The other night, Kiefer Sutherland won an Emmy for Best Actor In A Drama Series. Kudos to him! However, I think there was a major over-sight by the academy in the category of Best Supporting Actor In A Drama Series…Jack Bauer’s Satchel Of Doom.

Where would Jack be if it wasn’t for his Bag Of Death? It’s always with him, at the ready, able to spew forth many forms fo gadgetry and weapons.

No matter how bad Jack’s day has gone, no matter how many terroists he’s killed, no matter how many family members have gotten amnesia, Jack always has time for his Satchel of Doom.

The best part? The SOD works both in day and night settings, so Jack can go straight from work to a night on the town!

And when the chips are down, when the entire country of China wants you dead, when your goverment has forsaken you, Jack always knows who his REAL friend is!

I had originally planned for this entry to be my bringing to everyone’s attention the glory of this accessory, but as I searched the web for pictures, I discovered many people had already done this. I had taken to calling it the Bag Of Death, but I found it is more commonly known by Satchel Of Doom. However you slice it, it’s a magical bag that always has JUST what Jack needs at any given time to save the United States once again.

I know this entry makes no sense to anyone who has never watched 24, but if you have, you are sure to have noticed the SOD. The first time I clearly remember it standing out to me was when Jack held up the convenience store in season 4. (He was trying to delay a terrorist…it made sense at the time!) It seems lots of people also noticed it though and it now has it’s own MySpace page, articles about what the SOD contains, and whole pieces dedicated to how Jack should design laptop bags. So, while this drifted, I am glad to know I am not the only one who shares in the love of the SOD.

Hopefully the Emmy’s will soon include a category for Best Inanimate Object In A Drama Series, because we all know who’s going to win!

Yep…more Transformer’s whining, I can’t stop myself. This time, it’s a close-up of Bumblebee’s face.

I get that they are trying to make them look more like robots, but can’t we be at least a little less “Messed-up-drug-dream-face-of-a-guy-wearing-a-gas-mask”?

Spotted this over at Engadget today, and they in turn got it from the Daily Mail. So, the idea is you store your car in the belly of your RV on a sliding tray. I don’t even want to think of how much this costs.

I did love Engadget’s suggestion though:

All it needs is a green paint job, a big number “2″ on both sides and you’ve set up every Thunderbirds fan in the country for a month of restless nights: this pointlessly excessive system definitely makes it the Tracy family’s day tripper of choice.

Probably only funny to people who know of The Thunderbirds, but man I would be tempted. Anyway, start saving your pennies for this one kids, I am sure it will top many Christmas wishlists this year.

Amazing it’s already been 1 year since Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans. The thing that kills me, is:

1) Ray Nagin is still a moron, and somehow got re-elected. The man can’t seem to open his mouth without pissing someone off. (The Chocolate City speech and the Ground Zero/hole-in-the-ground comment come to mind) This guy is just a disaster as a mayor, but somehow he just keeps chugging along.

2) The media is DYING for another Katrina to happen.If a strong wind comes along, they are quick to jump to “Could this build in to the next Katrina?” They couldn’t have reminded the public any more if they tried that the current storm, Ernesto, was coming to life around the same time as Katrina. I wouldn’t mind so much if they didn’t sound so much like they were drooling for a bad storm. It wouldn’t bother me so much if they didn’t seem to be rooting for it to happen.

To all those effected though, my heart still goes out to you.

I really didn’t want to comment on this whole thing, but now I can’t resist…did anyone really think John Mark Karr killed JonBenét Ramsey? Yes, he is a sick bastard. Yes, he does not belong on the streets. Yes, I am happy he is in jail. No, I never thought for a second he was actually guilty of this murder.

The problem? Feeding this guys dellusional state has made it next to impossible to ever convict anyone for the murder of JonBenét.

Defense Attorny: “So let me see if I have this correct. You believe my client killed JonBenét? Just like you once thought her parents did it? Just like you questioned the other Ramsey children? Just like you thought that John Mark Karr did it? Really, aren’t you just grasping at anyone you remotely think might have been in the general vicinity?”

That’s all it’ll take to plant resonable doubt in the jurys mind. Case closed, and possible real killer gets away with it.

This case has been botched since day one (fun side fact, Deputy Chief Jim Hughes, who resigned over his part in the handelling of the case, is now the Chief of Police in my town…lucky me), and the media is as much to blame as the Boulder police. They were so anxious to be first out with a story, they jumped on any inkling of a suspect, and this time, Karr really filled the bill. A history of being arrested for child pornography, a seeming obsession with the JonBenét case, and his confession when confronted with the allegations. He did everything he could to cooperate with the authorities, making it seem just a bit too easy. It seemed everyone could see it was a bit odd, except for the media. They were too excited by the propsect of dragging out this story again for the ratings and the sales of newspapers and amagazines. All the whle, all they were really doing was feeding his dillusion and harming any chance of capturing and convicting the real murderer. Not that I really thought they had a chance after 10 years.

Everyone is to blame for this massive mess-up though. The Boulder, CO prosecutors for making a huge spectacle out of this process. The media everywhere for rushing to convict this man in the court of public opinion before they did their own investigative reporting. The Boulder police (again) for not doing thier own investigating, which, it seems, wasn’t too difficult to do if they had bothered to look in to where Karr was that Christmas. Never mind the fact the amount of money the Boulder,CO officials spent flying him back from Thailand in business class, and then in a state-owned pivate plane from California to Colorado.

So, kudos to you all, way to go on getting your 5 minutes of tv time on the back of a tragic murder and the mentally deranged man who sought attention. Guess you all won.

This weeks 30 Days placed pro-choice Jennifer, a 29 year old woman with a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology that works in a women’s health clinic, in a Christian, pro-life maternity home named His Nesting Place. During her 30 days there, she is supposed to follow the house rules, work in the pregnancy crisis center and take part in their pro-life activities.

Again, this episode fell on it’s face, but not for the usual lack of time, but more from neither side really being that engaged in the give-and-take of the format. Upon Jennifer’s arrival, she was asked by one of the head workers if she worked in a place that “sells abortions”. Oh yeah, this is going to go well. During the time Jennifer spent at their pro-life activities, she insisted on not standing with them and wearing a pro-choice shirt.

I am all for people standing by their convictions, but the whole point of 30 Days is to learn from each other. This season seems to be suffering from people who are either too attached their beliefs to listen (such as this episode) or they are too willing to give in (the New Age episode). Last season you had true immersions, like the Off-The-Grid episode, but this season it seems to be breaking their own rules left and right. I’m afraid the format of this show may be broken now, and I’m not really sure there’s a way to fix it.

If the site keeps randomly changing looks on you, it’s because I’m playing with some new layouts. You aren’t losing your mind….or are you??

Ok folks, I think this is going to be the final choice. I’ll be tweaking it some, but I was getting tired of the old one, but if you really hate this one, leave me a comment.

Why do they keep doing this to me?

This is the Megatron I grew up with. He turned in to a gun. He was cool.

Later on, in Generation 2, he became a tank, still cool and I could live with it.

Both heads were pretty similar though.

So, leave it to the movie folks to mess up even more. Here’s Megatron’s head from the movie.

And also, he turns in to some sort of weird alien jet.

Why are they doing this? Are they trying to anger the fans? They can’t even throw us a lousy bone? No, they have to keep pissing us off by changing EVERYTHING about the original we loved so. Instead they almost seem to be intentionally annoying us by trying to see how much they can get away with and still have us go to the movie. Part of me wants to boycott it, part of me still thinks “It’s the Transformers, you have to go!” Damn you Hollywood…damn you.

Do you all remember Debra Lafave? I wrote about her here. She was the teacher in Florida who slept with a 14 year old student, but got out of jail time on the “I’m too pretty for jail” defense. Yeah, you all remember her. Anyway, part of her sentance was to serve 3 years of house arrest, but it seems you can get out of that if Matt Lauer wants to interview you at a hotel.

I have no real problem with the interview, the state didn’t object as she’s not being paid for it, but I have a problem with her going to the hotel. Why couldn’t NBC film the interview at her house? Even if it was in the backyard? If she lives in an apartment, remove some furniture during the interview and move it back when you leave. There was NO reason for her to be allowed out of the house for a television interview!

This makes no sense to me at all. I’m angry at the judge, the prosecuters, and NBC equally. It would seem “house arrest” no longer means anything if you’re “pretty”.

If, like me, you have had an impossible time getting to the site during the day, things should be better now as I’ve had my host, DreamHost, move me to a different server. This is one of the drawbacks to using a shared host. Sure, they may be cheap, but if one of your “neighbors” on the server is a resource hog, then it slows down your site also. So if someone is running a faulty script? It causes the server to bog down.

I have no clue who else was on our old server, but during the daytime, this site would move like a snail, while my company web sites were running smooth as can be. So after a lot of debate, I had DreamHost move this site to be on the server as my company websites. Everything appears to be running smoothly, but do drop me a line if you find anything broken.

Well, I am sure most of you have heard the news by now, but Pluto is no longer a planet, but a new classification, a “dwarf planet“. From the amazingly quickly created Wikipedia article:

The resolution describes a dwarf planet as an object that:

* is in orbit around the Sun,
* has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape,
* has not “cleared the neighborhood” around its orbit,
* is not a satellite of a planet, or other nonstellar body.

This definition demotes Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet because it has not cleared the neighborhood of its orbit (the Kuiper Belt).

This decesion was reached by a vote taken by the International Astronomical Union who were meeting in Prague. As late as last week it thought 3 more bodies were going to be named to planet-status, but instead we lost a “planet”, taking the population of our solar system down to 8.

Science is an ever changing field of study, but it seems, I don’t know, sad, that we lost Pluto! It was a planet from it’s discovery in 1930 until now, and now it just seems weird now it’s just some hunk of rock out there.

See? Poor little guy! Oh well. Have fun replacing all those models, charts, and text books in schools now that teach the system has 9 planets!

Last year, I wrote up an entry on a fun pair of fraternal twin, blonde sisters named Lynx & Lamb who perform under the name Prussian Blue. Yes, those sweet little, Hitler-lovin’ girls are back! ABC Primtime decided to do an update story on them this week. Basically not much has changed except they moved out of Bakersfield,CA so they could find some place “more white”. Other fun things we learned:

- Lynx and Lamb think the Holocaust is over exaggerated because they aren’t sure there were even 6 million Jews alive at that time.

- David Duke, former leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, thinks they are a wonderful example for other children.

- They released a second album…music lovers everywhere openly weep upon hearing it. (say what you will of their politics..they can’t sing!)

- They tried to do their part for Hurricane Katrina relief by sending a box of supplies down to New Orleans. Sadly, their box ended up at a surplus store when no one was real eager to take a box makred as to be distributed to whites only.

- Their father, a former drug user, tried to win custody back from their mother and failed. He claims he doesn’t share their racist views, but who knows.

- The Gaede family ranch (owned by their grandfather on their mother’s side) brand is a Nazi swastika. Picture here since they make it very clear all pictures are copyrighted.

As I was wandering around, reading up on these beacons of brotherly love again, I found this delightful entry on their blog. They have released a Germany-only CD entitled “For the Fatherland” which “contains the songs from the girl’s cds that have not yet been declared illegal by the oppressive German government.” Gee, do you ever think it might be because they have no desire to hear a song the glorifies Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy in the Nazi Party? Everyone needs to remember that the Germany of today is still very sensitive to what happened during World War II.

Really, what else can be said about these girls, their family or any of their ilk? Not a whole lot that hasn’t already been said. They will continue to sit around and declare how people that don’t agree with them are complacent in the destruction of their race and/or their country. I call it loving my fellow man no matter how they appear, or what they believe. Yes, that means even Lynx & Lamb fall in to that category, no matter how disgusting I may find their beliefs, I hold no ill-will towards them, if anything, I feel pity for them.

I love quoting my self. On 06/26/05 I said of Tom Cruise and his craziness:

So what is my point to all this? Lots. I think that our celebrities are growing more and more wildly out of control. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes pretty much are the current poster children for this. Celebrities have gotten to a point where they feel they can go around saying anything they want without any sort of ramifications.

There a lot of reasons why certain opinions should be kept to yourself if you are in the public eye at all. I am a business owner, and I know some customers might not shop with me if I publically said what political party I belong to. So, to make sure I don’t annoy my customers, I keep my mouth shut about politics. Before Tom goes shooting his mouth off about psychology, he should perhaps ponder what this might do to his career. I, for one, will not be seeing his new film, or any of his future films because he has annoyed me to such an extent. There are also lots of rumors circulating that Katie Holmes probably won’t be invivted back for the Batman Begins follow-up due to her recent actions.

It’s up to each person to decide if this bothers them. Every person in this country has a right to their own opinions and has the right to express them. Each person should also realize though, sometimes it is best to not go on a highly rated morning talk show and essentially call the host a moron. And to attack another celebrity for seeking medical help that you don’t believe in? Or for that matter, basically saying that anyone on these meds is in the wrong? Just not a smart move in my not-so-humble opinion.”

In case you have not seen the news of the past few days, Tom Cruise and Paramount have seen fit to part company and Paramount will not be renewing his contract. And make sure you all see this part:

“As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal,” Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone told the Wall Street Journal in an interview posted online. “His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount.”

So…what do we learn from all this boys and girls? I was right. Acting nutty because of your “love” for Katie Holmes, attacking Brooke Shields because she took prescribed drugs, and talking endlessly of your love of Scientology MIGHT just not be the brightest idea when you are so much in the public eye.

Is this finally a sign that Hollywood has had it’s fill of crazy actor antics? Perhaps Mel Gibson’s recent drunken attack of Jews, Tom Cruise’s craziness and so on, has gotten to the studios and see an oppurtunity to bring their stars back under control. Profit margins are shrinking, and if they sjake out a few big names, they may bring some of the others back in to line.

There are those who say this has to do with religious intolerance. No, I think it has to do with being just basically insane. In the linked article, Russell Shaw of The Huffington Post goes to great lengths to show how this is anti-religious, and those of us who attack Scientology are being hypocrites and so on, and that we base our opinions on “cursory analysis” of Scientology. Yeah, I think I have shown on numerous occasions that I have done more than a “cursory analysis“. And since I have last written about them, I have actually watched some of their recruiting videos…comparing not following Scientology to blowing your brains out doesn’t exactly seem “sane” to me. Yes folks, they really do make that comparrison, it has to be seen to be believed, but it keeps disappearing from YouTube…gee…wonder why.

Whatever your opinion on Scientology itself, you can’t deny the boy has lost his mind and it has cost him a 14 year association with Paramount. I, for one, couldn’t be more amused.

Why did it take me almost a week to write about the fourth episode of 30 Days season 2? Because it might have been this season’s Binge Drinking Mom episode.

Tom Collett is a 37 year old transportation salesman and he has a temper. He get’s stressed, and blows up at little things, so he needs to calm down because he fears it is boiling over and damaging his relationship with his girlfriend, Misti. The problem with this episode is he Tom seemed TOO willing to immerse himself in the New Age philosophy, he was ready to change his lifestyle and he quickly embraced everything his life coach, Barbara Biziou, had to tell him. The majority of the conflict came from Misti, who, once she met Barbara was also all for it!

Not that I wanted to see anyone tearing each other’s eyes out, but I did want to see someone who was actually interesting and having their life broadened by the experience, instead I felt like I was watching a man get 30 free days of intense therapy. Yes, he was supposedly “changed” when it’s all over, but it still felt like he was too open to the information.

A recent study conducted by the Oxygen Network shows women are getting more in to gadgets. According to this study, men owned an average of 6.9 gadgets to women owning 6.6. The same study showed that 77% of women wanted a plasma television instead of a diamond solitaire necklace, but 56% would only make the same choice over a weekend in Florida. (I would still take the plasma TV)

I am thrilled to see women getting more with gadgets and electronics, but would someone explain to me why gadget makers think the way to tap this market is just to make their devices in pink?

The pink PS2 coming out in England.

Pink PSP coming out in all of Europe.

Samsung Q40 coming out in Europe

The pink Razr sold just about everywhere.

I know there are some women who will be thrilled by these (calm down Rachel), but in general, well…I think it’s kind of insulting. Can’t you just imagine these product meetings?

Executive 1 “We need to tap this growing female consumer market for gadgets. How do we do it?”

Executive 2 “Make our existing products pink?”

Executive 1 “BRILLIANT!”

What’s even more insulting is when they not only make the device pink, they think they can UNDER POWER IT! The Samsung Q40 pictured above is a perfect example of that. With the blossoming of the dual-core age, releasing a laptop with a single core only running 1.2GHz is, well, insulting. A 60gb hard drive? But let’s not forget…it’s pink! For the price of $2,460, it’s a rip-off is what it is.

If pink is your thing (again, calm down Rachel…we all know you love pink), more power to you, enjoy. If, however, you are serious about your gadgets at the same time, don’t be lulled in to being jipped in power or performance just because it has a pretty cover.

Random link, check out ShinyShiny for all your female gadget news.

Big Brother is still going, and it still amazes me how anyone in the country likes Janelle and Howie. From their antics whenever they win an HoH competition, displaying amazingly bad sportsmanship, to Howie’s little escapade with throwing Boogie’s hat when he was voted out.

Howie and Janelle were the kids in high school who always thought they were better than everyone else, but in reality, they are just sad little people with no personalities of their own. I will give Janelle this though, she is like a freaking cockroach this season when it comes to getting rid of her!

Some time ago, I mentioned I might be changing over to American Airlines for my flights to Japan due to the number of ways there are to earn miles. Boy was I ever right!

Since that time, I joined the AAdvantage program, and I am now at almost 10,000 miles without having gotten on a plane! Some of the miles have been earned by going through special links when I order from online shops via AAdvantage eShopping. When I click on their links, I get a specified number of miles per dollar spent. Some times as high as 6 miles per dollar.

The best program I have found though is e-Rewards.com. When you sign up, you agree to take surveys based on your interests, and for each survey they pay you in virtual money. When you have $25 virtual dollars, you can purchase 500 miles for AA. Well, it tooke me less than a month and I had 500 miles from just filling out a couple surveys! Well worth my time, and they do work with other programs, so they are worth checking out.

I love earning miles without even getting on a plane! The other fun place I have discovered is Points.com. If you have lots of points/miles programs you belong to, you can go here, keep track of them all and swap rewards between programs. A great way to see what you’re doing and where.

I swear I am now a miles addict!

More and more info is coming out, and leaking out, about the Transformers movie. Some of it is exciting, some of it makes my skin crawl.

First off today, we now have an official list of which Transformers we’ll see:

Autobots:

Optimus Prime - truck
Bumblebee - camaro
Jazz - Lamborghini
Ratchet - Emergency vehicle based on the Humvee design
Ironhide - GMC Topkick pickup truck

Decepticons:

Megatron - Alien jet or tank
Starscream - F-22 Raptor
Brawl - Buffalo (mine protected vehicle)
Bonecrusher - Tank
Barricade - police car (new to the movie)
Skorpinok - Giant mechanical scorpion
Frenzy - unknown
Blackout - MH-53 Pave Low Helicopter (new to the movie, emits EMP pulse)

And then…then came the blood curdling scream inducing pictures….

black truck - Ironhide green truck - Ratchet yellow camaro - Bumblebee truck - Optimus Prime

Bumblebee in robot mode

Parts of what are believed to be Megatron covered in ice

Sadly…Optimus Prime

When will Hollywood learn there is no need to mess with source material? As I’ve said before, I can understand some of the changes, but why the need to give Optimus a flame paint job? Why use a Lamborghini for Jazz? Transformers has a Lamborghini, Sideswipe, so why not use him? Jazz was a race car, why mix characters? Like Devastator was originally made up of the 6 Constructicons, which, it just so happens, one of them was named Bonecrusher, who is now a tank?

If Hollywood wants to cash-in on a much beloved property, such as Transformers, then stay faithful to what made it loved! I can understand some minor changes, but it seems like not one of the characters is staying faithful to what I grew up with!

YouTube.com has announced that they are in talks with record labels to post every music video ever made by the end of 2007. So, as I like YouTube, but had never thought of the music aspect of it, so I went exploring today….JACKPOT!

I loved this song in the 1980’s, and to be honest, I still love it! (For those who don’t see it in the video, it’s Come Dancing by The Kinks) I haven’t seen this video in ages, so it was good seeing it again.

Some other old time faves I found:
Our House by Madness

Safety Dance by Men Without Hats

Take On Me by A-Ha

A Message To You Rudy by The Specials

Rock The Casbah by The Clash

Sweet Dreams by The Eurythmics

You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) by Dead Or Alive

When Doves Cry by Prince and the Revolution

Man, I could just go on and on, it’s so much fun seeing all these old videos.

My second company is a licensing company meaning we icense the rights to produce merchandise based on various properties. Even though we are fairly new, we are already making in-roads with some well known national chains. One of these I shall call “Mall Retailer”.

Mall Retailer is a well known national chain, and getting your products in to those stores is a big task. After 6 months of phone calls, an odd situation popped up where they actually needed us, and not the other way around. What we learned after we were in was they had an amazing set of rules for dealing with them. We had to fold the t-shirts to their specs, tag them to their specs, boxes could not weigh over 40 lbs, boxes must be delivered on certain dates specified by them, they don’t pay shipping, they dictate price and so on. Inside their 69-page guide, there was also a list of fines they could charge you with for not following their instructions.

After we received their order, we contacted one shirt printer I had worked with previously, but they were going to be too much when you factored in shipping the shirts to me and then me having to turn around and shipping them back out. We talked with another shirt printer who has a long track record with Mall Retailer, knows all their procedures, and even has a section of their warehouse set aside to deal with Mall Retailer. They quoted us a great price, and we went with them. The first order went great, no problems. Flash forward a few months and Mall Retailer comes back with a bigger reorder. We go to Shirt Printer again, they say no problem, they process and ship it. Then we get to today….

I received an email from Mall Retailer that says:

This email is to inform you that we received a recent shipment from your organization that did not adhere to the policies of our vendor’s guide. Unfortunately, because of this deviation from our policies, a fine will be issued. It is not Mall Retailer’s intention to profit from fines. The fine has been issued to offset the costs incurred fixing the problem in our distribution centers.

Reason: No or Incorrect case markings (*code that could identify Mall Retailer*) - No labels on cases.
Amount: $300.00

Excuse me? We are working with a shirt company who deals with Mall Retailer daily and knows their rules inside out. So all of a sudden they don’t know how to put the label in the correct spot on the outside of the case? (there are rules about how many inches from the edge it should be) This is just insane to me.

My father spent years dealing with huge chains in his business as a travelling salesman and even he is amazed by the hoops I am having to jump through. No one in my family has ever seen anything like this and we have worked in numerous different industries. We are fighting the fine, but how does one even prove something like this?