fuzzyraygun

Our day today was kind of a bust. It was overcast and cold and there was not that much traffic out on the street. Could also been that fact that the freeway connecting SF and the east bay collapsed after a truck fire early this morning. That is some crazy shit.

We packed it in early and have been cleaning up our mess around the house.

Today is the start of our garage sale weekend. I worked to get all our stuff outside on the back patio of our building and put up posters. I had already put some posts on Craigslist.org to get the regular garage sale crowd.

Cast of Characters:
• Dan Dan the electronics man: Right away you will see Dan. He will announce himself to your garage sale with something like “Hey now, where did you get all this stuff? Alanna doesn’t like Dan because she thinks he takes advantage and tries to get everything for a dollar. Which I guess is his job at the sale. I like Dan because he takes everything. He doesn’t weed through your games and DVDs and take the ones that are worth money. He takes everything. The good with the bad.
• Yuri the music guy: This guy will quietly walk into your garage sale, nod a hello and immediately get on his cell phone, to what I can only expect is a vast network of Russian yard sale mafia. He then picks a couple of things that he wants and has his cohorts thoroughly vet them while he is standing there. Once he is sure these can be useful he then tries to get them for dirt and maybe a sackful of beans. Alanna dislikes him as well. I take the long view. He is willing to take all of his items if only you would offer some sort of something to make him think that he is getting a better deal than what you are offering. He is happy, we are happy. Done.
• Mr. Dash the book superheroe: You can easily tell this guy if he pulls up to your sale, because his car is weighed down by 10 to 15 thousand books. Maybe he is a bookmobile, who knows. This man can find the books that are worth something in your pile with a blindfold on. Usually he makes his picks inside of 2 minutes and is on his way. Off to the next sale where he will be just as efficient. If he could fly in and out with rocket boots he probable would already have them.

We had lots of nice folks and we are out in the sunshine tomorrow as well. Whatever doesn’t sell I will pick through and make my list for what goes on Ebay and what goes to Goodwill.

Alanna and I were in north beach last night at the Live Worms gallery for a show of work from her France trip last year. We had a great time catching up with everybody and then went down the street for a great dinner at Ristorante Ideale.

I have been noticing these billboards around the bay area that say “The Algorithm Killed Jeeves”, and the first thing I thought of was “Wow, Google is doing billboards?”. The next thing I thought was, “Wow Google put Askjeeves out of business?”.

Well it turns out thats what lots of people thought as well. Only it wasn’t Google that put the billboard out, it was Ask.com formerly askjeeves.com.

This has got to be one of the worst advertisements I have seen in a long time. Not only does it not even have the Ask.com branding anywhere on it, but is so vague that it makes everybody who sees the billboard thinks that it was made by Google.

I’m sure all the people who work at Ask.com thought that this was a a good joke and would work great for the re-branding campaign, but what they should have done is “Asked” someone who does not use or remember askjeeves.

They don’t need to remind people of who they used to be. They need to get users to notice who they are, and what they can do for them. They need to take that money and try to figure out what makes them different. What do they have that meets a need that users have.

They should have at least put up pages on the web to direct people to their site if they GOOGLED “The Algorithm killed Jeeves”. Instead all the traffic on the web about this is talking about what an inept branding campaign this is.

I think this one says it all: “The Algorithm Can’t find the Algorithm.“

Panic, the makers of Transmit FTP program for MACs, have put out a new web APP that looks like a great addition.

Coda, is an all in one HTML, CSS, FTP program ala Dreamweaver that gives you lots of features and some new goodies to get all your site needs done on a MAC.

Can’t wait to give it a test drive.

(Sweet site as well. Those folks at Panic are First Class)

Kinda funny that a whole bunch of bloggers and tech geeks are calling Microsoft Vista “ME II” after the ill fated Millenium Edition.

It was not a good sign that Dell recently reversed course and started offering XP as an OS choice for consumer PCs. Usually when the new OS comes out you have no choice but to get the new OS on your machine, but I guess that sales figures were bad enough that they felt they needed to offer the old XP operating system.

I used to collect comic books and Fantastic Four in particular, so I was obviously disappointed with the hollywood version of FF. How can you screw that up? I mean they wrote so many great stories, its not like you don’t have enough material or the characters have not been fleshed out enough. They have been fleshing out the characters for 40years!

So the last FF movie wasn’t bad enough, they have to go and fuck up Silver Surfer too. Now I hear talk that they are not even going to show Galactus. (Side note: Silver Surfer is the herald of Galactus, the planet killer.)

The story has such a huge history and such an epic scale. It makes me sad. Please Brian Singer, take over on the Fantastic Four series!

I am also a super big Daredevil fan and that one just broke my heart. I mean, come on! Ben Affleck? That guy is out of his depth in a parking lot puddle!

Are cell phones driving them away? Is it more and more use of higher frequencies in science and technology? Spiegel has another article, that it may be genetically modified food.

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”
– Albert Einstein

Alanna and I went out to run some errands today. We went over to the inner sunset, so I could get a haircut and we could buy some groceries from this small corner store on Irving. This one little corner store has some of the best deals on produce and other stuff anywhere in the neighborhood. We were surprised to to walk away with two full bags of stuff for less than $20, including a bag of some nice avocados.

Now, it’s time for dinner but first Alanna is trying her hand making Horchata.

I was sad to hear that Kurt Vonnegut died. He has been a favorite of mine ever since I started reading his books back in high school. I am happy to have read a great many and will go on re-reading them for years to come.