great googly moogly

Got gas at Sams today. $2.88 a gallon. Thought it was bad until I pulled out of the lot and the gas station across the street was changing their price to $3.29 a gallon.

Poker Cheapskate

Rich has a poker blog:
The written account of a 30-something IT professional learning the ropes of online poker.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
--------------------------------------------
Hit and run indeed
I had my second most profitable session last night. It lasted all of 13 minutes (16 hands).
# 1 - 9s 5h (BB) = folded to a .50 bet pre-flop
# 2 - Qh 8s (SB) = folded to a 1.35 raise pre-flop
# 3 - 8c 3h = folded pre-flop

Then this:

# 4 - Ad Ac

(read the rest on his blog)

Firefox

Firefox popups

Like you, I love Firefox for many reasons, including popup blocking. So over the last few weeks I’ve been surprised to see occasional popups.

It turns out that some clever people figured out that you could launch popups from Flash, getting around the Firefox default settings.

Fortunately, you can get around it:

1. Type about:config into the Firefox location bar.
2. Right-click on the page and select New and then Integer.
3. Name it privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins
4. Set the value to 2.

The possible values are:

* 0: Allow all popups from plugins.
* 1: Allow popups, but limit them to dom.popup_maximum.
* 2: Block popups from plugins.
* 3: Block popups from plugins, even on whitelisted sites.

today

Today is Laura's birthday. She's Scott Seabol.

boxing action

WOMEN'S BOXING - News Story on WBAN!: "Evansville, IN (August 19, 2005) – Childers Promotions LLC is teaming up with former boxing champion Danny Thomas’ at Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Boxing and Kickboxing to present open sparring and workouts showcasing fighters appearing on Evansville’s first premier boxing event Saturday, September 10th at Casino Aztar. The fight card will feature six bouts including featherweight champ, Daniel Maldonado of Henderson, KY (18-1-0, 11 KO’s), lightweight women’s boxing champ Kristy Follmar (15-1-0, 9 KO’s) of Indianapolis. Former golden-glove champions David Thomas, Eli Arms Robert Adams and Patrick Lyles will make pro-debuts on the card. Local contender Wayne “The Cobra” Copper (3-1, 0 KO’s) will appear in a six round bout.

The open workout is free and open to the public and all media. All fighters appearing on the Sept.10th event will be in attendance and available for autographs and interviews from 12:00 – 2:00 pm Saturday, August 27th at Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Gym is located at 1307 N. Royal Ave., (upstairs at ICE Gymnastics, behind Wolf’s Restaurant East) Evansville. "

Google Talk

IM

They say talk is cheap. Google thinks it should be free. Google Talk enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free–anytime, anywhere in the world. Google Talk offers you:

* Choice: Get in touch how and when you want to–over email, IM or a call

* Quality: Talk through your computer but hear your friends as if they were in the same room

* Convenience: Your Gmail contacts are pre-loaded into Google Talk so inviting or talking to your friends is just a click away

Google Talk is in beta and requires a Gmail username and password.

interview with Adam Savage

The Sneeze - Half zine. Half blog. Half not good with fractions.: "MythBusters is easily one of my favorite shows on TV. If you've never seen it, hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman use their years of special effects experience to scientifically put urban legends to the test-- and blow up a lot of stuff in the process.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Maker of Things and Buster of Myths: Adam Savage. We covered lots of ground including the birth of the show, feeling famous, gay fan mail and lots more...

The following is Part One of our talk..."

Uncle Leo is coming home

TWIT: "Well it doesn't look like anyone else is going to announce it so I'll confirm what most of you have already guessed. If you check your Tivo or Yahoo! TV listings you'll notice that Call for Help is back on the schedule at G4.

G4 has purchased the show for air in the US. I will continue to fly to Toronto to produce it, and we're not changing a thing. In fact, as those of you who have been watching it know, it's really more like the Screen Savers of old than Call for Help used to be, especially now that Kevin Rose has agreed to appear on the show twice a week. We'll get Patrick up to Toronto, too, I promise.

Starting August 29 CFH will be on G4 weekdays at 11a Eastern/8a Pacific and weekends at 6 and 7a Eastern. If enough of you watch I'm sure we'll be able to move to a better spot in the schedule. G4 has also purchased the last four months of programs so there will be lots of great stuff from many of your TechTV favorites including Kevin, Alex Lindsay, Steve Gibson, Mr. Excel Bill Jelen, Dick DeBartolo, and of course my Canadian cohort, Amber, Andy, Mike, and Sean."

tyson quotes

On His Childhood

* "One morning I woke up and found my favorite pigeon, Julius, had died. I was devastated and was gonna use his crate as my stickball bat to honor him. I left the crate on my stoop and went in to get something and I returned to see the sanitation man put the crate into the crusher. I rushed him and caught him flush on the temple with a titanic right hand he was out cold, convulsing on the floor like an infantile retard."

On Lennox Lewis

* "My style is impetuous. My defense is impregnable, and I'm just ferocious. I want your heart. I want to eat his children. Praise be to Allah!"

On Razor Ruddock

* "You're sweet. I'm going to make sure you kiss me good with those big lips. I'm gonna make you my girlfriend. Choke on it biatch!"

On Tyrell Biggs

* "He was screaming like my wife."

* "I could have knocked him out in the third round but I wanted to do it slowly, so he would remember this night for a long time."

* "If I don't kill him, it doesn't count."

On Boxing

* "I try to catch him right on the tip of the nose, because I try to push the bone into the brain."

"My power is discombobulatingly devastating; I could feel his muscle tissues collapse
under my force. It's ludicrous these mortals even attempt to enter my realm."

On the Media

* “I wish one of you guys had children so I could kick them in their ******' head or stomp on their testicles, so you could feel my pain because that's the pain I have, wakin' up every day."

* [To a female reporter] "It's no doubt I am going to win this fight and I feel confident about winning this fight. I normally don't do interviews with womens unless I fornicate with them. So you shouldn't talk anymore... Unless you want to, you know."

On Religion

* "All praise is to Allah, I'll fight any man, any animal, if Jesus were here I'd fight him too."

On Himself

* "I love to hit people. I love to. Most celebrities are afraid someone's going to attack them. I want someone to attack me. No weapons. Just me and him. I like to beat men and beat them bad."

* "Real freedom is having nothing. I was freer when I didn't have a cent. Do you know what I do sometimes? Put on a ski mask and dress in old clothes, go out on the streets and beg for quarters."

"I'm the most irresponsible person in the world. The reason I'm like that is because, at 21, you all gave me $50 or $100 million, and I didn't know what to do. I'm from the ghetto. I don't know how to act. One day I'm in a dope house robbing somebody. The next thing I know, 'You're the heavyweight champion of the world.' ... Who am I? What am I? I don't even know who I am. I'm just a dumb child. I'm being abused. I'm being robbed by lawyers. I think I have more money than I do. I'm just a dumb pugnacious fool. I'm just a fool who thinks I'm someone. And you tell me I should be responsible?"

"I don't know what I'm doing. I just live, I guess, get some food. But I don't cook. I go to restaurants every night."

"I'm on this Zoloft thing, right? But I'm on that to keep me from killing y'all! ... It has really messed me up, and I don't want to be taking it, but they are concerned about the fact that I am a violent person, almost an animal. And they only want me to be an animal in the ring."

Miscellaneous Quotes
* “[He] called me a ‘rapist’ and a ‘recluse.’ I’m not a recluse.”

* "I might just fade into bolivian, you know what I mean? I ain't got nuttin' to do or nowhere to go."

5 bucks a gallon for gas?

Expert sees it in 2006: "5 bucks a gallon for gas? Expert sees it in 2006

BY MARK J. KONKOL Transportation Reporter

If you think all this flirting with $3-a-gallon gas is already a pain in the pocketbook, brace yourself.

Oil expert Craig Smith predicts gas prices will skyrocket next year, jumping to five bucks a gallon.

And if terrorists successfully strike a major Middle East oil field, Americans might end up paying $10 a gallon -- about $110 to fill a Ford Focus' 11-gallon tank."

let's move to venezuela

CNN/Money: Global gas prices: "NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – Gasoline prices in the United States, which have recently hit record highs, are actually much lower than in many countries. Drivers in some European cities, like Amsterdam and Oslo, are paying nearly 3 times more than those in the U.S.

The main factor in price disparities between countries is government policy, according to AirInc, a company that tracks the cost of living in various places around the world. Many European nations tax gasoline heavily, with taxes making up as much as 75 percent of the cost of a gallon of gasoline, said a spokesperson for AirInc.

In a few Latin America and Middle-East nations, such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, oil is produced by a government-owned company and local gasoline prices are kept low as a benefit to the nation's citizens, he said. All prices updated March, 2005."

Nation City Price in USD Regular/Gallon
Netherlands Amsterdam $6.48
Norway Oslo $6.27
Italy Milan $5.96
Denmark Copenhagen $5.93
Belgium Brussels $5.91
Sweden Stockholm $5.80
United Kingdom London $5.79
Germany Frankfurt $5.57
France Paris $5.54
Portugal Lisbon $5.35
Hungary Budapest $4.94
Luxembourg $4.82
Croatia Zagreb $4.81
Ireland Dublin $4.78
Switzerland Geneva $4.74
Spain Madrid $4.55
Japan Tokyo $4.24
Czech Republic Prague $4.19
Romania Bucharest $4.09
Andorra $4.08
Estonia Tallinn $3.62
Bulgaria Sofia $3.52
Brazil Brasilia $3.12
Cuba Havana $3.03
Taiwan Taipei $2.84
Lebanon Beirut $2.63
South Africa Johannesburg $2.62
Nicaragua Managua $2.61
Panama Panama City $2.19
Russia Moscow $2.10
Puerto Rico San Juan $1.74
Saudi Arabia Riyadh $0.91
Kuwait Kuwait City $0.78
Egypt Cairo $0.65
Nigeria Lagos $0.38
Venezuela Caracas $0.12

germans love him

video

The Contender rematch

It’s the news you’ve been waiting for, The Contender champion Sergio “The Latin Snake” Mora will be defending his Contender belt against rival Peter “The Pride of Providence” Manfredo Jr., whom he last defeated in May. This highly anticipated rematch will take place in Mora’s hometown in Los Angeles at the Staples Center on Saturday, October 15th.

The undercard will feature the following exciting match-ups:
Alfonso "Superman" Gomez vs. Jeff "The Hell Raza" Fraza
Anthony Bonsante vs. Jesse Brinkley
and more to be announced.

ESPN will air the event live at 11pm EST / 8pm PST.

Is there life after oil?

MSN Encarta - Is there life after oil?: "Is There Life After Oil?
by Tamim Ansary

I discovered something amazing recently and I tried to tell a bunch of friends about it. A guy in Illinois has, it seems, invented a device that can turn almost anything into oil, plus a few byproducts (all useful).

I, for example, could be transformed into 40 pounds of light sweet crude, 7 pounds of flammable gas, 8 pounds of high-quality mineral fertilizer, and 125 pounds of slightly cloudy water, give or take. Individual results may vary.

Inventor Paul Buskis is not planning to process people, of course. He's going after trash. His thermo-depolymerization process works on any carbon-based substance--chicken entrails, tires, plastic milk jugs, you name it. Garbage in, oil out--that's the promise.

My friends scoffed. 'Sounds too good to be true,' was their consensus. 'It'll never work.'

Ah, but it's already working. A company called Changing World Technologies has built a plant in Carthage, Missouri, based on Buskis's process. It's producing 400 barrels of oil a day right now, extruded from the wastes of nearby turkey processing plants. The company is building another plant in Philadelphia to process sewage into black gold."

word to your blogger

This is a test to use blogger from word.

Xbox 360 weighs in at $299 to $399

Engadget : "Microsoft’s announced the official base price for the Xbox 360 at $299, with a $399 version available (no surprise there either). The $299 version will come bare with a wired controller, while the $399 version will have a 20GB drive, wireless controller, headset, and remote."    

vectren

CourierPress: Business: "Vectren Corp. said Thursday winter heating bills could be higher this year if natural gas prices remain at their current levels.

The Evansville-based utility said current natural gas prices are at record highs and could remain there through the winter."

bad day

don't forget to fill this out

TPS report cover sheet

That'll do, Jimmy. That'll do.

catch it

good news

Wal-Mart leaks US$299 Xbox 360 price: "Employees at Wal-Mart are saying that they've seen the pricing of the new Xbox 360, and it's an unsurprising US$299.00. There's been no official comment from Microsoft, nor do we expect to hear firm numbers (or a firm date, for that matter) before September, at the earliest. To round out the speculation, the rumor mill these days is pointing to November 4 as a possible release date."

Sharper Image Ionic Breeze Air Purifier

bookofjoe: BehindTheMedspeak: Sharper Image Ionic Breeze Air Purifier May Cause Lung Damage: "BehindTheMedspeak: Sharper Image Ionic Breeze Air Purifier May Cause Lung Damage I453002005apr11l Who knew?Certainly not the hundreds of thousands of people who dropped $450 a pop for a big, fancy-looking silent device (above) purported to clean their air.

Now Consumer Reports tells us in its current (May) issue that not only does the Sharper Image product not work as it's supposed to but instead causes indoor air pollution by releasing unhealthy amounts of ozone.

The Environmental Protection Agency website in its discussion of ozone states, "Relatively low amounts can cause chest pain, coughing, shortness of breath, and, throat irritation. Ozone may also worsen chronic respiratory diseases such as asthma and compromise the ability of the body to fight respiratory infections.... Healthy people, as well as those with respiratory difficulty, can experience breathing problems when exposed to ozone."