Stan Taylor

I’m the guy who always points out how irrational many people’s fears are. Fear of terrorists while flying? You stand a far greater chance of dying in your car on the way to the airport. I’m the life of the party, I tell you!
Anyway, along those same lines, Christopher Null has compared the chance of dying because your Dell laptop battery caught fire to other common risks. Long story short: if you’re hysterical about your battery, don’t get out of bed (though, according to the post, your chance of dying by falling out of bed is higher than dying due to laptop battery failure).

Mildly funny humor. I just know that the artist creates these cards during mind-numbingly boring meetings at the office.
(via Matt Haughey)

A few months ago, Apple was criticized for the working conditions in its iPod factory in China. So, Apple made an investigation–good for them (and good for PR)–and put the investigation’s findings on its web site. This caught my eye (emphasis added):

We found no instances of forced overtime and employees confirmed in interviews that they could decline overtime requests without penalty. We did, however, find that employees worked longer hours than permitted by our Code of Conduct, which limits normal workweeks to 60 hours and requires at least one day off each week. We reviewed seven months of records from multiple shifts of different productions lines and found that the weekly limit was exceeded 35% of the time and employees worked more than six consecutive days 25% of the time. Although our Code of Conduct allows overtime limit exceptions in unusual circumstances, we believe in the importance of a healthy work-life balance and found these percentages to be excessive.

So, working more than 6 days a week and more than 60 hours per week jeopardizes an employee’s ‘work-life balance”? Wow.

This morning, I called Katie from the office:
Katie: Hi honey. What’s up?
Me: Just trying to get this damn release out the door.
Katie: That’s what you always say.
Me: Well, we’ve been working on this release for a while.
Katie: No, I mean, that’s what you always say at every company where you work.

From Kung Fu Monkey:

FDR: Oh, I’m sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we’re coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How’s that going to feel?
CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We’ll be in the pub, flipping you off. I’m slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I’m sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.
US. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike … NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about .. NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!

A while back, I wrote about an experience I had in the grocery store. But this grocery-store story is amazing.

I just helped Ducks in a Row software launch their new web site. They sell home inventory software, and–soon–other software for personal risk assessment.

This article tells of a woman who used her own sleuthing skills to track down the youths who vandalized her house and cars. The article focuses on the woman’s tenacity and ingenuity, but another aspect of the story struck me: the local grocery store went through receipts for her, and after locating the likely purchase, they went through their surveillance tapes with the woman to identify the purchasers. The article mentions that the perps made a cash purchase. If they’d paid by credit card, would the store have given her the purchaser’s name?
I find it disturbing that the grocery store management went to these lengths to help a PRIVATE investigation.

Now I’m getting some use out of my new dSLR camera. As we were loading up to drive home from San Antonio this afternoon, this dragonfly landed on the car’s antenna.

This is funny.