Thursday, December 24, 2009

Attempted Airplane conversation #253:

I started thumbing through the skymall and said, "I always like to see just how many of the gifts I bought this year are actually in SkyMall."

Results: They chuckled, but no real conversation ensued. I fell asleep and probably made a bunch of strange noises which clearly overshadowed the obvious wit of any statements prior.

Score: 4.2 wits out of a possible 10

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

A list of rejected movie sequel names:

1. Juno II: The Coat Hanger Chronicles
2. The Dark Knight II: Let's See If We Can Get Christian Bale to OD This Time
3. Knocked Up II: Another Ugly Fat Guy Wants to Make Out With Kathrein Heigel
4. Superbad II: McLovin's Special Sauce
5. Back to the Future II: Immaculate Conception
6. I Am Sam II: My Dad's Retarded and So Am I
7. Yes Man II: You have Syphilis
8. 40 Year Old Virgin II: 80 Year Old Virgin... Tranny
9.  No Country For Old Men II: Tommy Lee Jones Scowling for 90 Mins...
10. Flight 93 II: LOST Season 1

If you've got more rejected movie sequel names leave them in the comments.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

iPhone app idea #23: iConfessional - You send in your sin and we tell you how many hail marys to say.  Also includes sin viewer to see other people's sins.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Looking for gift ideas this Christmas?  Try this website I threw together:

http://accuregister.com/jquerytest/index2.php


Comments from some of my co-workers:
"Dear god, it's like staring at the sun!"
"MAKE IT STOP!!!"
"I feel like the guy in Clockwork Orange."

Thursday, December 10, 2009

In the spirit of letting my readers (well, reader) know what else I do on the web, I thought I'd share a review I posted on Amazon that all of 2 people have voted helpful: http://www.amazon.com/review/R37RHLO8IN11XM/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

And I invite my one reader to become my friend on Amazon.  You can check out Jeff's wishlist...

 http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A2YHYLKGVZ72A5

Monday, December 07, 2009

2012, goddamn it!  Ok, here's the deal.  I'll buy the fact that microwaves from the sun are boiling the planet like an egg in the... well microwave.  And I'll even buy the fact that the best plan we could come up with for surviving the end of the world was to build six arks bigger than anything we've ever built before in less time than it takes to build one skyscraper.  But I won't buy the fact that as 1,500ft tsunami barrels toward someone (and keep in mind, we've been watching the world explode for the past 100 mins) that there is enough telephone infrastructure left in the world to route his cell phone call.  You almost had me you son of a bitch.  You almost had me.

Saturday, December 05, 2009

The other day, I heard a guy complaining about people taking time off from work.  He boasted that when his son was born, he only took one day off from work. 

I asked, "What, was your kid ugly or something?"

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Many of you might not realize this, but RussThoughts(.com) has it's own CafePress store where I post some mocks of my ideas for merch. I bring this up for 2 reasons:

1. I thought of a new line of t-shirts that just say exactly what you're doing at the time on them. So when you go for a run for example, it says "HEY LOOK AT ME I'M RUNNING" or when you are drinking coffee, you wear one that says "HEY LOOK AT ME I'M DRINKING COFFEE"

2. I'm still bitter about my last design that they refused to publish on the store.

 
The other day I accidentally mistyped gmail and went to gmiale.com. The good news is I've found the name for my first-born. The better news is that some Nigerian prince is going to give me half his fortune.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The phrase "user interface" should be shortened to simply "userface." Used in a sentence, one would say, "The userface was using users' faces to face users with other user's faces." This, of course, is much simpler than the current version, "The user interface was using users' interfaces to interface users with other user's interfaces."

Monday, November 23, 2009

The onion bagel is the jerk of the bagels. No matter what bagel I get, the only thing I think about is that faint taste of onion and how much of a douche the onion bagel is for ruining everything.

Friday, November 20, 2009

"The Timetraveler's Wife" is a pretty good love story up until the point you realize that ALL travelers show up naked. Congrats, you're now a pedo and I'm Chris Hansen. Why don't you have a seat over there?

Monday, November 16, 2009

Everyone has seen the guys on the street that scream at you about the end of the world. Here's my plan for the ultimate payback. Join their cause (or whatever) and make sure that when you die, the two of you end up in the same place. Once you both show up on the other side, put together some signs and start screaming about how the end of whatever that place is coming and that they need to repent before it's too late.

Oh man, what a burn.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

The other day, my co-workers and I were talking about that new disaster movie "2012" and we got to thinking. When Y2K rolled around, people were making loads of cash on people's fears, and then nothing happened. Well we think people are going to try to do the same thing with 2012, and this time, we're not missing the boat.

So I present to you our new website, http://www.2012approved.com. Are you 2012Approved?

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Words of Wisdom: Always be mindful when writing or typing the word "count." This is even more important when using it as a noun. One missing letter and the sentence, "If it were up to me, we would have never kept that count as long as we did" turns into a real shocker.
Refilling my drink when I did not ask or was not asked really bothers me, to the point that when it happens, I lose a good 15 mins thinking about it. I've tried to figure out why, and I think it's because it assumes that me, as the drinker, doesn't know or understand how much I want to drink. This makes me inferior to you, as the person pouring the drink. It's not the inferior part that gets me, but the assuming part. Before placing food on someone's plate, you, as the host, should ask them if they would like some of what you're serving. I think the same should apply to my drinks. I'm sure this has been determined somewhere but google and wikipedia have both failed me.

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Baseball Helmets: Why do they only cover one ear? I mean, I understand that only one side really needs the protection, but what's the disadvantage of covering the other ear?

Monday, October 26, 2009

A human adult requires roughly 30 pounds of air every day to survive.

Friday, October 23, 2009

If you crash and get stuck on a desert island, is it still a federal offense to ignore crewmember instructions?
What is inside the survival pack on an airplane and how do you decide who gets it?

Well I asked on Quora and it was answered by John Bassett:
My airliner has a Emergency Medical Kit ! This kit contains items to assist ill customers. It is opened at the Captains discretion to be used by Licensed Medical Providers. To assist crews during an emergency, two way communication is established with Medlink, this contract service provides Medical Experts that provide information to assist crews until the aircraft can be safely landed.
 Here's more information: http://www.medaire.com/comm_kits.html
Possible swine flu diss: "Did you just give me swine flu or is the vomiting a natural reaction to your face?"
Possible swine flu pickup line: "Baby do you have swine flu because you're makin me hot/ill?"

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The other day, my roommate made the observation that it would be awesome to live as a duck. For the most part I agreed with him, but then I thought about it for a while (yes, I have time) and I changed my mind. I guess what really got me was the fact that most of the food I ate would be cold and wet. Plus, I would always have to worry about people feeding me some sort of duck meat. These are things you never have to worry about as a human. Well, unless you frequent that Wendy's that had a human finger in the chili.
Paranormal Activity: Yes it is a good movie to take you girlfriend to. She will pee herself. The End.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Pasta is strange. Think about it, what other food do we sell in that many shapes? Wikipedia lists 163 different pasta shapes but claim there are over 600. Where did they all come from?

I'll put my radiatore on some Italian spiralini that was making macaroni art one day and thought, "Does anyone realize that instead of making Mona Lisa's 'tache out of curved 'ronies, we could shape them into little dinosaurs and market them to lazy American college students?" And you thought the internet was big.

Dinosaurini - Little Dinosaurs

Seriously though, once you've hit about 30, you can probably stop making new shapes. Silly straws knew when enough was enough. How many shapes of one thing does a person need?

And how do you come up with new shapes? Who looks at a list of 599 pasta shapes and say, "No, wait! This one is going to change it all!" I now present to you the true story of shape 391:

It was 4am and the stars were hidden behind a thick black fog. Hank stood alone in front of a chalkboard, hands cracked, hair full of dust. He closed his eyes, lifted his last stick of chalk to the cold slate, and sneezed. When he opened his eyes and saw what he had done, he knew this was it. This was the shape that would finally put his name on the blue box in isle 6. This was Lumaconi.

Turns out, that's also the story for about 200 other shapes, just replace sneezing with any other quick, jerky action (Masturbatoni?). The rest involve heavy drinking (Jägeretti), flour and water.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

I made this last night. A website that uses AWS and a list of nouns to randomly display an Amazon.com detail page. I just like the name: http://www.randomazon.com/

Thursday, August 13, 2009

New Invention: Circles on the floor of the elevator that light up when the door opens to decide which person gets out first.

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

I just coined the phrase "You don't ask an Eskimo about the weather in Bermuda." Not sure what it means yet, but consider it coined.

Monday, August 03, 2009

Start a gym where you adjust the altitude and climate to match the base camps of Everest. That way, you can work less, burn more calories, and get altitude sickness all at the same time.
Things that upset me:
1. People that stand on the left and the right of moving walkways/escalators
2. People that bring their own chopsticks to lunch
3. People that make lists about things they hate

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Moonwalking was great, but what if you could do other things in a similar style? Such as moonswimming, or maybe moonwhacking. Soon, everything we did would look like we were doing it forward, but we would actually be doing it backward. But then, I guess we would say that forward was backward and that backward was forward.

Once that happens, I will just start walking forward, which will look completely amazing.

But what if everything we are doing is actually being done backwards and He was that man walking normally? Oww, my mind grapes.

Monday, July 13, 2009

The other day, my dentist told me my blood pressure was a little high. I told him he was a dentist.

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Special guest thoughts:

When people don't agree on something, but they're fine with that fact, they "agree to disagree."

We never really take advantage of the obvious opposite resolution, though: "disagree to agree." As in: we agree on topic A, and you're satisfied that we agree, but I'm upset that we agree. This doesn't change the fact that we agree on topic A, but I disagree that we should agree. Disagree to agree.

~Rawb

Saturday, June 27, 2009

There is a direct correlation between the amount of room you take up dancing on the dance floor and how crazy you are.

Friday, June 26, 2009

I finally figured out my dj name: The Doctapus. Werd ya'll
I used to be an over the fence kind of guy, but lately, I've been going through the gate and I'm enjoying it.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

I've never really gotten the hang of posting to RussThoughts (.com) on my iPhone. This is what happened the last time I tried:

"Today I was makig dried chicken and spilled some freeze I. The floor. Then I stopped in it and it made my socks all slippery. Now I have my shoes on and it squeeks when I walk. My shows smell like chicken."
Testing a post from a text message.

Monday, June 22, 2009

I like to leave notes on my phone so I can remember what I was thinking about the next day. This morning, I found the note: "Don't drop the midget. Hold on to that midget." I believe someone was talking about midgets while Journey was playing. Or maybe we were just having a good ol' fashion midget tossing. Anyone have any other ideas what this could mean?
I think one day I'm going to open a balloon shop named "Dubloons Balloons." All I would do is sell balloons and popcorn. Why popcorn you ask? Yes.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

I think they should make a couch that is also a bed. I was thinking of calling is a Bouch, but that kinda sounds like some terrible sex act. I'll have to think about that a bit more.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Update: The Washer, however, is an entrance to Macy's.
Update: My dryer is not, I repeat not, an entrance to Narnia.
I just pulled my laundry out of the dryer, and a green button came out. Nothing I was washing had green buttons. Could my dryer be the entrance to Narnia? Stay tuned, I'm going to investigate.

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Everyone always says, "Well I'm not made of money, am I?" But what if you were made of money? You probably still wouldn't buy it because you'd have to give up a finger or an ear.

Monday, June 01, 2009

Today I woke up and said to myself out loud, "Everyone I know is just one tooth away from being a hillbilly." Shocking, I know.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

The other day...

The other day I fell asleep while watching Benjamin Button. When I woke up, I thought it was almost over but it had just started.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Million Dollar Idea

Create a coffee mug that has 2 markers: one as a hot coffee fill line and another one as the line at which the coffee is cool enough to drink.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Sunday, April 05, 2009

A Very French Bakery

Today I walked into a very French bakery down at Pike Place market. I get to the counter, and the lady asks me what I'd like. I screamed at her, "Nope! Not French enough!" Then I left.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Rap Verse

I can't sleep right now, but I thought up a verse to a silly ass rap song:

Click clackity, clack clickity, tip tappity tap tap,
My keys crack snappity snap as I whack mackity mick mac.
Like Iraq, I came back, there's a pack strapped to my crack,
I'm Barack, I'll talk whack smack, and pop cap cappity caps.

WTF?

Monday, March 23, 2009

The New "Trop50"

Last night, my roommate and I were out for our bi-weekly/monthly food shopping trip, when we noticed this interesting new product next to the orange juices. Normally, we simply go for the 128oz Tropicana OJ, but today we saw something new. Now, as everyone is well aware of, Tropicana has been going through a change lately (insert puberty/fruit related joke here).

To tell you the truth, I like the new look. It's clean, simple, and honestly, if the woman in that picture was missing a tooth, you could use the same image in a 40oz ad.

But I digress. Tropicana obviously wants to get in on this whole "health" craze (because everyone knows how unhealthy orange juice is), so they have come out with Trop50, which touts 50% less sugar and calories than normal orange juice (or what will now be known as what fatties drink). Wow! This is an amazing breakthrough in juice making technology! I was excited to learn that they had finally made juice healthy. All these years I've been good, drinking nothing but sodas and beers, but every now and then, I admit that I cheated and had some juice. I'm not proud. So to get back to my story, I reach for the carton and find the nutrition facts.

Fact No. 1: This juice did have 50% less sugar and calories than what the fatties drink. Fact No. 2: This juice was only 42% juice. Wait what? Are you serious? To give the drink 50% less sugar and calories, they just replaced more than 50% of the juice with sugar water? Remember when you used to add water to that last bit of milk just so you could have a full bowl? Congratulations, you invented Milk50! Million dollars right there.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

First Real Crack at PHP5

So I haven't written PHP code in a while, but I figured I'd take a crack at setting up some REST services. The last site (the SAVSERV) I wrote was in PHP4 and being used to coding in JAVA and C, I found it pretty clumsy to use. Of course, at that time I was teaching myself PHP4 so I'm sure many horrible things were done. Things I will have to live with for the rest of my life), but I digress. Tonight I put together some PHP5 code for a simple REST login and wow, has it changed.


...
$sql = "SELECT loginid FROM logins WHERE username = '$username' AND password = '$hashedPass'";
try{
//TODO: put this into a common function
$result = DatabaseTools::runSelectQuery($sql);
if(mysql_num_rows($result) == 1)
{
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
Response::LoginSuccessResponse($row['loginid']);
}
else
{
Response::ErrorResponse(101,'Could not find your information in our system.');
}
} catch (Exception $e)
{
Response::ErrorResponse(101,$e->getMessage());
}
...


Now I am by no means a good PHP programmer. Self taught PHP4 in a few days and now PHP5 in about 3 hours really, so lay off me if things aren't perfect. But just look at that, actual classes and exception handling? Shocking. I swear, I felt like I was writing Java code. And the walkthrough that the PHP main site provides (http://us.php.net/zend-engine-2.php) is very easy to follow with lots of code samples. For anyone who is used to OOD, PHP5 is very easy to pick up and start going. Now if only I could find a nice project to teach myself Perl or Python...

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Review: This Film is Not Yet Rated

    Film censorship is a well known practice in Hollywood and has been for many years. People know it exists, but you don't really hear about it much. That is, unless your film gets the dreaded NC-17 rating. This film attempts to explain to people what they are missing by having a small group of people and the studios dictate what a film needs to be rated in order to get released. In some deep dark underground lair, there is a group of people that decide which films you see and don't see. Their names are kept secret. This is to protect them from outside influence, although they work with/are influenced by every major film studio and distributor in the country. This particular movie in itself isn't a groundbreaking documentary by any means, but it does get a message across. Yes, the private investigator bit is hokey. And by the end of some of the interviews, you feel like they director is just venting their frustration. But this film poses some intriguing questions to the audience. Why is heavy violence ok, but heavy sex not? Why is straight sex so much more acceptable than gay sex? Why is one scene in a movie distributed by Paramount ok, yet the same scene in an independent movie needs to be cut? Sure, we all know the MPAA is evil, but there is something more sinister about a small group of people controlling what America sees on the big screen. Oh, and yes, there are members of the major religious organizations involved as well.
    My main criticism of the film is what they left out. What I wanted to hear more about was the early days of film censorship. What was film like before they imposed these rules and how have the rules changed over time? Also, exploring the relationship of violence in movies to violence in real life a little more would have been interesting. Natural Born Killers is a great example. This film is a good start, but if you really want to know what is going on, pick up a copy of Obscene, Indecent, Immoral and Offensive: 100+ Years of Censored, Banned, and Controversial Films. All and all, I would recommend the movie to a friend as a way to open their eyes to the way the system works (or doesn't). But if they just want to see a good documentary, I'll point them to Man on Wire

Friday, January 23, 2009

Many airports in the US have some sort of system to get passengers from one terminal to the other. Here are just a few examples. Pittsburgh has a train that goes from baggage claim to the concourses. Atlanta has a train that goes between all concourses. Denver has a train that goes to some of the concourses. Seattle has a train that goes to some of the concourses. A train seems to make the most sense for airport transportation. You don't need a driver, it can move lots of people very quickly, it can be put underground as to not disturb airplanes, etc.

But then there is Washington Dulles. Why does Washington Dulles International Airport have these strange looking truck/bus shuttles that take passengers from terminal to terminal? Talk about a broken system. They have to be driven by a human? They have to yield to airplanes? That's really the solution you came up with?

I think this is how it went down:
Engineer 1: "Oh crap, we built these terminals so far apart, how are people going to actually get to these things in a reasonable time?"
Engineer 2 speaks up from the back: "Ummm, maybe we should put in a train system like almost every other airport which has this problem?"
Engineer 1: "No, No, trains are for European jerks and cattle. This is America, damnit! Now, my crazy half-stepbrother's dog's owner's nephew has an idea. His company makes these ugly, giant truck/bus looking things that will work much better. He hasn't found anyone else to buy them, but I think they would be great."
Engineer 2: "Sir, with all due respect, I'd rather have dental work done with an ice skate than ride in one of those. Don't you think there is a reason all the other airports chose trains?"
Engineer 1: "You again with the trains? Ha! Hey everyone, check out the European douche in the back with his trains. Haha!"

Check out a sweet picture of these ugly POSes...

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Note to self: Create a coffee table with speakers on the underside of the table. Add iPod dock to the top (or side). Use it to enhance the mood at our many fancy parties.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The rule of LOL: As the number of comments on a blog post goes to infinity, the probability of seeing 'LOL' goes to 1 very quickly.

The youtube rule of LOL: if there is a LOL, it immediately follows some ignorant, racist comment in all caps.

A google search for LOL returned 450,000,000 hits. 29 million of them are on youtube.com.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Why not put a sensor in the washing machine to tell you:

"Hey moron, you left your [cell phone | camera | belt] [in|on] your pants. You should probably remove the metal object before you wash your clothes."
There should be a light on the outside of the elevator that says:

"There are people in this elevator. Step back and let them out. Do not, under any circumstances, stand at the doors, waiting for them to open, so you can rush in and look like a total jackass."

Amazon Fresh vs. Safeway

Here is a comparison of shopping on Amazon Fresh vs the local Seattle Safeway. The items were picked as a normal shopping trip and not for any special reason. Looks like you can save about 7% by shopping at Safeway. Of course, you also have to take in the fact that while both stores offer a delivery service, Safeway offers free shipping for orders over $150, while Amazon Fresh's limit for free delivery is only $30.
View Spreadsheet Here


Using either service, you are likely to save a little bit of money because they allow you to stick to your shopping list much easier. Plus, being able to shop for groceries while watching the latest episode of 24 is a real plus.

~Russ

iPhone test

This is a test of posting via email to this blog.