Time Machine

One of the current "joke" emails flooding the internet is an email showing pictures from a 1977 JC Penny catalog. Given that the email referred to "blog fodder" I decided to search around and I've found the original post. Definitely worthy of a read.

Strap In, Shut up and hold on -- we're going back.

If you remember this stuff... If you wore this stuff... I'd suggest that you not share those identity attributes -- unless you don't mind being the butt end of many jokes for the rest of your life.

Tags : identity / time machine

Harry Potter Mania

Today, my daughters (Lauren and Jessica) were quite grumpy when heading off to their eventing horse camp (even more grumpy than they usually are in the morning). Their problem stems from a lack of sleep as they were up till quite late last night so that they could see the midnight showing of the new Harry Potter movie "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix".

The movie was great (perhaps even more so since I knew I was seeing it about 3 hours before Eve :-) -- she's on the west coast, though I wouldn't be surprised if she few to the UK just to be able to watch it last week during its world premier). Warner Brothers have done another good job transferring the magic of the book to the screen.

The movie was true to the book, fun and quite enjoyable. It felt a bit long in a few places, but the books are getting quite long as well. Of course, I haven't read the books recently so now I'm all confused about what happens in book 4 vs 5 vs 6. I guess I'll have to go back and read them again before I start in on book 7. We had to order two copies of the last few books in the series (including 7) in our house to ensure a reasonable wait time for each of the readers -- we will all read it.

What amazed me about this movie is that we got there around 10:15 or so (almost 2 hours before the star -- much earlier than we had gotten to Star Wars Episode III's midnight showing and got great seats for that movie) only to find that the theatre was already 2/3 full. The entire middle was pretty much full and we were relegated to one of the sides. Pity the people who only showed up about an hour before start time as they had trouble finding 2 seats together anywhere in the theatre.

Tags : entertainment / Hogwarts / Harry Potter / Warner Brothers / Star Wars

You know you're an addict when....

Back in February, I wrote about getting hooked up with Where's George after finding a dollar bill in my change with some strange markings on it.

I quickly went out and got my stamps and started marking some bills.

Well, 4 months later (today), I am totally hooked on it. So far I have:

• entered 727 bills worth a total of $5,177 (many of them are $1s).
• gotten 44 hits on my bills, most of them coming in the last month or so (seems you need to build a certain amount of inertia before the hits start rolling in)
• achieved a "George Score" of 637.36, placing me above the 85th percentile of Where's George users!!!!!
• joined Friends of George where I get to pay extra money for the joy of entering my bills and tracking them :-).
• started paying cash for many transactions that I had been paying with credit cards (so I can mark more bills and cause money to flow).
• learned that it is better to mark small bills ($10s, $5s, and $1s) as they circulate alot more than $20s, $50s, and $100s which frequently just go to the bank awaiting a future withdrawal.
• learned that it is better to get a stamp that needs little to no alignment (rather than the nice circular stamp I bought that goes around the treasury seal and must be aligned somewhat carefully -- taking way too much time when trying to stamp a stack of 100 or 200 $1s).

The real signs of my addiction:

• The anticipation that I have when checking emails looking for hits.
• The groans that I hear from my "friends" when I pull out my wad of marked bills trying to exchange them for unmarked bills in their pockets.

In any case, I still find it lots of fun and my friends seem to be mostly amused with my addiction. If you're interested, go get a stamp and enjoy marking your bills!

Tags : Wheres George / money

Bizarre Circumstances

Clearly the boy has missed his calling (or at least he can give up his day job anytime).

Tags : identity / humor

Mail Fraud

This week I've been off in the UK (in sunny, friendly Ipswich which is northeast of London) attending a Liberty Alliance Technology Expert Group (TEG) face-to-face meeting. Paul and I have been giving one of the other attendees (who works for Sun, but shall remain nameless) a hard time the entire week about an interesting work item that we want him to take on.

We discussed talking to his boss offline and having our management board reps approach his boss as well and clearly had him worried about the possibility.

So I used my mail server to forge a note from his boss stating:

Hubert,

Robin has advised me that he can no longer participate as the co-chair of the PPEG group within Liberty. Given that Sun needs to maintain it's visibility Liberty for our customer base, Eve and I have spoken and it seems that you would be an ideal candidate to step up as the next Chair of the TEG.

We need to talk further when you're back in town.

Bill

We thought about talking directly to Bill afterwards and getting him in on it so he could send a note to the nameless one with a "Why haven't you responded to my mail?" -- perhaps he will read this and do so :-).

Moral of the story: Don't believe email, especially if the sending server isn't within your own domain. George says there should be a thunderbird plug-in that will red-flag any email coming from one of my cahillfamily.com domain, but I pointed out that I host like 15 or so domains for friends, so I could easily work around such a restriction.

Tags : identity / fraud / Liberty / Liberty Alliance

Web 2.0 Validation

John Kemp sent me, amongst others, a link to the Web 2.0 Validator:

I noticed that my score was quite low (only 8 out of 51), so I thought I would do what I can to join the metasystem, grab the long tail and improve my overall ratings :-).

Warning: This page is in public Beta at this point.. Don't even imagine you'll find any useful information here. It's just an attempt to get myself a better rating from the validator (and it worked!!!).

Of course, I don't understand this "less is more" mentality, but it's possible that AJAX will come to the rescue with their prototype.js file.

I even looked to put a google map here (to get a point for using the Google Map API, but it appears that blogger blocks scripts within blog entries (although I can put scrips in the template).

But I don't think I meet the 30 second rule here. Perhaps I should try using Ruby while I'm podcasting through Rocketboom, but I don't know what the RDF would be nor how to fit it into the Semantic Web. If only Del.icio.us would find me but if not I can just keep poking around with Firefox. Perhaps when I add prototype.js to my scripts on Flickr I'll get noticed by the Venture Capitalists and they can invest money in my nitro-based micro-blog startup....

All that may be unnecessary if I can get Dave Legg to help me build an architecture of participation mash-up on isometric.sixsided.org.

This POST is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License -- All other rights (and the rights to all other posts) are reserved!

Tags : Web2.0 / fun

Where's George?

When I came home from Portland last week, I noticed some red and blue writing on one of my dollar bills when I took it out of my pocket.

So I went to WheresGeorge.com, entered the bill along with its current postition (Waterford, VA) and found that it had recently been added in Beaverton, OR -- not a short distance away, but easily explainable given that I just came back from Portland).

After poking around a bit, I became hooked and went about figuring out how to more actively participate. First off I had to get my own stamps so I could stamp my bills. Unfortunately, WheresGeorge.com doesn't sell stamps (according to Wikipedia, the secret service investigated and told them it was illegal because it amounted to advertising on money). Poking around a bit (googling "WheresGeorge Rubber Stamp") I found several places, selected Stamp-Connection.com and ordered my stamps. They came in yesterday and I'm off and running, entering all of the cash lying about.

I am concerned a bit about dealing with the cash that I get during the day... What if I spend it before I enter it... Should I log it immediately... Should I only spend marked cash and save the unmarked cash for marking when I'm home... Gosh... It's like blogging & watching readership stats... It's addictive..

Of course, for those privacy weenies out there, I do realize that I'm giving up some of the anonymous properties of my cash transactions... but it's fun!

Tags : WheresGeorge / money / traceability