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After much deliberation and spending money to get ideas from an advertising firm, the City of Keller has named the new aquatic/recreation center The Keller Pointe.  Not only is the name stupid and pretentious, but the graphic is cheesy.  It looks like an advertisement for some kind of dance company or something. 

Instead of being stupidly froofy the city could have saved a little money and just called it the “Keller Aquatic and Recreation Center”.  That name is not only descriptive, but they could have gotten it from me for free.  Personally, I don’t think I’ll be calling it “The Pointe”.  I’ll probably just call it the “Aquatic Center” if for no other reason than to avoid the embarassment of having to explain that stupid name to people from outside of Keller.

I’d like to find the bastard that did this and do the same thing to him (registration may be required for that link).

Fort Worth police are investigating the apparent torture death of a dog.

A construction worker at the former Bank One Tower on Taylor Street downtown found the animal Tuesday morning. The dog had been skinned and left to die.

It’s odd, but in some ways I find the abuse of an animal worse than that of a person.  Don’t misunderstand.  I’m not turning into some kind of animal-rights PETA-head.  Maybe it’s got more to do with my ambivalence towards people than it does with animals in particular.  It may also have to do with the idea that most dogs are trusting of people and never have a chance of defending themselves against the scum who would do something like this.

I let the dog out into the back yard this evening and went to do something else.  I heard her barking back there, which was out of character for her.  When I went to investigate I noticed that there was some test equipment attached to the telephone junction box in the corner of the yard.  There was no one around—she was barking at the equipment. 

A little while later the guy returned.  It turns out that they’re going to leave the existing copper wires in place in the back yard and run the new fiber along the street.  No one’s connections will be changed until such time as they order one of the new services that use the fiber optic connection.  He thought that the new internet service will be available in June, although that’s not definite.

One interesting thing that he mentioned is that Keller is the first city in the country where Verizon is rolling out fiber to the home.

Someone just left a hang-tag on my front door.  At first I thought it was one of those annoying marketers who don’t read the “No Solicitors” sign.  I usually throw them away unread, but the Verizon logo at the top caught my eye so I read it.

It turned out to be a notice that they were going to be running fiber optic cable through my yard as part of their new fiber-to-home rollout.  Once complete, it will allow them to offer 100Mbps networking and a host of other new offerings.  They definitely have my attention now.  If they can offer me a 100Mbps network connection at a reasonable price I’d dump Charter’s cable modem in an instant.  They’d get bonus points (and I’d be willing to pay even more, within limits) for a symmetrical service (i.e. no obnoxious upload cap).

My house seems to do a good job in keeping moisture out.  Perhaps too good a job.  I’d been noticing a lot of static electricity lately, to the point where I could hear the crackling as I was petting the dog.  The last straw came this weekend when I went to adjust the thermostat and got a huge shock.  I have a touch-screen programmable thermostat.  The discharge caused the screen to go completely blank.  I thought that I’d killed it, but fortunately it recovered, although it lost all its settings (and the thing is a royal pain to program, since you have to adjust the temperatures for four time periods for each day of the week; i.e. 28 individual settings). 

I immediately sat down with the laptop (after grounding myself to a metal table ) and ordered a great big humidifier.  Hopefully that will put an end to the constant shocks the dog and I have been enduring.

Cellular number portability has opened up a market for interesting and memorable numbers.  An enterprising New Yorker is auctioning off 212-867-5309 on eBay.  The bidding was up to $55,387.81 at the time of this posting.

Ever been in a movie theater or a restaurant and had to endure the loud, obnoxious prick with a cell phone who was regaling all in earshot with his or her conversation?  Despite it being illegal in the United States, some people are taking action.

A cafe customer fed up with cell phone chatter sits in a bubble of blissful silence as nearby patrons puzzle over dead handsets.

A man tries to take a secret snapshot with his camera phone, but gets only a blank screen.

A priest imbues his church with a new energy—the electromagnetic kind—to keep his sermons serene and free from beeps, chirps and rockin’ ring tones.

These are glimpses at a war of gadgets quietly playing out around the world.

As millions embrace the freedoms of mobile communications, some people and companies are pushing back against the tide. They are fighting technology with technology, using detectors, jammers and other gizmos to defend privacy, security and sometimes sanity.

However, for those worried about the legal ramifications of using a jammer, there may be hope in the near future.  A researcher at Iwata University in Morioka, Japan has come up with something called “magnetic wood”, which can passively block cell signals in rooms which have been lined with it.

Upon your death, a piece of you can slip the surly bonds of Earth.  For an appropriate fee, of course.

Celestis offers a service that will send a small amount of your ashes into space.  They offer options to send the remains into Earth orbit, lunar orbit, to the lunar surface, or into deep space.  Prices range from $995 to $12,500.

I awoke this morning to discover that we’d gotten a bit more snow than was originally predicted.  Here’s a view down my street to the South around 7:15 this morning.

By 10:45, several people had been outside making snowmen.

Boots also seemed to enjoy the snow quite a bit.

My new camera also does MPEG video, so I was able to get a short movie of her frolicking (approximately 1 minute, DivX encoded, 4.8MB download).  I had to compress the video with DivX to make it manageable, since the original was 36MB.  Windows Media should have no trouble playing the DivX video, although you’ll have to download the free DivX codec (the free download link is just below the chart comparing the pay versions).  If you have iTunes or the QuickTime brower plugin, though, it can interfere by taking over the file association.

Update:  I just realized that it might be a bit absurd to download a 5MB codec for a 4.8MB video.  I was able to get the size down to 2.8MB by creating a version of the video using Windows Movie Maker.

One of my coworkers sent me this joke today.

A guy walks in to a bar with his pet monkey. He orders a drink and while he’s drinking the monkey jumps all around the place. The monkey grabs some olives off the bar and eats them.  Then he grabs some sliced limes and eats them. Then he jumps on to the pool table, grabs one of the billiard balls, sticks it in his mouth, and to everyone’s amazement, somehow swallows it whole. The bartender screams at the guy, “Did you see what your monkey did?”

The guy says, “No, what?”

“He just ate the cue ball off my pool table – whole!”

“Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me,” replied the guy. “He eats everything in sight. Sorry. I’ll pay for everything.”

The man finishes his drink, pays his bill, pays for the stuff the monkey ate and leaves.

Two weeks later, he’s in the bar again, and his pet monkey is with him. He orders a drink and the monkey starts running around the bar again. While the man is finishing his drink, the monkey finds a maraschino cherry on the bar. He grabs it, sticks it up his butt, pulls it out and eats it. The bartender is disgusted. “Did you see what your monkey did now?” he asks.

“No, what?” replied the guy. “Well, he stuck a maraschino cherry up his butt, pulled it out and ate it!” said the bartender.

“Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me,” replied the guy. “He still eats everything in sight but, ever since he swallowed that cue ball, he measures everything first.”