Borderland Edition

Fun times. I’m sitting on the phone waiting for billing support from Verizon since they decided to double charge me for installation fees (which are pretty ridiculous to begin with since any monkey could run the setup program the technician ran to ‘install the Internet’ on my computer). Every time I’ve had to call Verizon and speak with the computerized I’ve been incorrectly routed to a half dozen over 15 places.

It’s funny how these computerized systems claim to help the process but it would be much better just to talk to a live person.

Grr… I’m about one misrouting from going back to dialup.

Good Article in The Washington Post:

The majority of Georgetown students I know are fairly knowledgeable about religion. They can talk intelligently about Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. The glitch is that they talk from the perspective of anthropologists and sociologists and historians. These are valuable perspectives. But they are not enough. Of course we need to raise young people who can be smart, savvy, sophisticated participants in international affairs. What we also need are young people who can be all of those things while at the same time knowing and understanding what it is to live one’s life with a commitment rooted in faith.

So I decided to do a 100-mile bike ride in September. I need to raise $500 in donations for the ride by the end of July. Here’s your chance to do something good as well as encourage me to ride 100 miles on a mountain bike. The link for donations is below. Go ahead, donate something, I know you want to.

Fundraising Page

Don’t forget.

The fun part of work today is that it actually IS my job to play around with Google’s latest toys since I get to implement a project adding some or our data to Google Earth. I’m doing research. W00t!

Google continues to do really cool things like Street View which allows you to virtually visit a number of cities. The funny part is that since the project involves taking real pictures of real places, inevitably real people will be caught doing real (stupid) things. And, true to form in modern society, people caught doing these stupid, immoral, unethical, or bad things will blame Google, as reported by the BBC.

What else can you do but complain if you are photographed exiting a strip club in the middle of the day and are caught on Google Street View by your employer, wife, or mother?

Just another great example of the simple rule of “if you are worried about getting caught doing something wrong, then maybe you shouldn’t be doing it“.

I once read or heard somewhere that “good enough is the best’s worst enemy”. In the same way, being forced to settle with your backup choice is like settling for Safeway Select vanilla ice cream when you almost got your hands on a pint of Chocolate Fudge Brownie™ Ice Cream from Ben & Jerry’s. When you compare the two you find that you’ve lost your appetite all together.