Year: 2011

Categories Links

Links

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What to do if your dog eats your pot. (try not leaving it out for anyone to get to?)

Everyone who used Ticketmaster for the last 12 years is getting a refund.  Apparently you’re supposed to declare when you’re making a profit.  I’d like to see more companies held to this rule…..

Scientists may try to clone a mammoth.  Cause yah, re-creating LONG extinct animals is ALWAYS a good idea…..

A 7yr old boy accused of sexual harassment.  Cause yes, every 7yr old understands what sexual harassment is and how to avoid doing it….especially when being choked by the “victim”

Categories Nothing Much

News Anchor tells viewers there is no Santa

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And is promptly told she is the most evil person ever.

I have to admit that I’ve never understood the whole “Santa” thing.  I’m sure part of that is the fact that my parents never “did”  Santa.  Infact I think it was kindergarten, when I came home one day and wanted to know who this “Santa” person was that everyone was talking about.  My mother told me he was made up and not real.  I promptly returned to school and proceeded to tell everyone Santa was a lie and they shouldn’t believe in him.  Something tells me I wasn’t very popular with the other kids’ parents that year….

But really, I don’t get Santa.  A large majority of the people I know who DID believe in Santa when they were little, say they were very upset when they realized there wasn’t any Santa.  That their parents had lied to them.  And yet, they proceed to tell their children that its Santa who’s bringing the gifts.  My inlaws do this, their eldest grand-child is 8yrs old, and still believes in Santa, because the whole family is expected to go out of their way to assist in the foolery (I have so far avoided having to be involved, without having to argue the fact).  Having gotten to know the child over the last few years I can firmly state that she is going to be PISSED once she finally figures out that they were lying to her.  Screaming temper-tantrum mad.

I don’t get it.

Categories Nothing Much

Oh NOes!! Your Cell Phone Might Be Spying On You!!

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And if thats news to you have a bridge to sell you…..

Seriously, I got a smart phone with every expectation that Verizon was going to go to the legal limit (and possibly push that limit as hard as possible) to get information on what I do with it and when.  That doesn’t make it RIGHT, but I KNEW that it would happen.  Therefor when the recent announcement hit that many phones, sold by many carriers, contain software that can keylog and send back that information I wasn’t surprised.  Now according to the linked article my phone, sold by my carrier, does not contain this particular piece of software.  However I fully expect it contains something very similar that no-one’s found yet.  That concept will eventually piss me off to the point of rooting the phone and fixing the issue, till then I understand that everything I do on that phone is potentially being sent off to someone.  After all, this is Verizon we’re talking about.

Seriously.  When I first got my Droid2 I was rather disgusted by the amount of bloatware that came pre-installed, and even more so when I discovered that the only way to get rid of it was to root the phone.  But I was outright PISSED when, a week after getting the phone, I discovered that one of those pieces of bloatware was an app (*cough* City ID *cough*) that was sending all my incoming call information off to a 3rd party, without my permission, no way to opt out, and no way to turn it off till the “FREE NO COMMITMENT TRIAL!!!!111!!!!” ended and I could finally tell them to go to hell.  It wasn’t even a useful piece of software, it was supposed to tell you the city and state that the person was calling from, in reality all it did was ID the city/state where the PHONE NUMBER originated from, so if you got your cell phone in NY state, and kept your number when you moved out of state, City ID would still ID the call as from AnyCity NY.  I’m guessing I wasn’t the only one complaining since when Husband upgraded his Droid to a Droid3 City ID didn’t come preinstalled.

So yah, if you were really under the illusion that everything you did on your smart phone was private you need to get a life…….

Edited to add: this doesn’t mean that I think we SHOULDN’T take apart any company who breaks the law in this manor, just that I’m totally unsurprised that it happened.

Categories Rants

To the idiots

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To all the idiots I passed on my way home today, who did NOT have their lights on in the rain:  NY requires lights on while wipers are going.  You CAN be pulled over for that.  (seriously, what is it lately, you always see one or two cars without lights on in the rain, but lately its been a signifigant percentage of them)

Especially to the idiot in the silver Honda with the Ontario plates:  not only were your headlights not on (which can get you a nice ticket all by itself), you were blatently talking on your cell phone (which is another nice ticket here in wonderfull NY state), while driving 15 under the speed limit.  Were you TRYING to call attention to yourself?

To all the 10+ cops I saw on my way INTO work this morning, where the fuck were you on my drive HOME??

Categories Links

Links

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Kansas Gov decides that persecuting an 18yr old for exercising her right to free speech is a bad public relations move.

Cyclist shoots dog that attacks him.  Look people, if your town/county/whatever has a leash law then you need to make sure your dog is restrained (these days he needs to be restrained ANYWAY, but thats another arguement).  I don’t care if “the whole street does it” and “everyone knows he’s friendly”.  That goes extra if your dog is of a breed (or LOOKS like a breed) “known” to be aggressive.  Very very very rarely do they decide on the side of the dog/owner in cases like this.  The fact that the dog was in training to be a service dog doesn’t matter, if anything that should be even MORE of a reason to restrain him properly.  (and you know what? Apollo’s a “loveable friendly pooch who’s great with children” but he hates bikes, and if we let him he’d would chase them madly down the road, so sorry, no excuses)

Categories Nothing Much

Holy cow

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As of yesterday morning (Sunday) Sitemeter said I had an average per day visiter count of 14 visits (which is different from pageviews for those of you who aren’t familer). 

Saturday’s count was a bit higher than usual, people searching for information on the chicken jerky caution.  Some of the search terms were a bit odd, but not too weird.  I didn’t think much of it.

Sunday morning I was catching up on Facebook and came across reference to a “Blue Buffalo Recall” related to the chicken jerky caution and went WTH, there’s no recalls related to that?!  Did some digging, and discovered that someone was spreading rumors.  Well, that always annoys me so I posted on it. 

According to Sitemeter I had 94 visitors yesterday, almost all of them coming in after I posted the above mentioned post.  Assume 14 or so are my usual visitors (the large majority of which I can thank the GunBlogBlackList for, THANK YOU!), and holy cow.  Basically all of them came in via search engine searching for information on a Blue Buffalo recall.  A few came in via Facebook, at least two different folks linked to me there (it appears anyway, if any of you reading this came via Facebook I’d really like to know WHO and WHERE I was linked too please).

I’m shocked.  A check of Google puts me in the front page for most variations of “Blue Buffalo Chicken Jerky Recall” as search terms.  The rest are all reposts of the spam message that went around Facebook yesterday.  Hopefully the large majority of those folks went away with the tools to figure out if there was a recall now, and in the future, so they won’t be caught believing spam again.

Categories Dog, Online Idiots

There is NO Blue Buffalo Recall for canine Chicken Jerky

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I think I need a new label for “just cause you found it online doesn’t make it true”.

Anyway, I posted a few days ago about an FDA caution on chicken jerky treats.  Apparently there is someone out there spreading the rumor that the FDA has issued a recall on Blue Buffalo brand items for the exact same problem.  This mis-information was being spread initially via Facebook (sigh), and from there upset animal people took it to various forums where its spread around the web.  So lets get this straight.  Not only is there no recall on Blue Buffalo, the FDA hasn’t issued ANY recalls for this issue.

There WAS a Blue Buffalo recall last year, due to excessive amounts of  vitamin D in the foods.  This was a voluntary recall and not forced by the FDA.  Some of the end symptoms were similar to the symptoms to look out for now.  I can only assume that some IDIOT one was attempting to look up the FDA caution, ran across reference to the Blue Buffalo recall, and didn’t check the dates on that information.  They promptly had a freakout and that was the end of that. 

Look people, Stop spreading rumors, AND CHECK YOUR FACTS before spreading any further lies.

Edited to add:

People are now reporting that their local news media have picked up on the “Blue Buffalo Recall”.  Folks, if there’s a recall neither Blue Buffalo or the FDA are aware of it.   You can check on pet food recalls listed by the FDA here.  The only Blue Buffalo recalls listed are OLD.

Blue Buffalo stated the following on their Facebook page:

Blue Buffalo chicken jerky products are safe and NOT made in China.Normally, we wouldn’t post about an issue that does not impact us, but we feel it’s necessary to clear up some confusion about the latest FDA warning. The FDA is warning that there might be a danger to pet health associated with chicken jerky dog treats that are made in China (see link with this post). Blue Buffalo makes NO products in China and does not source proteins/fruits/vegetables/grains from China. All BLUE products are made in the US. Also note that the FDA has not yet described any recall action for other brands, though that doesn’t mean they will not at some point. Regardless, it will not impact BLUE. Thanks for your support. –BB