Eat Healthy & Make Art

A fun way to eat healthy is to start a PLU sticker collection... otherwise known as "banana stickers." Buy a banana and then stick the PLUs all over your desk and monitor at work. You will soon become addicted to buying fruit with stickers and in the process, you will form the habit of eating healthy.

But wait, there's more... I just found out about a kindred spirit who wants your stickers!

Guerrilla Office Gardening

The New York times had a great article recently on the history of the fortune cookie.

Some of you may know that one of my all time favorite office pranks is to tape a fortune cookie fortune to a co-worker's monitor while they aren't looking (in a mismatch type of flare)...

In any case that had me thinking of other office mischief and the possibilities of Guerrilla gardening in the office.

Supplies that you will need:

1) Pinky finger
2) Seed
3) Live office plant
4) Florescent light
5) Purell Instant Hand Sanitizer (WARNING: not for the plant ...for cleaning your hands you fool!)
6) A co-worker that waters their plant once a week

Fat Guy Stuck In Internet.

So I was digging around the adult swim website and found Ryan McFaul's Fat Guy Stuck In Internet.

Funny.

I have to admit that I have never heard of of Ryan Mcfaul but his work reminds me of Dan Harmon.

Dan Harmon did Computerman with Jack Black and the best TV show (pilot) you never heard of Heat Vision and Jack (see video below).

Dan worked on the Sara Silverman Show (funny) and also Acceptable TV

I gotta say Acceptable TV was off the mark (at least the VH1 version is "meh") and could not live up to it's online counterpart Channel101 (awesome)

NLP - MSFriends

Joey: I can't believe Ross is going out with Rachel's sister. Ya know, when Chandler made out with my sister, I was mad at him for, like, ten years.
Chandler: That was five years ago.
Joey: I know. You got five more years.
Chandler: Joey...
Joey: You want to make it six?

Better Safe than Sorry

Before you lock your valuables in a newly purchased safe, make sure that you test out the combination a few times first.

Better safe than sorry.

BIC

Night of the Living Doo - Adult Swim

Can anyone tell me why Adult Swim pulled "Night of the Living Doo" from their Video Archive?

It is/was a great Scooby Doo spoof with Gary Coleman and David Cross.

It was there a few weeks ago...

Was this because of Hanna-Barbera/Warner Bros??

BIC

Additional Comments

So it seems that my Microsoft Experience has caused a bit of buzz in the "Blogosphere."

I would like to clear up a few things that I have read:

BIC are the initials of my name (not Bic).

My first name was provided in the articlethat "broke" this story at Consumerist.

The call from 2006 or 2007 was the BSOD (which I believe was in part caused by putting Google Desktop on my PC and/or system tray ... not sure ... purely conjecture on my part).

The "Back to the Future Call" (which I like to think of it) was not a BSOD ... the support person told my parents it was about "internet connectivity" or my "internet connection being down ... something like that ...
to which I replied to my father "that sounds so archaic ... why would I make a call like that?"
I do remember making a call many years ago when I lived with my parents (1997 & 1998) ...
back then I could fathom making such a call.... after speaking with Webspan (my dialup ISP at the time) and Gateway (whom I just gotten my Gateway Destination with Windows 95 from).

Speaking on the phone with my parents, telling them the computer problem sounded archaic and looking at my keyboard made me come to the conclusion that there was a human Y2k error (if you can call it that).

Webspan's tech support was "meh"
Gateway's tech support was awesome back then.

I still have my Windows 95 COA(s) from 1997.
I still have my Gateway Destination with it's 32" CRT monitor (the monitor is still in use after 1 repair).

Microsoft (supposedly) called from this phone number
They asked for *me* and gave a 10 digit case # (ticket # or whatever you call it)

I lived with my folks in 1997 and part of 1998 .... I would only have provided MS with my parents' phone number in either of these two years (what can I say ... we didn't have Skype back then and I may not of even had my own cell # back then).

Google is not evil. Microsoft is not evil.

Microsoft's calling me back is a testimony to their superior technical support.

I can't say that i have ever called Google's technical support nor do i know If they even have technical support.

This is not a hoax


Well... gotta get ready for a date 2-night ....
so over and out.

BIC

MSY2K Follow-up - PROOF?

So I was able to locate 2 banker boxes with old statements in them in my parent's garage.

I found My January 1998 Visa statement (received February 1998).
I would like to say that Microsoft was listed as one of the charges (because it would make the story that much more funny)... but alas MS was not a charge.

While I was in there, I also tried to locate a Credit Card statement with a charge from "CDNOW" in 1996 ... I bought the Macross Soundtrack CD and that would mark my first purchase of anything online (couldn't find it --- and i'm starting to get off topic here so....)

However, this does not mean that I didn't charge my Discover card... but I cannot locate those statements (i'm no longer a card holder... not that that particularly adds any useful information).
Or maybe MS doesn't accept Discover?

It also doesn't mean that Microsoft for one reason or another didn't offer their service to me with that call at no charge (I couldn't say why they would or wouldn't do this).


This also does not explain why Microsoft would call me at my *parents* home number.

BIC

Microsoft Y2K bug circa 1998?

So this will make a fabulous second post for my second blog.

On January 8th of this week my parents received a phone call which they dodged because the call was coming through at 11:00 p.m. at night.

The next day they retrieved the voicemail message which was from Microsoft technical support calling *me* back to see if my problem has been resolved.

I told my folks that the caller was obviously phishing for information for some kind of identity theft and that neither they or I should return a call to the toll free number. I hadn't lived with my parents for many years and it didn't make sense for Microsoft to have called me at their home number.

But then after I calmed down, I reversed phone searched the toll free number which appeared to be a legitimate Microsoft Number.

Then I recalled that I had called Microsoft not once, but twice (possibly as many as 3 different times).

I remember in the past year or so when I called Microsoft and the problem was not resolved (BSOD after Microsoft patch) that Microsoft did call me back the next day to see if i made any progress in my little computer crises (which I though was super cool of them... I was really impressed)...
but wait a second .... or wait 315,569,260 seconds ....
Microsoft hadn't done this (call me back that is) the first time I called ... and I called many years ago.... but that must have been when I was living at home with my parents..... which is why they called me at my parents phone number.

Look at the top of your keyboard....

On January 7, 1998
a Tech Support person typed into their database to call me back the next day...
but instead of typing 1/8/98 they typed 1/8/08

Instead of typing the "9" right next to it they typed "0"

Microsoft had called me back 10 years later!

More on this story as it develops...