Sparkatopia

DateLine April 26th, 2010

9:14 PM – Post ad of Criagslist – no photos in original ad

For Sale – 2002 GMC Envoy XL 4X4 – SLT. Black. Features: Bose Premium Sound System w/ 6 CD changer, Power Sunroof, Heated Leather Seats, Self Leveling Suspension, Rain-Sensing Wipers, Seats 7 with 3rd row seating, Rear seat DVD, Rear heat and A/C, 3rd Party Remote Start, 20 inch Black Rims with Good Year Eagle’s. I have original 17′s to throw in if interested.

101,000 miles, New water pump & electric fan at 95,000. Engine run great. A/C blows cold.

Body has a few scraps from years of love and wear. Rims show signs of wear from winters in Wisconsin.

Car is viewable in Green Bay, East Side during work hours, or Appleton after 6:00 pm by appointment

Call 920-205-0033 for more info

10:00 PM – 2 phone calls already

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April 27th, 2010

3:00 PM- John R calls asking for VIN #, says he has needs to go to the bank. Will drive to see me with his sweetheart. Meeting me at 6:15 pm…

5:45 PM – Getting trusty Professional Grade GMC Envoy washed – get phone call from Green bay, guy says he has cash in hand wanting to see the car ASAP. Have to tell him another suitor is en route… call him later

6:16 PM – John R and sweetie shoe up for test drive

7:34 PM – Titles filled out and 60 crisp, sequentially serial numbers $100 bills in my hand…

8:00 PM – Old license plates come off…

8:05 PM – John R drives off into the sunset

8:07 PM – call Green bay guy, tell him car is sold. His reply “Bummer!”

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Less then 24 hours from posting to sale…. Wow that was easy…

I saw this and it certianly set me back in my seat. Heres a pick of what 20GB of storage looked like and cost back on 1980 and ‘this is what it looks like today. Pretty stunning. Hat tip to Crunch Gear for the good info

So I just took my seat on a flight from St. Louis to Minneapolis. Nothing new or glamorous about that. The flight attendants are making their rounds up and down the isles, and one in particular seems about as condescending as could be. I realize I’m not in first class and I know perfectly well that all my luggage needs to fit in the overhead compartment or underneath the seat in front of me THANK YOU!

So as others are still getting situated and hoisting luggage into the overhead bins.. one the finest attendants on a trip past me says, “Sir, please buckle your seat belt!” in a rather snotty tone, if I do say myself. Never being one for a loss of words I reply “With all do respect, you have yet to show me how to properly buckle. Once you show me how to do it, I’ll give it a shot.”

And with that… you could hear snickers and laughs coming from the peanut gallery aka other passengers and she scoffed off.  I think I may have heard an audible “DING” but I’m not 100% sure about that.

When was the last time someone gave you a test before you were shown the material? Seriously

Lesson learned I say…

This is an open letter to the CEO and all the employees of Northwest Airlines.

This last week I had the pleasure of flying your airlines on a business trip from Appleton Wi to St. Louis, Mo connecting through Minneapolis, MN. The day before my return flight, there were some pretty nasty storms in the midwest that caused havoc to travelers all over the US. When Minneapolis is backed up, that pain can be felt in many a city around the US. This was true in St. Louis as my departing flight was delayed several hours due to the previous days weather related backups and a runway that was closed in Minneapolis.

Once I boarded the flight to Minneapolis I had a sneaking suspicion that my regional flight to Appleton would be delayed. As i’ve learned, regional flights get canceled by almost anything minor… if a flight attendant gets an hangnail — so bad weather is a shoe-in for delayed or canceled flights to Appleton. Once we landed in Minneapolis, over the loudspeaker, the flight attendant gave us a 1-800 number to call to find out about connecting flight status. I called he number and found out that my connecting flight was not delayed but had been canceled. This really wasn’t any huge newsflash, what made me wince was the amount of time I thought I would have to stand in line, dealing with getting a seat on what would most likely be an oversold later flight. These types of situations ALWAYS bring out the worst in people. I try to keep a cool head and roll with the flow, but not all travelers can say the same.I know the ground staff tries to do their best, but all people want to do is get home… Ahhh the glamor of business travel.

As I deplaned, my mind turned into survival mode. Where’s the monitors, and where the closest ground agent to get me re-ticketed on a later flight, wheres the bathrooms as its going to be a long time in line and I need to prepare myself.  I had to act fast as I know others are in the same boat. Upon exiting the jetway, I was greeted by the nicest gentleman in Northwest blue. He asked if I needed assistance with my connecting flight. I told him I called the 1-800 number and was told my connection had been cancelled and that I needed to get furhter info on a later flight. He then said the magic words I thought I would never ever hear… “Please go over to the counter, find your name and find your updated ticket and itinerary”

So I made a 90 degree turn and made a beeline for the ticket counter. These in nice rows where the new seat assignmentss for many if not all of the passengers that had cancelled flights. I quickly found my name, which was highlighted in yellow on the boarding pass. I had a seat on the 7:55 PM flight to Appleton. A confirmed seat… WOW!!!  Not only did I get a seat, but there was a voucher for 2500 free frequent flier miles and another voucher for $50 off my next NWA flight.

So let me see if I got this right. I don’t need to find a free ground agent to get re-booked. I don’t need to schlep myself and my luggage in line along with 50+ other people who are all mad, tired and missing their families… to get re-ticketed? AND NWA was giving me $50 off another flight and frequent flier miles to boot? Remember this wasn’t their fault, its mother natures gig here. This was some customer service!!! I love it!

This is exactly what I call customer service and the reason I am now going to look for chances to book flights on NorthWest Airlines. THANK YOU Northwest for an amazing customer sevice experience, Love Tommy.

Mason says:

Bamboo microscopes that cost just $4 are being made in India by a group called Jodo Gyan. They’re hoping to supply kids with more hands-on learning, and get away from rote memorization.

Nature has an article about this, with photos of the microscope and of a woman making them.

Originally posted by Mark Frauenfelder from Boing Boing

Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of the famous Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot footage, taken at Bluff Creek, California. Over the last four decades, the short shaky film has ignited countless young people’s interest in cryptozoology and strange phenomena, including my own. As Loren Coleman suggests over at Cryptomundo, let’s take just a moment to shelve preconceived notions and rumors, put “belief” and “disbelief” back in the province of religion where they belong, and just appreciate the curiosity of the clip. Link

Originally posted by David Pescovitz from Boing Boing

Here’s a great tip from Consumerist: airlines’ cargo-tracking websites often give the real explanation for flight delays on their passenger jets. The next time your flight gets delayed, try looking up the story on the airline’s cargo site and see if the problem is the airline’s fault (mechanical failures and so on), and then use that as evidence to get refunds/miles/tickets out of the airline.

It can be hard to get a straight answer out of airlines sometime about the real reason a flight is delayed. For some reason, though, they’re more straight up about their packages than their passengers. See, the airlines have special cargo websites which are supposed to be for people tracking packages they’re shipping through the airline. Here’s the cargo sites for some of the major carriers…

AmericanAirlines
Continental
Delta

NWA
Southwest
United
USAirways

Originally posted by Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing

This is a few years old, but I just saw it on haha.nu.

Link

Originally posted by Mark Frauenfelder from Boing Boing

In its heyday, MAD magazine was required reading for happy mutants. Every (cheap!) issue was jam-packed with terrific cartoons, highlarious parody, social commentary disguised as sophomoric humor, and quite a few jokes that I pretended to get but was secretly too young to understand. The Don Martin Department was always my favorite section (along with Dave Berg’s strips and the sacred fold-in) so I’m salivating over the publication of The Completely MAD Don Martin, a beautifully-packaged two-volume collection of everything Martin ever did for MAD, from 1957 to 1987. Over at the Arf Lovers blog, Craig Yoe interviewed Jon Anderson of Running Press, publishers of the mighty tomes. From the interview:

How did the project come about?

I had been talking with the folks at Mad for years about wanting to collect the works of their best and most prolific artists. The result is going to be a series of deluxe boxed sets concentrating on one artist at a time. We’ve begun with Don Martin, but future years will bring Jack Davis, Al Jaffe, Sergio Aragones, Mort Drucker, etc.

And I hope my very fave Wally Wood! Anyhoo, this Don Martin set is the perfect beginning for things to come. It doesn’t look like you spared anything.

That was the idea. We were so determined to produce a true collector’s item that we went and hired the same folks who had produced The Complete Far Side and The Complete Calvin & Hobbes collections of a few years ago. The set is two volumes, 1,000 pages, slip-cased, and is printed on such high-quality paper that it weighs in at over twenty pounds. The retail price is $150 (Cheap!). And we were able to get appreciation pieces from almost all of Martin’s Mad colleagues as well as a wonderful introduction from Gary Larson… The end result is a celebration of Don Martin’s Mad Magazine career, and it does include every single illustration he produced over a span of thirty years as a contributor, including the stickers, posters and other ephemera.

Link to Arf interview, Link to buy The Completely Mad Don Martin

Originally posted by David Pescovitz from Boing Boing

Proof that Randall from xkcd is wiretapping my brain in today’s nose-sprayingly funny toon. I’ve always wanted to same a kid with a MySQL code-injection attack, or “+++ATH” or “^d^d^c^c^g^g^g^g”. Anything to mess with database nation.

Link

See also:
Xkcd webcomic on online sexism
Cory Doctorow cosplayers at the XKCD picnic
Geeky comic strip uses Cory as the punchline
Geeky comic about chess and roller-coasters
Xkcd fans bring chess-sets on roller-coasters

Nerd humor about Katamari Damacy
Bloggin’ ’bout my generation
Pi joke

Funny map of online communities in the style of a D&D map
Sarcastic comic about computational linguistics (and emo kids)
Where LOLCats come from
Ironic Internet malapropism grid

Originally posted by Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing