AmusingAmusing Archive Pages
November 27, 2007
Thanks a lot genius!
Was reading an article today about how unfortunately Mac's that have the beta version of Boot Camp installed can get bricked if users upgrade Tiger to 10.4.11. Apple support technicians at apple stores are called "Geniuses" and they sit at the "Genius Bar." Unfortunately, the solution is to back up the disk and format and start all over again. While this is sort of a solution, it made me realize that in the unfortunate case where Apple doesn't have a solution to one of their problems, naming their support technicians "Geniuses" might in fact backfire.
While most of the time, when things to right, people will happily say "Oh thanks! you're a genius!" When things go wrong, it quickly becomes "You screwed up my computer with an update? Thanks a lot Genius!!"
Posted by Bryant at 01:36 AM | Comments (0)
September 22, 2007
Snubster on Facebook
I know I know. It doesn't make sense.
I just wanted to check out the Facebook API today, so I decided to do an ironic mashup.
For those of you who are Facebook members, you can add the Snubster application at:
http://apps.facebook.com/snubsterfb/
By the way, if anyone knows who registered the other facebook app called snubster, let me know. I have a few words for him/her.
Posted by Bryant at 12:54 AM | Comments (0)
February 28, 2007
Corn Bobber Infomercial
Funniest video i've seen in a while:
Posted by Bryant at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2007
Top Gear making a spaceship car
I'm impressed.
Posted by Bryant at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2007
Animator vs. animated pt 2
Posted by Bryant at 08:45 AM | Comments (0)
January 22, 2007
Heroes has a website/sideplot
So it was another good episode of Heroes today. The show seems to get better every episode.
In the middle of this episode, there was a business card exchange from Claire's dad to the professor's son. This business card had a website address and a phone number.
If you go to http://www.primatechpaper.com/, you will be greeted by an intentionally sparse and poorly designed site. The entire site is more or less uninteresting except for a careers link. If you click on that, it requires a code to enter the site.
At first, I jumped to view the source. Sure enough, the validation is all done in javascript and the link can be obtained, but they must be doing some kind of referral checking. The passcode is an MD5_hex hash. Rather than trying to crack the hash, I decided to dig some more.
If you dial the 1-800 number you will be greeted by a fake phone tree. You can try different options, which all say they're not there right now. If you try the careers one, they'll give you an access code for the jobs site.
For those of you who'd rather not call or are impatient, the code is mt36 . This code lets you fill out a form where you basically put in some contact information. Probably means that the "game" can contact you. At the bottom of the form are some personality questions that seem like they try and detect evil doers and heroes. Not sure if this will have an effect on the game, but we shall see.
I've already started getting some text messages from them. Fortunately I'm on an unlimited plan.
I've done a domain lookup on the domain and obviously it's owned by GE, the parent company of NBC:
General Electric Company
Internet Registrations
3135 Easton Turnpike
Fairfield, CT 06828-0001
US
I'll try to keep posting on what happens in this "game"
Posted by Bryant at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)
December 02, 2006
Seinfeld the Lost episode
This is a parody outlining the Kramer at the laugh factory incident done in the style of a Seinfeld episode. It's pretty well done.
Posted by Bryant at 07:39 PM | Comments (0)
November 09, 2006
Fed-Ex got Served via text
So I guess we've entered that era, where schools are emailing acceptance letters, employers are emailing firing notices, and now wives are serving divorces via text.
Apparently the day that Mr. Federline got the message, he was being filmed by the Canadian MTV. So lucky for everyone, theres an online video clip:
Posted by Bryant at 07:08 AM | Comments (2)
October 24, 2006
This Bear Cares
So it seems like there are about 100 million different GPS devices out there.
Gizmodo did a lovely video showing this, however amongst the fray, one GPS navigator sits apart. This GPS bear from Japan has no display. Instead it sits on your dashboard and raises its furry paw and points you in the direction you need to go.
If you miss a direction, he'll turn around and mock you and when you get to your final destination, he'll do his little bear dance for you.
Posted by Bryant at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2006
2006 McDonalds Monopoloy Rare Pieces
A few annual traditions in the food industry is going to shorten my life by about 30 years.
First you get the never ending pasta bowl at Olive Garden. This year I packed away about 4 bowls of pasta plus salad and breadsticks.
Soon after Red Lobster comes along with their shrimp feast. I tried it for the first time this year, and due to some misunderstanding with the waitress, I ended up shaming myself and eating ~120 shrimp.
Stumbled upon the third one a week later. Tony Roma's has never ending ribs. Being as I was still recovering from exhibit A and B and the greatest all you can eat sushi buffet known as Minado, I decided to just observe as my eating companions devoured an unhealthy amount of ribs.
Now we are upon Monopoly Season at McDonalds, as French Fries, Happy Meals and Big Mac's weren't enough to get tubby American's in the door, they also make it a contest to try and eat your way to 5 million dollars. This year they're forgoing the usual prizes and instead only offer cash and Best Buy bucks.
For those of you who don't know, the way the game works is, there are essentially 9 winning game pieces, the rest are filler.
The winning game pieces this year are
Mediterranean Avenue - Win $50
Vermont Avenue - Win $500
Virginia Avenue - Win $1,000
Tennessee Avenue - Win $1,500
Kentucky Avenue - Win $5,000
Ventnor Avenue - Win $10,000
Pennsylvania Avenue - Win $50,000
Boardwalk - Win $1,000,000 ($50,000 per year for 20 years)
Short Line - Win $5,000,000 ($250,000 per year for 20 years)
So best of luck to everyone and remember, only one of these eating contests has a payout.
Posted by Bryant at 01:52 PM | Comments (2)
October 04, 2006
Overheard in the office
Overheard a bad joke about Congressman Foley in the office today. Thought it would be funny to make a bookmark, here it is.
Posted by Bryant at 01:12 PM | Comments (1)
September 23, 2006
How to get banned from a bar without throwing a punch
or how not to run a bar.
So my friends and I are out at Buffalo Billiards having a good time. We're ordering food and getting drinks. We arrive at about 7 so the place is full, but not crowded. Service is good. The Shufflepuck tables are new and fast. Everybody is happy.
As the night progresses, the bar becomes considerably more busy. Yet, the bar, which is about which has probably about 300 feet of total bar space, still only has 2 bartenders. Not only are these bartenders serving people sitting at the bar, they're also serving people coming up to the bar for drinks as well as waitresses who need drinks for their customers.
Naturally, this results in inordinate wait times. In order to get the next round of drinks, we need to wait about 20-25 minutes. This basically means, whoever is up next to get the round of drinks has to go up as soon as he gets his beer.
Because there is no formal line or queue at the bar, the bartender can intentionally or unintentionally skip people or serve people in an order of priority other than the order in which they got to the bar. While this might be great for the couple people the bartender does "jump the line for", it also pisses off the other customers who see this happening and who are waiting for 20-25 minutes to just close a tab.
So I go to close out the shufflepuck and food tab. I was happy with the service so I pay the 20 bucks an hour for shufflepuck, food, and a 20% tip. Next, I head over to the bar so I can close out my tab.
What i expected to take 5-10 minutes top becomes a 20 minute exercise in patience. So as the minutes tick buy I'm progressively getting angrier as I watch the performance by 1/2 of the two man bartending staff assigned to serve 500 people:
If you order rum and cokes: One will have 2/3's glass of rum, second will have 1/2 glass of rum, and the third will have a splash of rum.
If you order a black and tan: The bartender will forget that he's making you a black and tan, and just later pour some guinness on top of a full glass of bass to add color.
If you order a drink through a waitress, not only are you getting your drink, you're also getting whatever was printed on the receipt that was stuck in your drink to indicate it was done. It probably also contains whatever was on the waitresses hand that was used to fish out the slip of ink on paper in your carefully crafted beverage.
If you're waiting to get a drink: there might be a good chance that even though there are only 2 people manning the bar, one of the team might think its a good idea when he spots a friend to drop what he's doing and go chat it up for 5 minutes.
If you're not a regular: be prepared to watch other people drink. Possibly the most annoying is watching someone gets two rounds of drinks while you don't even get an "excuse me" acknowledged.
So when I finally do get my bill, I decide to let the bartender and management know exactly how I felt about the service.
First I tipped three cents. A definite indicator not that I was against tipping or had forgotten, but that I was extremely upset with the service.
Then I wrote on the receipt, "Waited 20-25 minutes to close tab. Hire more ____ waiters." I'll spare you the expletive that the alcohol inserted into there.
Then I go over to my waiting friends to gather them and leave. I explain to a friend that it's ridiculous the amount of waiting we have to do here, and he agrees and we probably shouldn't come here any more. On our way out a guy comes over and explains that he's the manager. He then produces my receipt and asks me if I had written this. I said yes. At this point, I was actually impressed, I thought that my note had worked and that I was actually going to get to talk to management about my service experience. Instead, he told me I was being kicked out and that I needed to leave.
First of all, I was taken aback. They provide me with bad service, they receive some criticism and then as I'm getting ready to leave I get kicked out?
So as I'm being shoved to the door we have the following conversation:
Me: Is this how you treat your customers?
Mgr: I want you to leave the bar.
Me: Why don't you just hire more bartenders so your customers don't have to wait 20-25 minutes to get a drink?
Mgr: Get Out.
Me: We had to wait several 20 minutes several times to get drinks and then 22 minutes to close a tab, isn't that ridiculous?
Mgr: Is this how you treat your bartenders?
Me: Is this how you treat your paying customers?
Mgr: You should have spoken to a manager about that.
Me: I'm sorry, I was too busy waiting to do anything about it.
Mgr: You need to get out now. (Growing quite upset)
Me: I already was on my way out. This is no way to run a business
Mgr: I don't want your business
Me: How do you sleep at night?
It was kind of amusing to get kicked out of a bar. I always imagined that it would be as a result of a fight or brawl and that it would have been somewhere I was not currently exiting. It kind of felt like being the guy at work who points out problems and then decides to quit, and then the pissed off Manager decides that you can't quit because you're fired.
While I do understand that it was not the most elegant way to handle the situation, I still can't believe that their crappy service and me rubbing their noses in it resulted in me getting kicked out. So while its a shame I won't be playing shufflepuck on their nice tables any more, Buffalo Billiards will not be sorely missed.
Posted by Bryant at 08:35 AM | Comments (2)
August 04, 2006
America got Lipsynced
So I'm sure you were all excited by the announcement on wednesday that Hasselhoff was going to sing for us on the results show for America's got talent. I know I was. I sat through the entire episode waiting to hear the Hoff sing on the live awards show. Hoff put on a decent performance last night on America's got talent, but there was one catch. He was lip syncing.
First off, it was pretty obvious because he's not the world's most talented lip syncer. Secondly, they used the audio track from his music video. This track also included his clever side comments. While dancing with Brandy, he forgot a couple lines and they played on the show even though his lips were not moving.
Then in the saddest display of anything I've seen in TV since Ashley Simpson tried to cover up her lip syncing, he actually did sing the last note, which he pulled on for what seemed to be an innappropriate as well as painful amount of time.
I've glued together his performance and his video for your viewing pleasure below:
Posted by Bryant at 12:48 PM | Comments (0)
July 31, 2006
We welcome our new King
I should have realized this ages ago, but the Internet like any other realm must be under the control of some supreme power or being. At first thought some might think that this may be Bill Gates or maybe Chuck Norris, but they would be wrong. The true king of the internet is none other than David Hasselhoff.
You don't believe me? I have proof:
Posted by Bryant at 02:08 AM | Comments (0)
July 28, 2006
Colbert interviews DC congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton
This is probably his best interview ever in his multi-part series.
Posted by Bryant at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 01, 2006
2006 World Cup Spreadsheet
For All of you American's out there, there is something called the world cup that will be taking place in Germany quite soon. There they play a game called "football" which we call soccer over here in America.
If you happen to be one of those people who follow this sort of thing, I've run across a spreadsheet that tracks the tournament progress. All you have to do is plug in scores as you go along.
I've run this through a virus checker so it appears to be clean.
Posted by Bryant at 04:42 PM | Comments (2)
May 19, 2006
How to sink Free Throws
Everybody would like to know how to sink game winning free throws on demand. It can be tough out there on the line with all the pressure. It would be great if somehow there was some mythical force that could instill confidence, peace, power and grace all at the same time. It would be great if somehow just by humming some magical tune you were able to become something great.
Look no further my friends. The answer has been under all of our noses. I'm surprised this has not been documented until now. According to the AP, Dirk Nowitzki uses the power of the Hasselhoff when it comes to sinking game winning free throws.
It must be one heck of a tune considering Nowitzki made two foul shots with 7.9 seconds left for the tying and winning points in Game 3 against San Antonio, then forced overtime by making two foul shots with 8.5 seconds left in regulation of Game 4.Smiling wide and laughing loud, he said the song was David Hasselhoff's "Looking For Freedom," a big hit when he was a kid in Germany.
For me personally, it doesn't get any better than when Hasselhoff is snowboarding down a mountain during part of a safari motorcycle tour in "hooked on a feeling," but I will definitely have to give "Looking for Freedom" a chance. Just look at all the good reviews.
Posted by Bryant at 08:37 AM | Comments (2)
May 16, 2006
Harvard Shmarvard
So I get an email directed to my snubster email account today with the subject : Snubster Founder Question:
Who is it...? And did s/he, by any chance, attend Harvard?
The logic behind this oh-so-ludicrous question is that I work for a magazine
that covers Harvard grads...and if the person brilliant enough to come up
with this idea happened to have also gone to Harvard, I would be quite
happy...
Thanks so much for any info.
XXXX
-------------------
From the author's signature I could tell that she was interested in writing a bit about influential Harvard Alumni.
Amused by this, I decided to shoot of this reply:
I went to brown. Harvard was my safety.
Posted by Bryant at 01:53 PM | Comments (6)
April 19, 2006
Fastest Wifi Hotspot ever
So I'm on the fastest Wi-fi connection i've ever been on. 542 miles per hour to be exact.
I'm flying on a Korean Air Lines flight to Seoul, Korea. It looks like Beoing has launched a network of satellites and attached antennas on top of planes and put access points in the cabins. It's called Connexion by Boeing.
I've decided to use gmail, voipbuster, warfish, AIM, orb and dsl reports to do some testing on my own. I'm connected to at 54 Mb/s to the router and DSL Reports seems to indicate I'm connected to the rest of the world at around 80Kb/s. After this, I did a traceroute to google.com to measure up on latency. From the results I was experiencing anywhere from 500 ms to over a second. At first I was getting disconnected regularly while doing my tests, but after a tip from a friend, James, i reset my MTU size settings in XP and now my connection seeems stable.
So on to the apps. Everything works.
Gmail - web email:
There's a lot of 2 way communication going on in Gmail. So while everything works, everyting has an annoying lag to it.
Voipbuster - Voip phone service
You can hear the person you're calling just fine, but apparently the other user hears garbled voice that is partially discernable.
warfish - web based game:
Same deal with gmail, but with graphics. Therefore, my turn which normally takes about 2 minutes took about 10.
AIM - instant messaging.
AIM works pretty much the same as it does on terra firma. Nothing to report.
ORB - streaming video
Orb actually works surprisingly well. My media server is on a Comcast cable modem. The video streamed near perfectly at about 80Kb/S
However while all of these are nice to have aboard the plane, Korean Air Lines also provided a service that detracted from the value of the internet connection. They offered an on-demand library of about 100 tv shows and about 40 movies as well as Single player and networked games available at every seat on about a 8 inch screen.
Overall I was pretty much impressed at what was available. While the technology isn't perfect, It did offer all functionality that was necessary. Hopefully they'll be able to squeeze out extra bandwidth and reduce latency somehow.
Posted by Bryant at 05:10 PM | Comments (4)
March 27, 2006
Too many shows on Tv
DVR was just about the greatest thing ever It's allowed me to start watching every episode of a tv show.
However, this has led to the proliferation of shows that end up requiring the viewer to watch every episode. I'm starting run out of hours in my week.
Somebody please come up with either an automated or non-automated editing system to cut out useless crap in TV shows to buy me more time. A good example of this excess fat is the Apprentice. There is no reason why that show needs to be an hour every week.
I'm guessing you could probably shave an extra 10-20 minutes off of lost and 24.
My initial thought was an algorithm to speed up non-dialogue parts up to 8X, speed up the rest of the show by 1.5 and then cutting out the bumpers to the commercials.
Posted by Bryant at 10:11 PM | Comments (1)
March 20, 2006
Do you need a Dentist?
So I moved apartments about a month ago. The rent renewal at my last place sucked. So we moved across the street. The amusing part about my new apartment building was that along with the requisite asian-american owned deli and dry cleaners and hair cutting place, it also had a dentists office.
Now I've been walking past this door on the way to the metro and back from the metro for about a month now and it makes me chuckle every time. I'm sure the dentist or dentists who work in the office are also aware of what their door says, but I guess they either like it or don't mind.
Now I'm not sure what exactly balls on dental entails, but if you'd like to give it a try, let me know.
these photos have not been retouched.
Posted by Bryant at 12:08 AM | Comments (1)
March 14, 2006
Pencil Fighting
Really Random reference from the past today.
One of my co-workers was talking about pencil fighting today. This was something I had totally forgotten about. Does anyone know if kids still play this in school nowadays?
For those of you who may have forgotten or have never played. Pencil fighting involves two players. You take turns being the attacker. The defender holds the pencil horizontally by the ends. The attacker uses one hand to hold the pencil back and uses the other to create torque to swing the pencil down when the holding hand releases it sort of like a catapult.
This random reference made me laugh today.
Posted by Bryant at 06:23 PM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2006
Even Doonesbury uses Snubster
Thanks to nick for this:
See! Even Doonesbury uses Snubster.
Posted by Bryant at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)
March 02, 2006
A lesson in Taxes from Hux
Hux Sent me a couple stories today that explain the US Tax system
Read more in the extended entry:
Tax Cuts - A Simple Lesson in Economics*
This is how the cookie crumbles. Read it carefully. Let's put tax
cuts in terms everyone can understand.
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all
ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our
taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing
The 5th pays $1
Sixth would pay $3
The seventh $7
The eighth $12
The ninth $18
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men ate dinner in the
restaurant every day, and seemed quite happy with the arrangement,
until one day, the owner threw them a curve.
"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to
reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20." So now dinner for the
ten only cost $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.
So the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for
free. But what about the other six, the paying customers? How could
they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair
share?"
The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they
subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the
sixth man would each end up being "paid" to eat their meal. So the
restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each
man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out
the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings)
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings)
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings)
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings)
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings)
The tenth now paid $49 instead $59 (16% savings)
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four
continued to
eat for free. But, once outside the restaurant, the men began to
compare their savings.
"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He
pointed to
the tenth. "But he got $10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a
dollar, too.
It's unfair that he got ten times more than me!"
"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back
when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get
anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night
the tenth man didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and
ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they
discovered something important. They didn't have enough money
between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how
our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the
most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them
for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table
anymore. There are lots of good restaurants in Europe and the
Caribbean.
___________________________________________________________________________
and now for number two
A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like many others her age, she considered herself to be a liberal Democrat, and was in favor of the redistribution of wealth.
She was deeply ashamed that her father was a staunch Republican, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.
One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the addition of more government welfare programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father. He responded by asking how she was doing in school. Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party. She didn't have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.
Her father listened and then asked, "How is you friend Audrey doing?" She replied, "Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus, college for her is a blast. She's always invited to parties, and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over."
Her father asked his daughter, "Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct a 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA."
The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, "That wouldn't be fair! I have worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!"
The father said, "Welcome to the Republican Party".
Posted by Bryant at 10:06 AM | Comments (3)
February 23, 2006
Taylor Hicks
if you watch american idol you probably have heard of taylor hicks. he looks like jay leno minus the chin. now i know in its fifth season some people are tired of the whole idol premise. but if you have a some free time this guy is definately worth watching..... and yes after 25 tries i got my vote in for taylor... good luck mr. hicks.
and a video link of an interview with hicks.
Posted by Jesse at 04:32 PM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2006
Which is worse Bird Flu or Kimchi Air Conditioning?
Let me start off by disclosing that I was brought up in a Korean-America household in the middle of the midwest. Part of being a Korean Family in America means that you need to have at least two refridgerators if not more. Your extra refridgerator will be placed in either the garage or the basement. This system was devised to help prevent everything you eat, touch or breathe from smelling like kimchi.
For those uninformed of the powers of kimchi smell, go to any korean/asian grocery store, buy one of those ginormous glass jars of kimchi and take it to your car. Take off the cap, roll up the windows and stay in the car for 1 hour. Then see what happens.
Not only is this smell so foul that it can kill a man or a grizzly bear, apparently it can also fight disease. Back when sars was the fad sickness, there were rumors that kimchi was the reason why the rate of infection in Korea was much lower than in China. This caused a lot of chinese to start importing some of this Kimchi. I think it may have just been some marketing ploy by the Kimchi Overlords in Korea.
Now they've decided to take this marketing to a whole new level. In case you don't want to eat kimchi, but only enjoy the sickness fighting qualities of it, LG has made an air conditioner that uses Kimchi to fight avian bird flu.
Forget UV filters or any other things you can't really tell are working. Make sure that you can taste the power yourself.
Posted by Bryant at 10:39 AM | Comments (2)
February 16, 2006
Ever hear of the band Blogging Bryants or the Loose Change Engineers?
Sean Crespo has an interesting article where he outlines his patented method for making a great indie band name.
This is a good read for people who have either thought about starting a band and for those of you who have not.
Thanks Hux.
Posted by Bryant at 05:14 PM | Comments (0)
February 01, 2006
Riding Superman
This was from a couple years ago:Posted by Bryant at 01:07 AM | Comments (0)