10 thoughts for November 18, 2013

I have a lot of thoughts going through my head, all the time.  Here's my way of getting a bunch of them out of my head, without taking the whole day to write long form.

1. "Honestly, I'm a little old-fashioned", doesn't seem like an appropriate way to open your ad about a Windows tablet.  Or maybe I'm a little old-fashioned, and a fat, bearded, middle-aged guy really is chic -- the future of targeted ads for computing?
2. Speaking of the Surface 2 ad, you know what's creepy about it?  The claim that one "can use Bing Smart Search to find anything in the world including last night's homework" implies that Bing catalogs school websites so that you can find what you need.
3. New TV shows I like, include: Sleepy Hollow, Almost Human, Marvel's Agents of SHIELD and The Blacklist.  Shows that I'm not all that interested in anymore, include: 2 Broke Girls, Mike and Molly, NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles.
4. Speaking of new shows, I can't see how Sleepy Hollow and The Blacklist will last beyond a couple of years or three, because their shows are hamstrung by their stories.  Still, they're fun to watch.
5. Shows that I continue to love: Grimm, Castle, Person of Interest, The Big Bang Theory, The Neighbors, and Revolution, Bob's Burgers, Family Guy, Misfits (only on Hulu in the US) and The Simpsons.
6. A show that ends this year and I will miss: Warehouse 13.  I love Sci-Fi, but I really enjoy the quirky characters in this show more than anything else.
7. Bitcoins were validated by the DOJ and FBI at a Senate committee hearing today.  It's not the meaning that you think it means, though.  Bitcoins are a payment / exchange system, not a true currency, even though, many people have taken to it as if it were a commodity such as gold.  Such as it is, the value shot up to $800.  These people don't seem to understand that by using it as a speculative investment vehicle, they're destroying its viability as a means of trade -- volatile inflation and deflation is never good, unless you know how to profit from it.
8. Thank goodness we -- and by we, I mean the world -- have Toronto's Mayor Rob Ford.  (Too bad for Toronto residents, though.)  Watch this video of him going off the deep end on what seems like a drug-fueled rage.  Watch this live interview where he goes off the deep end again, with even more vulgar language.  And he follows up with admitting that he's driven drunk.  Apparently schools have cancelled visits to City Hall, out of concern that he'll be there and go off the deep end.  What a train wreck!
9. How unfortunate that the Trayvon Martin jury failed to convict George Zimmerman, who just can't seem to keep out of trouble ever since then.  Now, he's allegedly pointed a gun at his girlfriend.  This time, he barricaded the door with furniture, and reacted calmly when police entered through the barricade.
10. Bear with me a bit on this one.  I think no-kill shelters are great.  But here in Oregon (and probably everywhere else around the nation) there's been an explosion of nonprofit, no-kill shelters not named a member of the Humane Society.  Some of these places are converted homes, and their proprietors have all sorts of intrusive demands, from seeing your income to viewing the inside of your home, and often have clawback clauses that allow them to take back your adopted pet if you violate some rule.  I've seen some dogs sit in these shelters for over a year.  I think these people, well-meaning as they may be, have a hero / mother complex, and feel that it is their duty in life to protect all animals.