Brandon Live!

The best story I’ve heard this week by far was told today over lunch.  Apparently, a co-worker of mine named George listens to the Rush Limbaugh show in his car, and yesterday heard him discussing Barak Obama’s comments about similarities between the recent housing crisis and the lead-up to the Great Depression.  I imagine the comments were referring to the obvious similarities between those who obtained ridiculous sub-prime loans and those in the 1920s who bought stock they couldn’t afford on margin.  However, Limbaugh decided that Obama’s comments were the result of a crazy “liberal education” - and even remarks how “lucky” he is that he didn’t graduate from college, thus allowing him to escape the perils of actual knowledge.

To prove his point, Rush says he did some Google searches for “Great Depression” and then proceeds to attack each of the results as liberal propaganda.  Because we all know that college professors teach straight off of Google results pages.  So my friend is listening and hears something rather striking… the name of one of our mutual colleagues - Paul Alexander Gusmorino (”The Third!” - I love the way Limbaugh says that).  

Limbaugh found among the top results an essay written by Paul, entitled “The Main Causes of the Great Depression.”  He quotes Paul’s essay and refutes each of its claims, dissecting them as if they were part of a Harvard professor’s lecture on the subject.  He doesn’t pull any punches either.  “Mr. Gusmorino, you better check Karl Marx and see if you plagiarized him in putting this piece together.”

Ouch.  Those words would be harsh if they really were for a Harvard lecturer.  But that’s not who wrote this essay.  It was my friend who works as a Program Manager at Microsoft.

When he was in 10th grade.

Today I saw, for the first time, a software release where an update had to be released to address 32-bit compatibility issues, as the initial release was apparently only tested on 64-bit machines.

Neat. 

Well that didn’t take long.

They’re supposed to be sending someone over to install Verizon FIOS service at my place next Wednesday Friday.  15mbps up, 15mbps down.  Just the way the internet was meant to be.  And hopefully, without the Torrent-stifling connection-dropping level of service that Comcast has been supplying for a while now.

For making it reasonably easy to leave.  Unlike some companies.

I don’t really have complaints about the service.  But since I no longer have the car that had the XM radio built in, it didn’t make much sense to pay for it any longer.  The new car has Sirius, although I’m not yet sure if I’ll bother signing up considering how little I used the XM radio in the last one.

They made a quick attempt to sell me a new radio at a discount, which is perfectly fine.  But they weren’t insistent, and seemed quite understanding of my situation when I mentioned why I was cancelling.  They take calls on Sunday, and I spoke to a real person with hardly a 30-second wait.

So even though I’m no longer a subscriber, XM and I are on good terms in my book.

This time

I’m actually quite impressed with the quickness of the response by MyPunchBowl to the community’s concerns. They made a mistake, but at least they’re listening and have taken steps to fix the situation - and I respect that. Thanks to Matt of MyPunchBowl for coming here to post the link to their response and updated privacy policy.

Jake beat me to it. But I knew as soon as I got a “March Newsletter” from MyPunchBowl.com that they’d gotten my e-mail address back when Chris and Ponzi invited me to a party via the service.

Anyway, go read Jake’s thoughts - and then pretend I said them. That’ll save me the time of paraphrasing

Yesterday morning I chuckled when I saw the news reports about the “bomb scare” in Boston, where some off-their-rocker police person in Boston decided that a neon sign that was part of a viral marketing campaign for an upcoming movie looked like a bomb.  “That must be embarassing,” I thought - who could be so stupid as to think what is essentially a Lite Brite would be an explosive?  I suppose it’s good to know that Boston authorities are on top of things if some evil terrorists decide to place very small bombs with big flashing bright lights depicting a popular cartoon character on them in publicly visible places.  I feel safer already.

But this whole thing became a lot less funny when I heard they were pressing charges against two men who work for the advertising agency that Turner Broadcasting hired to run the marketing campaign.  Are they insane?  But wait, it gets better.  Apparently they’re being charged with a felony for placing a “hoax device that causes panic.”  Again, this would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that these two guys are actually being charged with this stuff.  The assistant attorney general there apparently refers to the signs as “bomb-like devices” and has gone on record saying “if they had been explosive they could have damaged transportation infrastructure in the city.” 

He’s so right.  In fact, if the billboards along I-90 were explosive, they could injure passing motorists.  Heck, if my TV exploded right now that would really suck.  Maybe I should sue Starbucks, because if my cup of coffee here exploded, I could get hurt.

Anita posted word of a Geek Dinner happening tonight at 7pm at Crossroads Mall.  Details here.  Not sure if I’ll make it but I may try.

Earlier today I made my first of several posts about building a Windows Vista “PowerToy” on the Windows Shell Blog.  This first post is an introduction to what PowerToys are and a bit of history of how mine (a Windows Search gadget for the Sidebar) began.

Building a Windows PowerToy, part 1.