I was just on my Facebook page, editing my “applications” because when I signed up recently I got into the game of the thing and before I realized it I had nearly thirty of them! As if that wasn’t enough, When adding them, I neglected to un-check the box that tells them NOT to send me email. So, after a couple of weeks of getting loads of notification emails I decided that I am not a hamster, I’m going to turn off the email notifications.

That’s when I logged in and discovered that I had that many applications, all with permission to send me email. I’m about halfway through changing that and I have to say, the way that works is really bad.

The links on the “edit my applications” pages are written with an “onclick” element instead of an “href” element. This means that you CAN’T right click on them and open ‘em up in new tabs so that you can deal with all of them at once. Instead, you have to edit them one at a time and wait for the whole page to reload after each one.

Nice way to take something that could be easy and make it take six times as long.

Technorati Tags: settings, slow page, slow loading, onclick, applications, email notifications, facebook

It’s getting well into the beginning of vacation time and of course, with the latest efforts of the oil companies to bleed everybody dry, fuel has gotten more expensive than ever. Thing is, people still want to take vacations and honestly I am not a hamster, I think it’s important to be able to do *something* that allows you to “decompress” from the day to day routine that you deal with the rest of the year.

So, as the media has been busy pointing out, a lot of people are changing their vacation plans. For example, people living in Southern Missouri or Northern Arkansas might elect to go someplace like Branson instead of taking longer trips that would likely eat up most of their vacation funds just getting there and back.

A place like Branson has a lot to offer. If you like live music, Branson is billed as the “Live Music Capital of the World”. Then there’s theme parks. Silver Dollar City is close by and has over 30 rides and attractions. There’s bound to be something for anyone.

Branson is also home to The Titanic Museum, a half scale replica of the infamous ocean liner. When you “board”, you recieve a boarding pass that bears the name of one of the 2200 crew and passengers that were abord it’s maiden voyage. That museum alone would be a fascinating part of any vacation.

Technorati Tags: vacation, gas prices, titanic museum, branson missouri, live music, fuel saving, branson

I just read an interesting article about a guy that’s apparently come up with something that, if it’s for real, could be the first steps of independence from foreign oil. A variety of bacteria that’s been engineered so that it will eat agricultural waste and excrete fuel.

Oh, I am not a hamster, I had the same “are you sure about that” reaction that most people have when reading something like this. Think about the possibilities though. If there’s anything to this, and I think there just might be, then OPEC could be in for a rude awakening.

Technorati Tags: oil 2.0, bacteria, opec, agricultural waste, genetic engineering, fuel

Just when you think you’ve heard everything, along comes proof that in fact, you haven’t. Case in point is a recent CBS News story about the case of an unidentified woman who was found with her hair cut off, a plastic bag over her head and her hands cut off. She had been strangled and then tossed aside.

As if this isn’t enough, it seems that in the year since then not only is there no solution to the crime, there is also no solution to the disposition of her body. That story is the real one and it’s one that makes me believe that there’s a lot of people in Waller County, Texas that only have fractional ownership of anything even resembling brains.

The victim is white, the funeral home and cemetery that a justice of the peace chose to take care of her burial are “historically black”. There’s since been a lot of back and forth about it with some fighting words being flung about. As a result, Waller County has been paying Harris County $50 a day to store the body.

I am not a hamster but I know idiocy when I see it and this absolutely qualifies. It’s bad enough that the woman was murdered in the first place. It’s even worse that there’s not been any family members or anyone to claim her body. But the fact that there is apparently a racial segregation in funeral and cemetery services is flatly asinine.

There’s no excuse for this kind of thing. The woman is dead and instead of getting a decent burial she and what memory there might be of her gets to be disrespected and abused in a ridiculous situation. One that, if she were a live person and was being denied a table in a restaurant, motel room or other services because the clients were historically one race and she were another… there would be lawsuits, protests and the whole mess would make the six O’Clock news all over the world.

Technorati Tags: prejudice, funeral home, cemetery, unidentified, murder victim, segregation, cemetery segregation, stupidity, racial tension

I got another one of *those* emails today. You know the kind, you get most of them not from the automated spam-bots around the Internet, but from your friends and family members.

I’m sure you’ve seen the kind I’m talking about. They all offer some sage advice, a poem, a moving story or even a prayer and then they tell you that if you believe in God, love your spouse or care about anything or anyone then you’ll be sure to forward the message to everybody in your address book because if you don’t then people will know you hate them and / or there’ll be some kind of disaster or your face will suddenly prune up and you’ll spend the rest of your shortened life investing in top wrinkle cream formulas to remove the fingerprint of non-cooperation from your face.

The one I got today contained a bit of text that talked about how God opens doors for people. It was even scripturally accurate. Then it admonished me “If you believe, send it. If you don’t believe, delete it.”. It closed with the instruction, “If you need God to open some doors for you…send this to ten people”.

I love my family but I am not a hamster, Just because one of them sends me an email that instructs me to be sure to forward the email to everybody in my address book doesn’t mean I’m going to actually do it. My refusal to forward these things has nothing to do with my belief in God or the fact that He most certainly can and will do amazing things for people. There are two basic reasons.

1) Forwarding an email has nothing to do with whether or not God will do this or that for you or whether or not you’ll suffer some disaster. The ONLY thing it does is put an extra load of unwanted and unnecessary email on a system that’s already overburdened with unsolicited commercial spam and make life difficult for the people who run mail servers and those who receive tons of this stuff they just plain don’t need.

2) If I want or need something from God, the only sensible thing for me to do is to spend time in study and prayer seeking His will, followed by doing my level best to DO that will. If I want to ask God for something, then I need to talk to HIM, not forward a bunch of emails to people who, for the most part, don’t want any part of it.

Technorati Tags: moving story, commercial spam, wrinkles, belief in god, mail servers, spam bots, disaster, address book, prayer, family members

Image via WikipediaA recent CBS news item went into detail about the fact that the NRA is planning to spend some 40 million dollars during this campaign, with 15 million of it dedicated to portraying Obama as a threat to the second amendment right to keep and bear arms.

I am not a hamster, I saw the very carefully worded response that Obama gave to the recent District of Columbia v. Heller Supreme Court decision. He was indeed very careful to not take any position one way or another, which in itself has lead many to believe that he in fact is very much opposed to that decision and would, if elected, make an effort to nominate Supreme Court judges that would be inclined to reverse the recent ground breaking decision.

McCain on the other hand, didn’t hesitate to come out in full support of the decision which confirms an individual’s right to own a gun and defend themselves and their property in their own home.

I don’t pretend to know a heck of a lot about Obama’s stance on gun rights and gun control, but I have to say that his being so careful to avoid taking a position is nearly as bad as taking the wrong one from the start.

Technorati Tags: national rifle association, united states constitution, obama, gun control, second amendment, second amendment right, antonin scalia, gun politics, District of Columbia v. Heller, nra

Bill Gates, the billionaire behind Microsoft, MS-Dos, and Windows. The man who is credited with saying “640K of ram is enough for anyone”, is calling it quits and is leaving Microsoft.

The bad thing about this is that this means that Steve Ballmer is going to be in charge now. This is the same Ballmer that’s been reported to have screaming fits and sound nearly homicidal because some other company had the gall to think that they could do something better than Microsoft. I am not a hamster but I think that “Cyber Cynic” Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols on the Computerworld blog is dead on with his “Five reasons to fire Ballmer“.

If Ballmer guy stays in charge, Microsoft is doomed, it will only be a matter of time, end of story.

On a semi-unrelated note in regard to the statement Bill Gates is credited with about memory… I’ve got 512Megabytes of ram and it’s *SO* not enough. I wonder how much Bill’s computer has? I’ll just bet it’s more than 640Kilobytes!

Technorati Tags: steve ballmer, bill gates, bad news for microsoft, fire ballmer, microsoft stock falling, microsoft

Remember the Writer’s strike? I remember it. Some of the few things I liked about television were either killed by it or had their seasons ended several months early because of it. Now it’s a year later and we’re staring at the prospect of another strike that could delay the fall season, which means that not only did shows like Heroes, Bionic Woman and Eli Stone end up with short seasons, now the new seasons are in jeopardy as well.

I understand that these people don’t think they’re getting a righteous deal and maybe they’re not, but what they (or the producers) are not even thinking about is the way in which they’re shafting a lot of innocent people that just want to make a living and wont if they go on strike or the studios lock them out.

And oh, by the way, being part of another strike that delays or cancels more programming that people, fans, are looking forward to is not exactly a way to build any kind of positive rapport with the viewing public.

Then again, I am not a hamster, perhaps there is a technological solution. Television shows made using technology like the kind that folks like Dreamworks, Pixar and Second Life are capable of. I’ve seen some of their “making of …” bits and for example, in Shrek they had to back off on the realism because the characters looked “Too Real”.

Seems to me that it’s at least possible to come up with a software engine that could present virtual characters on a virtual set acting out real scenes. Come to think of it, it’s very possible and maybe if there’s another strike, the viewing public ought to start calling for the implementation of such a thing.

Maybe the Screen Actors Guild ought to think about that for a while. This is *SO* doable it’ll make their heads spin.

Technorati Tags: virtual set, angry viewers, producers, screen actors guild, writers strike, jobs lost, actors strike, virtual actors, lost income, solution

Y’know, I’ll just bet that there’s plenty of people out there who share at least one of my opinions. I’m Sick of hearing about O.J. Simpson in the news. Now there’s a CBS story about his latest claim.. that a Nevada prosecutor is persecuting him.

I am not a hamster, I realize that said prosecutor is pressing charges that even the alleged victims don’t want to press. Maybe what needs to happen is for O.J. to feed his ego a diet pill and just get through with the matter without resorting to headline grabbing tactics.

If the prosecutor is out of line, then get the lawyers to deal with it. Jumping up and down and yelling “I’m a victim” isn’t going to get anything positive done.

Who knows, maybe that prosecutor believes he’s got legitimate charges to press. After all, if he can’t back himself up in court he’s going to lose, look like an idiot and possibly face charges himself for wrongful prosecution or somesuch.

Technorati Tags: headlines, oj, o.j. simpson, kidnapping, nevada prosecutor, lawyers

I am not a hamster but lately Facebook has been making me feel like I’m in a giant hamster wheel. Loading profiles isn’t too bad but the “applications” can get to be horrendously slow… as in click on something and then go set up the capresso coffee machine and brew a pot. Then you go back and click something else and now you’ve got time to drink a couple of cups before anything else will finish loading.

Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating here just a tad… but not by too much. I’m not exactly running with the dinosaurs here… My PC may not be state of the art, but it’s not bad with a 1.6ghz cpu and half a gb of memory and I’m connected through a 3mbit adsl… to my way of thinking the thing should just about blink from one page load to the next. Apps should get cranked up almost instantly.

Maybe Facebook needs to trim some of the slow off of those apps.

Technorati Tags: slow running, applications, slow loading, slow, flash, facebook