You’ll thank me later.

I’ve gotta figure out how to take “The Next Level” to the next level else I’ll have repeated it four times in a row and that’d be bad.

This just pisses me off ’cause it’s beyond fucking wrong, and it’s intentional:

As if life wasn’t hard enough, some lowlife, scumbag griefers have taken to deliberate assaults on people who suffer from both photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epilepsy.

Wired magazine reported last month: “Internet griefers descended on an epilepsy support message board last weekend and used JavaScript code and flashing computer animation to trigger migraine headaches and seizures in some users.”

How not to assault your users.

What a goddamn moron:

R.E.M. on Sesame Street:

(h/t and a high-five to Stragglyr Chris!)

Need proof that when beautiful people fuck up it comes up roses? Here’s all the proof you need.

Some of them thar images are stunning.

I just don’t think it can be said more betterly than this:

I hate April Fool’s day. It is to humor what New Year’s Eve is to drinking - the day a lot of people who aren’t very good at it feel empowered to give it a spin. With either, vomiting is a probable outcome somewhere.

A picture is truly worth a thousand words:

I stopped to think about where my money goes… but I really didn’t need to stop to consider… I know it all goes here:

You’d be well advised to avoid Max’s Restaurant. Here’s the review I just posted on Yelp:

If it were possible to give a restaurant negative stars, this review would be a negative five (-5).

It’s very obvious as to why there are “Critics Not Welcome” signs/notices posted everywhere… Max’s Restaurant is obviously worried that people will find out how absolutely shitty the food and service is… oh, yes… it definitely sucks.

Periodically my coworkers suggest going to Max’s and I reluctantly agree. Today, I actually suggested going there so I have noone to blame but myself. One of my coworkers ordered the Asian Chicken Wrap. I’ve seen him eat things that I personally would avoid like the plague, but he left half of his plate untouched.

I ordered the home-made Gardenburger*. What I got was a pseudo-burger with minimal vegetables (a slice of onion, a single piece of lettuce, and a pathetic slice of tasteless tomato). The concoction of vegetables that Max’s staff pathetically attempted to create a patty from made plain oatmeal seem like a spicy Indian dish in comparison. The “patty” fell apart immediately and seemed to be undercooked. After a few bites I decided that it was a lost effort and flagged down the waiter and asked for a grilled cheese sandwich or something as a replacement.

After my coworkers had finished eating, I again flagged down the waiter and suggested that instead of a replacement that we should just cancel the order altogether. He replied “oh, well they cooked it and it’s ready.” Then why was it still sitting in the fucking kitchen?

In all fairness, Max’s is probably a great place for the geriatric crowd to dine, as the food is bland and tasteless. If one can’t handle anything that tastes like food, then a hospital cafeteria is probably second only Max’s restaurant.

–

*Gardenburger is actually a trademark for a vegetable “burger” which is normally quite good. Had I not known the difference (and not noticed the “home made” description on the menu) I’d likely have confused the slop they serve at Max’s for an actual Gardenburger. This is a prime example of why a company should sue the fuck out of a restaurant which infringes upon its trademark.

I’m totally looking forward to the equivalent product for men!

(Not exactly “work-safe” but not “extremely non-work-safe” either)

I’m not sure how I missed this, but there’s a Pragmatic Programmer’s podcast interview with Jeremy Sydik, author of Designing Accessible Websites.

I got an e-mail today which is an impressive display of audacious scumbaggery (emphasis/commentary added, in bold):

Recently, (domain name I had registered and let expire) expired and went into a domain name auction. We acquired it and, since you own the .net version of this domain name, we wanted to provide you with the opportunity to own the preferred .com version.

Our company specializes in recovering preferred expiring domains and either selling them to individuals such as yourself or building out our own web presence on those valuable domains. I’m flabbergasted that he’s proud to be a scumbag… amazing.

…

If you’d like to own (domain-name-that-we-ganked), you can buy it now by covering our acquisition costs and a modest profit. (What a motherfucking bargain at $257! Wow, thanks Ken!)

If you have any interest I encourage you to act quickly because this domain name will only be offered for sale for a limited time.

If you have an affinity for scumbag assholes, here’s Ken’s contact info. Sounds like he’s interested in making friends:

Ken Palm
ken@securethatdomain.com
(aka “secure-that-domain-before-we-steal-it-from-you.com”)
tel: 563.823.4644

iTime Marketing, Inc
322 N. Main Street
Davenport, IA 52801

No need to thank me for the free advertising Ken. I’m so impressed with your 20-lb. balls of brass that I’m willing to share your outstanding offer to sell me something back that you snapped out from under me (or that I intentionally let expire ’cause I have no interest in developing).

Hell yeah, I’m going… last year’s RailsConf was just too damn fun.

Buddy: Hey, did you ever get your iLemon working right?

Me: It’s still fucked up

… from the last firmware upgrade which somehow fucked up my AT&T account.

Buddy: Wow, really makes me not want to get one. I was thinking about it for a split second,

Me: Dude, don’t get one

They’re overpriced

And standard Apple bullshit

Buddy: but I really really want a phone/ipod that holds ALL of my music. I do not want to do that oh I’ll swap this music for that today

Me: Great design / lame-ass quality control & service.

Buddy: Yeah, typical with apple

ALL HAIL Apple

Me: I was on the phone with the tech. support guy for almost 55 minutes before I got “it’s an AT&T billing problem.”

The support guy was cool (spoke English, even!) and he connected me to the right guy at AT&T

But OMG

Buddy: wow

Me: He didn’t know shit about what was up.

Buddy:That is cool he did that

Me: Yeah, he treated me like a person.

I told him “I don’t think it’s fair for me to have to pay for 55 minutes of tech. support.”

The AT&T guy reversed the charges for the call (over $20)

My phone is still fucked up.

I get billed any time I do anything on Edge.

Since it’s set to check my mail every 10 minutes I get billed 15 cents every 10 minutes.

I used it last night to reply to an e-mail: $1.50

Buddy: Good God

Me: AT&T dude says they’ll reverse the charges (and they better damn well reverse them… I pay for an unlimited data access plan), but I have to call in and ask them to do it.

After this experience and my previous iBrick experience, I would suggest that you find a phone made by a company that doesn’t suck ass.

Buddy: Heheh, I have heard horrible exp. with AT&T

Me: Yeah, AT&T sucks ass too.

No wonder they partnered with CrApple.

updated….

Buddy: hey that would make a great Snapple flavor…

Crapple from Snapple

Me: LOL

Buddy: then have kids just like the ovaltine comm. saying “MORE CRAPPLE PLEASE”

and instead of milk mustaches they could have chocolate pudding ones.

Me: Now with 30% more crap!

I haven’t, and probably won’t, play(ed) Assassin’s Creed, but I love this review of it:

Adobe has been busy making cool new tools, and one of their upcoming tools, Thermo, looks like it’s going to be absolutely amazing.*

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

*Granted, like all new tools which generate code, it’s bound to generate some smelly code… but wow, the fact that they’re working in this direction is awesome.

Adobe sure seems to do a lot right. Quite unlike a certain fruity company which is rapidly losing my affection at a rate much faster than Microsoft ever could, Adobe underpromises and overdelivers. There have been numerous moments recently when I’ve seen a demo of some upcoming Aodbe technology that just wows me… and they deliver.

Since the firmware upgrade for my iPhone has now put me on a phone call with Apple Technical Support (a nice guy who doesn’t seem empowered to actually accomplish or know anything… I’ve been on hold for at least 1/2 of the call) for the past 45 minutes, I’m bound to be writing a lengthy screed about how amazingly suckass Apple is to deal with. Yeah, YET ANOTHER ONE.

Do yourself a big favor… DO NOT BUY APPLE PRODUCTS. From an engineering perspective, they’re awesome. From an end-user experience, you’re fucked up the ass with a 2×4 the minute you have a problem with them unless you’re willing to pay a company to fix a defective product you bought from them.

Wait, I was going to rant about that later…

Adobe is appropriately named… they provide foundational building materials that you can use to build great things. Apple isn’t appropriately named, though. They’re right to name themselves after a fruit, but they’ve got the wrong one. They should call themselves Lemon, since that’s what they sell.

My primary machine these days is a MacBook Pro… and I have -0- virus utilities installed for OSX. Knock-on-wood, I haven’t had a problem yet.

Fairly regularly I need to fire up Parallels to check stuff in some flavor of Windows (usually XP Home and/or Pro), ALL of which have virus detection software installed.

The OS I use all the time is pretty secure, but the virtual machines I run periodically are trouble magnets. I find this to be simultaneously amusing and pathetic, and I’m glad I use the OS I do… even if I do have a love/hate relationship with the company that makes it.

As a side note: my friend came over and booted Sabayon on my MacBook and uh…. it’s pretty damn cool. I have a windows box at home that might be getting some new software guts really soon.

:)

If you’re looking to buy my affection, it’s for sale for the low-low price of just $3,100 (or thereabouts).