Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Crazy

  • I Lost a Picasso

    Today I hit one of those development stopping points where the next chunk you start will take a while. I needed to head home in about 30 minutes so it didn’t make sense to start the next thing. I figured I’d just get home a little early.

    About a block from my office there’s this tiny bar. I’ve checked it out a couple times before. It’s nothing special. Tiny, only a few beers on tap, but at least they are decent. And during happy hour draft beers are $3.

    So with an extra 30 minutes I figured why not.

    So I’m drinking a Blue Point Winter Ale (not bad) and checking out my RSS subscriptions via Google Reader on my phone. I’m sitting right next to two guys who clearly know the bartender and are chatting away. I’m trying not to eavesdrop.

    Then this other guy goes behind the bar and makes himself a drink. He’s not serving anyone, he just seems like the owner. He knows these two guys and after pouring himself something strong they start chatting.

    Again, trying not to eavesdrop.

    But it’s a tiny place and they are right next to me. And let’s recall that this is in DUMBO, a fairly artsy, eclectic neighborhood in Brooklyn.

    The owner says to the two guys,

    I had a really bad day. I lost a Picasso.

    At this point, trying not to eavesdrop is out the window. Surely I misheard him. He lost an espresso, or a pistachio, or a panini.

    But no. After not eavesdropping some more, this guy must be somehow affiliated with MOMA (the Museum of Modern Art). Some Picasso was being transported from Queens to Manhattan. It didn’t get there. He spent the whole day trying to track it down. He still hasn’t found it.

    This boggles my mind on many levels.

    First of all, where else do you randomly walk into a bar and hear the phrase, "I lost a Picasso"?

    Second, I’ve had bad days at work before. I’ve had really bad days at work. But I’ve never lost a priceless work of art. Software defects suddenly don’t look so bad.

    And finally, I really hope he finds it…

  • Quite a News Day

    The CIA has a task force to assess the impact of WikiLeaks and it’s called WTF.

    The New York Jets head coach’s wife is apparently featured in some foot fetish videos.

    And Pat Robertson of the Christian Coalition has come out in favor of marijuana legalization.

    All this in one day. If this keeps up, what’s The Onion going to do?

  • Unhappy Meals

    This is ridiculous. I would totally agree that a school shouldn’t have a McDonald’s as their primary lunch option. Or that schools should have vending machines full of soda and nothing else.

    But suing McDonald’s because the toys in Happy Meals entice children to eat unhealthy food is ludicrous. My daughters love happy meals. They always go for the toys (even though they are usually lame). But here’s the deal. My eight year old doesn’t say to me, "see you later, I’m going to McDonald’s".

    She gets McDonald’s when I take them. I’m the grown up. I am making a rational choice to treat my girls occasionally with food that isn’t great for them because it makes them happy (and it’s easy, which makes me happy). That is a rational adult choice that I should be allowed to make. And as a parent I should be smart enough to say no if my daughter wants McDonald’s two days in a row.

    The plaintiff in the lawsuit says that McDonald’s

    uses toys as bait to induce her kids to clamor to go to McDonald’s

    So can I sue Nickelodeon for airing ads that make my kids "clamor" for sugary cereal? How about the circus? Let’s sue Ringling Brothers for making my kids "clamor" for cotton candy. What about the ice cream truck that plays that stupid music. Talk about clamor…

    Better yet, can we sue people for being crappy parents?…

  • Crazy Bad

    OK, this is good developer humor. Someone at the US Embassy in Beijing creates an automated program that takes the air quality readings and tweets it.

    There is an official scale used by the EPA that runs from 0 (good) to 500 (Hazardous), with various levels in between.

    I would be willing to wager that no one specified what the program should do if the index is above 500. And the developer did what I would probably do:

    if (level > 500) return "crazy bad";

    And apparently the level exceeded 500 yesterday so people got an amusing (or scary) tweet.

  • Directions Man

    It’s been established that people just seem to ask me for directions. Just this morning on the way to work, two more people asked me. As the default Directions Man, I’m discovering a woeful lack of clue as to how addresses actually work.

    Weren’t we all taught this as kids? Address numbers go in one direction, evens on one side of the street, odds on the other. It’s a very simple system. I’m constantly amazed by how many people don’t understand it.

    Today a woman was on Atlantic Avenue, my street. She had the address (which was on Atlantic) and the cross streets. And she wasn’t confused about where she was. She knew she was on Atlantic. So why did she need directions? Look at the numbers, figure out which way they are going and walk in that direction. Simple.

    No, the fact that she couldn’t see the cross streets (because she was two blocks away) completely confused her.

    The other woman who asked for directions was a different kind of clueless. She was apparently heading to a job interview. She had a million pieces of paper in her hands with all kinds of information from the web. It didn’t dawn on her to try Google Maps though…

    Directions Man is getting jaded…

  • A Night in NYC

    I just finished having drinks with Dan Song, Aaron Shapiro and Linus Concepcion in Manhattan. A nice night and great to see Dan. (side note: that would be an interesting start-up)

    As I’m waiting for the subway at 42nd street I hear a beautiful women’s opera voice. That’s not unusual in New York, you hear great musicians in the subway.

    But then I see this goofy looking white guy. Fishing cap, pants pulled up way past his stomach. He’s singing. He has a beautiful voice. A beautiful woman’s voice. He was the one singing. Gorgeous voice, but seriously? Only in New York…

  • Just Funny

    Whatever your position in the immigration debate, this is just funny…

    PHOTO Dora the Explorer Illegal Immigrant Cartoon

  • Product Safety

    I would like a guarantee that every single product I’ve ever purchased in the last 45 years is 100% safe. If not, please recall the product and give me a full refund.

    Honestly, is this how people think?

    I just received a very nice email from Amazon. Apparently some product that I purchased in the past 10 years has a 0.0001% chance of causing injury to my child. So there’s a product recall and I can get a free fix.

    I’m not making this up. My math might be off, but even if it is, it’s immaterial.

    We bought this product for Danielle years ago and we’ve used it for Victoria as well. It’s excellent. It’s from Step2, who I would like to say generally makes very fine kids products. My only complaint would be that if you leave it outside, the rain will fill it up internally and it’s hard to get the water out.

    The recall notice is here.

    Note the statistics. The product has been sold about 2.5 million times. There have been 28 reports of issues. 2 of those reports required a trip to the doctor.

    Holy crap, that should prompt a celebration, not a recall.

    Honestly, I believe in meaningful government regulation to promote product safety. Especially when kids are involved. But c’mon, if this is the standard no company will ever sell anything…

  • True Accomplishment

    Not sure what to say about this.

    http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/04/asteroids-record/

  • iCarly

    Danielle’s favorite show is now iCarly. While I really liked her old favorite, Phineas and Ferb, iCarly is also good. The premise is that Carly, a 15 year old girl, does a web show with her best friend Sam (Samantha) and her other friend Freddy doing the tech work. Their web show (in the show) is very popular.

    Carly lives with her older brother Spencer (a lot older). He is an artist so he’s both wacky and around a lot. Apparently her father is in the military and is away and the two of them live in a surprisingly large apartment in Seattle (what is it with TV apartments being way outside the occupant’s income? – see Friends). Aside from the fact that a 15 year old (and her friends) is left to herself for way too much time, the show is pretty harmless and definitely funny.

    We record it on our DVR. Danielle would watch it 20 times a day if we let her.

    There’s one show where they ask their viewers to send in videos of good dancing. They are expecting a few people to send in videos, but they get like a thousand videos. They try to watch them all and of course fall asleep trying. Then each of them has a funny dream involving crazy dancing. Danielle loves this episode and watches it a lot (since we have it recorded – honestly, do kids understand that we used to have to watch TV at a certain time?).

    I only mention this for one reason. What is up with the ads that Nickelodeon shows for iCarly? Danielle is 7, but I understand that older kids like the show. It probably works into early high school. And I guess parents must watch as well (I obviously do).

    Because one of the common sponsors is Nationwide insurance. Yeah, Danielle likes that ad. There are also some feminine hygiene ads that I thankfully have not had to explain yet (and yes, I’ll be using the “talk to your mother” approach).

    But this particular episode has an ad for a cosmetic surgery place (I guess this is NYC only). Seriously? We are advertising breast reductions and liposuction for pre-teens? Since we watch this episode all the time, this ad repeats all the time. I can’t hit fast forward fast enough.

    I can’t handle ads when she’s seven. What am I going to do when she’s a teenager?