.the gpb kids.

Social Consciousness

Posted by Jules - August 30, 2008 at 09:08:29 pm

I was contemplating buying this shirt from anthropolgie, because it looks like something I would wear. However, the political tendencies of the the owner, Richard Hayne, don’t agree with me. He also happens to own Urban Outfitters. He generally keeps his politics well hidden, and supports only safe causes through his companies, such as breast cancer research. From his clientele and offered merchandise, you might suspect that he was a left leaning, anti-establishment, liberal, hipster type. Instead, I found out that he was a rather conservative republican who obviously understands marketing to the disposable-income-masses. He hires hipsters to find the new trends and set the tone. He has donated around 12k to the infamous has-been senator Rick Santorum. Granted, if you compare this  to his yearly take, 12k looks like chump change. In case you don’t know Rick Santorum was a pennsylvanian senator, popularly known for his anti-abortion, anti-homosexual stances.

Many of the women in my orchestra are fluid and openly lesbian. It’s a great orchestra to be in, because everyone is so warm and welcoming. When we were in florida for the music gala, we happened to pass by an urban outfitters. I started to wonder- would you support a store if you new the founders/ mission statement did not align with yours? Or would you continue to buy stuff because you like the style, regardless of who runs the corporation? I feel like there are many queer/liberal/left leaning folk who shop and work at urban outfitters near my university. I wonder what they think? If they’re aware? And if they are aware, what their justifications are? Something to ponder…

Cloning an array in JavaScript

Posted by Mike - August 15, 2008 at 02:08:12 pm

This frustrated me for like an hour today. The problem is that in JavaScript, arrays are treated like objects and are referenced when you really want to clone them. See embed.

Better Rossi vs Stoner Video

Posted by Mike - August 5, 2008 at 04:08:59 pm

Stoner vs Rossi

Found this better version of the Rossi vs Stoner battle from Laguna Seca by the people at MotoGP.com. However, they disabled embedding. Why would you do that? Who runs that stupid motogp website? What a bunch of jerks. Their website is subscription based, and their content on youtube is embed disabled. Here I am trying to promote their content and they don’t even let me.

Unfortunately I liked the video enough to work around the disabled embedding… *sigh*

update: okay i guess i can’t embed it like that… back to MotoGP.com being jerks.

Yes, that must be it.

Posted by Mike - August 5, 2008 at 08:08:57 am

“It’s because they’re crazy,” she muttered under her breathe as she impatiently darted from lane to lane under the grass-is-always-greener freeway mentality. On the radio NPR was previewing a segment on increasing motorcycle rider fatalities despite lower overall traffic accidents. Yes, I’m sure they all must be crazy and it has nothing to do with car drivers. Well, at least we motorcycle riders check our blind spots. I’ll think I’ll skip her the next time she comes up as my casual carpool driver.

Gaining Customer Trust

Posted by Mike - February 9, 2008 at 05:02:11 pm

“Unlike any of those computer-generated ‘guessimates’ that you get from the internet, we examine the value of your property accuretly.” (emphasis added)

Well… if they’re as good at property value as they are with spelling, I think I’ll use someone else.

Spelling and grammar on a blog are one thing, but on your business site? You should really have that checked, and rechecked. It makes you look terrible.

No Internet

Posted by Mike - January 28, 2008 at 09:01:35 am

Jules and I are trying to take advantage of the internet without a phone line (dry-loop) service that ATT is being forced to offer now. Here are the steps so far:

January 16: Jules calls and switches the plan. They say the current phone/dsl service will be shut off on the 24th. Jules sets up an appointment for the 25th, Friday, for a technician to come by and activate the dry-loop service. Jules and Mike rearrange lives around appointment time.

January 23: Random technician calls Jules and essentially says he’s there to shut off the service. Jules happens to be at home by coincidence and man comes in and does something.

January 24: Internet goes away.

January 25: ATT is a no show. Jules calls and they said there was no appointment for and that the service should be on but there are apparently some phone lines down but they should be up by 4:30pm.

January 26: Mike calls ATT, talks to half a dozen people before he’s told that the tech department looks pretty backed up but they’ll call me (as in the cell phone number that I gave them) within 24 hrs.

January 26: While running errands Jules gets an automated call that says everything is just fine.

January 26: Get back from errands. No internet. Mike calls again, whines for a while. They attempt to transfer me to tech, but they’re closed… it’s 5:50pm.

January 27: Mike calls tech at 9am. They say automated test was a waste of time. We make an appointment for a tech to come out between 4:00-8:00pm on January 28. I am told that I don’t have to be there by 4:00pm. I can delay the appointment when the tech calls to when I’m home.

To be continued…

Update: ATT contractor came, internet restored, peace on earth.

Photo from cuteoverload.com

IE8 Passes Acid 2 Test; Mike Still Sad

Posted by Mike - December 20, 2007 at 10:12:16 am

Recently the Internet Explorer development team posted that IE8 passes the Acid 2 standards test. Having spent a lot of time working around rendering issues in IE, I feel like I should be happy about this. I think I would be happy if everyone used the same browser. But unfortunately that’s not the case. I would even settle for all IE users updating to IE8 when it comes out. Hell I’d settle for an update to IE7. Alas, even though IE8 is standards compliant, I still have to work my way around IE6. And the chain of browsers is only as strong as the weakest link.

Operation Lucky Bag

Posted by Mike - December 12, 2007 at 01:12:02 pm

During “Operation Lucky Bag” the police left shopping bags, backpacks and purses scattered around the subway system. Then they sat back and watched the items. Anyone who took one of the items and then walked past the police officers without reporting it was arrested. These items were valued at a few hundred dollars, at the most and therefore the “crime” of picking them up was a misdemeanor.

Well that sucks. Although, with all the ‘look out for suspicious bags’ warnings around BART, I probably wouldn’t pick up a bag anyway. I might say… “LOOK OUT! SUSPICIOUS BAG!” And then there would be chaos. At the debriefing the chief would ask the officer, “So, why were you putting suspicious bags around the station again?”

Okay that wouldn’t happen. Oh well.

[No Good Deed Goes Unpunished In New York – Total Lawyers]

Submission

Posted by Mike - November 18, 2007 at 12:11:43 am

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.
Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,
and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—
for we are members of his body.
“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

– Ephesians 5 (22-33)

My friend was married today and this passage seemed to be an important part of it. The pastor spoke on it for a good 30 minutes. Emphasizing the husband’s role as head of the family and the wife’s as, well, subservient. He pointed out that while the wife has the right to speak her views and make suggestions, the final word would be that of the husband.

I was waiting for Jules to get up and light her bra on fire in protest. But our friend seems happy enough with the arrangement even though they only met in December. But, good luck to them. I hope their marriage is happy and fulfilling.

Rebates

Posted by Jules - November 13, 2007 at 07:11:53 pm

In June, I decided to renew my service with ATT DSL. In return, they were supposed to refund me 50$ for renewing. I sent off my postcard and rebate sticker in July, and waited. It was supposed to arrive in 4-6 weeks. When I didn’t hear or see anything from them after 4 months, I decided to give them a call. So apparently, they had been holding it in limbo, as the lady on the phone said, “Oh, we didn’t know what to do with it, because we didn’t know the reason for the rebate- was it for retention, new service sign up, new modem?” So she was telling me that, while they had access to my phone #, billing history, service history, password, and SSN, they had no way of emailing/calling me to ask this question, and they had no way of figuring out why I got this rebate? Riiiiggghhhttt. I just said, “It was a retention”. And then she said, “Ok, we’ll mail it right off”. Are you kidding me? That’s why they were holding it in limbo for 4 months?? I guess it’s a good way to get out of giving rebates to people who don’t double check. I just got a check in the mail, dated 1 day after I called.

Search