Who would send their kids to a place like that?

Yesterday, a large number of Microsoft’s Zune portable music players spontaneously died in their owners’ hands.

After spending much of the day digging into the problem, Microsoft said that it had traced it to a software bug "related to the way the device handles a leap year."  Apparently the Zune was expecting 2008 to have 365 days, not 366.

Though this does suck for Microsoft and for their customers who bought the Zunes, it makes me feel a little less bad about any bugs I’ve had in any of my applications.

The fix for the glitch?  Patience.  The company said the internal clock on the players should reset itself at 7 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday.  [...]  Those who were hoping to provide the soundtrack to New Year’s Eve parties had no choice but to find a friend with an iPod.

Realistically though, there’s probably not much overlap between "people who’ve bought a Zune" and "people with enough friends to host a party."

At least the Zunes came back to life a day later.

Quoting Fox News:

A family did not realize they had an unexpected Christmas guest until a man who had been in their attic for days emerged wearing their clothes, police said.

Didn’t take long for somebody to upload this to the upload demo:

Hilarious video.

From Modern Marvels:

When the 9-1-1 system was originally introduced, it was promoted as "Nine-Eleven" service.  After some panicked callers tried to find the "eleven" key on their telephones, it was changed to "Nine-One-One."

Today I had a website visitor who found my site by searching for pennsylvania no smocking law on Google.  Which was surprising, not only because I don’t have any such information on my site, but also because I seem to remember a fair amount of smocking in various art classes I took while attending grade school in PA.  I guess times are changing.

Sad but true.

I’ve grown attached to @MarsPhoenix over the past few months and I was sad when it stopped tweeting last week.  Its final tweet was a great one, though.

Gizmodo has a nice collection of some of the lander’s important discoveries.  Here’s the best one:

Scott Adams nails it as usual:

It’s expensive to travel anywhere, but on the other hand, the new season of 24 is almost here.  I don’t need to go to faraway places and meet people when I can sit on my couch and watch Jack Bauer shoot those people.

Dumb: leaving a restaurant without paying the bill

Dumber: forgetting your purse in the restaurant and going back for it

Brain donor: getting arrested because (of course) you’re a pothead and there’s pot in your purse

(via)

The Al Smith Dinner the other night was one of the best parts of this race, by far.  McCain and Obama were both hilarious.  I don’t know who wrote their speeches but they were pretty much non-stop laugh-fests.  And it was great to see each of them poking a little fun at himself.  Here’s the full video; the good stuff starts about 5 minutes in:

Some of Obama’s funniest lines:

Contrary to the rumors that you have heard, I was not born in a manger.  I was actually born on Krypton, and sent here by my father Jor-El to save the planet earth.

I got my middle name from somebody who obviously didn’t think I’d ever run for president.

My greatest weakness?  Ah... it’s possible that I’m a little too awesome.

A New York Times writer says that Democratic presidents are better for the stock market:

Quoting The New York Times:

As of Friday, a $10,000 investment in the S.& P. stock market index* would have grown to $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents only (...) Invested under Democratic presidents only, $10,000 would have grown to $300,671 at a compound rate of 8.9 percent over nearly 40 years.

John Gruber picks up on this and quips that "Facts continue to hold a liberal bias."

Then Mathmatica co-founder Theodore Gray points out that the Times’ simplistic analysis conveniently excludes all of those pesky issues that actually apply in the real world, like inflation and dividends.  When you adjust the model to actually reflect reality, it turns out that Republican administrations are actually better for the stock market.  Oops.

Gruber’s response to this?  "This is not a good metric for measuring presidential economic policies."

Hilarious.

Yes, but... these flavors, are they natural?

From Ars Technica:

According to The Seattle Times, a Craigslist ad was placed last week, offering road construction work at $28.50 per hour in Monroe, WA, a city northeast of Seattle.  About a dozen men replied to the ad, and all received instructions to show up outside a Bank of America wearing a yellow vest, safety goggles, a respirator mask, and a blue shirt.

As the men gathered outside the bank within the proper attire, however, another man wearing the same getup used pepper spray on a guard transporting cash from an armored truck into the bank.  The suspect grabbed the duffel bag, ran 100 yards to Wood Creek, and made his getaway (floataway?) on what police believe to be an inner tube.  Seattle FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs told the Times that armored car robberies are "quite uncommon," and that she’s never heard of an inner tube serving as a getaway vehicle.

Pirates.  Real live pirates.

Navy Lt. Nathan Christensen told The New York Times "several destroyers and missile cruisers" had joined a U.S. destroyer already following the Faina, effectively surrounding the pirates.  The Navy’s plan for dealing with the maritime hijackers should they refuse to surrender was not disclosed, the U.S. newspaper said.

I don’t suppose that you need to disclose your plan when you’re the one who’s got the several destroyers and missile cruisers.

This follow-up story has quotes from the pirates themselves:

Mr. Sugule said that his men are treating the crew members well (the pirates would not let the crew members speak on the phone, saying it was against their rules). "Killing is not in our plans," he said.  "We only want money, so we can protect ourselves from hunger."

When asked why the pirates needed $20 million to protect themselves from hunger, Mr. Sugule laughed over the phone and said: "Because we have a lot of men."

So apparently I’m in the minority with my opinion of the new Microsoft ad campaign.  I think the first and second ads, with Seinfeld, are great, and the third one is totally lame.  Everyone else seems to think the opposite.

The Seinfeld ads were ads about nothing, which was of course the whole point of Seinfeld’s TV show.  The ads weren’t trying to sell Windows or PCs.  They were just Gates and Seinfeld hanging out, trying to be normal guys.  The ads were pointless, but they were funny and interesting.  And they sure as heck got people talking about Microsoft.

The new "I’m a PC, and I’ve been made into a stereotype" ad is whiny and pathetic.  It’s basically saying "please don’t listen to what Apple says about me!"  The ad shows lots of politically-correct multicultural images of people around the world saying "I’m a PC", which when you think about it, just means that the PC is pedestrian, in contrast to the Mac, which is special.

The new ad also fails because, technically, every Mac is also a PC.  And furthermore, Microsoft doesn’t even sell PCs, they sell Windows, which isn’t mentioned at all in the ad.  So what’s the point again?

The Seinfeld ads were bold, new, interesting, and subtle; and they made Bill Gates a little more accessible to us, even if only for pretend.  The third ad is utterly unoriginal and boring.

I can’t tell if this guy is being nasty or just poking some lighthearted fun, but this is hilarious:

Quoting George Saunders:

In summary: Because my candidate, unlike your winking/blinking Vice-Presidential candidate, who, though, yes, he did run as the running mate when the one asking him to run did ask him to run, which that I admire, one thing he did not do, with his bare hands or otherwise, is, did he ever kill a moose?  No, but ours did.  And I would.  Please bring a moose to me, over by me, and down that moose will go, and, if I had a kid, I would take a picture of me showing my kid that dead moose, going, like, Uh, sweetie, no, he is not resting, he is dead, due to I shot him, and now I am going to eat him, and so are you, oh yes you are, which is responsible, as God put this moose here for us to shoot and eat and take a photo of, although I did not, at that time, know why God did, but in years to come, God’s will was revealed, which is: Hey, that is a cool photo for hunters about to vote to see, plus what an honor for that moose, to be on the Internet.

Roger Ebert has posted this about Sarah Palin:

I think I might be able to explain some of Sarah Palin’s appeal. She’s the "American Idol" candidate. Consider. What defines an "American Idol" finalist? They’re good-looking, work well on television, have a sunny personality, are fierce competitors, and so talented, why, they’re darned near the real thing.

Does Ebert honestly not realize that he’s describing Obama, or is he just in denial?  I don’t know which would be worse.

Meanwhile, the Lightworker himself claims that he’s got more executive experience than Palin because he’s been running for president for 2 years.  That’s right, Obama thinks that running for president is a good qualification for actually being president.  You can’t make this stuff up:

"Well, my understanding is that Governor Palin’s town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We’ve got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made clear over the last couple of years," Obama said.

Someone needs to tell Obama that after Palin was the mayor of Wasilla, she was the governor of Alaska.

But what do I know; I’m from Pennsylvania, so I’m probably just clinging to my guns and religion.

24 fans, if you haven’t watched the movie Flatliners since before you started watching 24, you should watch it again.  Not only because of one particularly hilarious and well-delivered line, but also to see where Jack Bauer got his toughness.

We got this card during our trip to the Bahamas last fall.  I put it in my wallet and forgot about it until recently.  As you can see, it did not work as advertised; nothing I could do would make the card turn into the bus driver.

Spotted in a bathroom at the Jersey shore:

And yes, I took the photo after washing my hands.

Uploaded today:

Quoting Scott Adams:

Puppies are essentially little factories that take in small pellets and convert the raw material into barking and poop. My job, as foreman of the factory, is to make sure the output happens in the designated grassy area. I’m sure I would have gotten a bad performance review yesterday, as little Snickers delivered a pallet of product behind the dining room table and decided it was a chew toy.