Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,
Not much going on with me. We actually won a real game in volleyball, not by forfeit...but then were sorely defeated in the next game. Like, I think they were toying with us a bit kind of defeated. They'd just better wait until basketball next week. We'll show those b**ches. Other than that, just trying to figure out what I want to do with my career over the next few months now that I can move around a bit...but nothing's for certain. You know how it is. So many choices...but all have their risks & rewards. Funny, it seems like I was just here a year ago doing the same thing...and making quite a bit more money while doing it...but hey, that's what happens when you risk. Sometimes you get your dream outcome. Sometimes you fall flat on your face. Sometimes you get a no-expenses paid six-month adventure in Denver followed by a pink slip. It happens. One cool thing that happened today...is that I met up with Double Dee. Remember her? Not sure if I mentioned her more than once...but she was in the training class with me back in the day and is just a sweet sixty-something lady...and her son painted my Baby a few years ago. Anyway, she was "let go" by my former employer around 4th of July weekend...and because of her age & the market, has yet to find a job. She was upbeat as always and we caught up (her number was on the phone that was lost in Vegas) but yeah, it was good to see her again. That's probably my best thing today. Definitely. May not sound huge...but it was awesome. So here's some news...
Where's My Ring? - In a celestial feat any magician would appreciate, Saturn (the planet, not the car company or video game system) will make its wide but thin ring system disappear from our view, tonight, August 11th. Saturn's rings, loaded with ice and mud, boulders and tiny moons, is 170,000 miles wide. But the shimmering setup is only about 30 feet thick. The rings harbor 35 trillion-trillion tons of ice, dust and rock, scientists estimate. The rings shine because they reflect sunlight. But every 15 years, the rings turn edge-on to the sun and reflect almost no sunlight. "The light reflecting off this extremely narrow band is so small that for all intents and purposes the rings simply vanish," explained Linda Spilker, deputy project scientist for the Cassini Saturn mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The rings remain a bit of a mystery. Scientists are not sure when or how they formed, though likely a collision of other objects was involved. Saturn's equator is tilted relative to its orbit around the sun by 27 degrees – similar to the 23-degree tilt of the Earth. As Saturn circles the sun, first one hemisphere and then the other is tilted sunward. This causes seasons on Saturn, just as Earth's tilt causes seasons on our planet. While Earth goes around the sun once every 365 days or so, Saturn's annual orbit takes 29.7 years. So every 15 years, the attitude shift puts the gas giant planet's equator, and its ring plane, directly in line with sunlight. Scientists call it an equinox, and this one marks the arrival of spring to the giant planet's northern hemisphere. (On Earth, equinoxes occur in March and September.) "Whenever equinox occurs on Saturn, sunlight will hit Saturn's thin rings, the ring plane, edge-on," Spilker said. So there's your nerdy fact of the day...so get your super high-powered telescope prepped to check out Saturn...and you'll see it ringless. Then it'll look just like Jupiter...without the red dot.
Twitter Bandit - So remember the other day when Twitter went down...and Twits or Tweeters or whatever across the globe kinda lost their minds? Well, the outage that knocked Twitter offline for hours was traced to an attack on a lone blogger in the former Soviet republic of Georgia...but the collateral damage that left millions around the world tweetless showed just how much havoc an isolated cyberdispute can cause. "It told us how quickly many people really took Twitter into their hearts," Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, said Friday. Tens of millions of people have come to rely on social media to express their innermost thoughts and to keep up with world news and celebrity gossip. Twitter "is one of those little amusements that infiltrated the mass behavior in some significant ways, so that when it went away, a lot of people really noticed it and missed it." The attacks Thursday also slowed down Facebook and caused problems for the online diary site LiveJournal. But Twitter, the 140-character-or-less messaging site used by celebrities, businesses and even Iranian protesters, suffered a total outage that lasted several hours. Those attacks continued Friday from thousands of computers pummeling its servers, said Kazuhiro Gomi, chief technology officer for NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services, which hosts Twitter's service. Twitter crashed because of a denial-of-service attack, in which hackers command scores of computers toward a single site at the same time to prevent legitimate traffic from getting through. The attack was targeted at a blogger who goes by "Cyxymu" — Cyrillic spelling of Sukhumi, a city in the breakaway territory of Abkhazia in Georgia — on several Web sites, including Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal. So now former Soviet terrorists (by the way, calling Georgians Russians apparently REALLY pisses them off...so I went with Soviet) are attacking our networking sites...and strike fear into our way of life. Bastards!!! And not the Inglorious kind (which I look forward to checking out in about ten more days). In other news, $teve still couldn't give two tweets about Twitter...but hey, it makes other people happy.
Web Addict Dies in Rehab - The People's Republic of China is investigating the death of a teenager who was allegedly beaten to death in a camp designed to treat Internet addiction, state media said. Fifteen-year-old Deng Senshan died last Sunday, less than a day after his parents sent him to the camp in southern Guangxi province, Xinhua News Agency reported. The case has led medical experts to call for laws regulating centers that treat obsessive Web surfing. Concern over such behavior is so widespread in China, and demand for rehabilitation is so great, that some camps now advertise on television. Deng was found vomiting and was taken to a clinic where he died. Fellow students said a teacher beat him, Xinhua reported. The report quoted the local government as saying several marks were found on the boy's body. It said four trainers from the Qihang Salvation Training Camp in Nanning city have been detained. Police and government authorities in Nanning could not be reached for comment Thursday. Controversy over the methods used in addiction-treatment camps led the Ministry of Health to issue a notice last month banning the use of electric shock therapy (oh yeah) on Internet addicts at one hospital in eastern China. Tao Ran (he ran so far away), director of the country's first Internet addiction treatment clinic under a military hospital in Beijing, told The Associated Press that such deaths are bound to happen because few camps employ scientific methods, with most opting for crude military-style discipline. Tao said 40% of those addicted to the Internet suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and find it difficult to obey orders at training camps. "They are only one-fourth or one-fifth as efficient in their academic life. Once you put these kids to the training camps or schools, they are bound to have problems with the teachers, because ... they can't be still, while the training is all about keeping still." Internet addiction is a big problem in China because 200 million Internet users are between the ages of 15 and 35 and many lack self-control, Tao said. Students at high school and college also face enormous pressure from parents to succeed academically. Tao's clinic has treated about 5,000 Internet addicts since 2004. Xinhua said the numbers of treatment facilities and addicts treated have soared in the past few years in major cities. China's National People's Congress has estimated that 10% of China's Internet users under age 18 are addicted (and that's by clinical standards...which are pretty high). Chinese psychologists say symptoms include being online more than six hours a day (playing games or looking at pornography rather than working or studying) and getting angry when unable to get online. Deng's father told Xinhua his son spent all his time on the Internet. He said he sent his son to the camp after seeing an advertisement on television (which is way better to be addicted to than the internet). So yeah, that's the latest update in how things are in China right now. Hmm, I wonder if this coincided with the other story somehow. "What do you mean Twitter is down? I got to let the world know about this guy I saw with a funny haircut. ARRRRGH!!!" "Deng!!! Calm down...or we will be forced to put you down." "Whatever man! I'm not even supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be blogging...and you guys are just oppressing me." "We're the Chinese government. It's what we do." "Not for long. The Revolution is coming...by the internet." CRACK!!! "We'll see about that, Deng. Guards!!! Help me treat this patient. Bring blunt objects."
New York's Expensive - You know, I used to think that my apartment was overpriced. Homeowners aren't the only ones in hot water over overpriced real estate. A New York City hot dog vendor has been evicted from his prize spot outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art because he couldn't pay a whopping rent bill of nearly $54,000 a month. Snack cart owner Pasang Sherpa of Queens had a deal with the city's parks department that required him to pay almost $643,000 per year for the vending rights near the museum steps. He says he was $310,000 behind on his payments when he was evicted. The Parks Department had auctioned off the rights to the spot last year. Wow! I wonder if they turned a profit there. That's $1800 a day!!! I happen to know that you can live in the Presidential Suite with meals included in most five-star hotels for less than that. Not just sell hot dogs & soda. Amazing. Absolutely amazing...but then again, it makes sense. They very well may turn a profit at that spot with all the traffic there. Apparently not enough though. Wow! Real estate in New York is just ridiculous. And here I am complaining about $1000 a month (as well I should be). Of course, things could be worse.
Be Careful With Those Cigars - Cuba, in the grip of a serious economic crisis, is running short of toilet paper and may not get sufficient supplies until the end of the year, officials with state-run companies said Friday. Officials said they were lowering the prices of 24 basic goods to help Cubans get through the difficulties provoked in part by the global financial crisis and three destructive hurricanes that struck the island last year. Cuba's financial reserves have been depleted by increased spending for imports and reduced export income, which has forced the communist-led government to take extraordinary measures to keep the economy afloat (tehehe, like poo). "The corporation has taken all the steps so that at the end of the year there will be an important importation of toilet paper," an official with state conglomerate Cimex said on state-run Radio Rebelde. The shipment will enable the state-run company "to supply this demand that today is presenting problems," he said. Cuba both imports toilet paper and produces its own, but does not currently have enough raw materials to make it, he said. One of the measures taken to address the cash crunch is a 20% cut in imports, which in recent days has become evident in the reduction of goods in state-run stores. Cuba imports about 60% of its food. Despite the shortages, prices will be cut between 5% and 27% for some food, drugs and personal hygiene products. A visit to a store in Havana's Vedado neighborhood on Friday found that prices had dropped for mayonnaise, barbecue sauce and canned squid. One customer, who gave his name only as Pedro, complained that "it doesn't look like prices have been lowered for the fundamental products" such as cooking oil. Ana Maria Ortega, deputy director for military-run retail conglomerate TRD Caribe, said there will be no shortage of basic goods. "The conditions are in place to maintain the supply of essential products," she said on the same radio program. Cubans receive a subsidized food ration from the government each month that they say meets their needs for about two weeks. President Raul Castro told the National Assembly last week that the government had cut its spending budget for the second time this year and has been renegotiating its debt and payments with foreign providers. Cuba has long blamed the 47-year-old U.S. trade embargo against the island for many of its economic problems ("Then quit being commies! I want cigars dammit!"). It also said that last year's hurricanes did $10 billion worth of damage that forced the government to spend heavily on imports of food and reconstruction products. Castro, who replaced his ailing older brother Fidel Castro as president last year, also has complained that Cuba's productivity is too low. He has taken various steps to boost output, including putting more state-owned land in private hands and pushing for salaries to be based on productivity. Hmm, so perhaps Cuba's becoming more capitalist...and the United States may be becoming more socialist. Interesting...but at least we still have toilet paper...for now. Be wary the next time you're at the home of Mister Fancypants...and he offers you a finely rolled Cuban cigar...rolled on the thighs of bronzed beauties in the sexiest parts of Havana...and then ask yourself...how did she wipe? Hmm, have you also noticed that they kinda look like...ah never mind. Sorry. That's the best way to quit smoking. Associate it with fecal matter. You're welcome. I just saved you at least a hundred bucks a month.
Not much going on with me. We actually won a real game in volleyball, not by forfeit...but then were sorely defeated in the next game. Like, I think they were toying with us a bit kind of defeated. They'd just better wait until basketball next week. We'll show those b**ches. Other than that, just trying to figure out what I want to do with my career over the next few months now that I can move around a bit...but nothing's for certain. You know how it is. So many choices...but all have their risks & rewards. Funny, it seems like I was just here a year ago doing the same thing...and making quite a bit more money while doing it...but hey, that's what happens when you risk. Sometimes you get your dream outcome. Sometimes you fall flat on your face. Sometimes you get a no-expenses paid six-month adventure in Denver followed by a pink slip. It happens. One cool thing that happened today...is that I met up with Double Dee. Remember her? Not sure if I mentioned her more than once...but she was in the training class with me back in the day and is just a sweet sixty-something lady...and her son painted my Baby a few years ago. Anyway, she was "let go" by my former employer around 4th of July weekend...and because of her age & the market, has yet to find a job. She was upbeat as always and we caught up (her number was on the phone that was lost in Vegas) but yeah, it was good to see her again. That's probably my best thing today. Definitely. May not sound huge...but it was awesome. So here's some news...
Where's My Ring? - In a celestial feat any magician would appreciate, Saturn (the planet, not the car company or video game system) will make its wide but thin ring system disappear from our view, tonight, August 11th. Saturn's rings, loaded with ice and mud, boulders and tiny moons, is 170,000 miles wide. But the shimmering setup is only about 30 feet thick. The rings harbor 35 trillion-trillion tons of ice, dust and rock, scientists estimate. The rings shine because they reflect sunlight. But every 15 years, the rings turn edge-on to the sun and reflect almost no sunlight. "The light reflecting off this extremely narrow band is so small that for all intents and purposes the rings simply vanish," explained Linda Spilker, deputy project scientist for the Cassini Saturn mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The rings remain a bit of a mystery. Scientists are not sure when or how they formed, though likely a collision of other objects was involved. Saturn's equator is tilted relative to its orbit around the sun by 27 degrees – similar to the 23-degree tilt of the Earth. As Saturn circles the sun, first one hemisphere and then the other is tilted sunward. This causes seasons on Saturn, just as Earth's tilt causes seasons on our planet. While Earth goes around the sun once every 365 days or so, Saturn's annual orbit takes 29.7 years. So every 15 years, the attitude shift puts the gas giant planet's equator, and its ring plane, directly in line with sunlight. Scientists call it an equinox, and this one marks the arrival of spring to the giant planet's northern hemisphere. (On Earth, equinoxes occur in March and September.) "Whenever equinox occurs on Saturn, sunlight will hit Saturn's thin rings, the ring plane, edge-on," Spilker said. So there's your nerdy fact of the day...so get your super high-powered telescope prepped to check out Saturn...and you'll see it ringless. Then it'll look just like Jupiter...without the red dot.
Twitter Bandit - So remember the other day when Twitter went down...and Twits or Tweeters or whatever across the globe kinda lost their minds? Well, the outage that knocked Twitter offline for hours was traced to an attack on a lone blogger in the former Soviet republic of Georgia...but the collateral damage that left millions around the world tweetless showed just how much havoc an isolated cyberdispute can cause. "It told us how quickly many people really took Twitter into their hearts," Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, said Friday. Tens of millions of people have come to rely on social media to express their innermost thoughts and to keep up with world news and celebrity gossip. Twitter "is one of those little amusements that infiltrated the mass behavior in some significant ways, so that when it went away, a lot of people really noticed it and missed it." The attacks Thursday also slowed down Facebook and caused problems for the online diary site LiveJournal. But Twitter, the 140-character-or-less messaging site used by celebrities, businesses and even Iranian protesters, suffered a total outage that lasted several hours. Those attacks continued Friday from thousands of computers pummeling its servers, said Kazuhiro Gomi, chief technology officer for NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services, which hosts Twitter's service. Twitter crashed because of a denial-of-service attack, in which hackers command scores of computers toward a single site at the same time to prevent legitimate traffic from getting through. The attack was targeted at a blogger who goes by "Cyxymu" — Cyrillic spelling of Sukhumi, a city in the breakaway territory of Abkhazia in Georgia — on several Web sites, including Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal. So now former Soviet terrorists (by the way, calling Georgians Russians apparently REALLY pisses them off...so I went with Soviet) are attacking our networking sites...and strike fear into our way of life. Bastards!!! And not the Inglorious kind (which I look forward to checking out in about ten more days). In other news, $teve still couldn't give two tweets about Twitter...but hey, it makes other people happy.
Web Addict Dies in Rehab - The People's Republic of China is investigating the death of a teenager who was allegedly beaten to death in a camp designed to treat Internet addiction, state media said. Fifteen-year-old Deng Senshan died last Sunday, less than a day after his parents sent him to the camp in southern Guangxi province, Xinhua News Agency reported. The case has led medical experts to call for laws regulating centers that treat obsessive Web surfing. Concern over such behavior is so widespread in China, and demand for rehabilitation is so great, that some camps now advertise on television. Deng was found vomiting and was taken to a clinic where he died. Fellow students said a teacher beat him, Xinhua reported. The report quoted the local government as saying several marks were found on the boy's body. It said four trainers from the Qihang Salvation Training Camp in Nanning city have been detained. Police and government authorities in Nanning could not be reached for comment Thursday. Controversy over the methods used in addiction-treatment camps led the Ministry of Health to issue a notice last month banning the use of electric shock therapy (oh yeah) on Internet addicts at one hospital in eastern China. Tao Ran (he ran so far away), director of the country's first Internet addiction treatment clinic under a military hospital in Beijing, told The Associated Press that such deaths are bound to happen because few camps employ scientific methods, with most opting for crude military-style discipline. Tao said 40% of those addicted to the Internet suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and find it difficult to obey orders at training camps. "They are only one-fourth or one-fifth as efficient in their academic life. Once you put these kids to the training camps or schools, they are bound to have problems with the teachers, because ... they can't be still, while the training is all about keeping still." Internet addiction is a big problem in China because 200 million Internet users are between the ages of 15 and 35 and many lack self-control, Tao said. Students at high school and college also face enormous pressure from parents to succeed academically. Tao's clinic has treated about 5,000 Internet addicts since 2004. Xinhua said the numbers of treatment facilities and addicts treated have soared in the past few years in major cities. China's National People's Congress has estimated that 10% of China's Internet users under age 18 are addicted (and that's by clinical standards...which are pretty high). Chinese psychologists say symptoms include being online more than six hours a day (playing games or looking at pornography rather than working or studying) and getting angry when unable to get online. Deng's father told Xinhua his son spent all his time on the Internet. He said he sent his son to the camp after seeing an advertisement on television (which is way better to be addicted to than the internet). So yeah, that's the latest update in how things are in China right now. Hmm, I wonder if this coincided with the other story somehow. "What do you mean Twitter is down? I got to let the world know about this guy I saw with a funny haircut. ARRRRGH!!!" "Deng!!! Calm down...or we will be forced to put you down." "Whatever man! I'm not even supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be blogging...and you guys are just oppressing me." "We're the Chinese government. It's what we do." "Not for long. The Revolution is coming...by the internet." CRACK!!! "We'll see about that, Deng. Guards!!! Help me treat this patient. Bring blunt objects."
New York's Expensive - You know, I used to think that my apartment was overpriced. Homeowners aren't the only ones in hot water over overpriced real estate. A New York City hot dog vendor has been evicted from his prize spot outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art because he couldn't pay a whopping rent bill of nearly $54,000 a month. Snack cart owner Pasang Sherpa of Queens had a deal with the city's parks department that required him to pay almost $643,000 per year for the vending rights near the museum steps. He says he was $310,000 behind on his payments when he was evicted. The Parks Department had auctioned off the rights to the spot last year. Wow! I wonder if they turned a profit there. That's $1800 a day!!! I happen to know that you can live in the Presidential Suite with meals included in most five-star hotels for less than that. Not just sell hot dogs & soda. Amazing. Absolutely amazing...but then again, it makes sense. They very well may turn a profit at that spot with all the traffic there. Apparently not enough though. Wow! Real estate in New York is just ridiculous. And here I am complaining about $1000 a month (as well I should be). Of course, things could be worse.
Be Careful With Those Cigars - Cuba, in the grip of a serious economic crisis, is running short of toilet paper and may not get sufficient supplies until the end of the year, officials with state-run companies said Friday. Officials said they were lowering the prices of 24 basic goods to help Cubans get through the difficulties provoked in part by the global financial crisis and three destructive hurricanes that struck the island last year. Cuba's financial reserves have been depleted by increased spending for imports and reduced export income, which has forced the communist-led government to take extraordinary measures to keep the economy afloat (tehehe, like poo). "The corporation has taken all the steps so that at the end of the year there will be an important importation of toilet paper," an official with state conglomerate Cimex said on state-run Radio Rebelde. The shipment will enable the state-run company "to supply this demand that today is presenting problems," he said. Cuba both imports toilet paper and produces its own, but does not currently have enough raw materials to make it, he said. One of the measures taken to address the cash crunch is a 20% cut in imports, which in recent days has become evident in the reduction of goods in state-run stores. Cuba imports about 60% of its food. Despite the shortages, prices will be cut between 5% and 27% for some food, drugs and personal hygiene products. A visit to a store in Havana's Vedado neighborhood on Friday found that prices had dropped for mayonnaise, barbecue sauce and canned squid. One customer, who gave his name only as Pedro, complained that "it doesn't look like prices have been lowered for the fundamental products" such as cooking oil. Ana Maria Ortega, deputy director for military-run retail conglomerate TRD Caribe, said there will be no shortage of basic goods. "The conditions are in place to maintain the supply of essential products," she said on the same radio program. Cubans receive a subsidized food ration from the government each month that they say meets their needs for about two weeks. President Raul Castro told the National Assembly last week that the government had cut its spending budget for the second time this year and has been renegotiating its debt and payments with foreign providers. Cuba has long blamed the 47-year-old U.S. trade embargo against the island for many of its economic problems ("Then quit being commies! I want cigars dammit!"). It also said that last year's hurricanes did $10 billion worth of damage that forced the government to spend heavily on imports of food and reconstruction products. Castro, who replaced his ailing older brother Fidel Castro as president last year, also has complained that Cuba's productivity is too low. He has taken various steps to boost output, including putting more state-owned land in private hands and pushing for salaries to be based on productivity. Hmm, so perhaps Cuba's becoming more capitalist...and the United States may be becoming more socialist. Interesting...but at least we still have toilet paper...for now. Be wary the next time you're at the home of Mister Fancypants...and he offers you a finely rolled Cuban cigar...rolled on the thighs of bronzed beauties in the sexiest parts of Havana...and then ask yourself...how did she wipe? Hmm, have you also noticed that they kinda look like...ah never mind. Sorry. That's the best way to quit smoking. Associate it with fecal matter. You're welcome. I just saved you at least a hundred bucks a month.Fortune Cookie of the Day - "You Will Discover an Unexpected Surprise...in bed" - Boy howdy!!! Either that means I'm getting some sweetness...or I'm gonna find a turd in the bed. "Who the hell...FRANK!!! That crafty sum'bich!!!" He's right though. Poo is funny...but he'd better not crap the bed again. I'm serious. Either way, it's worth the risk for some sweetness.
Anyway, that'll do it for today. Day off tomorrow...so I'm gonna clean up the apartment a bit, do some cooking, and whatever else comes my way. Have any ideas? Let me know. Have a great day everybody!!!
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