March, 2010 Monthly archive
A user on Reddit.com posted a personal story about how his life is out of order and how depressed he feels and how he believes something is wrong with him. It is a long but decent read. I thought a reply to this post was very well worded. While targeted towards this particular user, I feel that it is good advice for anyone feeling down. Here it is.
Kind of depressing, but a lot of folks have been down this path. I think most get out of it, but end up miserable for years. I don’t know your philosophy on life, or if you even have one but I can tell you how to move the ball forward just a bit. You should devote tomorrow to cleaning your apartment. Not picking it up and moving the garbage around clean it. Stop at nothing until it is perfectly spotless. When you have finished that task start to organize your life on paper. Work at it. Do it better than you have ever done anything. I am much older than you and I’ll tell you one lesson I’ve learned …
Read MoreOriginally from HBO’s Funny or Die Presents series:
Read MoreSome of you may have noticed some photos of our wedding on Juice, The Dropbox. I put them up there because I figured you guys may want to snag them, which I have full rights to do under my contract with the photographer. Part of our deal was that we would receive a DVD with all of our pictures, in high resolution, and we could do with them as we please as long as we weren’t selling them.
So today, Jackie and I decided we were finally going to fill some frames we got as wedding gifts with said photos. We had them quickly printed at Walgreens, and when we arrived to pick them up we were greeted by a smiling Walgreens employee who promptly asked if we had a waiver from the photographer to print these photos.
Huh?
After asking a couple questions, it became clear that we had to drive all the way home, dig up our photographer’s contract and drive back to Walgreens. When we got back, we were helped by the Assistant Manager. I asked him a few questions:
When did this policy start?
We’ve always had it.
How do you know they are professional photos?
We can tell by looking at them.
What happens when my friends and family try to print these photos?
You’ll have to give them a copy of the release.
This seems kind of ridiculous.
Well, it’s the law. We just want to sell photos, but we have to protect the photographers who make them because that’s their livelihood.
I just had to nod.
It is fairly obvious that this is pure legal bullshit on the part of Walgreens. I mean, had I actually been printing something without permission, how easy would it be for me to get around it? First of all, I could have just said that I took those photos. They would have no way to prove otherwise.
Secondly, what’s stopping me from typing the following release letter?
To Whom It May Concern:
I hereby authorize Brian Lindenau to print any of my photos.
Sincerely,
Theodore Roosevelt
I mean, they don’t even know who took the photograph.
This seems like this is an issue that could be easily handled by a simple checkbox, similar to what Facebook asks you: “I certify that I have the right to distribute this picture and that it does not violate the Terms of Use.”
It might save everyone some time and headache, and would be equally toothless.
For now, I guess I’ll just print my photos at a place that doesn’t place arbitrary legal barriers in front of me.
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I know that I harp on this a lot, but it’s something that I think people need to be reminded of, because it’s one of those things that doesn’t get a lot of press. So here goes:
The bailout worked. The stress tests worked. Tim Geithner did a good job.
There’s a good article in The New Yorker this week making this case, and it also does a good job of highlighting how politically repugnant this entire process was:
In the history of product launches, the rollout of the Obama Administration’s plan to stabilize the financial system was in the category of “Ishtar,” smokeless cigarettes, and New Coke.
The bottom line, though, is that these policies were a smashing success. Banks are more capitalized than they’ve been in over 70 years, GDP is growing, and at the end of the day, the federal government will be out only 117 billion dollars, most of which didn’t even go to Wall Street (*cough* GM *cough*).
I could end up quoting this article all day, so you should just go read it, but I particularly liked the closing line from Geithner himself:
“Why do policymakers screw up financial crises?” he said before I left his office. “They screw up financial crises because the politics are horrible, and that deters action. They are slow and late and tentative and weak because they are scared to death of the politics. But sometimes a policymaker has to say, I’ll take pain now against pain later.”
There’s at least one adult in Washington, and his name is Timothy Franz Geithner.
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MikroKopter – HexaKopter from Holger Buss on Vimeo.
You can order the parts & plans to build one yourself, but it’s going to run you about 1200 Euros.
MikroKopter Website: http://www.mikrokopter.de/ucwiki/en/MikroKopter/
Read MoreJUICE THE BLOG DOT COM
Read MoreFor those of you who have been playing the game Blocks, we’ve released a newer version of the demo. We have incorporated a lot of the feedback received from everyone and included 3 new levels. For a full rundown, check out the Darkwind Media Blog.
Thank you for playing!
Read MoreFrom this (past) Sunday’s episode of Tim & Eric:
I WANT TO SEE THEM.
I WANT TO SEE WHAT YOU’VE DONE.
Read MoreI’m so happy I get to use the “hallandoatesfuckyeah” tag again!
Read MoreHere’s me being awesome on level 16, “All The Way Down”. The level was designed to be annoyingly narrow in the very beginning to show the player that you can still win by chucking the block to the island goal. I wanted to see if I could beat the level without touching anything. I did it!
Read MoreIn a previous lifetime, I was the guy in the glasses. Dats whats up.
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