My wife works for the Humane Society. As a result, every gift giving occasion ends up with her receiving all sorts of animal related tchotskys and trinkets.
And, when you turn it around, it’s…

You’ll have to hit the link to see why it’s so funny.

Technorati Tags: Bones, Humane Society, Funny, WTF?

On December 9, federal agents arrested Democratic Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich on charges that he had put president-elect Barack Obama’s senate seat up for sale–though not on eBay, which probably would have made things a lot easier. The Blagojevich portrayed in the 76-page criminal complaint is, according to the New York Times, a “[d]elusional, narcissistic, vengeful, and profane” man who has been under investigation for years. They’re not kidding.

You want corruption?  They did it old-school in Chicago.  “Here’s a powerful position.  How much you pay me to get it?”  Plain.  Simple.  Direct.  Like was done in Capone’s time.

The really touching thing about this scandal is we also get to find out what kind of family the Blagojevichs have.

111 a. On or about November 27, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH, his wife and daughters, and BLAGOJEVICH’s chief of staff JOHN HARRIS ate Thanksgiving dinner together. BLAGOJEVICH’s wife asked BLAGOJEVICH to “please pass the potatoes.” BLAGOJEVICH asked what his wife was willing to give him for “the f—ing potatoes” because “these f—ing things aren’t f—ing cheap.” HARRIS said that BLAGOJEVICH’s wife might donate $250,000 to Friends of Blagojevich in exchange for the potatoes. BLAGOJEVICH’s wife said she thought that was a high price for a spoonful of mashed potatoes and asked BLAGOJEVICH to carve the turkey instead. BLAGOJEVICH said “What am I, your f—ing butler?” and reminded her that “I don’t f—ing work for free.” HARRIS asked BLAGOJEVICH to consider carving the turkey in exchange for a helping of BLAGOJEVICH’s wife’s cranberry sauce. BLAGOJEVICH said he “hated f—ing cranberry sauce, you stupid f–k,” and reminded his wife that the “only reason we have this f—ing turkey in the first place” was because Senate Candidate 5 had personally delivered it to the BLAGOJEVICH residence that morning. BLAGOJEVICH’s wife said BLAGOJEVICH could take Senate Candidate 5’s turkey and “shove it up your a–.” BLAGOJEVICH said she could have the turkey “but if you feel like you can do this and not f—ing give me anything, then I’ll f—ing go.” HARRIS volunteered to carve the turkey if BLAGOJEVICH did not want to and the group returned to eating in silence.

Not only is he an inspiring, honest, upright public servant, he also is a loving, caring, good-natured provider for his family.  Most areas of the country have tiny little bribery or abuse of power corruptions going on.  In Chicago, they show the rest of the country what a government employee should do to abuse power and stamp out democracy.

Technorati Tags: Blagojevich, Old school corruption, Chicago, Capone’s way, Family man

In recent discussions on the future viability of US auto manufacturers, one of the topics to come up was the UAW job bank program.

According to that document, the basic guarantee from the 1987 agreement is that no eligible employee will be laid off over the term of the agreement, except under the following specific circumstances. 1)Reduced customer demand, a maximum of 42 weeks over the life of the agreement (commonly known as loss of marketshare); 2)Acts of God or other conditions beyond the control of management; 3)Conclusion of an assignment known in advance to be temporary; and 4) Plant rearrangement or model changeover.

Eligible employees can not be laid off because of new technology (robots), sourcing decisions, or company-implimented efficiency actions. There are generally three states of layoff: temporary layoffs where workers know their return date, indefinite layoffs where workers get 48 weeks of unemployment benefits and a supplemental from their employer equal to 100 percent of your salary. After 48 weeks workers are reemployed by the Job Bank, at which time they receive 95 percent of their salary.

Now if you are like me, you’ve never heard of this program before very recently. Ultimately, what the program is used for is to keep paying some number of UAW union members a worker’s salary while they don’t work. This is part of a program implemented in the 80s as a concession by auto manufacturers to the union to get support for productivity improvement efforts. In other words, the union realized that improving worker efficiency would mean fewer workers needed, so brought in this program as a way to keep paying some of the people who lost their jobs as a result.

How much does this cost the auto manufacturers? Well, we don’t know for certain, but looking back a few years gives us at least some idea:

General Motors Corp. has roughly 5,000 workers in its jobs bank. Delphi has about 4,000 in its version of the same program. Some 2,100 workers are in DaimlerChrysler AG’s Chrysler Group’s job security program. Ford had 1,275 in its jobs bank as of Sept. 25.

. . .

Detroit automakers declined to discuss the programs in detail or say exactly how much they are spending, but the four-year labor contracts they signed with the UAW in 2003 established contribution caps that give a good idea of the size of the expense.

According to those documents, GM agreed to contribute up to $2.1 billion over four years. DaimlerChrysler set aside $451 million for its program, along with another $50 million for salaried employees covered under the contract. Ford, which also maintained responsibility for Visteon Corp.’s UAW employees, agreed to contribute $944 million.

Now let’s look at what the auto manufacturers are asking for. GM alone is requesting $4 billion to finish this year plus an additional $8 billion in cash to start 2009 and a $6 billion line of credit in case more is needed. The claim from the head of the company is there is a chance for GM to fail completely if a bail-out for the last few weeks of the year does not come through.

If GM alone continued the jobs bank program at the 2005 rate when renewing their UAW contract in 2007, we are talking about somewhere around $550 million per year. Let’s call it $600 million due to inflation, although this is honestly just a nice round number I pulled out of the thick, magical fog around my head. Suddenly, I can see one way to cut the need for about 7.5% of the requested bail-out funding for next year. Can anyone else? It is true that UAW representatives agreed to eliminate this program, but until I see it happen, I’m counting that cost as part of GM’s ongoing cost of running the business.

On top of the jobs bank program, there is talk of cutting workers’ wages. While I would personally think it makes more sense for everyone to take a pay cut than for some people to get full pay while others lose their jobs, I don’t know how pragmatic those who have to make this decision will be. There are sure to be workers who will vote against wage concessions and take the gamble that they will remain employed and someone else will be let go instead.

Just these couple of things makes me wonder aloud, as I have done many times before – Why would a logical worker choose the gamble that best benefits him/herself with the high-probability downside of ALL employees losing all financial rewards, when the option that costs all workers somewhat evenly has the high-probability upside that MOST workers keep their jobs? Am I just being a blind romantic (in the literary sense) here, or am I overlooking something that makes the selfish choice smarter than I’m seeing it?  I can actually see a reason why the workers would have fought for this in the 80s.  But I just can’t see why it still exists.

Technorati Tags: Auto industry bailout, UAW, Pragmatic, GM, Unions

I hear he is huge in Germany, although all the video I’ve seen him makes me think he’s really the same size as all the other people there.  Therefore, either everyone in Germany is huge, or Hasselhoff is the same size in Germany as when he is in the US.

Technorati Tags: I can’t stop this feeling, Ooga chakka, Hasselhoff, Huge in Germany, Ich bin ein Hasselhoff

You know – that really is the kind of thing one should apologize for, too.

Technorati Tags: Humor, Sorry for the incontinence, Closed today, Private party

Is betting on the assassination date of a newly elected President free speech? I would say yes, although it sure is poor taste. Is offering a betting pool on the assassination date and then saying Let’s hope someone wins similarly protected? I would argue that it is not. This changes expressing an expectation that an assassination will occur to something that instead looks to incite violence in a manner long ruled illegal. Or at least to be dangerously close to that. To me, the betting alone seems legal and protected, even if offensive and remarkably stupid. Including the indication of hoping for a successful assassination does not seem reasonably protected speech.

The Town Council in Standish condemned the sign on Thursday in a 6-0 vote and declared it reprehensible at a meeting where some residents defended the store owner, saying he had a right to free speech even if in bad taste, local authorities said.

. . .

The sign in the Oak Hill General Store asked customers to place a $1 bet on the date of Obama’s assassination, and said “Let’s hope someone wins,” the Portland Press Herald reported. It was called the “Osama Obama Shotgun Pool.”

Am I way off here? Is this something that should be allowed? If you say yes, would you believe the same if this had happened 4 years ago, and the betting were instead for what date President Bush would be assassinated? If you say no, am I being too lenient in believing that the betting pool itself is legal without the Let’s hope someone wins quote? Where is the line on talk about expected/anticipated assassinations of our leaders?

Technorati Tags: Obama, Assassination, 1st amendment, Betting pool, Inciting violence, Free speech

Now I have to figure out just what I’m doing in my surfing that makes FaceBook think that first ad is appropriate for me.  Maybe I need to surf more straight pr0n?  I thought maybe the $1 million from the second ad would be available for me if I got involved with the hot gay men, but sadly, the money is pretend only.

Technorati Tags: FaceBook, WTF, Ad Service, More pr0n please

I got my brown, 30 gig Zune when the first generation product was shipped. I got a very good price on it. The large hard drive available for the low price ($99 shipped) made it appealing, and I heard that the screen quality was very good (it is), which appealed to me. When my Zune arrived, I was looking forward to hooking it up and loading audio, video, and podcasts, and trying it out. So I loaded the drivers, plugged the device in, and waited.

…and waited…

…and waited…

…and finally decided to go have dinner and figure out later why the player turned on, caused my system to give the Windows “you’ve got hardware” beep, then turned off. After the 10^th or 11^th on-and-off cycle, I figured I’d gotten bum hardware, but didn’t want to troubleshoot until I had eaten. I checked on dinner (pizza that night, as I had hardware to toy with), saw it wasn’t ready, so came back to my geek-cave to try again. The Zune was still taunting me by turning on, making Windows beep, and turning off. I waited for the pizza instead. After dinner and cleanup time, I returned to start debugging. The Zune was on, showing the charging icon, and the Zune software was loaded. Apparently, the device ships with a fully drained battery, and it turns on as soon as it is plugged in. Since the battery is drained, there isn’t enough juice to get the device running, and there’s no smarts or circuitry built in to keep it from booting until there is enough power to keep the thing on. Hmmmm. Not happy with my first impression.

I go through configuration, get a couple hundred songs loaded, and look for some video to try the screen out. Here comes problem number two – the software for the Zune won’t convert standard AVI files to a format the Zune will play. I can accept that, but it seems odd that this thing was pushed as a music and video player, but didn’t understand the most common video format I can recall seeing on the internets. Through the magic of search, I found the SUPER video converter, which I used (and still use) to convert from AVI to MP4 format that Zune kinda, sorta, maybe understands. I convert my videos, put them in the directory that the Zune software is monitoring, and wait almost 15 minutes each for my 22 minute, already converted MP4 videos to get converted in to whatever format the Zune uses. This takes place on a dual-core Windows system with 2 Gig of memory and nothing running except Firefox. Why does it take almost as long to convert as to watch, after I’ve already converted it once? I don’t know. And I’m not so forgiving of not having video conversion software if I have to two-step it.

And the above doesn’t even take into consideration the fact that when I do find a video podcast in the Zune marketplace that I want to view, the system still has to convert it after downloading it before putting it on the Zune.  Shouldn’t downloadable content already be in the right format, when the downloading service is the official marketplace for the device?

Music, video, and podcasts loaded, I take the sucker to work the next day, ready to glow with happiness in my audio-isolated listening Nerdvana. The Zune played music fine. Everything sounded great. I had no problems. Until I tried to stop listening to music and start watching video. I clicked down on the control wheel, intending to go from the “Music” to the “Video” option. About 1.5 seconds later, the display updated. I clicked the center button to get to my video listing, and another 1 to 1.5 seconds passed. I got to the videos list, tried to choose one, and every click to go down the screen was followed by a 1 to 1.5 second pause. I got annoyed with the interface. Once I started my video, it played fine, but it took me another day or two to figure out that leaving wireless turned on while working in an area without wireless networks caused massive interface lag. That problem no longer happens, but the fact that the Zune ships with wireless enabled and it slows down the interface by several seconds made me like the device just a little less.

Now, let’s turn to the first disagreement I have with ExtremeTech over the Zune: the Zune software interface (here compared to the iPod interfacing iTunes):

Zune desktop software, by comparison, is sleek and highly visual. It’s clean and well organized, fast, and makes browsing music and videos into entertainment by itself. Toss in the greatly enhanced social aspects (syncing friend’s recently played lists, browsing what they have been playing, messaging, checking out users with similar tastes) and the cool Mixview for discovering new music, and it’s actually hard to go back to the boring spreadsheet-like lists and boxes on iTunes. And yes, the Zune marketplace has all sorts of MP3 tracks available, podcasts and video podcasts, TV shows and movies, etc.

The desktop software interface, while indeed highly visual, is too busy. I’ll give them well organized, but there’s just so much ‘stuff” on display that it takes longer to see the “What” that you need to get around. It’s not worse than iTunes, but I don’t see it as being any better, either. And the stupid interface is lacking in some necessary basic user-friendliness that web browsers exhibit. Say I want to find a particular podcast, like the latest Countdown with Keith Olbermann which I enjoy watching. I go to Podcasts, choose News, choose Politics, then scroll through the list until I see Countdown. I click on that, realize I’m on the audio podcast, so I click the back button so I can find the video podcast. I’m back at the top of the list of political news podcasts. That’s a problem in some categories where there are 3 or 4 screens worth of choices to scroll through. Now I have to scroll again and find where I was, then continue on in hopes I finding where I want to be. While trying out a dozen or so podcasts recently, I got real tired of scrolling. And so far as I can see, there’s no bookmark option so I can return to that podcast’s listing in the future, should I want to easily download something to watch or listen to again.

The interface is perhaps one of the best Microsoft has ever developed, and easily on par with the click wheel on iPods.

No. It is not. Not even close. It’s slow, and much less precise.

(Here’s the happy-hug-time stuff) On the plus side, the Zune pass option, a $15 per month subscription, just got upgraded so you can get unlimited music downloads for listening, and you get to keep 10 songs per month. These songs can be moved to other computers, burned to CD, or put on other media players you have. That’s just cool, and I’ll be signing up for this feature next time I hit the Zune marketplace (tonight, after I get this posted, in fact). In addition, Microsoft does well by regularly updating the desktop experience and the device firmware, and the recent addition of games will go far for picking up more gadget geeks who have otherwise held off, I’m sure. It just needs to get easier for users to add games made for the Zune which are available for download elsewhere on the net.

I agree with ExtremeTech that Microsoft performs best when playing catch-up. I agree that the Zune most emphatically will be getting better and capture greater market share. And I fully expect that the Zune will be a strong contender for best media device if Microsoft keeps working and improving it like the company normally does when trying to break in to a market. But to praise the poor user interface and desktop experience at the present time I think is inaccurate. And had I an account on ExtremeTech, I would contribute some of these thoughts to the discussion, but the last thing I need is yet another website or discussion board account, so I’ll stick to putting my disagreement on my own site where only 2 other people will have to subject themselves to it.

Technorati Tags: Zune, Technology, ExtremeTech, Wrong

Hey Microsoft, could we get the Zune pass user agreement in a slightly larger box so we can read more than 3-5 lines before we have to scroll? Please?

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Zune, Web interface, User experience

I have no recollection where I got this.

Technorati Tags: Mice joke, Stupid humor, How many mice

The decision not to press charges against former Gov. Eliot Spitzer for his involvement with a high-priced prostitution ring last year came as no surprise yesterday to several former prosecutors and defense lawyers, many of whom said that the case, while full of lurid and suggestive details, would have been hard to prosecute.

. . .

In laying out his decision not to prosecute Mr. Spitzer, Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said he had three main rationales: Mr. Spitzer had apparently not used any public money or campaign funds for his trysts; there was insufficient evidence that he had broken the law in how he had structured payments to the call-girl ring; and, finally, it was not the policy of his or other federal prosecutors’ offices to charge the customers in matters of prostitution.

Hard to prosecute.  Not policy to charge customers.  Remember that when you get caught in Nevada after paying $15 for a blow-job.  If you are a nobody and buy a cheap whore, you will get busted.  If you are a big-name politico, you get to apologize in public, say you are sorry, then wait for the whole thing to go away.

Technorati Tags: Eliot Spitzer, Hookers without penalty, High priced hookers, Scot Free

Yes, that is a newsperson for the fair and balanced FOX news network calling for Barrack Obama’s assassination.  Clearly Bill O’Reilly is no longer the worst thing that channel has to offer.

Technorati Tags: Assassination, Obama, Fair and Balanced, Idiocy

A Japanese civil servant was demoted for logging more than 780,000 hits on pornographic Web sites on his office computer over nine months, an official said Friday.

. . .

The man’s supervisors discovered his extensive porn site visits after his computer became infected with a virus, prompting officials to examine his Web browser’s history.

Those viruses are causing all kinds of problems, though, aren’t they? There is, of course, the possibility that the worker did very little of the pr0n surfing, and the virus caused many non-human-driven pr0n-site hits. The linked MSNBC article does not hit on this aspect of the story, so I can’t personally say how much of this might be automated rather than user-created.

I will admit to being surprised by the punishment for this. Most places I’ve worked, very-light pr0n surfing is enough to get one fired, although most typically a warning on high will come down first unless the viewed content involves non-adult subjects or any animals (yes, I’ve worked in a field where I have to know these kinds of things and have had to monitor people doing this stuff). As already noted in the above quote – the worker was demoted for his actions. Additionally:

Along with the demotion, he received a 20,000 yen ($190) monthly pay cut, Waki said.

Yup. Loss of rank, and small paycut. Now in a society like Japan, where appearances of propriety are so highly valued, I realize this is much more of a punishment than the same actions would be here in the States. I’m still surprised by this, though, as it sounds fairly mild compared to what I’ve seen in places where I was one of the net-abuse monitors.

NOTE: All links above are safe for work – I try hard to keep stuff here mostly worksafe, and hide non-worksafe stuff below “Read More” tags or NSFW warnings.

Technorati Tags: Pr0n, 780000 pr0n hits, Virus, NSFW, MSNBC, WTF, Stupid

I’m just a little shocked at how many answered the kooky options there.

Technorati Tags: UFO, Poll, Science, QuickJump, qj.net