Wired Sage

KY3-TV reported:

The video appears to be part of a viral ad campaign by [...], whose signage can be seen in the distant background.  Longoria told the St. Petersburg Times that it was real and it occured after a [...] commercial shoot.

Well, it’s clearly a clever advertising campaign by a shaving company — they’re not getting free advertising here.  And there are many things wrong with the video.  I read elsewhere it was shot in a few minutes.  It was also edited in the same amount of time.  But I will be fair, the IDEA of the video captivated me, and I wanted to believe it.  But many things were blatantly wrong with it.

• What news syndicate doesn’t have their call letters on the banner at the bottom of the video let alone their brand on the microphone?
• Why were all the stands empty?
• Was that a minor league park?

Now I did share this with my friends when I saw it.  I rationalized the above as, “Batting practice at spring training.”  No call letters on the banner because a video guy at whatever-station leaked it because it wasn’t going to be shown otherwise.  I missed the plain mic.

But after a good friend of mine pointed out it was faked (but still cool) I had to do some further digging.

• Fake advertising banners all over the background of the stadium.
• If you freeze frame it, the batter swings, the ball is hit, you see it go off straight (just one small line on one frame), then the CGI ball comes at the reporter.
• If you freeze frame it at the end when he throws the ball back onto the field, the batter is ready for the next pitch, and the pitcher is looking at the batter.

So, it is obviously faked.  Which is fine.  Very cool advertising idea, except for the fact that they lied about it when the truth came to light.  If they fessed up to it, I would have said, “Way cool. I need to buy me some of [that brand of shaving shit].”  But because they lied about it, I’m instead saying, “We’re not stupid. But you’re treating me like I am. I don’t want to buy your [brand of shaving shit] and I probably never will again because I don’t do business with liars — mostly because liars are usually cheats also.”

So, one little lie turns a “Way cool” fake viral video into a “You and your products suck!” feeling from a guy who should be shaving now.

Neutrogena actually makes the best shaving gel ever.  You should go out and try it.

“Guns don’t kill people… Mythbusters kill people… when people try what the MythBusters do on TV at home!”

Jamie Hyneman, in the last episode of MythBusters said “[Guns] kill people.” He’s so wrong. A gun can not do anything by itself. It’s a tool and is wielded by a person — a thinking, breathing, individual who is solely responsible for their actions and the use of that firearm.

I’m saddened to hear this otherwise thoughtful individual say otherwise.

I really like Apple’s new Snow Leopard OS. If you look back through my blog you’ll see my trials and tribulations I went through, lamenting the upgrade. I felt that Leopard was never quite up to par — that it fell short of Tiger in many ways. I really liked Tiger, that was a solid operating system.

But in any good OS, you have to be able to tweak it; customize it in seemingly mindless little ways to make it yours. It starts with naming your machine. There’s a big difference between a machine named “Dilbert” or one named “Loki”. And you want to start from there and expand. Tweaking your background, cursors, file icons, screen animations, you name it… it should be tweakable and fit into your Norse Mythological scheme or your Dilbert Philosophy.

Please don’t misunderstand me where I’m about to go next. I love astronomy. I like Apple’s sense of style and design. But, I never liked the Aurora.jpg that was the default background for Leopard. I wasn’t happy when it became my default background when I upgraded to Snow Leopard from Tiger. And I wasn’t happy when changing my Desktop background as an administrator there wasn’t a checkbox to Change Login Background also.

It annoyed me. I really grew to despise that image. And for months I’ve searched and searched for the solution — how do I eradicate Aurora.jpg from displaying on my mac? Finally I recently became obsessed and refusing defeat I continued searching Google. Coincidentally, Googles new “Bing” tools made the difference and I finally found the solution.

Open up Terminal and enter in the following commands.

cd /System/Library/CoreServices/
mv DefaultDesktop.jpg DefaultDesktop.old.jpg
sudo mv DefaultDesktop.jpg DefaultDesktop.old.jpg
sudo cp /Library/Desktop\ Pictures/Nature/Horizon.jpg ./DefaultDesktop.jpg


I chose to copy the Horizon.jpg image to the DefaultDesktop.jpg image. But you can choose any image you like.

And that is how to change the default background image for the login page on Mac OS X version 10.6 otherwise known as Snow Leopard. And just as a side note and a way to help other “search engine challenged people” like myself, it helps to figure out the file name of the image you’re searching for and not just call it space image, leopard default image, and other generic things like that.

I’m a little disappointed in Apple. I think it was MUCH too complicated for the Mac experience. I think Apple should pay closer attention to making every little thing easy to customize… and easy to restore to its default values in future versions of their Operating Systems.

It will be the little things that matter in the near future too. The devil is in the details. Google is pressing the court and developing Android to complete with the iPhone. It won’t be long until they follow in Apple’s footsteps and take a Linux kernel and make an OS that rivals Mac OS (although Apple used BSD Unix instead of Linux, I can’t see Google making that same choice).

The world has officially come to an end.  The seas have turned blood red, the sky is on fire, and I hear the hoofs of the four horsemen approaching.  I joined Facebook today.

I have always felt that Facebook has it’s place for those who are not gifted with mad-uber-tech and zen-computer-fu skillz.  I never felt a need to join Facebook because I figured that if you knew me, you knew this is my web site (it’s on the bottom of all of my personal emails — just a click away) and you had all my contact information… if  you wanted to talk you just had to send me an email, video chat with me (skype, AOL or Yahoo!), or just use the phone — I’m in the book.  And here, on my own personal domain, in my own little electronic kingdom, I control my privacy completely.  If you don’t know me, my personal information on this site is pretty sparse and I feel confident that you’re not using this site as a resource to stalk me or my family.

Over the years I’ve gotten many friend requests for Facebook and for one reason or another I didn’t join.  Reasons included requests sent to my work email address, personal privacy issues, my impression that Facebook was just another re-branded version of MySpace, and Facebooks own EULA.  My content, whether you find it to be inane drivel or not, is mine and I will not grant license to any company or organization to use it as their own.  Ever!  The only thing left that we can honestly claim as our own is what we think, feel and say.  There’s no way I’m giving that up to a corporation.  Then again, I’m jaded.  I’ve seen people lose their reputations on-line.  I’ve seen people lose their jobs on-line.  I’ve seen people lose their identities on-line.  I’ve seen people lose their life savings on-line.  I’ve seen people lose their children on-line.  The Internet is a lot like New Jersey, it’s got it’s really nice parts, and it’s got drawbacks, and it’s got it’s really bad parts… except the bad parts of the Internet are way worse than Newark ever was.

So, now that you know my true, honest feelings about Facebook, I’m sure you are wondering, “Why the hell did you sign up?” Well, my brother came over for Christmas and, as a Facebook addict, he had to get on my iMac to tag someone’s wall.  I gave him the bah-humbug-facebook-shpil and he said, “Naw! You gatta look here… check this out.” So he gave me the tour.  Everything I’ve seen before except one thing.  One thing made me say, “Crap!  I have to join Facebook now!”

My 89 year old Aunt was on Facebook!

So, I read the EULA again, and three sections of it turned my stomach.  But, my 89 year old Aunt Edna on Facebook outweighed the drawbacks enough to make me join.  So I’ve joined, but there is no way I’m uploading any content of any considerable value to their site.  If you desire anything of substance from me, if you want to read anything other than a “LOL! you goof!” or a “Yeah, we need to grab a beer this weekend.” you’ll have to read it here.  Where, for whatever it’s worth, I own it.  It’s mine, all mine.

With that said, Facebook gets a minimum amount of personal information about me.  If you know me and friend me on Facebook, you’ll always have a quick, easy link to this website and you’ll always have a link to my photo gallery.

Well, that all happened.  It’s all true.  But there was something else.  Aunt Edna was the #1 reason I joined Facebook.  But there was one more thing that tipped the scales in favor of signing up at Facebook — Google Wave.  Google Wave integrates with Facebook.  So I don’t actually have to login to Facebook to participate in the conversations there.  I can do it all remotely, from Google Wave.  That to me is just cool.  I’ve grown to be a google fanboy of sorts, and anything that makes me use Google Wave more, can’t be a bad thing.

Google Wave might actually get me to sign up for Twitter too…

Dog bite!

While I was vacationing in New Jersey I was bitten by a dog.  Actually, first the dog went to bite me but wasn’t fast enough.  Then, I choked him with his collar and made him stand on his hind legs to breath.  When he calmed down and stopped acting like a wild animal I let him down at which time he immediately resumed acting like a wild animal and finally succeeded in bitting me.

I had a very large puncture in my arm which bled profusely.  I decided I needed to go to the Emergency Room.

My Hospital Experience

I had a tetanus shot a few months before during my annual physical.  I also knew the dog was healthy.  So, my the biggest problem I faced was an infection from the bite.  So, before going to the Emergency Room I cleaned my wound and then drove myself to the Hospital.

My father and I drove to the Robert Wood Johnson Memorial Hospital at Hamilton.  I checked in and waited patiently in the reception area.  I was given two pieces of sterile gauze for the bleeding and while I sat waiting I used the sanitary hand foam on the wall to further clean and disinfect my wound.  Within fifteen (15) minutes we were lead back into the treatment area of the Emergency Room.  There we waited approximately forty five (45) minutes until someone trained to practice medicine saw me.  While waiting, I had to go to the bathroom.  After going to the bathroom I washed my hands and the puncture wound on my arm with hot soapy water and foam hand sanitizer.  When I got back to the treatment area where I had been waiting, I disposed of all my bloody towels and gauze in the red bio-hazard garbage can and took another piece of gauze to keep pressed against my wound.  My father informed me I had missed John, the Medical Technician.  I said, “They’ll be back.  They’ll need this room eventually.”

In a few minutes John came back, looked at my wound and was surprised at how clean it was.  He took my vital signs, blood pressure, oxygen, pulse and temperature.  Then we waited some more for the Doctor to come in.  It’s important to note that the Doctor put gloves on his hands, but he never touched me.  He asked me about tetanus and rabies, and I explained that I was only worried about infection.  I came because the wound was large enough I thought it needed to be stitched closed.  He advised me that it was an infection risk if it were closed and I’d just have to live with a scar there. I asked about shaving my arm to keep the hair out of the wound and I was told that was not necessary.

World class health care?

The Medical Technician, John, squirted some triple antibiotic on the wound and slapped a large band-aid on my hairy arm. I picked up a prescription for some antibiotics and was asked how I was going to pay for my visit.  My insurance has a $50 co-pay.  So I gladly put that on a credit card and went to the nearest drug store to fill my prescription.

Not counting the antibiotic that were prescribed (2 pills per day for 7 days) the actual emergency room treatment I received lasted all of two hours.  In two hours the large band-aid I had been given by John had filled up with blood and was leaking.  I had to remove the band-aid, along with a large portion of arm hair that stuck to it, to redress the wound.  At this time I shaved my own arm.  Three band-aids a day is enough reason to look slightly silly by having a bare patch around an extra large band-aid.  Plus, hair trapped in a wound is just plain unsanitary.

The bill…

Today I checked my health care account and I was shocked.  Just to remind you, my medical treatment consisted of being ignored for more than an hour and a half, having my vital signs taken, speaking to a Doctor for all of five minutes about the injury, three pieces of sterile gauze, a smidgen of neosporin, a large band-aid and a prescription for amoxicillin.  The Emergency Room charged my Health Care company $1004.46!  My Health Insurance agreed to pay them $465.00 to which the hospital agreed.  $373.50 of that cost is covered by my plan.  So I’m personally responsible for $91.50.  $91.50 for three pieces of gauze, neosporin, a large band-aid, and an antibiotic prescription!  In my opinion the services rendered were barely worth my $50 deductible!

The solution — Fast Food Medicine

I would have rather walked up to a counter like in any fast food chain to be greeted with a cheerful hello and a list of services and prices up front.  The Doctor’s hourly rate is $300 per hour, PA’s and RN’s are $150 per hour and Medical Technicians are $75 per hour, but that’s only the actual time they spend in the treatment room with you. A Doctor’s time comes to $5 per minute.  Prescriptions have an additional $20 fee — seems fair.  There’s a $20 fee for incidentals used, gloves, gauze, band-aids, etc.  Sure, sure, sure.  My total would have been less than $90. If medical services were priced like this I wouldn’t have a co-pay on my insurance.

I’d love to see the itemized breakdown by the hospital to justify a bill of $1004.46, which I think is just completely absurd.