Soapbox

True? or False? – Should be true if it isn’t!

by Mike on April 17, 2009 , 11:11

Posted to Craig’s List Personals:
(maybe?)

To the Guy Who Tried to Mug Me in Downtown Savannah night before last..

Date: 2009-03-23, 3:43 AM EST

I was the guy with the black Burberry jacket that you demanded I
hand over, shortly after you pulled the knife on me and my girlfriend.
You also asked for my girlfriend’s purse and earrings.

I hope you somehow come across this message. I’d like to apologize.

I didn’t expect you to crap in your pants when I drew my pistol after

you took my jacket.Truth is, I was wearing the jacket for a reason that evening, and it wasn’t that cold outside.

You see, my girlfriend had just bought me that Kimber Model 1911 .45 ACP pistol for Christmas, and we had just picked up a shoulder holster for it that evening. Beautiful pistol, eh?

It’s a very intimidating weapon when pointed at your head, isn’t it? I know it probably wasn’t a great deal of fun walking back to wherever you’d come from with that brown sludge flopping about in your pants. I’m sure it was even worse since you also ended up leaving your shoes, cellphone, and wallet with me. I couldn’t have you calling up any of your buddies to come help you try to mug us again.

I took the liberty of calling your mother, or “Momma” as you had her listed in your cell, and explaining to her your situation. I also bought myself and four other people in the gas station this morning a tank full of gas on your credit card.The guy with the big motor home took 150 gallons and was extremely grateful! I gave your shoes to one of the homeless guys over by Vinnie Van Go Go’s, along with all of the cash in your wallet.

I threw the wallet in a fancy pink “pimp mobile” parked at the curb after I broke the windshield and side window out and keyed the drivers side. I called a bunch of phone sex numbers from your cellphone.They’ll be on your bill in case you’d like to know which ones. Ma Bell just shut down the line, and I’ve only had the phone for a little over a day now, so I don’t know what’s going on with that. I hope they haven’t permanently cut off your service.

I could only get in two threatening phone calls to the DA’s office and one to the FBI with it.The FBI guy was really pissed and we had a long chat (I guess while he traced the number).

I’d also like to apologize for not killing you and instead making you walk back home humiliated. I’m hoping that you’ll reconsider your choice of path in life. Next time you might not be so lucky..

- Alex -

P.S. Remember this motto…… an armed society is a polite society!

( This might not be the way one SHOULD do this, but it sure is fun to think about)

be safe!

-Mike

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Social Networking Site Bankrupcy

by Mike on April 14, 2009 , 00:55

Ok, I’m declaring myself Social Networking Bankrupt. With all the different social networking sites that I joined a while back and the fact I have different ones cross posting to others I just can’t keep up! I don’t want anyone on Plurk, FriendFeed and whatever other ones out there to think I’m ignoring them. I’m just not able to look at all of them. So, as of today, I’m only looking at Twitter and Facebook. Facebook only because a lot of people on there are friends of mine and that’s the only place they go. Facebook drives me crazy with all the quiz requests and all the stupid time wasters on there. But I will check that from time to time and if you send something to me on Facebook, I will see it. If it’s a request for some time wasting thing, I may not respond to it. Please don’t be offended. It’s just I have to spend my time on the computer doing “work” and don’t always have time to screw around.

I use twitter because it’s the easiest for me to use from my phone (blackberry). So, if you are following me on Plurk, Friendfeed, iDeni.ca (or whatever), twit army, bebo or any other ones I forgot. Just know, that I won’t see your updates there. If you have something for me, come back here to Mike Dell’s World or go to Twitter and sign up for a an account and find me at twitter.com/mgdell. Plain old email works good too.

I just spent more minutes then I had trying to fend off all these “Great offers” on a facebook quiz. I gave up. Please don’t send any of those to me and expect me to do them.

Ok, back to your regularly scheduled blog reading!

-Mike

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Broadcast Future ?

by Mike on March 14, 2009 , 07:00

With what is going on with the digital transition and the economy, not to mention the “new media”, I think that broadcasting as we know it is going to die off or at least change into something we would never recognize if we were to jump ahead 10 years. That’s right, 10 years, at most, is all these traditional broadcasters have as a business.

The problem with Broadcast TV (over the air local stations) is that the networks are getting close to not paying the stations to carry their programing. Once the networks quit paying local TV stations, most of them will be forced to go out of business.. Just turn off the transmitters and go home. My thought is that most markets will only support one over the air TV station that is all local with no network affiliation. It will be the local news channel and they might have some sort of syndicated programing on there to fill time, but mostly it will be for local news, weather , sports and whatever. It’s just like the newspaper business. Back in the day, it wasn’t too uncommon for a big city to have 2 or 3 newspapers. Now there seems to be just one in most big cities. It will be the same for broadcast TV.

Cable TV will survive but it will be a different busness then it is today. The cable outlets will be mostly internet service providers. The channels they carry will be IP based instead of RF based. Instead of getting your ESPN channels on channel 17 and 35 it will just be a menu item on the cable company’s set top box.

Satilite TV may not survive. They will have a hard time competing with streaming internet channels because of the coming improvements to wireless internet. Right now EVDO (which isn’t really fast enough to watch TV on) is just about everywhere in the USA. Once that gets improved enough and the streams compressed enough, then people will have wireless internet everywhere their cable doesn’t go.. In cars, RV’s, Trucks and wherever else. They will be able to watch that ESPN Stream live on their phones. Who’s going to want to pay $50 a month for a satellite connection?

10 years ago, having radio stations in the sky seemed like a great idea, and it was. But in the 10 years it took XM and Sirius to get up to speed, the business model changed on them. They had to merge just to stay alive. So far they are holding their own. This won’t last. As with TV, and to a much greater extent, people will be able to stream audio to their cars (which is the major part of XM/Sirius’ market) though their telephone connection. Once this takes off, the XM network will dry up and blow away. I give them 5 years.. Maybe less.

IPTV which is the streaming content put out by CNET, HULU, Ustream and many others will be the wave of the future. The only thing they are not good at is live events (for now). Thats where the local tv stations will have hope. The broadcasters could use their bandwidth to stream data to cars and other wireless devices. There are already phones that can pick up special broadcasts on digital TV. Also, podcasts such as those put out by revision3 and others will remain strong as long as the distribution costs stay reasonable.

Broadcast radio (you know AM/FM) will be similar to TV in that these big groups of radio stations such as Clear Channel will not survive. We can get all the national syndicated shows via podcasting or streaming the same as video. That will leave the real local stations. Maybe a small AM transmitter in every town. Something that can be used to pass along emergency messages and local news. The rest of the time they will just be background noise.

The good old days of broadcasting are over. There are way too many outlets of information, entertainment and sports out there for the big expensive transmitters to survive. The power of the media will drop with the demise of the big central outlets. It might be a good thing and it might not. One thing for sure, it’s going to be interesting to watch. Being on both sides of the broadcast world is a lot of fun for me, but I wouldn’t put a long term bet on it. Just do it as a hobby as I have been.

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“Change” you can believe in

by Mike on March 4, 2009 , 21:26

A friend of mine sent me this photo and I have to say I agree. I wish the best for Mr. Obama but so far, we haven’t seen any change that I would say is positive. Still hoping and praying that things get better but I’m also not holding my breath.

-Mike

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Weak Taste Bud Theory

by Mike on February 26, 2009 , 02:10

I’ve had a theory for quite a while about why some people must use excessive salt, pepper, ketchup, mustard and other sauces. I know a guy that puts a completely ridiculous amount of pepper on things. This same guy will order a steak at a restaurant and pour a half a bottle of A-1 Sauce on it. I don’t understand how he can even taste the meat!

My theory is that people like this have weak taste buds. Like someone with poor hearing or eyesight, they have poor tasting ability. Just like I need reading glasses to see small type clearly, they need to add all this “stuff” to their food “clearly”. That would explain why there are hot sauces that will literally burn your tongue. I don’t mind “hot” sauce that isn’t too hot. My favorite is Tabasco Green (which is really quite mild)

My wife is one of these people. She will order a salad and get 3 dressings on the side. She will pour all 3 of them on the same salad. She says: “I just like it that way”. I think it’s that she doesn’t really taste the food clearly enough so she has to add dressings until she tastes something. She also puts ketchup on just about everything.

I, on the other hand, don’t put salt on anything (other then maybe French fries). I eat salad with just a simple oil/vinegar dressing or Italian. I don’t use ketchup unless what I’m eating tastes really bad and I’m in a situation where it would be rude to not eat it. If I do have ketchup, it seems that it’s all I taste. I don’t dis-like ketchup, I just don’t want my food to taste like it. My favorite food (even though it’s not good for me ) is Mac and Cheese. My wife even puts ketchup on that! SACRILEGE ! How can you mess up a perfect food with a soupy mess of tomato and sugar!

I don’t have any scientific evidence of this theory. I haven’t researched it yet. I’m not a doctor or scientist and I don’t even play one on TV. I think it’s a plausible theory. What do you think?

If my theory is true, what would we call these people? Those without hearing are called def and those without sight are called blind. Would those without the sense of taste be “tasteless”? or what?

Put that ketchup (or catsup) bottle down and step away from those fries!

Make sure you answer the poll question on the right side of this page.

-Mike

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Cash4Gold.com a Scam…

by Mike on February 18, 2009 , 01:14

… According to an ex-employee as reported on the consumerist http://consumerist.com/5144296/10-confessions-of-a-cash4gold-employee

Cash4Gold has threatened bloggers who post this link. Bring it on!

Companies like this are almost as bad as the the Payday loan business (Check cashing places) and the Whole Life Insurance business. (Yeah, bring it on too!)

-Mike

Thanks to Mike James over at Mike Thinks News for the tip!

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Repost: Don’t Email me that!

by Mike on February 17, 2009 , 04:28

Excuse me if this seems too direct, but someone has to say it.

I don’t want the Forward that you think is so funny. I spend a few minutes a day weeding though all the jokes that people send me. Some are funny, most are not. I get upwards of 200 messages a day and it takes a lot of time going though the spam and adding jokes to that doesn’t help.

I think it’s rude to bombard people with jokes instead of a well thought out “letter” of a personal nature. Besides, Most likely, I’ve seen it before. Sorry, but most of the jokes going around on email have a life of their own and have been going around and around for years! Same with that funny video, photo, PowerPoint, or whatever. If it is something new, and you want me to see it. Post it someplace (see below) and send me a link.

Don’t send me the chain letters and virus warnings. No, Bill Gates is not going to send money to someone just because this email goes to 1000’s of people. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you if you send me a stupid chain letter about friendship and I don’t send it back to you. I just don’t do that. The virus you heard about via some sort of forwarded email is likely from last century or non-existent. I can take care of my own security just fine thank you. If you get something like that, please go to snopes.com and check it out before you send it to others. Please don’t send it to me either way. If something says “Send this to everyone in your address book” Please, just delete it.

IF you still MUST email me something that was forwarded to you, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE clean it up. Cut and paste is your friend! Cut the funny/important forwarded message into a new message and write something personal to show that it really did come from you. If I see “Fwd: Fwd: Fwd:” in the subject line, it gets deleted. No questions asked. I don’t want to have to work so hard to figure out what you sent me. Also, if you just hit forward on these messages, you are exposing everyone in the chain’s email addresses (also rude). Also forwarding to a bunch of people in the “to” box or the “CC” box exposes all those email addresses. Please use the “bcc” which stands for Blind Copy.

With all the free services out there, you can share all the stuff you would be sending out in email without bombing someone with a large attachment. Also, know this about me, I don’t care how cool you think that big attachment is, I don’t see it. PERIOD. Don’t ask me about it, don’t be mad, I just don’t look at things like that.

A better way of doing that is to use the free services available in this new Web 2.0 space. They are easy to use and as a bonus, the people you send the link to (instead of the video, photo or whatever) do not have to have special software to use it. I know that most people have high speed internet now. But, some of us (like me) don’t have high speed all the time. In my case, I use my BlackBerry handheld as my email when I’m away from a computer. At other times I use it as my access. It connects to the network at 1xRT speed (about double dial up) most of the time. Sometimes it’s faster but it’s still not fast enough to download that BIG video you have. It will, however, do just fine downloading your link. When I do get to a high speed connection, I might just look at it.

Here is a list of free stuff that will help you distribute your “stuff”.

Blogs:
# Blogger
# WordPress

Podcasts:
# Mevio – Free audio and video podcasts
# Gcast – Free audio hosting from Garage Band

Videos:
# YouTube – Free Video hosting
# Viddler – Free Video hosting

Photos:
# Flickr – FREE photo hosting

Websites:
# My Space
# Facebook
# Your ISP – Many internet service providers have free webspace for your page and even a tool to make the page look good

Just to be clear, I didn’t write this to piss you off. I just want people to think a little about the person on the other end of that email. I don’t like you any less if you do send me something every once in a while. I’m just trying to help. Really I am

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Strange Week!

by Mike on December 15, 2008 , 23:59

So far me week is off to a very strange start. I went to work Sunday night and it was raining an 47 degrees. That is above normal temp for this time of year up here. At 3am I went to “lunch” and it was around 38 degrees and at 6am it had dropped to around 12 degrees.

All the schools where closed and the roads we icy. Now it’s down to 10 degrees and we are getting that Lake Effect Snow.

Even work it’s self is seeming strange, but I can’t put my finger on why.. Must be the pre-Christmas thing. or maybe it’s just a start of winter thing.

Then to top it all off, our teenager lost his cell phone. I really don’t want to buy him another phone but if I cut off the plan, they charge me a ridiculous fee to get out of the contract. So I don’t know what to think about that.

Ok, Sorry for this nothing post, but I had to put it somewhere. Also, I tried to do a podcast today and one of the connections to my mixer is screwed up so I spent that time burning my fingers with the soldering iron (which is funny because our first “Extra Topics” video podcast will be about soldering! )

It’s only Monday! I hope my week goes better later on.

-Mike

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Good News – U.S. gasoline price marks biggest drop ever

by Mike on October 13, 2008 , 00:48

I don’t buy a lot of gasoline. The last time I bought gas for my Toyota the price was $4.10 a gallon. I filled it up Saturday and was amazed to find it was down to $3.29…

Sunday I filled up my pickup truck and the price had dropped to $3.17. That’s nearly a $1.00 drop in 2 or 3 weeks ( not sure the date of the $4.10 fillup)

Here is a story I found about it…. U.S. gasoline price marks biggest drop ever

There is some good news out there… Really!

-Mike

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Heaviest Element Yet Known to Science

by Mike on October 7, 2008 , 03:45

Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet known to science.

The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2- 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of morons promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

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