The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for November 2007

Busted By Facebook

by 5 Comments


The youth of today. Oy.

Who says Facebook is the province of the young? Increasingly, the 30something bosses of naive recent college grads are proving adept at turning the social network against its earliest adopters.

Kevin Colvin, an intern at Anglo Irish Bank‘s North American arm, was busted when he told his manager, Paul Davis, that he’d miss work due to what colleagues took to be a “family emergency”. Davis turned up the photo above, freshly posted to Facebook from the Halloween party Colvin apparently missed work to attend, and attached it to his reply, copying the rest of the office as he did it.

For the full story click here.

One More Victory Over The Nazis

by Leave a Comment

Through the years I have read many different tales about things that happened during WWII. Those tales contain some of the most horrifying moments in humanity as well as some of the most heart warming.

The Shmata Queen tipped me off to a story that I think many of you will find to be quite interesting.

BERLIN — As a young girl, Katrin Himmler asked her grandmother about the man in a black suit in a photograph hanging on her living-room wall. Her grandmother didn’t say much, but she cried.

The man in the picture was Ms. Himmler’s grandfather Ernst, a brother of Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler. The little that Katrin’s family did tell her about her grandfather, who disappeared during fierce fighting in Berlin in 1945, was that he was apolitical.

Decades later, Ms. Himmler discovered that her family’s story was untrue. Her father, long suspicious, encouraged her in 1997 to go dig in wartime archives that the U.S. had recently returned to Germany. Ernst Himmler, she learned, joined Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ party as early as 1931. Two years later, he joined the SS guard, the special unit responsible for carrying out many of the Nazi regime’s worst atrocities.

Now 40 years old and married to an Israeli Jew, Ms. Himmler says she was shocked when she found out that Ernst was in the SS. “It might sound strange, but I never considered this possibility,” she says.

For the full story please click here.

Related Links:

Giving Hitler Hell
Hitler’s Plan To Use Sex Dolls
Hitler’s Gas Problem

The Attack of The Apple Computer Sycophants

by 7 Comments

Yesterday I wrote a post I called P.C.’s Versus Apple Computers that has generated a ton of feedback. While I didn’t write it for the purpose of generating controversy I can’t say that I am surprised by it either. The opening paragraph is a good description of a segment of supporters of Apple Computers:

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I was a devoted member of the Apple Computer cult. I was a dyed-in-the-wool Kool-aid drinking guarantor of the superiority of Apple computers versus a P.C. At that time I couldn’t stand to use a P.C. It was an affront against my sensibilities.

The post wasn’t ever intended to be a discussion of the technical merits of operating systems. Had I wanted to compare Linux versus Windows versus Mac OS I would have done so, but I didn’t and I don’t care. You want to find that, go seek out Slashdot, Linuxworld or MacNN.

Anyhoo, I thought that I’d share some comments from some of the keyboard banging monkeys whose toes I stepped on.

Here are two from the post:

At 11/12/2007 12:42:00 AM, Mstr. E. Anderson said…Ya know, I have absolutely no doubt that after 10 years of drinking MS Koolaid you feel that a PC with Windows as an OS is better–even though you just hint at why but don’t actually make any explanations.

More power to ya! Believe whatever you want.

Just one thing: P.C.= Personal Computer. Dell makes PCs. Apple makes PCs. Dell’s PCs run Windows (or you can get some form of Linux). Apple’s PCs run the Mac OS (and can also run Windows, many flavors of Linux, and other OSes).

So your article is NOT “P.C.’s Versus Apple Computers.” If you wanted to discuss that you would discuss hardware from Dell, Gateway, Lenovo, HP, Sony, and Apple. But you didn’t do that.

Your discussion was MS Windows vs. Apple Mac OS.

Respectfully, your total lack of understanding of the difference between hardware and OSes makes your entire “random thought” nothing more than Microsoft FUD.

Mstr E. Anderson,

Read the comment above. You’re right. Bill Gates is paying me hundreds of thousands of dollars to spread MS FUD and propaganda. Jobs and company just don’t pay as well which is why I didn’t praise them.

and

At 11/12/2007 01:30:00 AM, Anonymous said…

This blog defines randomness in all it’s vapid glory. You may just as well have posted with a headline “Concrete Versus Wood fence Posts” In fact you could have just left it at the title and forgotten about the rest – there’s just nothing there; no explanation, no insight, no nothing….
Web waster.

To my dear anonymous,

You’re anger is displaced. You spent 2.5 hours actively surfing through my archives. What’s that say about you.

Perhaps I’ll update this later on and share more feedback. We’ll have to see what happens.

Correspondence Regarding a Job Offer Part II

by 4 Comments

Part one of this post can be found here. For the sake of simplicity here is the last piece of correspondence I included in the prior post:

Dear Mr. Jack Ofalltraydes,

We are pleased to accept your position. In order to process your employment we need your banking information. Please send me to this at Johnson.Craig@Alum.com or you will not be functional.

God bless your person,

Mr. Johnson Craig
“Sole Proprietor”
Craig Textiles…

So I spent a little time trying to determine what the most appropriate response to Mr. Johnson Craig would be. This last note reminded me a bit of my friend Lloyd Dobler who once said:

Lloyd Dobler: I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.

My inclination was to just cut and paste this as part of my response, but something compelled me to try and come up with my own reply. Here it is:

Dear Mr. Johnson Craig,

By your last email’s voice I see that you wish to process me for employment purposes. I understand that you need my banking information so I shall do my best to fulfill your request to explain my banking information.

I used to have a mason jar that I filled with spare change. For years I kept it beneath my bed, but not under my mattress because that made it too lumpy. I called it the Bank of Jack.

The Bank of Jack was one of my best inventions. Unfortunately my sister Jill found it. When I saw her with my bank I yelled at her. She took it and ran up a hill. I ran after her. I almost caught her at the top of the hill, but I tripped and fell down and Jill came tumbling after.

Sadly the Bank of Jack broke and I was forced to try something else. Since I could trust Jill I went to the city and opened up an account at a place called This Old Man. And wouldn’t you know it, with knick, knack, paddy whack, this old man earned interest on my money.

Does this answer your questions? Please let me know and I will be happy to provide more knowledge from my well.

Regards,

Mr. Jack Ofalltraydes

Apparently Mr. Johnson Craig was not pleased with my answer.

Dear Mr. Jack Ofalltraydes,

We have made a serious offer of trade and employment for our growth and benefit. I must know your account information so that we can access it to place your deserved rewards and earnings inside it.

If you do not respond within one day we shall reserve this offer of employment.

God Bless you,

Mr. Johnson Craig
“Sole Proprietor”
Craig Textiles…

Now I wouldn’t want my dear friend Mr. Johnson Craig to be disappointed in me so I sent him a response:

Dear Mr. Johnson Craig,
It is important to me that you know that I do not think that this is a joke. When I received your offer I made a video that shows my excitement over this position. Tell me specifically what your heart desires and I shall strive to help you achieve it.

Regards,

Mr. Jack Ofalltraydes

I am curious to see if he actually answers this last note. I was going to try to come up with something more clever, but I got bored. We shall see.

I Am At War

by 4 Comments

I feel a bit like Snoopy shaking his fist at the sky. “Curse you Red Baron! I’ll get you next time!!” The Shack is officially at war on multiple fronts. Within a few short days I have seen my Treo die, my TIVO explode, an attack on my car and a number of other tiny irritants.

I am dying slowly. I am bleeding from a thousand cuts. No single one is large enough to kill me, but I haven’t the resources to stop the bloodshed either. I feel like I have been ambushed. It is me against overwhelming numbers. Everywhere I turn I see smoke. Everywhere I look the sky is filled with ash and the smell of sulfur.

I don’t give up. I won’t give up. I don’t know how. I’ll keep sending my men to crash into the breach again and again and pray that the dawn comes sooner than later. Robert Frost keeps coming to mind:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I have chosen to pay Charon for passage into Hades. I am going to tear down the gates of Hell and unleash my own inner demons upon those that stand before me. I am done with this nonsense. I am tired of this war of attrition so I am going to up the ante. You may call this hyperbole. You may deem it hysteria.

As for me, I call it something else.

Don’t tell me about how overcoming great challenges builds character. Don’t speak to me in platitudes or stories about perspective. I haven’t the time or the inclination to listen. The mood is upon me and all I can do is run with the moon and howl. Screams of anger, screams of rage and the sobs that are stuffed down where none can hear are my companions.

And if it should all work and if I should still be standing when the daylight comes you’ll see a different man. But I can’t quite say who or what he shall be. Through the mist I seem glimpses but the day is still so far away I don’t dare lose focus.

When I close my eyes I can still hear the bombs falling. I can hear the screaming of the wounded and smell something so putrid it makes my stomach roil.