Travis's voicemails

A while back, I discovered I had a bunch of voicemails in my old Google Voice account that I hadn't looked at in years. At first they were boring, but then I got a series of voicemails for Travis and, well, you'll just have to listen for yourself.

What is it with me and answering machines?

Big Tech

As you may have heard, Apple recently surpassed ExxonMobil as the most valuable company as measured by market capitalization.  At this time of economic uncertainty, it is unconscionable that Big Tech continues to take advantage of hard-working Americans by inflating prices on essential portable computing devices.  With the technological advances we have made in this country, it is absurd that we have to pay upwards of $800 per iPad (not to mention the astronomical costs of data plans) when Apple's past history clearly shows that their products will be obsolete within a year.  It's manipulative and deceptive and it's time for the government to discontinue its policies promoting Big Tech at the expense of the middle class and give some of the benefit of this windfall back to the people who need it most.  There is no reason Apple should be so obscenely valuable, and it's time they paid their fair share (or at least were paid fairly for their shares...).

Family Reunion Addendum

As I was looking through the portrait shots from the reunion, I couldn't help but notice that some of them looked pretty funny when played through quickly like a movie.  So for your entertainment, here are two as animated gifs.  (They may take a few seconds to load.)

Still no word on Pete

Several years ago, when we were living in our second basement apartment in Provo, we got a message on our answering machine.  It was a wrong number, but we found the message so amusing that it has remained on our answering machine all this time, being played occasionally for a good laugh.

Since we bought a new set of phones yesterday, I figured I should record it off the old machine before it was lost forever.  So for your listening pleasure, here is the message that has become our family joke.

Thanks Mary Sue, whoever you are, for the message.  And I'm sorry to hear about Aunt Grace.

No Carmen, No!

Bad girl!

Clarification

I just realized that my last post probably was probably too subtle, so for those of you wondering, check out the date on the ticket (and the link).

And so this post isn't completely wasted, here's a joke I thought up a few days ago:

What do you call a fat doctor who specializes in male parts?

A meteorologist.

But they'll suffocate!

Here's a good quote I heard in a meeting today that can be wonderfully taken out of context:

"These guys are producing a good bit of gas, we might want to shut them in."

Hurricane Food

Now that we live in hurricane country, I keep a link to the NHC (National Hurricane Center) in my favorites so I can keep tabs on all the storms. I've been pretty disappointed in Bertha so far as she lives up to her name's stereotype of being big and slow, just wallowing in the Atlantic for days at a time, hardly moving.

Poking around on the NHC's site, I found the list of hurricane names for this year (and future years) and I've been trying to decide which storm I would most prefer to meet this year, based on its name's personality. Here are the choices:

• Arthur
• Bertha
• Cristobal
• Dolly
• Edouard
• Fay
• Gustav
• Hanna
• Ike
• Josephine
• Kyle
• Laura
• Marco
• Nana
• Omar
• Paloma
• Rene
• Sally
• Teddy
• Vicky
• Wilfred

My first instinct was either Gustav or Cristobal, but on further thought I think those storms would be too damaging; Gustav with sheer power and Cristobal with something sneakier, like flooding. Edouard and Rene would provide lots of lightning and flair, but little substance. Ike and Wilfred would be weak and drizzly. Kyle and Sally would just be your run-of-the-mill hurricanes; no need to get hit by them. Laura and Vicky would look like an average hurricane, but hit harder than I'd like. I think I'd have to go with either Marco or Omar -- just dangerous enough to be interesting.

If it were up to Olivia, I think it's safe to say she would choose Hurricane Nana. And then she'd try to eat it.

Who would you pick?

Street Name Generator

One of the first things I noticed about this area is that nearly all street names have 2 words plus the type of street (e.g., "Eagle Springs Parkway"). It's not like that in the older areas closer to downtown, just in the newer suburbs, so I have to assume it's simply to sound pretentious. Our neighborhood, bless its clubhouse, has some of the dumbest, most generic nature names you can imagine. I took the best and put the first, second and third parts in separate lists to create the Eagle Springs Street Name Generator:

Meetings

One of the joys of working for a large company in an office environment is the preponderance of meetings. Normally I only have a weekly meeting with my immediate coworkers, but last week I was treated to additional 2 hour and 2.5 hour large group meetings. These extra meetings, while relating to my job in an overarching way, had very little to do with me specifically and except for the free food were rather torpid affairs. Now I see why my job required a college degree. Nothing prepares you for business meetings better than sitting through class.

The 2.5 hour meeting was on a Friday afternoon and by this time I was looking to keep myself entertained. This invariably means that I look for ways to misinterpret what the speaker is saying in humorous ways, which is why I had to stifle my laughter when a 30-something black woman repeatedly used the phrase, "Biz Ops" (as in "business operations") while answering a question. It sounded so similar to street slang that I just wanted her to bust out a "fo' shizzle my bizzops!" but she so obviously didn't talk that way that the mental image kept me chuckling the rest of the day.

According to YouTube...

Heat Mosquito

(inspired by Indexed)

Computer Science Pick-up Lines

"Terrible Life Choice..."

A guy in one of my classes showed this Simpsons clip before class today. It's very appropriate for this finals season...

Comic

The reason I wasn't sad to leave my last job:

Huh?

Sometimes I wonder if commercial writers put stuff on TV just to see if anyone will notice. Today I heard the best spin I've heard in a long time: "The #1 kung fu comedy in America!" Yes America, go see this movie, because it's more popular than all the other kung fu comedies playing right now!

Carl Lewis the musician?

This is perhaps the funniest, or saddest, thing I have ever seen. Apparently, riding the success of Olympic victory, Carl Lewis decided that he was not only a talented athlete, but also a talented musician. Check out his music video here and decide for yourself... Read the article I got this link from that talks about other bad athlete/musicians (among other things) here.

Funny Bush Video

Warning: This video light-heartedly makes fun of President Bush (it's Will Ferrell).

Watch It (19 MB)

(You might want to right-click and choose Save Target As to save it to your computer first.)

Zombo.com

The funniest most useless site I've seen in a while: Zombo.com

(Make sure your speakers are on. Don't bother to follow the links.)

This land is my land...

Voting time is coming up.  Check out this Flash cartoon.