Pirate Jokes

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I would like to share my two favorite pirate jokes with anyone who has not yet heard them:

A pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel attached to his crotch.

The observant barkeeper calls over to him, “Hey friend, do you know you’ve got a steering wheel attached to your crotch?”

“Arrrr,” says the pirate, “I know, it’s been drivin’ me nuts all week.”

There once was a famous pirate captain, well known for his fearlessness in battle. One day, the watchman called out to the captain, “Sir, there’s an enemy ship approaching!” The captain called to his first mate, “Prepare for battle, and fetch me my red shirt!” The enemy ship engaged them, but the captain, dressed in his red shirt, fought valiantly, and his crew was able to repel the invaders.

The next day, the watchman called out again, “Captain! Ten enemy ships on the horizon!” Once more the captain called for his red shirt, and once more he led the crew into battle, and they emerged victorious.

That night, after the tales of the heroics were recounted, the first mate asked the captain privately, “What is your secret, sir? And why do you always wear the red shirt?”

“Well, lad,” said the captain, “I suppose I can tell you, but don’t let the rest of the crew know. I wear the red shirt so that, if I am wounded, the blood will not show, and the crew will think me invincible, and fight onward with courage.” The first mate nodded, amazed with the captain’s cunning.

The next day, the watchman calls out, “Captain! One hundred enemy ships on the horizon!” The captain stood firm, his face a mask of pure calm. Then turned to his first mate, “Get me my brown pants.”

Googlerama

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Directions: Type “[your first name] is” (with the quotes) into a Google search then pick out your favorite responses.

  • Trevor is the epitome of the archetypal mad scientist.
  • Trevor is an exceptionally close-knit district of people… Come and see why Trevor is right for your family!
  • Trevor is more “African” than any other student attending his high school.
  • Trevor is by no means the only person who’s excavating the dump.
  • Trevor is prone to making publicly offensive statements.
  • Trevor is a metaphor for children that comes complete with paper doll.
  • Trevor is fully committed to low cost milk production.
  • Trevor is a very old-fashioned “traction engine” (farm tractor) who runs on coal.
  • Trevor is basically one step up from Pet Toad, he’s a cheap creature that eats damage.
  • Trevor is the funniest guy in the world.

What Business Can Learn from Open Source

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Important lessons about work and life from open source and blogging (and Paul Graham): What Business Can Learn from Open Source.

The atmosphere of the average workplace is to productivity what flames painted on the side of a car are to speed. And it’s not just the way offices look that’s bleak. The way people act is just as bad.
[…]
The basic idea behind office hours is that if you can’t make people work, you can at least prevent them from having fun. If employees have to be in the building a certain number of hours a day, and are forbidden to do non-work things while there, then they must be working. In theory. In practice they spend a lot of their time in a no-man’s land, where they’re neither working nor having fun.

Consumating

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Aubi and I stumbled across an amusing quasi-personals site called Consumating. It started as a dating site spoof, but seems to have taken off. The tagline, “Hot nerdy girls and indie rock boys! With glasses!”, was enough to grab my attention. The unique thing about the site is that it uses tags and random “Question of the Week” contests to allow people to describe themselves rather than boring old singles profiles. Also, don’t ask me how, but the photos seem uniformly bigger and more attractive than other such sites.

From a technical/business standpoint, I found two things interesting about the site:

  • The use of the Ajax approach to design the site. Basically, it uses techniques similar to Google Maps and Flickr to enrich the end-user experience and improve responsiveness.
  • The Question of the Week pages, which allow users to vote on the cheekiest answer to each of the oddball questions, feature Google AdSense ads. I imagine this is a great source of targetted ad revenue. For example, the ‘What’s your plot twist in, “George W. Bush: The Movie?”’ question features various ads for (anti-)Bush merchandise. Lots of specific ads + lots of impressions -> lots of ad clicks -> lots of $$$. All for the cost of posting a stupid question.

GemStone Facets

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I just read a really interesting whitepaper about an object database for Java called GemStone Facets. It’s basically like virtual memory for persistent Java objects; objects are faulted into local memory from a shared transactional cache. The downside is that it requires a custom JVM, currently based on the Sun JDK 1.4.2 codebase. Supposedly, they’ve released a free Linux version, but the license does not appear to be easily accessible. (The download is a 111MB install script.) Still, it’s an interesting idea.

July 27, 2005

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Agenda:

  • SIDE BAR’s one-year birthday party:

    Just a reminder to let you know that it’s been a year now and we want to celebrate! Tomorrow, Wednesday, July 27th starting at 8pm. There will be food, booze and awesome treats to be given away! $1 Drafts while supplies last!
    XOXO,
    the side bar

  • The Minderchucks @ Room 710 @ ~10pm

Occasional Acid Flashback

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After we quoted half the movie at lunch again today, a friend pointed me to the complete screenplay of The Big Lebowski on the web. Truly a wonderful thing to have bookmarked in case of an emergency or dispute.

I also read on IMDB how badly the networks butchered the TV version. Apparently one of my favorite lines was replaced with “You see what happens when you have fun with a stranger in the Alps?” Simply atrocious.

Stop Big Cable

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If you’re fed up with constant cable rate hikes, poor service and a lack of local and independent programming, the FCC needs to hear from you — right now.

The FCC may allow the three largest cable companies to control up to 90 percent of the cable TV and broadband market in the United States.

I just sent a message to the FCC. It only takes a few minutes. I hope you’ll do the same.