Modern Times...

Via Eric W., this joke – which only some of my readers will “get”.  For the geeks, the thing that makes it so funny is that it sounds so much like what we've all experienced.  Setup: an ISP's subscriber is calling a technician at the ISP's help desk:

Subscriber caller: My Internet is down.

Tech: Why do you say that?

Caller: Because When I try to go to Google, it takes 10 minutes to draw the screen.

Tech: Do you have any XBOXs, TVs, or other Computers?

Caller: Yes.

Tech: Go turn the power off on all of them and try again to access Google.

Caller: I can't... My husband is watching a movie on his new NetFlix power big screen, my kids are having an XBOX live tournament, and my daughter is updating her iPod/iTunes songs.

Tech: So you said your Internet isn't working?

Caller: OK, I turned all those things off. Speed is a little better, but still doesn't work.

Tech: OK try rebooting your router.

CAller : (phone disconnects, and she calls back). That's odd, my phone disconnected when I rebooted the router. Internet is still slow.

Tech: Oh so I see you have VOIP also. Do you have Direct TV boxes?

Caller: Yes, I'll go turn that off. I set my DVR to download movies in the background a few days ago. Do you think that had something to do with it?

Tech: Try again now.

Caller: Wow, my Internet sure is fast now! Google loads in 1/10th of a second. What did you do to fix it? You must have changed something on your end, when I was off turning stuff off. By the way, why did you want me to turn the stuff off?

Political Tees...

Via my mom, a nice collection of T-shirts for the coming 2012 elections.  Here's a couple I particularly enjoyed:

Einstein Weighs In...

Via reader Jim M.:

Remember this when you vote next November...

For my readers who are not up on their science: 185,999 miles/second is the approximate speed of light...

There Are Only So Many Cells...

I'm an engineer.  My mother emailed this to me.  Do you think she sent it for the political humor in it?  I'm not so sure...

All babies start out with the same number of raw cells, which over nine months, develop into a complete female baby.

 

The problem occurs when cells are instructed by the little chromosomes to make a male baby instead.

 

Because there are only so many cells to go around, the cell necessary to develop a male's reproductive organs have to come from cells already assigned elsewhere in the female.

 

Recent tests have shown that these cells are removed from the communications center of the brain, migrate lower in the body and develop into male sexual organs. If you visualize a normal brain to be similar to a full deck of cards, this means that males are born a few cards short, so to speak, and some of their cards are in their shorts.

 

This difference between the male and female brain manifests itself in various ways. Little girls will tend to play things like house or learn to read. Little boys, however, will tend to do things like placing a bucket over their heads and running into walls.

 

This basic cognitive difference continues to grow until puberty, when the hormones kick into action and the trouble really begins. After puberty, not only the size of the male and female brains differ, but the center of thought also differs. Women think with their heads. Male thoughts often originate lower in their bodies where their ex-brain cells reside.

Of course, the size of this problem varies from man to man.

 

In some men only a small number of brain cells migrate and they are left with nearly full mental capacity but they tend to be rather dull, sexually speaking. Such men are known in medical terms as "Engineers."

Other men suffer larger brain cell relocation. These men are medically referred to as "Fighter Pilots."

 

A small number of men suffer massive brain cell migration to their groins. These men are usually referred to as..."Mr. President or Mr. Congressman."

Dead Horse Politics...

Reader Simi L. passes along a new variation on an old classic:

The tribal wisdom of the Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that “When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, best strategy is to dismount."

However, in government more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:

1. Buying a stronger whip.

2. Changing riders.

3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.

4. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.

5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.

6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.

7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.

9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse's performance.

10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.

11. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.

12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

And of course...

13 Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

If you don't understand this theory, you haven't lived long enough!

Classical Muscians Gone Wild...

Miki and Debbie!!!

Here's video of a very nice run that Miki and Debbie made in competition last Sunday.  They did a terrific job...

Proof Positive...

Reader Simi L. sends this comforting thought along...

There is finally conclusive evidence that Osama bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi are dead.

Yesterday, they both registered to vote in Chicago.

Doormats...

Reader Jim M. sends along a collection of photos of doormats.  I liked this one!

Two Parables...

Two readers send me parables about the perils of assuming senior stupidity.  First, from my mom:

A lawyer and a senior citizen are sitting next to each other on a long flight.

The lawyer is thinking that seniors are so dumb that he could get one over on them easily.

So, the lawyer asks if the senior would like to play a fun game.

The senior is tired and just wants to take a nap, so he politely declines and tries to catch a few winks.

The lawyer persists, saying that the game is a lot of fun...."I ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me only $5.00. Then you ask me one, and if I don't know the answer, I will pay you $500.00," he says.

This catches the senior's attention and, to keep the lawyer quiet, he agrees to play the game.

The lawyer asks the first question. "What's the distance from the Earth to the Moon?"

The senior doesn't say a word, but reaches into his pocket, pulls out a five-dollar bill, and hands it to the lawyer.

Now, it's the senior's turn. He asks the lawyer, "What goes up a hill with three legs, and comes down with four?"

The lawyer uses his laptop to search all references he can find on the Net.

He sends E-mails to all the smart friends he knows; all to no avail. After an hour of searching, he finally gives up.

He wakes the senior and hands him $500.00. The senior pockets the $500.00 and goes right back to sleep.

The lawyer is going nuts not knowing the answer. He wakes the senior up and asks, "Well, so what goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four?"

The senior reaches into his pocket, hands the lawyer $5.00, and goes back to sleep.

Then from reader Jim M.:

An older, white haired man from Ft. Lauderdale inFlorida , walked into a jewelery store this past Friday evening with a beautiful much younger gal at his side.

He told the jeweler he was looking for a special ring for his girlfriend. The jeweller looked through his stock and brought out a $5,000 ring.

The man said, 'No, I'd like to see something more special.'

At that statement, the jeweller went to his special stock and brought another ring over. 'Here's a stunning ring at only $40,000 the jeweler said. The lady's eyes sparkled and her whole body trembled with excitement.

The old man seeing this said, 'We'll take it.'

The jeweler asked how payment would be made and the man stated, 'by check. I know you need to make sure my check is good, so I'll write it now and you can call the bank Monday to verify the funds and I'll pick the ring up Monday afternoon.'

On Monday morning, the jeweler angrily phoned the old man and said 'There's no money in that account.'

'I know,' said the old man, 'But, MAN! Did I have a GREAT WEEKEND!'

288,000 Jelly Beans...

I'm not a big jelly bean fan.  I can't remember the last time I ate one.  But I love this video!




How it was made.

Borrego Springs...

Borrego Springs is a community in the desert just to the east of our coastal range.  Reader Larry E. was out there this past weekend, and sent along some photos.  Here's just a couple that caught my eye...

The Badlands area - striking, desolate, beautiful...

One of 50 or so sculptures Larry saw...

Piss Power...

This reminds me strongly of an episode in Neil Stephenson's trilogy...

Strange Pairing...

This is something I would never have predicted: the Zetas (the notoriously violent Mexican drug cartel) and the hacker's group Anonymous are edging toward outright war.  A real war, in which people are likely to die...

Still Working After 40 Years...

Now this is cool – forty years ago, Jerry Lowe built this ring-counter based clock.  This is before microcomputers and before LEDs (and before most of my colleagues were born!).  It's still working.

Nice, Jerry...

New Terrorist Threat...

The Wall Street Journal's commentary pages today prominently feature an article by Andrew Krepinevich, who describes a new and parlous terrorist threat: attacking offshore oil rigs.

Well, maybe.  His whole point, really, is that offshore oil rigs are “soft” targets, meaning easy to attack.  Sure they are.  So are many other targets (dams, water supplies, hydrocarbon storage facilities, mass transit, etc., etc. ad infinitum).  I'm not convinced there's anything special about the offshore oil rigs.  But I have a real problem with those, like Krepinevich, who think that we should try to defend all these things.  To steal someone else's phrasing: we do that, and the terrorists really have won...

Twenty Four Hours at Fukushima...

This is the best summary I've seen yet, from IEEE Spectrum...

Put Down Your Morning Beverage...

...then go read this!

Nuclear Event Detector...

This appears to be for real – here's the data sheet (PDF) right off Maxwell's site.

Awesome...

Spam...

Randy Cassingham's excellent spam (email spam, not the meat product) primer.  You should read this even if you think you know everything about spam...