After perusing all of the pages at the Huh? corporate website, I still don’t have a clue what they actually do. But I’m convinced of one thing that I know I can never prove: Dogbert is behind this. His pawprints are all over it.
Jan
24
Jan
24
Virus warning
On Saturday I went to Raleigh Little Theatre to help hang lights for Blue, the next play that opens February 11. Rehearsals for Blue are already in progress, and I saw that the call board (a sort of easel-mounted bulletin board) has been set up in the house near the stage. Along with the rehearsal sign-in sheet and a couple of other routine notices, I spotted this on the call board:
Warning – New Virus!
There is a new virus. The code name is WORK. If you receive WORK from your colleagues, your boss, via e-mail, or from anyone else, do not touch it under any circumstances. This virus wipes out your private life completely.
If you should happen to come in contact with this virus, take two friends and go straight to the nearest bar. Order drinks immediately and after three rounds each, you will find that WORK has been completely deleted from your system.
Forward this virus warning immediately to at least five friends.
Should you realize you do not have five friends, this means you are already infected by this virus and WORK already controls your life.
If this is the case, go to the bar on your own and stay until you make at least five friends. Then retry.I think I have five friends, but am not entirely positive so I’m headed for the bar anyway…..it never hurts to be safe.
This virus could definitely be a problem for RLT. I’m sure WORK can disrupt the process of rehearsing a play. Fortunately, most of the theatre people I know are already applying the recommended countermeasure on a regular basis.
Jan
17
The luckiest guy ever
Here’s a health tip. If you start experiencing unexplained toothaches and blurred vision, ask yourself “Have I been operating a nail gun recently?”
Key quote: “If you’re going to have a nail in the brain, that’s the way you want it to be.”
Jan
14
It’s what’s for dinner
For years, scientists have been trying to figure out how we mammals managed to replace the dinosaurs as the dominant vertebrate lifeforms on Earth. Did we adapt to changing conditions better than they did? Perhaps not. A newly discovered fossil suggests that we ate them.
Jan
14
The maestro’s workshop
Researchers in Italy have discovered the secret laboratory of Leonardo da Vinci. Dan Brown should be able to get another bestseller out of this.
Jan
09
Elvis at 70
Yesterday was Elvis Presley’s 70th birthday. If he had actually lived to be 70, what would he have looked like? Scientists at St. Andrew’s University (wherever that is) decided to find out and used computers to artificially age a photo of Elvis. Looking at the result, I have to say that I hope I look that good when I’m 70.
Jan
03
My paradise
Tourists in Germany can now visit a tropical island only 50 kilometers from Berlin. Well, technically, it’s not really an island, but it has a beach, a lagoon, a rain forest, and a tropical village (just look at the pictures). And the weather is always nice, because the whole thing is under a dome.
Dec
30
Google reads my mind
Google is beta testing a new search feature called Google Suggest that tries to anticipate what you want before you finish asking for it. As you type characters in the search field, Google displays a list of the most popular searches that match. I was listening to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Tertiary Phase) this morning, so I decided to start typing the name of that show’s creator and see how quickly Google Search could figure out what I was after. By the time I had typed “dou”, I was looking at a list of suggestions that included “Douglas Adams.” Pretty impressive!
Dec
01
Top of the charts
Merriam-Webster has announced its list of the top ten words of the year for 2004, and the number one word on that list is: blog.
Nov
30
The dawn of spam
I have a Road Runner e-mail account that I have given up using for anything important, because it’s inundated by spam. This is partly my fault; I posted some messages to Usenet newsgroups from that account some years ago, and those messages are preserved for posterity in Google Groups, where spammers harvest my address from the headers and use it to send me junk mail. But even though I no longer use that address, I still have to log on to the account periodically to delete the spam. I was doing that today when I spotted a message with a subject line that sent a chill up my spine:
From: Imigration Services
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 2:38 am
To: jgiven
Subject: Green Card Lottery!
Live and Work in the U.S.A.
Official Program Conducted by the U.S. Government.
Please Register online to participate in the Green Card Lottery
To anyone who was reading Usenet in 1994, “Green Card Lottery” is a phrase that will live in infamy. It was the subject of the first commercial Usenet spam that, in the words of Wikipedia, “fired the starting gun for the legions of spammers that now infest the Internet.” That incident spawned the industry that now fills up my Road Runner mailbox with dozens of worthless sales pitches every day. And now a latter-day spammer has decided to revive the original spam scheme, this time by e-mail.
It gets worse. The Wikipedia article cited in the previous paragraph includes a link to the original Green Card Lottery post, which is also preserved in the Google Groups archive. I followed the link, and was astonished to see (in the Sponsored Links area on the right side of the page) advertisements for three Web sites that are promoting “Green Card lottery” registrations today. Aaarrgghh!!! I had thought that the Green Card Spam incident was a thing of the past. But it never ended. It’s still around, and probably won’t ever go away.