.68 billion, or 88 cents per share, a year ago.

 

Via Yahoo.

 

Net income for a three month period:  9.92 BILLION DOLLARS.

 

Billion.  With a "B".

 

Hyperinflated profits make Baby Jesus cry.

 

 

Blogroll Addition

Maybe you noticed this, and maybe you didn't, but the newest permalink is the website Snopes, which are the Urban Legend Reference Pages. 

Why do this, you ask?  For all you people out there who get those goofy emails claiming this ridiculous statistic or that ridiculous picture or story.  You want to know if it's true?

Check Snopes.  It's a very non-partisan site that will be ready to either confirm or debunk whatever you got from that friend of a friend.

 

Consider it my public service of the week.

 

 

Can I Get That In Cash?

Here's a kind of cool thang that I dug up.

 

Inspired by Tristan Louis's research into the value of each link to Weblogs Inc, I've created this little applet using Technorati's API which computes and displays your blog's worth using the same link to dollar ratio as the AOL-Weblogs Inc deal.

 

Actually, I was a little surprised to find out that this here blog don't do too badly.  Maybe it's all the geek posts.

 

Time to write another story, though.  Soon.  I promise.

 

 

 

Well, I Used To Read Novels...

...unfortunately, I don't take the time to read them like I used to.

 

I do like to read, though - which is why I read, with considerable amusement, TIME's Best 100 Novels.

 

Stunningly, it's not a terrible list.

 

But I've only read twenty-four of them.  That ain't good.  Obviously, I need to join a book club.

More Geek Love For Ya'll

Is your hard drive full of virtual crap?  God knows mine is.

 

How about a Hard Drive Janitor?

If I let it, my hard drive would fill to capacity with crap I don't need. Throughout the course of one day I get my paws on all sorts of throwaway files: video, images and songs meant for a single viewing or listen, PDF's I have to print, software installers and big ol' zip files I extract and do whatever I need to with the contents. The end result is a bunch of stuff hogging space on my hard drive for no good reason.

I'm lazy and I don't want to have to clean up after myself every time I work with a set of files. Instead, I've scheduled a cleanup script that sweeps through my hard drive every evening while I sleep. My virtual janitor deletes any temporary file that's been sitting around for more than x days, like old garbage starting to stink. This way space on my hard drive is constantly recovered, and I don't have to worry about getting the dreaded "Low disk space" message at the critical moment I'm about to conceive my opus. Because you know if you were going to run out of disk space, that's when it would happen.

Via Lifehacker, of course.  Man, I love those guys.

 

Halloween And Movies

"Hey, do you want to see something REALLY scary?"
                                                       - Dan Aykroyd,  from Twilight Zone, The Movie

So, because it's Halloween, here are:

The Scariest Movies Of All Time

5.  Jaws.
Amazing that I didn't think of this movie before.  Zoinks.  Scared an entire generation of going into the ocean.  Mad props to that.
4.  The Exorcist.
Heh.  Raised the bar for horror then and for all time.  Subliminal messages.  Pea soup.  Catholics.  What could be better?
3.  The Thing.
Probably the best of the John Carpenter horror movies.  If you don't know about the walking head scene, then you don't know horror.  Amazing, without the CGI.
2.  Alien.
Yeah.  Haunted house combined with Sci-Fi.  Remember this tagline:  "In space, no one can hear you scream."  Brilliant.
1.  The Shining.
Wow.  Almost a perfectly scary movie.  The Big Wheel scene, "Here's Johnny!"  Blood in the hallway.  Amazing.  Scared me for years and I'm still not quite over it.

Leave yours in the comments, if you like.  Just for fun, you might want to check this out: The 100 Scariest Movie Scenes Of All Time.  Via  Retrocrush.

Memes - The Friday Music Edition

Here we go again!

 

Last 10 on the iPod Shuffle List

 

"Colors" - Ice-T

"Crazy For This Girl" - Evan and Jaron

"Beginnings" - Chicago

"Always and Forever" - Heatwave

"Strange Fruit" - Billie Holiday

"It's The End Of The World As We Know It" - REM

"F-Stop Blues" - Jack Johnson

"South Side" - Moby and Gwen Stefani

"Babylon" - David Gray

"Midnight Rider" - The Allman Brothers Band

 

Analyzing....analyzing....

 

I think that maybe I should maybe leave the house tonight.  Sounds like a fun evening.

 

Pile on, y'all!

Text Messaging

Classic Consumer Scams:

 

1.  Disposable Razor Blades.  They cost more than the razors, and parody has now become fact. 

2.  Pantyhose.  Women hate them.  Why do they exist?

3.  Text Messaging.  Why?  People who make them, pay for them, people that RECEIVE them pay for them.  More revenue for phone companies.

 

So what have I been getting all week?

Text messages. 

In fact, I got a text PARAGRAPH today.  Gak.

 

When the revolution comes, I expect Gillette, Hanes, and Verizon will be the first up against the wall.

Geek Storage

No, I don't mean a place to store your geek.  Everyone knows that's in their parents' basement with plenty of beer and pizza.

 

I mean this.

 

All that porn clogging up your hard drive and your 500Gb external already full? Well no worries, thanks to this brand new Maxtor OneTouch III that'll have up to 1 whopping terabyte of storage space.

 

Via Gizmodo.

 

Of course, you know you want one.  Personally, I want three.  Being out of a computer for a while made me frightened and verklempt;  I couldn't feel my legs, and I panicked.

 

If you know that reference, you get a no-prize.  But if you don't, go here.  Think "Refrigerator Johnny".  What a classic.

 

Dude, That's Hardcore

Ex SNL comedian Charles Rocket is dead.  This in itself is not surprising (see:  Belushi, Jon, Farley, Chris, et cetera)

This, however, is absolutely, positively the most hardcore thing that I've ever heard in my life.

 

Rocket, 56, whose real name was Charles Claverie, was found dead in a field near his home in Canterbury on October 7. His throat had been cut, the medical examiner said."An investigation determined there was no criminal aspect to this case," State Police Sgt. J. Paul Vance said Monday.

Via CNN.

 

Yeah, you read that right.  HOMEBOY SLIT HIS OWN THROAT.

Maybe he heard about this.

 

Yeah.  Rocky.  I kid not.

 

I expect the seventh seal to be broken shortly.

 

 

 

Hah!

Well, following my friend's lead (for some reason, I can't find the post where she said she quit!  C'mon, L, help me out), I quit smoking this weekend.

Haven't had a cigarette in more than 48 hours. 

Yikes.  I would hate to be working for me on Monday.  However, my intentions are good.  If you're out there smoking and want to quit, I suggest that you try this.  Stunningly, it seems to work.

More Geek For Your Dollar

No, this post is NOT going to be about the video iPod, strangely enough, even though I think those are awesome and I want one.

 

This about home FTP.  Via The Hack

If you've been following the the Lifehacker Home Server Series of articles, you know how to do things like reach your home computer from anywhere in the world thanks to dynamic DNS services. Gina wrote about how to set up a personal home web server, but in my experience the killer home server feature that hasn't been covered to date is how to set up a personal FTP server at home.

 

Damn, that's cool.  Once I get my home computer working again, I'm doing it. 

 

I've got a Linux drive.  It might be time to start using it again and bagging XP for the time being.  My blogging is beginning to suffer.

 

Finally!

Not all hope has been abandoned.

 

NEW YORK (AP) -- "The Simple Life" is over - at least on Fox. The network said Wednesday it has canceled the Paris Hilton-Nicole Richie reality series after the show's two stars no longer proved compatible.

 

 

Via Fark.

 

I'll tell you what:  I think that it's too late for me.  I'm seriously considering selling my television.  Were it not for these things:

 

1.  Sports

2.  The Cartoon Network

3.  Law and Order, and

4.  The Discovery Channel

 

I would have gotten the darn television out of my house YEARS ago.

 

 

 

Who Will Protect The Children?

Sigh.

 

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Students who attend homecoming dances on Saturday will be doing some heavy breathing — into Breathalyzers.

At Santa Barbara High School, officials will screen every third or fourth student who arrives and anyone who appears drunk, said Principal Paul Turnbull. Dos Pueblos High School administrators will use the Breathalyzer only if they suspect a problem, said Principal Quentin Panek.

"There's a lot of heavy drinking going on," said Penny Jenkins, executive director of the local nonprofit Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse. "Something's got to be done."

 

Thanks, Yahoo.

Teens partying with alcohol = old and busted.

Teens partying with this = the new hotness.

 

C'mon, it's HOMECOMING.

 

Personally, I say legalize all drugs and such.  I think that it's the libertarian in me.

 

Amazing Site For You

Huh.  This is one of the most remarkable things I have seen in the internet in a while. 

 

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.

 

Even though this is not really a stupid site, that's where I found this.

 

A lot of people that read this site know who I am for real, but in the spirit of that website, I'll tell you all a secret:

 

Even though I honestly don't like 99% of all people, I hate living alone.  The absurdity of that fact sometimes makes me sad.

 

Carry on.

What?! A Cure For Cancer?

Darn it.  What is Fark going to do about that "still no cure for cancer" cliche?

 

A vaccine shown to be 100% effective against two virus strains that cause most cervical cancer could be available within a year, say manufacturers.

 

Via, of course, Fark and the BBC.

I have this to say about this development, as I'll have you know, cervical cancer kills something like 275,000 women a year:

 

YIPPIE!  THERE IS MUCH REJOICING!

 

Now, science, get to friggin' work on breast cancer, colon cancer, and lung cancer.  Oh, and pancreatic, prostate, and the others, too.

Nicolas Cage = Geek

He named his kid after Superman.

 

Nicholas Cage's new son is named "Kal-El Cage."

 

Boing Boing, again.

 

Oddly, I kinda like that. 

But, of course, my geek level is off the charts.  Word.