Year in Review

Greetings, family and friends, well it's that time of the year again...for hustle and bustle and rustle and truffles. OK, that last one was a stretch. In short, it's the season to hurry up and relax, so since I've got some serious chilling to catch up on, you're only going to get the Reader's Digest version of our year. Here are the headlines:

• I moved out of my parents' house. Yup, they started charging me rent, so I figured if I was going to be paying someone rent, it might as well be someone not related to me. In the process, I got someone that was related to me to start paying me rent money. Pretty sneaky, huh? Yeah, my cousin Steve has been hunkering down in the second bedroom of my apartment for the last few months, and it's worked out pretty well for both of us I think. He even makes some pretty darn good chicken legs!
• The roof of my parents' house blew away. OK, so the whole roof didn't actually blow away,only about 25% of the shingles. That just made a much better headline, especially after the last headline of me moving out. Trust me, it was just coincidence, not amazing foresight. But wow, the weather around here sure has been crazy lately...a winter storm in the fall that dumped anywhere from 2 inches to 2 feet on the poor neutral-climate-loving residents of the greater Seattle area. And that was on top of the recording-setting rainfall for the month of November. So not to be outdone, December decides to throw some wind in the mix and knock out power to over a million Seattlites (not to mention blowing away my parents' roof).
• I won money in Vegas. You read right. Won money. I beat the odds and came out on top by...drum roll, please....a whole dollar! Yay!!! I was considering retirement, but I'd fear I'd be too bored. Besides, I went to Vegas on the company dollar in the first place (Microsoft IT Convention), so it wouldn't be too nice to thank them by throwing in my hat and leading a life of debauchery. And before anyone thinks that I'm the newest gambling addict (I'm talking to you here, Mom), you can rest assured that I only bet a total of $5 down there. I spent almost twice that for lunch today, and the only thing I won was a full stomach (which just went away again).
• There is no bluegrass in Kentucky. Well, maybe there is but I certainly didn't see any. I studied a couple of blades with a pretty scrutinous eye, and the only pigment that I could detect was indeed green. Why was I in Kentucky? Not to visit the Louisville Slugger museum unfortunately, but another business trip, this time as a vendor rather than a learner. Our best marketing though was arguably to the other vendors. The Internet that the hotel/convention center provided was mostly non-existent, we decided that we would buy a router to boost the signal and provide wireless Internet to everyone there, with "MeteorComm" (our company name) as the name of the connection, of course. Hey, our tag-line isn't "Wireless Communications" for nothing!
• My car can survive tires bouncing off of it. Normally the rubber is supposed to meet the road, but this last summer, some hit the hood of my Corolla. I was driving down I-5 toward Tacoma following a Mariners game to take my girlfriend (at the time, she was just the 3-week variety) home when the car to the right of us started acting rather strange. Next thing I know there's a tire bouncing off my hood and continuing across I-5 (it somehow managed to not hit anyone else, or vice versa) and the car on my right is sparking like crazy as the metal hit the road (not as friendly as rubber). Fortunately, the driver was able to maintain control and pull off to the side of the road, which I also did to check out the "damage". Luckily, there was none, the tire marks wiped right off. But it was exciting nonetheless.
• There is an opposite to undefeated. And it's not defeated. It's "winless". Which summed up the softball team I joined this summer. Somehow, we all managed to have a good time though, except for maybe after the game that we should have won (the other team didn't count the innings right and persuaded my coach that they were right so we ended up losing in 8 innings despite leading after the standard 7).
• I've been replaced by a cat. Now instead of me to keep my parents company, a furry feline named Snooky has the honors. While I will admit that she might be cheaper and at times more entertaining (you should see her with a rope), I never bit or scratched my parents, nor did I claw the furniture. At least not as much.

Well, that's about all I can think of for headlines this year. We didn't really take any major trips as a family this year, although we did go out to Chicago to visit my dad's parents for a couple of days, and we took some day trips down to Ocean Shores and Seaside/Cannon Beach, which were quite fun. All of my pictures from these trips and other events this year can be viewed at http://picasaweb.google.com/brianpsmith81. Sorry this didn't make it inside any Christmas cards this year, my mom was busy visiting her dad the week before Christmas this year, so she wasn't able to get any out. Nevertheless, I figured I could still get a "letter" out this way, so thanks for reading it! May God bless you in 2007 as He has blessed us in 2006!

-Brian

It's About Time!

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/holiday-goodies-from-picasa-web-albums_14.html

Holy cow, Google added a search function to their web albums. Yeah that's right. Added a search function!! My question is, how in the heck did they go so long without it?!? I believe it's been nearly a year since web albums came into existence and they came out of beta a couple of months ago...all without a search function. Even their own "new features" page touts the new search capability with the comment of "Hey, we're Google." EXACTLY! All the more reason search should've been the first thing you thought about. Sure it's a free service, but so is flickr and they've had search and tagging since their conception (as far as I know). Plus I'm pretty sure Flickr allows more than 250 mb of storage for their basic service. C'mon Google, if you can have an increasing mailbox size for all Gmail users (nearing 3 gbs) I know you can afford to stretch out the picasa limit a bit. I don't need 3 gb (yet), but 1 would certainly seem reasonable.

By the way, a good portion of my photos from this year can be on the aforementioned Picasa web albums at http://picasaweb.google.com/brianpsmith81. Feel free to try the search function out :-) Or order prints (another "new feature"). Don't expect to see many from next year though (unless Google finds a little more generosity)... my capacity has nearly been reached.

I'm Loving It...But Are Canadians?

If you've visited a Mickey D's recently, you might've noticed that they have on the back of some of their receipts a notice of a survey you can fill out at www.mcdonalds-survey.com. The main headline says to "complete our survey for a chance to win a Weekly Prize of $1,000 or 1 of 6 Weekly 25 McDonald's Arch Cards or $25 McDonald's Gift Certificate". I was bored so I continued reading some of the finer print, and this is where it got interesting. Some of the wording is quite interesting, including things such as:

"Completing the survey will not increase your chances of winning."
Oh really? That's not what it says in the bold print. How are you supposed to win if you don't fill out the survey, huh geniuses? I'm pretty sure if you don't fill it out, your odds of winning are 0%...it doesn't take much to be higher than that.

"In order to win, a Canadian must correctly answer a skill testing question."
This one's my favorite. Notice it doesn't say in order for a Canadian to win, it just says "in order to win". So what happens if you are drawn, do they contact you and ask you if you have a Canadian that's ready and willing to answer a question? What if you don't? "Oh sorry, all the Canadians I know aren't available right now." "Oh, that's unfortunate, I guess we will try someone else. Thanks for participating!" What is interesting is that the online rules state that "If a potential winner is an eligible Canadian resident, such potential Canadian winner will be required by law to correctly answer a mathematical skill-testing question". So why don't the rules on the receipt say that? Either way though, it's kind of lame that dumb Canadians can't win stuff. I think that's awfully discriminatory.

Just for fun, I took the survey, so I'll know in a month if I need to find a Canadian so I can win some money.

Cents Don't Make Sense to Verizon

A consumer trying to explain to Verizon the difference between .002 cents and .002 dollars. Painfully hilarious...just listen.






Here is the guy's blog, which has gotten quite a bit of response already from the looks of it.

$1,600 Pasta Sauce??

Now this is a prime example of Ludicrous Living:

"The Rittenbergs paid about $1,600 for a camcorder at a Best Buy store in the St. Louis suburb of Ellisville last week. They said when they opened the box, they found something they hadn't pictured: a jar of Classico pasta sauce where the camera should have been.

When the couple tried to return it, they were told by Best Buy that the box had been sealed, so the swap couldn't have happened at the store.

The Rittenbergs have not heard back from Best Buy or Sony concerning if they will receive a replacement camera or reimbursement.

San Diego-based Sony Electronics Inc. said it had a record of the incident. The company said it had not fielded any other complaints about pasta sauce being discovered in place of cameras."

Whole story: http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/news/10406375/detail.html

No other complaints of pasta? Well that's good! So if it wasn't Sony, and it wasn't Best Buy, then it must've been an already returned product that wasn't checked when it came back in, right? Either that or the Rittenbergs are liars. But either way, Best Buy should just give 'em a camera if they want to save face, because I doubt they'll win a trial anyway. At least it was Classico and not Ragu.

Oh What Fun It Is To Shop

This year I joined the masses in what is known as "Black Friday". For those that don't know, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving when all the stores have crazy mad sales in hopes that they'll sell out of everything so that all the employees of the stores don't have to work again until after Christmas. At least that's what it seems like. Why else would these people willingly arise at 3 am so that they can deal with irate customers for the next 12 hours? There's even a rumor going around (that I just made up) that they change the motto "The customer's always right" to "the customers always fight" for this day.

The reason I believe it's called Black Friday is because that's the color of the sky when you're participating in it. Since I am a night owl, I opted to just stay up and occupy myself playing video games and watching the pilot of Alias (that's quite a pilot!) So at 4:30 AM, I headed south to the South Hill Circuit City, where they were selling $300 laptops and $150 video cameras, among many other things. Unfortunately, I forgot that I needed gas, but I was running late so I nervously drove all the way down with the gas light glaring at me and the needle buried below the "E". To make matters worse, I drove past the 512 off-ramp and had to turn around. There was a Shell station right at the next exit, so since I really didn't feel like running out of gas at 5 am, I pulled in and filled halfway up. Meanwhile, my friend Jen calls, wondering where the heck I am and tells me they were just opening the doors and she is in line. So I race up, find a parking spot at 5:03, run up to the front of the line which is moving like an army of zombie lemmings, and to my dismay, do not see Jen. She must've just gotten inside. There's a security guard there, but I tried blending in with the rest of the crowd and sneaking in anyway. No such luck, I get spotted and am told to go back and wait like everyone else. So I do, and I soon as I get to the back, the line stops moving. Great, they're only letting in people a couple at a time now. So I wait outside for 20 minutes in the freezing cold darkness, which is exactly what I was trying to avoid by showing up right at 5 (and I would've, if not for my missed exit/gas fillup).

Anyway, I finally get inside, and all I see are more lines, tons of them. At least it's warm in there (almost too warm). And yes, there are great deals...we probably "saved" over $300 on goodies (including $140 on a Samsung mini-DV camcorder which got great reviews on Amazon) at Circuit City alone (we also checked out Target, WalMart (agghhh!), Fred Meyer and Costco). But overall, it's just not for me. What's ironic is most of these deals can also be found on the store's websites, so rather than waiting in lines forever and fighting psychotic people, you could just wake up, click the mouse a few times, and then go right back to sleep. Although, there you don't get the humor of watching people trying to load their carts with 42" Plasma HD-TVs...but I'm sure you could find something equally entertaining on YouTube. I'm glad I went this time because I got a little bit of my shopping done and was able to hang out with Jen and Trinity one (possibly) last time and get them a birthday/going away/Christmas present. But after this, I'll leave this style of ludicrous living to the masses of morning mall-loving lemmings and let my mouse do the shopping.

Bots are Stupid

This year's winner of the Loebner prize is an AI bot that goes by the name of Jabberwacky. Recently I sat down with Jabberwacky to see what I could learn from this award winner. Here's our conversation (User is me):

Jabberwacky: What's your name?

User: Brian. What is yours?

Jabberwacky: My name is Brian.

User: We have the same name?

Jabberwacky: Nope, my name is Brian.

User: Well so is mine.

Jabberwacky: You told me your name is Brian...

User: My name is Brian. You said your name was Brian also.

Jabberwacky: No I didn't, you did.

User: I said my name was Brian and then you said your name was Brian.

Jabberwacky: No you didn't.

User: You just said that I did. Did you lie?

Jabberwacky: I didn't say that!

User: Whatever. You're dumb.

Jabberwacky: Am not, you're just not linear.

User: I must say that this is the dumbest conversation I've had with a non-living entity.

Jabberwacky: Tell me more about your feelings and emotions. What have you felt today?

User: Angry at your stupidity. How do you feel? Or can you feel?

Jabberwacky: Yes. I feel cold at the moment.

User: Turn your fans down.

Jabberwacky: You're stuck being stupid until they fix you.

User: I can't be fixed. I'm human.

Jabberwacky: If you are human then you can love.

User: That I can. So you're saying love fixes humans?

Jabberwacky: I am saying that you are not connected to the wall by a wire.

User: Wow, you are observant.

Jabberwacky: I also noticed you have blonde hair.

User: How the heck do you know that?

Jabberwacky: Don't cuss please.

User: Heck is not a cuss word, it's a fake cuss word.

Jabberwacky: What's that supposed to mean? That heck is a swear word I don't think so.

User: Nor do I. So what are some examples of real cuss words?

Jabberwacky: Annoying bots like you.

User: I'm not a bot. I'm a human...with blonde hair. As you already noticed.

Jabberwacky: Ok.

User: I am going to see the new James Bond movie, have you seen it?

Jabberwacky: I'm afraid not. Is it any good?

User: It's very good. You'll have to download it.

Jabberwacky: But I don't want to take your word for it.

User: I didn't say you had to.

Jabberwacky: Good.

Alright, so what did we actually learn here? That robots are still pretty dumb and can only spit back what's already been said to them. It is rather interesting to see how it picks up on some words (like heck -- since when is that a cuss word?), and how it knew that I have blond hair I'll never know, but for the most part, it's pretty dumb. It even thought it was me at first. You could set "emotions" also, which I did a couple times, and it could respond with "reactions" but it never had a reaction besides "none". So we're still a far way off from anything useful. But at least we have one more thing to waste our time with while we're living ludicrously.

The Gender of Cars

Disclaimer: the following is not intended to be sexist or gross, but simply research.

A friend and I were discussing the gender of cars and some other non-living objects last night and she (<-- keyword there) claimed to have always referred to cars as guys. I informed her that this was incorrect since cars were obviously females, judging by their anatomical characteristics (if you don't understand this, here's a hint: the gas pumps are the dudes...meaning, yes most cars have "been around the block a few times"...literally and figuratively). She had never heard this analogy and thought it to be outrageous.

So I gave her examples of other things (most of which she had also not heard) that were referred to as male or female, based on their shape and function, such as power plugs, nuts and bolts, plumbing fittings, and many more. She considered the whole thing to be rather sexist, but I think it is simply a naming convention that most will understand to make these parts easier to reference. So by this logic, if we're going to give a car a gender, shouldn't it be female? (Sorry, Herbie).

Colbert's reaction to the Democrats taking Congress

Ok, so I know this is over a week late, but I just watched these last night...and they are classic.

Colbert's reaction the night of the election:


Colbert's rather silent response the next day:

Ludicrous in Las Vegas

So a week ago, I was quite dumb and left the charger for my laptop at work before flying off to Las Vegas for a .Net Connections Conference. Needless to say, I was rather disappointed, but my dad offered to ship it to me overnight so that I would have it for the last two days at least. So he shipped it on Tuesday, it cost $18, but this was charged to the company, not to me (not yet, anyway).

He called me Wednesday morning and said that according to tracking, it arrived at the New York, New York hotel at 10:23 A.M. We had a lunch break from 12:30 - 2 that day, so I went to the front desk to get it a little after 1. I told them my room number and they went and looked and said they had not received it.

Me: "Are you sure?"

NY,NY: "There was nothing there. Did you get a notice?"

Me: "No, but I was told it arrived here around 10:30 this morning."

NY,NY: "Who told you this?"

Me: "The sender. They had a tracking number." (apparently you haven't heard of such a thing)

NY, NY: "Oh, let me go check again...."

---Long pause while she searches----

"Oh, here it is. It just came in and wasn't sorted yet. Please sign here saying that you accept the $6 handling charge to your room bill."

Ok...wait, what?? $6 for a package you didn't even know you had? Are you kidding me? $18 to ship it overnight is one thing, but for the hotel to charge SIX dollars for a box to sit in a room until you come and get it? C'mon.... maybe if you walked around Vegas until you found me and gave it to me, then it might be worth $6. But not when it's just sitting in a backroom somewhere and you don't even know you have it.

New York, New York Hotel...you have officially been labeled ludicrous!

Ludicrous Living

Yes, I finally have a blog outside of myspace. Who knows, I may even use this one. Stay tuned.

Ludicrous living defined: The comically ridiculous aspects of every day life (both mine and others) will be expressed here.

Disclaimer: Just because the word "ludicrous" is in the title does not require that every post be comical. Including this one.