• Main Page - mRemote
  (tags: SSH)

• PC World - Business Center: ISPs Meddled With Their Customers’ Web Traffic, Study Finds
  (tags: security reading)
• FEMA: Earthquake
  What FEMA recommends you do before, during and after an earthquake

5.2 earthquake in Southern Illinois early this morning. I didn’t feel it. I can sleep through anything.

I bet insurance sales people are enjoying some increased calls today asking about earthquake coverage. (I don’t think my policy covers much for earthquake damage, but I seem to remember there’s a supplemental policy for that.)

Oh, and for robot insurance. If you’re over 65, you have to have that.

• OpenSocial - Google Code
  OpenSocial defines a common API for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.
  (tags: opensocial web2.0 socialnetworking)

Since Facebook opened up their interface for outside applications, it’s gone pretty much down hill. There are some apps that are worthy tie-ins, but most of them are just crap. (Please, no more zombie vs alien invites.)

The app I kinda like is the Compare People one. You do this hot-or-not style match up with your friends against many different questions and eventually you get “ranked” based on how many of your friends picked you for X category, such as “Who would you rather be stuck on a desert island with?” It’s also neat because Compare People doesn’t know cliques/social subgroups, so it has you compare high school friends with that one girl you took a class with three years ago but hardly know. Between her and your baritone playing friend from junior high who you also haven’t talked to in 10 year, you search your soul and try to decide which one is the best salsa dancer. Fuck if I know.

Also, in true Facebook annoying app form, it sends you emails everytime friends rank you. They also send a summary, from time to time, to let you know how you’re doing. And that’s why I’m posting again. You, blogosphere. You, the Facebookosphere, have spoken.

I am #1 for “person with the best hair.”

That’s right. I have been compared in this category multiple times, and you, the voters, the academy, have chosen me to have the best hair 100% of the time. Thank you.

I’ve never really thought about my hair as a bread winning feature. You see, I try to dazzle with my wit, my knowledge of stupid trivia, and my basic control of balance and bodily functions. My hair is just something that sits on my head, costs me $25 to groom every month or so, and turns slightly lighter in the summer months. Beyond that, I don’t really think about my hair.

But you do. And you love it.

Of course, I was also ranked “most punctual” — which I’m not sure if that’s in relationship to the rest of my family, or based on Kenny-time (the standing assumption that I will be 20 minutes late to any set appointment.) (Good relationships are all about managing expectations.) If I was doing a self-evaluation, I would not rank punctuality as one of my strong points.

You also said I was “best to hang out with for a day” — which I understand is just a veiled way of saying, “but living Hell to hang out with after the fourth day.” I get it. We need our space. It’s not you, it’s me.

So those were the good parts. (You knew this was coming.) Areas for improvement? “most likely to succeed” Ouch. Nothing like losers voting against you on a lame website telling you you’ll go nowhere in your life. Good thing I don’t have self-esteem issues. Also, a category where I usually fell to my opponent — “coolest” (At this point, this should come as no surprise to anyone still reading this.)

The Internets can be so cruel.

So anyway, if Facebook is your thing, go check out apps.facebook.com/comparepeople — rank your friends, exert your influence via online social networking, feel good about yourself until you get that first summary email. Do whatever you want.

Just don’t mess with my hair.

The meth commercials on TV and the sides of the buses that drive through campus scare me a little. Ads with creepy surprise almost dead people in your shower, or getting accosted in the laundromat are off-putting. I don’t appreciate the association between scummy bathroom stalls and lost virginity regardless of the drug message.

I guess that makes the ads effective, or at least successful, if creepy was their goal. I think it says a lot that we need to go to graphic scenarios to teach kids about drug resistance these days. I prefer the more mental breakfast-themed anti-drug messages from the 80s.

Speaking of graduation, I got a card in the mail inviting me to a morning reception on graduation day at “The Gardens of The President’s House” I remember this is something my Bronze Tablet/Campus Honors undergrad classmates were invited to. (ha, not me, not even close.) Why am I invited now? Because I’m a graduate student? Because I’m special? Because my name was randomly selected, and if I could leave directions to my house with the Prize Patrol I may already have won $10,000,000? (Probably not.) If anyone could clear up for me why I got invited, I’d appreciate it.

I’m probably not going to go, because even with the complimentary shuttle, I don’t think it would work for my family. There are too many logistics as it is on graduation day that it’s not worth adding something at 8am. (And it means waking up for stacks that much earlier.) The friends that went to the reception at undergrad graduation said it was a downer … that the president and chancellor couldn’t look more disinterested. But it’s different staff now, so anything’s possible.

(And “complimentary shuttle” — like the MTD doesn’t run anyway. I like how the administration gives us things that already exist and call them special. Another example, complimentary pre-season holiday-weekend football tickets. But I’m not complaining too much. I like the Gift Days.)

The card is pretty boring. They should have signed it:

B. There or
B. Square.
B. Joseph White.

Or saved the paper and the stamp and just sent me the invite on Facebook. Get with the program people!

I have a twenty three and a half inch head. (And very small ears.) Graduation garb is ordered.

I never did anything with mounting or special displays for my B.S. diploma. Now, looking at Herff Jones website, I remember why. It’s $108 to frame the dumb thing. True, it might be a $20k piece of paper, but does it have to be so expensive to frame?

I enjoy reading the bar signs on Daniels Street to/from class. In particular, I’ve learned so many different ways to spell ‘jager bomb’ Yeger, I think, was my favorite. Yegger (must rhyme with kegger)

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