Tag: Anti complaint

Does this void my warranty?

Treehugger: Convert Your Car To Run On Ethanol With New Kit

I love the idea of this.  $500-700 and, with a flip of a switch, I can choose to fill my car with gasonline or ethanol.  I’m not sure I’d risk this on my car (It’s not even a year old) without doing some research, but it’s a great step forward.  Why be forced to buy a poor quality GM product just to use ethanol?  Now, I’m still waiting for the Back to the Future banana peel and stale beer fuel, but I guess I can wait a few more years.  Now all we need is an alternative to ethanol that’s a little more sustainable than growing corn.

Is it wrong to enjoy Husseins trial?

CNN.com – Hussein: Shoot me if found guilty – Jul 26, 2006

I can’t wait for the movie version of his capture and trial.  It will be like Saving Private Ryan plus A Few Good Men, except ten times awesomer.  The media coverage of this makes it sound like Hussein is playing the charismatic lunatic really well, ranting and raving and refusing to give up on his principles.  Sometimes it gets easy to forget that the guy slaughtered his own people when it suited him, and that he doesn’t like us Americans very much.

But when I read that he said he should be shot like a military man, not hung like a criminal, I envision the end of _Lionheart _that I just saw on TNT the other day where Van Damme is standing over the big bad guy he just beat and the blond woman who runs things is standing next to him looking like she’s trying to inhale herself out of her dress because it’s so tense, and Van Damme is about to kill the guy, but then he doesn’t.  If that guy was Saddam Hussein, and Van Damme was George Bush, and the blond woman was maybe Condi or someone . . . Hussein looks Bush in the eye and says, “Shoot me”.  And for a second you think Bush is going to do it, but then he relaxes and turns around and walks away.

Or maybe you like the Lethal Weapon/Bad Boys/Die Hard ending, where they think the guy is toast, but then he has another gun and as Bush is walking away, Hussein pulls the gun out in slow motion, and then Dick Cheney shoots him in the face.  Bush could smile and say, “Thanks, Dick”, and the audience would laugh. I should be a screenwriter.  This would be the best movie ever.

Lets not get ahead of ourselves

Boing Boing: Will Bix kill the record industry? (I hope so)

This is a cool idea.  This new company, Bix, started by the guy who build epinions, is going to pretty much move American Idol online, except without obnoxious hosts.  The idea is to hold online contests, where maybe everyone pays an entry fee and the winner gets a chunk, or things like that.

Let’s see . . . combine YouTube with American Idol, tempt people with the idea of getting “discovered”, and sell advertising everywhere?  That sounds like a business model that could work for a while.

Plus, if it gets big enough, maybe some cool bands will get discovered that don’t sound like they were manufactured for MTV.  I think the musings at BoingBoing that suggest this could kill the recording industry are a little far-fetched, but giving up-and-coming musicians and whatnot a lower barrier to entry into the market sounds good to me.

A different perspective

Touch Messenger: Braille Text Messaging – Gizmodo

The first time I really thought about things like this was a few years ago when I had a deaf coworker.  Of course I understand the concept of being deaf, or blind, but it never sinks in until you spend some time with someone who actually is deaf or blind.  But you never think about things like, “How would a blind person text message?”

My deaf coworker called his little two way text messager a “deaf person’s cell phone”.  I had never thought about how useful something like that would be to someone who’s deaf, but once I saw him use it, it’s obvious.  But I’m glad to see some of the gadget companies looking around and seeing niches that need to be filled.

I've been waiting for this for all my life

Newsvine – Political Strategists to Launch Web Site

Well, not quite all my life.  Looks like “Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, and Joe Lockhart, former White House press secretary under President Clinton” are starting up an “Internet information venture designed to interact with America’s opinion leaders and serve as an antidote to the right-left clash that typifies political discourse on the Web”. 

It’s supposed to be a social networking site for grownups.  And it’s supposed to be bipartisan, focusing on informed debate rather than the self-serving crap we get from the Democrats and Republicans now.

It remains to be seen if it will be anything worthwhile, but I would love to see this work out.  Imagine!  A place to get real information from both sides of our political spectrum.

Anyway, keep your eye out in October for HotSoup

It looks like Ten isnt Pearl Jams only worthwhile gift to society

Treehugger: Pearl Jam Announces Carbon Portfolio Strategy

Pearl Jam has announced that they are giving “$100,000 to nine different non-profits ‘doing innovative work around climate change, renewable energy, and the environment'”, and hope to get to 0% net emissions for their tours and business.

I haven’t listened to much Pearl Jam lately, mostly because I haven’t liked much they’ve done since “Ten”, but “Ten” was one of the top five or so albums released in the last 20 years, and ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE IS STUPID. Just kidding. Anyone who says otherwise isn’t necessarily stupid. They’re wrong, but not necessarily stupid.

This does make me want to go out and buy the latest Pearl Jam cd. Do you think they’re selling a DRM-free copy?

When two things I love come together

Sales of organic beers start to hop – Yahoo! News

And those two things are Yahoo! News and dumb headline puns.

Actually, the two things I love are organic and beer.  I was in Giant yesterday because I was out running another errand (recycling cardboard, actually – I’m so environmentally friendly) and I was right next to Giant.  I never used to think there was much difference between one supermarket and another.  But now that we have a new super Safeway nearby, plus the Harris Teeter and Whole Foods, where I can get all kinds of cool organic food, the fact that Giant seems to have watched the organic bandwagon go flying by without so much as a wave is a big deal.

Now, I don’t buy everything organic.  I’ll buy “conventional” if no organic is available.  But it’s always nice to be able to get the organic.

So now organic beer is starting to pick up.  That’s great.  I do love beer.

Organic beer sales increased 40 percent in 2005, tying it with organic coffee as the fastest-growing organic beverage, the Organic Trade Association says. By comparison, overall U.S. beer sales fell slightly last year.

Awesome.

On the Internet!

I just ordered some hanging plant pots from some strange store I found on Google. I need a new one because I have a hanging plant that has outgrown its pot. None of this is very interesting. However, I just got the shipping confirmation email (Edit: It was UPS that sent this email, not Novosel.), and it includes this at the bottom:

Click here to track if UPS has received your shipment or visit http://www.ups.com/WebTracking/track?loc=en_US on the Internet.

Now, I don’t know about you, but “on the Internet” is the LAST place I’d look for www.ups.com. The absolute last place.

Edit: These guys are the fastest online seller I’ve ever seen. I placed an order at 9:40AM yesterday. The UPS woman showed up at 10:50AM today. For $4.83 in shipping. If you ever need garden supplies, check out Novosel Enterprises.