Sony Misinformation Campaign

I went to the Sony Style Retail Store in University Village (here) and the following interaction took place:

Salesguy: Hi sir, are you looking for a new laptop?
Me: yep.
Salesguy: These models here have the Core 2 Duo.
Me: what does that mean?
Salesguy: It means they have two hard drives so they can write files twice as fast.
Me: really?
Salesguy: Yah, it's sort of like having two brains.

Hrm, I think even my father knows the difference between a hard drive and a processor. Note that Sony laptops easily run upwards of three grand. You would think for that amount of money, the sales people would be educated about their product.

Oh and no, the laptops I was looking at did not have two hard drives (just the Core 2 Duo). And, yes, the last thing he said was somewhat accurate, but only if he was referring to the processor.

Scooter Style

If you pause the video at 11 seconds in, you can see Toomim.

Denny's in Tempe, AZ

I was in Tempe, AZ this past week for the ASSETS2007 conference. Across from our hotel was Denny's Restaurant, which offers fine dining experiences across the USA. This was the first Denny's that I'd ever been to, however, that sold hard liquor. I, of course, ordered a $3 whiskey, which the waitress told me was, ahem, Crown Royal. Although now I am somewhat disappointed that I did not order Denny's Champagne.

Whose Parrot Had Learned

Classic David Sedaris:

Once, at a dinner party, I met a woman whose parrot had learned to imitate the automatic icemaker on her new refrigerator. "That's what happens when they're left alone," she'd said. It was the most depressing bit of information I'd heard in quite a while, and it stuck with me for weeks. Here was this creature, born to mock its jungle neighbors, and it wound up doing impressions of man-made kitchen appliances.

-From "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim" by David Sedaris in his essay Repeat After Me

Charts that Flow

BoingBoing has been linking to lots of flowcharts recently, see Criteria for proper tactical usage of phrase "Oh, Snap!" and Medieval sexual decisionmaking for penitentials . My favorite, however, is this one from Toothpaste for Dinner: the Panflute flowchart. Comedic genius.

Subway Cheese Tessellation

(click here to see fullsize).

Richard Simmons Is Not Gene Simmons

Mental note: Richard Simmons is not Gene Simmons--although that makes for an interesting mental image.

Stop Putting Orange Soda In My Mouth

Simply the funniest amateur YouTube skit I have ever seen. This is hilarious even if you don't know who David Blaine is. It's worth watching the whole video--the ending has a big payoff.

Note: this video contains obscene language.

NetFlix User Reviews

Recently, NetFlix has been actively promoting their user-created content. NetFlix allows users to rate and review movies and share them with public/friends. One of the coolest features is the user-to-user similarity rankings--e.g., my g/f has rated569 movies and has a 80% similarity ranking with me. The reason for this post, however, is that I recently rented Maria Full of Grace (which was fantastic) and I found the most current"user reviews" to be quite interesting:

The movie might have been OK except that there was non stop comentary [sic] through the whole movie... The comments told every small detail about where he met the actors, physical points he liked etc. I got a BIG headache and had to turn off the movie. Who cares where he met the actors, I wanted to see a movie, not hear about what it is like to make a movie.

and, from another user,

I hated it because the movie was in Spanish and I could not get it to speak English.

New Years Resolution Passed

This year for my New Year's Resolution I decided to gain 100 pounds of pure muscle. On Thursday, the 12th of January, I passed my goal. This is, mind you, without steroids or even Gatorade. This is simply the outcome of 12 days of hard work.

Next year, I plan to work on my other arm.

Gates Apparently on Circumcision Promotion Tour

Google News aggregation makes for some interesting combinations of headlines. I saw this one last night and couldn't help but take a screenshot. The primary headline, "Circumcision promoted," actually has no accompanying graphic. The Bill Gates shot, shown just to the right of the "Circumcision promoted" text, is actually related to the third headline link: "AIDS Funding: Gates Steps Up as Rich Countries Step Back." However, given the proximity/layout of the Gates graphics and the Circumcision headline, it's easy to interpret that they are related.

Gary Gulman, 9 to 5

For my birthday last year my clever gf got me an autographed copy of Conversations With Inanimate Objects by Gary Gulman, who is one of our favorite comedians. First saw him opening for Dane Cook a few years ago at the Improv in Irvine. Comic Genius. Hard to upstage Dane but Gary definitely held his own.

9 to 5, eh. You know what the worst part of the 9 to 5 is... the 9. Noon to 5, OK. 9 to 5? I'm not even up at 9, what am I a farmer?

Hilarious IM

them: OHMYGOSH
me: wut?

them: i just swallowed a cherry pit!!

(Ah how I love IM; also note the gratuitous txtspk here to save myself a letter)

Robbie Cordry = H-A-T-E Monger

I saw Mr. Cordry perform at a show last month at UW. He recently taped a segment for the Daily Show on Comedy Central about tolerance in America--his finding, that Americans on the whole are quite tolerant people, except when it comes to their views on racists. The segment ends with a list of 200+ groups that he hates scrolling quickly across the screen. Someone took the time to transcribe these and post them on the web (here).

The best part is the continued reference to TiVo list pausers scattered about:
1. TiVo List Pauser
2. Seriously Stop Pausing This
3. What do you think this is Lost?
4. listpauser@yahoo.com

Others: first "Korea (North)" and then later "Korea (South)", suggested lottery number picks, Lebanese Christians as well as Lesbian Christians, Circumsized, Mohawk Indian, and Mary Kate and Ashley.

Update: someone more clever than me sent an e-mail to listpauser@yahoo.com and received this response.

A Froehlich Recently Auctioned

Dartmouth just auctioned off a date with my cousin for their Asian Relief fund. Note the young lady in front with her hand held high and proud--they can't get enough of him. (link)

Google Quote of the Day

You know your day is going well when your personalized Google quote of the day is "Information is temporarily unavailable." Hmm, I wonder who said that.

Also, in other Google news, my clever girlfriend found out today that if you search for "search" in Google, Google is actually the 5th result from the top behind MSN Search and Lycos of all things.

10 Ways Cheney Can Kill You

In light of the recent man-hunt conducted by Dick Cheney in which he shot and injured a 78 year-old man in the face, neck and upper torso (link), here's a celebratory picture memorializing Cheney's brutality.

Number of the week: 8

[17:34] jonfroehlichUW: 8 is sexily symmetrical
[17:34] jonfroehlichUW: both over horizontal and vertical axes
[17:34] sled212: and orthogonally infinite