I can’t believe what is happening.  I am attempting to set up an auto forwarding option in my Yahoo mail account, and it asked me to upgrade my account and pay 19.99/year for Yahoo! Mail Plus!!

What??  Email accounts are free!

If you ever wonder why Google wins the ad wars — its because I spend all my time on on Gmail, chatting and clicking on ads they know I like — and all that time I didn’t pay any yearly fees.

Come on.

My broken driver-side window forces me to open my door often as a substitute.  Normally this is a hassle every time I need to pay a toll or get drive-thru… But today my broken window scored me a new (new to me at least) bluetooth headset!

While stopped at a stoplight, I opened my door and ejected a large and equally disgusting loogie.  Seconds later while preparing a follow-up spit, I noticed a hands free bluetooth Motorola headset laying in the street!

With the new California hands-free cellphone law in effect, my broken window saved me $25!

I hope somebody in their convertible lost it from wind, instead of somebody actually littering by throwing it out the window.  I suppose I’ll find out when I plug it in and it doesn’t work…

It is rare to find valuable items laying around, but here in Silicon Valley — anything is possible…

McDonald’s wants to change the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of McJob.  Since 2001, the official definition, as stated on askoxford.com, is “A low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low benefit, no-future job in the service sector.”

According to Time.com’s article, McDonald’s is leading a crusade with the objective of changing “the definition of McJob to ‘reflect a job that is stimulating, rewarding … and offers skills that last a lifetime.’”

To accomplish this, McDonald’s launched a multi-faceted campaign to petition the OED. Check out Changethedefinition.com… There is even a video to convice you (which was evidently shown in Picadilly Circus), and another one with employee interviews.  First, I’m not sure which McDonalds manager/CEO was drinking coffee atop a skyscraper in the first video, and while I’ve never had a McJob, I’m pretty sure they don’t play that super-happy-upbeat-guitar music everywhere.

Are we going to see the day when money can change the official definition of a word?  Would that change the meaning of a word as it is used in speech?

Lets look at a similar example that some others consider wrong.

We don’t drive in driveways or park in parkways.  So what if someone forced Oxford to change this wrong defintion?  I might then tell you to “come over my house, and leave your car out on the parkway.”  Or, “when driving over here, its best not to take any driveways.”

If I said either of those, there would be quite a bit of confusion.  As well as you’d think I’m an idiot.

For this same reason — the definition in NOT CHANGEABLE.  If it were merely as easy as changing the words in a book, they need to change the whole McPrefix!

I’m guilty of using McAnything in a derogatory manner — “that run has a bunch of McSnowboarders, lets go the other way.” Or, while dining at a fancy restaurant, I received “McPortions of food.”

Both of these example aren’t talking about McDonald’s, or its employees.  When referring to my delicious yet tiny steak, “McPortions” clearly communicates my feelings regarding the amount of food I received.  Just as well, the “McSnowboarders” probably didn’t work at McDonald’s.  Nor did they exhibit any qualities of McDonald’s employees.

As far as McDonald’s proposed new definition- “stimulating, rewarding … and offers skills that last a lifetime.”  Come on.  Show me 100 people who have used McJob with those ideas in mind (without paying them off)–then I’ll agree with you.

And what about McLovin?  Should we change that too?

That’s my blargument…..

I’m not exactly sure what happened, but at 2pm (pacific), I reported spreadfirefox.com showing just under 3 million downloads.  This picture was taken around 1:55 pm:

Now, about three hours later, there are just over 2 million downloads.  About 1 million less than 3 hours ago.  This picture was taken at 4:45 pm:

In addition, Americas count was around 825,000, and now its at 660,152….

I am not sure whats going on, or what happened, but I’m sure we’ll find out as the story develops…

It seems as though someone else saw this a few hours ago and posted it to digg…

Anyone else see or notice this?  If you have screenshots — lets see them!

I want a recount!  Hah..no, kidding…

So its June 17th, Firefox Download Day 2008.  It began about 4 hours ago, 10am pacific, 1pm eastern.  This whole time I haven’t been able to load spreadfirefox.com…until just a few minutes ago.  Apparently they’re almost at 3 million, with America leading the pack at 856k.

I already downloaded my version, though I guess I’ll go do it on the other computers around here…

With 18 hours to go, I wonder how this will pan out…

Frequently, youtube videos will become extremely popular, create serious iBuzz, and become an internet phenomenon.  In the last two weeks, 3 internet videos by CardoWirelss achieved this feat.

The videos feature some people surrounding some popcorn kernels with 3 or 4 cellphones, then while calling all the phones– the popcorn kernels pop.  Its nuts.  You can watch them here, here, and here.

Some brilliant marketing director hit a grand slam with this one.  Duping millions and being shown all over the news, Cardo has truly achieved buzz status.   Only recently, Cardo claimed the vidoes in the descriptions with a link to their site, headlining “Making popcorn with a cellphone only happens in the movies, However if you use a Cardo Bluetooth headset for your mobile calls, you can reduce power output by up to 99%*!”

There is even some lawyerese (pronounced law-yer eez) shoved into the corner.  This disclaimer affirms that the contents of the videos are fake and “humorous optical illusions, designed for entertainment.” And of course, that they’re released from all liability.

Absolutely genius.  Play on something we all use everyday and know little about.  Sure, I know it uses microwaves, and that it makes my head hot if I talk for hours.  These two things combined with some (albeit fake) empirical evidence left me quivering whenever the phone rang.

This marketing guy, and the guy who thought up Firefox’s Download Day 2008 idea should team up.  Their combined powers could be triumphant even against greats like Steve Jobs….

As one of the duped, I’m happy to have an “Ohh, ok” moment of closure.  But seriously, nice.

I wonder if raw popcorn sales doubled in the last week…

I am normally a calm person, but right now, I am fuming.

In an effort to dig my way out of college-student-broke-past-my-eyeballs status, I leveraged good ol’ craigslist to help.  For an hour or so yesterday I diligently photographed all my ‘crap’, wrote short blurbs about them, and posted them to the goliath of classifieds.  For a few hours, things were great.  I recieved a slew of emails from interested buyers all the way up until 7:30pm.

Why did the emails stop?  It seems that someone thought it would be funny to flag ALL my posts.  What did I do?  Seriously?!  They’re not miscategorized, prohibited, spam/overpost, or porn!  They’re all legitimate ads!

Well, Mr. I-think-I-can-flag-craigslist-anonymously-and-get-away-with-it, little did you know, I have a little statcounter code on each of my postings.  It is interesting that all the posts stopped getting traffic at about 19:45 (7:45pm)…but whats more interesting is the final IP addresses are very much the same!!

Oh how the tables have turned!!  You tried to screw me with your nonsense flagging, but you forget that we left privacy in Y2K!

So, what will I do now that I know where you live (on the internet)?  I am not sure, but rest assured that if I do find a way to connect your email with your IP, I’m going to scare the living piss out of you…Somehow.  Or I’ll wait until we can time-travel, and I’ll send an Arnold (Terminator..heh…) back to break your computer over your face.

And if I cant, I’ll at least bitch about it as much as possible.

That’s my blargument….you stupid ass….