The Fractal Future

I saw my possible futures spread out in branches across all possible timelines. Different versions of myself were represented down each branch. With unique sub-selves branching out further at every path. I had the urge to spread my thousand arms into each world to embrace all the me I could ever be. Yet I only have two arms. And two legs. I feared that walking down one path would bring death to the other unexplored selves. But to stand still guarantees the death of them all.

Awesomepocalypse

In case you didn't know there is an active super volcano underneath Yellowstone National Park. In the last week it has experienced an earthquake swarm with more than 500 earthquakes.

How cool is that? Pretty cool, right?
Tune in next week for more awesome news.

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises; And this blog sets

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

It's a wonderful time to be alive

Ignore the static in the air.
The never ending noise
For we have slight control over our filter
through which we view existence

Reflect! Absorb! Buzz! Vibrate!
Phonons and photons echo and change
creating a melody of life
for the dancers in a corner of space.

Printer Problems - Cat Support

This is very similar to some troubleshooting that I had to do this week.

Recipe for Viral Advertising

1. Set up a premise where an idiot is filming something stupid on a shitty camera phone.

2. Have the idiot do something even more stupid than you would expect.

3. Have something unexpectedly stupid happen. (Add some really horrible CGI-digital effects. Because the video quality is so awful, no one can tell that you hired some student on Craigslist with the old "we can't pay you, but this will look good on your rèsumè" routine.)

5. Don't mention your company anywhere in the video.

6. Profit.

Twitter

There's a website on the internet that's called Twitter and it's pretty amazing.

You can twit anything on Twitter.

The possibilities are almost as open as Zombo.com.

MSNBC Digs Deep

I caught some MSNBC political coverage during my lunch break and I believed they showed Obama's terrorist fist jab about 40 times in slow motion while some very intelligent people dished out some amazingly insightful analysis of the candidate. This is the kind of information that the American public needs to have before they can go to the polls. MSNCBC is the only source that I can depend on for difficult to understand news events.

Also, I'm starting to suspect that the science of Face Off is here and Cheney is Travolta and McCain is Edward Norton. I haven't seen Face Off, but I think I have just violated the first and second rule of Face Off. I hope the third rule of Face Off is "it's not that big a deal if you do end up talking about Face Off, it's just discouraged."

I'm going to write a children's book called: Everybody Loves Politics!

What's The Point of Pickle Slices?

I'm not a fan of cows, but bovine-free burgers are something that I enjoy to eat provided I have plenty of condiments. In fact, I'm starting to suspect that I see bread and meat as a vehicle for condiments rather than condiments as being an accessory.

One of my favorite things on food at restaurants is pickles. I love pickles. I can't get enough. French fries taste much better to me when wrapped in a pickle slice.

So when I was at the grocery store I decided that I would get a jar of pickle slices to add some zazz to my at-home meals. Unfortunately, I don't know much about at-home pickles. I could buy a jar of pickles, but I don't really like eating a whole pickle and I don't want to spend an afternoon chopping up pickles for sandwich use. What I need is a jar of pickle slices.

Pickle slices are strange things to buy in jars! None of the jars of pickle slices said "I'm a jar of pickle slices. Buy me, Ryan Niemi!" In fact, they had all kinds of confusing labels. What's the point? Are they trying to entice non-pickle enthusiasts?

There was a bunch of jars that said "Bread and Butter Pickles" and then the jar was full of slices of pickles. The contents of the jar appear to be what I require, but what's the point of 'bread and butter?' There are at least three ways I could take that. One way is that these are the types of pickles commonly eaten with bread and butter. I've never been so hungry that I slapped some butter on a slice of bread and then covered it with pickles, so I am unable to comprehend that possibility.

Another way to take it is that the pickle slices have bread and butter flavor. This is the first thing that pops in my head when I see these labels. Why would anyone want to eat bread and butter flavored anything? The next thing you know, there will be a bread and butter flavored sports drink. Their slogan can be "punish your taste buds into shape!"

The other way they could be going with their strange name is to use "bread and butter" in the way that implies 'money maker'. Like these pickle slices are the "bread and butter" of the food industry. That makes sense to me because I like condiments more than the meat, but I imagine that the majority of burger enthusiasts believe that beef is the bread and butter of the food industry.

I read the ingredients on one of these jars and it said nothing about natural or artificial bread and butter flavoring, so I just bough a jar of regular pickles and some stationary scissors so I can get that authentic pickle slice shape.

What's the point? Seriously.

Up Yours, Butters

I've been on a South Park kick lately. I regret getting rid of my South Park collection, but I'm glad that all the episodes are available for watching at SouthParkStudios.com.

There's been lots of great shows that I've missed. I recently enjoyed Canada on Strike where in Canada goes on strike and demands some of that Internet money.

I just downloaded this sample to my phone from this web site. I really want to play it on my phone's (excellent) speakers in a public bathroom when someone is fumigating for humans.



Also, here's some downloadable South Park commentary tracks for some reason.

Nothing That You Didn't Already Know

(I must preface this with an apology to my friends who work at Micorsoft.)

Sometimes I wonder:
"Why do I dislike Microsoft? It makes good things. Windows XP is usable. The Xbox360 has at least one or two decent games. The Microsoft mouse and keyboard released in 2000 were pretty nice. I'm actually starting to like Office 2007 a little bit. Is Microsoft really all that bad?"

Then I remembered why I hate this company:
Excel = $192.99
Outlook = $87.99
Word = $196.99
Vista Ultimate = $179.99

Total price = $657.96

Does it really need to be priced that high? I understand that they need to pay their workers, invest in R&D and also make a profit, but is a text editor really worth $200?

All they're really doing is taking advantage of the fact that very few corporations are able to avoid Microsoft. It's the same pricing scheme as Adobe and other high priced software vendors. It makes me mad because I'd like to buy that stuff if it was reasonably priced. With Adobe, I don't have any choice. I don't know how many professional graphic artists use GIMP.

Also, Microsoft is incredibly stupid.

I was listening to TWiT 154 the other day and they were talking about the Mojave experiment which is Microsoft's Pepsi Challenge with Vista. The host, Leo Laporte, brings up an amazing point on why Microsoft shareholders should be terrified.

The average Internet user spends 30 seconds on a web page. To see how clueless Microsoft is: Go to MojaveExperiment.com and wait for 30 seconds after the video starts to play. Then close the website. What does Microsoft want the average user to take away from this PR campaign? "Zero"

Watchmen

The trailer for the movie Watchmen looks very good.

Fisting Obama

Watch The Daily Show's response to the recent New Yorker Magazine cover. Sometimes I worry that there is a shocking lack of realists in the world.

Hemispheres

Here is an interesting TED talk give been by Jill Bolte Taylor about how the two hemispheres of the brain work with and against each other.

Thirteens, Seventeens and Eighteens

I drank a lot of Millington Eighteens last night. I also had two Seventeens, which were my favorite, and part of a Thirteen. The Thirteen tastes like liquid potpourri, but all the other beers were delicious. The beer went amazingly well with Chen's Chinese food. I don't think I've ever had Chinese food as tasty as Chen's. They got my order wrong, but the food was so damn good that I am unable to complain. I don't think I'll ever be able to eat regular food again.

The Dresden Dolls @ Sunshine Saturday 2008-05-24

I just found out that one of my favorite bands, The Dresden Dolls, is playing in Albuquerque next weekend. Fucking awesome. I'm really excited to see The Dresden Dolls' drummer rock out in person. I love bands with awesome drummers. That's why I love my band so much.


Backstabber is my favorite Dresden Dolls song, mainly, because of the drums.

It looks like Death Cab For Cutie isn't supporting them this far west. That's too bad, because I don't like Death Cab, but I could have talked Natalie into going with me if they were opening. A band called Smoosh, is opening instead. Because I have dyslexia, I was under the impression that Smoosh is Smosh. If Smosh was opening, it would be hilarious or god awful... or both... It's a mystery.

For Great Justice

Today was a good day. I finally got a little bit of that great justice, that I've heard so much about.

You know what you doing. Take off every Zig.

Thunderbird

Today, I stood about 30 feet away from Thunderbird, the world's sixth fastest supercomputer in 1996.

The Reason I Want a Mac

I've been a Mac user for a long time, but skipped the iMac and went to PC for gaming. I missed Apples, but dealing with the ridiculous problems in Windows 98 and above has definitely increased my technical proficiency, so I don't regret my Apple abandonment.

One thing that I've always loved about the Mac OS is speech. Windows has never and will probably never match the quality voice control that you can get with a Mac. A great thing to do when using a Mac is to set a keyboard shortcut for speech. While playing video games or working, you can select the text of a lengthy article and press Apple+Ctrl+Alt+S and read with your ears. Windows does not seem to provide this feature without expensive software. What's the point?

Cheap and Effective Organizer

I was looking at using a small expandable mini-file for shopping card organization after reading this article at lifehacker.com. I really didn't feel like going out to a store and spending money on something that I could easily replicate on the cheap. After a couple minutes of searching, I found a great way to keep gift cards: Cheap CD/DVD sleeves of which I have hundreds.



Just spread them out so each one is visible and pop them into a cheap CD Sleeve. The clear plastic window allows you to quickly see the contents. Keep one for membership cards, one for gift cards and coupons, or whatever else you could think of. Perhaps this could be used for business cards or coupons as well. Toss them in your glove box or laptop bag and you'll be ready to use them whenever the need arises.