Gever Tulley is an advocate of child endangerment… exactly the kind my parents sheltered me from, and from which I would have significantly benefited. There should be more people like this guy.

The video here tells the full story.

(h/t Stragglyr Chris)

This is probably my favorite quote from 2007 (I believe it was written on 12/31, but I might be mistaken. If so, then it’s my “Favorite Quote of Almost 2007…):

I’ll never be afraid of some pilsner fresh fat fuck who eats donut hamburgers and only gets exercise when he plays World of Warcraft on a DDR pad.
- Zed Shaw

I’m totally on the fence as to whether I think this is uber-lame or cool: “The Beatles” do a cover of “Stairway to Heaven.”

aka “Another Stupid Web 2.0 Meta Video”

(h/t Stragglyr Chris)

This bit of brilliance was written by Sean Morey:

(h/t to Carl from Simply Left Behind)

This is EXACTLY WHY you should NEVER buy stuff that’s been mutilated with Digital Rights Management (DRM) crap… because you’re more-than-likely to get screwed in the end.

If You Purchased MLB Game Downloads Before 2006, Your Discs/Files Are Now Useless; MLB Has Stolen Your $$$ And Claims “No Refunds”

Dear Tyra Banks and Oprah Winfrey,

GROW THE FUCK UP.

Female genitalia is called a VAGINA, not a va-jay-jay or whatever other toddler name you come up with for it. I find it pathetic that two remarkably successful women such as yourselves have to use baby-talk to refer to your own body parts.

The down side of this is that you’ve conclusively proven to the world that you’re both morons. The up side is that at least you have each other.

- Rev. Dan

(Dude with a penis, not a panini [that’s a kind of bread those are sandwiches].)

Update: This is what I’m talking about…

This is just stupid… Peachpit Press charges the same amount for a .pdf version of a book that they charge for the print version… but if you buy both you save a whopping $3!

What kind of crack are they smoking? Guess which Flex 3 book I’m not buying?

Peachpit needs to read a page from the business practices of the Pragmatic Programmers, where they sell .pdf versions of their books for less than the print version, and are super-smart and sell you a bundle of the print book and the .pdf for only a few dollars more than just the print book. It’s a no-brainer to spend another $10 or so and get the beta .pdf now and the print version when it ships. The only pisser is that the PragProg folks don’t have any books on Flex.

However, Flexible Rails is only $20*, and it’s an awesome book. Manning seems to have this down too… their book + .pdf bundles are only a few dollars more than the print version alone.

Somebody at Pragmatic Programmers needs to thank Peachpit Press, actually. I was so annoyed to see their absurdly overpriced .pdf book that I blogged about it and went to the PragProg.com site so I could link to it… and I ended up buying three books (bundles of the print book and the .pdf) that caught my eye:

** ***

I just gladly spent ~ $200 on print and .pdf bundles. The books themselves are a majority of that… and then a little bit more for convenient, offline-accessible versions which fit on my hard drive.

Which publishers won by providing me value, creating a win-win? Yeah, not Peachpit Press.

* I bought the print and .pdf bundle of Flexible Rails today ’cause I didn’t have the print version, and another legal copy of the .pdf is totally worth $5 more.

** This is my second hard copy of Agile Web Development with Rails: Second Edition. The print version I have now is beaten up, and it was impossible not to add the .pdf version ’cause it was only $8 more.

*** Design Accessible Web Sites: 36 Keys to Creating Content for All Audiences and Platforms is a book I’ve been wanting to read since I met and talked with the author at RailsConf. (Dude knows his stuff… and is hella-cool to boot.)

I’m seriously considering this:

Whaddaya think?

“There’s no such thing as a sexy carrot. Let’s leave the vegetables alone.”

- Cat

I love Billy Joe Shaver and this particular album, “Electric Shaver,” is one of my particular faves. His son Eddy’s guitar playing is nigh-unto-perfection if not perfection itself.

You can listen to samples of this album at Amazon (not an affiliate link).

Here’s a fairly recent video of Billy Joe performing one of his classic songs “Old Chunk of Coal:”

My friend Jom sent me this great blog post on the Music Business and Technology. It’s very interesting to read the opinion of someone who’s been involved in the industry for quite some time.

I seem to have the “why isn’t there more good music… (why are there are only ‘handful’ of pop stars that make money/get promoted)” conversation or some variant several times a week. There’s an amazing amount of amazingly great music in the world… it’s just a matter of knowing what artists to look for.

Some people have awesome ideas and execute on them… for example:

Animator vs. Animation

Go stickman, go! Them thar be some mad Flash skillz, yo!

I know people get attached to their pets and treat them like family, but isn’t this taking it way too far?

If your pet isn’t into Elvis (though most animals I know sing as well as Elvis) then perhaps (s)he’d prefer to be Batman, a skeleton, a pirate, or even a rabbi.

Once again, I’ve been taught the “don’t be an early adopter” lesson, this time courtesy of CrApple.

Around the middle of last week, my lovely iBrick “Smudgy” decided to become remarkably unresponsive… only seeming to acknowledge the sliding action to unlock the phone and display a completely pointless inactive “desktop.” I could accept calls (as long as I didn’t try to put anybody on hold or use any of the phone’s features) and well, that’s about it.

(Image submitted to Worse Than Failure by a reader named Daniel [not me].)

My lovely $400 iBrick (what else would you call a tragically broken iPhone [besides “yet another example of CrApple’s lack of commitment to quality”]?) is sitting on my desk, demanding to be connected to iTunes. When I connect my iBrick to iTunes I’m presented with two options: 1) Upgrade to the latest firmware, or 2) Restore, which requires an internet connection and demands the installation of the latest firmware. The latest firmware: 121+ MBs of crap that downloads over and over and that iTunes completely fails to install, yielding an obscure and pointless error message.

Hey, you there in the Cupertino mothership, isolated from reality… here’s a new marketing slogan for you:

CrApple: sweet design ideas that almost make it slightly past true mediocrity.

I’ve got one of those snappy 1/2-hour long Featured Artist spots at Open Mic tonight. It’s at Red Rock Coffee Company (201 Castro) in the ever-lovely Mountain View, CA. Open Mic runs from 7-10, and my spot is at 9pm. If you haven’t got anything better to do then head on down!

I tried to use AT&T chat to resolve my DSL problem. What the fuck was I thinking?

Please wait while we find an agent to assist you…
Thank you for contacting AT&T Internet Services, my name is Nicole Hodges. One moment while I review your information.
Nicole Hodges: Thank you for contacting AT&T Internet Services, my name is Nicole Hodges, please allow me a moment as I review the information you submitted.
Nicole Hodges: Hi, Dan Tripp. I see that you need an assistance for DSL connection.
Dan Tripp: Yup
Dan Tripp: It’s been completely unusable for several weeks.
Nicole Hodges: I am sorry you are experiencing this issue and will be happy to assist you.
Dan Tripp: My best guess is that y’all shut it off when my neighbor moved out.
Nicole Hodges: Is XXX-XXX-XXXX your DSL telephone number?
Dan Tripp: Yes
Nicole Hodges: Let us check on the line signal using your number.
Nicole Hodges: Allow me to put you on hold while running the line test.
Nicole Hodges: As I run a test on your line, it does not give me results on it. I try to pull up your account and discover that you cannot connect to the internet due to non-pay of your DSL bill. Have you settle the bill or not yet?
Dan Tripp: My bill looks current, according to your online payment system
Currently experiencing network delays, one moment please….
Network connection re-established.
Nicole Hodges: I see. I suggest that you call our billing department to clarify the issue. I cannot access the full information about the payments and bills here on my end. They can explain much further with that. The telephone number to call is 1-877-722-3755.
Nicole Hodges: Is there anything else that I may assist you with today?
Dan Tripp: If there’s a problem with billing, then why isn’t my phone service cut off as well?
Nicole Hodges: Who is the provider of your telephone service?
Dan Tripp: Wanna take a wild fucking guess?
Dan Tripp: Actually, why was I expecting the chat service to be any more useful than calling y’all on the phone? (It’s not… same tortured English, same inability to actually do anything besides read from a script)
Dan Tripp: …same inability to distinguish between one’s head and one’s ass.
Dan Tripp: Who the hell do you think you’re fooling?
Currently experiencing network delays, one moment please….
Network connection re-established.
Dan Tripp: Y’all can’t even maintain a goddamn network connection with your chat.
Nicole Hodges: Dan Trip, this session is being discontinued. Please contact us later, and we will be happy to assist you.
Dan Tripp: You can’t even SPELL MY GODDAMN NAME, WHICH IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU
Thank you for using AT&T High Speed Internet. You may now close this window.
Your session has ended. You may now close this window.