Archive for January, 2007

What’s Your Destiny Quiz

So, I had a pretty good time making the quiz yesterday. I felt that I might have rushed through that one, though, so I wrote another quiz. I think this one is a little better. So, give it a try. Choose Your own Destiny

Career Decisions: What to Be When I Grow Up Aptitude Test

So, recently I have been faced with the question of: "what do I want to do for a living?". This question sucks. I mean, how do you know what you want to be? Do you do what runs in your family, as in the olden days (dad's a baker, your a baker?), are you lucky enough to inherit a family business that you may or may not want to run and ruin? Do you join the Army and have the government tell you what to do for a living? Or, are you like most of the people my age who go to college and study something that they like to study? And when you start, there are seriously a million jobs in the market and everyone wants to hire you? And then, when you graduate, there are some jobs, but they are in Antarctic and you don't want to move to Africa to go to work every day. And even if you did, the pay sucks because it's an entry level position. And then, when you finally get the job you think is really the job you spent $40,000 on college for, job of your dreams that you are going to love forever and ever amen, you hate it with ever fiber in your soul. So, how do you decide what you want to be? What do you want to do with life? And when you do decide, how do you get someone to hire you? And pay you to do something that you love to do? So, I am going to make an aptitude test. If other sites can make stupid tests that everyone and their brother depend on for instructional guidance in life, so can I. Click here to take my quiz: Career Aptitude Quiz

Mozilla Not Making a Profit

I recently found out that Mozilla is a non profit corporation. Thats right the same Mozilla that makes Firefox. Mozilla's mission is to improve the internet experience for the public benefit. I would say that they are doing a really good job of that because Firefox is used my millions of people and totally kicks IE's ass. Mozilla started as a small corporation but due to the overwhelming success of Firefox have turned into a multimillion dollar corporation. That corporation however, is totally owned by the non profit Mozilla foundation and revenue generated from Firefox is put back into funding Mozilla's mission. This is probably why Firefox is so much better than IE. Rather than giving CEO's and stockholders all of the profit and paying their programmers nothing, Mozilla reinvests into hiring the top programmers and staff to make sure their products attain levels of excellence. It is refreshing to see a company that views its profits as they good it is doing for the benefit of others rather than how much money it can rake in. Non profits are becoming more professionalized everyday are showing that they can be as competitive as for profit organizations without sacrificing their commitment to enriching other people's lives.

Five T-Shirts That Can Improve Your Life

T-shirts are the apex of human fashion design. Although man and womankind have clothed themselves in many different materials, in arrangements ranging from the functional to the impractical, from the plain to the ebullient, nothing tops the simple comfort and versatility of the T-shirt. You can even use yours as a laptop case. Need proof? Below are five T-shirts that can actually improve you life. window blinds T-shirt1) Can a T-shirt with a simple, elegant design, help you find your soul mate? The answer is yes. Pull the cord, and suddenly it is apparent why this shirt is so brilliant. By raising these shades, you can send a subtle but sexy message to that attractive person from across the dance floor (or bingo parlor, whatever, I'm not going to tell you how to live your life). Made by a Japanese company with an inscrutable name, it's a good illustration of the kind of clever, art-and-craft ideas you buy Make Magazine and shop at Ikea for. Unfortunately, it's only available at museum shops in a few select cities.
digital watch T-shirt2) Watches have become completely superfluous. Everything has a clock on it, and you are never at a loss for the current time. In my house, if I want to know what time it is, I can check the stove, the microwave, my phone, my MP3 player, my computer, and my wife's extensive clock collection. The point is, watches are superfluous, and if you try to get a watch that actually is useful - like a calculator watch - you will be ostracized for your poor fashion sense. So this shirt is perfect, in that it makes owning a watch even more optional than it already is. How will it improve you life? Well, having thrown away all your watches, if you ever find yourself adrift in the open ocean, you can use this accurate time piece to calculate longitude. You can see it at ThinkGeek.
dry-erase T-shirt 3) One of the age-old dilemmas of the human condition is the problem of communication. Homo sapiens is a social animal, yet outside of speech, we are given few ways to express ourselves. And things like text-messaging and sign language don't count, because they are unnatural abominations. T-shirts can solve this problem. They impart super powers - specifically, telepathy. This shirt uses an advanced dry-erase technology to allow you to communicate your thoughts without speaking a word. Finally you can transmit abstract, complicated concepts directly from your brain (or actually your neck, from the placement of the thought bubble) out to the world. More information at Blue Fish T-shirts.
Math cheat sheet shirt4) Unlike sombreros, tabi shoes, and saris, T-shirts are useful and universal. So it is fitting that this next shirt helps you with the universal language: mathematics. That's right - although languages and religions vary from place to place, when it comes time to build a bridge or send up a satellite, everyone uses the same math. But how are you supposed to remember your sines, cosines, and tangents when you haven't used any of that stuff since high school? Now you don't need to, you can bring a math crib sheet everywhere you go. Don't even get me started on calc--what the hell was all that supposed to be? It's sold by a place called Computer Gear.
Air-guitar T shirt5) This last shirt will make you wonder how you have lived you life wearing such boring, non-musical shirts. What would you say if I told you that all the time you have spent at Van Halen concerts rocking the air guitar from the bleachers no longer will go to waste? Strum the air, and a chord is produced - almost as if a guitar was there. Dr Richard Helmer a team of researchers at CSIRO Textiles and Fibre Technology have made your dream a reality by inventing a functional air-guitar T-shirt. Although actually, there is some controversy over who was the true inventor of the air-guitar shirt. As far as I can tell, it's not yet available for sale. So you will have to wait, most likely with bated breath. If the prospect of a magical air-guitar T-shirt does not make you gaze skyward and sigh, then you, my friend, must already be dead inside. Special bonus: Want more ideas? There's a book, Generation T: 108 Ways to Transform a T-Shirt, that should give you a few little projects to try.

Finally we can Blame 9/11 on Gay Marriage

It has taken five years and two wars, but finally, author Dinesh D’Souza has found the real cause of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.  Saddam Hussien?  Nope.  Lax airport security?  Sorry.  Osama bin Laden and the extreme religious conservatives who plotted and carried out the attacks?  Not so much. The real culprit is gay marriage and Fear Factor.  D'Souza explained on the Colbert Report. [youtube]rqIXBRTwcUI[/youtube] Now, some might say that advocating that we become more like the terrorists in order to avoid terrorist attacks is sort of like giving in.  But that's just silly.  Let me explain why with a simple analogy everyone can understand : Imagine you are back in grade school and out of no where another kid hits you in the head with a rock, then says: "That's for all the times you came over to my house and broke our yard gnomes.  Also, your T-shirt has GI Joe on it and that means you are an idiot because Thundercats are obviously better than GI Joe and Panthro rules!" How should you respond?  Now my first thought would be to go over to a totally different kid's house and start breaking his yard gnomes in revenge.  But it turns out, the best course of action is to stand up, brush the dirt and little rock pieces out of your hair, and tell your attacker: "Of course, you are right, Thudercats is way better than GI Joe, though I must point out that Lion-o is truly our lord and savior.  This shirt is a hand-me-down from my brother, I blame him for the whole situation!" That way, the disagreement is cleared up immediately, and instead of a schoolyard enemy you now have an ally to help you plot the brutal beating of your own brother. Isn't it funny how things like this end up?  It truly takes a world-class intellect like D'Souza to figure things like this out, but once he says it, it so obvious!  It's just like when the Wright brothers had their first flight, and the next day everyone walked around saying, "all it took for man to fly was an airplane!  Why didn't I think of that?"