Q: Why do programmers get Halloween and Christmas confused?

A: Because 31 OCT == 25 DEC

* Don’t be upset (or even surprised for that matter) if you don’t get this joke. In fact, you might be a healthier human being if you don’t. If you do get it, then sit back and remember those glory days in Discrete Math and laugh until Mountain Dew squirts out of your nose and ruins your “Seven of Nine” mouse pad.

Early this morning, a once in a century event took place. I tried to stay up for it, but I didn’t make it. Did you?!

I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, but for those not in the know, our clocks experienced the following rare event:

01:02:03 04/05/06

Some folks will have to look at that for a minute to figure out the significance. The rest of us will wait for them to “get it”.

…

Ah! See now?! Isn’t that cool? Oh one, oh two, oh three… Twenty one minutes later, a slightly less cool event took place, which I also slept through:

1:23 4/5/6

Some folks say that you can enjoy this again this afternoon, but that doesn’t really count. Every good geek knows that 1 PM is really just 13 o’clock and there’s nothing cool about 13:02:03… Yeah. I’m a geek. Get over it.

Thanks for sharing this amazing second with me. I look forward to sharing 12:34 5/6/7 with you next year!

(Shamelessly scraped from The Sneeze.)

I love science. I’m the kind of guy who takes comfort in certainty. Two plus two is always four. (Well, unless you’re using a number system that doesn’t include four. Or you’re trying to add incompatible objects. Or you have overloaded the plus operator. Or… oh never mind.)

But it irritates me to no end when scientist tromp all over the beauty of the scientific method with statements that we are supposed to accept as fact, but are based on ridiculous assumptions. Just because you get paid to be a scientist doesn’t make you immune from the scientific method!

We’ve seen this behavior from archeologists, geologists, biologists, ecologists and about ever other “ologist” you can think of. It defies reason that so many of our worlds “smartest” people can be so blind to their own bias and pride that they have become completely unreliable. Can you really trust anything a scientist tells you anymore? I don’t.

The easiest example is “global warming”. We’ve been indoctrinated for over two decades that man’s abuse of technology is going to bring about the end of the world by gradually raising the Earth’s temperature until the sky falls. Okay, not exactly, but something along those lines. I dare say it would be hard to watch 24 hours of news without hearing some nut job mentioning global warming.

However…

A recent study found that less of the sun’s energy is making to the Earth in the last five years (not more), and yet, miraculously, the world’s temperature has remained the roughly unchanged. According to this study, the Earth should be getting colder. How do scientists sum up this article?

“No doubt greenhouse gases are increasing … No doubt that will cause a warming. The question is, ‘Are there other things going on?'”

GAH!! He just finished saying that they can not explain what they’ve observed, but somehow he remains certain that the sky is still falling.

Okay, okay. So, let’s just say the sky is falling. Record hurricanes, droughts, blah blah blah. So the Earth is getting hotter. That would explain why it’s been so hot in Africa this year, right? Oh wait. It’s not hotter in Africa this year?!

No! In fact, for the second year in a row, there has been record snow in the Sahara! SNOW!! IN THE SAHARA!!

So, how is it that scientists are so wrong? Allow me to explain. In the last half century of so, scientist in every field have gotten into the habit of extrapolating. That is to say that they observe an event and then extend that event infinitely into the past or future and make assumptions based on the math.

For instance, scientists have noticed some major earth quakes on the Horn of Africa in the last few years. There are large fissures opening up in the ground. So, a scientist says, “Look! The ground has opened up 100 meters in only a few months. At this rate, Africa will be split in half in only a few thousand years!” WHAT? It would be funny if it weren’t true.

That is equivalent to someone observing a house fly traveling three feet through the air. “Look! That house fly flew three feet in only half a second. That means that in the last year, that same fly has flown 36,000 miles! He must be tired!”

As stupid as that sounds, it is exactly what we are being taught. Global warming, evolution, archeological dating, and pretty much our entire understanding of astronomy are all based on these kinds of retarded extrapolation. And you and I are expected to swallow it with a smile. Well, excuse me, but I don’t have much of a stomach for poo. Do you?

Oh! I am in 80’s Geek heaven. I just found RetroJunk.com which hosts all sorts of old TV clips and movie trailers from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.

They even have the ORIGINAL Mrs. Fletcher!!

How do you rank in cyber space? Are you googlable? (Ooooh! New word!) I’ve always ranked pretty well because my name is a bit unusual. When you search on “Trint Ladd” you don’t end up with a bunch of links to some English professor or small town city council member’s web site. You get me.

I think it also helps that my wife is famous. *wink*

So, anyhoo, not to gloat or anything, but my combined Web Ego is over 4500. (Bill Gates scores almost 13,000, so I’ve got room for improvement.)

Give it a try! (http://www.EgoSurf.org) Be sure to click “more options” and check all the different search engines. (Warning, it takes a long time for the page to finish searching you. Let it finish.)

Monk-ish – adv. 1. Has obsessive-compulsive thoughts, tendencies or behaviors. 2. Of, or relating to, or characteristic of Adrian Monk.

Monk is my second favorite show on TV (right behind Mythbusters). Tony Shalhoub brilliantly portrays Adrian Monk, a former police detective who lost his job due to his debilitating obsessive-compulsive disorder but who still consults with the police to solve murders.

What I love so much about Monk is that I get to laugh at some of the traits I have. Actually, my co-worker, Dave, and I both have some pretty serious Monk-ish qualities. The invention of alcohol hand sanitizer (such as Purell) has made my personal distaste for germiness even worse. (*snap snap* Wipe! I need a wipe!) It has become a running joke at home and at work. Much like “geek”, “monk” has gone from an insult to an accepted (even enjoyed) label.

Naturally, anything that I really enjoy eventually becomes an internet quiz. Check out “Are you Monk-ish?”

I’m more than most.

A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me,
can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The woman below replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You’re between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”

“You must be in Information Technology,” said the exasperated balloonist.

“I am,” replied the woman, “How did you know?”

“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is, technically correct, but I’ve no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything, you’ve delayed my trip.”

The woman below responded, “You must be in Management.”

“I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You have risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault.

(Shamelessly stolen from Veni Vidi Vici.)

Congratulations to Surely You’re Not Serious for not being nominated for the 2005 Weblog Awards. Not only was I graciously not nominated, but none of the blogs I frequently read made the list.

Actually, one of the blogs I read DID get a nod: Michael Yon, the self-described non-journalist reporting from Iraq, is in the running for Best Media/Journalist Blog.

You can vote once a day every day until the contest ends. And remember kids: Don’t take democracy for granted. You have no right to complain about the blogosphere if you don’t vote!

Googly-moogly, it’s been over two weeks since my last white board quip. Shame on me.

WBQotW #47 is from a shirt on ThinkGeek.com. If you don’t know what this means, then you don’t have a clue. *wink*

>SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0
0 rows returned

photoshop – (fó´tó – shôp) v. To digitally manipulate an image.

I’m one of those geeks that turn cultural trends into verbs. I was one of the first people I know to use “google” as a verb. In the same manner, I have been “photoshopping” images for years and preaching that you can not believe your eyes anymore.

A couple of days ago I posted my first submission on Worth1000. If you have any doubt about the power of digital editing, spend some time over at Worth. You’ll be amazed. (The tutorial about artificial aging is my favorite.)

Now, it’s all well and good to photoshop for silly online contests. It’s another thing entirely to create images for the media that create a story where none exists (also known as lying). This is what you see on all those spurious tabloid covers and it’s called photo-chopping.

photo-chop – (fó´tó – chôp) v. To digitally manipulate an image for malicious or duplicitous purposes.

This is certainly not a new practice among the media’s dirtier dogs, but with the latest technology it’s that much easier and thus that much more tempting for journalists to make news rather than report it. I strongly encourage you to read this article about the history of image tampering. It will open your eyes to some of the things you may have seen but should not have believed.