perkonis

I saw this in with my normal run of comment spam today…

Xenical online….

Xenical lawsuits. Xenical. How long for results xenical. Cheap prices on xenical. Cheap xenical. Cheap xenical diet pills. Xenical tablets….

OK, I’m by no means a marketing guru, but it would seem to me that when you are trying to con persuade people to buy your product, you probably should not open the sales pitch by mentioning lawsuits.
Yeah, I know it’s all about blackhat SEO, but asuming they were able to spam their way up Google, I still think that opening the con sales pitch with the word lawsuit is a dumb idea. Yet another reason I wouldn’t make a good spammer. Well, that and the fact that I couldn’t possibly match the 7346 words of my most recent spam comment. Seriously. 7346 words, 46140 characters. That’s impressive.

I have to salute the producers of “How It’s Made.” Where most TV shows would cheerfully elect for gratuitous nudity, they have taken the opposite approach.
I was just watching the episode where they were making mannequins. Now you can imagine the horrors that could have occurred in showing this process. Thankfully, someone had the common decency and the moral wherewithal to protect the poor, innocent children from this.
They blurred out the mannequin boobs.
Mercifully I, along with an entire generation of impressionable minds, was spared the horrors of seeing a completely naked blob of Styrofoam that vaguely resembled a pair of boobs. At last, someone is thinking of the children.

I should know better. Should being the operative word there.
Since I am our IT department at work (I was the only one who could spell IT) I’m always harping on security. Left to their own devices my users (who all outrank me) tend to do really dumb things. Like disable firewalls, uninstall anti-virus, and connect to any random ad-hoc network they see. I have the envious task of edumacating them.
So far I have done a pretty good job. They let Windows install updates (they weren’t even on SP1 a year and a half ago), they keep their anti-virus up to date, and they quit surfing somewhat shady websites. They even quit storing information that should be secure in plain text on a laptop. I seem to be setting a good example.
Then today I remembered that some time ago I had to share my printer. Didn’t need to do that for long, but I forgot to “unshare” it when I was done. Care to guess how I figured that out? Yeah, the printer automagically spit out a page when someone else in the motel decided to use it.
I’ll turn in my geek card in the way out.

I think I have my very own morning DJ. No, not on the radio. That would be insane. He lives in my head.
Every morning as I stumble/stagger/fall into the shower my DJ comes on duty. I can actually hear the pop and hiss as the needle is dropped on the record (yeah, my DJ is old school).
He’s really not a very good DJ and I think he drinks like a fish. What other reason could he have for playing this 6 days in a row?

There, is it stuck in your head too?

The avatar. That little picture that represents you in the online world. The main item that makes your online persona unique. The one thing that identifies you as you. But what is the value of the ubiquitous avatar? It’s the image of yourself that you choose to project into virtuality. It is possibly the most valuable online commodity there is. Yet at the same time it’s completely worthless.

How do you identify someone online? Of course there is their username, but the quickest and most impressionable is their avatar. At a glance, you see a familiar iconic picture and you know who it belongs to.

There are a fair number of people I “know” online. I haven’t ever met them in the real world, and most of them I probably never will. I don’t even know what most of them look like. I could have a face to face conversation with them and never even know it. Unless they happen to look like their avatar, that is.

I frequent a number of sites like Digg and Netscape where everyone has an opportunity to select a unique picture to represent themselves. I see the same people on a lot of the sites I visit and as soon as I see their avatar, I know who it is. That little bitty picture is the digital equivalent of their face and their virtual reputation rolled into one. In that sense, the avatar is priceless. It lets everyone know at a glance that you are you.

So how is it worthless then? Because there is no permanency. No authenticity. Tired of being you? In a different mood? Like a virtual masquerade ball, just upload a new pic and voila, new you. It even works if you want to be someone else. Just nick somebody else’s avatar and use it for your own. Since that 48×48 picture is the first thing that draws someone’s attention, you can go a good way toward impersonating someone. At least for a while. I have seen it done several times and it does nothing to help the reputation of the impostor. But it does cause at least momentary confusion.

I started using the avatar above over a year ago. I’ve used it for so long and in so many places that I don’t even remember what I used before. I have had people ask me what it means. Since they equate the avatar to the person behind it, they think I chose it for a specific reason or that it holds some deep and significant meaning. The big reason I chose it? It’s bright and it scales well. At 16×16 or 150×150, it’s identifiable. It tends to stand out no matter what the size. Not exactly the deepest and most meaningful of reasons, but there it is. Now I use it everywhere and I guess that in a sense it has come to represent me. Or maybe I just like it.

So how do you choose your avatar knowing it will be your electronic face? I see people who use an actual picture. Sometimes even of themselves. Others use a cartoon character. Or an album cover. Or the ever popular cat with a melon on its head. So today’s homework assignment is this: What is your avatar, how did you chose it, and what does it mean? There may be a pop quiz later.

The local news in Charlotte is by far the most entertaining I have ever seen. This morning there is a patch of ice on a road. Not a huge patch. Probably 50 yards or so. And it’s probably 1/4 inch thick. And this is HUGE news. They keep interrupting every few minutes to give an update on the errant patch. They have a crew on the scene to cover the latest up to the minute news. One of the anchors commented that it “doesn’t look natural.” Seriously. They have contacted utilities to make sure there isn’t a water main break. Best guess is that it fell off a truck. I’m waiting for them to blame Bin Laden. Thankfully they had a team on the spot to see the salt truck put an end to this threat to our national security.

This is one of the funniest news casts ever. I think they may possibly have the Department of Homeland Security on the show before they sign off. They were able to get the weather guy on camera long enough to give survival tips since it is currently 18 degrees out. Apparently there is danger of freezing to death in a matter of minutes in this kind of weather.

Qualifying took place for the Daytona 500 last Sunday. Actually that was qualifying for the qualifying races. So 66 cars set times so that they can race to get in the race.

Now, the top 2 cars in qualifying for the qualifying races are actually locked into the real race (not the qualifying race) leaving 41 positions up for grabs. That means there are 64 cars that will line up in the two qualifying races. Ergo 23 cars will go home after the qualifying races but before the real race. Presumably the drivers will go home too. This is not good news for them unless someone forgot to set their Tivo and really need to see House.

So far the system seems easy enough, but hold on. The teams that were in the top 35 in car owner points at the end of 2006 are guaranteed a stating spot. The driver could go out, weave like a drunken gibbon, hit everything but the lottery, and wind up in the infield upside down and on fire, and still be guaranteed a starting spot (in the real race). Since the two cars that qualified on the front row were in the top 35 last year, that leaves 31 cars (and presumably drivers) fighting for 8 spots.

To further complicate things, there is the past champions provisional. If there is a past champion who doesn’t otherwise qualify, they get to line up last. If more than one champion is vying for the coveted position of dead last, it goes to the most recent champion. This means that theoretically, Herb Thomas could start the Daytona 500. However, the various permutations required for his to happen are so many that a super computer is needed to figure it out. And the WOPR just asks if I want to play a game. Since Dale Jarrett is pretty well assured of this position, it leaves 30 teams vying for 7 positions. These are getting to be some really bad odds.

Out of those 7 spots, 4 will be filled by the top finishers (who weren’t in the top 35 in 06) in the qualifing races (not the actual qualifying). The other 3 will be filled by the fastest qualifiers (from qualifiying, not the qualifying races) who weren’t in the top 35 (from 2006 owners point, not 2006 drivers points, and not qualifying for the qualifying races).

Ok, now that the whole qualifying thing is clear I think I can use the qualifying data (from the qualifying races, or is it from qualifying?) to predict the winner of the Daytona 500. So if i crunch the numbers… let’s see, carry the one, cosine of the square root of the average speed of the non-qualifiers (from the qualifying races, not qualifying), and I get the winner of the Daytona 500 as Ray Haroun. Crystal clear.