This was great, I heard about Will Ferrell's website, but forgot to visit it.
GJ said about 19 hours later
Speaking of Not Safe For Work, let's start using the NSFW tag on posts like this. It'll make them easier for me to find! ;)
Marc said about 20 hours later
Maybe we should make it a little more standardized format, such as "NSFW: Post title here"
GJ said about 21 hours later
no, I meant add a NSFW tag to the post. You know, tags? :)
Marc said about 22 hours later
Oh haha, yea that works too. :) Heck, I could put a little feature in there where it will only show things tagged with NSFW on the blog if you're of a certain age. This would hide them from anonymous users too though.
The preliminary round of the tournament is wrapping up. The US dropped an exciting game to the Czechs today, 4-3, but they still easily made the Qualifying Round with a 2-1 record. This, with a team that has very few NHL stars on board compared to the Czechs, Canadians, Russians and Finns.
Overall notable team records:
Czech Rep 3-0
Russia 3-0
USA 2-1
Finland 2-1
Sweden 2-0
Switzerland 2-0
Slovakia 2-0
Canada 2-0
Sweden plays the Swiss tomorrow, and Canada plays the Slovak team. Both games should be interesting, to say the least.
And I bet you thought the Stanley Cup was the only game in town! :)
Seems the destruction of the Death Star was not as it appeared...
UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ATTACK: Was it an inside job?
1) Why were a handful of rebel fighters able to penetrate the defenses of a battle station that had the capability of destroying an entire planet and the defenses to ward off several fleets of battle ships?
2) Why did Grand Moff Tarkin refuse to deploy the station’s large fleet of TIE Fighters until it was too late? Was he acting on orders from somebody to not shoot down the rebel attack force? If so, who, and why?
3) Why was the rebel pilot who supposedly destroyed the Death Star reported to be on the Death Star days, maybe hours, prior to its destruction? Why was he allowed to escape, and why were several individuals dressed in Stormtrooper uniforms seen helping him?
4) Why has there not been an investigation into allegations that Darth Vader, the second-ranking member of the Imperial Government, is in fact the father of the pilot who allegedly destroyed the Death Star?
5) Why did Lord Vader decide to break all protocols and personally pilot a lightly armored TIE Fighter? Conveniently, this placed Lord Vader outside of the Death Star when it was destroyed, where he was also conveniently able to escape from a large-sized rebel fleet that had just routed the Imperial forces. Why would Lord Vader, one of the highest ranking members of the Imperial Government, suddenly decide to fly away from the Death Star in the middle of a battle? Did he know something that the rest of the Imperial Navy didn’t?
6) How could any pilot shoot a missile into a 2 meter-wide exhaust port, let alone a pilot with no formal training, whose only claim to fame was his ability to “bullseye womprats” on Tatooine? This shot, according to one pilot, would be “impossible, even for a computer.” Yet, according to additional evidence, the pilot who allegedly fired the missile turned off his targeting computer when he was supposedly firing the shot that destroyed the Death Star. Why have these discrepancies never been investigated, let alone explained?
7) Why has their been no investigation into evidence that the droids who provided the rebels with the Death Star plans were once owned by none other than Lord Vader himself, and were found, conveniently, by the pilot who destroyed the Death Star, and who is also believed to be Lord Vader’s son? Evidence also shows that the droids were brought to one Ben Kenobi, who, records indicate, was Darth Vader’s teacher many years earlier! Are all these personal connections between the conspirators and a key figure in the Imperial government supposed to be coincidences?
8) How could a single missile destroy a battle station the size of a moon? No records, anywhere, show that any battle station or capital ship has ever been destroyed by a single missile. Furthermore, analysis of the tape of the last moments of the Death Star show numerous small explosions along its surface, prior to it exploding completely! Why does all evidence indicate that strategically placed explosives, not a single missile, is what destroyed the Death Star?
Btw, if you hadn't guessed, this is a dig on those Loose Change knuckleheads and the 9/11 "truthers," who are busy defending their "theories" about how steel is hard to melt with this bridge collapse in California due to a tanker fire.
Abby said about 13 hours later
Funny. =D
And steel is a type of metal- it melts. How hard is that for people to understand?
GJ said about 16 hours later
Yes, they forget that steel gets melted all the time in steel mills, and before that, blacksmiths used to melt it to forge tools by hand over a COAL fire. Heck, in these accidents, you don't even have to melt the steel--you simply need to heat it enough to force it to lose it's structural strength partially--under load, it can then suffer a cascading failure. Of course, it's just another fringe group.
There are plenty of others out there. Alien-abduction believers, for one.
Geoff said about 17 hours later
Aliens are real...:)
Abby said about 24 hours later
Aliens are so definitely real.
But they don't abduct humans- they just observe us and now they're waiting for us to make the next move into... hyperspace! xD
GJ said 1 day later
Proof, people. Aliens may exist, but current logical assumptions seem to dictate that even if they did, they are not aware of us nor are visiting us so far, just as we are not aware of them. If you'd like, I'll write up a post that explains this line of thinking.
Steve said 1 day later
I don't know what you're talking about GJ. I saw a UFO in the front yard when I was a kid. I remember it vividly. That was about 3 seconds before they abducted me. Explains a lot....
Abby said 1 day later
Who says we need proof?
Aliens exist, and that's that. xD
GJ said 1 day later
Hey, I'm warning you people! You don't want to see another long winded rant from GJ, do ya?
Geoff said 1 day later
Bring it Alien boy! If you're lucky, maybe they'll abduct you....although something tells me they already have. :P
Marc said 1 day later
It's kinda funny, if nobody disagrees even the slightest bit in the comment threads, we move onto aliens. Predictably hilarious.
And yes, aliens exist.
Geoff said 1 day later
You see, the aliens are already taking over. They have dominated our blogging, captured our movie watching experience, exploited the conspiracy theorists, and built the pyramids!
They must have inflitrated our cow farms and poisioned the milk!
We've run into a dilemna that we will probably need a little legal advice on, but I thought that I'd put it out there to see what you all think. We've been purchasing our items for our company directly from the supplier. We then set our own price, which is slightly lower than what the manufacturer sells it to the public for. We never signed anything with the company saying that we had to sell items for a particular price, but they've asked us to match their price. Since we obviously want to maintain a good relationship with the company we buy from, we will comply, but I'm curious about the legality of both their request and what we've done (advertised for less).
I've taken down all of our prices as a precaution. But what's interesting to me is that I know for a fact that another company that buys wholesale from them lists their items on Ebay for less. I would think that would be a no-no as well....
I think you're stuck. While you don't have to comply with their request to match their price, they also don't need to sell you the bags for any less than they list on their website, unless you had an agreement with them before hand. You might advise them of the other company that's selling the stuff on ebay, and mention that you don't think it's fair that you have to comply but they don't.
Even if you did have an agreement with them on price beforehand, they may find ways around the agreement, or just not be very supportive in providing product to you. Since they are you're only source of product, you are very limited in what you can get away with. They have quite a bit of control over you, unfortunately.
Have you gals given any thought to increasing the range of products that you resell? Relying on just one source for all of your income is very risky, as if anything goes wrong with the source, you're out of business.
GJ said about 9 hours later
Steve's spot on, Kristen. There is nothing that can be done from a legal perspective--they aren't violating any laws. It's totally the rules of supply and demand.
Absolutely, positively inform the manufacturer of anyone who appears to be violating their selling rule. Remember, though, that you're not in that line of business, so don't spend your time on finding rule violators.
Now, of course, selling at the same price as the manufacturer is going to dent your sales. If they have a slicker site (and they almost certainly have more media exposure than your company), a price differential was the only thing keeping your sales going. What can you do now? Simple--you must add value for the customer. Previously, you added value by reducing their cost, but that's not the only way to add value.
Adding value:
1. Like Steve said, offer other things for sale--but be sure those things are complementary to your main sale items. Either find good accessories to sell, or expand your business to sell other "interesting" purses. You still want that to be a hallmark of your business, I assume.
2. Offer some kind of freebie or reduced price item along with the purses--this, to the consumer, makes the purse appear lower in price, even though you are keeping with your supply company's restrictions. The idea here is use the gap in price that you used to have to put towards this freebie or reduced price thingamabob.
So, I pulled my computer all apart last night to put in a new motherboard and CPU (Athlon 64 3800+, was a Athlon XP1800+).
Well, got it all apart, and was reading the instructions for the new CPU cooler, when I realized I bought one for a Intel processor. Doh. So today, I ran down to the local computer store, where they wanted $50 for a CPU cooler. No way! So, I went home and started putting my computer back together, so I could hop online and order a new CPU cooler from newegg.com for $15. Well, I knew my CPU was running hot already (75°C when running BitTorrent, which uses a fair bit of power), so while I had it apart I pulled the cooler off the CPU, got all the dust out of it, and applied some new (better) sealant between the CPU and the cooler. The CPU is now running about 10°C cooler when running BitTorrent, and the computer is running faster too.
Oh, and to top it off, I got onto newegg's website, and learned that the cooler I bought will work on my new CPU afterall. Doh again. Oh well, at least I enjoy fidgeting with computer hardware.
And yes, I am starting to wish I bought a PCIexpress video card over Christmas, instead of the AGP one. The only way I found to significantly upgrade my processor was to go with a socket 939 processor, and one of the few (I could find only one) motherboards with that socket style and AGP video slot. At least the new motherboard also accpets the same memory, so I didn't need to upgrade that either.
Oh well, maybe Sunday I'll tear this 'puter back apart and put the new stuff in it. Should be a fair bit quicker then, and it only cost me about $180.
AMD chips run about 10°C hotter than Intel chips. Although the 75°C is a bit hot under load for the AMD, but not by much. Here's the typical breakdown:
AMD Idle: 60°
AMD Load: 68°-70°
Intel Idle: 48°
Intel Load: 58°-65°
Your new mobo supports PCI Express? That's pretty sweet, those cards rock, but frankly I'd save your money a bit long, there's still quite a battle going on for video card formats. I think there's a Dual PCI Express now or something, I don't pay much attention since I haven't built a computer in a few years.
GJ said about 15 hours later
What AGP card are you running? I just dumped my 9600xt ati cards for geforce 8800xt cards--the new ones actually have a slower GPU but far fatter memory pipeline, which actually uses the 256MB on it, unlike the 9600xt. I did the same thing as you, but I'm running even farther behind the times...went from two boxes running T-bird 1200s to two running XP2000+ on the same mobos. It was great, bang for the buck wise, but the jump in cpu temps took me by surprise, too. I went from 47C to 60C.
Steve said about 20 hours later
Sorry Marc, no my new mobo doesn't support PCIexpress. I had to find a mboard that supported AGP because that's the video card I have. I also wanted one that I could reuse my PC2700 memory on. I wanted to keep this a low buck upgrade for now.
GJ, I'm running an 512 MB ATI Radeon X1600 Pro AGP card. I'm hoping these upgrades should keep my computer happy for the next 2-3 years. The XP1800+ and the Asus MB it sits on have been in my computer for at least 5 years. To give you an idea how long I've had it, it replaced the Pentium computer that you gave me way back when. I have had to replace 1 hard drive and 1 CDRW drive (both failed), and I've upgraded the power supply from 300W to 450W, and upgraded the video cards twice in the 5+ years that I've owned it. Seeing as I use it all the time, I'd say it's doing pretty good.
I really only wanted the faster processor and new MB so that I can do more multitasking. BitTorrent uses up a lot of the CPU, and I like to watch TV shows I've downloaded and just let BitTorrent work in the background. Currently the computer really slows down, and sometimes produces choppy video when I do that. And if I start to open other apps on top of that, things slow WAY down.
Steve said 2 days later
Hehehe, got the new system up and running. New CPU temperature - 40°C!! I put a monster cooler on it, must be twice the mass of the cooler that was on the XP1800+ (factory cooler on the old CPU).
This cooler was only $15 from newegg.com. I did also use a special sealant between the CPU and cooler, not the stuff that came on the cooler originally.
Well, it seems faster. Of course, most restarts and stuff so far take a while, as it's installing or updating drivers or software each time. Hopefully things will speed up once everything else stabilizes.
GJ said 2 days later
Best way to speed up boot time is rebuilding the OS. ;) I recommend this at least 1x per year.
Steve said 2 days later
So when you say rebuild, how do you mean? Reformat the main drive and start over? Or is there a way to just reinstall windows without affecting everything else on the drive? If so, would I have to redownload all driver updates, or will most of those stay, and I'd only need to redownload all the WinXP updates?
GJ said 3 days later
When I say rebuild, I mean format and start over. Easiest to do with two drives--one for the OS, and one to store the data you want to keep. That, or you save your data to CD/DVD, but that takes forever if you have a lot of crap.
Steve said 3 days later
I'll keep that in mind next time around. If you segment your drives, and put only the OS on onesegment of the drive, you can probably get away with just formating that segment, right? Are are you thinking wipe clean the entire computer, all programs, everything?
GJ said 4 days later
Segment drives--yeah, that works too...but they're so cheap today, why bother. ;)
And yes, I do mean EVERYTHING. It doubles as the perfect spyware sweep. hehe.
Breaking news! Kurt Cameron and his buddy Ray Comfort are going to prove, on national TV, that GOD EXISTS. He's going to do this without mentioning the Bible, or Jesus, or any gobbledygook. I don't know about you, but I'm truly excited. Maybe I was wrong about this whole "God not existing" thing.
I've heard that he's going to demonstrate the Atheist's Nightmare on this show. Never heard of it? Never fear, I have a video where Ray explains it, and Kurt sits next to him looking pretty. Or something like that.
Fascinating, isn't it? Don't read the comments until AFTER you watch the video.
There is a slight problem with this nightmare scenario for atheists. See, culinary bananas (which is what he is describing above) don't have seeds. Non-culinary bananas are not very similar to this easy to eat variety, and lack most of the "design features" quoted in the video.
Why don't they have seeds, you ask? Very good question. Culinary bananas don't have seeds because they are genetic manipulated breed, much like donkeys. Culinary bananas were invented...by man. They propagate only with man's help. Sorry, James. God didn't design the banana. Man did. You couldn't have picked a dumber proof of God's existence.
He's going on this TV show to debate two atheists. They're going to rip him to shreds, especially if he uses the banana proof. There is no way to prove the existence of God, period. It's a faith thing, through and through.
So...this isn't a dig on belief in God. It's a dig on two fundamentally stupid fundamentalists. Need I remind you that our elected president is one as well.
GJ said 22 minutes later
Mistakenly referred to Ray Comfort as James in the above comment. Comment editing doesn't work yet.
Darcy said about 1 hour later
And it is Kirk Cameron you doofus!
Comfort's arguments made my brain hurt.
Marc said about 2 hours later
Atheist or not, this guy's argument reminds me of anything having to do with Mega Churches, and all of them are nuts. I was actually waiting for Comfort to put his hand on Cameron's head and heal him, then Cameron would fall to the floor. At least then it could have been tagged "funny."
Geoff said about 3 hours later
I would have loved to have seen that!
Ray's banana proof would have been better served if he tried to disprove Darwin's theory of evolution to help prove God: If Darwin's "Survival of the fittest" was true, then the banana wouldn't lend itself to be so easily eaten by humans and apes. Thus, Darwin is full of crap and God creates to serve man (oh and apes too!).
I think that would have been a better approach. His intelligence rating would have gone up to say...the critters under a rock, rather than the rock itself. Oh well, at least we got to see Kirky give us his warm, dumb smile. I think I might go have a human harvested Dole banana, I hear those God branded ones don't shape up.
GJ said about 22 hours later
Darwin's theory isn't "survival of the fittest." You've been listening to the creationists too much. ;) Part of the the strategy of those who oppose evolution is to paint it as something it's not. See this great PDF, it's a great introduction into all thing evolution. I promise, it won't make your brain hurt nearly so much as that Ray Comfort video.
GJ said about 22 hours later
Btw, disproving evolution is not going to prove God. If we find a new mechanism to describe how humans came about, and we truly do find that it replaced what we though of a evolution, I can guarantee it won't be any more palatable to those to hate evolution so. If anything, they'll hate it more--as it will further reduce the mystery of God.
Geoff said 1 day later
Your right, disproving evolution doesn't prove God, however I think it is a better tactic than saying, "a banana fits in my hand, therefor God exists." Remember, I was trying to think on Ray's brain frequency. It is difficult, I know, but perhaps you need to eat a few more bananas and then you shall see the light. I mean, what was this Darwin guy thinking?!?
...I funny....don't hurt me.
Abby said 1 day later
*laughs*
Funny. xD
Just because bananas are quite convenient doesn't prove anything.
(and I finished another book after buying it in the same day)
GJ said 2 days later
Oh, one more thing. Most religious folks, even fundamentalists, are not as dumb as these two. However, they are going onto national television debating those folks behind The Blasphemy Challenge, some fairly smart atheists who go by the handle "The Rational Responders." In a live, open debate, they'd eat Ray for breakfast. However, he may have worked a deal with the network to get editing rights on the debate, so what shows up on TV might not reflect what really was debated. We'll see, as the Rational Responders will likely post the whole thing on their site after the broadcast. It'll be interesting to compare and see what the network filtered. They do have a financial incentive to not alienate their religious viewers.
Geoff said 2 days later
I'm glad you brought up "The Blasphemy Challenge." I've been looking for this scripture, Mark 3:29, which talks about the unforgivable sin. The wacky priest at Bishop Ludden told us about this once (didn't mention it was in the bible though)...and I just assumed he was a moron, but it is actually written in the bible. How funny is that!
So I guess the all powerful one will forgive us for everything....oh, except if I spit on the Holy Spirit. I can crucify Jesus, deny God the father and still repent, but you better not mess with old Holy one, or else you get the boot!
Do Christians even know about this? I'm surprised it wasn't eradicated from the bible as it pretty much contradicts the foundation of Christianity.
GJ said 2 days later
The Blasphemy Challenge was funny, but totally immature, too. It did serve to reveal the idiocy of that particular part of faith, and what was more interesting was the panicked responses of some well-meaning folks who were sure these challenge participants had just damned themselves to hell.
Oh, another update on Ray--here's his new proof:
When you see a painting, you know there was a painter.
When you see a building, you know there was a builder.
So then creation is proof of a creator.
I think the intriguing part of this the stunning number of Atheists in Europe. I had no idea there were that non-believers over there. Also, this isn't a ploy to take potshots at the believers, I thought it had some nice defense views for believers....however misguided they are. (OK, that was a potshot lol!)
Steve said about 2 hours later
Well, don't believe everything you see on TV. God knows where a lot of these "numbers" come from. Hehehe. God knows... Sorry. Typed it first, reread it, and laughed.
As Bill says, when science proves how everything was started, fine, I'll sign up. But for now, religion, in *most* cases, serves the greater good.
GJ said about 4 hours later
Stats? Here you go. Bill was a moron as usual during this interview, but Dawkins handled himself pretty well. The old canard "the worst mass murderers of the world are athiests" was raised, which of course is used to try to explain how atheists have no moral compass and will do anything they please. For some dumb reason, lots of people believe this, when in truth this is really the hallmark of anarchists. That being said, the dictators mentioned were NOT anarchists, but their lack of a moral compass had more to do with their power mad desires and paranoia than atheism.
As for when science proves how everything started....well, first of all, proofs are for mathematicians. Science makes no proofs, it only makes hypotheses that are then tested. Should they pass muster, they are then considered the standard...i.e., a law, but even then they are subject to change should future evidence point to a different solution. So, we today have hypotheses about how the world came about, and how people came about, but they are still pretty rough since it all happened a looooong time ago (not 6,000 years ago, you dang new-earth creationists). This freaks out the religious folk, so they try to keep the kids from learning about this evolution science and astronomy science (they were big into suppressing the Big Bang not so long ago) in order to preserve their house of cards they call a belief system.
Religion can certainly provide a moderating influence in the world. However, it has no place in politics, no place in our system of laws, and no place in our schools.
Last round was interesting, and the Western Conference was unpredictable (which is the only thing you can predict, haha). Let's see what my crystal ball says about the quarterfinals:
Buffalo vs New York: Wow, the Rangers just totally dismantled the Thrashers, and Buffalo beat the Islanders with some hard work. I think this one will come down to goalies--Ryan Miller didn't look as good as I know he can play last round, and Henrik Lundquist is giving the Rangers a far better season than the rest of their team really can ask for. I'll take Buffalo in six.
Ottawa vs New Jersey: Ottawa really pounded the crap out of Pittsburgh, but the Devils will prove to be a far bigger test. Is this Ottawa's year? Dunno--but I think Ottawa may win in seven.
Detroit vs San Jose: If San Jose can shoot the puck and their goalie tandem stays hot, Detroit is in a lot of trouble. Of course, if they can't stay out of the sin bin, Detroit will eat them alive on the power play. Sharks in seven.
Anaheim vs Vancouver: Vancouver barely survived Dallas...and showed that they aren't much more than a goalie and one line. Anaheim is far stronger than Dallas and will likely make short work of Vancouver. Ducks in five.
I did some quick Programming Kung Fu and defeated Internet Explorer (While keeping all the other browsers happy too!). Anyone using Internet Explorer will now notice the comment box works now, no more of that silly expanding.
More updates will be on the way shortly, some things include:
- Finally getting a nice rich text editor in for blog posts.
- Editing/deleting comments
- Easy YouTube integration.
Hey, what's with the 0:38 timestamp on Geoff's post below?
Marc said 27 minutes later
I fixed it, but to be honest I don't know. It was wrong in the database, and the blog doesn't even handle adding the dates, it's all done by Rails and the server. This isn't the first time I've seen a blog post have an absolutely strange timestamp. I'm keeping an eye on it, but it may be happening when I deploy a new version of the blog. I'll remember to check when I post these new updates.
GJ said about 3 hours later
if only my developers worked that fast...
Steve said about 7 hours later
Thanks for the updates Mark! I'm writing this note very long to see how well it works. Wow, look at that, it worked! You are the man!!!
Geoff said about 11 hours later
Mark? Who's Mark, Stephen?
Steve said about 13 hours later
Oh, sorry Jeff, I meant Marc. Stupid typing too fast... Sorry Marc!
Geoff said about 14 hours later
At least you had his name right, I think Dad once called Marc, Rascal!
Marc said 1 day later
Once? He calls me Rascal at least once a weekend.
Geoff said 1 day later
Must be the smell....
GJ said 1 day later
Yeah, cause if it was stature he'd be calling Geoff Rascal.
