Quote of the day

And yet, there I was. One little man on a flimsy little train (and I even still had a baby tooth to lose at the time) out of billions of people living on a floating blue rock. How can I knock Ruby? Who’s to say that I’m not going to happen to choke on my cell phone and die later that evening. Why’s dead, Ruby lives on.

The gravestone:

What’s in his trachea? Oh, look, a Nokia!

From here.

Quote of the day

On slashdot, a conversation thread drifted onto pillow shams. Someone pointed out that no-one on slashdot would possibly know what a pillow sham is, and earned this response:

What is a pillow sham? Women know. When you find one who moves in, you will soon learn. You will also learn about the pillows that you aren't supposed to use for sleeping, and the blanket that sits on the foot of the bed, only to be removed at bedtime and replaced the next morning. You will learn about towels that nobody except for "guests" may use. Ditto plates and silverware. Occasionally, candles will fall into this category.

Made me laugh.

AOL cuts 2000 employees

AOL announced that it would cut 2000 additional jobs yesterday. I can't say that I'm sad to see AOL go, because of all the war stories that I hear (and once experienced) about the insane hassle they make it to actually cancel their service ("When I say cancel the account, I don't mean help me figure out how to keep the account"). Someone on slashdot presented this scenario:

AOL's trained its employees too well.

Boss: You're fired!

Employee: Sorry, AOL employees only accept termination notices between the hours of 1:13am and 1:16am, Ugandan time. Please call back at this deliberately inconvenient time. Until then, we will continue to bill you for our services.

Boss [several hours later]: OK, now you're fired!

Employee: Sorry, please hold.

Boss [several hours later]: Look, you're freaking fired!

Employee: OK, I'm going to sign you up for one more month of free employment.

Boss: I don't want a month's free employment, you're freaking fired, you stupid cretins!

Employee: I'm sorry, we accidentally disconnected that call. Please begin the process again.

Management may want to fire them. If the employees have learned anything from their time working there, it'll be next to impossible to make them actually leave.

Quote of the day

So, EA Games just bought Bioware/Pandemic for $620 million dollars. You may recognize them from titles like Knights of the Old Republic, or Mercenaries 1 & 2. EA games hasn't been doing so hot lately, so a lot of people think that they were pretty stupid to allow themselves to be bought. One guy on Slashdot responded to that with:

I'm sure they are feeling none too smart... them and their HALF A BILLION DOLLARS.

Heres hoping that Bioware/Pandemic get to keep enough creative freedom that their quality doesn't drop.

Quote of the day

Someone brought in cupcakes to work, and sent in an email inviting us to come eat them. From the email:

Joe turned 2 earlier this week, and I have a few cupcakes left over from his party at daycare...Even though the icing got a little mangled by the foil cover, the only cupcakes handled by children were already devoured.

It made me laugh.

Quote of the Day

Who cares about realism? If I wanted realism I'd play outside.

Gleaned that little beauty from the forums for the Source mod Fortress Forever, where someone was whining that the Heavy Weapons Guy's gun can overheat.

Fortress Forever is pretty spiffy. I'll do a writeup in a day or two.