Random Brain Dump

A New Zealander couple, expecting a baby, had an ultrasound. The experience must’ve had a high impact for the couple because they quickly decided on the baby’s name: “4real”.

Authorities is blocking the name citing that numerals are not allowed. 🙂

“Hey, why is my baby driving the space shuttle?” 🙂

Earlier this year, the city of Tuttle in Oklahoma became the laughing stock when its city manager wrongly threatened a software engineer for “hacking.”

City manager Jerry Taylor, pictured here, claims to be a computer expert with “22 years in computer systems engineering and operation.” This so-called expert logged onto the city web site one day and saw a boilerplate configuration page from Apache on CentOS (a Linux operating system) instead of the usual city website. He panicked & assumed it was hacked and fired a threatening email to CentOS:

“Who gave you permission to invade my website and block me and anyone else form accessing it??? Please remove your software immediately before i report it to government officials!!”

To which, the engineer from CentOS replied

“I feel sorry for your city…”

He followed up with helpful information which Taylor ignored and instead threatened to report the alleged hacking to the FBI . So emails flew back & forth. In the end, the developer figures out that it was the server had crashed and somebody reinstalled CentOS, hence the default test page. When everything was straightened out, Taylor finally apologized but still stubbornly pointed out that the whole situation could’ve been avoided had the developer informed him the problem in the beginning.

Unhappy with the apology and feeling unappreciated for help resolving a problem he didn’t even cause for free, the engineer posted the entire email exchange on the web. The exchange took on a viral effect. Pretty soon, people all over the world started blogging about it, articles were created on wikipedia, a deluge of phone calls made & emails sent to the city manager. In a short period of time, the city & its manager became the laughing stock on the web. Taylor had this to say about the incident, which didn’t exactly helped his cause:

“This is just a bunch of freaks out there that don’t have anything better to do. When I came in to work Monday morning, I had about 500 e-mails, plus anonymous phone calls from all the geeks out there. [CentOS is] a free operating system that this guy gives away, which tells you how much time he’s got on his hands.”

Looser with a capital L.

Here’s a TV news report, a Wikipedia entry, as well as the entire email exchange is posted here. This is one of the funniest thing I read in a long time.

Classic! 🙂

This video is of a giggling baby is so cute, his laughter is so infectious– definitely a watch when you’re having a bad day…

Last year, I wrote about a funny routine by David Armand to Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn. Here’s a same routine but with the singer herself. She even joined in the routine toward the end, proving that she’s got a sense of humor and ultra-cool.

Funny stuff!

Suzanne got her hair permed this past weekend. When she got home, the kids took notice immediately. Allison wanted to touch her mommy’s hair and since it was lavishly hair-sprayed, she said “your new hair is crunchy.” Earlier this evening, after she again commented on her mommy’s crunchy hair, Suzanne corrected her that her hair is wavy, not crunchy. Allison paused and then wave her hand and said “you mean your hair likes to say bye bye like this?”

just something I came across reading, this joke is so bad, it’s good! 🙂

A man is driving along a highway and sees a rabbit jump out across the middle of the road. He swerves to avoid hitting it, but unfortunately the rabbit jumps right in front of the car. The driver, a sensitive man as well as an animal lover, pulls over and gets out to see what has become of the rabbit. Much to his dismay, the rabbit is dead. The driver feels so awful that he begins to cry.

A beautiful blonde woman driving down the highway sees a man crying on the side of the road and pulls over. She steps out of the car and asks the man what’s wrong. “I feel terrible,” he explains, “I accidentally hit this rabbit and killed it.” The blonde says, “Don’t worry.” She runs to her car and pulls out a spray can. She walks over to the limp, dead rabbit, bends down, and sprays the contents onto the rabbit. The rabbit jumps up, waves its paw at the two of them and hops off down the road.

Ten feet away the rabbit stops, turns around and waves again, he hops down the road another 10 feet, turns and waves, hops another ten feet, turns and waves, and repeats this again and again and again, until he hops out of sight.

The man is astonished.

He runs over to the woman and demands, “What is in that can? What did spray on that rabbit?”

The woman turns the can around so that the man can read the label.

It says, – “Hair Spray – Restores life to dead hair, adds a permanent wave.”

in Silicon Valley…
🙂

It was so hot this past weekend it seemed the only things that fell were the temperature records across the Bay Area! Not having AC, we resorted to different ways seeking relief.

We took the kids to Sandra’s place for swim & BBQ to start the weekend. Good food, cool water and great company– a great way to cool down. Unfortunately, it would be the last good idea for the weekend. 🙂 You can read a bit about evening on the Jarvinen’s & Truong’s websites.

Having much fun, we allowed the kids stay up way past their bed times and didn’t head back until 10 pm. On the way back, we heard weird thumping sounds while driving. I didn’t think much of it figuring that we were hearing because with the kids napping and radio turned off. First bad idea. A few minutes later, the rear tire blew up. After pulling the van over to the shoulder, I went out to inspect the damage & was surprised to see how little of the tire was left. The tire literally blew off the wheel. We placed a call to AAA after deciding it was too dangerous to change in the spare on I280’s narrow shoulder. We didn’t get home until midnight.

Sunday morning, I woke up early and headed to Fry’s to buy an air condition unit, thinking I’d beat the crowd, little did I know… The first bad sign was when I saw an empty floor in the appliances section which was filled to the rim with AC’s only a few weeks ago. Looking around, I saw a long line of people so I figured that’s the line for AC’s. Several other people were rushing to beat each other to the line. As I walked to the end of the line, I was a bit amused. I’d only expect a line like this when the PS3 or Wii game consoles come out later this year. Desperate times call for desperate measures I guess… When I got to the end of the line, I asked a guy in front of me whether this was the line to buy an AC. The guy goes: “Oh no, this is the line to get on the waiting list to buy the AC’s on the next shipment!” “What!!!“, I thought (and cursed). No longer feeling amused, I quickly returned the cart and left the store. Crap!

Realizing how this endeavor had suddenly become a more daunting task, I then headed to Lowe’s & Home Depot. No luck, both stores sold out. The guy at Home Depot practically laughed in my face when I ask him if he had any in stock! Lowe’s had a big red sign “All AC & Fans SOLD OUT!” Grudgingly, I went back to a home full of hot air and cranky kids (and wife) with rosy cheeks, empty-handed! Bad idea trying to buy something everybody is desperately after. 🙁

As a last ditch, I placed an online order for an AC unit when I got home, fully aware that the few days of the shipment will be painful. Bad idea. Everybody was shopping online as well. As of today, costco.com is yet to process my order, no doubt they don’t have any units in stock either. Crap, again!

Desperate to escape the heat, Suzanne & I decided to take the kids & their grandma to the theater. The only kiddie movie playing was Over The Hedge, which Katelyn & Allison already saw. But they’re more than happy to watch it the second time. I discovered later that the AC’s in the theaters were broken. Fortunately, it was still comfortable for everybody throughout the movie. Almost a bad idea…

As we left the theater, we hit the heat again. We decided to take the kids to a nearby ice cream parlor. Bad idea… The place was packed with people trying to escape the heat. Gave up, we rushed the kids into the van, cranked up the AC and headed to the mall. Another bad idea… Once entered parking lot, we quickly gave up. It was obvious, we weren’t going to find parking easily. I was glad we didn’t enter the mall though after hearing a co-worker describing how crazy Valley Fair was this past weekend.

We decided to drive to Santa Cruz beach. Okay, yet another bad idea! Highway 17 was packed, bumper to bumper. Along the way, the highway was littered with over-heated cars. I’m not exaggerating. The situation was not much different from disaster scenes on CNN where Floridians rushing out of the Keys, trying to escape a hurricane. We decided to keep going anyway since the kids were comfortably napping. The trip, usually takes 30 minutes, turned 2 hours long. At least, it was 2 air conditioned hours.

The weather was quite pleasant at this beach town when we got there, a good 20 degrees lower I’d say. By this time, the kids woke up and were hungry. We decided to head to the Boardwalk for some fun & food. Bad idea. The streets were packed with cars heading toward the Boardwalk. After some time driving around and not finding parking, we gave up and headed home, content that at least we spent the last 3 hours comfortably in a van with AC cranked up. But, I’d used up half of a gas tank in the van.

As you can see, it was a weekend of many bad ideas… 🙂