US Military Rips Away Pet of Deployed US Soldier

Posted on October 13, 2008 by Jonathan

I like to call myself a very patriotic person. I’m also very supportive of our military. But something happened fairly recently, that’s just not acceptable. At all.

Here’s the story: A US soldier whom had been stop-lossed (enlistment term involuntarily extended) found a little tiny puppy.  Through the help with SPCA’s Baghdad Pups she raised this poor scrawny lil guy to a docile dog. This dog, to my knowledge, has no conditions (fleas, rabies, aggression issues, etc). This dog looks really friendly and honestly quite adorable.

Cute, right? Uncle Sam didn’t agree. The commanding officers of the soldier seen above seized the animal (named Ratchet) en route to the airport to go home with the soldier’s family.. a place where he was  guarenteed love and safety.

“It is against military regulations for active duty troops to befriend animals”

I kind of find that to be a little bit of a stretch. There is no provision or clause in the UCMJ that mentions anything about animals with the exception of the prohibition of animal abuse (this is important, keep note of it). However, in a document dated in late 2000 (ie, before the war), the following is listed as a prohibited activity per General Order 1A:

“Adopting as pets or mascots, caring for, or feeding any type of domestic or wild animal.”

That being said, these are different times. These soldiers don’t have many friends out there. Yet these animals can offer unconditional love and care for them. Also, note, it’s the SPCA that is handling the transportation and such of these animals. They are not being transported with tax payers money.

According to a press release by the SPCA:

“It is against military regulations for active duty troops to befriend animals – Soldiers can face immediate court-marshal and some even see their animals brutally murdered by a direct gunshot to the head from commanding officers who will not bend the rules.”

I sincerely hope the SPCA is embelishing that. Because if the military is killing animals, especially when it’s not a misery kill (animal is mortally wounded, rabies, no chance of survival, etc), that is definitely animal abuse, which the military claims to take very seriously. Also, not only would that be cruel and unusual punishment to the animal, it is also cruel and unusual punishment for the soldier. That’s just not acceptable.

Personally, I suggest everyone start talking to their state congressmen.

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New in Google Labs: Mail Goggles

Posted on October 8, 2008 by Jonathan

I think what I love most about Google is their sense of humour. Yeah, they are a huge corporation, but they know how to have fun. I think their most recent project in Labs is actually meant to be funny, but it might be suprisingly effective.

Have you ever sent an email that you didn’t mean to send? Maybe a big rant to your supervisor at work, or some “constructive” (not so much..) criticism to your mother-in-law about her cooking? You got in trouble didn’t ya? Well, not anymore!

Mail Goggles is a Google Labs addon for G-Mail. How it works is before you’re allowed to click send, you must answer some variable-difficulty math questions. So you type up your big complaint to your girlfriend about her snoring, then as you’re doing the math problems, you’re like.. “wait a minute, I shouldn’t send this.” It gives you some time to think and verify your intent. Like I said, I think this was more or less a product of the Google Team’s quirky sense of humour, but also surprisingly effective.

You can change certain variables. What time and what days should you prompted with a question? WIth this, you can determine that you usually send stupid emails when you’re really sleepy, so you could set it between 11:00 PM and 6:00 AM. Pretty good idea.

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My XBox 360

Posted on October 4, 2008 by Jonathan

I’ve always wanted one… but I haven’t been in the position to be able to just shell out $400+ on it. Well I got one.. for free.

No, this isn’t one of thos scams a la freeipods.com. You could say the 360 was given to me as a gift. This is the story:

I was talking to one of my friends, Josh, and he flat out told me he was going to mail me his 360 for my birthday. Well, there’s a bit more to it. See, Josh had a 360 but it broke… so he went and picked up a new one. Unbeknownst to him (at the time of the new purchase) the broken 360 had an extended warranty on the exact condition it was suffering from. Knowing this, he offered to send me the broken one (plus 1 game!). I agreed. So after a few weeks of waiting (he’s located in Trinidad and Tobago), I finally received the 360. Actually, FedEx decided to toss it on the ground and leave, instead of handing it to a person after receiving a signature… since you know, thats what was paid for…. but I digress.

So, I plugged in the 360 and tested to make sure the problem suffered was consistent to the condition that Microsoft has universally agreed to fix for an extra 3 years (making my unit still overed). It was. The Red Ring of Death. So I contacted Microsoft and requested a repair. Just the other day, a mostly empty box showed up. In the box contained a strip of tape, some package padding, and UPS shipping label.

So now my next step is to pack the 360, put the label on it and ship it. Then wait for Microsoft to get around to fixing it.

Regardless if it is broken, I am extremely grateful. Josh sent me an easily fixable (by microsoft, anyway) xbox 360. He even paid for most of the shipping to get it to me. If he wanted to make some money, he could’ve sold it “as is” on eBay and made like $50.

I will update you as soon as Microsoft returns the unit to me.

Thank you, Josh!

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Movie Watch: Blindness

Posted on October 4, 2008 by Jonathan

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So last night, I decided to go see Blindness. This guy at work said it was going to be good. … I didn’t like it. And I’ll tell you right now not go to the theaters to see it. If anything at all, wait for it to come to Netflix so you don’t spend money specifically on it.

I will say though, the movie has a very interesting premise. What if blindness was an infectious disease? Well of course, the government would resort to containment and quarantine those who are infected. Lock them up in wards. Heavily ration their food, put armed guards all around the building, et cetera. Though, the clear up any misconceptions, this is not any type of zombie or undead film. It’s an “everyone is turning blind, our government is breaking down” film.

The infected storage area is comprised of wards that fit maybe 30 some people per ward. For the most part, we follow ward number #1, which contains the characters that were identified early in the film. The other wards fill up with blind people (obviously) but we don’t learn too much about the others, except ward #3. There’s one trick though. In ward #1, there’s a woman who can see, but no one knows (save for her husband). This woman sets up a guideline system so that the blind can navigate from ward to ward. Pretty soon, the compound goes from looking like your typical medical facility (bare, cold, white), to a disgusting dumb where people defecate and relieve themselves on the floor. It truly is gross, but I guess that is probably what would happen.

Pretty soon, Ward #3 takes over the compound. Some how they acquire a gun (seriously wtf?) and the “king of ward #3″ becomes the “king” of everyone. So Ward #3 takes all the food and says that everyone must pay to be fed. Don’t have any money? Oh that’s okay, in their infinite benevolance, they will allow you to pay with your jewelry and the little valuables you might have on you. Oh what about the next day? No more valuables? That’s okay, they’ll take your women.

Yes, that’s right. One of the most disturbing scenes in the entire movie is a brutal mass-rape scene. Actually there’s two of the scenes. It’s really unsettling to watch. You don’t see anything really, you just see bright white silohuettes and such, but it’s still awful.

Anyway, moving away from the story teller mode to the actual review mode, the movie is quite boring. It takes awhile to get in any kind of momentum. And it’s ending is just as worse. It leaves the viewer without the typical movie-ending satisfaction. The viewer leaves the theater no different than when they entered the theater. The story doesn’t keep you attached the story, it’s not a gripping or enticing story; well I suppose that mass rape scene might induce your stomach to tighten and turn.. but that’s an entirely different kind of grip.

In the end, I felt this movie to be a bit of a waste of time. Too bad, though. The idea and premise has a very interesting concept. Also, with a cast like Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover, you can’t go wrong… well I guess maybe they just did. Oh well.

Oh and they never named any of their characters: Doctor, Doctor’s Wife, man with eye patch, etc.

Recommendation: Netflix it.

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Hilarious Facebook Group

Posted on October 2, 2008 by Jonathan

So, I just stumbled across a Facebook group that made me lol a little bit. It’s a group simply called ‘FUCK THE POLICE’ yup. That’s right. All capital letters. According the group profile, they are a “political organization.” One more LOL.

Here’s the description of the group they provided.

In the United States, us as American citizens have the right to express our opinion in many ways, however some ways are illegal more than others, we do have one thing they cannot take away from us and that is the 5th admendment, it is our right as U.S. citizens to express our opinion by freedom of speech, anything you read or write in this group is OPINION not fact, an example is (in my opinion all cops are possible child molestors) this group is to state your opinion, share bullshit stories, and to join together as a nation against the cops that are dumb fucks, dont get me wrong though not all cops are some are actually pretty cool if you get to know them, this group is for the police that think they are hardasses because the have a gun and a badge
There’s …uh.. a few things wrong with this poorly constructed, English-teacher’s-nightmare-from-hell paragraph. First off:
In the United States, us as American citizens have the right to express our opinion in many ways, however some ways are illegal more than others
Seriously.. uh. wtf? How do you have the right to something that is illegal. That doesn’t even make sense. Losing credibility and gaining LOL points and “Wasting my time” points. Let’s move on,
we do have one thing they cannot take away from us and that is the 5th admendment, it is our right as U.S. citizens to express our opinion by freedom of speech

So uh.. you do know that the fifth admendment refers to protections against self-incrimination,  establishment of Miranda rights, establishment of Eminent Domain and definition of double jeopardy. Now you just sound uneducated. I think he is referring to the first amendment… but I thought everyone knew that. Guess not. But I digress..

anything you read or write in this group is OPINION not fact, an example is (in my opinion all cops are possible child molestors)

Well golly gee, that first half sounds somewhat intellgient. However that second half there, yeah.. that’s just baseless and in bad taste. Stereotype much? The average Joe Shmoe has more of a chance of being a predator.. police officers have to go through detailed background checks.

To me, this very laughable. It looks like a bunch of future anarchist kids being resentful to those with authority simply because they have authority. Don’t get me wrong: Cops can be jerks. Some are abusive. Some definitely fit the in category of police brutality. But come on, ‘I think all cops might be child molesters.’ I’m calling Whiskey Tango Foxtrot on that one..

I do find it noteworthy (and very LOL-worthy) that the creator of the group has a profile picture of him chugging something. Probably beer. Oh yeah, his network… it’s a high school. We must have some big law abiding citizens here. Thanks for the laughs though, kids.

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Movie Watch: Lakeview Terrace

Posted on September 21, 2008 by Jonathan
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Lakeview Terrace staring Samuel L Jackson and Kerry Washington was a fairly well done film.

Chris and Lisa are a young couple and they just bought their first house. It’s beautiful; wonderful house, bright neighborhood. Or so they think. Their next door neighbor, Abel Turner, is not too fond of interracial couples. He wreaks havoc to the couple by shining lights into their bedroom at 3 AM, allegedly slashing their car’s tires and making rude statements at their housewarming party.

Turner REALLY hates Chris and Lisa. Probably Chris more than Lisa. The worst part is Turner is a cop, so it’s not like they can call the police when he is doing stuff to them.

This was a movie that I liked. It had a little bit of humor but contained the action you’d expect from a SLJ film. Some of the dialog was a little drawn out and silly but still contained integrity. Many people believe this is a rip off of a Ray Liotta film, Unlawful Entry, but it is actually loosely-based on a true story. All in all, I liked this and was an enjoyable 1 hour 50 minutes.

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How To Get the Old Facebook Back

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Jonathan

So, I’ve stumbled upon a trick to restore the old Facebook.

I’d like to remind everyone who does this that Facebook can just as easily restore everyone’s back to the new Facebook and remove this workaround. I don’t know how long this method will be working. Minutes? Hours? Days? Trust me, Facebook will catch on to it.

Regardless. First you need to add the Facebook developer application. Personally, I’ve had this application since day 1, so I could skip this step. Once you’ve done that, click this link to “opt out” of the new Facebook. You might have to refresh to see the change after you fixed it. You will be restored to the old facebook design. You will see the “Click here to see the new Facebook” bar again and be able to click it to go back to it.

Again, I don’t know how long this will be available for. So get it while it’s hot!

EDIT: Facebook fixed it. Sorry guys. Back to the new version.

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Two Great New Google/G-Mail Labs Features

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Jonathan

How many times have you said something like “Okay so-and-so, I am attaching this week’s productivity report.”… but then you forget to actually attach. The person replies with “wtf?” and you feel like a total moron. Google has just rolled out “Forgotten Attachment Detector.” It reminds you about attaching a file if it detects you intended to. I guess all this does is check for keywords in the message body.

The other feature is definitely quite handy. I get a lot of crap to my inbox. It isn’t really spam, but I don’t read it. Stuff like “Enclosed is your 10% off coupon to [some book category/genre I don't care about] at Borders!” Well, often I find myself just selecting mail and going to “More Actions” then “Mark as Read.” Well the newest Lab feature actually put’s a “Mark as Read” button right ontop of my inbox. This will save me some time and aggravation. Especially because sometimes I clicked “Star” or something like that. Oops.

Thanks Google!

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The New Facebook

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Jonathan

Ah, yes. The Facebook redesign. it’s been out for quite some time now. Up until Friday I’ve had the option to still use the old Facebook, but my account has been since locked to the new Facebook. This is Facebooks attempt to push the new design so they no longer have to support and maintain the old design.

The feedback and response has been mixed but generally negative. Most people don’t like the new design. I’ll tell you why. Change. Yes, it’s something new. Humans are a creature of habit and routine. If this routine changes, their feeling of structure collapses. Also, another thing people don’t like is because it’s very buggy.

From a developer’s standpoint, I feel bad for the people on the product team. They have worked hard trying to excite and create a new Facebook for people to enjoy and in return they get ‘Anti-New Facebook Groups’ and really nasty feedback from spoiled brats. Take my word for it, a lot of work went into designing and programming this.

Now on the user standpoint. Aethestically, Facebook looks much better. Light colors, semi-transparency, rounded corners. It looks nice, but it’s like everything has changed location, so it will take some getting used to. But then again… remember the last Facebook changed? Yeah, everyone was doing the same thing with complaining. Now they are holding on so very dear to it.

The profile page. The most core component of Facebook. The wall, formerly a way of posting Comments between users, has been combined with the user’s news feed. This actually removes the clutter but also will cause confusion for people not used to the idea of combining the two components.  Profiles now have tabs which does remove the page-scrolling but increases the clicking. So it might be worse.

Remember some people who had like a thousand applications installed (I wish they wouldn’t)? Well, boxes generated by applications and such have been moved to the “boxes tab.” These tabs are kind of good. Let’s say you want to find someone’s screenname. Originally you’d have to scroll through all of their applications, wall posts, et cetera in order to get to it.  Now you just click “Info” and it’s quite easy to find

Facebook is a little buggy. The biggest one actually completely interferes with a task. On some profiles, I do not see a link to “View more pictures.” It simply isn’t there. It’s not that they don’t have any pictures, because they would If i were to be on the Facebook.. it’s just for some reason a link isn’t being rednered for them. I am sure Facebook will patch this and the other bugs and glitches soon.

A note to the New Facebook team. You’ve done a lot of work and a lot of people are ungrateful and unaccepting of the work you put out. It’ll just take some getting used to, that’s all. Keep up the good work.

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Comcast Woes

Posted on September 14, 2008 by Jonathan

For years Comcast has had an invisible data-transfer cap that seemed to vary from node-to-node. Basically if you transfer more than [some number you dont actually know] gigabytes of data (uploading/downloading) in a month, you get a phone call. If you do it again, they disable your account. I think at the time it was for a year.

Many people have had a problem with this. I mean, hey, you don’t know how much data you can transfer before it’s considered abusive. It’s kind of well.. just lame, Comcast. So it seems Comcast finally caved and have announced that effective October 1st, 2008, the data transfer cap is 250 GB monthly. This is a bit, it depends on what you use the internet for. Someone who just checks their mail has very little to worry about. Someone who watches multiple high definition movies and TV shows a day might have to curb their habits.

This kind of affects me. I have my brother who uses the internet for whatever, I use internet frequently for work, communications and programming where I constantly have many connections to open remote command line interfaces. And also my dad uses the internet. And also, there’s no way to accurately monitor your internet transfer quota easily.

I guess the fact that Comcast was forced to specify their caps is a victory in itself.

Also, Comcast has been enforcing network administration & management policies that involve throttling users that use BitTorrent and other P2P software. This means that these users who use those services will have slower upload/download speed and generally their requests will be deprioritized. Comcast claimed that it was doing this only during peak times to prevent other users from being affected by the heavy bandwidth consumption. But somebody posted some photographic evidence that their connection was throttled constantly all day.

Comcast was recently ordered by the FCC to cease this practice as it violates Net Neutrality regulations. Comcast is now attempting to sue the FCC and overturn the order… because it’s “unfair.”

I predict the downfall of Comcast and it will probably run out of business within the next decade.

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