Borderland Edition

From Being Brain Healthy:

Have a social life with non-distracting friends and family. By non-distracting I mean not distracting people like those of the opposite gender (having a girlfriend will not help you sleep, especially if you’re a geek like me, it will just make you confused, hopeful, frustrated, whatever — not that I’m encouraging anyone to not have a girlfriend, I’m just saying that that doesn’t fall into the context of “non-distracting”) as well as frustrating relationships with people who make you have grudges or regretful memories or overly enjoyable or hopeful thoughts. Children are great for this.

Ah, poor lonely computer geeks…

Another nifty idea from Google: Mail Goggles

Mail Goggles would prevent you from sending e-mails to ex-girlfriends or boyfriends while drunk on the weekends

Maybe we should have Google takeover Wall Street instead of the Feds.

Someone forwarded me this job opportunity at the headquarters of a famous U.S. government agency in DC and I found the description a bit dramatic and quite funny:

Do you have what it takes to make sense out of 50 years of analog and digital data?

Do you have the technical AND social skills to handle a SQL or Excel problem and attend a high-powered Director’s meeting in the same afternoon?

The world’s premier international volunteer program needs real talent to work in its Strategic Information, Research, and Planning office, the agency’s in-house consultants. Change the world by solving the data challenges of Peace Corps.

Fifty years of analog data in SQL or Excel? Well, that’s enough to make me run for the hills.

Technical and social skills? Well, that’s gonna cost you more than $49k… Speaking of salary, with a range between $49k-$90k, that’s quite a different in experience levels. Do you want someone with 1-3 years experience or 10 years?

“High-powered”? Unless Peace Corps has some other branches I wasn’t aware of, how powerful is the director really?

Changing the world indeed. With a little data organization, maybe we can cut the ridiculous application length from 9-15 months to something a little more acceptable.

However, I was disappointed that they didn’t slip in the latest slogan, “How far will you go?” into the advertisement. Maybe, “How far will you go… 1st normal form? 2nd? 3rd? or will you take it all the way, getting nasty with Boyce-Codd?”

Excel? Seriously?

Some websites just aren’t down with posts in Cyrillic…

Oh well… Good news is that I made the required amount to ride in the Tour de Canal. As you can see, even V. Putin took time out of his busy schedule of taking over Georgia to donate to the cause.

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.

Don’t you just hate it when your computer takes away your permission to speak English?

“You are not granted the permission to use English language.”

I love that the message itself sounds like broken English. =)