I'm not usually up to date with what's going on in the world, and it's because of things like this:  Don Imus, the guy who came up with the phrase "a face made for radio", called the Rutgers women's basketball team a bunch of nappy-headed hoes.  I wouldn't normally even notice a "national event" like this, but it's impossible to ignore.  It's the breaking story on every major news network, and it's even permeated the seedy underbelly of morning shock jock talk radio.  Each day brings a new aspect of the story to light, and it's an absolutely exhilarating story to be a part of.  Not really. 

I have some advice for the old Don-ster:  Blame it on the movie Happy Feet.  One of the major songs in the movie about a dancing penguin was Stevie Wonder's "I Wish", which tells the story of when Stevie was a "little nappy-headed boy".  Happy Feet probably made some good money at the box office, so now would be a great time to capitalize on your offense with an easy lawsuit.  Man, I'm a genius. #entertainment

The Dilbert guy wrote a thing a few weeks ago about his former job at the front desk of a hotel: 

During my college years, I worked two summers as a desk clerk for a resort in the Catskills. That's where my boss taught me that one of the services we offered was listening to irrational whining. He explained that certain customers enjoy complaining. To them, it's not so much about getting a solution to the problem as it is the complaining itself. The resort catered to people's vacation needs, and if complaining was what they needed, it was our job at the front desk to listen to it.

I witnessed a strikingly similar event as I checked out of a hotel recently.  The hotel was a popular vacation spot in a warm, sunny area.  However, it was March, so the average daily temperature didn't far exceed 80°F and the nighttime temperature hovered around 55°F.  As I was signing the receipt and checking out, a woman approached the front desk (keep in mind this was around 8am).  Below is a transcription of the entire conversation, beginning to end, that the woman purposefully woke up early that morning to complete: 

Woman:  "I've been to this hotel before and the pool wasn't always this cold." 

Ok, so maybe the hotel clerk said something in response.  I didn't quite notice it.  I was too enthralled by this complaining woman.  I signed my receipt and left, so maybe a lengthy, detailed discussion ensued.  But in all likelihood, the complaining woman got up that morning, took a shower, got dressed, walked to the front desk, and voiced her complaint ... for the sole purpose of complaining. #business

I'm no historian, but I feel confident enough to make the following prediction:  Based on several trends in human history, oil will eventually be unnecessary and irrelevant, thereby solving most current world conflicts and corruption, but also creating several completely new ones.  After reading through this Forbes article about the world's most corrupt countries, it seems like somewhere around 75% of the corrupt nations became corrupt because of their natural supply of underground oil.  And because of rich nations' competitive need for oil, these otherwise poor, oil-rich countries have a steady flow of money, but very little governmental regulation and transparency.  Putting tons of money into the hands of a few unwatched people is a great way to breed corruption. 

Now for the history part:  Oil is a relatively new commodity.  Even 100 years ago, there was quite a bit less demand for it.  Going back 150 years, I doubt there was any demand at all.  Instead, there was demand for sugar cane, tobacco, and gunpowder.  Going back another 150 years, there was demand for spices and fabrics.  [These two facts might not be completely historically accurate, but you get the idea.]  Looking at any major time period in history, there was something everyone wanted, only a select few could get, and so everyone fought over it.  Gold.  Land.  Military strength. 

I wonder what's it's gonna be in a few years.  I doubt there could really be much confidence even if we were able to make a prediction.  I doubt there were people in the Middle East in the 1890s saying, "You just wait.  In a few years, people will be begging us for this black liquid."  What's it gonna be in 2050?  If history tells us anything, it tells us there's pretty much no pattern or logic.  Sure, each commodity was something useful and was worth good money.  But as quickly as tobacco became the world's favorite crop, it became the bane of our existence when we finally figured out its relationship to lung cancer and heart disease.  My prediction:  Oil's replacement will be something that seems useless right now but which would provide a benefit if there was enough of a use for it.  I'm thinking something like mud.  Or maybe ice.  Think of all the wars that could be fought to get some valuable real estate in Antarctica for the purposes of mining ice. #business

This is offensive for at least 3 different groups of people, but I can't help laughing at headlines like this from the Onion: 

Trey Wingo Apologizes For Accidentally Calling Champion Lady Vols 'Pat Summitt's Marauding Army Of Monstrous Lesbians'

I wish I didn't laugh at that, but I did. #sports

Lucien Gambarota is an Italian inventor who came up with a way to harness wind power without the need for large, expensive turbines.  His MotorWind turbines consist of several 25 cm plastic fans linked together to generate power from as little as 2 m/s (4.5 mph) winds.  This CNN article has more info.  Similar to my idea for small scale electrical generation.  (via Neatorama) #science

I don't travel enough or consistently use the same services to build up enough miles or points to do anything.  I have a few here and a few there, but none of them add up to anything.  I had a few points on an American Express card, so I decided to move them to my Continental OnePass account to try to get them to add up to something useful.  I went through Continental's web-based process to do this, but I received the following error: 

We're sorry, but a minimum transfer of 2,000 Membership Rewards points is required. You have 2,240 Membership Rewards points in your Membership Reward account. 

Please try again once your Membership Rewards account has at least 2,000 points.

I read this about 17 times to see if I was missing something.  I even tried the process a few more times to make sure it wasn't a random glitch.  Finally, I decided to email customer support and ask them for some advice.  I've actually had some good experiences emailing customer support at various airlines and rewards programs, so I had moderately high expectations.  Here's what I said: 

I'm trying to transfer some rewards points from American Express to my OnePass account.  This is the error message I received.

We're sorry, but a minimum transfer of 2,000 Membership Rewards points is required. You have 2,240 Membership Rewards points in your Membership Reward account.

Please try again once your Membership Rewards account has at least 2,000 points.

I'm no mathematician, but I was under the impression 2240 is more than 2000.  Am I missing something here?

I could've been infinitely meaner with something like this, so I stuck with a little humor/sarcasm.  I was hoping some geek in tech support would get the email and thank me for being the highlight of their day.  Instead I got this: 

Dear Mr. Hosier:

Please contact American Express Membership Rewards at 800-297-3276 for information regarding transfers.

Regards,

Belinda Harris
OnePass Partner Liaison Representative

Ah, progress.  "We're stupid and can't program our website to do math correctly, so contact someone else entirely because I didn't even read your whole email."  Thanks, Belinda.  You've been such a big help. #business

I'm planning on starting my own airline in a few years.  Here's how a typical flight will work: 

- No assigned seats.  The best seats will go to the people who got there earliest and/or fastest.  Sorry grandma and fat people, but I'm sure you could get a ride on one of those crazy beeping carts that doesn't stop for bi-peds like me. 
- No first class.  What better way to differentiate between classes of people than by publicly displaying how much money they pay for things. 
- No food or drinks will be served.  What is this, a restaurant? 
- No peanuts or pretzels will be handed out.  What are we, monkeys? 
- No flight attendants.  Figure things out for yourself.  Buncha idiots. 
- No seat belt instructions.  Honestly, if you can't buckle that stupid seat belt, you have bigger problems to take care of than surviving the experience of falling from the sky at 300 mph from 30,000 feet in a tin can strapped to a removable cushion. 
- No pilot talk.  Nobody cares how fast or high we're flying.  And nobody likes to hear the deafening voice of a stupid pilot who doesn't understand how a microphone works. 
- No cell phone use while on the plane.  The person picking you up can wait 3 minutes for you get off the plane before you call to tell them, "Hey, we just landed.  We're on the runway.  We're taxiing to the terminal." 

Thank you, and enjoy your flight. #travel

I have a theory that the Palm brand of smartphones and PDAs is on its way out.  They essentially created a whole new market by making the first Palm Pilots, enabling people to store and organize information digitally without dealing with a computer.  And as they developed better technology and software, their devices became more and more useful.  My Treo 650 is a great example of this.  It's essentially a handheld computer combined with a phone. 

The problem with all this is that Palm is losing market share, and fast.  Just a few years ago, there weren't many choices of smartphones.  There was a Palm model, some sort of ultra-expensive Siemens model, and a failure of a Windows model.  Now, there are a plethora of good Windows models to choose from, and Palm is essentially in the same place as they were 3 years ago.  I don't think it helped their case when they released a smartphone that ran Windows software.  And with the abundance of Windows models comes an abundance of software and addons.  Plus, Windows Mobile feels pretty much exactly like normal Windows.  Palm doesn't make operating systems for computers, so they're already at a loss in that market.  But choosing between a Windows feel and a Palm feel is making it harder and harder to choose Palm. 

Palm used to be cool like Apple and Linux because it was a sort of underdog.  It had cool applications that performed simple yet useful functions, and nothing could compete with it.  Now Windows is competing with it, and I think Windows won.  Unless Palm can introduce something that blows the competition away, I think they'll be stuck with being the 3rd-place handset maker that also used to design handheld operating systems. 

Update (2007-05-07 9:28pm):  To clarify, I think Palm as a software company is dead, but Palm as a hardware company is still alive and will continue to live. #technology

Have you ever reached into a bag of candy and magically pulled out every color?  I just did that with a bag of jelly beans.  Man, life is good. #food

I've always been about 3 or 4 years behind most cutting edge technology.  I didn't use the internet until 1998.  I didn't get a cell phone until 2003.  I just got a GPS device a few weeks ago.  I like to wait for technology to prove its worth before I jump in. 

It's the same with digital video recorders like TiVo.  They've been out for a few years now, and they've definitely proven themselves worthy of purchase.  (On a side note, any time a piece of technology becomes a common verb, it's obviously successful -- text, Google, TiVo, Microsofted [actually, that's a little different], etc.)  But my cheapness comes into play here.  Big time.  It's one thing to buy an electronic box that hooks up to your TV.  It's an entirely different thing to pay to use it.  I hate subscription fees.  I hate monthly payments.  If I buy a device, I want to be able to use it without restriction, not pay a monthly fee to have some stupid box tell me what TV shows I should watch.  It's not like the device uses TiVo Corp.'s cable lines or satellite signals.  In that respect, you're literally paying to use the device, not even to use the service.  (Yes, I know TiVo has extensive automated systems that record shows when you want.  But last time I checked, I'm pretty good at recording things on my own.) 

(My cheapness sometimes causes me to get angry.) 

So I came up with a solution:  A DVD recorder.  It's a step up from a VCR (a what?) but a step down from a DVR.  It records stuff on DVDs, which have the added benefit of being able to be used in many different devices (take that, TiVo and your un-portability!).  It doesn't do anything automatically or without my permission.  It just records stuff that I tell it to record.  And it costs no more money than what I paid when I bought it. #entertainment