If dogs could speak...
Sunday, July 31, 2005
This commercial sucks
Burger King's recent attempts to lure younger customers back by trying to be hip and cool have been at times questionable.
First they resurrected a dubious character in their Wake Up With The King breakfast campaign. The King had an oversized plastic face and a creepy smile, and was sitting on a guy's bed watching him sleep. Then they launched a Subservient Chicken web site where you can get a goofy looking chicken to do borderline edgy stuff (he'll pick his nose or go pee-pee -- turning around before he unzips, but he will give you a naughty-naughty finger if you tell him to go screw himself, or get a Big Mac).
A King in your bedroom. Cluck on the Subservient Chicken to supersize
Next came a musical ad for the Bacon Cheddar Ranch sandwich featuring Darius Rucker from Hootie and the Blowfish in a rhinestone cowboy suit, surrounded by pretty farm girls and Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, singing a parody of the song Big Rock Candy Mountain. That effort fared much better because it was so bizzarre and cheesy that it was funny and memorable, although it probably tanked Hootie's career forever.
I love tender crisp bacon cheddar ranch - the breasts they grown on trees
and streams of bacon ranch dressing flow right up to your knees
I love the tender crisp bacon cheddar ranch no one tells you to behave
your wildest fantasies come true - Dallas cheerleaders give you shaves
where onions make you laugh instead and french fries grow like weeds
Burger King's latest invention to promote their new Chicken Fries was a heavy metal band named unfortunately, ahem, CoqRoq with the lead singer Fowl Mouth blasting out songs like Bob Your Head. The ad concept was to introduce a "plucky new music genre that combines the latest in hard-working rock and easy-eating chicken." Whatever that means.
Bob your head
Push out your beak
Bob your head
Shake your lean white meat
Lift your noble stick
Raise it to the skies
Wave the golden prize
And bob your head
Bob your head
The Coq gets shots from the road
Their web site showed Polaroid snapshots of Paris Hilton lookalike female fans with handwritten captions "Groupies Love the Coq" and "Groupies Love Coq." If that wasn't enough, they had Burger King misspelled in some ads. Within a day, the pictures were relabeled "Shots from the Road" or yanked completely from the site.
I guess somebody was pushing the Coq too hard.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 5:18 AM 6 comments
Saturday, July 30, 2005
It's your (retirement) party, and you can cry if you want to
Let's see, you spend 44 years at a company, joining it at age 16 as an apprentice, eventually rising to chief executive officer. Ten years after becoming CEO, you announce your retirement, two years earlier than planned. Business analysts and shareholders almost unanimously welcome the news with something close to euphoria. One analyst calls you a "dinosaur" and says that the change is long overdue. Shares immediately soar nearly 10 percent, the biggest single-day rise in six years.
That's what happened to Jürgen E. Schrempp, CEO of DaimlerChrysler. On Thursday, the company stunned the automotive world by announcing that Schrempp will leave at year's end, well before his contract expires in 2008. The statement said in part: "The supervisory board and Prof. Schrempp are in full agreement that the end of the year 2005 is the optimal time for a change in the leadership of the company."
DaimlerChrysler stock Thursday-Friday. That jump is real
JP Morgan automobiles analyst Philippe Houchois declared, "This is the day I've been waiting for. It's a wonderful day for the auto industry as a whole." It's not hard to understand why. In the last 6 years since its stock was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, the company has seen its share value drop by half. I guess that performance annoys stockholders more than a Mercedes SLK, Chrysler 300C or a Hemi engine can ever fix.
DaimlerChrysler stock 1998-2005 (black) compared to DJIA (red)
- posted by Woofwoof @ 6:50 AM 3 comments
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Fish stories - The big ones that didn't get away
King salmon, 55 lbs, Kasilof River, Alaska
Giant catfish, 646 lbs, Mekong River, Chiang Rai Province, Thailand
Tiger shark, 1100 lbs, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts
(Yay! Americans still have the biggest fish, so there)
- posted by Woofwoof @ 11:18 PM 1 comments
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
It sure blows in here
Two home improvement companies in Japan have been accused of charging an erderly customer for fraudulent house repair. Contracts with a Tokyo man who recently died at age 85 showed at least 44 ventilation fans ordered for installation in his home. "All of them are unnecessary and the companies that did the work are vicious," said an architect who inspected the victim's home.
The house is a 32-year-old, two-story wooden structure with a total floor space of approximately 1600 square feet. 27 ventilation fans were counted so far in the small attic, placed wall to wall right next to each other. In addition, another 32 fans were supposed to be installed under the floor of the house but have not been found yet.
Before the work was stopped, the victim had paid nearly 18 million yen or $160,000 to the two firms.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 9:45 PM 2 comments
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Superman
Lance Armstrong won his seventh consecutive Tour de France today, leading the pack by a comfortable margin just as he did in many past years. After all this time I still found it exciting to watch him during yesrterday's individual time trials. He was dancing on the pedals, fast, effortless and graceful as always, and again was wearing the yellow jersey at the end of the day. He seemed to have been born wearing it.
It may be hard to imagine the magnitude of his conquest, but let's start with the basic stats: 2242 miles in 21 days in sun-baked July. On flat stages, average speed is over 30 miles per hour. But perhaps nothing put things in perspective better than stage 15 through the Pyrenees mountains, probably the toughest ride of the Tour: a relentless 128-mile-long, 1-mile up route that includes five huge climbs and descents followed by one steep uphill finish. My hair hurts just thinking about it. His overall speed? 21 mph, faster than we travel by car sometimes.
Stage 15. Test of endurance and mental toughness. Click on picture for scary details
Up and down the mountains. A perfect man-machine combination
Happy retirement, Lance, and may your legs rest happily ever after.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 8:03 AM 4 comments
A commercial plug
There are many great things about the Internet -- no, not online porn, you pervs -- but things like Google search, Google Earth, instant messenging and of course this blog. Today I feel compelled to add my own kudos to the heap of accolades for Skype. They are a VoIP company providing PC-to-PC and PC-to-phone calls with amazing convenience exceeding that of the telephone. Voice clarity is superior, and best of all, they are free for PC-to-PC. PC-to-phone incurs a small charge but is still cheaper than going through the regular phone system.
For PC-to-PC, both sides must have Skype downloaded (did I mention for free?) and have broadband for it to work best. After that, it's a simple matter of clicking on a name on your contact list and you can talk forever, without worrying about minutes and bills and battery life. I have had this set up on my desktop at home for a while, and on my laptop for use when I travel. With a headset or a microphone, I can work on the computer, read email, listen to music or surf the web while talking hands-free wiith another person from another state or another country, and the conversation would be as natural as if that person were in the same room. It is simply awesome. If you don't have it yet, download it and join the Post-Ma Bell Age.
PS. I like yahoo and their IM is great, but their PC calls are just static compared to Skype. I am just a happy user of Skype and am not affiliated with them in any way (although I'll be happy to take their ad money if they offer)
We now conclude this public service announcement and return to regular programming...
- posted by Woofwoof @ 5:22 AM 3 comments
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Hi-tech land-scape-goat
Network Appliance, a computer data storage in Sunnyvale, CA, has decided to employ 200 goats to keep the lawn trim on its 5 1/4 acre campus. Supposedly everybody is happy. It's cheap for the company -- the goats cut lawn maintenance costs by $5,000 or 70 percent (cheaper than outsourcing to Pakistan). It's good for the environment -- no more air pollution from large lawn-mowing equipment. And it's fun for the goats -- they get to eat for a job. No word on other benefits though.
The goats aren't picky eaters. They devour grass, poison oak and almost everything else. And they have a great work ethic, says Allison Carey, owner of the "holistic land management" firm that rents out goat herds for landscaping purposes. "All they do is eat," she said. "It's what they're born to do."
She probably forgot one thing. In the computer business, if there is input, there is usually output.
The work is never finished
- posted by Woofwoof @ 5:29 AM 1 comments
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Ewwwww
I know that some of my blogs have been getting longer and longer lately, but today's is going to be a short, true story. I just don't know what else to add to it.
From the Seattle Times: On July 2, a 45-year-old Seattle man died from something called acute peritonitis. His colon was perforated while he was having sex with a horse. The man, who died before he was dropped off at Enumclaw Community Hospital, was traced back to a 40-acre farm where investigators found hundreds of hours of videotape depicting men, including the one who died, having sex with horses. He had bought the stallion earlier this year.
And no, there are no pictures today.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 8:38 PM 2 comments
Sunday, July 17, 2005
I started buying from Amazon right after they opened, and at last count I've spent about $2000 with them over their ten years of existence. My buying pattern has certainly changed during that time, but they have remained my favorite and most frequented online store.
In the exuberant dot-com days, it was almost impossible not to buy from them or just about any online store -- everything was so cheap, and promotional certificates were abundant. Bargain hunting was like a sport, and the trophy was finding the best deal possible after tax, shipping and discounts. I timed my DVD purchases just before release date in order to find the lowest last-minute pre-order value before regular prices kicked in. I bought dog food in 40-lb bags online but delivered to my door for practically nothing. Even my two big dogs had trouble keeping up with the orders that were coming fast and furious. I also got in on a few mispricing deals when stores incorrectly marked down their prices, triggering a feeding frenzy among the comparison shopping and bargain hunting web sites. For example The Far Side set was discounted for a while to 40% of list instead of 60%, but stores honored the lower price anyway. It was never really the $5 or $10 savings, but in some strange way the thrill of bagging a pricing coup.
My five-minute moment of fame came when I was widely quoted on the Internet for a comment I made regarding a new business practice by Amazon. At that time they were experimenting with a strategy they called "dynamic pricing" by which different customers were shown different prices for the same item, depending apparently on the users' purchasing history. I posted a comment on a bulletin board site questioning the business wisdom of that approach, and that comment somehow got picked up by the New York Times and Washington Post, and from there it spread to a large number of business and technology news outlets. For about a week, my 2 cents opinion seemed to have appreciated a thousand times.
Those days, for better or worse, are long gone. Most of the online dot-com stores like Pets.com and Webvan have vanished, leaving behind betrayed investors and old T-shirts with shiny logos.
Amazon has somehow managed to survive through the turbulence. They may no longer have the best prices for everything, but it is hard to argue with their merchandise selection and reliability. I still go there for hard-to-find books and DVDs, the stuff you don't find at Circuit City and Costco. I rarely buy anything without at least looking at the spec sheets and reviews on their site. There is also the occasional Gold Box treasure hunt when they recommend something so interesting that it is hard to pass up. They continue to bring a dose of respectability and class to every transaction I've had with them. To me, Amazon is among the few companies that pioneered a new business model and stuck around to see it establish and grow.
I think they've made it. Happy birthday, Amazon!
- posted by Woofwoof @ 6:32 AM 2 comments
Saturday, July 16, 2005
What a difference a week makes
Back in April, I added to the blog this parody of the Homeland Security terror alert flag. It used a Sesame Street character to represent each of the five alert levels: Elmo was red, Ernie was orange, Bert was yellow, Cookie Monster was blue and Oscar was green. It was an interesting mix of the innocent and childlike with the violent and frightful, and added a bit of color to the blog. For a while it was funny, but eventually it got old because we seemed to get stuck on yellow and I was getting tired of seeing Bert every day. It wasn't like the weather update that was new and different each time I checked it.
Last Monday while fixing my blog layout and and cleaning up a few obsolete links, I decided to drop the terror alert flags. Two days later, terrorists attacked London in coordinated bombings that have thus far killed 55 people and wounded over 700, and brought back the fear and uncertainty that followed the 9/11 attack on New York City. Once again, it shattered the normalcy that had started to return after nearly four years. Airport checks still reminded of threats to security, but in our daily lives, the risks were no longer front and center issues. After the London attack, the alert level was raised to Orange for transit systems in the US, calling for increased police presence at airports and train and subway stations.
For me, it was almost spooky. Suddenly, Bert wasn't such a bad guy after all. He was becoming a familiar figure, but sometimes there is comfort in familiarity. I wish we can get good old Bert back all by himself. I never liked Ernie anyway.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 5:02 AM 1 comments
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Cartoon of the Month
I've always disliked "No Dogs Allowed" signs in stores and restaurants. What about elephants, turtles and pigs and rude people? Why not ban them too? Huh huh huh?
Click for a larger view. Look at Fang's expression (Fang is the dog)
- posted by Woofwoof @ 9:55 PM 1 comments
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Can I have the rest of your brain too?
(Reuters News: 7:12 p.m. ET July 12, 2005)
CHICAGO - A bank robber behind the wheel of his car Tuesday sent a note through a vacuum tube to the teller at the drive-through window at a branch of Chicago’s LaSalle Bank, and the teller obliged, returning an undisclosed amount of cash, police said. The exchange was completed through the bank’s pneumatic tube communications system, in which canisters are passed back and forth between motorist and teller.
PS. The note probably said that if the teller didn't pass over the money, the robber would send a gun next.
PPS. There will be no blog tomorrow as I have to make an unexpected trip to Chicago. I hope to come back a bit richer.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 9:30 PM 1 comments
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Star Wars, Japanese Style
"Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" opened in Japan this past week. Japan, the No. 2 market in the world for the movie industry, is the last major market for "Sith" to open in. Movie fans camped outside theaters in Tokyo on Friday night to be first for the Saturday 8 a.m. screening. Outside a theater in Yurakucho, the line started forming early on Friday and grew to 300 by night. It's good to see that some things don't change when they cross the ocean, especially when it's silly, fun entertainment.
Alien invasion of Tokyo. The little one appears to be their fearless leader. Note his funny beret
- posted by Woofwoof @ 6:32 AM 0 comments
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Joining the crowd
In all of my years living in California, I had not until recently been a member of Costco or set foot in Ikea. Friends who considered those things to be both a birthright and a sacred duty have threatened to revoke my California citizenship. It's not that I am rabidly anti-Walmart or against big stores in general -- I shop at Best Buy and Home Depot, but I've never felt the need to buy pickles in 2-gallon jars, or the urge to bring home half a dead cow and put it in the freezer. But, that all changed in the last few weeks, so buckle up and go with me on the magical tour.
First came Ikea. I was in Seattle visiting family late last month, and they said we had to go to Ikea to buy things for back-to-school. My digital watch showed positively June, but I decided to be wise and not ask. Besides, I was secretly excited about going to see for myself what the big deal there was about this exotic furniture, especially since it was hand-built by equally exotic Swedish people. Well, on that last count alone I was disappointed. Most of the merchandise turned out to be machine-made in China or Vietnam, which I believe are about as far from Sweden as from the US. And their women certainly don't look the same. The meatballs and the pickled herring were authentic, although I had to admit, the Ikea pickled food looked even more unappetizing than the Walmart pickles. I left empty-handed, no dish rack, no folding table and no hip lampshade for me. The kids had their arms full and said they had to come back the next day for more.
Now for the other half of the story. I received unsolicited in the mail an invitation to a membership at Costco, complete with a $10 discount. I thought about it for a while and concluded that for $10, I would sell my soul and join the Dark Side. Perhaps it was because this store was new, but it was just like a zoo -- the membership lines stretched all of the way out to the front entrance, and the occupants were large. Inside, I understood why. They had all kinds of junk food imaginable and unimaginable, in supersized portions, and they were giving out samples. Going from aisle to aisle, I must have eaten a quarter of a turkey, two cups of chocolate ice cream and an Austrian cookie (I had no idea why Austrian, maybe it was because of the Governor.)
And round and round I went, marveling at it all but not knowing what to buy -- what could I possibly do with all this stuff? But after what I ate, I felt obligated to buy something. So I walked out with a bag of salmon burgers (delicious, wild Alaska salmon), a large box of blueberries (sweet, harvested in Oregon), another large box of kiwi fruits (imported from Chile, and as people say, never seen them that big before), and a whole rotisserie chicken (plump, juicy, how could I pass it up at only $4.99?)
Roasted chicken at Costco. Click on picture to supersize
As I stood in the cashier line, I felt my transformation nearly complete. I was now a glutton, materialistic, full fledged oppressor of the little people, muahahahaaaa, damn the mom-and-pop stores. Then the cashier rang me up, looked again at my 4 things on the conveyor belt and the total of under $24, and asked incredulously: "Sir, is that really it? Nobody buys that little."
Maybe he was kidding, or maybe not. Somebody must have forgotten to tell me the secret handshake, that you had to spend at least $200 each time at Costco. I apologized and slowly pushed my cart out, almost empty. Come to think of it, their camera was down that day and they said I had to come back to get my picture ID card. They probably won't let me in this time.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 5:22 AM 3 comments
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Yer Out!!!
In a controversial decision last Friday, baseball and softball were eliminated from the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London. Each of the 28 existing sports was put to a secret vote for renewal by the International Olympic Committee, and the two favorite American pasttimes failed to obtain a majority approval required to stay in the program. They were the first sports to be cut from the Olympics since water polo was dropped in 1936.
In 2002 the IOC decided to cap the number of sports at Olympic Games at 28, events at 301 and athletes at 10,500. Two new sports will be selected to replace baseball and softball. The short list of candidates includes golf, bocce ball and toe curling.
New sports?
A hair in my beer
If you are owned by a Siberian husky, you'll understand the cartoon below. If not, get one.
Click on picture for a larger view
- posted by Woofwoof @ 11:02 PM 3 comments
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Outer space hole-in-one
NASA accomplished a nearly impossible feat on Monday, sending an 800-pound probe to smash into a comet following a 6-month, 270 million mile journey. The battery-powered impactor separated from the main craft 24 hours before colliding with Tempel 1. During the last two hours, it navigated itself toward a target point on the sun side of the comet and made three course maneuvers to reach it.
The probe took increasingly detailed pictures with its telescopic camera as it approached the comet, shooting its last image just 3.7 seconds before crashing in between two large craters. As one scientist explained, "The whole mission rides on what happens in about 800 seconds. We've only got one shot at it." I played back the spectacular video several times and still found it hard to believe. A perfect bullseye, delivered with such amazing clarity. The little green men probably had no idea what hit them.
90 seconds before impact
Click to enlarge. The red dot at the center indicates an increase in brightness caused by the collision
50 minutes after impact. The bright teardrop represents the plume of dust stirred up by the probe collision
- posted by Woofwoof @ 5:50 AM 2 comments
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Man bites dogs
Yesterday Takeru "The Tsunami" Kobayashi of Nagano, Japan, captured Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating crown for the fifth straight year, scarfing down a gut-wrenching 49 dogs in 12 minutes -- but missing his own world record of 53 set at last year’s July 4th competition. He won yet another year's supply of hot dogs from Nathan's. Kobayashi is 27 years old, stands 5 feet 7 inches and weighs just 144 pounds. He also holds records for eating 18 pounds of cow brain (that's 500 cows), 20 pounds of rice balls, 378 small bowls of Japanese noodles and 69 hamburgers. Presumably not all at the same time.
Bigger is not always better. Kobayashi shown standing next to Eric "Badlands" Booker in 2004. The 6-foot-4 and 400-pound Booker from Long Island, came in 3rd in 2003 but slipped to 5th last year.
This year's results mean that the Mustard Yellow Belt will return to Japan for the ninth year out of the past 10. New Jersey’s Steve Keiner, who won in 1999, is the only American to capture the title in the past decade. There are rumors, probably unfounded, that organizers of the event will unleash a secret weapon (shhhhh... spy picture below) next year to make the contest more competitive.
Warning: Don't click on the above picture. Really, don't... See, I told you.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 6:25 AM 4 comments
Monday, July 04, 2005
The clever and the ugly
I flew to Seattle last weekend. The whole trip was interesting, but more on that some other time. On the Alaska Airlines flight, they had product catalogs from which you could purchase all types of intriguing merchandise that you never knew you needed.
One such thing is a photoblocker that you spray on the car license plate to block speed-radar or red-light cameras. The spray contains a special coating of crystals that reflect the bright flash light used by cameras, resulting in an over-exposed and unreadable picture. However, the coating isn't visible to the human eye, so your friendly highway cop wouldn't know that you are using the spray. That's going a long way to escape a traffic ticket, but I have to admit it's ingenious. And sometimes amazingly it seems to change the car color from dark to light.
If that isn't enough, you can purchase fake mud to obscure part or all of the license plate. Just a few squirts of the spray-on dirt and you can not only fool the police, but also make the neighbors think that you are really a manly outdoors type that just spent the weekend hunting deer or racing dirt bikes. Too bad it costs $11 a bottle. I need that money just to drive the truck around.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 1:32 AM 2 comments
Layout back to normal
It took me an hour and many attempts to fix the blog and even now it doesn't make much sense. But the blog format is now back to the way it should be. I am so relieved because I really wasn't interested in trying a new format anytime soon. The problem came out of nowhere and now is gone just as mysteriously. I also cleaned up some of the obsolete links. Gone is the terror alert flag, which showed no sign of ever changing from yellow. Bye Bert. Good luck in fighting the terrorists. Thank you all for your patience.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 1:10 AM 1 comments
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Doing my bit for the environment
I have a 1994 Ford Ranger truck which doesn't look anything as macho as in the picture below. I use it often to go to work and make runs to the Home Depot and garbage dump (sometimes it's hard to tell which is which,) and normally I don't turn the front wheels when I park to make it look more menacing. But still I feel a bit guilty because I am sure I can do all of those things with a Honda Civic econobox or a hybrid Toyota Prius which impresses but costs a lot more. The Ranger, despite being American-made, has been exceptionally reliable. I change the oil and do a tune-up once in a while and that has been all it needed. Oh, and I replaced the tires and brakes once in 90,000 miles.
Since I live in California and in the Bay Area, I have to do a smog check every other year. Recently they tightened the criteria, requiring the test to be run on a "dynamometer" which is basically a vehicle treadmill; the truck is smogged both in idle and in a simulated run which mimics actual driving conditions. A lot more vehicles have failed the new test so I was a bit apprehensive when I took the Ranger to a smog station yesterday. It wasn't showing any obvious problem but then it was 11 years old and a Ford, so it couldn't possibly do that well.
Well, here were the results:
Hydrocarbons: 5 ppm at 25 mph, vs 12 ppm average for passing vehicles and 54 ppm allowable
Carbon monoxide: 0 (yes, zero) measured vs 0.05% average and 0.80% allowable
Nitrous oxide: Another 0 measured vs 124 ppm average and 770 ppm allowable
It just goes to show that there are at least a few things American that are still done right. We sure love trucks and use a lot of oil, but we know our HC, our CO and our NO. And that's a great Independence Day statement. And pffffft to all of you doubters.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 10:27 AM 3 comments
Saturday, July 02, 2005
The Joy of Pi
A 59-year-old man from Chiba Prefecture, Japan recited pi to 83,431 digits in a new world record that is almost double the current Guinness Book record held by another Japanese. Akira Haraguchi started the challenge shortly after noon Friday and stopped early Saturday. This is his second attempt in less than a year; last September, he had already gotten to about 54,000 digits, but was forced to drop the challenge when the facility hosting the event closed for the night.
The effort didn't go entirely smoothly this time either. About 3 hours into the exercise, he lost his place and had to start over from the beginning! He probably also missed the 20,492nd digit, but hey, who's counting... In case you wonder, he is by profession a mental health counselor. Which makes me wonder whether sometimes the psychiatrist isn't crazier than the patient.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 9:49 AM 1 comments
