But why does your phone say you’re at the beach?

By December 31, 2005, your cell phone company will always know exactly where you are.  And maybe your friends, enemies and boss will too.

Oops:  The February Trail magazine contained a route that would lead climbers off the edge of a cliff on Britain’s tallest peak.

Today, January 29 is National Corn chip Day, and I almost missed it. It’s also National Whatever Days for a bunch of other things, just like every other day is.

Check out link1 and link2 for all sorts of other holidays and “nation fill in the blank day”.

It’s a start.

Not all of you, but your name can go.  NASA will put it on a CD that will go to Comet Tempel 1.  You can even print out a geeky certificate to prove you did it.

They quit taking names on Jan. 31.

This site lists items (like a USB Portable Flash Drive) that you can get for free after rebate.  Their motto is:  The best things in life are free (after six to eight weeks).

Russian soldiers were sent in to save the beer.

“The question is, where were you, Governor Bush? What would you do as commander-in-chief if someone in the National Guard did the same thing? At the least, I would have been court-martialed. At the least, I would have been placed in prison,” said Senator Daniel Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii.

He was referring, of course, to the 12 month period where our Fearless Leader was nowhere to be found during his stay with the National Guard.

Michael Moore provides a number of links to news articles about the absence, and to Peter Jennings’ interview with Wesley Clark where he asked about Moore’s support.  Since the link is Moore’s entry page, the information will probably be gone soon unless you look for it within the site, probably in the Must Read section.

Shrubya will give his version tonight.  Here’s a sampling of numbers he won’t be talking about:

$113 million: Total sum raised by the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, setting a record in American electoral history

$130 million: Amount raised for Bush’s re-election campaign so far

130: Number of countries (out of total of 191 recognized by the United Nations) with an American military presence

58 million: Number of acres of public lands Bush has opened to road building, logging and drilling

And the last disturbing one is
53%: Percentage of American citizens who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president when asked on 16 January, 2004

According to Advertising Age Research, last year’s Super Bowl had 88,637,000 viewers (138.9 million according to the NFL) at 43,433,000 homes watching commercials that cost $2,100,000 for 30 seconds of air time. That’s $23.69 per viewer over the course of the game, but less than 25¢ per 30 seconds. The first Super Bowl ads cost $42,000 ($239,167 inflation adjusted) for 30 seconds. This year, the price is up to $2.25 million. What will be eaten during this year’s 62 half-minute events?  Pizza. Super Bowl Sunday has evolved into a national party day:  The average number of people at a Super Bowl party is 17. More pizza will be sold Feb. 1 than any other day of 2004:

• Domino’s will deliver about 1.2 million pizzas, 42% more than on a regular Sunday, and its drivers will cover 4 million miles.
• Papa John’s expects its business will jump 70% in some areas.
• Grocery store sales of Kraft’s DiGiorno and Tombstone frozen pizzas typically jump 20% during Super Bowl week.

Pizza Hut, the world’s most powerful and influential pizza seller, will unveil what it considers its biggest product idea in years: four square, topped-to-order pizzas in one large pizza box, which, at $11.99, costs about the same as a regular large pizza. It will spend $50 million to launch the product, and fill the national airwaves with as many as 75 commercials throughout game day.

Personally, while pizza is probably my favorite food, I hate Pizza Hut pizza. And although their franchises originally didn’t want the new pizza, in part because they had to get new equipment to make it and it may reduce the number of two pizza orders, it should be good for them. Now it’s not only the edges of the pizza that won’t have topping, the lines separating the four parts will also be empty. What a great way to sell bread at a premium.

The musical history of the Electro-Theremin is at The Paul Tanner Electro-Theremin Page.  It was used on the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations and the TV show My Favorite Martian.

As many of us thought, it turns out there isn’t any simple answer because it depends on the rain speed and direction, your running speed and size, wind, etc.

Here’s a Running in the Rain Calculator.

Thanks again, Terry.

This is a cool graphical representation of zip codes.  Click on the map and type in a code.  As each number is typed, the map shows the limits for that part of the zip.

You need to be running the Java VM, which is no longer included with Windows, for this applet to work. 

Thanks, Terry.

By now most people have seen the Carl’s Jr. ad for their low-carb burger.  It uses lettuce to hold things together instead of a bun.  It turns out that In-N-Out has had this for a while on their “Secret Menu“;  it’s called “Protein Style”.

They don’t have a name for what I eat at home:  everything sitting on top of half a bun.  I guess I could get a Double Double “Flying Dutchman” style and a mix it with a dry “2×4”.  And then be really, really full.

MoveOn.org is having a contest to come up with a 30 second campaign ad showing Bush’s accomplishments.  The initial 1000+ entries were voted for on the web, getting it down to fifteen finalists.

Take a look at the final fifteen at www.BushIn30Seconds.org

Almost no news has been reported about the government’s new powers to look at your finances.  That’s because it was signed on a Saturday at the same time that Hussein’s capture was announced.  The only reporting seems to be from the San Antonio Current article With a Whisper, Not A Bang:

By signing the bill on the day of Hussein’s capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote. Consequently, while most Americans watched as Hussein was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI had just obtained the power to probe their financial records, even if the feds don’t suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism.

The Bush Administration and its Congressional allies tucked away these new executive powers in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, a legislative behemoth that funds all the intelligence activities of the federal government. The Act included a simple, yet insidious, redefinition of “financial institution,” which previously referred to banks, but now includes stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and any other business “whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters.”

The fact that I couldn’t find this on any of the news services made me do a little more research than usual.  I found the text of the bill, H.R. 2417, and an announcement that it was signed.  But even that doesn’t make clear what happened because the text of the bill refers to the United States Code.  The new meaning of financial institution is finally made clear there.

On and on…  it seems the article is correct, but perhaps not as sweeping as it sounds.  That’s because only the smaller institutions were added; the big ones were already there.  At least from what I can tell from that legal morass.

The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs.  In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated.

Why Part 1 in the title?  With things going this way, there’s no doubt that a part 2 will show up soon.  Maybe people carrying maps.

What A Crappy Present.  Ho, ho, ho!

Depending upon what you read, either “US Internet Growth and Broadband Adoption Slow” or “US Broadband Up 18% in H1”.  But they’re both using the same reports.

According to a Dec. 22 Pew Internet report:

• The size of the online U.S. adult population is 63% of all those 18 and over; online population was 126 million in August 2003.
• The size of the online population on a typical day was 66 million in August 2003
• 31% of Internet users who go online from home have broadband as of August 2003.

It’s the last number that caught my interest.  I can’t imagine using a dial-up connection any more and wondered how many others had made the move.  I have friends that won’t look at anything on the internet unless they really, really need to because it takes too long to load. 

Those numbers mean that only about 20% of the U.S. population (at those using home access) are surfing at high speed.  I guess I better make my blog and website smaller.

Just got this neat tip in the mail for Internet Explorer:

Type the main part of a URL but instead of hitting Enter use CTRL+Enter and IE will add the http:// and .com to what you typed.