"Dear Americans...

"...We totally agree with you about illegal immigration. Please allow us to show you to the nearest airport.

Sincerely,
Native Americans"

Thanks go to dearblankpleaseblank.com.

This! This is why I don't want my teenagers to have a car...

Gee. Thanks a lot honey. I love you too...

My wife, younger daughter, and I were getting our hair cut last night.  And here is a snippet of a conversation my daughter and I were having when we were so rudely interrupted...

daughter: "Gee, daddy, you should let me pluck out all your grey hairs and then you'd look really young!"
wife (from the other room): "But then he'd be bald!"

How much Spanish did you learn your first semester?

This is pretty dang funny. And I don't know about you, but the amount and quality of Spanish seems about what I learned...

I can't relate to this comic, can you?

None of you have ever done this, have you?  You know, write a scathing email then send it to the very person/people you were writing about?  I never have... Yeah, right.

By the way, I just love Pearls Before Swine.  I'm a big fan of silly puns and ridiculous word-play and PBS gives me my fix every day.  Read the artist's official blog here.

Some Chinese proverbs for your enjoyment

I like these.  Short, but oh, so true...

• A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
• A bit of fragrance clings to the hand that gives flowers.
• A book holds a house of gold.
• A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.
• A book tightly shut is but a block of paper.
• A child's life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark.
• A diamond with a flaw is worth more than a pebble without imperfections.
• A gem is not polished without rubbing, nor a man perfected without trials.
• A nation's treasure is in its scholars.
• A rat who gnaws at a cat's tail invites destruction.
• Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.
• Be the first to the field and the last to the couch.
• Dig the well before you are thirsty.
• Do not fear going forward slowly; fear only to stand still.
• Don't open a shop unless you like to smile.
• Each generation will reap what the former generation has sown.
• He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
• He who strikes the first blow admits he's lost the argument.
• If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.
• If you don't want anyone to know, don't do it.
• Keep your broken arm inside your sleeve.
• Not until just before dawn do people sleep best; not until people get old do they become wise.
• Only the man who crosses the river at night knows the value of the light of day
• The palest ink is better than the best memory.
• To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.

Courtesy of the Insurance Broadcasting newsletter.  For more Chinese proverbs, check out Wikiquote.

On the first day of Christmas, my retailer sent to me...

..a small tire in a big, honkin' box!

Really.  That's all there was--one bmx tire--in this giant box.  Thanks to my co-worker who let me take a picture of his package, ...and the retailer shall remain nameless.

The cup is definitely half-full.

This is kinda how I approach when it is I play golf...

Chuck Norris is so tough...

This one is for my son, a big fan of Chuck Norris.  Or maybe it's just Chuck Norris jokes.

Anyway, Chuck has been named an honorary Texas Ranger!  Now, he doesn't have to pose as a Ranger being Cordell Walker; he can pose as a Ranger being himself!

I must say, he definitely looks better in this article than when I posted about him here.

Do you have an iPad?...

Have I got a case for you!

Okay, maybe I'm just old and nostalgic, but it's really cool!

A great quote

"Men's and nations' finest hour consist of those moments when extraordinary challenge is met by extraordinary response. Hence in those darkest hours, we must light our individual candles rather than vying with others to call attention to the enveloping darkness. Our indignation about injustice should lead to illumination, for if it does not, we are only adding to the despair—and the moment of gravest danger is when there is so little light that darkness seems normal!" - Neal A. Maxwell (1926-2004), LDS Apostle.

Who are you?  And what do you stand for?  But maybe most important, what are you yourself willing to do about it?

Golf sale at Uinta Golf!

Today through Thursday, Thanksgiving, Uinta Golf is taking 15% off your entire order in their online store!  So, don't live in Utah?  No problem!  There is, of course, the usual fine print about certain items not being included, such as all Ping items.  See their home page for details.  But as an example, the Garmin Approach G3 GPS that I covet is $270 minus 15% = $229.50.  Amazon's price is $244.  Pretty good.

It's the bra, stupid!

With apologies to President Clinton, or maybe not, depending on your view of his presidency.  But I digress...

The real reason for this post is based on this article from USA Today.  According to USA Today, retail analyst John Morris says that brisk sales of Victoria's Secret "Miraculous" bras (sorry, you'll have to dig up that link for yourself...) could be a good indicator of two important economic trends.

• If women buy these high-priced bras, it probably indicates they'll buy other things for themselves.  This is important because shoppers mainly bought presents for others.
• The "Bombshell" bras cost anywhere from $50 to $250.  This doesn't include the jewel-encrusted one which goes for $2 million.  So what does this mean?  Well, according to the story, it's important to note that the buyers of the bras are not husbands buying for their wives, but it's the wives buying for themselves which indicate that shoppers may be willing to indulge.

So, people are buying for themselves more and not only for others, and they're buying more expensive things.  Sounds like good support for the economy.  Oooo...  I didn't just say that, did I?

It's beginning to look a lot like...

...Thanksgiving?   Shouldn't it be looking more like fall than winter? I blame it all on the retailers who had Christmas stuff out before Halloween! They must've fooled Mother Nature or something...

Who says your vote doesn't count?

I love these feel good kind of stories...

Two couples, old friends who had not seen each other in awhile, had a chance meeting at their polling place. The wife of one couple, Enid, upon seeing her old friends, Noel and Mary Beth, remembered a ring she had found with the initials M & N on it. It turns out that it was Noel's wedding ring, last seen in 1966!  Apparently, Noel lent it to his son to use as a Scout neckerchief slide (I'm not sure I would do that! :) ) and it was lost later that evening when he took it off.  At a holiday dinner sometime later, Enid found it, tried to find the owner and when she couldn't, put it into safe keeping.  The chance meeting jogged her memory and the ring is now back to its rightful owner.

Read the full story from The Deseret News here.

PS.  Here's a weird (but unimportant) connection to me:  The son now lives in Fresno, CA, where I grew up.

I'm a geeky fan, but not this much of a geeky fan...

but as Darth Vader would say... "Impressive"

Sometimes I wonder...

You don't suppose that the workers in my office are doing this whenever we aren't around, do you?  I guess I can understand since I'd do the same thing if my boss were out... Nah, that'd never happen...

Can you spell "hypocrite?"

Maybe it starts with a "C," as in C-H-A-F-F-E-T-Z.  In this story, Representative Chaffetz (R-Utah) says that "we're paying too many people too much money," and said that the number of federal workers who make more than $150,000 has doubled since President Obama took office.  (NOTE: Actually, I'm not sure that's factual.  I need to check another article I saw that I thought said it's doubled in the last 5 years.  I'll edit when I find out more, but I'll assume he's correct since he should know.)  He also said that federal workers' pay should be frozen, if not cut 10%.

So to me, that sounds like anyone on the federal payroll making $150,000/yr should get their pay cut 10%, right?  How much is his salary?  $174,000.  So he'll gladly accept a pay cut, right?

According to the article in the Deseret News, "When asked whether $174,000 is too much, Chaffetz pointed instead to the overall congressional budget and said it needs to be revamped."  Way to skirt the question there hypocrite Representative Chaffetz.  At least he works for Utah (I think).  I'd hate to be "the other guy" that gets his pay cut.

AUGGHH!! This is a national emergency! Call Obama!

What's he doing trying to solve the economy and health care issues?!?  This is the real tragedy!  He needs to do something NOW!  We're running out of Chocolate!

Looks like someone else will be joining Wade in the unemployment line...

What kind of an operation is Jones running there in Dallas?!?  I know that going 1-7 to start the season is a little embarrassing, but to try to hide the existence of your team by not renewing its domain name is a little extreme, isn't it?

Top 5 States to Play Golf

...at least according to one editor from Golf Digest magazine.  Since I only started playing a few years ago, I've yet to play outside Utah (except for a couple of rounds in Mesquite, NV - about 30 miles from Utah), so I'm in no position to judge.

Do you agree with his list?

#5 South Carolina
#4 Hawaii
#3 Michigan
#2 Oregon
#1 California

The Queen of Facebook

Hey, if she's all in, then I can't be all wrong for being a Facebook fan, can I?

A "driver's license" for golf

Can I just rant here for a second?  I was playing a round of golf on Friday and I was behind a two-some who were playing from the tips (6700 yd tees).  Not a problem, except they didn't belong there!  I was playing the next tees up (6300 yds, so an average of 20 yds shorter / tee) and I always had to wait until after their second shots, and often after their third shots before I could tee off.  It was so bad that a three-some in front of them actually left them behind!  I finally got past them, but come on!

So, I propose a Driver's License for golf.  I'm sure it's been thought of before, but the Driver needs to be able to hit driver at least X yards and hit Y fairways / round before being allowed on the longest tees.  It sure would make playing golf a lot more pleasant, at least for me.  And while I'm at it (the rant, that is) how about a written etiquette test that has to be passed before going out on the Driver test?

Not exactly the governator...

How would you like to have this guy as your next governor (I'm talking about the guy on the right :) )?  I'm not sure which I like better: his beard, or his political party...

Thanks go to Insurance Newscast.

Well, this explains all the babbling emails...

7% of Babies Boast their Own Email Address.

But then, what about the other 90% of emails I get that are gobbledygook?

Rah, Rah

I've got a team in my workplace's "Elite" (whatever that means) Fantasy Football league.  Not only that, but I'm currently 3-1.  Woo-hoo for me!

But that's not my reason for writing.  I just wanted to share some of the funnier (at least to me) FF team names that are out there.  (And you know how much I just love word play)

10. "Burrested Development"

9.   "Armed Schaubbery" (he better be.  he's my starting QB this year.)

8.   "Boldin the Beautiful" (at least he was when he was on my FF team a few years ago...)

7.   "What Would Jones-Drew?" (and your WWJD bracelet still makes sense...)

6.   "Casselblanca"

5.   "Ahman the Inactive List, Again"

4.   "Larry Csonka and the Chocolate Factory"

3.   "Somewhere over Dwayne Bowe"

2.   "Orton Hears a Who"

and my favorite...

1.   "Do us all a Favre and retire"

Okay, a bonus for the "guys" (my wife won't appreciate it...)

"Show us your TDs"

Courtesy of bleacher report

A New Beginning...

Yes, I'm back!  I've been a little busy, but mostly lazy.  Actually, I've been learning to play golf, and going at it full tilt!  Not very good at it, mind you, but I've been enjoying myself.  So be prepared to see a lot more posts here, especially about golf.  However, that doesn't mean there will no longer be the wit and wisdom you've all (all 3 of you--okay, I might be a little optimistic) have come to know and love.  Stay tuned.

Too many Tweeties?

What's up with this?  Too many people with too much nothing to say?

Not sure I want to hold this phone up to my ear...

This cordless handset just seems a little painful (not to mention heavy).

What's amazing is that 58% go ahead and buy this cordless system and only 37% actually go on to buy what looks more like a phone! :P

Guess Who?

Can you tell who this is in the picture below?  When I read the caption, I had a hard time believing it!  Answer coming in a few days...

UPDATE 6/2: It's Chuck Norris! Can you believe this is what Walker, Texas Ranger looks like now?

Land Reclamation Project

Based on this article from USA Today, I figure that in a few years there'll be no need for Glacier National Park.  Why? Since there won't be any more glaciers! Duh...  

Anyway, we should just decommission it as a national park and build some condos or at least some coal-fired electricity plants.  Montana's Big Sky Country, right?  What difference are a few smokestacks going to make.

C'mon.  It makes sense.  Admit it.

Ummm... Thanks, but I'll wait for the next car going up...

Researchers at Stanford University have created a car that will drive up Colorado's Pikes Peak.  Oh, I guess I should mention that it will do it driverless!  According to USA Today, the car "can traverse rough terrain, accelerate quickly and negotiate sharp turns like other high-performance sports cars."  It just doesn't need a driver.  I don't know about you, but I think I'll let the technology mature a little before getting into a car that drives itself. :)

Here's the article.  Interesting read.

Reason #827 I love Verizon Wireless

Although I have AT&T for my phone because 1) my company pays for the service and 2) they're the only ones that have the iPhone, I must say I just love Verizon Wireless for my family's plan.

On this past month's bill both my daughter and my wife had a couple of, let's just say, questionable text charges. Without even blinking (as far as I could tell.  I wouldn't know if he blinked or not.) the Verizon rep offered to take those charges off for us which were immediately reflected on my bill.

Of course, they're not perfect, but they've done right by me.

Bravo for Verizon who just gets customer service.

0h n0! whr dd 4ll th3 v0w3ls g0?

Ha ha!  This is pretty dang funny (from Google, of course)

Today’s vowel outage

Thursday, April 01, 2010 6:49 AM

Posted by Sam Schillace, Gmail Engineering Director

If you logged into Gmail over the last hour (or visited the Gmail homepage), you probably noticed that something looked a bit off: all the vowels are missing. We realize this makes things difficult for all of you who rely on Gmail — whether at home or at work — and we’re incredibly sorry. We take morphological issues like this extremely seriously, so we want to let you all know what happened and what we're doing about it.

At 6:01 am Pacific Time, during routine maintenance at one of our datacenters, the frontend web servers in that particular datacenter started failing to render the letter 'a' for a subset of users. As error rates escalated, the strain spread to other datacenters. We worked quickly to avoid a cascading failure of the entire alphabet by implementing a stopgap solution that limited the damage to the letters 'a,' 'e,' 'i,' 'o,' and 'u.' As a result, we're experiencing Gmail’s first temporary vowel outage. (We’re still investigating whether the letter 'y' is impacted and will post an update here shortly.)

Over the last hour we've received numerous reports of this issue via our help forums, from colleagues at Google, and via email you’ve sent us. Some of you have already found creative workarounds for communicating without vowels, like Aaron, who sent us this:


Having 80.8% of the alphabet available is significantly below the 99.9% full letter uptime reliability we strive for. Since identifying the root case of this issue, we’ve started bringing vowels back to Gmail, so you should see them back in your account within the next few hours if you don’t already. In the meantime, while you may still see this issue in Gmail's web interface, both IMAP and POP access are functioning normally. We'll post an update as soon as things are fully resolved and, again, we're v3ry s0rry.

Update (7:30 am): We’ve determined that the letter 'y' is not impacted. 

Where will you be Dec. 17, 2010?

I'll be at the sequel of one of my all-time favorite movies...  (And, yes, I am a nerd.  Thank you.)

Happy International Women's Day all!

International Women's Day

Tell me again why we play golf?

After watching this video, I think it's only for the amusement of those that don't play golf.  However, I really enjoyed the poor schmuck fellow at about :49 into it.




via GolfBlogger

Do they check fluids with that tire change?

If I had, like, a gazillion dollars, the Bugatti Veyron would be the car I'd own. At only $1.2M, it's a steal.

So, being a gazillionaire, I guess I wouldn't care about the annual $20,000 maintenance, the $30,000 for a new set of tires (every 2,500 miles), nor the recommendation by Bugatti that the wheels be replaced every 10,000 miles along with the tires for only $50,000.

Sigh...

via Luxurylaunches

FarmVille!

Are you a member of Facebook?  If so, have you ever played FarmVille?  If you already play it, you can watch this video, but it's not really for you (or maybe it is...).  If you haven't played it yet, but have the urge to try it, this video should kill that urge off nicely...

PS-About the last 1/4 of the video is outtakes and advertising for the site. He's got some pretty good stuff though...

How to mathematically prepare your bagel

Once you go out and get bagels, do you just slice 'em in half, slather some cream cheese on, and eat?

Well... BORING!

Next time you have some fresh bagels, do something a little different and make a Mobius strip.  Amaze your friends and family!

via BoingBoing

The way to keep customers coming back (well, me at least)

Last week my wife said she wanted some bagels for breakfast, so being the wonderful husband that I am, I went to Einstein Bros to pick up a dozen bucket.

It was an especially easy decision given that I had finally earned a free dozen bucket using one of their promotions.  I took my family's order and off I went.

Since I was still in my jammies, I decided to use their drive-thru.  When I pulled up, I informed them that I had a card for a free dozen and proceeded to order.  Unfortunately, they told me they were out of one type of bagel, so I changed things up a little, making sure that my order still added up to 13.  Since it was a free dozen bagels, it did not include any cream cheese. I wanted some so I ordered that as well (how can you eat a bagel without cream cheese?).  I pulled up to the window, got my bagels, paid for the cream cheese and off I went.

It wasn't until I got home that I realized there were only 11 bagels in the box!  I called the manager at the store ready to yell and scream because I was just positive he/she was going to tell me the 11 I got were already free and what did I expect?  But much to my chagrin (yes, I was hoping I could yell...) she asked me how to fix things.  I replied that I'd be happy to just get the missing bagels next time I came in, but she said that to make it right, she'd give me another dozen!  A free dozen for me not getting all of my free dozen.  She took my name and number down and said to let them know the next time I came in.

So this morning I went back to that same Einstein Bros and told them my story.  The worker went to the back, verified my name and took my order for a dozen.  End of story?  Well, almost.  They let me order 13, not 12.  Not only that, but they gave me the cream cheese that I was going to pay for.  Bonus on top of the bonus!

Corporate policy or manager's initiative, I don't know, but either way, they have a happy customer.  One that's going to keep coming back and one that's going to tell other people about my experience.  Think about it: what if she didn't make me happy?  A lost customer to save 11 bagels and a tub of cream cheese?  Doesn't sound very smart to me.  What she did for me is just good business and I'm more than happy to keep buying Einstein Bros foods.

Happy 200 to me!

Okay, it's all fluff, but on my way to creating a 'real' post, I noticed that this is the 200th post for this blog!

Woo-hoo!

The story of my boyhood sports hero

The authorized story, that is...

When I was a wee lad, all I wanted to do was be a pro baseball player.  I'd play every chance I got, I'd read everything I could about the game, and I'd watch every game I could, whether it was pro (we had a Single A team in town), college or high school.  Heck, back then, I didn't even know they didn't make all that much money.  Certainly not the kind of money they make today.   But I digress.

My baseball idol back in those days was Willie Mays.  Scratch that.  He still is.  And, he's the reason for this post.  We finally have an authorized biography of Willie Mays!  I can't wait to read it!

via Holy Kaw!

So, what did you do with your Christmas tree after Christmas?

Recycle it?  Toss it in the trash?  Cut it up for firewood?  Whatever it was, it was probably not what these guys did...

Today's the day!

Yes, I admit it.  I am an Apple fanboy.  As such, I will be keeping a close eye on what happens at their media event today where it's expected that Apple releases their long-awaited tablet computer.  Will they?  Won't they? I guess we'll know in a few hours (it starts at 11am Mountain)...

If you want to follow along, here are a few places to do so...

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/live-from-the-apple-tablet-latest-creation-event/

http://live.gizmodo.com/

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/apple-tablet-event/

http://live.slashgear.com/

http://theappleblog.com/live/

Easily shrink pictures for uploading or sending

I guess that's why they call the app "Shrink Pic." This utility is for those of you who do a lot of picture posting to your own blogs or sending via email or IM.

Basically, Shrink Pic automatically creates a temporary copy, resizes it and sends it instead.

For instance, the below picture's size on my hard drive is 450K. When I insert the picture into the post (which uploads it into my storage), Shrink Pic resizes it to 52K in my blog storage, saving me a lot of space for more pictures! I've only had Shrink Pic for a little while, but it seems to work great! One small caveat, though. Shrink Pic doesn't seem to work for me when sending from Outlook 2007 running on Windows 7. I'm going to contact the author to see what's going on since the website says it's supported.

Shrink Pic doesn't modify the original, nor does it seem to change it when moving pictures from folder to folder, even if it's something like my online DropBox account. By the way, did I tell you Shrink Pic is free? Even better!

for Windows, via LifeHacker

On sale now! 30% off!

Get a soon-to-be-retired space shuttle on sale while you can!  Only $28.8M!

Top 100 books for 2009

Here is USA Today's top 100 best-selling books for 2009.

So, what sticks out?  How about Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series' books taking the #1 spot.   And #2.  And #3.  And #4.  Yeesh.  In fact, the entire boxed set came in at #70!  (Not to mention #19 with The Host)

My son's favorite series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, nails down #7, #8, #18, and #24.

And finally, vampires seem to have a hold on readers in general.  Charlaine Harris had nine books make the top 100, mostly about vampires along with P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast with six books.

What's your favorite?

How Great Thou Art!

"O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed."


The lyrics of that song came to mind as I viewed the following photograph.  Just pretty amazing.  In fact, it's now my desktop wallpaper.  You can get your own hi-res copy here.

For those of you who don't want to click through to the Bad Astronomy article (I highly recommend reading it), it's a picture from the Hubble telescope.  You know how you go outside on a dark night and look up and see all those stars, and then you keep looking at one spot for a few seconds and more stars appear?  Well, this is sorta like that.  They pointed Hubble at an "empty" area of space and let it gather in light for 48 hours.  48 hours!  How long can you keep your eyes open?  Anyway, what Hubble was able to capture is light from galaxies 13 Billion light-years away!  The article says that some of the light from these galaxies is "only" 600 million years after the Big Bang.

Oh, yeah, one more thing.  The width of this picture only covers about 1/15th the width of a full moon.  It would take 30 million of these pictures to cover the entire sky!

"Thy power throughout the universe displayed" indeed.

Twelfth Night Before Christmas...

This past Christmas, my son had to memorize Clement Clarke Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas."  You probably know it better as "The Night Before Christmas."  In fact, the Wikipedia article states that it was actually published anonymously in 1823 and is only attributed to Moore.  But I digress...

The reason for this post is to update the poem a little.  At least update the interpretation based on what Google Voice thought it heard from a speaker.  And no, it's not me.  And I can't vouch for how good the author's English is.  I won't post the text here since I haven't gotten permission yet from the author or from Google Voice, but it's pretty funny really, especially where Santa calls out the reindeer names.  Read it here.

The 'military intelligence' oxymoron strikes again!

Who the heck would spend $4.5 million on a remote control plane and not spend enough to thwart a $26 software app that steals video feeds?  Oh, yeah, the U.S. Government...

Thanks to boingboing for pointing this out.