(eom)

http://www.temple.edu/murl/spring09shannonmcdonaldspotfeature.htm

Excerpt:

"OK, here's the real deal: Team 7 will be called Green Death. We will only acknowledge "Team 7" for scheduling and disciplinary purposes. Green Death has had a long and colorful history, and I fully expect every player and parent to be on board with the team. This is not a team, but a family (some say cult), that you belong to forever. We play fair at all times, but we play tough and physical soccer. We have some returning players who know the deal; for the others, I only expect 110% at every game and practice. We do not cater to superstars, but prefer the gritty determination of journeymen who bring their lunch pail to work every week, chase every ball and dig in corners like a Michael Vick pit bull. Unless there is an issue concerning the health of my players or inside info on the opposition, you probably don't need to talk to me."

[more]

[via]

Made without wires or fasteners
[via]

It's fun to say "beeeeowww" as you click on the photos to turn lights off all over the world
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/earth_hour_2009.html

There's a computer worm that awakes on April 1, 2009. Microsoft's Malware Removal Tool will take it out, as would, I would imagine, the super cool program Malwarebytes.

Read more about the worm that is expected to be ready to activate on 12 million machines over at the NYTimes.

In the end, it will probably end up being nothing (nerds love to imagine doomsday scenarios where everyone's computer becomes an unstoppable cylon cloud computer where only those nerdy enough to know computers survive), but this is a good opportunity to download malwarebytes and scan your computer. You may find something you didn't even know was around.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iri5/sets/72157611954107572/

[via Karen via CRAFT]

This machine reminds me of the machine we saw at the Ann Arbor Art Center

[via MakeBlog]

One of the things we're doing for residents that renew their lease is letting them pick out an accent wall from any color in our book of colors. All they have to do is show me the color and I'll write down the number, mark the wall on the floor plan. I tell them this. Today I had someone come in after two days with our color book who was only able to tell me the name of the color and didn't know what wall she wanted it on. So I was left to sort through the whole book of colors searching for that name (which turned out to be slightly different than the name she told me).

The ad at right showed up as a google ad on one of the RSS feeds I read. I just don't understand some fashion posing choices. The model seems to be a zombie reenacting the bullet time scene of The Matrix

Also reminds me of Gallery of the Absurd's Annoying JCrew Model of the Week

As I posted on my photo blog, I had to buy new speakers thanks to Zooey's nomming. The problem: when I hooked up my speakers, both speakers were working, but both were only playing the right-side channel audio. I plugged headphones into the jack and found that the line out was that way too: so it was my settings, not the speakers.

Somewhere deep in my computer I had changed a slider in an attempt to boost the volume of my old speaker (which was just the R speaker, the left was broken), and now I had to find that slider.

I tried reinstalling the driver. I tried to figure out where the config files were so I could reset them to default. I tried to find equalizers online. I looked to see if I had changed it in VLC, Audacity, WMP, or iTunes. I looked for programs that could change any potential setting. Nothing helped. Every time I played Such Great Heights, I could only hear one half of the initial boop boop boop booping (a good way to test if your left/right is working btw)

In the end, the solution I developed was to just remap all the line out to a different audio jack. So for everyone on the internet that this may happen to, this is what you do. Go to your RealTek Sound Manager and change it to manual mode. Change the old line out to nothing. Change a different jack to be Line Out. Plug your speakers into that jack. Fixed. I just saved you two hours.

Above (click for large) Mike II, the second level talking pony tongueblade, heads out on a quest.

This is ProgressQuest, a game that plays itself. It's a parody of games like World of Warcraft that can include a large bit of repetitive tasks (Not that those can't be fun) And as near as I can tell, it's actually playing a game. It goes out, kills monsters, returns to town, sells stuff, buys better equipment, and then repeats. There's even a multiplayer version that seems identical to the single player version (edit: this allows you to send characters to the hall of fame).

I've you want to see for yourself what it's like, it's downloadable at their website

Bootleg Brands is a blog about knockoff/counterfeit brands. Here we have an IVIKE sock, a pretty clever way to make fake Nike socks

[via]

So apparently on One Tree Hill this guy is waiting for a heart transplant. And then he's going to get one. But then a dog eats his heart. What the heck.



[via the soup]

Bike by this guy via Make

and turns out to be the DNA of the QTip factory worker
http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2009/03/german-crime-wave-solved.html

In case you're not familiar with them, a mashup is when a DJ takes two or more songs and brings them together to make one song. Below you can click and listen to United State of Pop by DJ Earworm, a song made up of the top 25 Billboard songs of 2007. Party Ben also has good mashups that include things like The Beastie Boys Galvanize with John William's Imperial March from Star Wars. His site seems to be down at the moment though.

Listen to United States of Pop below (mp3 and vid)

This basically seems like one of the easiest ways to make money on the internet there is. So there are a number of places that apartment communities advertise. Many, like Apartment Shopper's Guide, cost the company a flat monthy fee per month. Yellowpages.com costs $495/month and when communities start look for places to cut advertising, they're going to cut sites like yellowpages.com that don't bring them any leads.

Others, like the internet's biggest apartment website, Rent.com, don't charge the apartment community anything to be listed online.

Here's the Rent.com business model:

1) Allow apartment communities to be listed for free
2) When someone rents an apartment, charge the appartment community $398 for filling their vacancy as per the agreement
3) Give the new resident $100 for listing you as a referral

It's quite genius, especially considering that most people look at a bunch of different websites and are going to list you as the referring site if theres a $100 kickback for them (even if they viewed another site first).

Recently, ApartmentMonster.com came onto the scene offering a $175 kickback to referrals. It's pretty easy to establish yourself when you're giving away money. Start up costs? All you need is server space and someone that knows how to code a professional web 2.0 style website.

So if anyone wants to make some money on the internet, start offering $200/month and let me in on the profits.

Today at 3:20 I got another call.

"Thank you for calling ________; this is Mike"

"Hi can you tell me about what you need in order to get an apartment?" she asks. This was her actual first question: she asked nothing about price.

"In terms of the application process?"

"Yeah"

"Well, with your application we would need something that verifies income. You can use 3 recent paystubs, a W2, or even a letter from your employer: basically anything with a number on it. And then when we run your credit, it's not based just on income; the program combines both income and credit to give us one composite number to let us know if you're approved or not"

"Ok" she says. And then I hear a click as she hangs up on me.

Yesterday and today I've had two different people do this to me. Here's yesterday:

"Thank you for caling __________, this is Mike"

"How much are your one bedrooms?"

"Well, when were you looking to move in?" [Revelant because it changes what specials I can offer her]

"As soon as possible."

"That works out well because I do have some one bedroom apartments available now. They include heat and water and a covered parking space and start at $770 a month"

And then, without a word, she just hangs up as if I'm a website and once she gets the information she needs, she can just end the connection.

Karen was watching the trashy reality show, Keeping up with the Kardashians last Sunday. Ok, so we both were watching it, but I'd prefer to assign channel selection blame for that to someone else. Anyhow, in the most recent episode one of the ultra rich daughters went out to a store and spent $19,723 in one shopping trip.

This made me think about how great it must have been for that store owner that day. I'm sure that would pay rent for a few months on her store. And in turn, maybe that store owner wouldn't have to worry about rent for a few months and spend that money at another store. And then that person will spend the money they get. And suddenly, everyone has more money, but really it's that same money getting passed around. It all comes down to an economic variable called the volume of money. I don't remember enough of my Econ classes to tell you what formula that plugs into, but it an interesting concept. It's the concept behind last year's stimulus checks.

Really it's just weird to imagine everyone having $5.00 and sitting in a circle. And then they keep passing that $5.00 to the left and buying something from the person next to them. Pretty soon, everyone has sold a lot of stuff. Over simplification? Yes.

Anyhow, the NYTimes just ran an interesting article called Oversaving, a Burden for Our Times that is a little ahead of the game (I think it will be a while before America saves too much), but raises some interesting points. It goes through a series of studies that researchers did to test enjoyment people got from different buying scenarios.

Dr. Keinan managed to change consumers’ behavior simply by asking a few questions to bus riders going to outlet stores and to other shoppers shortly before Black Friday.

The people who were asked to imagine how they would feel the following week about their purchases proceeded to shop thriftily for basic necessities, like underwear and socks. But people who were asked to imagine how they’d feel about their purchases in the distant future responded by spending more money and concentrating on indulgences like jewelry and designer jeans

“When I look back at my life,” one of these high rollers explained, “I like remembering myself happy. So if it makes me happy, it’s worth it.”

Also, I submitted the NYTimes article to the Consumerist today and they posted it. More commentary on their post

The answer to yesterday's Price is Right parking sticker post was $300.00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/science/24scan.html

The Consumerist brings us this story of a drummer who has come up with an interesting way of pricing his new album:

"Josh Freese, a member of Devo and A Perfect Circle who's also played for NIN, Sting, The Offspring, and more, has just released his solo album today. Aside from the free single or vanilla $7 album download option, you can pay anywhere from $15 to $75,000 for increasingly more bizarre package deals.

At the cheaper end of the tier, $50 will get you the digital download, a double disc set, a t-shirt, and a 5-minute phone call with Freese to discuss anything you like—including what you liked or didn't like about the album. Too boring? Buy the $250 package and you'll get signed drumsticks, plus you can have lunch with Freese at The Cheesecake Factory or PF Changs. The $5,000 package includes (among other things) a letter from Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam telling you about his favorite song on the album.

But wait there's more! If you're willing to spend a sizable amount of money, the perks get even weirder: there's only one $10,000 package, but that's because included alongside the foot massage and day at Disneyland, Freese will give you his Volvo station wagon, of which he obviously only has one.

More info (on things like what 20k gets you) and full article atThe Consumerist post

From the blog of unnecessary quotation marks, don't miss the small text on this one:

Why would such a description be necessary?

Via Digg. Click for full.

Without going over, leave a comment guessing the total cost of the 250 parking stickers you see here. Answer revealed Tuesday at 6:00pm. Winner gets bragging rights.

Our local paper, the Ann Arbor News, is ceasing print publication in July and going with an online edition. I hope they still put out an online RSS feed of stories for me to read for free.

/part of the problem
http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/michigan/Ann_Arbor_News_to_stop_print_edition

[via my dad]

From Failblog

Using the same technology that gave you moving baseball player chips on your slurpee cup in the 90's, this guy made a big moving mural

Wikihow's How to of the Day yesterday shows how to make cool floors like these. I could never do anything like this without a pattern, but still: neat.

View the full gallery for a whole bunch more (click on one and use your arrow keys to quickly scroll through them):
http://www.marikasurinen.com/sculptures_main.html

Figured that since I posted on part one of the finale that I ought to post on part 2. I won't go giving anything away but I thought that I'd say that I thought the finale to Battlestar Galactica was a pretty great ending.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to head over to BSG Sitrep to see if other nerds agree with me.

http://jordanferney.blogspot.com/2009/03/happy-spring.html

Someone stopped by the office to place a bid on doing our property's flowers for spring. His business card makes it seem as if he has problems conjugating verbs. It reads:

BOB WHITE
LANDSCAPE

[person's name changed]

This makes me want to get cards that say

MIKE
TAKE PICTURE

other than, you know, the accordion music

[via tpfd rss]

Jake points out that these people beat Mountain Dew to the punch: http://manapotions.com/buy.html

with World of Warcraft themed Mountain Dew in both horde and alliance flavors

there are finally enough Wiis to go around

The internet loves stop motion animation

Fun fact from the consumerist: When Felicia Day works at Sears and tells you that you have no interest and no payment for 12 months, that's true. But what they don't tell you is if you don't have your entire balance paid in 12 months, you'll be paying around 25% interest on what remains. And not only that, but you'll have to pay all of the interest that would have accrued during your "no interest" time. Or, to direct quote from Sears:

"FINANCE CHARGES accrue on a promotional purchase from the date of purchase and all accrued FINANCE CHARGES for the entire promotional period will be added to your account if the purchase is not paid in full by the end of the promotional period or if you default under your card agreement. Making the minimum monthly payment will not pay off your promotional purchase in time to avoid FINANCE CHARGES"

The Escapist has a ridiculous post about how "The Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force is warning parents about online predators who use games like Animal Crossing: City Folk to connect with kids across the country"

"There is no reason an adult should have this game," said Task Force Coordinator Andy Anderson. He added that adults who own Animal Crossing and similar games likely have them for "the wrong reasons." Evil, child-molesting reasons, no doubt.

This month's issue of Entertainment Weekly has an article about how fans were so upset back in 2003 when Battlestar Galactica was in the works that the show almost didn't go forward. People were upset about all the changes they had made over the original 1970's series. Cylons weren't big lumbering robots, Starbuck was a woman and the President was too, Boomer went from a black man to a Korean woman.

"Katie Sackhoff: "I got a death threat [mailed to me]. It made me terrified of science-fiction fans, which was unfair because 98 percent of them are fantastic human beings. But there's 2 percent of them that scare the s--- out of ya."
* * *
[Creator] Moore got an up-close-and-personal taste of the fan outrage in October 2003, when he was invited to attend Galacticon, a fan convention held at a Los Angeles hotel across the street from his Universal Studios offices. Richard Hatch [was Capt Apollo in the original series, later went on to be Tom Zarek in the reimagined series] was one of the organizers of the event. Before Moore started the audience Q&A, he showed three lengthy clips from the miniseries.
Moore The clips end, and they booed and they hissed.
Hatch It was icy cold in there. It was obvious that no one liked it, and it wasn't because it wasn't good. It was because it was so different from what everybody wanted at that time. Their questions were tipped with a lot of acid.
Moore The gist of it was "This is nothing like the series - how could you do this?" Somebody stood up and said, "Now that you've heard all this, will you take a pledge that if this show goes to series, you will make sure it's more in keeping with what we would like to see?" I said, "The answer is no. This is the show. You may not like the show, you don't have the watch the show, but this is the show that we're making." Then they got really mad. People started to stand up and yell."

To summarize the rest, Hatch stood up and said "hey sit down and listen to the guy" and Moore gave him a guest spot on the new show which later ended up turning into a good role.

Back in the day after I read through all the Hardy Boys books, I moved onto Star Wars books [I will be happy to point out IG-88 next time you watch Star Wars]. From there, it was Dragonlance. And then on to Stephen King and all sorts of other "real" books. Then came college where I read a lot of stuff written before 1800.

I've wanted to try my hand at reading some Sci Fi or fantasy again, but every time I pick up a sci fi book it's a retelling of the Cold War in spaaaaaaace or something similar. And last time I picked up a fantasy book, it was a total dud.

I figured there's gotta be something out there that I would like. So today at Allie's birthday, I asked @kev097 and Angie if they had any recommendations.

I got some great recommendations. Dune. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Philip K Dick. Ray Bradbury. Of course, I said, the classics. The perfect place to start.

Except the AADL was out of classics. And since Dune book 7 didn't seem like a good place to start, I am trying the shotgun method: pick 12 books regardless of what's on the cover and read through them like an editor. Editors usually can tell if they like a manuscript by reading the first typed page. I figure among these 12 books I've gotta find something that I like. If I don't like it then it's off to the library returns slot when I'm there picking up one of the classics I put on hold.

[article via digg]

but it's not easy to shoot a lock off a door. Most of the time, it results in you seizing up the lock so that it will never come off. Exception: shotgun. Full story w/ photos at: The Box O' Truth
[via Eston]

This guy quit his job via giant sheet cake. He described the cake as "delicious and well received". Full text below.

"Dear Mr. Bowers,

During the past three years, my tenure at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard has been nothing short of pure excitement, joy and whim.

However, I have decided to spend more time with my family and attend to health issues that have recently arisen. I am proud to have been part of such an outstanding team and I wish this organization only the finest in future endeavors.

Please accept this cake as notification that I am leaving my position with NWT on March 27.

Sincerely,

W. Neil Berrett"

[Via Cake Wrecks]

Remember to proofread your emails, especially if they are going out to everyone in an entire apt association. Added bonus: unnecessary quotation marks.

More at the original post

I want to get out our swiffer and take photos like these by just jumping up in the air like these kids did.
More at http://ziza.ru/2009/03/13/pridurki_na_metlakh_9_foto.html

I always enjoy going through the keywords that bring new visitors to my site. I've found that Serial Bus was a good name for generating search results. Every time I mention a video game, I get people looking for a serial [number] a.k.a. CD Key so they can play the pirated version of the video game they downloaded.

Brian mentioned that naming his blog "My Stories" brings him visitors looking for "funny stories". This lead me to run another experiment on google, naming my photo of the day blog http://photo-of-the-day-blog.blogspot.com to hopefully capitalise on people looking for photoblogs since google counts title when determining rank.

That all being said, I still get people looking for strange things and ending up on one of my sites. Examples:

mikehulsebus.com
used minnow tanks for sale
does gene keady wear a wig?
a pretty girl who is polish
bamn tasty
cat blowing out candles
centaur on a bicycle
something to look at

serial bus
crochet baby sack
irrational number joke
how to cry photoshop
headon wax
oh my stradivarius
yell at the tv
dump bus porn you tube
duck feeling
crotch,sell
bus where can live
i need to borrow 2600.00 now
pic crying on the bus
مسلسل صدام حسين
vaginal discharge aerial picture video [what the heck post did this find?]
this training will help me
tarp fantasy

There, I just gave away the entire penultimate episode of Battlestar Galactica. They know they have everyone watching so part 1 of the final episode was alllllll set up. And the entire set up was the same set up that was in the trailer in which the Admiral said a very enunciated "this is likely to be a one way trip" (Adama knows when speaking to a large crowd, you gotta project). The final mission is coming, pick sides, that's it. Pretty lame episode. It took ~50 minutes to get to the scenes from the trailer:


and then that was basically it. Every show normally starts with a bunch of high energy quick cuts backed up by heavy drums. Usually when they forgo it like they did for this episode, it's because they're about to reveal a bunch of crazy stuff. This time it was because they didn't have enough material.

/Ready for the 2 hr finale.
/Offically leveled up in nerd for posting a gripe post about a Sci-fi network show.

Someone spoofed the WBC protests and made the following flyer. More easily readable version is on flickr. Includes the verse from the Bible in which Jesus curses the fig tree as well as other fig-related verses
[via google reader via the stranger]

They're renaming the Sears Tower to Willis Tower

A clever way to accidentally spray water on the floor.

In Monday's mail, among the coupons for Jet's Pizza and Rite Aid was my opportunity to own knick knacks that combined a legendary mythical beast and mirrored sunglasses.

In Tuesday's mail came my copy of the BudK catalog (requested for fun and amusement (free catalogs are fun to look through). Now I have to choose between lizards in visors and the betting undead.

Click to view full

As the guys over at Penny Arcade pointed out, Above the Influence has started a new ad campaign that is targeted at gamers that argues you won't be as effective pwning n00bs if you're high. They're not the only one targeting gamers though. As posted on Kotaku, Gillette has a razor targeted at gamers. Neckbeards beware.

[Link]. Too neat to not share. Lyrics NSFW. See all the nerdcore rapping at his the site http://southbygirls.com/

This real book cover is from this boingboing post. More at the original post.

Google Reader, where I read all my websites, is pretty smart. It automatically recommends site feeds I may like based on not only what things I star and share, but also based on my web browsing history (since I have personalized search turned on).

Today I checked out to see what they recommended for me to find the blog of Andrew Keenan-Bolger. Andrew is a student who was The Cat in the Hat when Karen and I saw the University of Michigan Musical Theater people do Seussical at the Power Center.

So somehow Google put together that
1) We bought tickets to Spring Awakening, which I later blogged about on my Google-owned blog
2) I looked up videos of Spring Awakening and Rent for the blog post
3) I like feeds based out of Ann Arbor

to magically narrow down all the internet's websites to the blog of someone I've heard of but never met and that I never realized had a blog.

How cool is that?

Also from the MoOM, the Gallery of Thrift Store Art has a good variety of paintings, some better than others.

In fact, perhaps the best real book.



Thanks, SA

In every particular order:

1) The Price is Right
2) Lingo
3) Family Feud
4) Wheel of Fortune
5) Jeopardy

Special nostalgia category:

1) Nick Arcade
2) Wild and Crazy Kids
3) Double Dare

From Cellar iotd, this Russian fort was "used later by Russian army to test the influence of Russian alternative to napalm inside of the brick houses. Due to very high temperature of napalm the bricks started melting just like ice melts in the spring forming the icicles, but those icicles are of red brick"

Imagine if you forgot while parking in a tight space!

Thanks, failblog

According to a Michigan Daily Article, published today, one of my favorite professors during my time at Michigan received the first ever lifetime acheivement golden apple award.

Williams, who was unaware of the award, was beaming and teary-eyed following the surprise.

“There are seldom times when I am speechless,” Williams said. “However, this is one of those moments.”

After receiving the award, Williams spoke about the importance of work ethic and told a story of a childhood conversation with his parents.

“You best be useful in life,” Williams said he learned from his parents. “Because you are certainly no ornament. I looked in the mirror and thought, ‘God, they’re right.’ ”

I had him in a Shakespeare class (English 367 I think) that I took with Spencer. Just the other week I was telling Karen how some weekday we should sneak into one of his classes just for fun. I've always wanted to check out his Bible class based on the good things that Allie has said about it. Not that he'd mind, but the thing is I really think that Ralph Williams would remember me: he always spent the first few minutes in class greeting everyone and going around to shake everyone's hand despite the huge class size.

Hey wait a second!

Williams’ last lecture and the presentation of the award will be on April 21st at the Rackham Graduate School at 7 p.m.

Time to clear my schedule!

Original article: http://www.michigandaily.com/node/48087

Ciara passed on a link to the MoOM: The Museum of Online Museums. I've yet to get a chance to go through all their many exhibits, but I did check out the condiment packet museum. Sortable by type and restaurant for the true condiment lover.

What are you doing in my episode of Battlestar Galactica? And why are you a brain surgeon?

In related news, today I realized that President Laura Roslin is Stands With a Fist from Dances with Wolves