Journal of Omnifarious

15:56 - High weirdness from rosencrantz319

It's the Spongebob Squarepants Musical Rectal Thermometer. I was informed of its existence in a this post by rosencrantz319.

The mind boggles. One wonders if this heralds a new era of rectal musical devices of all kinds. I suspect that the Golgafrinchin marketroids who were wondering if people wanted fire that could be fitted nasally were completely missing the boat.

Current Mood: distressed

13:54 - Another geeky pick-up line

I think of these periodically. I should collect them together someplace... :-)

This one is: "Oh, baby, you make me wanna collapse your state vector.".

It's quite possible that someone has thought of this before.

Current Mood: creative

15:10 - A pinhole 3rd degree burn

I just got a pinhole 3rd degree burn on my fingers from one of those eye-of-the-storm plasma lamps. I noticed that if you put a piece of chocolate wrapped in foil on the lamp that the movement of the tendrils of plasma was not strongly affected. But if you then touched the chocolate it would act like it does when your finger touches the lamp. All the tendrils of plasma would converge on the chocolate.

Then I noticed that if I pulled my finger away slowly that it hurt very slightly. I experimented with this a bit, and then when I looked at my finger I noticed a pinhole sized spot that was charred. Oops.

Now the tip of my finger feels very slightly odd.

I'm rather amused by this.

I need a user icon involving Ben Franklin, a kite, a key and some lightning. :-)

Current Mood: touched

23:05 - I like this joke

And it took me quite awhile to find it. So I'm saving the link for posterity...

How various disciplines rank against eachother.

Current Mood: amused

14:18 - Question...

People have been recommending "Soon, I will be Invincible!" to me. And this has brought to mind an important question. Why is it that only comic book villains are interested in being invincible? Why don't heroes ever seem interested in that? I mean, if you're a hero it seems to me that it would just be generally all around good for everybody (not just your) to be invincible and not rely on the machinations of plot writers and such to make it sort of happen via the invisible hand of the narrative.

If you have an idea, please consider posting it as a reply before reading the comments. I'm sort of interested in as much variety as possible as well as sort of an informal poll. :-)

Current Mood: curious

15:56 - Filk

Surely someone among you can expand on this verse of filk:

Hypoxia! Hypoxia!
This meeting will not end,
and makes my day so very dull
from hours eight until five.

Current Mood: amused

14:22 - I'm a bit worried because, you know, I have fingers too...

mle292 brings us this shocking tale!

Current Mood: worried

09:29 - When the moon hits your eye...

( It's a big picture. )

Current Mood: silly

19:58 - In case you somehow missed this

I love The Onion: "I'm In An Open Relationship With The Lord"

Current Mood: amused

15:24 - Interesting night in a hotel room

I got very little sleep last night. The reason was that my hotel room was sandwiched in between two loud parties that were still going at 2am. One apparently was a bachelorette party, and another was some group of guys who were partying in a hotel room for a reason of which I'm unaware.

I called the front desk about the noise, and they had hotel security come up and talk to the two rooms of people. That quieted them a little, but by 3:30am they were loud enough to wake me up again.

Then, the event of the evening happens. Some guy from the guy party is poking about on the ledge outside my hotel room. I notice this, and then lo-and-behold, he slips through the window of my room. This is when I notice that he's completely naked.

I yell, very loudly, "Get out of my room!" in a "you will do this now" sort of tone. I yell it again and prepare to violently repel the intruder if need be, but he gets scared and leaves.

I call the front desk, and they are credulous but shocked. They call the police.

It takes the police about 15 minutes to show up and start getting the people out. They remove the bachelorette party first. I watch through the peephole and listen to the thin justifications, complaints and threats against the hotel's reputation from the people in the room.

When they get to the room full of guys I open my door so I can watch. I want to identify who the naked guy was, even though I didn't see him that clearly because it was dark. There are only two guys who were the right build and one of them comes over and harasses me and asks me why I assume it was one of them. I think he's frightened of actually being arrested.

I can't identify any of them definitively though, so I don't think anybody was arrested. I talked to the people at the front desk the following morning and apparently the guy had intended to try to get into the bachelorette party but miscounted and ended up in my room.

The hotel gave me that night free.

Current Mood: annoyed

06:58 - Headline silliness

I saw this article being put up on a website about meth addiction. Meth addiction is, admittedly, a pretty serious problem, but the headline had me in cynical stitches. It read "Meth, the Terrorist Next Door". It was like a straight dominant culture version of the lurid title of a pulp novel.

How many inappropriate contexts can the word "terrorist" be shoved into? One is tempted to come up with a list...

• Spiders, Terrorists of Arachnophobes
• Thumpy Cars, Auditory Terrorists
• Terrorizing Movie Theaters Everywhere by Sticking Gum Under the Seat Handles
• Yippy Dogs, the Terrorist Next Door

The list goes on. The word "terrorist" is such a useful, all-purpose word. We should all use it so often, for so many things that really it doesn't mean anything anymore. Kind of like replacing most verbs with "get".

Current Mood: annoyed

08:57 - Apparently Star Wars day was a couple of days ago

And I missed it. But luckily I just got caught up today...

May the 4th be with you!

Personally, I want a Hello Kitty Darth Vader action figure.

Current Mood: amused

12:05 - I love Google maps

It can figure out how to get from anywhere to anywhere!

Current Mood: amused

22:14 - I haven't laughed out loud at a comic in quite awhile

butterflydrming, this comic is for you. :-)

Current Mood: amused

21:13 - Star Wars geekery, this reinterpretation makes SO much sense

Copied from jwz.

A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope

If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2. [...] Much of Obi-Wan's behaviour in this film, and Yoda's in the next, can best be understood if they are frankly scared to death of what Luke might become.

Current Mood: amused

08:41 - A t-shirt for rosencrantz319

Though I'm not sure if he'd wear it or not.

Current Mood: amused

14:03 - Random facts about Bruce Schneier

First there were random facts about Vin Diesel, then random facts about Chuck Norris, and finally now there's a random fact database I can fully appreciate: <Random Facts about Bruce Schneier. My favorite so far: "Bruce Schneier's mail server only sends him the emails' hashes, just to make things a little more interesting for him.".

For those who don't know who Bruce Schneier is, here's Bruce Schneier's Wikipedia page and an excellent article he wrote about estimating risks in election fraud.

Current Mood: amused

20:31 - Where can the matter be

Oh, dear, where can the matter be
When it's converted to energy?
There is a slight loss of parity.
Johnny's so long at the fair.

I really wish I knew who was the author of this particular piece of filk.

Current Mood: amused

12:28 - Bush on "the Google"

Here's the transcript a bunch of people have been talking about:

HOST

I’m curious, have you ever googled anybody? Do you use Google?

BUSH

Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see — I’ve forgot the name of the program — but you get the satellite, and you can — like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It remind me of where I wanna be sometimes.

Of course, I really don't expect much better than that from any politician these days. About the only politicians I know of who are in the least tech-savvy are (possibly) Jesse Ventura, Howard Dean, and Pete Ashdown.

But, it's still impressively stupid.

My favorite response though was this one:

"How inconsiderate! Now we'll have to hear this a jillion times just like that thing about the tubes."
--Paul Boutin

I found it at a CNet article.

Current Mood: amused

15:35 - The story of Virtudyne

Wow, I thought I'd heard the worst and zaniest of the tech company boondoggle stories, but this one has them all beat. It's longish. A 4 part series each about 15 paragraphs. But it's well worth the read. The company's name isn't Virtudyne of course. It's possible to figure out who it is with enough search engine tenacity, but out of respect for the wishes of the author, I won't reveal the name:

1. Virtudyne: The Founding
2. Virtudyne: The Gathering
3. Virtudyne: The Savior Cometh
4. Virtudyne: The Digital Donkey

Sometimes I wish I knew a few dumb rich people who I could snow into funding me for some random project idea of mine. Heck, if I managed to convince them not to saddle me with tons of management people I might even be able to give them value back instead of throwing it all away like this place.

Sadly, I feel that separating fools from their money is kind of evil without making them aware of just how long a shot they're betting on.

Current Mood: amused