Category: about me

Pure Vanity.

Ghetto tips

Mike, a friend and former co-worker pointed me to Go Ghetto. I looked at it and promptly forgot about it.

I should have read Mike’s blog closer because at Lunch 2.0 today, I found out that my friends Holly and (a different) Mike are the instigators of GoGhetto. (What a weird small world we live in.) They even gave me a bumper sticker which I had in my hand for all of 10 seconds. (They were too ghetto to let me keep it, because Mark already had one.)

Ghetto product shot

“Ghetto product shot” by tychay.
Nikon D70, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
f/1.8 at 1/60 second, iso 200, 50mm (75mm)

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Lunch 2.0 l(a)unches

In 1999, I used to eat lunches in Novell’s offices (now eBay’s headquarters). In 2000, Dave visited me and I showed him all the crappiest food in the valley. In 2001, Dave came to the Valley and we decided we needed to visit corporate cafeteries, because the only thing you got free in the valley, post bubble, was caffeinated beverages.

That was Lunch 1.0 and it sucked.

Then Mark got fired from Google and started inviting everyone to have lunch on Plaxo.

Lunch 2.0 was born…

Lunch 2.0 @ Dot’s Café, Yahoo!

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You can be sure if it’s Slashdot…it’s wrong

Westinghouse logo

I read this article today about Toshiba buying out Westinghouse Electric.

I shouldn’t be surprised that Slashdot gets it wrong again. Really wrong.

First of all, Westinghouse hasn’t made blenders since around the time I was born. They sold off the appliances division to a separate company, White, which renamed itself White-Westinghouse. The confusion arises because White-Westinghouse used the same W logo, but any Pittsburgher can tell you they aren’t the same. The same holds true for other “Westinghouse” brands like Westinghouse Digital Electronics, the makers of the LCD panels referred to in the article. They have nothing to do with Westinghouse or Westinghouse Electric. The brand name was licensed to them recently when the CBS/Viacom media empire realized they had a merchandisable brand name they weren’t using.

[ore theorizing after the jump]Continue reading →

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Taking football seriously

My obligatory Superbowl blog entry:

“You can’t believe how seriously these people take their football.”
—overheard, “Gridiron City”

The quote above comes from an op-ed in today’s New York Times. The answer is, “Yes, I can believe,” because, like Holly, I grew up in Pittsburgh, and they do take their football seriously there.

The article does a great job explaining why: the rise of the perennially bad Steelers came during the middle of the decline of the Pittsburgh steel industry.Continue reading →

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ID as nominal philosophy

LA Times reports on a California lawsuit concerning “Intelligent Design.”

Since Intelligent Design as a science was universally shut down, the idea this time is to nominally call Intelligent Design “Philosophy of Design” while teaching it as a science or religion course. It’s a lot like a long car trip with your older brother in reverse: you agree upon a line you cannot cross and then he puts his finger over, then his arm over, an escalates until you start fighting again. Amusing stuff.Continue reading →

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Relationships and Politics

A friend of mine went out on a date with a SUV-driving, Fox News-watching conservative Republican. I wonder if he shouts at his television set or gets angry when people impugn his man?

I made the mistake of commenting:

Reminds me of an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm which I never saw because the last time I had television was when a room mate would watch Fox News on it. With a name like “GB”, I guess his political leanings are understandable. Does he go by his middle initial, “W”?

My brother once told me that he thought young Republicans were pathetic because as you got older you can always get more conservative—I blew that idea out of the water by getting more liberal…

You should’ve taken a picture of him for posterity before his species becomes extinct.

Bad Terry, never comment your political leanings on someone else’s blog! Bad! Bad!Continue reading →

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What I’m having for Thanksgiving

If anything should be indicative of a my right-wing gen-x background, it should be this simple fact: I did cross-ex debate in high school. One result of that is my Thanksgiving meal: a burger at Jack-In-The-Box.

The University of Pittsburgh tournament is held on Thanksgiving weekend. This is not a big deal normally for a Pittsburgher such as myself, except that for those last three years in high school, my family shared Thanksgiving with my relatives in Chester, New Jersey. I have nothing to show for this except a bad junk food Thanksgiving habit.Continue reading →

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