And since we've no place to go, let's go check out the flaming trash heap that is The Bonfire of the Vanities.

Posted by: Jim at 06:19 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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During this hectic holiday season there are a few things that we need to go over to insure my sanity and your continued good health.

1. Shopping on your lunch break is fine but the sense of urgency this creates for you is not the “life or death” type of thing that will get you out of a traffic ticket.
2. No matter how late you are getting back to the office, the laws of physics still say that you cannot go faster than the car in front of you.
3. That three feet of space you normally leave between my back bumper and your front bumper is sacred and should not be sacrificed no matter how desperate you are to get to Borders.
4. Stay the hell away from Pleasant Hill Road.
5. Those lanes that turn into forced right turns are still there even when they are full of traffic. If you donÂ’t want to turn right you need to get into another lane before you get into the intersection.
6. If you find yourself in the intersection turning right even though you don't want to, go ahead and turn right anyway. Sitting in your turn lane waiting for a break in the lane of traffic full of cars that got out of that right turn only lane in time will get your ass totaled by the Excursion carrying one very stressed mom and 3 screaming kids that is coming up behind you. The people behind her will cheer your destruction.
7. Do NOT match your vehicle speed to the ambient temperature.
8. When the left turn arrow turns red this means you are not supposed to enter the intersection. They picked that color because it is exactly the fucking same as a red light. If you are in the intersection when the red arrow makes its appearance you may continue out of the intersection. If you are not yet into the intersection then stay right the hell where you are.
9. If you are the fifth or succeeding car to blow through the red arrow by playing choo-choo train with the car in front of you I will shoot you dead.

Posted by: Jim at 02:31 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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I've mentioned a couple times about the new site look that The Bartender has done for The Snooze. Due to my time problems and then my tables messing things up y'all haven't been able to see it. Well, go take a look at it now. This is the preliminary design, looking for feedback. That page is a duplicate index so it has the very same article content as this one. Sidebar content is different since this one's been updated a few times in the past weeks and that one hasn't.

Let us know what you like, don't like, etc.

Posted by: Jim at 12:29 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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You've probably seen this poem before but it's such a good one that I'm posting it anyway.

This holiday season there are hundreds of thousands of servicemen and women who aren't with their families because they've chosen duty over comfort. I'm very grateful to the men and women of our armed forces for the work that they are doing and the sacrifices they are making for our protection and the benefit of the world. more...

Posted by: Jim at 11:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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CON PROMISES SLICK INHERITANCE

LONDON (Reuters) - A pharmacy in Scotland is suffering from a bad case of mistaken identity after it was used as the front for a Nigerian sting con.

Unsuspecting victims from around the world are descending on the chemists shop in Thurso, Caithness, believing it to be a bank they were duped into paying thousands of pounds.

How can there possibly be people with thousands of disposable dollars who are so stupid they can fall for this highly publicized con? It's OOOOOOLLLLLLLDDDDDDD! It's documented up the freaking wazzoo. It's been on every news channel, every news magazine, in every paper. Hell, they joked about it on Malcolm in the Middle this week!

Each was told they would inherit an oil company in return for an upfront fee to be paid into an account at the Continental Trust Bank -- but the bank does not exist and the address given was that of Sutherland's the chemists.

Even if nobody had ever warned anybody about it, how many synapses have to fire before you realize that this is bogus? You will inherit an oil company if you pay an upfront fee? What? And where is this bridge you're selling me?

Arlen Hughes, from Wyoming in the United States, was told he would inherit $41 million (23 million pounds) if he paid $57,000 up front.

"I received a call from a fella in Nigeria saying that I had inherited an oil company," he told Today. "They were very professional."

"I found a registered number in Scotland and so the researches I had found led me to believe they were on the uppity up."

Sure, Arlen. Blinded by greed and posessed of startling stupidity. But they had a registered number! Um...yeah. So based on the fact that they had a phone he gave them $57,000. Jackass moron asshat.

Please, please, please, do not waste even a single penny of taxpayer money on this crap. Let the greedy morons pay and keep paying for their stupidity. Consider them a suplement on foreign aid to Africa just like the Lottery is a special tax on people who are bad at math.

Posted by: Jim at 07:47 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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The Pessimist: Our meeting is cut back to 30 minutes? We'll never cover everything in that time!

The Optimist: Our meeting is cut back to 30 minutes? We'll concentrate on the important things and everything will be fine.

The Realist: Our meeting is cut back to 30 minutes? That means I'm allowed to kick out the teeth of any one of you plebians who starts regurgitating inane drivel that does not concern, and I mean DIRECTLY concern, the actual job oriented requirements and objective of this meeting. We'll be able to cover everything from a regular hour and a half meeting and I won't be subjected to your pathetic life stories and humorless anecdotes on a frikken Monday morning while supressing my urge to scream at and/or throttle any number of you on my way back to my cube where I have actual work to do. Work that is waiting for me in a not-being-completed-while-I'm-in-this-frikken-meeting state. You remember work, right? That shit we're all being paid for? All right! Let's get this bitch of a meeting moving!

(I'm a realist.)

Posted by: Jim at 02:05 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The Bestofme Symphony is showing good growth with the second edition attracting 33 submissions by 27 people. Much thanks to the people who've submitted posts either from their own weblogs or from ones they read. Thanks also to the webloggers who've posted about the Bestofme Symphony to get the word out to the Blogosphere.

Submit!: Want to be a part of next week's edition? Check out this post for submission info.

Spread the word: Webloggers, please consider putting up a post linking to this Symphony. The faster this becomes a well known weblog meme, the sooner I'll stop begging you to link to it. See? We all win if you link.

Email Reminders: If you'd like to be sent a reminder about the Symphony, drop me a line at this address. It's not a mailing list, just me sending out friendly little reminders. There'll be one on Thursday or Friday to remind you to submit for the next symphony and one on Monday with a link to the freshly posted Symphony.

So without further ado, I present the second edition of the Bestofme Symphony: more...

Posted by: Jim at 08:39 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Bacon: I peed my pants.
(Bacon is a card carrying member of the CAP Society. That's Children Against Parents. Their methods are nefarious, devious and purely evil.)

Lovely Wife: What? You just went potty before we got in the car! Why did you pee your pants?
(Lovely Wife has recently joined POTLaN, better known as Parents On Their Last Nerve.)

Bacon: I don't know.
(CAP members are highly trained to withstand the fiercest interrogation.)

Bear: Because we don't have a bathroom in here!
(As the CAP Team Leader, Bear launches a flanking attack to support his troops.)

Lovely Wife: Gah!
(Bear's flanking attack is successful. Lovely Wife's adult thought processes cannot switch gears fast enough to counter his devious non sequitir.)

Bear and Bacon smile, content in their victory as Lovely Wife and I devolve into a laughing fit.

Posted by: Jim at 07:24 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Get into shape for those traumatic post-holiday party battles with the diabolical front door.

Nissed as a Pewt

(Credit to Dopple-G)

Posted by: Jim at 08:51 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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If you don't want to be blackmailed the best thing to do is get the blackmail material out yourself. Here's a picture of me after a shower with only my boxers on. more...

Posted by: Jim at 07:09 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Virginia Arrests Man for Spam Email Under New Law

DULLES, Va. (Reuters) - Virginia authorities said on Thursday they had arrested and charged a North Carolina man for sending "spam" e-mail in the first use of a new state law that could bring penalties of up to 20 years in prison.

20 Years? Wow!

At least he'll be very popular with his huge penis, unlimited supply of viagra and hordes of barely legal girls.

(Inspired by Art Marion)

Posted by: Jim at 06:39 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Don't forget to submit posts for the second Bestofme Symphony, which will be posted this Monday. I'd greatly appreciate if bloggers would link to this info post to help spread the word.

And remember, any qualifying post may be submitted by any person so you do not need to have a weblog in order to participate.

Posted by: Jim at 11:00 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Notice something odd about this site the past couple of weeks? I mean besides it being FUBAR yesterday.

Yes? You in the back. What was that? Yes, quite correct. The content blows. I think there's been one lonely little SBD post in the past two weeks and that was a shorty. I haven't had a Carnival submission this month! What happened to the amusing content that got me a readership in the first place? There are several reasons and they all boil down to one thing. Time.

It's the Holiday season and that puts new demands on my time. We're in a very busy section of our release cycle at work and that puts some fantastic demands on my time and on my brain. The Bestofme Symphony is another thing that is taking up creative blogging time. We've got company now and will for the next week and a half. It's very cool having old friends and family up to visit but it is a disruption and time committment.

So what's going to happen to the Snooze? We shall persevere, that's what! Okay, so don't expect the fantastic SBD posts until close to the new year. That'll mark the end of the holiday season, crunch time in the release cycle, visitors, and Bestofme Symphony. Until then it's going to be mostly punditry and linking with the occasional humorous or interesting stuff thrown in by Dopple-G.

No, the Symphony won't be ending. I'm just planning on turning it loose like BigWig did with the Carnival. Once it's established and flowing smoothly I'll ask for hosts and it'll make the rounds. Hopefully at least a week before I host the Carnival itself! Both of those in the same week could be a recipe for disaster.

Posted by: Jim at 09:44 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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...going to be revealed in 2 hours. That's how long the auction for Tidings of Comfort and Joy has left.

This has been an absolutely spectacular auction, magnitudes over what I expected. I need to think up something special and Christmasy to use the proceeds on as I hadn't thought of anything bigger than candy canes and spekulaas.

Any ideas? We've got one Lovely Wife, 3 rugrats from 1 year old to 4 years old and one cow sucker (that's me) to be invovled in the festivity.

UPDATE: The winner is Robert from XSet, who got in a last bid virtually under the wire to sneak past Sue. All's fair in love and auctions, they say.

Posted by: Jim at 08:01 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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The Great and Powerful Pixy has worked his magic and Snooze Button Dreams is back in action. Thanks to everybody who helped figure out the problem and to Pixy for implementing the DNS fix.

Now, on with the show!

Posted by: Jim at 07:55 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The Flick Filosopher weighs in on The Cat in the Hat and le gateau fails to make the scales.

For true nightmare-inducing terror, Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat is the film to beat, and Gothika can't hope to stand a chance against it. The title itself is an affront, for there's nothing Seussian about it, and in fact it makes 2000's The Grinch, which at the time was the most abyssal insult to Seuss I could imagine, look like a masterpiece of wit and subtlety. Who in their right mind would consider a nonstop barrage of toilet humor and riffs on late-night infomercials and gross-outs and a sexually aggressive six-foot-tall cat and creepy children and illegal employment practices the stuff of a good film, never mind a good film for kids?

You can always tell that MaryAnn feels strongly about a movie when she forgets how to stop a sentence.

Of course, The Cat in the Hat made $40 gazillion this opening weekend, which Hollywood will interpret as a sign that this is the kind of film that kids and moms and dads are genuinely enjoying, and not a sign that this is the most disgustingly overly marketed film in recent memory and you can't watch a commercial for household cleaning products or walk by a Burger King or buy a postage stamp without being assaulted by a six-foot-tall cat and we all know few parents can resist the high-pitched whine of a kid who's been overly marketed at and will simply not shut up until he gets what he wants: in this case, a ticket to Cat in the Hat and a Value Combo.

Why is Ms. Johansen my critic of choice? 'Tude and emotion, aptly applied. You can't get real opinions like this from Stan and Ollie Siskel and Ebert. Especially since Stan Siskel passed away.

All I know is if I have to look much longer at those damned weird little midget Things in their leotards trying to sell me Delivery Confirmation at the post office, I'm gonna go postal.

Posted by: Jim at 08:33 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Several people have commented that the site is fubar today. It was fubar last night but should be fine today. Here's what happened:

The Bartender designed a new look for the site. He was done quite a few days ago but due to my schedule and some stupidity (when I did get time to implement the new look I didn't have the files with me) I wasn't able to make the changes. I finally caught a couple of minutes yesterday around 2:00 my time to make the changes but my large table from the Bestofme Symphony was beating the hell out of the new template. Just as I was preparing to return to the original index and style I had to leave for home as my ride (Dopple-G) had to leave.

This left the site in a FUBAR state for about an hour and a half until I could get home and get the time to restore it. During the FUBAR time the new style sheet was apparently cached for some visitors and since I'm now reverted to the old style it is making the site look FUBAR PLUS.

If it looks like there's no formatting or style present on the site, try forcing a refresh by hitting F5 (Internet Explorer) or whatever the steps are for your browser. If the wrong style sheet is cached somewhere on your service (ISP, proxy, whatever) then Snooze Button Dreams is going to look ugly until they recache it.

MuNu also suffered an attack on our DNS servers last night so that could be playing a part in this hullabaloo. Pylorns is pulling up sonicwall.com when he tries to go to www.snoozebuttondreams.com. Others are probably similarly affected.

It's difficult for me to diagnose because everything is working perfectly from my seat. If you encounter wierdness please comment on it.

UPDATE:

The problem is all DNS. The $mtbloghost$ is www.snoozebuttondreams.com so every time that reference is used in scripts, generated pages and links, etc, it is fucked for people who can't resolve www.snoozebuttondreams.com.

By the way, here at home I can't resolve it either. Yay.

Anyway, I changed the script reference in the index file to reference snoozebuttondreams.mu.nu instead of $mtbloghost$ so at least the index page will be usable for people who get here via snoozebuttondreams.mu.nu.

Help me, Pixy, you lord of the DNS services. Help me please!

Posted by: Jim at 01:08 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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Bruce Simpson is an engineer and a tinkerer, as well as the editor of The Aardvark Daily, New Zealands longest-running daily tech-news and commentary website. He also loves doing things that are viewed as impossible. Stuff like building a $5000 cruise missile.

The DIY Cruise Missile project was going splendidly. Thousands of people followed the progress of the missile on Bruce's Interesting Projects site. (Incidentally, that's the site to check out if you want to build your own rocket powered gokart or jet engine.) Bruce was getting his parts off of the internet and had even licensed an American company to manufacture his X-Jet engine.

Now the New Zealand Government has aparently squashed the project. They've bankrupted Bruce and nixed the engine deal to the US. This is despite receiving government permission to export the same technology to Iran and Iran sure does want it.

So why did the Inland Revenue Department kill his jet engine tech sale and bankrupt him? Bruce claims that the NZ government was responding to pressure from the American government over his cruise missile project. "The New Zealand government at first said I had done nothing illegal. But then a US official was quoted as saying it was 'extremely unhelpful'."

All is not lost though as Bruce has seemingly proved his original point "that by using off-the-shelf technology in a suburban garage a terrorist can create a weapon against which there is no effective defence."

(Tuned on to this by Dopple-G)

Posted by: Jim at 11:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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If you are as pissed off about this as I am you should let Dennis know about it. I did:

I'm about as openminded as a person can get without being indecisive. I try to give time and thought to every position before forming a decisive opinion on it. With this attitude I just watched the new animated 2004 election piece at http://www.kucinich.us/dk.html.

It is abhorrent. It is an absolute travesty of decency and respect. The only message it gives is that Dennis Kucinich is driven by hatred irrespective of the issues at hand. I can forgive many things in a candidate but hatred is not one of them. Hatred is unpredictable and unstable. It will always be a reason to vote against a candidate, never a reason to vote for one.

I'm unfamiliar with the legality behind this propaganda piece but I sincerely hope that the families of each and every one of the fallen that you used in this abomination seek and find recompense against your reprehensible use of their names, images and lives.

Posted by: Jim at 10:11 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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There are about a gazillion of those quizzes about "What flavor dressing are you?" or "Which one of the Rug Rats are you?" but this one kicks ass.

Which Class of Federation Starship are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

You are a Galaxy-class Explorer, a top of the line
luxury-liner with teeth. You prefer refinement
and appreciate beauty. You're well-apt at
diplomacy and are trusted to handle crises.
Despite a changing world with new, you still
have a reputation for unparalleled excellence.

That's right, y'all. I'm the frikken Enterprise!

(Found over at XSet)

Posted by: Jim at 09:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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