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linda stasi is an idiot.

By on Monday, January 8, 2007

in her recent article in the new york post, linda stasi attacked oprah for spending $40 million to build a school for girls in south africa using the argument that there are too many children here in the U.S.A who needed that assistance:

“Yeah, I’ve about had it with you and anyone else who relates more to the country of their ancestors than with the USA where we were all were raised, fed and educated well enough to earn enough dough to run back “home” to lend these helping hands. “

first things first, oprah is a private citizen who can do with her money whatever she pleases. why isn’t stasi attacking an administration who has cut funding to education, resisted pay increases to teachers, and consistently avoided taking action to curb the downward spiral of education as a whole? i find stasi’s indignation sadly misplaced. the continent of africa, one of the wealthiest in natural resources, has long been plundered by the west with NO regard for the native inhabitants, why begrudge a school? it is the least that anyone in this country can do to help rebuild what our country tore asunder.

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Musings

bad advertising

By on Wednesday, January 3, 2007

a friend of mine had this photo in one of thier albums, and i thought…this has to be a joke, right? he’s from california so my assumption is that the sign is depicting “caution! illegal immigrants.”
for whatever reason, this brought to mind the old taco bell ad campaigns where the catchy “make a ruuuuun for the border!” jingle used to play at the close of each commercial. HOW did they get away with that???? i think that taco bell has single handedly had the most culturally insensitive advertising campaigns ever, and yet, i don’t ever recall there being much backlash…i mean, remember the talking chihuahua with the accent? terrible.
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Musings

there is nothing to fear…

By on Tuesday, January 2, 2007

but fear itself. a friend of mine recently told me something that i didn’t want to hear. and at the close of the conversation, the question posed was: “what are you so afraid of?”

at the time, i was aggravated, i felt like that was a question that didn’t appropriately address what i was feeling, but in retrospect, it was a question that i needed to answer for myself. WHAT is it that i was so afraid of? change. i will admit that i am a creature of habit, and though i make small changes frequently, big changes are hard to come by, and are usually spurred by some external catalyst. so the question that i am asking myself in the new year is “what are you waiting for?”

it seems that i wait and wait for things in my life to happen, but why wait? as cliche as it may sound, tomorrow is not promised, and all too often, all that is really holding us is fear. so what’s the worst that could happen, i mean, if i don’t die, i’m still here to keep on living (obviously) so why not LIVE! that is my profound schpiel for 2007. i am not afraid anymore. bring on the change, i suppose the worst it can do is kill me 😉

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Technology

oh yeah, i’m a nerd

By on Friday, December 29, 2006

so i got a speeding ticket when i was driving back from mexico a few weekends ago. unfortunate, but well deserved (92 in a 65). i am trying to be a good citizen and take the defensive driving course so that i will not have points added to my license. anyhow, i see that i can take the course online, so of course, i opt for that scenario as opposed to sitting in a classroom for 5 hours.

when attempting to pay for the course, i keep getting this (terribly non-descript) error about my information being missing or incorrect. i call the help line because i know i’m not an idiot, and the technical assistance guy on the other end logs in and attempts to do the same thing that i just did (like i don’t know how to type and hadn’t tried several times already) so he says “i think this may be a technical error” (no! really??) and that there will be a girl coming in in ~1 hour who can take a look at it. me being the impatient techie coder that i am, decided to check it myself.

so i get off the phone with mr techincal assistance and view the source code of the page, turns out their code is there embedded in the html for all to see (which is very bad practice, didn’t anyone ever teach these people anything??) so i see the function that is parsing my credit card number and low and behold, it doesn’t account for a 4 digit number beginning with a zero…so to test my theory, i change the leading zero in my credit card number to a 1 and resubmit, and of course it goes through without the idiotic error message. i call back the guy and let him know what the problem is so that the girl can fix it and that they also have my incorrect credit card number. why do i do things like this? because i can’t help it…it’s just who i am, a nerd.

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