Hoo Hoo Nick

Fucking Computers.

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sun, 04 May 2008 12:57:51 +0000

EDIT:After mailing HP support we came to the conclusion that the wireless card is malfunctioning and needs to be replaced. I beg to differ, but if they say so, why the hell not. I need to bring in my entire laptop(even though they asked me to open it, pull out the card and put it back in, so obviously when they expect me to be able to do that, why don’t they just send a new card and have me replace it myself?) which is nice in a way cause then they can test it and fix any other problems that may occur.

Hopefully that helps.

Okay, so the ensurance company provided me with a brand new shiny HP pavilion dv6000 series laptop, the dv6811eo to be exact.

Great machine, was running fine, even though it was running vista. The wife’s PC however, was destroyed by my son, so while that was in for repair she used this one, without any problems.

Finally her PC got replaced and now we both have shiny new HP machines. I figured I didn’t need 250GB disk space so I could do some multi booting loving action on it. So I installed some vista installations, some XP ones, and finally ubuntu. I didn’t like it. All OS’s ran fine but I really didn’t want to have to navigate through a ton of different menu’s in order to pick an OS. So, I figured I could run recovery.

Wrong.

Turned out one of the OS’s had changed the MBR of the recovery partition, rendering that useless. Of course I didn’t know this so I hadn’t thought of burning recovery discs before shit hit the fan. So, the only option was wiping and installing a new copy of vista. Tried the 64bit version, the 32bit version, with and without service pack one, and I keep running into the same problem. The wireless network card will not fucking work. It can’t start it. I’ve been trying for two days now and no luck whatsoever. Whatever I seem to try, it is a dead end solution.
And there’s no point in a laptop if you have to keep it wired to your hub all the time to have internet access. Fuck computers. I am now at the point where I would like to bash something or someone against the god damn radiator just to see if that makes me feel better. Fuck wlan. Fuck windows. Fuck HP. Fuck computers. Fuck everything. Fuck you.

Water powered cell phone

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:58:16 +0000

Samsung claims they invented a phone that runs on water, which is great. You can read all the boring details here.

The part that bothers me is this:
Oh said water-powered handsets are expected to hit the market by 2010. “If the user uses the phone for four hours a day on average, they would have to change the hydrogen cartridge about every five days,”

Let’s see, so in 2010 I will have the choice between a phone for which I need to remember to go out and buy hydrogen cartridges(and make sure to have money in the budget for that at all times), or a phone like I have right now that I charge with electricity from the wall, which I never run out of.

Luckily, it goes on with:
“Later handsets will be developed that don’t need the hydrogen cartridges to be changed, and would only need to be filled with water.”

What happens with the water when its used though?

Bloggasm and the google dance.

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:42:59 +0000

In an attempt to help out Simon Owens from Bloggasm and also to help out readers that use google to search for actually relevant content, i wish to place this list of links. If you wonder what this is all about then this post will tell you more.

1. Youeditor: Anthology Builder and the self-selected table of contents

2. Tor Books to offer social networking, original short fiction and nonfiction online — this was one of the posts that were harshly downgraded, despite the fact that it was linked to on BoingBoing and dozens of other websites.

3. The rise of the genre ezine: Will it ever find a profitable model?

4. Is journalist burnout on the rise? — this article got harshly downgraded despite the fact that it was linked to by Romenesko and dozens of other websites.

5. Readership of major liberal blogs declined in 2007 while conservative blog readership increased — this post was harshly downgraded despite the fact that it was linked to by some of the most popular blogs on the internet, including Andrew Sullivan, Think Progress, Little Green Footballs, Crooks and Liars, Newsbustors, Salon.com. Are you getting the point yet how fucking stupid this algorithm shift has been?

6. The Dawkins Effect: How The God Delusion mainstreamed atheism — this one was harshly downgraded even though it was linked to by at least two A-list blogs and dozens of smaller ones.

7. Harriet Klausner: the publishing industry’s secret weapon?

8. The Sideways offensive: Will Merlot sales ever recover?

9. The Million Writers Award: raising the profile of online literary journals — this one doesn’t even come up first if you google the words “Bloggasm” and “million writers award” in the search field. Pathetic.

10. When “webscabs” unite: Celebrating International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day

11. The Creative Commons Confound: Whether releasing your book for free will help boost your sales — this one, like all the others, was harshly downgraded despite the fact that it got linked to by dozens of sites and at least two A list blogs.

College admission

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:52:09 +0000

If you want to get into college, you will have to write an admission essay. That’s quite a big thing, really, if you consider that this is something that changes the rest of your life. So you write an essay on the previous part of your life, which will change the rest of your life. Interesting. And important.

So important, that you want to have it done by professionals. Thank god it’s 2008. Well apparantly that’s not even a factor, cause college admission essays has been writing college admission essays professionally since 1996. If you’re anything like me, you spend blood, sweat and tears on your essay. You want that essay to look good. You spend several nights awake, only thinking about what font face to use. You even consider making your own font face just to be special. Then when you finally are done writing your essay, you find out that these guys can do it for you for a couple of hundred dollars, which with the current exchange rate translate to about 3 real moneys.

Well not to worry cause for a 165 dollars per essay, 225 if you are in a hurry they can revise your essay in order to have a professionally done essay without wasting a lot of money plus having wasted a lot of time on writing your own essay that you’re not going to use.

I wish I could pay them to guarantee to make it trough college though, cause even if i’d get into college, i’d be way too stupid to make it trough. Oh well.

The green fairy

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:29:45 +0000

Memories, memories. Last summer when I had my friend Rob on the phone, he was going to come over and have some fun. This was a day after he returned from his vacation to spain. “Do you drink absinthe?” he said. After a quick word with the wifey we agreed on giving it a try.
So Rob comes over and brings the bottle of the green goodness. Basically it smells and tastes like liquid anise. I must say I quite enjoyed the taste, but didn’t really understand what all the fuzz was all about. Then Rob mentioned something about keeping it in your mouth and then breathing the fumes. This is when the green fairy banged my head with the hammer of justice. Boy did that stuff fuck me up. I remember my wife coming into the room to serve dinner, and all i could do was look at her and grin. I was in a state of total relaxation and complete happiness. I love absinthe.

Did that make you thirsty? Well good news, this post is a review for a site that sells wormwood absinthe. The site looks pretty decent, and apart from a few different kinds of absinthe they also have the needs to make the ritual as perfect as it should be, with the correct glasses, an absinthe spoon, hell even flasks so you can hide it in your suits jacket to take some sneaky drinks at the office. It smells anise, so who’d notice, really.

The absinthe spoon made me curious though, a quick look at the wikipedia shows that the spoon has some holes in it so that you can poor icecold water on a sugarcube which you put in the spoon, that way the sugar-water gets added to the absinthe, and that’s what you drink. Also a way to do it, I suppose. I enjoyed sipping it like whiskey. I recommend doing whatever you’re most comfortable with, but you definately have to try absinthe if you are so inclined. It’s worth any effort.

Spock.com

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:49:41 +0000

Spock.com must be the most curious thing i’ve ever reviewed. It’s basically a search engine to find people. Spock- the best for people search, is what they say themselves.
Whenever I look for a person I usually just turn to Google but of course I had to give spock a spin, since they are paying me for this review.

So what is the first thing to search for? Hoo Hoo Nick of course. A quick search for Hoo Hoo Nick gives me a few different kind of results. It gives me wrong results, slightly irrelevant results, more irrelevant results, completely irrelevant results, and completely fucking batshit insane results. Fair enough with the spaces in between, i suppose, but then i’m being nice. So i try searching without the spaces in between, just plain old “hoohoonick”.

The result: “Your search - hoohoonick - did not match any results on Spock.
Suggestions:

Check that all words are spelled correctly.
Try more general terms.
We don’t have a search result for this person yet.
Login or
Sign up for Spock now
and you can request that we index this person.”

Excuse me? Sign up to request to index this person? I just did that search, the robots should do the rest of the job.

So it sucks ass at finding a specific person. I’m not trying to be a precious little snowflake here, and i’m definately not saying that i’m a big celebrety cause i’m definately not, but it’s not hard to find me on google, so it shouldn’t be hard to find me on spock either.

Let’s try using a different meaning of the term people search. A search for “drunk driving” does give some interesting result. At the very top, Mel Gibson. Apparantly he’s a drunk driver. More specifically, “drunk driving florida” comes up with among others president George W. Bush. Doesn’t surprise me.

Conclusion: Spock.com is pretty good for finding people that match certain criteria, but sucks ass for finding a specific person. Good to know, I might actually use it in the future. I might even create an account.

Fanmail

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:53:12 +0000

in a response to this story, I recently received a kind letter from a reader, which I thought you’d like to read as well.

HEY, I READ YOUR ARTICAL ABOUT PAY PAL AND AGREE, THEY S___, AS FAR AS HELP CREATING A NEW ACCOUNT. THEN THERE IS NO GD LIVE HELP AVAILABLE, JUST A RECORDED BS MESSAGE NOT ADDRESSING THIS TYPE PROBLEM. I AM BEGINNING TO AGREE, ABOUT PAYPAL AND E BAY, IM SO FRUSTRATED IM READY TO CHOKE EM BOTH, ESPECIALLY PAYPAL. IF THEY ARE SO GREAT, WHY CANT SOMEONE GET LIVE HELP OR AN ANSWER TO E MAIL AT CUSTOMER SUPPOSED TO BE, SUPPORT, WHAT A JOKE, GLAD I READ YOUR FEED BACK, YOU ARE RIGHT ON TARGET.I GIVE UP. GOT ONE E MAIL ABOUT SIGHNING UP, REFERRED ME TO PAYPAL SITE WHICH WILL NOT ALLOW ME TO, OR CONTACT BY PHONE TO HEAR BS AND NO HELP TO CREAT A NEW ACCOUNT. DOESNT ACCEPT MY E MAIL ADDRESS OR PASSWORD, I GIVE UP, THEY CAN JUMP OFF A BRIDGE, WHILE HANDCUFFED BEHIND THEIR BACK, THANKS, FOR YOUR FEED BACK, I DONT FEEL ALONE NOW. THANK YOU!!

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Episode 44 - The show that never happened.

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:05:07 +0000

Hi everyone! Finally back with a brand new episode. That only took 1,5 year or so. Hope you enjoy this one. I certainly did enjoy making this one, and I hope to do the occasional show again. Apparantly I comitted to more karaoke so I guess i’m going to have to.

Download Episode 44 - The show that never happened

Flexwebhosting.nl

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:06:22 +0000

Just felt the need to post about Flexwebhosting.

This is not a paid review, just something that happened that i considered necessary to publish.

I do websites for some people and organisations and one of them is using flexweb(I won’t mention who for their privacy). This particular website had been running happily since 2003 or so, but all of a sudden a few weeks ago email stopped working. When trying to visit control panel to check the settings, I got a 404. When trying to visit the main site, I got the apache test page. Nice!
I emailed the customer to explain what was going on and adviced to contact flexweb about this.

Flexweb responded by sending a mail with all the login info. The login info though, was different from what it used to be. Where I used to use the users domain for ftp and access to the control panel and everything, they now seemed to be using a different domain for all that. Though when I tried to login, the password did not work. So, I chopped the “/admin” bit off the end of the URL and got a site from a different customer. They sent the login details for a different customer.

When they finally send the real login info, first thing I will do is change all passwords. If my client stays with them, that is.

Afterwards by the way, i had a look at the site and it appears they just put all the static stuff back, but the database is non-functional which means my client lost all their guestbook entries, and a lot of their email is not being delivered due to flexweb’s fuckups. This is bad. This is really bad.

Cracked photoshop contest

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 21:38:40 +0000

Theme of the contest is: Error Messages You Never Want to See

This is my entry:

too much web2.0

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 20:56:09 +0000

Today i was at the mall with my son and the wifey. Suddenly my phone goes “Nick!” - a text message. Google Calendar. Tomorrow is wordpress backup day.

Okay. About 10 minutes later, at IKEA, one more time “Nick!”. Twitterfeed posting to my private twitter account that there has come an email from Google Calendar, reminding me that tomorrow is wordpress backup day.

20 minutes after that, another text message. Twitter. The twitter gcal service, telling me that….

The thing with web2.0 is, there’s just too much of it. Some time, it will go in a loop and my gadgets will explode.

Well-placed advertisement, part II

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:17:39 +0000

This was sent to me by Miguel(from his own blog) in response to this post:

Miguel writes:

The ad features a well-known portuguese tv host; the article is about the london-based artist called decapitator that goes around chopping people’s heads off. I has a roffles!

Thanks Miguel!

Mail to phone!

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 11:34:18 +0000

For free. Yep! Mail forwards to mailbucket, mailbucket gets read by twitterfeed, twitterfeed posts to a privat twitter account, and the private twitter account is followed by my normal twitter account, which txts the mail to my phone. This is the best idea I had this year so far. I am sure someone else came up with the same idea though.

That’s as thorough as this “howto” is going to be, by the way. You can figure out how all that stuff works by the respective manuals, if you are not smart enough to do so, you do not need to receive email on your phone, it’s that simple.

Testing Twitterfeed

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 09:14:57 +0000

If you came here from twitter, congrats! It worked.

Otherwise this post is utterly useless.

What a ride.

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:38:51 +0000

Kindergarten is about 300 meters from my front door. 322, if I remember exactly - I measured it on Google Earth once. Kindergarten closes at 16.30.
My work is roundabout ten minutes by car, about twice as long by bus, plus an extra 10 minutes to walk from the busstop to work. The other busstop is right outside my door.

Today I was off at two, which should give me plenty of time to pick up my kid… NOT. There was snow, not extremely much, but just over my ankles. Enough to slow me down enough to not make my regular number 80 bus that goes at 2.15 but fortunately a 24 bus showed up quite soon, and that one goes in the same direction. Well, except for the one I was on, apparantly. I tried to get the busdriver to explain to me what the difference is between the apparantly several kinds of number 24 busses, but he wasn’t skilled enough at any of the languages I speak(though I’m sure he was really good at whatever they speak at wherever he was from) to explain to me what the hell was up so all I could do was sit trough the entire trip until we were back onto the main road where I could just get off, cross the road and try again on a new bus.
Well, once on this trip through hell and back I noticed that traffic around town was complete chaos, cars stuck everywhere, and when the hell bus finally came up the hell to turn and go back there was another bus that got stuck in the snow, and of course my foreign friend insisted on helping his colleague. He was a nice busdriver, really, I had a cosy chat with him and everything. It’s just that he couldn’t complain me stuff that was complicated for him, such as where the fuck he was going to drive me.
Anyhoo, when we finally got back on the main road I still had plenty of time, my mood was still up and I even agreed to push a lady’s car which was stuck a few meters for her to get a grip on the street again, so that she could repeat the same thing a bit further down the road. The new bus showed up quickly, and that one took me to the terminal in not much longer then that usually takes. Great.

At the terminal my bus just didn’t show up. This was where I phoned kindergarten to explain them that I might be late. Shortly after my bus showed up, completely packed with people. Some of them got off, but too many bastards pushed their way onto the bus, and I didn’t make it. The busdriver said that another bus would be coming straight after, with which he meant about an hour later, which I discovered the hard way. Though this time I was one of the bastards pushing people aside.
I phoned kindergarten and they were really cool about it, which I appreciate cause after all they had to wait around for me to show up. My kid’s mood wasn’t ruined either. I’m writing this while our overdue dinner is in the microwave. What a day. What a fucking day.

Moon Costumes Returns

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:55:17 +0000

Yes, Moon Costumes is back. I just want to point out that they have halloween costumes and kid’s costumes. So there you go, if you want to dress up your kid like a hippy, you know where to find them. You could also dress your kid up as a Colonial Soldier or a Colonial General. Oh wait a minute, those are exactly the same costumes, only difference is that they mirrored the picture in one of them. I’m kinda curious which one. I think the costume looks a lot like Napoleon Bonaparte. Which is strange, why would you sell a costume that looks like a dictator? You might as well sell Adolf Hitler-costumes for kids then. Well, they already have another gay german person suit, I think if you add a wee mustache to that one, you’re all set. Ah, this one might just work. By the way, did you know that Charlie Chaplin was born four days before Adolf Hitler, which was 20th of April 1989? But I Digress.

The best kid costume must be this one. But pirates pwn everything, especially Ninja’s. I think I’m going to save up for a nice pirate suit. Pity the only choice I have is this one. But then I also need boots, an eyepatch, and a hat. I think i’ll start with the eyepatch, since it’s a key part of my religion.

If you would like to sponsor my quest to a pirate suit, please use the paypal button on the right-hand side of the page. I do not ask to click the ads, but I do like to point out that the ad-money goes to me personally, so don’t be ashamed to click one if it’s about something of interest.

Creepy…

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 14:18:14 +0000

Imagine this:
You surf to your website, and all of a sudden it just shows you some random posts from 2006 and all the other stuff is still there, but not on your front page. You can surf to the newer content okay, but it doesn’t show up when you surf to your main site.

Speaking to the site admin shows that he ran some updates on the server, but nothing that could cause this. Rerunning the updates, kicking the mysql server, no difference.

Nice opportunity to run that long overdue wordpress backup, and as you can see, everything is working fine again. my theory is that the wordpress tables got fucked somewhere and that updating the wordpress database fixed it. But thank goodness we’re back.

Halloween is coming up!

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 12:08:57 +0000

Halloween is always coming up, since it’s a yearly event. Which is why it’s safe for Moon Costumes to sell costumes the entire year. They seem to have everything, from kid costumes to adult costumes, even if you are into cosplay. I doubt that anyone into cosplay would read my blog though. That’s what I want to believe, anyway. But I digress.
Seriously, this is one of those paid reviews, and usually I only care about two things when I write those: Whatever I write needs to be entertaining to you, the reader, and: the money. In this case though, I really love this advertiser. I’ve been surfing around the site, and they really seem to have everything you ever needed, need, or will ever need that has to do with costumes for Halloween or costume parties or whatever. Plus, even if you don’t need anything it’s quite entertaining to just surf around the site. They have an entire section for couple costumes for example. Look at this adam and eve set, or the ball and chain.
Or the fat people section. Or, if you’re not fat yet, you could dress up as a fat person. Seriously, I’m having so much fun with this site.

Apart from suits they have all sorts of accessories, makeup, tattoo’s, hats, wings, masks, wigs, party supplies, but i’ll saved the best for last. Just follow this link and laugh your ass off.

Cheers!

Old news.

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:22:14 +0000

But still funny. Did you know that the iphone is not going to come out? It’s on Yahoo! Answers so it has got to be true.

linky.

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:36:14 +0000

Scary version of this song.

Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds in a scary, creepy version.

Who else then William Shatner. This must be the worse thing i’ve seen today.

Well-placed advertisement

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 07:00:22 +0000

Although a story about killer fish is exciting, it’s not really the type of content HHN covers, though when it has an advertisement that actually is helpful to the brits:

This is pure gold. The ads rotate though, if anyone gets this one, please click it - I wanna know where it goes.
Source

Thank goodness for piracy tools.

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 06:37:15 +0000

I try not to encourage people to get involved with piracy, but I am glad piracy is around. I spend my good money on ordering a DVD from the US, and of course its the wrong zone and it won’t play on any of my devices.

Thank goodness for DVD decrypter, it allows me to just copy the entire contents of the DVD to my harddrive. Now I’m going to burn that one to a blank disc and see if THAT will work. According to the wikipedia article it should. I believe every PC should come pre-installed with these kind of essential tools, in todays world of over-protective media companies, we apparantly need it.

How many do we need?

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 06:13:30 +0000

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1982)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

I want to see the 2007 one, haven’t seen any of the others yet. Though how many of these things do we need, now really? There’s more on IMDB then just these three, too!

New layout

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:54:56 +0000

I hope you all like the new layout. I am finally done with it.

I’d appreciate it if you drop me a a line with feedback, I want to know whether you guys like it. I know it looks heavy on the ads, but in reality the ads just look slightly more obnoxious due to a new choice of colours. Nobody clicked them, which is why I had to do that.
The ads actually provide money that keep the site running, HHN benefits from them directly so don’t hesitate to click on ads if they are interesting to you.

Edit:Installed some google ads as well now. They are not appearing yet, but according to adsense this is normal.

Myspace

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:54:01 +0000

As you may have read in my post “Done!” a few days back, I deleted my myspace account.

Why do I still get the myspace newsletter? This is fishy.

Another way to make some cash.

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:27:39 +0000

If you’re like me, you have a blog and you can make some extra cash by writing reviews just like the one you are reading right now. If you’re less lucky and still want in on the “make a few bucks while sitting on the couch with your laptop” thing, maybe metapaid is something for you.
Get paid to sign up! is their cunning slogan - but I am afraid I had to decline. Fortunately I know whats inside by just looking at the front side.

If you’ve ever been involved in any online game that involves virtual money, in my case Alien Adoption Agency(or, A3:The awakening as they call it these days), InTheMafia, or even in Second Life there is Hippiepay and several others, you know exactly what this is. You sign up with them, then start answering surveys and offers, and they will give you free cash. In the online games it used to be game money, but metapaid took it to the game called RL and pays you RL money. Of course you get percentages from members that you refer(which basically means they could pay you a lot more but they prefer to blackmail you to refer some friends instead).

Go ahead and sign up if you feel like it, I think you actually might make a few extra bucks by doing so, but take my advice: Use. A. Different. Email. Address. Seriously, you do not want to give the email you use daily to these people because they will send you mail after mail after mail after mail. And i’m not talking about the spam you are getting daily already, like pills, penis enlargements and lottery phishing scams, but actual mails with actual offers and winy shit. I mean, I can deal with the viagra and pharmacy emails, they are easy on the eyes and in just a few seconds i have selected all of them and hit my delete button. The email you get from these offers though, require actual reading, you need to turn on your brain to decide whether or not the email in question is spam, and that is what makes it annoying and obnoxious.

But I am digressing.

Personally I never found the effort you had to put into filling out these offers worth the amount of money you were getting for it, but metapaid might pay a lot better. I will probably never find out. I hope it’s useful for at least some of my readers though.

Most fucked up family.

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:38:45 +0000

Well, of today, anyway. Be sure to skip the last part. As soon as the guy tells how fucked up the family is, you want to hit the stop button. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I know you’re gonna watch it, now. But really, you shouldn’t.

http://www.deletedyoutube.ftvteen.com/?v=flO6Of3Afzo

if banner ads were forced to be truthful…

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 10:40:46 +0000

Kinda busy this weekend. Enjoy this.

O’RLY?

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:10:28 +0000

Hmm, I have to disagree with my dear OS there. You see, to protect my PC I have automagic updates disabled. Interesting.

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 15:16:09 +0000

Song of the week

This is really my favourite song of this moment, believe it or not. I am really starting to get into Bobby Conn, even though I am really not into this sort of thing usually, which frustrates me. Maybe It’s part of the process of getting old.

Terrible!

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:37:26 +0000

I’ve been seeing videos of this guy posted here and there, and everybody seems to be impressed with this guys so-called talent or “amazing ability”. Am I seriously the only one who feels tortured by every sound this guy makes? Of course, nobody is actually making me watch this guy(thankfully) but from the first time I saw a video of him somewhere I noticed that all the comments were people that were impressed with him, some of them even euphoric. Rumor goes around that even Brian May himself is impressed with this dudes version of bohemian rhapsody. What the fuck!

THIS IS NOT A TALENT. It is an ability. If he could actually hit every single note in the right key at the right time, I would gladly consider it a talent or a gift, but he plays sloppy as hell, skips notes, has terrible timing, is obviously completely tone-deaf and his entire stage-presence(especially the youtube videos where he sits with his fat ass on his own couch at home) is completely akward. It could be comedy if he would deliver it in such a way, but he just doesn’t have the charisma to do that at all.
If anyone would play any instrument as sloppy as he does, only their mother would be proud of them, but everybody thinks this guy is sooo fucking great cause he worked 37 years on something thats not even original - he admits himself that he stole the idea from someone when he was 9 years old.

Everybody who thinks this guy is great, is stupid.

Groovy Google.

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:56:54 +0000

I love google. I probably have mentioned that a bunch of times already on this blog, so I’m not going to tell the story about how I first found google and was impressed and yada yada yada. There’s one thing nobody can deny about google though: Their design really blows. In a way its nice that they keep it simples, this saves a lot of bandwidth, thus time for everyone, but on the other hand, pages that you use a lot, usually get cached by your browser so you don’t really need any bandwidth for it, and neither does Google.

And, lets face it: The very best startpage, is Google. Unless you are a total geek like me, then you need something more complicated like Netvibes or Pageflakes, but for the average user I would definately recommend Google as a start page. I would, but not anymore. Why? Well like I said, Google is butt-ugly. And thats not neccesary anymore.

Cause with Groovle(Your Groovy Google) you can Personalize Google and actually make it look groovy. And again, the entire universe is thankful that they did not come up with a slogan more cute.

On first sight, it looks like its basically Google with a wallpaper, and if you take a closer look, you’ll see that it actually is more then that. Not much, but there is more. For one thing, they got rid of the obnoxiously cute “i’m feeling lucky” button, that Google obviously only still has for sentimental reason, as a reminder to the days that the button actually had a decent chance of generating some relevant results.

Also, they put their own logo on there(on which I seriously would mis the special google holiday and celebration logos) and they upped the design on the search buttons a wee bit. It also offers a possibility to add your own wallpaper, but not without entering your email address and passing a drunk reading test, otherwise known as captcha. Groovy. Your email address won’t be passed on, according to the TOU - which makes me wonder how they are going to make money with this thing….

Paid Reviews

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:40:17 +0000

Regular readers know that I do paid reviews on this blog. Sometimes I accept these offers, and when I get around to writing them I really wonder why on earth I ever accepted to review the particular item.
I never have regrets because the product in question is lame, bad, or just plain stupid. Oh no, I can go on for hours and hours about stupid things, and really love doing so. It’s usually the good ones where I have regrets, because usually the good ones are simple. There’s just nothing to tell about them, at least not in a review of the required size, let alone a decent size.
I simply can’t go “Well this company makes beer. Their website offers information on beer, and allows you to order some if you want, US Shipping only”. Problem is, for some of these, there just is not more to tell about that, which forces me to digress a lot and just write a lot of lines about something slightly related, to eventually end up at the subject in question. Thank god I get paid for it.

Done!

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:18:51 +0000

I deleted my myspace, as per international delete your myspace page day.

My cancellation comments to myspace(which i nicely entered into the form)

I deleted my profile because myspace really sucks donkeyballs. The only reason I signed up in the first place was because a lot of people i needed to network with at that time, were on here and it seemed convenient.

After that, my opinion on myspace only went downhill.

Flaws:
-useless email notification that requires you to sign in. I realize that you need me to view your ads in order to pay for the whole things, but you may as well put the ads in the notification email instead, like smart people.

-remember me tickbox does not do anything. I need to enter my username and password every single browser session, no matter whether i click remember me or not.

-general speed of the site is very slow. Not due to bad servers, but due to the fact that you seem to use technology and design from 1995 for this platform. There wasn’t anything wrong with the technology from 1995, but if you want to add as much features as are common these days, it just doesn’t quite do the trick.

-Crappy interface. The only way to find ANYTHING on myspace, is if you already know where it is. Any decent site or application tries to make an effort to put stuff where the user would expect it, to make navigating easier. Nothing on myspace is placed in a spot that would make sense, so you have to look forever to find any of the features.

That’s all I could come up with right now, but believe me, i haven’t even started.

So thank goodness for international delete your myspace page day.

I figured I could post it here, its always nice to have a copy of a good burn.

Awesome.

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 18:48:00 +0000

This guy is so awesome. It’s clear that american idol as well as america’s got talent(and all spinoffs) would not even let a guy like this get trough the auditions, but man, look at all that talent.

How not to end up like me.

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 21:23:22 +0000

Don’t get me wrong, I am happy with myself and everything, but I can imagine you would like to do things differently.

Protip: Finish school!

School sucks, seriously. Teachers are generally the most retarted creatures you’ll find, and the ones that aren’t yet are just waiting to get their spirit crushed. School doesn’t teach you anything either, except from repeating whatever you read in a book, on a test. Pupils score high if they are good at taking tests, not necessarily because they are smart.

Unfortunately, employers look out for people that have succeeded in taking the most tests, rather then just phoning up applicants to have a chat and see if they have any intelligence, so in order to get a decent job, you must finish school.

So then you need to get into college or the university to show that you can take tests that are slightly more difficult as well. In order to get in there, you also need to be able to show how good you can write. Now, I can’t write very well(honestly, I don’t get why anyone would read this) so if i would need to write a college admission essay, I would just never get in.
Thank goodness for services like “Admissions Essays”, which is what this paid review is about. They will take care of your college admission essays for you.

For USD285, somebody will actually draft an essay based on the information you give them, within 7 business days. For an extra USD100 you will get it within 3 days. This price is really a bargain, considering the dollar isn’t really money anymore these days. You even get up til 30% off if you order multiple essays!

If you already wrote your essay and want these guys to look at them and give you useful tips, they do that too. Other then that their site offers some sample essays, writing tips, an affiliate program, and if you’ll excuse me, i’m off to read the “Success Stories” section…. that should be pretty entertaining.

Official delete your myspace account day

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 11:50:06 +0000

30th of January is official delete your myspace account day.

I’m gonna join, i even scheduled a reminder on my phone, just so that i do not forget it.

Ordering a pizza.

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:59:52 +0000

This weekend was one of the rare cases where I was working for the man. I really enjoy working in the weekends. Of course I enjoy being at home with my family more, but working is a good second place, cause I like my job, and in the weekends nobody is nagging at me so i actually get some work done!

Another advantage is that I can take along my laptop and watch some good movies or TV shows while at work. On weekdays I don’t want to do this because I’m afraid that one of my careless colleagues will accidentally destroy it with some heavy tools or something.

But maybe the best thing about working several hours extra is that the company pays for your food, which means you can order delicious pizza. Cause of course, there’s no point if the pizza is not delicious. On saturday we had delicious pizza, and on sunday we felt like having some delicious pizza again, so we ordered from Dolly Dimples, since the company has an account there, so its just very convenient. Sunday was my turn to order.

I really hate having to wait for my food, so I already phoned them at 10.50. Got a nice tape saying that the phone lines do not open until 11am. So, I went back to work and patiently waited until 11.02.

She:”Dolly dimples, this is Lene, how may i help?”
Me:”Hi, this is nick from , we’d like to order a large number 9 and a small number 15″.
She:”Allright, is that for

?”
Me, impressed with the fact that she already knew our address: “Yes.”
She:”Can I get your full name and mobile number please?”
Me:” Of course. Nick , ”. I’d like the pizza at 12.30, not earlier.”
She:”Well the restaurant near you doesn’t serve before 13.00 so you can’t get it before 13.00″.
Me:” Hmm, that’s a bit late to eat lunch, now isn’t it. Well if it arrives at 13.00, it should be fine though.”
She:”Well it can be 10 minutes earlier or later, but 13.00 should be fine.”
Me:”perfect.”.

I inform my colleagues and listen to some bitching about them having to wait until 13.00 before they can actually eat, but can’t bitch back seeing as how I actually agree with them.

At 12.58 my phone rings. I pick up with a friendly “Yellow!?” as usual, and it’s Mrs. Hoo Hoo. I announce: “I thought you were the pizza, which should be here any moment!”. She doesn’t take the hint and keeps me on the phone for 10 minutes.

13.08, and still no pizza. I go upstairs, to see if I can see them coming. 13.09, a small red car comes up. I get excited, there’s not much traffic in these industrial areas on a sunday you see. Not them. I should have known, cause dolly dimples people drive tiny yellow dolly dimples cars. 13.12 I get too impatient and phone them up again, from a different extension this time.

I ask where my god damn pizza is, and the lady asks for my information. She also manages to find my address from my phonenumber, but not my order. Not from the extension I am calling from, not from my mobile number, not from my name, which by the way is an extremely standard norwegian name so misspellings were impossible. I didn’t give her the extension I phoned from cause I have no clue what number it was. No sign of my order. I got upset and told her that if no god damn pizza would appear, hell would break loose and burning hellhounds would run around and eat all of us alive while making an unbearable noise, or at least I gave her that impression. She started saying something like, “well if I can’t find your order by your name or phonenumber” - I interrupted her: “Oh yes, this is all my fault!”. She replied with something along the lines of “I’m not saying its your fault, but it really is.” You could tell that she had been working with customers a long time, too bad she was using these powers for evilness. I suddenly remembered to tell her that I spoke to Lene. She said that nobody by that name worked there. What the fuck!
Eventually I got her to phone the restaurant that was going to deliver the pizza. Turns out, they don’t open before 13.00 so they have no chance whatsoever to deliver a pizza at 13.00 sharp, but they had my order and were on their way.
I patiently waited for my pizza’s, which finally came at 13.38. “Hi,” she said. “I was promised these at 13.00″, I replied. “Well we can’t do that, as how we open at 13.00.”. “Then you shouldn’t promise pizza at 13.00.”. “I didn’t,” she said, “Someone else did.”. “Well, seeing as you work for dolly dimples, you represent dolly dimples and someone else representing dolly dimples promised me pizza at 13.00, therefor I get to bitch at you for it, its your fucking job.”. She replied: “Well we open at 13.00 so we can’t deliver pizza at 13.00 as well, its just impossible.”. “I understand that,”, i said, ” so you should not promise pizza at 13.00″. “I did not, it was the person you spoke to on the phone”.

This is where I went into nagging-mode, which is more effective then yelling. Nobody forgets being nagged at uniterruptedly for several minutes. I learned this from a big british supervisor at the place I used to work in holland. I will never forget his nag-sessions. So I nag at her for a while, not giving her a chance to offer any kind of reply, and when I was done she said “Well sign here and then you’ll get 50% discount on your next pizza”. I thanked her and let her go, satisfied with the fact that I at least ruined her sunday as much as dolly dimples ruined mine.

The part that pisses me off the most here is that the bitch that came to deliver actually tried to avoid taking a complaint from a customer. It’s this thing with norwegian people, especially with norwegian women i’ve noticed. It’s like they feel nobody should bitch at them because they are women. I don’t care, I bith at anyone that deserves it. Hard, and long.

I love netvibes.

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:40:02 +0000

I’ll attempt to say nice things occasionally as well, seeing as I bitch an awful lot. It’s just that whenever I find myself annoyed with something, it seems like a good idea to vent a little on here.

What happened a moment ago though, is something completely different. I found myself not-annoyed in a situation where I usually would be annoyed, and felt like writing about it. So here’s a completely new experience for the both of us.

It’s netvibes. I use it for all my daily things. It has got my notes, a quick peek in my inboxes, my torrent sites(for all backups and legal downloads off stuff i already have on the shelves), my work, and feeds to sites that I like to read or need to read. It has been my start page for quite some time now and I wouldn’t know what to do without it.

A moment ago though, i was trying to add a black note called “blacklist” for an unrelated story that I may or may not be able to tell you about in the near future, for now I really can’t, unfortunately. In any case, the note got placed but wouldn’t update and i started to wonder what was going on. I figured my internet connection was fucked again, so i tried to refresh the page to get a diagnoses. Instead of getting netvibes back I got a friendly screen with a image of a little doctor, and the text:

Netvibes may be temporarily unavailable for a health check. Don’t worry, we’re taking care of the servers. The health report will be published on the blog

I read the blog and the most recent post was this one.

I just went on with my life, and a moment later I realized that usually this would annoy the fuck out of me, but for netvibes, It does not. I am happy, they give me a warm and fuzzy feeling and i really am under the impression that they know what they are doing, and that they are doing something good out there, right now. I love the fact that the update is called ginger, while the previous version was called coreander. I am looking forward to trying ginger, too. I really, really love netvibes.

As soon as they come back in ginger, I need to remind myself to add the netvibes blog to my “feeds” tab on netvibes - I want to be testing the next beta version!

Powered by ScribeFire.

Fine Art Storage

hoohoonick@gmail.com (Hoo Hoo Nick) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:16:29 +0000

art storage is an art. It is according to Imagine that Mind’s Eye, and I think we can all be glad that they couldn’t find a slogan that was more cute. Oh actually they did, their site also says “Art can be a moving experience”. And they specialize in art storing and moving. Moving experience. Get it? God I hate cute slogans, but lets try and not let that affect my review, cause they need to get their money’s worth as well.

Mind’s Eye(this is what I am conveniently going to call them cause i can’t figure out their exact name from their website) specializes in, as I would put it, taking care of your art so that it won’t get damaged. Whether you want to store it, move it, or display it, they have a safe solution, and their website offers a lot of information on that. That, and gears that start to rotate as you hover over the menu. It makes me go “cool!”, and then forget that I was going to click one of the links. Let’s try again.

Actually, their website has a really impressive design, and honestly the fact that I get distracted by it is probably just a feature of one of my many personality disorders, so its not really fair of me to bitch about it. As far as flash-heavy sites go, this one is very slick and easy to use. And after reading a bit about their service, I must say I am very impressed.

Basically what they do is the following:
Let’s say you have art and you need to ship it somewhere. You get in touch, and then they offer a custom solution for your specific piece of art, whether you need extra security, climate control, you name it, they do it. Everything customized. There’s not much more to say about it, really. I would, but some sections of the site are not done yet. I would recommend these guys to friends though.