Bluetooth laser keyboard

A few weeks ago, one of my Microsoft boys told me about a high tech gadget that his co-worker got as a gift. It's a bluetooth laser keyboard that projects an image of a keyboard on any flat surface and monitors the movement of your fingers to see which keys you are typing. This amazing innovation is only slightly larger than a matchbook. I was amazed when I heard about it. Very cool.

Check out this gadget on ThinkGeek.com

Bush regrets cowboy rhetoric

From this Yahoo News article, referring to a recent White House news conference along with Tony Blair.

In unusually introspective comments, Bush said he regretted his cowboy rhetoric after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks such as his "wanted dead or alive" description of Osama bin Laden and his taunting "bring 'em on" challenge to Iraqi insurgents.

"In certain parts of the world, it was misinterpreted" Bush said.

I wonder if Bush has realized that these words calling on the Iraqi insurgents might have contributed to the insurgent's will to fight back. With the death toll in Iraq still growing, Bush probably conceded that maybe it wasn't in his best interests to act like a bully or a cowboy, especially with the whole world watching. Some of us formed a negative opinion on Bush a very long time ago, others are just now beginning to realize the damage Bush has done to his own country and to the world.

I've said this before, but the future of the world and the future of the United States of America lies in the hands of the next President. The United States wasn't always the most powerful country in the world, and it won't always be the most powerful country in the world. Brace yourselves for the silent superpower, the People's Republic of China (PRC). Children in Western countries will be learning Chinese as a second language to brace themselves for the inevitable emerging global superpower.

Movie trailer voice over guy

Today's entry comes from a co-worker who I call "office Bob". I have often wondered about who the voice is behind all movie trailers and previews, and today I was enlightened when "Office Bob" sent out an email with some information on the voice behind the movies. Here is Bob's email:

I’m not sure how many of you are movie buffs, but I have an extreme fascination with the movie trailer voice over guy.

It seems every commercial, every television show, and every movie trailer has the same voice over guy doing it. Who is this mysterious man? How did he score such a gravy job? How can I get him to record a clip for my marriage proposal?

Anyways…after some digging, it turns out there’s actually two guys who are responsible for most of the movie trailer voice over work.

Don LaFontaine and Hal Douglas.

Although Mr. LaFontaine is the undisputed champion of Movie Trailer voice overs (over 4000 in his career), Hal’s got the title in the “In a world” category.

Check out this clip of Hal (they call him Jack in the clip) doing what he does best…

Shock-factor

Two of my buddies who both left around September last year have returned to Ontario for the first time since leaving. Mark moved to Shanghai and Tim moved to Vancouver. I spent some time over the last week hanging out with them and catching up.

One thing that Tim always gets a kick out of is the shock-factor of his friends when revealing something to us that he has been secretly hiding from us.

A couple examples of Tim's "shocking" revelations was when he secretly entered the triathlon in Collingwood last August that I had signed up for. He kept it a secret the entire time and I didn't find out until I actually saw him the morning of the triathlon in Collingwood. The second shocker was when Tim had accepted a job in Vancouver he had kept the interviews and the job offer a secret until only a couple weeks before moving to Vancouver.

The latest "shocker" Tim had for us this time happened on the weekend when I saw him for the first time in 9 months. He had been growing his facial hair for 9 months and the hair on his chin was so long that it was curling. It was extremely wretched, so we urged him to shave it off. He said that a number of other people also urged him to shave it off; I know that he kept it just to shock us. This point is proven by the fact that he was easily persuaded to cut it off, and within 30 minutes of us seeing it, it was gone, and he was almost back to normal (With the exception of the 9-month long hair, which seemed pretty long, but quite suitable for someone from BC). Mark on the other hand basically looked the same, although he lost quite a bit of weight and his hair was a bit shorter.

Here are some pictures of the repulsively vile scruff filled with living organisms on Tim's chin. (I also threw in a few extra pictures from the Pearl Jam concert tailgate party the other week.

TV 'Guy' and Pentagon video

Did you hear about this guy who went in to the BBC for an interview for a "Data Support Cleanser" position and ended up doing a live TV interview about the Apple vs. Apple court case that he knew nothing about? Pretty funny stuff.

Click here for the full story.

Also, today the Department of Defence released security videos from the September 11th Pentagon attack. The intention was to dispel conspiracy theorist's contentions that it wasn't actually a 757 airplane that hit the Pentagon that day. People such as Mechanical Engineer Michael Meyer contend that the physical evidence suggests that it wasn't a 757 that flew into the pentagon. To read his article, browse to Scholars for 911 Truth, or click here for the article.

Well I have watched these videos, and I still don't see any evidence to prove that it was in fact a 757 airplane that hit the pentagon. In one frame, you can see the white nose of an object, but I have pretty good vision, and it still doesn't look like a 757 to me. In fact, these videos aren't any different than the videos that I had already seen in the video/review link below. This video/review shows a video from the security camera and it's the same video that the Department of Defence released today.

To judge for yourself, view the new videos.

To view an interesting conspiracy theory video and review of the plane hitting the pentagon (Pre today's video release) Click here

Single-minded Inc.

I'm taking a 5 minute break from studying to point out something that I think is wrong with our culture of capitalism. At school this summer, the one course I'm taking is Finance. In reading my text, I came across the definition of financial management and its one goal.

"The goal of financial management is to maximize the current value per share of existing stock"

(I should also point out that the book mentions that most CEO's have a background in Financial management.)

I think that all too often in Corporations, the stock value is often the most important aspect of the company to the senior executives, and it often leads to "business decisions" that affect employees in the corporation, customers and other human beings in the world. Examples are laying off employees, polluting the environment, loss of jobs to offshore outsourcing and just general ignorance toward doing the "right thing".

When choosing which company I wanted to work for recently, one of my major deciding factors was how the employees are treated and what sort of morals and integrity the company possesses. The company I chose to work for is definitely a pioneer in treating their employees well and having high integrity. If you focus on what I call "doing the right thing", the profits will come later. If profits are the one thing on a company's mind, they may achieve those profits, but it’s always at a cost. Companies will sacrifice their employees, the environment or their customers to simply raise their stock value.

In the short term, "doing the right thing" might not put cash into the shareholders' wallet, but in the long term a company will prevail, and people will take notice.

*Note: As I continued reading my text, I came across this interesting disclaimer: "Our goal does not imply that the financial manager should take illegal or unethical actions in the hope of increasing the value of the equity in the firm. What we mean is that the financial manager best serves the owners of the business by identifying opportunities that add to the firm because they are desired and valued in the free marketplace.

Auto manufacturers - who owns who

In the complicated auto industry, many auto brands are owned by larger parent companies such as Ford or GM. But with the strategic branding that the marketing teams employ, you wouldn't know through their marketing campaigns that a Saab is in a GM, or a Jaguar is owned by Ford.

I was curious tonight as to which other large auto brands are owned by larger companies, so I looked up the major auto manufacturers and decided to share my findings with you. This list is just a subset of the full list that I deemed "significant" from this Cars! Cars! Cars! blog.

BMW owns:
BMW
Mini
Rolls Royce

Daimler/Chrysler owns:
Chrysler
Dodge
Mercedes Benze
Smart

Ford owns:
Aston Martin
Ford
Jaguar
Land Rover (bought from BMW)
Lincoln
Mercury
Volvo cars

General Motors owns:
Buick
Cadillac
Chevrolet
GMC
Hummer
Pontiac
Saab
Saturn

Nissan owns:
Infiniti
Nissan

Toyota owns:
Lexus
Toyota

Volkswagen owns:
Audi
Bentley
Lamborghini
Volkswagen

*I'm just listing the companies that seem significant to me. If any of these change, I'll keep the list updated.

Eating Stickers

After you're done eating an apple, have you ever questioned whether or not you removed the sticker before eating it? If you didn't remove the sticker, would you have tasted it? Or would it taste like it was part of the apple? If you swallowed it would it make you sick? Is there a doctor out there??

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I removed the sticker this time.

First day on the job

Yesterday was my first day on the job, the first such occasion in 5 years and 4 months when I started at the bank. It was quite the cultural difference to work in a small high-tech firm. People wearing jeans, the pool table, the free pop and snacks and the dual 19 inch flat screen monitors. I was also quite surprised to see one of the Directors cracking open a beer in the office at 4:30PM to celebrate the 2 new hires at the office. Everyone is in their 20's and 30's and the people are great. I'm going to enjoy working there.

When I got home I finally got around to patching up the hole in my drywall; the result of the housewarming party I threw a month ago. I cut out a piece of drywall from under the stairs in order to patch up the hole near the bathroom. As I predicted, there is a lot of empty space under the stairs that could act as storage, since space is pretty tight in the loft and a locker wasn't included with it. So now I just need to cut the hole bigger and install a hinged door as an entry into my newly discovered closet space. I was also considering removing all the drywall under the stairs so the stairs would appear to be "floating". I've seen this in another unit in my building and it looks pretty funky.

Suggestions anyone?

Iraq war deadly for journalists

In addition to the 2,414 US soldier deaths in Iraq and the official 17,648 soldiers wounded, the Iraq war has been extremely deadly for journalists. (Casualties in Iraq)

According to Freedom Forum, (a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to freedom of the press) there have been 74 journalists killed in Iraq since 2003. This CBC news article points out that more journalists died in Iraq than in either World War II or Vietnam and Cambodia.

I'm not sure if this can be attributed to there being more journalists in Iraq, or if the situation in Iraq is just more dangerous for journalists than in other wars. I suspect that there is more terrorism happening in Iraq as a result of the country being on the brink of a civil war which puts journalists at a higher risk. I have always maintained my belief that the war in Iraq is not going to combat terrorism, but increase terrorism in the world.

There have already been reports release in the US that indicate that terrorism has indeed increased since the war started in 2003, and I don't see any sign of that slowing down. I think the new US President in 2008 will have a lot on his/her plate. President Bush has set the world and the US economy on a disaster course, so it will be up to the new President to turn this around. This will be no simple task. (See Iraq New Terror Breeding Ground - CIA Advisor report)

The only way I think terrorism can be decreased is by the US spending time and money to show the Muslim world that they do actually care and are willing to help. The US' image in the Middle East is extremely low and every time Condoleeza Rice spits out her hardliner neo-con threats, the US image worsens. The US has made it clear that they aren't willing to work with the newly elected democratic Palestinian government (See that, a fair democratic election!), which is also a blow to decreasing terrorism. Until the US Government does something to improve its image, terrorism will continue to rise.

Stunned bank teller and environmental irony

As stated in my previous article, I sold my Jeep last week and the guy who purchased it paid me in cash. Most of the bills were $20 bills. Although there were a few $50's in the pile, it was still more than 3 inches thick. I brought the wad of cash to the bank this morning to deposit it and the bank teller had a stunned look of disbelief on his face at the site of the monotonous and impending task at hand. He concurred that it doesn't happen often in our age of technology and plastic, but despite that it only took him about 3 minutes to count the money. This transcended my 15-minute marathon of counting and sorting the cash the previous week.

On a separate note of irony, I was in the bathroom at work today drying my hands with paper towels when I read a memo (directly above the paper towels) that said congratulations to the tenants of the building for saving 8,478 trees last year and diverting 1,924.87 megatons of waste. I threw my paper towel in the garbage, walked away and realized that the world still has a long way to go and wondered if it will get there before it's too late.