When taking out the mail this morning, I found a baby rabbit dead on our driveway. I’m not sure what killed him, although I suspect the poison we put out to kill the insects did it. I’d like to say it serves him right for eating our spinach in the vegetable garden, but that would be cruel and heartless. I buried him in the backyard.
Playing around with graphics, adding a few little 
’s throughout, only to realize that they look kinda ICQ-ish. Ick.
Dah nah nah nah nah nah… They say it’s my birthday.
Dah nah nah nah nah nah… Buy me something from my wish list.
I noticed this weekend that Amazon now has a Restaurants service in beta-test right now. Of course, other sites like Digital City and Citysearch have been doing something similar for years, not to mention numerous localized websites, but Amazon’s site is unique in that they actually scan in the menus to these restaurants. So not only can you read a review of the restaurant (at least, a customer review), you can also find out exactly what they serve and how much it’s going to set you back.
I’m still trying to figure out how they’ll make any money from the deal, though. For the service to be useful, they need as many menus as possible, so they can’t charge restaurants for listing their menu. They can probably charge restaurants for featuring their restaurant within listings, but that wouldn’t earn a lot of bread. It may just be an easy way of integrating with their movie listings (for which they DO get premium money from movie studios for placement) and their Travel store to leverage the site as an all-in-one entertainment destination.
In any event, the restaurant venture shouldn’t cost much money. A database, someone to scan in images of menus, and that’s all they need to keep the site up. No editors needed to write reviews or edit content. They’re hoping to get their content on the cheap from customers instead.
Hey, I finally got one of those Nigerian 419 scam e-mails today! I’ve heard about these for a long time now, but it took me years to actually get one. Here’s the text of the e-mail:
ATTN:THE PRESIDENT/CEO.
DEAR SIR,
REQUEST FOR URGENT CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP
RE:TRANSFER OF US$7,000,000.00 AMERICAN DOLLARS INTO YOUR ACCOUNT
I ON BEHALF OF OTHER COLLEAGUES FROM DIFFERENT FEDERAL GOVERMENT PARASTATALS, DECIDED TO SOLICITE YOUR ASSISTANCE AS REGARD THE TREANSFER OF THE ABOVE MENTIONED AMOUNT INTO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT. THIS FUND IS FROM THE OVER-INVOICING OF VARIOUS CONTRACT AWARDED IN MY CORPORATION TO CERTAIN FOREIGN CONTRACTORS DURING THE MILITARY REGIME IN NIGERIA.
WE, AS HOLDERS OF SENSETIVE POSITIONS IN OUR VARIOUS PARASTATALS, WE ARE MANDATED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO SCRUTINISE ALL PAYMENT MADE TO FOREIGN CONTRACTORS AND WE DISCOVERED THAT SOME OF THIS CONTRACT EXECUTED WERE GROSSLY OVER - INVOICED EITHER BY OMISSION OR COMMISSION. ALSO, WE DISCOVERED THAT THE SUM OF US$7,000,000.00 (SEVEN MILLION UNITED STATE DOLLARS ONLY) WAS LYING IN A SUSPENCE ACCOUNT, ALTHOUGH THE FOREIGN CONTRACTORS WERE PAID THEIR CONTRACT ENTITLEMENTS AFTER EXECUTING THE SAID CONTRACT.
WE ALL AGREED THAT THE OVER-INVOICE AMOUNT BE TRANSFERED (FOR OUR OWN USE) INTO A BANK ACCOUNT PROVIDED BY FORIEGN PARTNER BASE OUTSIDE NIGERIA BECAUSE WE ARE GOVERNMENT WORKERS AND THE CODE OF CONDUCT DOES NOT ALLOW US TO OPERATE A FOREIGN ACCOUNTS. WE WILL BE USING THIS FUND WHEN TRANSFER INTO ANY NOMINATED ACCOUNT PROVIDED BY YOU FOR IMMEDIATE INVESTMENT IN YOUR COUNTRY .
WE ARE THEREFORE SEEKING YOUR ASSISTANCE SO THAT THE AMOUNT OF US$ 7MILLION CAN BE SPEEDLY PROCESSED AND FULLY REMITTED INTO YOUR NOMINATED BANK ACCOUNT. ON SUCCESSFUL REMITTANCE OF THE FUND INTO YOUR ACCOUNT, YOU WILL BE COMPENSATED WITH 30% OF THE AMOUNT FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE AND SERVICES.
SO FAR, MUCH HAVE BEEN SAID AND DUE TO OUR SENSITIVE POSITIONS, WE CANNOT AFFORD A SLIP IN THIS TRANSACTION, NEITHER CAN WE GIVE OUR IDENTITIES AS REGARDS OUR RESPECTIVE OFFICES BUT WHEN THE RELATIONSHIP IS ESTABLISHED AND SMOOTH OPERATION COMMENCES, YOU WILL BE FURNISHED WITH ALL YOU DESERVE TO KNOW.
I AM AT YOUR DISPOSITION TO ENTERTAIN ANY QUESTION FROM YOU IN RESPECT OF THIS TRANSACTION, YOU CAN CONTACT ME BY EMAIL FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE REQUIREMENT AND PROCEDURE OF THIS TRANSACTION.
PLEASE TREAT WITH THE STRICTEST CONFIDENTIALITY AND UTMOST URGENCY
YOURS FAITHFULLY,
PRINCE DURU ACHI/ JUGE MADU
In related news, the FBI recently arrested six people in association with this scam.
Hot on the heels of tobacco lawsuits, a few lawyers are contemplating suing fast-food chains for causing obesity. The holes in such an argument are numerous, and the Salon article linked above explains many of them.
I locked my keys and wallet in my shower locker at work today. Doh!
Geez, looks like spammers don’t even have the time to get their mail merge set up properly. Today, I received an e-mail with the subject line of
Rush Priority Delivery for &first_name;
Managed to get all of my photographs imported over the past few days. It’s still not ideal, but I think it’s just a matter of playing with the CSS attributes to get it where I want.
Next step: figure out how to use blogger.el so I can post entries within Emacs.
I finally got the new weblog up tonight after dragging my feet for almost a week. It’s still far from done — for example, I haven’t imported any of my photographs despite calling this log a “Photojournal” — but at least I can update it at will, and I’m reasonably happy with the layout.