Monthly Archive for July, 2008
Back in 2005, I got my first cellphone. It was an Audiovox CDM-8500 that I bought used off of some guy, and locked to Virgin Mobile. At the time, Virgin Mobile’s plans were still actually prepaid (adding $20 to your account would extend the life of an account by 3 months, working out to a minimum monthly cost of $6.67), as opposed to the monthly nonsense they have now. (Today, VM’s only so-called “prepaid” plan requires you to pay at least $20 per month.)
Growing tired of Virgin Mobile’s arbitrary restrictions, their poor coverage, and lackluster selections of phones at the time, I decided, not even a year after buying my first phone, to switch to a different provider.
Now, what if I told you that my new provider offered $8.33/month for nationwide cell phone service with no restrictions, and was compatible with any unlocked GSM phone? What if I told you it still exists?
Don’t believe me? Then have a look at T-Mobile To-Go, T-Mobile’s prepaid service. By purchasing their refill cards in $100 increments (they’ll charge you more per minute if you choose the other denominations), you get 1000 minutes that don’t expire for a year (which works out to about an $8.33 per month minimum charge). Plus, you get free limited WAP service, which such services as pick up lines!
And now, to conclude the serious of strange DS games from Austria, here’s what is, presumably, the most fun game of all:
At only €39.99, how could I lose?
Today marked the release of Firefox 3.0.1. Yesterday, in response to the constant crashing I experienced with Firefox 3, I had moved to Internet Explorer and was in the process of writing a “Why I Switched Back to Internet Explorer” tirade. However, while working on the post, I stumbled across this article, indicating that the constant crashes were found chiefly on tablet PC users (I have an HP tx1120us), and that the problems had been fixed in 3.0.1. I immediately installed the latest version, and sure enough, Firefox hasn’t crashed since.
So kudos to the developers of Firefox for fixing their product!
To continue the “pictures of DS games I saw at a store in Austria” series, here’s a picture of the only version of Pokemon to feature a robust regular expression engine:
I’ve heard time and again that English is a difficult language to learn. However, during my stay in Austria (where English training is mandatory for all students), most people I talked to expressed their view that English was a very easy language to learn, especially compared to their native language, German.
This DS game is clearly the reason why:
After all, who wouldn’t want to learn English from that guy?
It’s the 4th of July, the 232nd year anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s writing of a politely indignant letter to Great Britain. As such, you should probably watch this video:
At long last, Freakified.net has returned!
So, what happened?
Well, after Frozen Midnight Hosting (link still dead as of this writing) happily took my money, I was provided with some stellar service involving quite a bit of downtime. However, during my journey abroad, both Freakified.net and all of Frozen Midnight’s corporate sites went down completely, the latter being replaced with GoDaddy parking pages. After I returned, I began calling the owner’s personal phone number (which I had obtained from an excellent, free historical whois database, and leaving voicemails. I never received a response. Sending emails was also pointless, as all the domains at which they were hosted no longer existed. So I was stuck without a working site, and, more importantly, without control of the Freakified.net domain. (Having been registered through Frozen Midnight, I didn’t technically own the domain.)
As a last resort, I decided to try using internet phone directories to find potential alternate contact lines. After a few hours of searching, I was only able to dig up a single piece of information: the owner’s mom’s phone number. Reluctantly, I called the number, and the person who answered was (understandably), rather pissed off that I’d called. Nevertheless, she took down my info.
The next day, the owner of Frozen Midnight finally called me back, saying that he’d received a call from his mom, and that he would begin the transfer as soon as he had the necessary information. I thus left a message, and within a few days, I received an email notification from GoDaddy saying that the domain had been pushed onto my account.
As of today, Freakified.net is now hosted on HostGator, which had already impressed me with their service. Hopefully, they won’t turn out to be another Frozen Midnight.
In conclusion, Frozen Midnight is the greatest hosting company ever.
A Solution to the Conception-Definition Issue
It recently came to my attention that the US Department of Health and Human Services is currently circulating a proposal that states in completely clear, not-at-all vague and meaningless, terms:
Effectively, what this appears to mean is that, as in institution, you’re still eligible for government funding regardless of the institution’s beliefs (and policies) regarding abortion. While on the surface that policy is about as amazingly engaging at that text itself, this results in a more interesting side effect when taking into consideration certain arguments regarding hormonal and emergency contraceptives, which some argue are abortive in and of themselves (more so in the case of the latter). In this vein, such an act would make it perfectly legal for medical instutitions to deny such contraceptive measures as they see fit.
As such, I myself see I need to propose my solution to the problem. Consider that those of the pro-life ideological camp generally classify abortion as a type of murder due to the destruction of a potential life. Also consider that every second you’re not engaged in sexual intercourse, you could be conceiving a child. Think: every sexless minute of everyone’s lives, people are are ending millions, if not billions, of potential lives. With this in mind, I present to you my improved definition of abortion (based on the original present in HHS-45-CFR), which surely will immediately be selected by the DHHS to replace its current wording:
And there you have it.