Archive for November, 2006

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Fun with Flickr

November 21st, 2006

Mounted in Times Square.
Originally uploaded by Stewart.

Besides being a great place to post photos, I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned how much fun it can be playing around in Flickr. If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it. From searching for photos of your town, your alma mater, places you’ve been or even just playing around with Flickr’s Interestingness, there’s always something to see or do.

I’ve opted to select “interesting” photos from Flickr to display here on the Diatribe, to mix things up a little.. but, there’s a ton of great ways to explore and participate in the photo community of Flickr. And what’s great is that you only need a Yahoo account.

The photo shown above is one of the several that I have tagged as my favorites, just one of the many cool features you can do on the site. And no, I don’t own stock in the company.

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Posted in Internet

Funky Cold Medication?

November 20th, 2006

Wait a second…

Is that Tone Loc at the end of that Flomax commercial? Is Tone Loc doing a commercial for a pharmaceutical that treats men who pee too much? What’s next, Young MC pimping for erectile dysfunction meds?

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Posted in Bizarre, Marketing

Odd Jobs

November 17th, 2006

Quite a while back, I saw an interesting post by Pixelinpink citing random facts about herself and then asking her friends to guess which ones were inaccurate. I was thinking about this last night, realized that I’ve done a lot jobs over the course of my career. Can you find the five jobs that I’ve never actually done during my lifetime (family members are excluded):

  • Radio Show Host
  • Dishwasher
  • Pizza Delivery
  • Bicycle Mechanic
  • Advertising Associate
  • Editor
  • Wedding Invitiation Designer
  • Telemarketing
  • Web Developer
  • Computer Repair
  • Toilet Salesman
  • Marketing Research
  • Administrative Assistant
  • Wine Sales

Green indicates a correct answer, while red indicates an incorrect guess.

12 comments »

Posted in Life, The Office

Sock it to me

November 16th, 2006

I really like socks. It’s odd, I admit that, but I’m a sucker for a nice pair of argyle socks or a solid pastel pair. Socks are rarely seen, but when they are noticed, they really pull an outfit together. It shows the world that you care about even the minute details. Just the other day, I picked up a light green pair of merino wool casual socks. Can’t wait to wear them. I feel that between my drawer of dress socks and my drawer of casual socks, I have all potential color combinations covered. No matter what pair of pants, shirt, sweater, jacket, suit, or occasion, I have the right pair of socks to fit the bill. I never want to be caught off-guard. This collection started in earnest back when I was about 16 and I still have some of those socks…from Structure…which doesn’t really exist anymore (it does, but under the Express for Men name).

Is that bad? Is it bad to still own 13 year-old socks? They are in good condition. I am, if anything, a stickler about trashing socks as soon as they begin to wear. The reason I ask about the Structure connection is because last week my man Petro told me about a Sirius satellite radio talk show on which he heard some guy get razzed for still owning Structure boxer shorts. I quickly replied that I, too, own Structure boxers (no, they’re not 13 years old). The reason they haven’t begun to wear out is probably because they’ve been at the bottom of my boxer rotation for quite a while now. They’re not my favorite by a long shot, but they’re still too good to get rid of.

I inspected my dress socks last night and, without making a formal count, discovered that at least half of them are from Structure. But my excuse is that, from 1998-2003, I was working in business-dress to business-casual offices. Neckties and socks were my thing. Any time I bought a new tie, I’d buy a pair or two of socks to match it. Sadly, my dress pants hang unused in my closet and my vast array of colorful dress socks go unworn as well. But on the bright side, that pair of navy blue socks with rodeo cowboys on them is bound to complete the perfect ensemble…someday.

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Posted in Haberdashery

Just Shoot Me

November 16th, 2006

Well, it’s official. Radio stations all over the dial are already playing non-stop Christmas music. I discovered this last night while driving home from work. I swear it gets earlier every year, because I didn’t rant about this until November 22 of last year. Mark the date as November 15, 2006, and it’s getting earlier every year. I flipped around the dial on Tuesday, but might have not hit the offending stations, so that might have been the day. But for now, we’ll stick with Black Wednesday. It was over a week ago that I noticed one station in particular was playing a Christmas song here or there, but not non-stop. Now it’s mid-November and a full week before Thanksgiving and half the dial is off-limits.

Who listens to Christmas music before Thanksgiving? No one loves Christmas music more than I do. It was playing in the house constantly when I was a kid, but not until AFTER Thanksgiving. Can anyone out there offer some guidance here? Am I on my soap box for nothing. I would love to find the ratings books for these offending stations to determine what kind of fluctuations they experience when they flip the switch to 24/7 carols. As always, if you have any of this info handy, please pass it along to The Diatribe.

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Posted in Complaint Department, Holidays, Music

Plates & Ice

November 15th, 2006

So, last night I swung by our friendly Toyota Dealership and picked up our license plates and registration. I never would have imagined that our first set of plates would be the Californian variety, but go figure. While this mean seem menial and unimportant, it’s actually the most important first step in getting some schnazzy hybrid HOV lane stickers.

These stickers allow single passengers to use the HOV lanes in California.. this is actually a huge deal and will likely shave 10 minutes or so off my daily commute. There’s a number of steps that are required as part of this process, but I was able to head into San Francisco bright and early today in order to get some of the other details squared away. The last part (the application) is now in the mail en route to Sacramento to be processed and issued on January 1. Just last month the state of California announced that they will be issuing another 10,000 stickers (they went through 75k of them in 9 months) to be distributed on January 1. Hopefully my application is one of those 10,000.

In other news, a few weekends back MP and I headed into San Fran to go to the E-surance Icer Air event at AT&T park. They actually installed a huge ski jump in the ballpark for skiiers and snowboarders to do tricks and jumps off of. There were a number of bands that played as well, including Jurassic 5, who we were able to catch. For the $10 admission, it was well worth the event — just to see J5 alone.

I finally got around to posting some pics from the event last night. The ball park is still fairly new and reminded me a lot of Coors Field in Colorado. It’ll be fun to catch a game there, that’s for sure.

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Posted in Life, Sports

The ads are back

November 11th, 2006

As part of my employment agreement, I was required to remove the Google AdSense ads from my site. I did this a few weeks back and most of you probably didn’t even notice.

I’ve come to miss the ads, though, being an avid contributor to the success of online advertising and have therefore re-instituted the advertising program on The Diatribe. This time, though, I’m using only one paid model (which you can buy advertising on through ) .

More importantly, though, I’m not really in the business of making money with the Diatribe. If you’re interested in promoting your personal weblog or small business, I’ll gladly add you into the rotation. Visit our Advertising page to get more information on how to qualify for a free banner ad on The Diatribe.

Feedback is always welcome.

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Posted in House Keeping