Thursday, September 29, 2011

A true story

Several years ago, on my birthday, the Future Spousal Unit and I were relaxing on a beach in northern San Diego county, killing time before dinner with friends.

As we sat there, a blimp flew in front of us, following the shoreline.

It told me I would have a good year.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Sentence of the day: Exchange rate edition

Matthew Yglesias:

Meanwhile, since voters are strongly nationalistic and strongly confused, they think a “strong dollar” is good but that “Chinese currency manipulation” is bad, even though the point of Chinese currency manipulation is to make the dollar strong.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Bleg: Mummification and curses

Suppose, that when our pets perish, the Spousal Unit and I wish them to continue in an eternal journey. We are fortunate to live in an era when mummification is (again) readily available for our animals.

Obviously, our home of wood-and-drywall is an inappropriate eternal resting place for them. It is likely to be sold, and if it isn’t, its impermanence will expose their mummified remains to the elements. Instead, we should go with a more traditional tomb to shelter them on their eternal journey. We therefore have the beginnings of a plan:

  1. Mummify the remains of the deceased pet(s)
  2. Rent a room at the Luxor Las Vegas, for (approximately) one night
  3. Place the mummified remains in the room, in addition to provisions for the eternal journey (Mummy Chow, etc.)
  4. ?????
  5. Our pet(s) enjoy their eternal journey, without disturbance to their mummified remains

The missing step is #4. Our limited means will not allow us to rent a room at the Luxor in perpetuity. Instead, once we have access to the room for a night (or a few nights), we wish to place a curse on the room, which will prevent any subsequent disturbance to the room or its contents (e.g. by housekeeping or security staff).

What is the procedure for instituting the curse? Are there traditional priests in Egypt who can provide this service? Must they travel to Las Vegas, or can they telework? Could we, perhaps, embed the “Do Not Disturb” sign with magical powers? Our Dobermen Pinscher has a talent in life for producing noxious fumes. Can this ability be leveraged to protect the burial suite?

Friday, September 9, 2011

Revealed preferences

Steven Sinofsky writes in the outstanding Building Windows 8 blog:

Few operations in Windows are as scrutinized, measured, and picked apart as boot. This is understandable—boot times represent an effective proxy for overall system performance and we all know the boot experience is an incredibly important thing for us to get right for customers. Data shows that 57% of desktop PC users and 45% of laptop users shut down their machines rather than putting them to sleep. Overall, half of all of users shut down their machines rather than putting them to sleep.

See, my interpretation would have been: The 57% of desktop PC users who shut down their machine instead of putting it to sleep must not care very much about boot time. Otherwise, they would just put the damned thing to sleep instead.

I guess that’s why I’m not in charge of Windows 8.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Bastard logo-child of LG and Apple

MacObserver reports that Apple is objecting to a Chinese trademark filing by Sichuan Fangguo Food Co., Ltd, on the grounds that it is too similar to Apple’s logo:

Personally, I think LG has an even stronger case:

LG_logo

So sharp, it’s blury!

A marketing email from GearXS advertises this Blu-ray player:

insignia_bluray_banner_73011

Protip: “Blu-ray” is only missing one letter, not two.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

ST:TNG coming to Blu-ray?!

Star Trek: The Next Generation’s LeVar Burton just tweeted:

TNGBD

This seems to be a step up from previous reports by anonymous sources. Can’t wait. The TOS remasters are excellent.