ThisMyShiznat

Public Function Weekend(byref intNumberOfDaysOff) as Object

–--for count = 0 to intNumberOfDaysOff
–------DoSomething()
–----–if count < intNumberOfDaysOff then
–--–----–WScript.Sleep(Int((43200000 – 14400000) * rnd + 14400000)
––----else
––----––WScript.Sleep(Int((32400000 – 25200000) * rnd + 25200000)
–----–end if
----next

----Weekend = “Go back to Work”
End Function

I looked at my Homer Simpson Chia Pet Time Lapse tonight and noticed that was ‘allegedly’* the 999th viewer.

A few months back I got a Homer Simpson Chia Pet.  Having prior Chia Pet experience on my resume, I already knew that they leak like a siv and i figured painting it would keep the water in.  I picked out a nice enamel paint, which was Homer Simpson yellow.  The water leaked through the terracotta pot and separated the paint from the pot, which formed as bubbles in the paint.  A few modifications later and I got the pot to hold water without leaking at all, and the paint didn’t bubble anymore.  Having gone this far, I wanted to make the Chia Pet completely self sustaining.  I didn’t want to be watering it at all, I just wanted it to grow.

I figured if I was going to go so far as to get a fish tank pump involved, I needed something more than the satisfaction of watching it grow once.  Thats where the photographs come in.  I started looking in to time lapse photography a little bit, and I found a few solutions, but nothing that would record for anything more than a few hours at a time.  This thing is gonna take 6 weeks to grow.  Resetting the camera every three hours doesn’t sound appealing when I already have a fish tank pump keeping Homers head full of water 24 hours a day.

More on that later.  Don’t let the suspense keep you awake at night.

* I say allegedly because I’m not entirely sure how that number gets updated, but it doesn’t seem to happen in real time.  Maybe it does it every few hours or something.

I had to bring this photo to you.  This is a rubber ducky of epic proportions.  I saw photos of this giant duck from a few different angles so if it *is* a photoshop job, it’s the most elaborate photochop job ever.

Seeing this giant rubber ducky balloon, I quickly followed the logical train of thought and started thinking how great it would be if the ducky were actually sea worthy.  It looks like this particular duck is a giant balloon similar to what you see in the Macy’s day parade.  Big balloon doesn’t work for me.  I’m looking for a 250 foot duck made with rubber 3 feet thick.  The giant rubber ducky will have just enough weight in the bottom that the ducky will ‘weeble in the ocean but it wont fall down’.

Now building a giant rubber ducky, capable of floating across the Atlantic would be awesome but it would be completely useless if we didn’t go all the way by dragging it out to the middle of the ocean and letting the giant duck float it’s way around the world.

If we’re going through all the trouble to make one of these giant rubber duckies, we might as well make a dozen of them.  We will tow a dozen giant rubber duckies out to the middle of the ocean and let them float away.  Meteorologists can place wagers on where the ducks wash up on shore and how long it it will take.  I’m sure the scientific value is huge and compared to the price of some new piece of technology it’s fairly inexpensive plus, the ducky data will be true to life accurate.

Bruno Bastet, a UN worker living in midtown Manhattan has been making a tax free salary of over $180,000 a year working for the UN, while collecting welfare checks each month as well from the welfare system in France.

It looks like he falsified documentation to build up the ruse that he was still living in France with his wife and children.  Over the past 4 years he has collected about $30,000.

So what do ya think?  Was it worth it buddy?

Original article here from Fox News.

A top operational official in charge of protecting civilian government computer networks has resigned, dealing another blow to the federal effort to enhance cybersecurity.

Original article here from The Washington Post

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I came across a great image from the NYTimes about last years federal budget in comparison to the planned spending for 2009, already set up by the bush administration. The article was originally published September 28th 2008. It mistakenly lists the federal deficit at 5.4 trillion. A correction was released a week later, stating the actual deficit at 9.6 trillion. That’s quite a typo.


The Red Columns represent the proposed ‘bailout funds’ to be allocated for the 2009 budget, addressing problems such as AIG, the Auto industry, the Financial system, and the mortgage crisis.


The Green columns represent the yearly spending in 2008 for things like social security, medicade, tax rebates and the previously named ‘war on terror’.


The ghosted columns represent how much further in debt the country became in 2008, and how much we lost on import taxes by foreign companies finding loopholes.


I am interested to see what this years chart looks like. This graphic was of epic size already. Something like 1260×1681 pixels. Click image to see it full size. You will need to zoom in as well. To zoom, hold down the CTRL and scroll the wheel on your mouse. If your mouse doesn’t have a wheel then your on your own.

If you want to read news on this, a google search for “Typhoon Marakot” will give you plenty of information. I just want to bring you some photographs that I found to be particularly impressive.

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No, I’m not talking about the Bush administrations federal budget.

Early this morning both Twitter and Facebook were victims of Distributed Denial of Service attacks.  (DDoS)  The attack seems to have hit Twitter first, bringing the social network site to it’s knees.  Shortly after Facebook also began experiencing intermittent issues, though it seems that the Facebook system handled the attack better than Twitter.

In theory, the attackers could have executed a buffer overflow attack by sending packets with 141 characters to the web servers.  Ok.. that’s a lie, but if you know what it means then it’s probably pretty funny.  At a minimum I amuse myself.

Personally, I don’t tweet.  I am even bothered by the SMS protocols restrictions.  For non tech speaking readers, that means I wish text messaging supported more than 160 characters.  140 is just absurd.  Now the Extended SMS protocol does support up to 1000 characters *i think*, but for the most part, cellular carriers don’t use XMS (eXtended Message Service).  Especially if your texting to a cell phone using another carrier.

I read one report about the twitter attack where a marketing executive in Manhattan complained that she couldn’t get to twitter, and didn’t know where to go to find answers because she gets all her news from twitter.  wait..  you get ALL of your news in 140 characters or less?  seriously?  The average news report i read is about 2 pages long, but hey, whatever suits you.

Speaking of the inherent limitations of communicating in such short bursts.  Did you know that Congressmen and Senators tweet with each other while in session?  Yeah, so the people who are running our country are sharing their opinions with each other this way.  I’ll say it one more time.  140 characters or less.

Below is an actual simulated tweet from the congress floor.

Ithink th $ 4 Kulnkerz iz huge sucess the $ alocated wuz sposd2 last 3 mnths and we
ran out in 1week Oh wait the black guy iz taking again.

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Here is some input from twitter users in real life (IRL).

140 characters or less is fine for me because I don’t actually have anything important to say!  This morning twitter was down when I was trying to tell everyone that I bought a pumpkin that looks just like my butt.

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Ok, I’ll stop now.  Please click my advertisers.