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Car dealerships in utah are out of control

This evening’s festivities involved a short drive from Sherwin Williams to my house. The exact route is shown here on google maps.

small map in provo

Gary and I were talking about the car market in Provo and Gary and I conducted an experiment on the way home from Sherwin Williams we counted every car dealership we found.

We counted 12 in a mile and a half route (less as the crow flies).

There are 12 car dealerships in one direction of my house. I know for a fact there are more the other way and the funny thing is that this isn’t even the part of town you think of as where all the car dealerships are. If someone tells me they’re at a car dealership I assume they are up on University Pkwy on the other side of town.

Reader question, why does utah have so many car dealerships?

Car dealerships in utah are out of control
Posted Wednesday, August 8, 2007
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Power Misused or How spiderman relates to the internet

We’re all familiar with the famous words of Ben Parker.

With great power comes great responsibility!

When remembering these words I can’t help but think of Google, the “do no evil company.”

uncle-ben
Ben Parker enjoys his “damn paper for once”

They do have a great responsibility but imagine all the fun they could have if they stopped taking their responsibility seriously. It would be even better than Emo Parker trying to act cool in a jazz club (seriously, wtf was that all about?)Google could do all kinds of things to make the internet more interesting. You ask how they will accomplish that? It’s simple, Google rewards different behavior and all of the sudden everyone wants to do whatever it is that google rewards!

I apologize again for doing everything in list format lately but here goes

Introducing: How Google can make the Internet more interesting

  • Reward the use of animated gifs.
  • Imagine, instantly all the SEOs would rush to put animated gifs all over their sites. It would throw the internet back to it’s hayday, circa 1995, when that kind of thing was totally acceptable, nay, totally tubular.

  • Reward the use of embedded midis
  • Now days kids all have to have their lastFM and their pandora or yahoo music, or even their “itunes” so they can enjoy music while they surf the web. If embedded audio became hip again then we wouldn’t need silly music players anymore because each and every website would have it’s own unique soundtrack! Recently gthing did a post about how to find good music but if Google would just reward embedded audio we would all find more of it every day just by surfing the web!
    An added bonus could be if their were multiple pieces of audio that would load simultaneously. Then you could discover all kinds of music at the same time

  • Reward contrast
  • If Google’s algorithm looked at how contrasted the colors on a page were we would get all kinds of web design gems! Most pages would be black and white strict with no gray but other pages would venture out into other contrasts, strict red and green combined with flashing text and embedded audio! Wouldn’t that be awesome!?

    Come to think of it Google doesn’t have to do anything to inundate the internet with insanity. Myspace already did it. (Warning:The previous link may cause bleeding from unexpected orifices

    Power Misused or How spiderman relates to the internet
    Posted Tuesday, July 31, 2007
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    Attention, we are officially in the dog days

    That’s right folks. Check your feed reader have you noticed anything strange? No body is updating their blogs! I’m not the only one with nothing to report but all across the blogosphere the latest entries are getting older and older.

    The only people on my feed that have updated anything latley are the loggers (ie the people that just tell you what they did the previous day) as for regular style blog entries, with their sass and frass, have decreased almost 74%! (see Pacman graph for details.)

    I have a few theories as to why this is happening.

  • People are too busy seeing the Transformers movie to blog
  • Would be bloggers are enjoying the “swimming hole” and “good ‘ol fashion fun” rather than writing their salty entries.
  • Generally being outside rather than nestled into the security of an internet connection
  • Worst case senario: everyone got girlfriends and don’t care about the internet anymore.
  • Attention, we are officially in the dog days
    Posted Sunday, July 29, 2007
    8

    A Saga of Phone Calls

    When I chose my cellphone number over a year ago I was going for something that was close to my brothers phone number. Little did I know that the former phone proprietor had a similar namesake to my own. It wasn’t long will I was taking calls for his booty calls, young women that I spent 20 minutes on the phone with trying to figure out how in the world I knew them. Finally, it dawned on me that I didn’t know who these people were.

    The booty calls stopped (when I stopped providing the booty) and I lived in peace for a while.

    Then another kind of call started coming, blockbuster, once a week would call me and tell me they were going to start charging me for my overdue movies. Turns out Tom never changed his phone number on his blockbuster account. Then today I got a completly different kind of call.

    Check it via my chat logs(or logz if you’re “GaNgStA”

    Ronin 10:28: DUDE!
    ok, you know how I’ve been getting phone calls for this Tom dude for the last year and a half?
    they’ve mostly died down

    Jon – 10:29: yeah
    Ronin- 10:29: but this is the call I just got:
    -: Hi Tom?
    Me:- Nope, this is Dan
    -: oh..I was trying to call this number ###-####
    Me: Yeah, thats my number but that’s not me. Who were you looking for?
    -: Tom ***** from Vizad
    Me: Wait…from Vizad?
    The guy that had my phone before was at VIZAD!?

    After tracking Tom for a while, I finally know where he is. Now the game is on!

    A Saga of Phone Calls
    Posted Friday, July 20, 2007
    8

    Keith Olbermann should stick to writing movies

    I was cruising around youtube today and I found out that Keith Olbermann was actually a writer for the movie Brick. I had no idea until I heard him speak. Listen to this wonderful line he slings (or watch the video below):

    The guilty pleasure offered by the existence Bill O’Reilly is simple and understandable. 99 times out of a 100 when we belly up to billow bar bluster, nearly every time we partake of the movable falafel feast he serves us nothing but comedy, farce, slapstick, unconscious self-mutilation. The sideshow Bob of commentators, forever stepping on the same rake, forever muttering the same grunt of inarticulate surrender, forever resuming the circle back to same rake; the Sisyphus of morons if you will, but this is the 100th time out of 100 it is not funny at all. Bill O’Reilly has, for the 2nd time in just under 8 months slandered at least 84 dead American servicemen, he has turned them again, from victims of the kind of atrocity that our country has always fought against, into perpetrators of that same kind of atrocity. He has turned them into war criminals.


    Not only is Keith Olbermann a spider spinning speech spells and he pontificates like Potiphar’s wife on poppy seeds; forever rambling a weak web of tawdry, but talented, tellings, forever clasped in the quickly collapsing cacophony of calumny; an exploitive expletive of alliteration, if you will, but he gavels great gusto and gravitas as if an embodiment of Colbert he thinks is.

    BTW, in case anyone is wondering about the massacre that Keith and Bill O’Reilly are talking about it its the Chenogne Massacre that happened in response to the to the Malamédy Massacre.

    The great thing about this report by Keith it is a perfect examples of hypocrisy. Bill O’Reilly calling the Chenogne massacre the Malmedy massacre is an honest mistake considering one happened immediately after, and in response to the other.

    Keith on the other hand is a sharp guy and must have known what Bill was talking about but chose not to report it.

    On the other hand, I really enjoyed Brick

    Keith Olbermann should stick to writing movies
    Posted Wednesday, July 18, 2007
    2

    Renting in Catania, Sicily

    Things to know when dealing overseas (specifically in Italy):
    1. Always keep your receipts: Many vendors print your complete credit card information on receipts and they may later try to charge you for things you already paid for.

    2. There is no better business bureau: Not that the BBB is super effective but it does carry a certain amount of weight. If you rent from an international chain you are at least guaranteed to have local options when making complaints.

    3. The mentality is snatch and grabs: In most tourist spots (especially in Italy) the mentality is that people are going to only come once so you may as well screw them as much as you can when they do come. They don’t think of repeat customers.

    4. They will steal your car: This one may seem confusing. Here’s what happens, you rent a car, they steal it back at night and then charge you the insurance deductible. Use a club or something. Make sure your stuff is locked up tight.

    Read more about some specific experiences:

  • Problems at Hollywood (part one)

  • Hollywood Rent-a-car will scam you(part two).

  • Renting in Catania, Sicily
    Posted Sunday, July 15, 2007
    11

    A silly note

    As I was writing the last post Gary was asleep on the couch. He shifted in his sleep and said, and this is verbatim:

    “You should have a ninja password.”

    Shouldn’t we all?

    A silly note
    Posted
    1

    Hollywood Rent-a-car in Sicily is a Scam

    Warning: The following contains rancor and some borderline curse words. Parents may not find the content suitable for children under the age of 9.

    I’ve been reluctant to make this post because I don’t want people to feel sorry for me or anything. But here it is, Italy continues to haunt me.

    I mentioned over a month and a half ago that Hollywood rent-a-car in Sicily tried to charge Gary, Lewis and my self all 250 euros. This is the amount of the insurance deductible. So, apparently, we all crashed or had our scooters stolen. riiiiight.

    Obviously I disputed the charge. I thought everything was fine until I got a letter on the 12 of July dated June 26th and post marked July 3 telling me that money($333.33 US) would be would be lifted from my account on the 10 of July. Basically, USAA screwed the pooch on this one when they told me that if there was a problem they would notify me several weeks in advance of any account withdrawals.

    postmark

    So not only did USAA fail to notify me that there was a problem but now they aren’t going to do anything to help me against these fraudsters.

    I signed a contract that says that I would be an insurance deductible if my scooter did whatever. Whether or not this actually happened or whether or not I already paid for this in cash, as they forced me to do, doesn’t matter.

    The only thing my bank cares about is if I do have a contract, after words I have to hire a lawyer to try to sue some bastards in Sicily to get my money back.

    I told the lady at USAA that these scam artist bastards probably pull this all the time and that they were helping facilitate dishonest practices but she assured me that there is nothing I could do. Unless I could prove that I already paid them there they won’t lift a finger to help me.

    I have a few things yet to try but as of yet it looks like Hollywood Rent-a-car of Sicily is going to suceed in stealing my money along with Gary and Lewis’s.

    Congratulations you Sicilian scum, you’re probably going to get away with stealing from poor college students. When you spend that money on greasy jewlery or a damned kebab I hope you choke. I dealt honestly with you, I went out of my way to treat you right and you’ve stabbed me in the back and robbed me blind.

    Hollywood Rent-a-car in Sicily is a Scam
    Posted
    3

    Free Slurpees

    As Jake pointed out earlier today it is 7-11; the day of free slurpees. The free slurprees celebrate over 80 years of 7-Eleven history.

    Don’t get too excited though, its more like a free slurpee shot than a free slurpee. None-the-less it is worth stopping in for. The little free cups are by the register, snag one fill up and walk out. No need to stop at the register or anything.

    Awesome.

    Free Slurpees
    Posted Wednesday, July 11, 2007
    1

    A Strange Occurence

    I’ve been using google reader for about a week now. It’s really nice except all the blogs I read haven’t been updating. Anyway, I posted an entry yesterday on my blog and then hit refresh on my feed reader. I didn’t have a feed for my blog on google reader but all of the sudden, it popped onto my list of blogs and said there was an update…

    wtf!?

    A Strange Occurence
    Posted Sunday, July 8, 2007
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