David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 214

Facebook Peoples Should Remember Yahoo Serious

Facebook people should remember the lesson of Yahoo Serious:

I don’t know if everyone remembers him, the star of the late 80s movie Young Einstein. He changed his name to Yahoo Serious and, according to the rumor I’m too lazy to look up, found out that he then couldn’t change it back.

I don’t know if that’s true or not (I still kind of doubt that he can’t change it back as opposed to just didn’t), but people on Facebook should remember him…because they seem to keep running into something similar and miss when it happens to other people.

For various reasons, people are sometimes changing their names on Facebook to funny things. However, they often only find out after that fact that Facebook has a policy that you can only change your name once every 60 days. As such, they’re stuck for two months with whatever joke they just did. This often surprises people fresh, regardless how many other people it’s happened to.

Though this is only 60 days as opposed to permanently, it’s still a good thing to keep in mind. Be careful what you can get stuck with for 60 days.

Parallels Between Fat Tuesday And Black Friday

I was just noticing that one could find certain parallels between black Friday and Fat Tuesday. I’m of course referring to the black Friday that comes after Thanksgiving and kicks off the biggest shopping day of the year, though the name relationship to Good Friday (also Black Friday) of Easter fame should not be ignored.

I mean, Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) is the debauchery that immediately proceeds the Lenten (atonement) season. Though perhaps not by design, the idea is that you get in your last bit of naughtiness and excess before you have to start being sorry for it all.

Looking at things that way, Thanksgiving is the last chance to be thankful for the good things you have shortly before kicking off the greed of black Friday.

Yeah, I know that the supposition is that you are Christmas shopping on black Friday and thus the ‘savings’ are related to generosity as opposed to greed, but let’s be honest. It’s a symbolic greed holiday.

As such, isn’t there a similarity? Granted, the ‘good’ and ‘bad are kind of reversed between Thanksgiving/black Friday and Fat Tuesday/Lent…but I think the relationship still kind of holds. I might be reaching a bit, but still.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

Everyone Complains About No Hoverboards But No One Complains About No Flying Trains

Everyone complains about how we don’t yet have hoverboards like the ones in Back to the Future II (yes, I know there are some strides in this direction…but they aren’t enough yet). However, it’s interesting that people don’t complain about other things if they’re going to complain about this.

For instance, Back to the Future III promised us we’d have flying trains by 1885:

That didn’t happen either. Why no complaints?

Things I’m Thankful For

We’re leading into Thanksgiving now and the lists I’ve been seeing people post about things for which they are thankful have got me thinking. Here are some things for which I’m personally thankful:

- Gratitude

- Acknowledgement

- Gratefulness

- Recognition

- Appreciativeness

And these are just a few. There are many others. I just wanted to chime in on this too.

New Study Clearly Means You Need To Keep Drinking Heavily

A new study apparently indicates that most heavy drinkers are not alcoholics. Clearly this means you all need to keep drinking heavily.

After all, if most heavy drinkers are not alcoholics that MUST mean that most alcoholics do not drink what is considered “heavily.” Ergo, if heavy drinkers reduce their consumption, they would not be drinking as heavily and would put themselves squarely in the population where alcoholism is most prevalent. They would be part of the population with the higher statistical odds of being an alcoholic.

Thus, there is clearly only one solution. Drink heavily. Otherwise, you could be an alcoholic.

Heavy drinking carries its own costs and puts its own toll on the body, but are people willing to chance alcoholism? I wouldn’t risk it. Animal House said it best:

Bluto: [thrusting six-pack into Flounder's hands] My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.

Otter: Better listen to him, Flounder, he’s in pre-med.

If You’re Cold, They’re Cold. Bring Them Inside.

If you’re cold, they’re cold.

Bring them inside.

I Won’t Be Going Back To Little India On Downing In Denver Again

Usually I can separate a single bad experience from a restaurant, but tonight was unpleasant enough that I won’t be going back to Little India on Downing in Denver again. Thanks, Jairan A. You made tonight dis-pleasingly memorable.

We still hadn’t gotten our drinks by the time the food arrived. We had to ask the guy who brought out our food about our drinks, and he said he’d get our waitress. Ten minutes later, she finally brought our drinks. That was good, because my order wasn’t right and it took that long to be able to tell her so she could go fix it.

That was the first she’d stopped by since the food had arrived, no check to be sure it was okay at all.

So, I got to sit and watch my wife eat while the naan and rice got cold. Eventually, my fixed dinner arrived. We hadn’t seen the waitress again since then. About ten minutes after that, halfway through me eating, she finally stopped by to check whether it was okay this time. Good thing, because I finally had a chance to ask for a second drink.

Seriously, we counted and the other servers were going to each of their tables about 5 or 6 times for each 1 time we saw our waitress.

Meanwhile, my wife wasn’t doing much better. Half of the lamb chunks in her food were okay, but half were so tough that she couldn’t even cut them with a knife. It was just bad.

Then the waitress showed up to take our plates away. Ten minutes later is the next time we see her when she’s trying to run through their desserts, which she hadn’t even asked if we wanted to hear about. We tell her we want the check and she actually says that we’ll have to give her a minute.

More like another ten.

Finally we were able to pay and get out of there. I never did get more than two drinks. It was just bad, bad enough that I won’t be going back to Little India on Downing in Denver. It’s sad, because they were really good the last two times we went there. I just won’t be able to forget this if I try to eat there again. It’d just poison the dinner.

I already had to pay for the privilege of having a dinner that just made me angry. I would have rather stayed home and eaten TV dinners out of the fridge.

McCarthy Picked To Star In Tinker Bell Movie Headline Confuses Me

I saw a headline recently mentioning that McCarthy was picked to star in the new Tinker Bell movie. That’s all I saw, just that much information. I was confused.

Upon further research, there is apparently an as of yet untitled movie about Tinker Bell that Melissa McCarthy has been supposedly picked to star in.

However, my first thought on seeing the headline was that they were talking about Joseph McCarthy:

This seemed inappropriate for a number of reasons.

For one, Joe’s dead. That could make difficult for filming. For another, he doesn’t really strike me as a Tinker Bell type. This could depend on individual interpretation, but still. Unless Tink plans to ferret out communists in the Lost Boys, Joe seemed an odd choice.

In the end though, I’m glad the film people weren’t as confused as me. I’m betting a Tinker Bell movie with Melissa McCarthy will be a lot funnier than one with Joseph McCarthy. Well, a Joe one could be funny too…but for different and less appropriate reasons.

Does Russia Have A Space Weapon?

I just saw an article speculating about whether or not Russia has an orbital space weapon. I have some bad news founded on absolutely no information whatsoever. It’s true.

My sources may or may not have informed me that Russian university students have secretly overcome a design problem and created a laser that can produce an estimated six megawatts of power. This wouldn’t be too much on its own, but my sources also may or may not have indicated that another Russian student built a circular precision mirror one meter in diameter with a virtually 100 per cent reflective, one micron thick, film applied thereto. Maybe the engineers don’t have to figure out a use for it…may someone already has a use for it, one for which it’s perfectly designed.

Looks at the facts: very high power, portable, limited firing time, unlimited range. All you’d need is a big spinning mirror and you could vaporize a human target from space. (Apologies to Lazlo Hollyfeld.)

Our only hope is that the first group of Russian students will realize what’s going on, find out when the weapon is going to be tested, and change the coordinates to their professor’s house…where they’ve conveniently placed a huge tin of popcorn. I only hope they have enough montages available.