blog.shrub

anne tipped me off to an interesting book: Great Americans, which chronicles the stories of regular people with famous names:

Did you know Elvis Presley lives - and works as a data supervisor at a hospital in Texas? That Jackie Kennedy is a sales clerk at an outlet mall in Mississippi? Ever met Marilyn Monroe, a retired politician in Iowa; Al Capone, who works at a food distribution center in South Philly; Bob Dylan, a cashier at a Las Vegas casino; or Muhammad Ali, a University of Minnesota freshman and aspiring neuroscientist? What do they look like? Where have they been? And what does it mean to them to be American?

Auto-Tune, which “helped” the Spice Girls and Cher, is being used on the Live 8 DVDs.

like TinyURL and MakeAShorterLink, but, well, even shorter: ln-s.net.

some of the folks sued by the RIAA are fighting back:

“If somehow this activity was to somehow been pinned to me, it was somehow done so fraudulently,” she says. “There is no way it came from my household.

“I have the least expensive computer system you can buy from Dell. The type you order off television for $499.00. It was purchased in the summer of 2002 and has the smallest hard drive they make. I have no cd writer on it and the cd-rom that I do have, does not even work correctly.

“I live alone with my 8-year-old daughter (who would have been seven at the time the alleged occurrence took place). I am a single mom who is disabled and unable to work. I live on Social Security disability and struggle to support my daughter and myself. If I am put in a position where I need to defend myself regarding this situation, it would create extreme financial hardship on me. I have no money and did not do what is being said. I also must admit that all this stuff that has been occurring with this whole ordeal has triggered my medical condition to flare lately.
…
“These files you are speaking accusing me of sharing (which Mr. Eiler told me about), are not and never have been on my computer system. Several of those artists, I have never even heard of! One, I understand, is a rap song. I am 42-years-old and do not even like rap music. The login that this person who did this apparently used, which Mr. Eiler told me of, is not a login name I have ever used or heard of.

looks like logoworks is borrowing rather heavily from others’ work.

Over at FastCupid, Brent notes some spam in his Friendster and MySpace inboxes. I’ve started getting the same thing.

First, on July 5, I got this message from Friendster user Jen, whose account was deleted:

Hi there, I’m Jen. I couldn’t sleep so I decided to do some browsing and happened on your ad and I thought I’d drop you a line. I recently moved to San Jose and I thought this would be a great way to meet new people. Outside of my work and my neighbor I don’t know anyone around here. So tell me more about yourself? What brings you to world of online personals? To be honest I liked your ad and thought your pic was cute and according to the site we live pretty close by each other. We should meet up for coffee or someting, it’d give us a chance to really get to know each other. LOL, sorry I have a tendency to ramble on sometimes, tell you what if you’re interested just drop me a line and we can get the ball rolling. I rarely have time to check this mail but you can always get a message to me at jen_usher26068@hotmail.com. Well its getting late, I should probably get to bed soon.. I hope to hear from you soon.
Jen

Next, on September 22, I got a message from another Jen:

Hi there, I’m Jen. I was browsing and saw your ad and I thought I’d drop you a line. I recently moved to Sunnyvale and I thought this would be a great way to meet new people. Outside of my work and my neighbor I don’t know anyone around here. So tell me more about yourself? What brings you to world of online personals? To be honest I liked your ad and thought your pic was cute and according to the site we live pretty close by each other. We should meet up for coffee or someting, it’d give us a chance to really get to know each other. LOL, sorry I have a tendency to ramble on sometimes, tell you what if you’re interested just drop me a line and we can get the ball rolling. I rarely have time to check this mail but you can always get a message to me at jensiir1151@hotmail.com. Well, I should probably get back to work.. I hope to hear from you soon.
Jen

And lastly, from Carrie on MySpace:

Hey there, how’s it going? I was just browsing around trying to meet some new, exciting people from around here. I recently moved to San Jose so I don’t know too many people. So how’s your weekend treating you? Any plans for this night?? Well I’ll keep this short until I know you’re interested. I’m just looking for someone to hang out and have a good time with….not looking for anything serious. I RARELY get a chance to check my myspace mail, so if you want to chat hit me up at
carrie8543goats@hotmail.com and I’ll send you some more pics. I hope to talk to you soon, hopefully:)

Carrie

So. Always in the Bay Area. Always with the subject “Hi Paul.” Always “rarely have time to check this mail.” Always with a Hotmail account.

Who’s doing this, and why? And stop bothering me.

some news of note:

• George Bush signed and executive order lifting wage restrictions and allowing government contractors rebuilding new orleans to pay workers less than the prevailing wage
• FEMA’s email server broke.
• New Orleans being underwater was preventable.
• Former FEMA head Mike Brown padded his resume
• FEMA refused help from Amtrak, Wal-Mart, the Coast Guard, firefighters and others.
• Jay Rosen reiterates the press may have found a spine.
• Evacuees are stuck — like being in prison.
• Republicans forced a vote on a relief bill without people having read the bill:
  

  the Republican Leadership in the House of Representatives limited floor consideration of the $52 billion Katrina relief bill proposed by President Bush and voted to reject any Democratic efforts to amend the bill to include a wider array of relief measures, RAW STORY has learned.

  Democrats said no one had even seen a copy of the legislation.

• Pat Robertson is once again off his rocker, saying ” John Roberts can ‘be thankful that a tragedy has brought him some good.’”

roundup of text editors for mac os x: SubEthaEdit, Textmate and skEdit.

test your Nikon D70 for back focus problems.

the ten “crazy” ideas for Microsoft are:

1. Schedule Unscheduled Time into Performance Reviews
2. "Break Up" the Company
3. Encourage Loose but Prominent Couplings
4. Exile and Empower Incubation Projects
5. Offer Super-exponential Rewards
6. Offer Different Risk-Reward Compensation Profiles
7. Cut Back on Bureaucracy
8. Review Cost Cutting
9. Reduce Headcount on Large Dev Projects
10. Eliminate Exec Reviews