Yet another one from the “faulty global search-and-replace” files, this time the subject line of a junk e-mail:

“Soma pfwdscribed online for limited time only.”

Obviously they were trying to turn replies into forwards, and failed miserably at it…

OK, this has to be one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a good while. I’m not sure exactly where– or how— this originated, but those of you who are music geeks should find this absolutely hilarious.

Faerie’s Aire and Death Waltz

(I discovered this, incidentally, while Googling for mondegreens– which, for those who don’t know, are misheard lyrics. The reason that the images are hosted on my own domain is simply that I don’t want to use up other people’s bandwidth.)

More abject stupidity from my own home state (that’s Georgia, for those too lazy to look it up):

Payoff from $1 million bill is forgery charge

COVINGTON — Here’s a quick tip: If you are going to try and pass off fake money, you might want to first think about using a denomination that is actually made by the U.S. Treasury Department.

Ranked by officers of the Covington Police Department (CPD) as of one of biggest “boneheaded” moves ever, a Porterdale woman allegedly tried to pay for more than $1,600 in merchandise at the Covington Wal-Mart Friday with a $1 million bill.

This incident also got a mention in The Smoking Gun, complete with actual police report and mugshot…

::grumble:: What is it with people replying to a mailing list posting with a one- or two-line reply… with the entirety of every other post in the thread quoted immediately below? Not only is it a waste of bandwidth, it’s quite a pain to scroll through if you view mailing lists in digest form.

I’ve seriously seen postings on some of the lists I’m on where someone will write a single-line “me too” sort of reply, and then leave 300 or so lines of text– most of it only tangentially related, at that– quoted in the reply. And of course, they always forget to trim the listserv instructions from each of the messages, so you end up with something that looks like this rather apocryphal example I’ve just made up:

Me too!

-- CluelessQuoter99

> I absolutely love this listserv. It's great! I could go on and on about
> how well I get along with everyone here, but that would just lead to
> a lot of incoherent rambling. I ramble on incoherently even more than
> my alter-ego Cody, you know, and he can rant quite a bit for someone
> who's so introverted in real life.
>
> -- Verbose102
>
> > So, what's your opinion on this mailing list?
> >
> > -- CellophaneBoy
> > ------------
> > To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to blah@list.srv
> ------------
> To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to blah@list.srv

…except, of course, that such posts tend to include far more than just two levels of replies. And the unsubscription instructions are longer. And one of the posts will be several paragraphs long and quoted in its entirety.

Gah…I know I can’t be the only one who still practices listserv etiquette these days!

The results of the 2004 Worst Manual Contest have finally been posted. These things are always hilarious… and this year, they seem to have found some veritable goldmines of Engrish.

“Please do not put the one embarrassed because it gets wet”? “Oiling the machine oil into the eccentric mechanism and clearance”? Seriously, I have to wonder how people manage to assemble these things at all with instructions as bad as these…

Well, I had to send my laptop in for service again; good thing it’s still under warranty until August of this year.

Why, you ask? Well, you know the little jack where the AC adapter plugs into the computer? Tonight, that jack somehow managed to come loose from the mainboard and to fall inside the computer. The hole for the plug is still there on the back of the machine, of course, but there’s nothing inside for the adapter to actually connect to.

I managed to get the necessary part of the computer open, but I couldn’t figure out how in the world to get the jack back into its proper place. Obviously this was an operation meant only for Trained Service Personnel, so my only resort is to send the machine off to Gateway to have it fixed.

But the really sad thing is, the adapter jack probably came loose when Gateway reattached the display panel last June; interestingly enough, I hadn’t noticed any difficulties with the adapter until after that incident. And it makes sense, since the hinge for the display is right there next to the power connector.

Incidentally, it seems as if my worst fears have been confirmed; Gateway appears to have followed the trend of outsourcing its technical support call centers to India some time after my support experience last year. Quite a shame, too, as today’s call to support was far more confused and generally unintelligible than the shining support experience I had with American tech support back in July. Suffice it to say, among other things, that heavily accented Indian support workers and auditory processing disorders don’t go together all too well; I had to ask the support rep to repeat herself more than a few times just to understand the line of questioning, and it was especially heinous trying to confirm my address to which the mailer was to be sent.

Need to read articles from The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Orlando Sentinel or Newsday, but don’t want to go through their incredibly intrusive registration process? Turns out that accounts created on BaltimoreSun.com, which has a much less intrusive registration form, work on all of the above-linked newspapers as well. Sure, you still have to give away your e-mail address, but personally, I’m more comfortable with spam than with marketers having immediate access to my name, address and phone number.

I just hope The Baltimore Sun doesn’t end up changing its registration form; this is quite a useful discovery…

In the local news has been quite a bit of debate about the renewal of a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or SPLOST. This seems to be primarily a Georgia thing, judging from the Google results for that acronym; basically, as the name suggests, it’s an extra 1% sales tax, added on to the state sales tax, that’s used to fund county government projects.

But that’s not the point I’m trying to make. No, the point I’m trying to make is that “SPLOST” would be an excellent comic-book sound effect. It’s like the sound made by a watermelon falling fifty feet to the ground, or something along those lines.

Yes, yes, I know, I’m way too easily amused…

A rather interesting Valentine’s Day article that I stumbled across while searching for various introvert-related things online:

ESTJ seeks INFP: Looking for love through personality tests

If any of this makes sense you’ve probably taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a personality measurement developed by Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother, Katharine Cook Briggs. Today, the questionnaire is used by 2 million people a year and in nearly 90 of the Fortune 100 companies.

The four-letter acronyms […] are so eerily accurate it’s no surprise that they’ve found new life in the online-personals ads.

The evidence is plentiful, from mentions in Match.com profiles (“thoughtful ISTJ seeks similar”) to entire dating sites, such as TypeTango.com and JungDate.com, designed in large part around the Myers-Briggs or its close companion, the Keirsey Temperament Sorter.

As an INTP, one of the rarest personality types, I can totally associate with this article. It really is interesting how taking various Myers-Briggs-based personality tests online made me feel like I really wasn’t as much of an outcast as it originally seemed. I really do feel more “at home” with INTPs, INTJs and INFPs than I do any of the other types…

(Edited 2003-02-11 to fix the “celebrity spelling bee” link, which originally had a line break in it that caused it not to work.)

I am not making this up: Fox will be airing a celebrity spelling bee starting this Friday (yes, Friday the 13th– how appropriate…), with semifinals on the following Friday and finals in two weeks.

Gimmicky, you say? Sure, it is; and there couldn’t be a better time for it, what with the hit documentary Spellbound just having been released on video. Ridiculous as the idea of a celebrity spelling competition may seem, I still think I’m going to watch it; first of all, it sounds like there’s a potential for hilarity, especially among some of the more… dense… celebrities, and second, having participated in the National Spelling Bee myself, there’s a certain nostalgia factor to be found in watching such competitions.