The Dumping Ground

I used to really enjoy reading Garfield as a kid, at least partially because we had a big cat that looked quite similar to the lasagna-loving feline. As I got older, I realized that, though funny to an eight-year-old kid with an orange tabby cat, like most of the comics on the funny pages, it was long past its prime.

Amusingly, the tubes have breathed new life into Garfield - by removing Garfield from them. Now, I know that this old meme is old, but my mom hasn't heard about it yet, and the only way she's going to is by reading it on my lame-ass blog.

Also, today's posting particularly good.

The geek in me would be remiss if I didn't post this video of the Candle Cannon, the biggest air vortex cannon ever created. Marvel and enjoy.

The Candle Cannon: Behind the Scenes movie is also excellent. And for a small dose of air-vortex humor, there's a short rendition of the Three Little Pigs, which, it turns out, is about 1/3 the length of the real story.

Flickr is down this evening. Similar to last time, hitting Flickr URLs yields a downtime massage - errr, message. No contests this time, but perhaps we can hope for a good old-fashioned happy ending instead.

I think this xkcd comic, entitled Nihilism, perfectly describes my personal life philosophy.

Now you know me a teeney bit better.

Although I am a FireFox user, I have never heard anything bad about the Opera web browser. It is supposed to be fast, powerful, secure, and all-around one of the best browsers out there. I never tried it, though, because it cost money.

Recently, I learned that Opera no longer charges for their PC browser. I'm not sure how long this has been the case, but it definitely has prompted me to give it a try. I have downloaded the installer, and I'll poke around with it a bit and maybe report what I find here, if anything.

While I was browsing their site, however, I clicked on the link to the page highlighting Opera's security features, and I was struck by the silliness of the pictures in the banner.

It seems the average Opera user is a pensive, impeccably-dressed, high-finance banker with a major case of five o'clock shadow; and the average Internet cracker is a gay S&M biker who, judging by the shameless leer on his face, is looking to anally rape our poor banker avatar. Fortunately for us, Opera's myriad security features will save our collective bums from the impending travesty.

Seriously, Opera should consider just giving away free condoms like DC Snacks.

So apparantly the Lt. Governor of Illinois is publicly encouraging people to mail teabags to the utility company to protest a rate increase.

Do you think he's realized yet precisely what he's asking? I have no doubt this is going to become the next big Internet meme, with friends from around the world mailing one another teas of various flavors.

For their part, the post office notes that it is legal to send a tea bag through the postal system, but discourage the practice for fear of gumming up the sorting machines or being mistaken for some agent of biological terror. It seems a bit ridiculous to think a postal employee might mistake a bag of tea for anthrax. However, in the case of the peach detox tea I just sent one unsuspecting friend, I might be forced to agree if it were classified as a bioterror weapon.

(Picture cropped from the original by Andrew Coulter Enright, used under a CC license.)

So Flickr is down due to a storage failure. As somebody who works on digital libraries trying to keep terabytes of storage online and available, I can empathize with the difficulty of their plight.

However, their downtime message is absolutely hilarious. Flickr is definitely an awesome company.

(If you don't get it, read up on how Ted Stevens thinks the Internet works.)