THOMnottom

A few weeks ago I managed to pick up some Pearl Jam tickets directly from TicketBastard, since I missed out on the fan club pre-sale for the second show. The experience isn’t alltogether painful as their servers have the common courtesy to not lose cookies or randomly crash in the middle of large rushes for tickets. Instead, you just have to wait the actual 5-10 minutes that the progress bar displays for your order to pop up. Unfortunately, my order popped up with a copy of their new CD (which I fully intend to pre-order directly from them) in the cart at the ridiculous price of $16.99. Despite their claims that I would be able to remove the CD, I was stuck with it if I wanted the tickets.

Much to my surprise, this weekend I received an e-mail from their customer service describing the bug that had prevented customers from removing the CD from the bin and included instructions for cancelling that portion of the order. “Wow,” I thought, “Those jerks actually did something right – they actually fixed their mistake.” So it occurred to me that I should write a post describing what a wonderful thing TicketBastard had done in order to right this wrong. Songs should be sung about them and tales told long into the night as we feast over wild boar and flowing stouts. Perhaps a statue in their honor shall be erected.

Then I began to wonder why I should praise a company that charges me an extra $8-$10 just for the right to buy a ticket for fixing their mistake. Do they really deserve any publicity for simply not being completely devoid of ethics?

No, no they don’t. So I guess I won’t write about this afterall…

Talk about a one-blog-mind – the first three posts from my regular feeds today were all the same. This has definitely peaked my curiosity. It is now a very real possibility that I would consider buying a Mac somewhere down the line. I’ve said plenty of times that I was interested in OS X, but would never fork over all the money just for an extra machine that couldn’t run all of my Windows software. Now the transition might actually make sense.

UPDATE: There are, of course, more talking on the subject – Deiter talks about the possible negative ramifications. But since I moved him over to the photo section, it takes me longer to catch up 🙂 .

Alrighty, listen up, I’m not about to freak out because it‘s snowing snowed in April. I’ve seen weird and wacky weather enough the past few years to get over that. But the manner in which the precipitation transpired this morning was just WAY over the top.

When I first got up, I rushed to take the garbage down to the street. I didn’t even need a jacket. It was beautiful and sunny out. Yeehaw! As I hopped into the shower I noticed it was getting a little grey outside – darn, looks like we’ll get that rain afterall. By the time I got out of the shower (TADA!) it was snowing. That sucks, but not too much. So I (not so) quickly gather everything for work and get ready to leave. WHERE THE HELL DID THE HAMSTER-SIZED SNOWFLAKES COME FROM?!?! Seriously, my car was coated with a not-so thin layer in about 2 minutes flat. Suddenly we’re checking the weather channel to figure out if it’s even safe for me to leave.

WHERE DID MY BEAUTIFUL SUNSHINE GO?!?!

Finally I decide I can’t just sit around and leave even later in hopes that the blizzard subsides. There’s probable a quarter inch on the ground, and I want to get out before the roads get bad. The drive isn’t that bad. After about 15 minutes, it’s barely snowing. Five minutes later, I don’t see any flakes. I pull into work, and my car is the only one with snow on it.

And I repeat: WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!?!

For those of you who shoot with Canon SLRs, you know that “L” glass lenses are the shiznit. Seriously, they’re the kind that everybody drools over while wishing with all of your might that the price tag will just magically disappear – or at least move the decimal over to the left a little. In other words, the quality is top notch, but you might just need to take out a second mortgage to get one. Kind of like when I go into a camera shop and they let me try out a 20D (or 30D these days). Yeah, I want it, but I also want to eat.

That’s where Rentglass comes in. This company is actually renting out high quality lenses for decent money on a weekly basis. So far they only have Canon, but Nikon is around the corner. The worry of having to take care of someone else’s lens definitely makes me think twice about this, but imagine being able to head out to Hawaii for my honeymoon (still not definite, by the way) with a stunning wide-angle and a killer macro in tow for about 50 bucks a week. And I’m sure I could find some reason to spend $45 for a week with this beauty (and a friend).

It seems to be a growing business that’s trying to take it slowly and make sure their model will work. Here’s hoping that I get a chance to try it out!

(thanks to Matt Haughey)

Remember that webcam I mentioned last week? It got so popular so fast, they’ve already redesigned a “proper” front page, added forums, put up some ads, and hinted at a “premium” feed option in the future. Amazingly, there seems to be no grousing over the idea that these people can’t do this for free. In fact, there have been a few threads in the forums suggesting that they take Paypal donations and asking how they can contribute to make sure the feed keeps running smoothly (at this time it’s grown a tad jerky).

It’s nice to see people on the Internet realize that when a small project suddenly starts getting 2 million visitors a day with over 4500 simultaneous viewers, you can’t really keep it up for free. I guess it also helps that a number of people on the forums appear to be teachers who are excited about the prospect of showing a live hatching to their classes.

I’ve got to give a lot of credit to Infotec on this one. These guys have been on the forums asking and answering questions; tirelessly working on the feed as the demand has increased, and even assured everybody that there will continue to be a free live stream for everybody to see the eggs hatch. Way to go guys!

And here’s some quick facts I found in the forum:

* The Eggs are expected to hatch sometime in the third week of april. The incubation takes about 36 days!
* The nest is located on Hornby Island, Vancouver, BC, Canada
* The nest is sitting in a tree at the top of a 150ft cliff!
* The Camera is located next to the nest (literally) and is connected to an Infotec ‘Galaxy Encoder’ box situated nearby.
* The stream will be live well into the days when the baby eagles are old enough to leave the nest
* We don’t currently have an infrared camera, so at night time, expect it to be dark!

I just got to watch the mother swap out with the father again – and yes, I’d easily contribute 25 bucks to make sure it wouldn’t be so jerky next time.

My boss sent out this e-mail over the weekend:

We are in the process of initiating a new improved health care plan. It is called Health Cash Plus and this is how it will work.

You go to any doctor or health care facility you want, anywhere in the world. When the bill comes, you pay it directly out of your own pocket. No muss, no fuss.

Here are some of the advantages vs. a traditional managed care health plan:

1. No claim forms to fill out
2. No networks
3. No ID cards
4. No “explanations of benefits” arriving in the mail
5. No help lines to call
6. No benefit books
7. No enrollment forms
8. No “preferred providers”
9. No managed care
10. No HMOs

We will keep you posted on further updates and improvements to our health plan.

I had to read it three times before realizing that it was a joke. Bill’s a fun guy, but a mass e-mail like this is not what I would expect from him. But April Fool’s Day will bring out the prankster in plenty of us.

P.S. Of course, some people will go to much greater lengths for a joke.

P.P.S. And an even better one.

The best webcam I’ve ever seen – Hornby Island, Bald Eagle Nest. I got a chance to see the pair switch off on their egg-sitting duties and even heard one of them let out some little cries. Amazing. I am in awe of birds, and really must get around to processing some of the great shots I got last year.

Back in college, one of my roommates wanted to learn how to juggle. I forget how it all started, but it eventually became a big thing among a group of us. I think I got into it simply to prove that my roommate was going about the process all wrong. Regardless, a number of us were regularly juggling in the hallways of our dorm and trying (and failing) all sorts of fancy tricks.

We got to the point that everybody was picking up their own set of juggling balls (trust me, they are a lot nicer than simply using tennis balls) and looking through catalogs of other items for throwing into the air and then catching. Humorously there was another group of kids on campus that got into yo-yoing around the same time. There were jokes about a rivalry between us… but I think I’ve already admitted too much geekness in my past.

Anywho, it’s not like I was about to give up college or anything, but I certainly became a better juggler than the average person. Lo these many years later, I still have the same set of balls (there’s just no good way to phrase that) and am still likely to pick up objects of all sorts of shapes and sizes to see how well I can juggle with them.

Why am I writing about this? Because right here and right now, I want to be this guy.

(Orginal link thanks to Tim at O’Reilly Radar)

I just wrote a post. Well, almost. About three or four paragraphs in, I wanted to check something in another tab. BAM – Firefox decides to stop responding. Oh yeah, it freezes up spectacularly. There’s absolutely no indication why, and it just keeps beeping everytime I try to click on anything. So much for that post.

Firefox has been getting worse and worse lately. It’s using too much memory and not unloading tabs even after they are closed. It freezes at the worst possible times, and crashes almost randomly. I just uninstalled all of my extensions, but what’s the point of an extensible browser if you can’t actually install any plugins?

I’m not giving up just yet, but I’m getting pretty sick of this. I’m beginning to regret recommending people to switch lately. Maybe it’s time to give some other alternatives a try.

Because I like it when a crappy story turns out ok, the woman I mentioned who had her lost camera stolen by a family finally got it back. One of those rare occasions when a relatively unknown law actually helps someone 😛 .

(Thanks to Geof)