2009 February | BoWilliams.com

Custom ringtones

Family, Leisure, Popular Culture No Responses »

Feb 202009

I’m having a blast setting up different ringtones for everyone in my cell phone. Aural Caller ID is très useful, grasshopper.

I’ve really had this capability for a couple of phones now, and actually did an all-Cheap Trick scheme once. That was fun. “If You Want My Love” for Lea; “Gonna Raise Hell” for Charles; “Daddy Should Have Stayed In High School” for Dad…heh.

This time it’s wide open—anything in my library—and I’m not going to share, and you’ll never know, ’cause why would you call me mobile if you’re standing right there? Bwahahahahaha! OK, I’ll share one: this time around, Lea is “You’re My Best Friend” by Queen.

Incidentally, the default ring is the theme from Twisted Nerve. I’ve wanted to do that ever since I saw/heard it in Death Proof, which was itself a reference to Kill Bill Vol. 1.

Thursday miscellanea #27

Menagerie 11 Responses »

Feb 192009

Want to see a six-pound rat with inch-long canine teeth?
Is anyone doing good, unpretentious, straightforward, working stiff, barroom rock and roll anymore? You know, six- or seven-piece lineups with a saxophone and a harmonica and stuff, singin’ ’bout girls and good times? Who is today’s John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, or Michael Stanley Band, or even early Huey Lewis? (Springsteen misses; too political, and with long-expired blue collar credentials.)
Dad’s shopping for a new buggy, and I took a close look at a Hyundai Genesis with him yesterday at lunch. It’s quite impressive. If you still hold negative opinions about Korean cars on principle, it’s time to jettison them.
Washed my cell phone a couple of weeks ago. (That’s not good for them, by the way.) I almost had it replaced at wirelessgalaxy.com, but they pissed me off, and I’ve repeatedly judged the story too boring to tell in detail. (Stay away from this merchant; trust me). Anyway, a colleague wants an iPhone, and wanted to get rid of his BlackJack II, so I got into a three-month-old one of those for less than I had already mentally spent to replace my simple slider. Cool.
Google is blurring faces on Street View, in the stated interest of privacy. Remember, computers do exactly what you tell them to.
Oh, and if you ask Google Maps about driving from Seattle to Honolulu, check out step 8.
I’m almost 38 years old and have never been anywhere dark enough to see the Milky Way in the sky. I might see about rectifying that this year.

Maybe she should try a wolverine next

Current Events 4 Responses »

Feb 182009

chimpanzee Prudent living tip for today: wild animals make bad pets. Corollary: wild animals who are a) several times stronger than you are, and b) inherently unpredictable make horrible pets.

You know, if you’re going to live on thousands of acres where you can run around in a loincloth and chant and commune with them and shit, that’s one thing. But in the conventional pet sense? Nah. Bad move.

Chimpanzees are strong—freakishly, unbelievably strong. As soon as I read about the adventures of Travis, I remembered this Straight Dope column, in which we learn that:

In a strength test at the Bronx Zoo in 1924, a 135-lb. chimpanzee named Suzette registered a pull on a spring dynamometer of 1,260 pounds—with one hand.
The original questioner writes of a carnival act he saw in which a person could win $100 by staying in a boxing ring with a 90-lb. chimpanzee for three minutes. The keeper would let the mark enjoy himself and thoughts of easy money for a minute or so, and then blow a whistle—at which point the chimpanzee would pick the person up and effortlessly throw him over the ropes.
“When roused, they are vicious little bastards and not to be trifled with.” Indeed.

Perhaps if this woman avoids charges, she and the idiot who climbed into the panda bear’s cage to give him a hug can hang out.

Unintentional (regrettable?) prescience on the “stimulus”

Annoyances, Current Events, Politics 5 Responses »

Feb 172009

Guess the author:

“Genuine bipartisanship assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained — by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate — to negotiate in good faith.

“If these conditions do not hold — if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs . . . are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so — the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100% of what it wants, go on to concede 10%, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this ‘compromise’ of being ‘obstructionist.’”

Could it be Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, decrying the cost and questionable content of the “stimulus”? Is it Rush Limbaugh, firing up his “dittoheads”?

Nope. It’s Barack Obama, from The Audacity of Hope (hat tip, The Corner.)

Political expediency is the harshest of mistresses.

If you are sufficiently dim as to be unable to discern when and how to talk in the car, then by all means, hang up and drive

Annoyances, Current Events, Liberty, Politics 13 Responses »

Feb 162009

Another day, another blood-runs-in-the-streets piece on driving while talking on a cellular telephone.

I talk on the phone while I drive. I have no plans to stop when it’s illegal, either. (Inserting an “if/when” in there seems a needless fantasy at this point.) I choose times and topics carefully, and if either begins to threaten my primary responsibility as a motorist, then I stop. “Gotta go, bye” (click) is a longstanding and understood practice when I’m talking to Lea, or when she’s talking to me.

That hang-up threshold has always been very clear to me, and I can only guess that many people who crash while talking ignore it.

If you’re too stupid, distractable, enamored of what Your Betters require of you, or whatever to talk and drive, then you don’t do it. Can’t handle a sausage biscuit? Don’t do that either. Find music disruptive? Turn it off.

I can do it. So I will.

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