E-Filler Archives

There's a story today about how the #1 CFL draft pick won't play in the CFL this year. Come on, I'm sure he could have got at least $40k in the CFL :D

It's that time of year again; the kids are packing up and fleeing this university town for four months. Some will be back, some won't. But one thing is for sure, they like to waste a lot. Take a walk down any 'student ghetto' street (Mill, Huron, etc.) and you'll see the same thing: mountains of furniture, mattresses, and other garbage...as far as the eye can see.

Below are two photos from the buildings next to mine:

The first photo shows a small mountain of garbage, obviously the usual dumpsters for this building have overflowed. The second photo shows a large industrial sized dumpster 3/4 full of old furniture and other objects. This building has emptied their 3 (or 4) usual garbage bins already once this week, as well as another one of those huge industrial bins. I just watched someone throw two perfectly good mattresses in the garbage. I can only assume that the mattresses were still good because someone probably slept on them the night before. Meanwhile people half way around the world don't have a pot to piss in...you can see where I'm going with this. The waste is mind boggling.

I think this is consumerism at its best.

Walmart has threatened legal action agaist the owner of www.walmart-foundation.org. The site is/was a parody of www.walmartfoundation.org. Walmart claims that he used the images (and probably did) directly from their site. Is this, or is this not fair use?

Now is probably a good time to plug the modprobes t-shirt I made, available in the e-filler store. For those who don't know; modprobe is a Linux command used for probing kernel modules. The t-shirt parodies the 'modrobes' line of clothes.

Here's some hockey new for everyone...
So it looks like Chris Chelios has spouted off his mouth again. This time attacking legendary coach Scotty Bowman.


Here is the link to the video

Brian

It seems like you can't even turn around in this country without seeing something about the Liberal Sponsorship Scandal (TM). So, why should e-filler be any different? Personally, I haven't really been watching and I'm not too sure what's going on, except I hear the Liberals gave away a nice pile of money.

Those of you who are watching (or not), is this going to affect the way you vote? What about Jack Layton and Paul Martin's recent dealings to keep the Liberals afloat?

I'm not too sure what the rest of Canada looks like this morning, but here's the situation in London (click to enlarge):



Hello spring?

Someone sent me this link, and now I'm sharing it with you. It's flash and takes a minute or two to load, but is worth the wait. I'm curious to know how they do it. (Remember to zoom it in and out with your mouse.)

For the second time this year, I had the pleasure of dining at my local Burger King. The store is huge, always empty and the service is slow. My food (which took at least 10 minutes to get to me) was cold and the bun for the burger was stale. And it wasn't just me; the other two people I was with also had this delight. How can a fast-food chain have stale food?!? It wasn't for lack of effort on the employees' part either. They all seemed to be working very hard (although independently, perhaps this is where the problem stems from, the manager's unwillingness to get more change for the til also contributed to the delay).

So put up or shut up right? I decided to e-mail Burger King to express my concerns. First off, their Canadian site is "Under Construction"...the US site doesn't accept e-mail correspondence. Are they stuck in 1995? Is Burger King a company that is in serious trouble?

So some woman in the US tried to sue Wendy's because she claimed that she found a severed finger (3.8cm of it anyway...nothing to scoff at) in her chili.

It turns out, she has launched lawsuits at large companies before...and once that came to light, she dropped the case against Wendy's. Well, Wendy's is now counter-suing the woman on account of her false claims, and is offering a $100,000 reward for anyone who knows where the finger came from. I'm wondering the same thing...where the hell did she get a human finger-tip from?!?! Maybe the police should be looking into this, no?

Google has introduced a cool new feature to Google Maps: Satellite imagery. Go to Google Maps and then in the upper right hand corner click the "Satellite" link. From there, you can type an address into the search bar and zoom in. Burlington is photographed in very high quality; I could easily find the roof of my parents home. Toronto looks the same. London is only surveyed at lower quality.

If civilians have access to this kind of satellite/photographic technology, then the spy agencies must be able to read our news papers from space. Kinda scarry...

I wish I had thought of this scam. I know 2 people who own cute rabbits I could have taken pictures of. Perhaps I can rebrand the scam...but I don't own anything worth saving.

Alright,
I guess as the E-Filler resident hippie it is my obligation to do the post on today, April 20th.

As most of you know (and many of you don't), 4:20 has been a time and subsequent date infamously associated with the recreational use of a little drug called cannibis. Also known as marijuana, pot, reefer, doober, weed, grass, wacky tobaccy, sticky-icky and so forth. The origin of 4:20 is loosely traced back to a group of students who would meet everyday after school at 4:20 to have thier first joint of the day. I guess it spread from there.



Here is a good link regarding the history of 4:20. It also includes some facts and myths about the time.
So have a hippie April 20th everybody! I'm gonna go grab some munchies!

Brian

A new pope has been elected: Pope Benedict XVI.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, age 78, has been chosen as Pope John Paul II's successor. Cardinal Ratzinger was an advisor to Pope John Paul since 1981 on matters of church doctrine.

CBC News article
Wikipedia Article

Here is a video of a REALLY bad weatherman. It's funny because of how BAD this guy is and that they don't cut back to the news. But I feel bad because this guy was on TV, and now the Internet. The good news for him is that he's not alone. I've seen some presentations here at university that weren't too far off from this guy's peformance.

The circus is in town to entertain the College of Cardinals before they enter the conclave. Pictured below are two clowns pretending to be soldiers.


But seriously, why is that the Swiss Guard uniform? They're the Swiss GUARD...you think they'd pick something a little more guard-like, no?

Is it just me or as the Toronto Star reached a new low? This article about Britney Spears is posted on the front page of their website. Seems like tabloid material to me. Some excerpts:

But if Spears, 23, doesn't stop eating junk food, she'll be spread far and wide.

With all her bucks, Spears is buying trailer-park fast-food value meals?

What is this crap and how did it get into a reputable news paper?

For those of you who don't know, DNS is the Domain Name System. It is the protocol that takes a name (like www.e-filler.ca) and turns it into an actual IP (Internet Protocol) address. The IP address in turn allows your computer to connect to the remote computer you’re looking for (just now you connected to the computer at e-filler with your web browser). DNS is nice in that it gives us a way to quickly remember where stuff is located. Another nice thing is that even if the machine changes IP addresses, it can still be found through its domain name. (You may recall a few weeks ago, e-filler.ca changed IP addresses...you probably didn't notice; a testament to the effectiveness of DNS.)

However, the glory days of DNS may almost be over. DNS abuse is becoming more and more rampant, setting up a domain name can be a chore, and lastly (and most importantly) does anyone really memorize URLs anymore? The only URL that's really important is google.com. From there you can get to any page on the web. What good is the domain name?

For example, I want to get to Mazda's website; I go to Google, type in Mazda and hit search. Mazda.com comes back first, mazda.ca is a nice close second, so on and so forth. Does it matter if Mazda is located at www.mazda.com or 202.47.18.34? (Okay, okay, bad example, Mazda uses virtual hosts...but when IPv6 comes around this won't be necessary.) The important thing is that I got where I was trying to go. The real beauty of this 'Google' approach is that regardless of the domain name, I'm getting the content I want.

Misspell a domain name lately? The results can be a bit scary. A tame example: try www.googel.ca. You'd expect an error, or something to do with 'googel'...nope, Toronto Spas.

Have you tried to register a domain name lately? Think of a domain name, and I bet it's taken. The system doesn’t work any more. People are registering domains by the thousands in an effort to resell them, meaning most names will never be used.

It’s time to rethink this DNS thing, and soon.

It's another great afternoon!
If any of you out there are anything like myself, you watched professional wrestling as a child. It isn't my proudest moment, but hey, there isn't much to do growing up in suburbia. It was brought to my attention today, that the Ultimate Warrior is a lonely and desperate man. Well, maybe not as lonely and sepparate as others.



But alas, he must be poor or something, because he has been threatening the website Something Awful.com with legal action with regards to some post on the website dissing the Warrior. Here is a quote from one of the emails between the Ultimate Warrior's "people" and one of the guys from somethingawful.com discussing the lawsuit...

Dear Director of Communications Ultimate Creations, Inc.,

I just realized you never informed me which time zone you're in, so I have absolutely no idea if your "9 AM Monday April 11, 2005" deadline is based on central standard time or pacific or mountain or what. Could you please let me know what time zone you're in so I can adjust my schedule accordingly? I'd hate to be at the doctor's office or something when the deadline comes up. I plan to be seated firmly in my legal lawyerin' chair (LLC) so as to save my ass when you attempt to blow it off with your awesome lawsuit.

I assure you that if you have the time to read the following, you will not regret it. Here is somethingawfuls.com's view on the matter.

Brian

The face of Cookie Monster isn't changing, but his appetite sure is. The producers of Sesame Street are changing Cookie Monster's trade mark song from "C is for cookie" to "Cookies Are a Sometimes Food". (Wow, that just rolls off the tongue.) Is nothing sacred?

First off, he's the COOKIE MONSTER...that's what he eats; cookies...all the time. Next, why is Sesame Street picking up the slack for crappy parents? Kids are getting fat because they’re lazy and parents feed them crap. 2-5 year olds shouldn’t be preparing their own meals. Teaching them to eat fewer cookies won’t change what they’re fed. They should teach parents that "E is for Exercise" and "D is for Discipline".

I spotted this photo of a street-sign on another website...it reminds me of Dr. Zoidberg from Futurama.

Well, it's that time of year ago. UWO (and I assume all other universities in this country) have published their list of faculty members making over $100K. Without further ado: 2004 Salary Disclosure

After thought: I guess we can also assume that this is the upper echelon of professors based on appearance as well. (See yesterday's post.)

Check out this interesting article .

"A person with below-average looks tended to earn 9 percent less per hour, and an above-average person tended to earn 5 percent more per hour than an average-looking person."

Kind of makes you wish you just worked out instead of going to school.

Maybe ERTW should be changed to GLPRTW

Enough from me, I'm going out to get a tan... and then hopefully a raise.

We're one step closer to being able to choose the weather outside: You can now choose which forecasts are displayed on the sidebar of E-Filler. Simply click the 'Customize Weather' link (also found below the weather icons), and figure the rest out yourself. There are some 4000 different locations in the database. Pretty sweet.

Let me know if there's any problems.

On last night's broadcast of ABC news there was an interesting news report on pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for the morning after pill. For those of you who don't know, the morning after pill (marketed as "Plan B") is taken by a woman and can cause a fertilized egg to detach from the uterus. (I'm no doctor, but this can't be good for you.) This may not sound like a problem, but many people believe that life begins at conception, and that a fertilized egg is in fact a human life. Ergo, to followers of this logic dispensing the pill is facilitating or aiding in an abortion. So, who's rights should prevail? The right of the patient, trying to get the drug? Or the right of the pharmacist? This is a touchy subject, and various states have passed laws on both sides of the argument. What's the law here in Canada? Can a doctor be made to perform an operation that conflicts with their morality? Is a pharmacist any different?

Round 1: Fight!

I meant to post this earlier but I forgot...and if you're learning about it now, you've probably already missed something important today: Today is the beginning of Daylight Savings, so set your clock AHEAD 1 hour.

Enjoy the sunlight.

As I'm sure you've all read, Pope John Paul II has died. He has been the pope for more than 20 years, and half the world has not known another pope. He won't soon be forgotten. In his papicy he travelled more miles than all other popes combined (including 3 trips to Canada). He worked hard to unite the church, he remained firm on moral issues, and he improved relations with other religions. Despite what loud critics say (even on the eve of his death), the world has lost a truly remarkable man.

How many of you are gamers? I find this clip funny even though I'm not a hardcore gamer. Just click on the "watch this movie" link.

So, the tomato died yesterday. I'm glad that it was "god's will" (and not machines) that kept her alive for the past whatever years...

Anyway, its about time someone started to mock this whole situation. South Park did it in episode 904 which aired on comedy central on wed the 30th.Also, here is a random image someone sent me yesterday



Brian

Starting next Monday there will be a $0.05 (CDN) access fee each time you view E-Filler. The reason for the charge is to help offset rising bandwidth costs and to help pay for the new hardware.

Billing will be on an IP address basis. ISPs are now required to divulge the users of IP addresses to site owners thanks to the Freedom of Information Act. Billing will be done in accordance with RFC 2148, allowing collection to be processed through your ISP (most likely on your monthly statement).