Police As Frat Members

In the Wisconsin it seems the police enjoy using the Facebook to crack down on underage drinking.  In California they go undercover...

But Pi Lambda Phi president Ronald Exley said he and six other fraternity members on security duty at a house party Friday night saw three undercover officers attempt to gain entrance to a rush event by claiming to be Gamma representatives.

Exley said two women in their late 20s and a man in his early 30s-the man in a black beanie and jacket and the women in normal college attire, instead of Gamma T-shirts-requested to enter the house.

The three were allowed to walk around the house, Exley said. He said they left after being refused beer.

You would think a 30-year-old would stand out at a frat party, but who knows in California.

Thanks to Campusbyline for the pointer towards this story.

Tags: Facebook, Police

Green Keeping "Illegal" Money

Wisconsin Governor candidate Mark Green is going to keep the $468,000 the state Election Board has ordered him to give back, which means the issue is going to court.  Green had transferred the money into his state campaign from his federal account.

The Wisconsin State Journal has a good non-partisan breakdown of what this story is all about.

Tags: Wisconsin, Mark Green

The Class of 2005 Presents a Bank Robber

The first person in my high school class to attempt to rob a bank was caught today.

So if you're keeping score at home it now reads.
Internet Pornstars: 1
Bank Robbers: 1

Tags: Janesville

Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Milwaukee

I've moved safely into my suite/dorm in Milwaukee. Today starts Orientation Assistant training, so I won't be back here until way later tonight.

Wedding

It's going to be a dead day, I'm off to a wedding in the boonies.

City-Wide Ban On Basketball Hoops?

If you didn't think creating a city language was enough waste of a mayor's time, how about a wealthy community in Texas trying to ban driveway basketball hoops?  Way to go University Park, Texas.  Clearly nothing is more important to you than getting rid of those unsightly basketball hoops.

Side story: When my family moved to Janesville when I was in 4th grade one of the things on the list for any potential new house was for it to have a flat driveway for me to play basketball on.  Come to think about it, this was all I really cared about in a house at that point.

Milwaukee Wifi Update

Left on the Lake has an update on the happenings (or perhaps better-stated "not happenings") of the Milwaukee wireless network that was set to be built over a year ago.

Tags: Milwaukee

Downtown Milwaukee's Best Views

I stumbled upon a list of downtown Milwaukee's best views. I've managed to see most of the them (most of them on a weekly basis because I live downtown), but my favorite view is on the sub-list of "Great Downtown View You Probably Won't Ever See".

Michael Best and Friedrich's offices, 28-34th floor of 100 East Building, 100 E. Wisconsin Ave.

Let me tell you the view from the 33rd floor looking south is absolutely amazing.

The view from the top of the Chase building didn't make the list, but I've scaled that building too. Here is what it looks like.

Update: A commenter pointed out that I had said "Walls Fargo", which should have read Wells Fargo. In all reality though, I meant to say Chase building, because that is the one that didn't make the list. The post has been corrected to show my original intentions.

Tags: Milwaukee

What Is Google's Strategy?

Marc Canter has a new weblog post that takes a fairly technical look at what Google's strategy really may be.  It's worth your time to read.

Free Geek - Helping The Needy Get Nerdy

Free Geek has to be the best technology non-profit that I have stumbled across in a long time.  Not only do they work with volunteers to recycle old computers, but they're actively involved in building new computers that are for sale at a very cheap price.

A unique part of their operation is that the volunteers are rewarded with rebuilt computers themselves for contributing their time.  I'm sure this goes miles to keep volunteers coming back and ensuring they contribute a desired amount of time.

Brilliant!

Side note: I discovered Free Geek with the help of Microsoft's new 10 service.  You can take a quick video tour of Free Geek on 10, worth your time.

Linkin Park & Jay Z (Numb/Encore)

Jeremy Wright brought this video to my attention. I keep forgetting that you can get all these music videos off of YouTube now.

Enjoy.

Small Town Mayor, Big Time Stupidity

It's nice to see small town mayors taking on issues like a city language. It's a clear indication that the town must not have a single other problem since they're spending time on such a seemingly worthless issue.

ARCADIA, Wis. About 90 people gathered Saturday in a stuffy church basement to hear their mayors proposal to make English the official city language translated into Spanish. Anger and confusion have gripped the Latino community in Arcadia since Mayor John Kimmel introduced his plan in an Aug. 10 column in the weekly News-Leader. In addition to restricting all official communication to English, Kimmel proposed to require an American flag to fly alongside any other national flag; alert federal agents to residents complaints of undocumented workers; and to penalize businesses that employ undocumented workers and landlords who rent to them.

Read on.

I cant believe what he (wrote), Barrientos said. For me, it sounds racist.

Agreed.
I can't believe the mayor of Arcadia, Wisconsin is taking on this issue. Get a clue.

Tags: Wisconsin, Arcadia, racism

I Give You Nelson Eisman

The media has been fairly quiet on covering it, but there is a third candidate running for Governor of the State of Wisconsin. Nelson Eisman is running under the flag of the Green Party. I, along with BabbleMur, believe that Eisman should be included in the two scheduled debates.

Keep your mind open when you think about who you are going to be voting for this fall.

Tags: Nelson Eisman, Wisconsin

Dieting

The worst part about dieting is I can't use my go-to line, "want to go get ice cream?"

Icon War

From Kevin Briody comes Icon War. The flash-based story of what your desktop icons do when you're not at your desk.

Busy Day

I spent most of the day in Milwaukee today, so it's been a day of no posting. The regular swing of things returns tomorrow.

Going To Be A Late Night

USA Basketball kicks off play tonight in the FIBA World Champioinships which means I'm staying up to fight the time difference (the tournament is in Japan) and watch the game live. The action takes place at 2:30 a.m. CST on ESPN2.

Update: I blew it. Time conversion error, game was at 12:30 CST. Thankfully, Chris and I turned on ESPN2 to see what was going on. It was one of those "Oh crap, I blew it" moments.

Tags: USA Basketball

Pre-1990 Sports Card Portraiture

The Idealist
Originally uploaded by The Tattered Coat.

I wanted to draw attention to what I thought was a really cool and unique Flickr group, the "Pre-1990 Sports Card Portraiture" group. The title, I think, says it all as far as what the group is about.

The group has an small, but growing collection of images of sports cards that form a pretty neat collection for someone that grew up an obsessed card collector (i.e. me).

Jesus Is The Answer

the answer!
Originally uploaded by Hilary (curioush).

I'll admit it, "Jesus Is The Answer" is not something I expected to see on the back of a semi-truck.

Weird.

To See: Employee Of The Month

After watching the trailer for Employee of the Month, I'm totally there.

Doesn't hurt that the movie has Jessica Simpson in it either.

Tags: Jessica Simpson, Employee of the Month

Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional District - Republican Candidate

From Left On The Lake...

Sounds like just the kind of guy Wisconsin needs representing us in Washington D.C.

Paul R. Nelson suggests Muslim males ought to be singled out, by airport security. "Racial profiling is one way that we can cut down on security risks," said Nelson. Asked how to tell what a Muslim male looks like, Nelson said "well, you know, if he comes in wearing a turban and his name is Mohammed, that's a good start."

Read the full post. Left on the Lake does not quote the source of the quote, but you can find it on the Wisconsin Radio Network website.

Wow.

Tags: Paul Nelson, Wisconsin

For Those Of You Not Familiar With Facebook

I realize I talk alot about the Facebook, but for those of you that aren't members probably struggle to really grasp what I'm talking about all the time. Thankfully, a professor went as far as to draw analogies to the past of how using the Facebook compares to things that may have been done in the pre-Internet college era.

Tags: Facebook

Chase To Become Exclusive Facebook Credit Card Company

J.P. Morgan Chase has signed a contract with the Facebook to be the exclusive credit card sponsor. The tagline for their initial campaign is "a totally new way to hook up your friends, yourself and your community." Which, when translated into real English reads "you're all going to be in debt above your head, but at least you'll be able to complain about only one company."

On the flip side, this is probably the route to profit for Facebook. Exclusive deals for certain types of products are going to create a nice bidding war between companies making products like deodorant, laptops, cell phones, and generally anything else a college student uses on a daily basis.

Tags: Chase, Facebook

"Poor Planning On Your Part Does Not Constitute An Emergency On My Part"

The statement that is the subject of this post has always upset me. During my elementary school years one of my teachers had this statement on a large banner on the wall of their classroom. It always upset me, but I couldn't figure out why. Finally, today it all clicked when I was reading Seth Godin's blog post "Two Things You Can Say" about his experiences at JFK airport.

"You must be feeling really frustrated."

What a great thing for a gate agent to say to a frustrated traveler. I saw it used three times in ten minutes, and it worked every time. It enabled the agent to get on the same side of the conversation, it allowed the customer to let off some steam and got both sides moving.

On the other hand,

"Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part..."

This is true, of course, unless your goal is to make the person happy, or, at the very least, get rid of them. There were all sorts of clueless people at the airport today, cutting lines, yelling, getting angry just because they didn't leave enough time. Not the airline's fault, that's for sure.

Yet the best way to handle the situation is not to persuade, convince or bully the person into admitting that they were wrong. No reason to teach these people a lesson, because they're not going to learn a lesson anyway.

There it is, Seth points out how my teacher was phrasing the statement wrong. You can't improve a situation with an angry person by trying to hammer a point into them.

If you're not reading Seth Godin's blog by now, you really should be. My continued linking to him is for good reason.

Tags: Seth Godin

Response - "Will UW System ban Christians"

The West Bend Daily News ran a story by Owen B. Robinson entitled "Will UW System ban Christians?" I was immediately intrigued to see what exactly Owen had to say. After just a couple of lines worth of reading, I was confident Owen and I stood on exactly opposite sides of this argument.

"You may remember that late last year, UW-Eau Claire banned Resident Advisors from leading Bible studies in their own dormitories."

I stood in support of this, the government pays for their rooms. They can use any other room on campus, just not their dorms. Going to a pretty-religious private school (MSOE) where many of the RA's are involved in religious groups, I have been harassed by a few of them to attend bible studies. I did not appreciate it and do not wish it on another student. I'm saddened by the fact that UW-EC's ban on bible studies by RA's in the dorms was overturned. Seperation of church and state should exist in a public school.

At UW-Superior, The InterVarsity Christian Fellowship was denied recognition because it requires members to sign a statement declaring that they have Christian beliefs. School officials said that this violates the schools nondiscrimination policy because nonChristians are not permitted to join the organization. Apparently, Christian organizations are unacceptable unless they welcome people of all faiths - making the "Christian" part of the organization meaningless.

That last line is ridiciulous. Christianity is a private club now Owen? Having non-Christians in the room while you talk about Christian things destroys your Christianity? I thought Christianity included welcoming people to your faith? Accepting others? You and I obviously went to sunday school at different churches.

At UW-Madison, the Knights of Columbus, recognized by the university for 30 years, was delisted. The Knights of Columbus only permit Catholic men to become members. Again, university officials cited their vaunted nondiscrimination policy as the reason for derecognizing this honorable Christian organization. Apparently, UW officials believe that university policy trumps the Constitution and the peoples natural right to assemble and practice their religion.

The Knights of Columbus is discriminating, and I'm glad someone called them on it. Only Catholic men isn't discriminating? Wake up Owen, open your eyes. No one is stopping them from assembling, they're just not an official campus organization. These same protections stop groups from forming on campus and becoming private clubs or hate groups. It's a public school and the clubs on campus should be open to everyone. I don't want to spend my tax dollars funding a Catholic organization that I can't even join.

The UW system is not on a campaign to remove Christians from their campus (which I would imagine the bulk of their students are), they're on a campaign to have a safe and accepting environment for their students. I'm sorry that you do not see it that way.

Tags: Wisconsin, UW-System, religion, Owen Robinson

Facebook Now Featuring An API

Facebook unleased an application programming interface recently to allow you to tap into the Facebook database. Look for exciting new applications extending the capabilities of Facebook in the near future.

There is one product, FaceBank, already featured that helps you and your friends easily track expenses.

Tags: Facebook

New Version of Skype for the Pocket PC

Skype, the "little piece of software that lets you make free calls to anyone else on Skype, anywhere in the world", just unveiled a new beta version for the Pocket PC. If you're a Pocket PC user, I really encourage you to check this software out.

I became hooked to using Skype when I was in Germany and trying to call home to Wisconsin. The Pocket PC version worked, but left much to be desired. This new beta version helps answer many of those demands.

Tags: Skype, PocketPC

Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner

The Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner will not be as funny as the one of Pamela Anderson. Promised.

Tags: William Shatner

Entourage: Episode 32

Last night's episode of Entourage was excellent. It was the first episode I've been able to catch up to and watch on schedule. I got hooked on the show last week and in an 8 day period watched every episode of the series. It was definitely worth my time.

The plot for the show is really unlike anything I have ever seen before. It follows the life of movie star Vincent Chase and his "entourage" of friends and their careers. A unique look at Hollywood from a side I've never seen before.

Check it out if you get the chance.

Tags: Entourage, HBO

Who Killed The Electric Car?

I'm going to see "Who Killed The Electric Car" on Tuesday in Milwaukee and I'm eager to see what the movie has to offer.

What is most interesting to me however is that General Motors was able to use a blog to respond.

Tags: GM, Who Killed The Electric Car

Windows Live Writer

This post was written with the new Windows Live Writer unveiled today by Microsoft. I'm impressed with what I see so far.

The software supports Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, and more.

Above is Monterey Stadium in Janesville, Wisconsin home of my alma matter the Craig Cougars.

Map insertion is a feature supported by Windows Live Writer.  Awesome.

Tags: Windows Live Writer, Microsoft

Wal-Mart To Bring E85 To The Masses?

Fortune's Marc Gunther takes a look at how Wal-Mart, with their massive amount of gas stations (both through ownership and a partnership with Murphy Oil Corp), is looking at offering E85 fuel (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline).

This move, outside of being a business decision, is fueled by Wal-Mart's vision of being a more environmentally-responsible company.

I'm excited for them to do this. It's going to rush ethanol ahead in development, reducing our dependance on foreign and hopefully weakening the control the oil companies have over our economy and lives.

An important thing to note is that although Wal-Mart would clearly dominate the E85 market early on (since they would be adding potentially 3,000 locations to a current number of 800 gas stations offering E85), I don't think that market position would hold. There would be plenty of competition coming later as more gas stations get on board with E85. The catch I would see is if Wal-Mart would be able to get exclusive deals with E85 producers, which would limit the ability of the market to compete.

Tags: Wal-Mart, ethanol, E85

Why Is Wisconsin Dells The Water Park Capital of the World?

Freakanomics author Steven Levitt recently took a vacation and wonders why Wisconsin Dells is the water park capital of the world?

I've been asking that same question for a long time. Thankfully (for my self-confidence), Levitt was also stumped.

What is the real reason though?

Is it perhaps because it is such a novelty to the people of Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa (who I think I can safely assume make up the bulk of the customers)? There isn't an area like it in the midwest. It's like enterting another world when you're in Wisconsin Dells. It's like a Las Vegas for the family, a fun-only zone.

Anyone have any guesses as to why there are so many water parks in Wisconsin Dells?

Tags: Wisconsin, Wisconsin Dells, Water Parks

What Gore and Lieberman Could Be Doing Now

In light of my previous post, it's interesting to consider what Gore and Lieberman could be up to right now. If you remember the 2000 Presidential Election, Gore and Lieberman won the popular vote but lost in the electoral college.

Today Al Gore is marketing his movie "An Inconvenient Truth", he could have been a second-term President by now. In a couple of months Joe Lieberman will be out of a job. He could have been a second-term Vice President.

It's weird how things turn out.

Tags: Joe Lieberman, Al Gore

Nader's Thoughts on Lieberman's Primary Upset

Ralph Nader looks into the details on why the democrats of Connecticut voted Lieberman out and Net Lamont in in the Connecticut U.S. Senate race primary.

Thank you people in Connecticut for casting your vote for change.

Tags: Joe Lieberman, Ned Lamont, Connecticut

The Killers - All These Things That I've Done (Acoustic)

The Killers did a really good job playing an acoustic cover of All These Things That I've Done. You should watch it.

Republicans Teaming Up

From Dan Cody "Republican Attorney General Candidates To Play By the Same Rules Every Schoolchild Knows" about the Wisconsin Attorney General election race.

"I know I did not appreciate being repeatedly spoken over, interrupted, and called stupid,' as I'm sure you did not appreciate my inappropriate use of the word suck,'" Van Hollen wrote in a letter to Bucher.

Read on.

Tags: Wisconsin

Terrorism

In light of the recent airplane terrorist threat, I've had many thoughts cross my mind. Ze Frank tapped my mind though and put the bulk of my thoughts together into a cohesive package.

Now, the way I see it, you can't have terrorism without terror. The strategy of terrorism is to use isolated acts of violence to instill fear and confusion into the population at large. A small number of people can incapacitate a society by leveraging our inability to understand risk.

Airline industry stocks plummeted today, while the industry braced for a rash of cancellations. This, despite the fact that even with the risk of airplane bombings it's still more dangerous to drive your car. Or smoke cigarettes.

As long as a small group of people can inflict mass panic across a large population, the tactic itself will remain viable. One way to deal a blow to the effectiveness of terrorism is to deal with the terror itself.

London's police deputy commissioner Paul Stevenson said that the plot was "intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale." No, it is imaginable, between three and ten flights out of thousands would have resulted in the terrible loss of human life.

Bush today said this country is safer today than it was prior to 9/11. Personally, I don't think he knows. Whether we like it or not, terrorist attacks on Americans are now part of the global reality. They will continue to happen. Many places around the globe have had to deal with a similar reality for years. India, Ireland, England, Spain, Russia, to name a few. In many cases, these societies have pulled together and not allowed isolated acts of violence to tear at their fiber. Like disease and the forces of nature, it's a risk that we have to rationally come to terms with. The government's responsibility is to make sure that fear and terror are not disproportionate to the reality of the situation.

Today the President said, "This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom to hurt our nation." Generalized statements like this which instill nebulous fear without specific information are exactly in line with the goals of terrorism.

Brilliantly put.

Tags: Ze Frank, Terrorism

Why I Don't Like Apple

To put it simply, the reason I don't like Apple is what I call the "Steve Jobs Iron Curtain". Steven Rubel has a great blog post that demonstrates just my point.


Suing bloggers and forcing a culture of secrecy is not the way to do it in the 21st century.

Tags: Apple

Fosters Going Internet Only

Fosters, Australian for beer, is no longer going to be advertising on TV. They're switching to internet only ads. Cool.

Tags: Fosters

Dart Tournaments

They're showing replays of dart tournaments on ESPN Classic. Does the sports world really not have anything better than this going on?

Niall Kennedy Leaving Microsoft

Niall Kennedy is leaving Microsoft to found his own company after the problems encountered internally with the Windows Live Intiative.

I joined Microsoft in April excited to change the world and build an Internet-scale feed platform to power the experience of Microsoft's hundreds of millions of users as well as opening up the feed experience to outside developers to leverage in their own applications. The opportunity presented to me was extremely unique and a way to change how the world interacts with syndication technologies such as RSS, RDF, and Atom. The launch of Windows Live and Ray Ozzie's vision of Internet services disruption made me believe Microsoft was serious about the space and not being left behind in yet another emerging industry as they had been with the web browser and search.

Niall goes on to explain how everything went downhill from there leading to his decision to leave.

I'm beginning to wonder if Microsoft's problem is that they are too concerned with their stock price with Steve Ballmer at the helm instead of doing what they know is right and creating world changing software.

Tags: Microsoft

Steve Jobs Losing His Magic?

Could it be true? Is Steve Jobs losing his presentation magic? Cult of the Mac details how Jobs has looked tired during his speeches lately and is moving away from his standard, tried-and-true presentation techniques.

Tags: Steve Jobs

AMD To Drop ATI Name - UPDATED

AMD, as you hopefully know, just purchased popular graphics card maker ATI. Now it turns out they're going to drop the ATI name in effort to expand the AMD name to compete against Intel.

Smart move on AMD's part, but it's amusing to see that the ATI name will be disappearing from the graphics card world. They've been such a huge presence in the past 5 years.

Say hello to the AMD Radeon 9800.

UPDATE: I was wrong. This story was misinterpreted, the ATI name will be staying.

Tags: AMD, a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ATI" rel="tag">ATI

The Dangers Of Air Conditioning

The New Vernacular has a good post up about the dangers of air conditioning.

If you can survive it, there are real reasons not to use air conditioning. Number one? Air conditioning might keep your house cool, but it heats up the earth.

Tags: air conditioning

Crushed Corvette

corvette3
Originally uploaded by blurpleVTX.

This is what the end of the life of a Corvette looks like. Thanks to Jeff Sandquist.

Flickr/Yahoo Working On Photo GeoTagging

My one constant nag about Flickr is that the service doesn't provide a geotagging feature so that I could view photo data on a map instead of hoping that everyone is using the same tags for the same locations (i.e. Milwaukee). It looks like my wishes are soon to be answered as there are reports of Flickr working on a geotagging feature, which would allow users to pinpoint the location that their photos were taken. Awesome, I can't wait.

Tags: Flickr, Yahoo

New Strategy

After a weekend away from the computer I have adopted a new strategy to my work. The empty desk.

In an effort to clear my mind while using my computer (something I've had trouble with lately) I'm going to keep my desk as clean as possible to minimize distractions. While that seems easy, we'll have to see how that goes.

Off the Grid

I'll be completely off the grid until late Sunday night sometime on a lake house weekend expedition so don't expect anything new until Monday morning.

More Free Music

Don't forget, it's another week so that means more free music from Apple on the Facebook. This week's 25 song genre package is "electronic".

Tags: Facebook, Apple

100 Oldest Domain Names

A list of the 100 oldest currently-registered domain names. There is a few familiar names on the list.

Barbarians At Gate 8

Bruce Sterling's latest article in Wired magazine takes a look at the idea that jets and nets (as in the internet) are leading to a globalized society that is experiencing "reverse colonization". It's a good article, quick to read and makes you think.

Tags: Bruce Sterling, Dave Winer and I'm sure Jeremy Zawodny is too. Are you?

Tags: Yahoo

Republicans Fighting in Florida

From the bottom-less pit of entertainment known as politics comes yet another story. The Republicans can't decide who they want to run in Florida to challenge incumbent Democrat Senator Bill Nelson.

Revoking support for a leading Senate campaign? It appears instead of doing these things quietly, the Republicans like to let them leak onto the news networks.