IRON MAN 2 - AC/DC - SHOOT TO THRILL

New video for the new movie...filmed live last month in Buenos Aires during their Black Ice World Tour.

too cool.

Cell Carriers Quick Reference Numbers - Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile

So I saw this and thought it was kind of handy to have around...It's the quick dial numbers for carrier help/info etc on your cell phone. Verizon wireless, AT&T, T-mobile and Sprint. Enjoy

Sprint Help Numbers
-Sprint billing summary: dial *4
-Customer service: call 1-800-Sprint1

AT&T Help Numbers
-Number Porting: 1-888-898-7685
-Customer Support: 1-800-331-0500
-General Billing: 1-800-222-0300

T-Mobile Help Numbers
-Account Balance: dial #225#
-Minutes Used: dial #646#
-Texts Used: dial #674#
-Customer Service: dial *611 or 1-800-937-8997

Verizon Help Numbers
-Account Balance: dial #225
-Minutes Used: dial #646
-Make a Payment: dial #768
-Customer Service: dial *611 or 1-800-922-0204

The house that blew up in Knoxville Tennessee

So a friend/co-worker of mine sent this to me and it's insane...

Apparently, this was near one of our coworkers in West Knoxville and this is what is left from an ~ $1,000,000 6,00 sq ft house. There was a natural gas leak inside at the fireplace and it exploded. The parents were actually blown out of the house and survived with some minor injuries, but their 18 year old son was asleep in the basement and was killed. Tragic.

Check your gas stuff if you have it...

Knowing when an Egg is Rotten - Rotten Egg test

Can you eat that egg?

If not sure you ought-ter,
then place it in water.
If it lies on its side,
then it's fresh; eat with pride.

After three or four days,
at an angle it lays.
But, it still is a treat,
so go on and eat.

Ten days, stands on end,
in your baking 'twill blend.
'Cause it's definitely edible,
in your baking, incredible.

But, if it floats on the surface,
that egg serves no purpose.
'Cause a floater's a stinker!
Out the back door best fling 'er!

SENA Show Pics...(pre) Day 1...PICS

On my way to the online marketing conference at SEMA (which has been awesome so far), I've ran across a few vehicles, that are pretty sweet! More to come this week... Check em out...

Best Weblinks of the morning

So browsing around the net today, here are some of the links that interested me the most...

• Smartphone Total Cost of Ownership Comparison
• Mafia Killing caught on Camera (video - disturbing, but nothing like what you see on TV)
  
• Explaining DRM to someone who doesn't understand...
• Facebook's new Privacy Policy
• Happy 40th, Internet

SNL Obama Skit - too funny!

Toyota Recall

Toyota says it will recall 3.8 million vehicles in the United States to address problems with a removable floor mat that could interfere with the vehicle's accelerator and cause a crash.

The company says it will be the largest recall in its history. Owners could learn about the safety campaign as early as next week.

Toyota and the government warned owners of Toyota and Lexus vehicles about safety problems tied to the removable floor mats. They say the mats could interfere with the vehicle's accelerator and cause a crash.

The recall will affect 2007-2010 model year Toyota Camry, 2005-2010 Toyota Avalon, 2004-2009 Toyota Prius, 2005-2010 Tacoma, 2007-2010 Toyota Tundra, 2007-2010 Lexus ES350 and 2006-2010 Lexus IS250 and IS350.

Owners should take out the floor mats on the driver's side and not replace them.

Grammar

Got to thank my dad (who is part Indian) for this one...


On his 60th birthday, he received a gift certificate from his wife. The certificate paid for a visit to a medicine man living on a nearby Indian reservation who was rumored to have a wonderful cure for erectile dysfunction. After being persuaded, he drove to the reservation, handed his certificate to the medicine man and wondered what would happen next.



The old man slowly and methodically produced a potion, handed it to him, and with a grip on his shoulder, warned, "This is powerful medicine and it must be respected. You take only one teaspoonful and then say '1-2-3..' When you do that, you will become more manly than you have ever been in your life, and you can perform as long as you want."


He was encouraged. As he walked away, he turned and asked, "How do I stop the action of the medicine?"



"Your partner must say '1-2-3-4,'" he responded. "But when she does, the medicine will not work again until the next full moon."



He was very eager to see if it worked so he went home, showered, shaved, combed his hair, put on lots of cologne, took a spoonful of the medicine, and then invited his wife to join him in the bedroom. When she came in, he took off his clothes and said, "1-2-3!"

Immediately, the glory of his manhood filled the room.. His wife was so excited that she began ripping off her clothes. And then she asked, "By the way, Honey, what was the 1-2-3 for?"



And that, boys and girls, is why we should never end our sentences with a preposition!

Otherwise you will end up with a dangling participle...heh.

Direct to God....

A man in Topeka, Kansas decided to write a book about churches around the country. He started by flying to San Francisco and started working east from there.

Going to a very large church, he began taking photographs and making notes.

He spotted a golden telephone on the vestibule wall and was intrigued with a sign, which read 'Calls: $10,000 a minute.' Seeking out the pastor, he asked about the phone and the sign.

The pastor answered that this golden phone is, in fact, a direct line to heaven and if he pays the price he can talk directly to God.

The man thanked the pastor and continued on his way. As he continued to visit churches in Seattle, Denver, St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, and around the United States, he found more phones, with the same sign, and the same answer from each pastor.

Finally, he arrived in Georgia, upon entering a church in Alma, Georgia which is only about 30 miles from Waycross ....behold - he saw the usual golden telephone. But THIS time, the sign read 'Calls: 35 cents.'

Fascinated, he asked to talk to the pastor, 'Reverend, I have been in cities all across the country and in each church I have found this golden Telephone and have been told it is a direct line to Heaven and that I could talk to GOD, but in the other churches the cost was $10,000 a minute. Your sign reads only 35 cents a call. Why?'

The pastor, smiling benignly, replied,

'Son, you're in the South now, God's Country....It's a local call.'

American by Birth - Southern by the Grace of God.

heh

IBM masters teleportation like in Star Trek, kind of.

OK, so i figured that since the new Star Trek movie is out and doing well, I'd share a little info i had found a while back on teleportation from IBM. It's an interesting (ahem, boring) article that states it is possible and has been done and is coming soon to home (or tele-lab) near you!

Or does it? I guess you'll have to read it for yourself to see...

Quantum Teleportation

Teleportation is the name given by science fiction writers to the feat of making an object or person disintegrate in one place while a perfect replica appears somewhere else. How this is accomplished is usually not explained in detail, but the general idea seems to be that the original object is scanned in such a way as to extract all the information from it, then this information is transmitted to the receiving location and used to construct the replica, not necessarily from the actual material of the original, but perhaps from atoms of the same kinds, arranged in exactly the same pattern as the original. A teleportation machine would be like a fax machine, except that it would work on 3-dimensional objects as well as documents, it would produce an exact copy rather than an approximate facsimile, and it would destroy the original in the process of scanning it. A few science fiction writers consider teleporters that preserve the original, and the plot gets complicated when the original and teleported versions of the same person meet; but the more common kind of teleporter destroys the original, functioning as a super transportation device, not as a perfect replicator of souls and bodies.

In 1993 an international group of six scientists, including IBM Fellow Charles H. Bennett, confirmed the intuitions of the majority of science fiction writers by showing that perfect teleportation is indeed possible in principle, but only if the original is destroyed. In subsequent years, other scientists have demonstrated teleportation experimentally in a variety of systems, including single photons, coherent light fields, nuclear spins, and trapped ions. Teleportation promises to be quite useful as an information processing primitive, facilitating long range quantum communication (perhaps unltimately leading to a "quantum internet"), and making it much easier to build a working quantum computer. But science fiction fans will be disappointed to learn that no one expects to be able to teleport people or other macroscopic objects in the foreseeable future, for a variety of engineering reasons, even though it would not violate any fundamental law to do so.

In the past, the idea of teleportation was not taken very seriously by scientists, because it was thought to violate the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, which forbids any measuring or scanning process from extracting all the information in an atom or other object. According to the uncertainty principle, the more accurately an object is scanned, the more it is disturbed by the scanning process, until one reaches a point where the object's original state has been completely disrupted, still without having extracted enough information to make a perfect replica. This sounds like a solid argument against teleportation: if one cannot extract enough information from an object to make a perfect copy, it would seem that a perfect copy cannot be made. But the six scientists found a way to make an end run around this logic, using a celebrated and paradoxical feature of quantum mechanics known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect. In brief, they found a way to scan out part of the information from an object A, which one wishes to teleport, while causing the remaining, unscanned, part of the information to pass, via the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect, into another object C which has never been in contact with A. Later, by applying to C a treatment depending on the scanned-out information, it is possible to maneuver C into exactly the same state as A was in before it was scanned. A itself is no longer in that state, having been thoroughly disrupted by the scanning, so what has been achieved is teleportation, not replication.

As the figure to the left suggests, the unscanned part of the information is conveyed from A to C by an intermediary object B, which interacts first with C and then with A. What? Can it really be correct to say "first with C and then with A"? Surely, in order to convey something from A to C, the delivery vehicle must visit A before C, not the other way around. But there is a subtle, unscannable kind of information that, unlike any material cargo, and even unlike ordinary information, can indeed be delivered in such a backward fashion. This subtle kind of information, also called "Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) correlation" or "entanglement", has been at least partly understood since the 1930s when it was discussed in a famous paper by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen. In the 1960s John Bell showed that a pair of entangled particles, which were once in contact but later move too far apart to interact directly, can exhibit individually random behavior that is too strongly correlated to be explained by classical statistics. Experiments on photons and other particles have repeatedly confirmed these correlations, thereby providing strong evidence for the validity of quantum mechanics, which neatly explains them. Another well-known fact about EPR correlations is that they cannot by themselves deliver a meaningful and controllable message. It was thought that their only usefulness was in proving the validity of quantum mechanics. But now it is known that, through the phenomenon of quantum teleportation, they can deliver exactly that part of the information in an object which is too delicate to be scanned out and delivered by conventional methods.

This figure compares conventional facsimile transmission with quantum teleportation (see above). In conventional facsimile transmission the original is scanned, extracting partial information about it, but remains more or less intact after the scanning process. The scanned information is sent to the receiving station, where it is imprinted on some raw material (eg paper) to produce an approximate copy of the original. By contrast, in quantum teleportation, two objects B and C are first brought into contact and then separated. Object B is taken to the sending station, while object C is taken to the receiving station. At the sending station object B is scanned together with the original object A which one wishes to teleport, yielding some information and totally disrupting the state of A and B. The scanned information is sent to the receiving station, where it is used to select one of several treatments to be applied to object C, thereby putting C into an exact replica of the former state of A.

To learn more about quantum teleportation, see the following articles and links:

• C.H. Bennett, G. Brassard, C. Crepeau, R. Jozsa, A. Peres, and W. Wootters, "Teleporting an Unknown Quantum State via Dual Classical and EPR Channels", Phys. Rev. Lett. vol. 70, pp 1895-1899 (1993)
(the original 6-author research article).
• Tony Sudbury, "Instant Teleportation", Nature .362, 586-587 (1993) (a semipopular account).
• Ivars Peterson, Science News, April 10, 1993, p. 229. (another semipopular account).
• Samuel Braunstein, A fun talk on teleportation
• Q&A on Teleportation by BBC News Online science editor David Whitehouse
• Wikipedia article
  
• Experimental Articles
  
• D. Bouwmeester et al. Nature 390, 575-9 (1997) (photons)
  
• D. Boschi et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 1121-1125 (1998) (photons)
  
• A. Furusawa et al. Science 282, 706-709 (1998) (coherent light field)
  
• M.A. Nielsen et al. Nature 396, 52-55 (1998) (nuclear magnetic resonance)
• I. Marcikic et al. Nature 421, 509-513 (2003) (photons, long distance)
  
• M. Riebe et al. Nature 429, 734-737 (2004) (trapped calcium ions)
  
• M.D. Barret et al. Nature 429, 737-739 (2004) (trapped beryllium ions)
  
• R. Ursin et al. Nature 430, 849 (2004) (photons, long distance)
  
• Theoretical Articles
• G. Brassard Physica D 120 43-47 (1998) Teleportation as a quantum computation
  
• Gottesman and I Chuang Nature 402 390-393 (1999), teleportation as a computational primitive
• X. Zhou, D. Leung, I. Chuang Quantum gate constructions from teleportation-like primiitve
• L. Vaidman quant-ph/0111124 Using teleportation to measure nonlocal variables
  
• For recent experimental and theoretical articles, do a title search on "teleportation" in the ArXiv E-print Archive

http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/

If you like baseball, you ain't seen nothing yet!

I came across this article on espn.com about a guy who is a switch pitcher! Yes, you heard me right (and left). He throws both ways! You have to read this article...very cool. There's a picture there you have to see...

How do you beat a guy who throws righty and lefty? You don't.

You'll probably never witness an unassisted triple play in your lifetime, right? (There have been only 14.) Or see an intentional walk with the bases loaded. (Six.) Or watch one player hit two grand slams in an inning. (Once.)

But you can see something right now that hasn't been around in baseball since the late 1800s: a switch-pitcher.

His name is Pat Venditte, he's 23, and he's pro baseball's only ambidextrous pitcher. This living piece of history is more than a YouTube star; he's throwing almost daily for the Charleston RiverDogs, the Yankees' Single-A club. And he's not just throwing: He's blowing through hitters like a Cub Scout through Skittles. At one point in April, the closer's ERA was 0.00 in 6 1/3 innings, and he hadn't blown a save in five games.

Last season, he had 23 saves for the Staten Island Yankees, with a 0.83 ERA. And best of all, the kid can relieve himself!

He wears a specially made six-fingered Mizuno glove with two thumbs. (His Dominican teammates call him Pulpo, Spanish for "octopus.") When he warms up, he throws four pitches righty and four lefty. You should see the opposition when he does it. It's as if they had seen a ghost. Wait—did you just see that? If a righty is up, he throws righty, and vice versa. Whenever Venditte switches sides, everybody in the Charleston ballpark is encouraged to switch seats.

"I've got to remember to tell people which way he's throwing," says RiverDogs radio play-by-play man Danny Reed. "Never had to do that before."

There are a lot of "never befores" with Venditte. The pitching coach has to file two reports: Venditte the lefty and Venditte the righty. And he should; they're two different pitchers. The righty has a 90 mph fastball, a curve and a nice change. The lefty comes sidearm and has a murderous slider and a change. He's a five-pitch pitcher! Once, in Little League, the other team's coach came up to Pat Sr. and said, "Your twins pitched a heck of a game."

His college pitching coach called him Dexter, and opposing managers call him an ulcer. What's the point of saving your righthanded pinch-hitter for the ninth if Venditte is just going to switch to righty? Strategy is futile. Remember in The Princess Bride when, halfway through the sword fight, Inigo Montoya suddenly says, "I know something you don't know: I am not lefthanded!"?

All this was Pat Sr.'s idea. When his son was 3, Dad noticed Pat threw balls with both hands. So he fed it. He had him throw footballs both ways, punt both ways, kick field goals both ways. Pat was homeschooled by his mom, Jan, who had him write both ways and eat both ways.

We might be looking at the future here, people. "I get calls and letters from people wanting to know how they can do it with their kids," says Jan. "But you have to do it when they're very young. If you try it at 9, they won't listen."

For Pat Jr., it's meant a way to chase his dream of playing in the Show someday. "I know I wouldn't be this far without it," he says. "I don't have dominating stuff from one side or the other. I need both."

Not that it doesn't cause problems. If he walks a hitter, fans will start hollering, "Try the other side!" People want him to sign autographs with both hands. And switch-hitters will switch batter's boxes, making Venditte switch the glove, starting a cat-and-mouse game that can go on for 10 minutes. Minor league umps now have the Venditte Rule: At the start of an at-bat, the pitcher must declare his throwing arm, then the hitter can pick his side, with each man able to switch once. Phew.

There's been only one other such pitcher in the past century: Greg Harris, who threw one scoreless inning for the Expos, in 1995. More than 120 years ago, three guys are believed to have done it occasionally. The best was Tony Mullane, who stood on the mound with no glove and the ball cradled in both hands so nobody would know which way he was going to pitch until his windup. I've had bosses like that.

But Venditte, a four-year letterman at Creighton, has a chance to be the best. If the Yankees bring him up—and at this pace it could happen within three years—they won't need a pitch count. Venditte can throw every day! And when manager Joe Girardi needs to call the bullpen, he can say, "Okay, get a righty and lefty throwing. In other words, get Pat." Of course, how would Girardi signal the bullpen? Touch both arms? Either way, it's a steal for the Yankees. As one scout says, "This could be an economical two-for-one." (Hey, Pat, ask for two salaries.)

-Rick Reilly, espn.com

So over the not quite complete first 100 days...

OK - I am so over a bunch of crap. 1st I am still in shock that America voted in one of the most incompetent people to serve as President in recent memory. The first 100 days is almost up and most people I know who voted for him (including lots of things I see and read), wish they would not have voted for him. I mean really, who brags about being gifted in speaking but has to always read a teleprompter. He has no gift...he is a stooge that simply stands up and talks. I can't believe there is going to be 4 years of this....and when his teleprompter stops - so does he...and tells people to fix it...why can't he just keep speaking? Really, is he not intelligent enough to continue to inform people about 'his' policies and ideas? And to allow people to fly Air Force One to NYC for a photo op at Ground Zero...? I mean, really? And why are certain people still in Congress? I think there are more and more stupid people out there in the world who don't pay attention to politics or government affairs who shouldn't be allowed to vote. I think everyone should pass a test to demonstrate their knowledge of an ability to understand just how our country's government works, how we got here, and what makes this country the one country that everyone wants to come to.

I hope that in the next election in a couple of years that there is a big turnaround or this country is heading for a nose dive. Oh and another thing...read this article...even Democrats think this is wrong...

I'm so frustrated i can't even type anymore...

VP Joe "The Joke" Biden

read this link - enough said:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/17/bidens-list-political-blunders/

More Proof of my Chinese Takeover Theory...

So, for those of you who haven't heard about my theory on the Chinese's subtle attempt at taking over the US in an interesting and very possible way through Chinese foods and various other outlets, see my previous post dated Aug 7, 2007. Of course when I typed that I had no idea Obama would become President and that our country as a whole would fall into this whole socialist/communist mess, but my theory is still holding up and proving very plausible....even if it was initially a joke, or should I say genius?. ;)

Anyway, unless you've been under a rock, I'm sure you've heard of the huge [Chinese] GhostNet cyber-ring bust the super sly Canadians (who knew? eh?) found out about a few days ago. [[ see this and that...]] One thing that's interesting is that China does use "the web" as part of its military strategy... But let me get back to my main point back in 2007. I just saw another article today that falls right in line with the whole "chinese sell stuff to us to get us sick and then take over theory". Only this article is not about food...ummmm, it's about the house you or your loved ones are living in... enjoy.

Chinese Drywall Poses Potential Risks to American Homeowners, Apartment Dwellers

At the height of the U.S. housing boom, when building materials were in short supply, American construction companies used millions of pounds of Chinese-made drywall because it was abundant and cheap.

Now that decision is haunting hundreds of homeowners and apartment dwellers who are concerned that the wallboard gives off fumes that can corrode copper pipes, blacken jewelry and silverware, and possibly sicken people. --------->>>read it all....

Google's new Autopilot for email is pretty nifty. You have to check this out!

So, this is some cool stuff...

Imagine getting some emails from people and you're away from the computer and they are answered for you by the computer in a natural language response... how awesome is that? You don't even have to be there...

Check this stuff out!

http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/landing/cadie/

Oh yeah, today is April 1st...I'm sure that has nothing to do with this... heh.

nice.

Beyonce fans 'among least intelligent but Beethoven fans are cleverest' - How dumb are you?

This is GREAT! I ran across this article reading the news (as I tend to do) and went and checked out the site/charts/graphics. It is really funny and cool. Think of your friends and what they listen to and how smart you think they are...this is really good. It has totally pegged people...hahahaha

Beyonce fans 'among least intelligent but Beethoven fans are cleverest'

the article



Could one's musical tastes say something about intelligence? How about SAT scores?
http://musicthatmakesyoudumb.virgil.gr/
the site

check it out...

Secret Message Found In Lincoln Pocket Watch

Now this is too cool. Something straight out of National Treasure...but without all the whizbang blow up romance stuff...hahahaha

from FoxNews

WASHINGTON — For nearly 150 years, a story has circulated about a hidden Civil War message engraved inside Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch. On Tuesday, museum curators confirmed it was true. A watchmaker used tiny tools to carefully pry open the antique watch at the National Museum of American History, and a descendant of the engraver read aloud the message from a metal plate underneath the watch face.

"Jonathan Dillon April 13 - 1861," part of the inscription reads, "Fort Sumpter (sic) was attacked by the rebels on the above date." Another part reads, "Thank God we have a government."

The words were etched in tiny cursive handwriting and filled the the space between tiny screws and gears that jutted through the metal plate. A magnifying glass was required to read them.

Jonathan Dillon, then a watchmaker on Pennsylvania Avenue, had Lincoln's watch in his hands when he heard the first shots of the Civil War had been fired in South Carolina. The Irish immigrant later recalled being the only Union sympathizer working at the shop in a divided Washington.

Dillon's story was passed down among his family and friends, eventually reaching a New York Times reporter. In a 1906 article in the paper, an 84-year-old Dillon said no one, including Lincoln, ever saw the inscription as far as he knew.

Dillon had a fuzzy recollection of what he had engraved. He told the newspaper he had written: "The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a president who at least will try."

For years the story went unconfirmed.

The watchmaker's great-great grandson, Doug Stiles, first heard the tale of the engraving from his great uncle decades ago. He said the story had reached extended family as far away as Ireland.

A few months ago, he used Google to find the New York Times story, and last month he passed the information along to Smithsonian curators, who knew nothing about the engraving.

On Tuesday, watchmaker George Thomas, who volunteers at the museum, spent several minutes carefully opening the watch as an audience of reporters and museum workers watched on a video monitor.

"The moment of truth has come. Is there or is there not an inscription?" Thomas said, teasing the audience, which gasped when he confirmed it was there. He called Stiles up to read his ancestor's words, drawing smiles and a few sighs of relief.

"Like Pearl Harbor or 9/11, this was the reaction he had (to the Civil War,)" Stiles said of the inscription.

Later, Stiles said he felt closer to the 16th president.

"My gosh, that was Lincoln's watch," he said, "and my ancestor put graffiti on it!"

Lincoln's family kept the watch until it was donated to the museum in 1958. It was Lincoln's everyday pocket watch, one of the president's only valuable possessions he brought with him to the White House from Springfield, Ill., said Harry Rubenstein, curator of the museum's politics and reform division.

"I think it just captures a bit of history that can transform you to another time and place," he said. "It captures the excitement, the hope of a watchmaker in Washington."

The watch will go back on display at the museum by Wednesday as part of the exhibit, "Abraham Lincoln: An Extraordinary Life." It will have a new label to tell Dillon's story and a photo of the inscription.

I must be part Japanese...hahaha b/c I think the iPhone is junk too.

Well, I get it now!! I have not gotten an iPhone, I've not really thought they were that super cool and have been in the minority with most phone people because I don't think they are all people crack them up to be...guess it must be because I'm either a) part Japanese or b) technically ahead of my time. hahaha

This also explains why my newest phone I have (LG) does mutlimedia texting, takes awesome pictures, makes movies and yes I can watch TV (live TV!) on it (and do email, games, blah blah blah all the other basic stuff)...all that plus I bought it off ebay without having a contract...wow. Oh yeah, and I can do it all with only one hand...heh.



http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/02/why-the-iphone.html



The article above is awesome! Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone...



My favorite quotes from the article:

"Japanese citizens possess high, complex standards when it comes to cellphones. The country is famous for being ahead of its time when it comes to technology, and the iPhone just doesn't cut it. For example, Japanese handset users are extremely into video and photos — and the iPhone has neither a video camera nor multimedia text messaging. And a highlight feature many in Japan enjoy on their handset is a TV tuner."

"So that would suggest that in Japan, carrying around an iPhone — an outdated handset compared to Japanese cellphones — could make you look pretty lame."

hahaha
sayonara

Parents Magazine...too funny.

I ran across this and just had to share it...classic.