Jeffrey McManus

I don’t even think it’s necessary to comment about how perfect this photo is of Hillary in Las Vegas. Study it for a moment. There is absolutely nothing about it that is not hilarious.

From the NY Times’ election blog.

This is not to be missed: Fake Steve Jobs attended today’s MacWorld keynote and live-Twittered it. It’s vulgar and hilarious.

I think that Dave was one of the twelve people who bought an Apple TV before they made it work right and lowered the price; it’ll be interesting to see what his upgrade experience is like.

Not excited about the MacBook Air, even if it is impossibly thin, etc. I don’t need a smaller screen and a smaller hard drive, I need a bigger hard drive, 3G wireless everywhere for a fixed rate of $20 a month, and more battery life. And more memory. And a pony.

Paying $20 apiece to equip our two iPod Touch devices with software that should have been there in the first place will make me feel like a choad, but I’ll probably do it at some point, maybe.

A movie rental that expires after 24 hours is still a stupid idea, particularly for people whose kids constantly screw up their plans. Extending the intentional bit-rot factor, even slightly (like to 27 hours) would be a big help. But even then, this feels like the flip side of the Blockbuster coin that consumers have been rejecting in droves in favor of the Netflix model. Instead of dinging you with endless late fees they simply disappear the movie you paid for. Dumb model.

A wireless terabyte network attached storage device for $500 is kind of interesting.

Still, nothing to make me leap out of my chair and run to the Apple store this year. (A 3G iPhone, maybe with more storage, might have done that this time around, and I will probably want to replace my mid-2006 MacBook Pro before the end of 2008, but there’s no rush on that.)

Blue Screen of Death by Laughing Squid.

Best costume evar!!

Hapi olmost halawin by jeffreymcmanus.

Celeste writes letters to characters in the game Animal Crossing nearly every day. Her spelling isn’t terrific (she’s six, so it’s no big whoop) but it’s really astonishing to see her pursuing this with such vigor when six months ago she was barely able to read or write her own name.

This reminds me of when I was in fifth grade and I got my first real creative writing and public speaking experience through dungeon mastering. Why can’t more learning activities seem like play?

Link: Late but Lavishly, A380 Makes Debut

"As if to enhance the already high expectations of his audience, Mr. Chew explained that four of the suites in the center of the cabin can be modified to become double beds for couples traveling together, simply by removing the privacy divider between them.

In a demure hint at the plane’s honeymoon possibilities, the carrier had decked out one double bed with Champagne and scattered the duvet with red rose petals. The bed’s two seat belts — in case of unexpected turbulence — were discreetly hidden below the bedding.

Officially, of course, these beds are meant for sleeping only. ‘We look forward to welcoming our premium-class guests for the purposes of travel and rest,’ said Stephen Forshaw, a Singapore Airlines spokesman. ‘That is all.’"

If you claim to have invented Facebook, finally there is a place for you to tell the world about it.

Your story won’t be believed, of course, because everybody know that I invented Facebook, but if you’d like to weigh in with your story, you’re welcome to.

AEEEE by jeffreymcmanus.

Link: A Different Kind of Company

"Because we consider the success of our client to be our ultimate aim, we take an unusually proactive approach to providing the client with the most effective marketing collateral possible. If a client is unsatisfied with a first draft, we’ll happily provide a revision. And if a client is unsatisfied with the revision, we will seize control of the client’s firm by force so that we might better provide the firm with what we, as marketing professionals, know to be effective marketing collateral. And though, as a precaution, you as the CEO will be executed, your children will be provided for in a manner adequate to their social station."

Those of us who have ordered the new generation of iPods and paid extra for FedEx shipping have noticed that they’re being shipped from a city in China called Kunshan. Naturally, this important fact has now been entered into the Wikipedia page for the city. Way to put yourselves on the map, dudes!

I just noticed that the date stamps jumped forward and backwards (from Sept. 19 to Sept. 20 then back to Sept. 19, I guess as the package crossed the international date line). Hope it makes it here from Alaska tomorrow so I can play with it over the weekend.

Update: I checked again this morning to see they’d sent it to Indianapolis. Crap! That must be a FedEx hub.

Link: Troubleshooting Guide for TimeCorp’s VH3928-Model Time Machine

"Problem: Time travel has led you to an alternate version of yourself identical in every way but gender.

"Solution: It is natural to be curious. Go for it. It is TimeCorp’s firm belief that there would not be anything gay about it. Even the complicated science of time travel is no match for the science of love."

Link: Losing Your Shirt, but Not in the Casino

Mr. Wolf explains it differently: "We ultimately decided that it would be better, in terms of being a classy, fun, hip beach-club, to not be topless. It was a hard decision but it was a good decision."

Next time you feel like you’re wasting your time in a business meeting, think about what this poor slob must have to endure.

Link: The Geek Movie of the Year: King of Kong

"A few dozen techies gathered last night at the offices of the investment firm Clearstone Venture Partners for a screening of the undisputed geek movie of the year: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. The winsome documentary looks at the freakish world of competitive arcade video game playing and, in particular, two rivals who warily duel to claim the title of highest scorer on the 1981 Nintendo classic Donkey Kong.
Many of us have our memories of the coin parlors, but most, I’d wager, are colored by Shigeru Miyamoto’s early masterpiece of a game, with its malevolent ape and surreal constructionscapes. The movie is a shockingly fun ride, with a laid-off father of two battling to best one of the famous arcade kids of the ’80s, who resorts to political manipulation of the gaming league rather than directly facing his talented opponent."

When I first read this, I thought to myself "How does this writer know that Mario was laid off, and when did he have two children? Is there a chapter of early Mario lore that I somehow overlooked?" Then I realized he was talking about a real person, not a video-game character.

Link: Hoopty Rides.

"Like me, you probably bemoan having inadequate wall thickness for serious radiological experiments. True, the walls of Navy X-Ray Facility are only 2 1/2′ thick for the final 20 feet, but the fifteen foot base is an impressive 4′ thick! Every morning, I would wake up, put on my hearing protectors and shoot my .300 Weatherby at the opposite wall. Check out those concrete notched, stacked wall modules. Corps of Engineers takes no guff!"

Multimedia message by ernie.

Zombie Mob in SF tonight!

(How nice did the shirt turn out?)

Sometimes we’ll be sitting on the couch, discussing stuff like how much our oldest kid likes to be a zombie. Then sometimes I’ll make what we’re talking about into a t-shirt.

I Heart My Undead Child
by
jeffreymcmanus
Get this custom shirt at Zazzle

Update: You may think I design these T-shirts to be "funny," and if you thought that, you’d be right, but I also design them because I want to own them myself. I have ordered at least one of every Zazzle shirt I’ve ever designed; royalties from sales of my "Legalize the Irish" design typically translate into a $5-10 discount every time I order from them. I received my copy of the "Undead Child" shirt today and it looks really cool — my plan is to wear it to the SF zombie mob on Friday.

Once the Germans stop writing Knut songs and posting them to YouTube, then I will stop reposting them here. It’s as simple as that.

I promise that this will be the last one of these that I post. Unless I run across another one that has an original song.

This is my blog. I don’t need to explain why I post videos like this.

Happy Friday, here’s a little something I threw together yesterday to commemorate the fact that Lolcats has infected our home (just now I asked my wife "I can has lunch date?").

If this makes no sense to you, it’s a mash-up of this and this.