There Is But One Constant In The Universe

There is but one constant in the universe: No matter how many times via phone, in person, or over email that you tell a sales person that you will get back in touch with them once you hear something… Whether, yes we will buy your product, or no we will not… Especially when it is not up to you to make a decision, but your boss for whom you've done the research for, turned over the information and are waiting to hear back from… The sales person will incessantly call and or email you every 2-3 days non-stop to "just check in" with "how things are going". Constantly. UHG.

Rick Santorum For President?

Rick Santorum just tied Mitt Romney in the Iowa Caucuses last night, which is hilarious for dear old Mittens. What's even more hilarious (and you're probably aware of already), is that whenever you search for Rick Santorum in Google or Bing, the website spreadingsantorum.com is usually featured in the top few results. If a concerned conservative (or liberal) voter tries to learn about Rick Santorum's policy platform or Rick Santorum for president, or even Rick Santorum's family values, said voter is instead subjected to a mental association likely to hurt Santorum's chances of winning the Republican nomination and the White House. And that is a problem for America. Why? Because spreadingsantorum.com isn't the top result. But we can fix that. This post contains a handful of keywords and phrases Santorum needs to own if he's going to direct curious voters from Google or Bing to Santorum-friendly websites. This post probably needs more (and should probably contain hostile keywords Santorum will likely buy in order to bury spreadingsantorum.com in search results), and you can add them by editing the post when you reblog it. Which you should probably do now. Go to work, Internets. via Geoff Barnes.

Rumsfeld's War Games

Digging up an old article that written by Joe Galloway courtesy of Olivier Knox:

The referees stopped the game, which is normal when a victory is won so early. Van Riper assumed that the Blue Force would draw new, better plans and the free play war games would resume. Instead he learned that the war game was now following a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory: He was ordered to turn on all his anti-aircraft radar so it could be destroyed and he was told his forces would not be allowed to shoot down any of the aircraft bringing Blue Force troops ashore. This topic comes up, due to to today's events. Some defiant, short-sighted conservative heckled Knox on Twitter over the reporting, claiming something along the lines that the Iranian navy didn't stand a chance at hurting the U.S. Navy ships. Knox replied, referencing this article, that this was an example of how it could be done. I wonder if the generals in the Pentagon, now that Donald Rumsfeld is gone, have bothered to plan for this eventuality?

The Greatest Paper Map of the United States You’ll Ever See

Seth Stevenson, writing for Slate:

American mapmaking’s most prestigious honor is the “Best of Show” award at the annual competition of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society. The five most recent winners were all maps designed by large, well-known institutions: National Geographic (three times), the Central Intelligence Agency Cartography Center, and the U.S. Census Bureau. But earlier this year, the 38th annual Best of Show award went to a map created by Imus Geographics—which is basically one dude named David Imus working in a farmhouse outside Eugene, Ore. Here is an example of part of the map, the state of Pennsylvania. Please avoid buying one of these for about 10 more minutes (just long enough for me to order my copy before they sell out).

Why Best Buy is Going out of Business...Gradually

Larry Downes, writing for Forbes:

First comes the strategic bankruptcy, well in progress at Best Buy, where management’s sole focus is improving some arbitrary metric from last quarter, even when doing so actually interferes with customers trying to buy something else. The financial collapse comes later. But if history is any guide, the second part, once it starts, will be quick. Downes puts in writing what I've thought for several years now but never really thought enough about to put into words myself. Best Buy's customer service is horrible. Most store employees behave as if they were used car salesmen who try to peddle one or another bad product on their customers depending on which ever product management is trying to push that day. Whatever you buy they try to sell you an "extended warranty", which is how Best Buy makes a lot of their profits. When doing so, they promise (and sometimes lying to do so) that it will cover any possible circumstance. If you ever actually need to use the warranty however, there will be complete reversal from the sales pitch and instead find every reason that whatever circumstance you have encountered, is not actually covered under the warranty. Their entire business is predicated on scamming their customers. How is anyone surprised that they're now on a downward trend that will lead to their bankruptcy in the next 5-10 years?

My Year In Cities 2011

This will be my third year keeping track of this, having done so for both 2009 and 2010 previously. In 2009 I saw Jason Kottke do this and liked it, so I decided to do it too. Once more, one or more nights were spent in each place. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days Alexandria, VA*
Wirtz, VA*
Barboursville, VA
Baltimore, MD
Chevy Chase, MD
Toronto, ON, Canada
I'm down from last year's nine cities, back down to six. Still, an improvement over 2009's list of five.

A Classic

via Apple Insider.

Here we go again...

Yet another Presidential election year is upon us and again, the Paultards are out in force. Every time I mention one of the many things Ron Paul has said in the past which makes me oppose him as a candidate (for anything), or any of the other crackpot, crazy ideas that he touts, his supporters come out of the woodwork like cockroaches white-knighting for his cause. One particular rebuttal is that he voted to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. What they fail to say (and probably don't know) is that he supports DOMA, the Marriage Protection Act, and the We the People Act which explicitly allowing discrimination against homosexuals. Is he homophobic? I don't know. Is he interested in protecting rights of homosexuals? Clearly not. He doesn't want the federal government meddling in people's affairs, but he has no problem at all with state government banning same-sex everything if they so choose. I don't think he is racist or homophobic, but it doesn't matter because he'll allow the racists and homophobes at the state levels to write racist and homophobic laws. Being the president is a practical job, and he's a philosopher with no concern for practicality or the real-life consequences of his philosophies. I shouldn't have less rights than my compatriots just because I was unlucky enough to born in a certain region. And I shouldn't have to wait 50 years for bigots to learn better either.