Facebook Research: News Feed

Facebook.com. Enter. Click. ihatemyspace[at]somespace[dot]com. Tab. *******. Enter.

Hmmm… let’s see here. Jessica and Bryan just ended their relationship… bummer, I expected that to last longer.

Susan Jefferson is omigosh, I just like totally stubbed my toe! ouch lolz!!!!!!! Does she just keep getting blonder, or is it just me?

Collin Michaels wrote a new note. “16 random things (lol).” That’s only like the 12th one of those I’ve seen this week.

Dave Stewart just changed his about me to “I am a womanizer, and I’m not ashamed. I have a corvette and I…” I really don’t feel compelled to read the whole thing. There was more than enough information in that lovely preview.

Amelia Flannagan joined the cause “Save the rocks, don’t use pencils” Wow, that's so random. I think I’ll join just for the heck of it. Where would donations go? School of Rock? Maybe I'll write that on her wall...

Laura Warren commented on Ashley Weber’s photo. “Lololol idk y u taged me in this I look like a giraffe lol” Holy smokes, she does look like a giraffe in that picture… now that I think about it, she looks like a giraffe in real life too. Woah, bad mental image there.

Julia Nelson wrote on your wall. “you are so hott. we should hang out sometime! call me.” She’s desperate. But wait… I’m desperate too. Nevermind. Delete. It's nice to know I'm somewhat attractive, though.

Susan Jefferson became a fan of Charlie the Unicorn. So, that’s why she keeps saying “Shun the non-believers!”

Nate Harmon and Chris Gordon are attending “Hug a cheerleader day.” Slightly disturbing, but an intriguing concept. I bet a cheerleader with low self-esteem created that event.

837 of your friends changed their profile pictures... I have way too many Facebook friends.

Time for a new status change. Hmmm… “(my name deleted) is realizing how much time he wastes reading his news feed. I am such a creeper.”

Environmental Wacko? I Think Not.

Last June, I was hired by an environmental firm to do administrative work. The pay was good and the people were nice, so I decided to take the job. Plus, I really, really, really needed work.

Now, I don't think I've ever been what anyone would label an "environmental wacko" or even environmentally conscious. Sure, I never littered and tried to drive as little as possible - mostly due to monetary concerns - but it didn't bother my conscience too much if I threw away a bottle instead of recycling it or used more paper than absolutely necessary.

About a month into my job, however, my family started calling me a treehugger. "Naw," I thought, "they're just giving me a hard time. There's no way I'm remotely close to being a treehugger!"Well, I've been in full denial for 5 months now, but a recent encounter finally opened my eyes to the truth.

My mom and I were at C---co, buying a new computer and my mom asked the guy checking us out if we could give them our old computer to dispose of.

"No," he said, "you can just throw it away."

"What?!" I asked, staring in disbelief. "That's illegal! Those computers contain hazardous waste! The acid can leak out and cause a lot of damage to the environment. Don't you know that it's a federal offense to dispose of old computers that way? You have to take it to the county Hazardous Waste Disposal Facility, or you can get in big trouble. Does C---co know you're telling this to customers? You guys could get in big trouble!!!"

It was at that point, after seeing the blank looks on the faces of the checkout man and my mom, that I realized what my family members were telling me was indeed true. My worst nightmare had become reality. I was a full-fledged environmental wacko.

13375p34|< (leetspeak)

+|-|1$ |*0$+ \X/@$ \X/|21++3|\| 1|\| |33+, @ |-|@(|<3|2 style=""> 1|= `/0|_| @|23 +|-|1|\||<1|\|6>

|33+ 1$ 0|\||`/ |=0|2 +|2|_|3 (0|\/||*|_|+3|2 |*30|*|3; +0 3\/3|2`/0|\|3 3|$3 1+ 1$ (3|\|$0|2$|-|1|*; $0 \X/|-|`/ @|23 `/0|_| 3><|*3|\|[)1|\|6 +|-|3 3|=|=0|2+?

0|-| \X/3||. 1|= `/0|_|’\/3 60++3|\| +|-|1$ |=@|2 `/0|_| |\/|@`/ @$ \X/3|| |=|0@+ +0 +|-|3 |=1|\|1$|-|. +|-|@+ \X/@$|\|’+ $0 |-|@|2[), \X/@$ 1+?

I'm sure it'll be fine (part one)

When course registration opens at a large campus, students scramble from their dorm rooms like beetles away from the light and approach the registrar's office with all haste. Not getting into the right classes means not graduating on time, which threatens scholarship money and prospects with the females. As much as nobody wants to be a Van Wilder, nobody wants to date a Van Wilder.

My father tells of a time when he trudged wearily through miles of packed snow to get to the registrar's office in time to have a prayer of possibly making it into his class. He had to fight away crazed radical feminists and environmentalists and the occasional Volvo-driving professors who want to audit the class on lower mammalian art because it sounds "interesting."

Maybe that was the model a few decades ago. Today, the iPod generation has vastly improved on the nonsensical student stampede by automating the entire process and putting it online. Instead of careening down to the registrar's office like crazed soccer fans, we students have "appointment times" with the computer. We sit down at an authorized terminal and tell the silicon which classes we want to take. It's all very sophisticated.

Equipped with a series of five digit codes given me by a human being, I marched into the library at the appointed time and took a seat at my authorized terminal. The computer keys were sticky and it looked like there was a hair stuck between the "D" and the "F," so I made a mental note to wash my hands after entering my information. I checked and double checked the numbers (a plastic sign above the computer advised a "re-double check," but I thought that was overkill) and then clicked submit.

In a semester system and in order to graduate in four years, many full-time students take four 4-unit classes. This sixteen unit load is exactly one-eighth of the requirement for a four-year degree and, if completed expeditiously, will get the student through the revolving academic door in the time frame promised in the school's glossy promotional material. Ever since I'd read the school pamphlet, this had been my plan.

The screen went white for several seconds and then a faded image of our school's logo appeared in the center along with a twirling hourglass. It was working!

The hourglass twirled and twirled tirelessly, daring me to look away. My eyes were mesmerized by the movement and I thought that I could stay there forever in a sort of computer generated nirvana. I didn't feel anything anywhere, but knew that sensations were possible because I saw the movement on-screen. Then, more abruptly than it had begun, the logo disappeared and a happy looking emoticon appeared above text telling me that I was successfully registered.

That's when I did something uncharacteristically intelligent: I read through the rest of the notification. You see, I hadn't actually signed up for all the classes, as the friendly logo led me to believe. Rather, I had registered for three of my four classes. In very fine print at the bottom of the page, I was instructed to "consult [my] professor" about the last class. It said something else about a prerequisite, too, but I was already on my way out the door.

FCN Classic: The ... thumb ... knows.

My old laptop crashed a few weeks ago, taking with it a lot of precious files. School was in full swing, so I hastily went shopping for a new computer. My choice: IBM's new Thinkpad T42, which has a load of cool features, including a little red ball between the G and the H that moves the mouse, and the latest in biometric security: a fingerprint reader. That's right, there was no longer any need for me to be memorizing and changing passwords, because all I had to do was push my thumb on a little pad next to the keyboard to verify that the user was me. Without that thumbprint, no imposter could log on and steal my files. This was the major selling point for me. I paid a little extra, but I figured the peace of mind was worth it.

The new computer worked great. I always got a grim satisfaction from pushing my thumb onto the reader every morning. "Take that, hackers!" I thought.

Then, four days before my midterm paper was due, calamity struck. I was working in the kitchen putting away dishes, my mind distracted by visions of a frustrated criminal trying to discover my non-existent password. Then I looked down and saw blood all over the towel. I had absently swiped my thumb across a paring knife, causing a minor flesh wound which was more irritating than painful. I dutifully bandaged up the cut and finished putting away the dishes, then sat down to finish writing my term paper. It was only then that the true magnitude of the situation hit me. I pressed my thumb on the reader, and it gave an error beep. I removed the bandage and tried again. Error beep. I tried the other thumb. Error beep. I tried all my other fingers and toes, and those of nearby friends and family members. The infernal reader wouldn't let me in. I had weeks of research on that hard drive. I frantically raced to the nearest computer lab and started my research anew, pushing the space bar with my left thumb. It was too late. My paper got a D.

When I saw that grade come back, I vowed never to let that happen to me again. So I did the only thing any reasonable person would do: I went down to the nearby arts and crafts store and bought myself a fake thumb. You know, the kinds magicians use for stupid parlor tricks. I went home and reprogrammed my Thinkpad to accept the fake thumb as mine. I then kept the thumb in a jewelry case in my laptop bag under lock and key (the key was in my wallet). Satisfied, I went back to daily life.



A week later, I went into Starbucks and ordered a Frap. Then I sat down in the corner. I removed the laptop from the bag, removed the key from my wallet, removed the thumb from the case, and booted up. I then promptly got engrossed in my work, and the next thing I knew, I was a half hour late for class. I frantically packed up and dashed out.

While sitting in class drawing pictures of burning houses, I suddenly realized with a start that I had forgotten to pack my fake thumb. It might be sitting on a table in Starbucks right now, waiting for some dastardly coffee-drinking hacker to find it! I nearly jumped up and ran out of class right then. But I am not that bad a student. I waited for it to finish, feverishly counting each passing second (as always). The moment class was dismissed, I grabbed my bag, hurled myself out the door, slipped and slid down the stairs, vaulted over a little old lady with a walker, and fired up my car. Minutes later, I was back at Starbucks. I burst open the door and cried:

"Has anyone seen my thumb?"

FCN Classic: Blue Screen of Death

Q. What's more irritating than having your computer crash right before you press save?
A. The Blue Screen of Death.

Every Windows user knows what I mean by this. Whenever the system is needed most, it will invariably flash a blue screen covered in text for a half second, then crash and reboot, leaving you screaming and tearing out your hair. What makes the BSOD (also known on online help forums as BluScrn and ttl deth h@xors CTD) so irritating is the fact that you can never read what it says. For years, we all assumed that the Blue Screen of Death held the key to preventing future crashes. To this end, FCN used a top-secret and slightly unethical device to capture an image of the Blue Screen of Death on my nearly-new ThinkPad T42.

In the name of information and education (two things FCN is not known for) we proudly present to you: The Windows XP Blue Screen of Death.

Click on the thumbnail.



So we use ImageShack. So we're cheap. There's no shame in that.

Punishing a broken watch

Meet my watch. It is one of the few pieces of electronics that I haven't named. I purchased my watch late last year and was so proud of my new toy that I wrote a post about it. In that post, I lauded the features and abilities of my watch, including its 200 lap memory, which actually turned out to be more of a detriment than an advantage.

A week ago my watch broke. Something snapped in its silicon brain and it went all Charles Manson on me, squealing and flashing away in a way that can only be described as chronological. Anyway, it wouldn't tell time anymore.

I couldn't let my watch get away with this rebellion without some kind of punishment. I needed a deterrent to show the rest of the electronic world that giving up - even if that surrender is justified by valid medical reasons - will not be tolerated.

With N toting the camera, I took the offending watch outside to the concrete pad in front of my house and delivered the kind of swift punishment that would have, in another time and place, make me famous. In four strokes of my hammer, the damage was done. My watch will never disappoint another owner again.

Enjoy the photo essay...

Like the snake snuggling with the rat, the crazy watch nestled against the hammer.

The watch is in position and the hammer is poised to smash. I could almost see the watch's face flinch.

The glass is smashed, but the job is not done.

The faceplate broke into a fine powder that shone brightly in the late Spring heat.

This is one watch that will never again tell time.

Two smashes later, my watch was warning all the other electronics in the area to be good.

A million pieces.

Fashion #2: Tigers Are Cool

Funny Class Notes has a new guest contributor! A longtime reader and member of the faithful few has been accepted into the ranks of the writers who call this site their online home. Chip has been reading since August of 2007 and here is how we introduced him back then:

Reader number ten is an exceptionally overweight individual named Chip. Chip's main reason for coming to our page was to find solidarity. That's right, our tenth reader came to FCN because he wanted to find dumb people with whom to associate. Chip has, according to his G-Talk picture, an affinity for tight white undershirts and the style he chooses does little to hide his bulky middle or hairy back. He sent us a long email full of lovingly misspelled words in which he poured out his life's wish to work as a corporate executive at a Fortune 500 company. We assured him in our reply that white collar work isn't all it's cracked up to be and that he would be much happier working graveyard at Taco Bell while supporting eight kids and his own beer belly. We also advised that one major prerequisite to the Chief Executive's chair is teeth brushing and that he might want to consider other personal hygiene innovations as well. Yeah, we really hit it off.

In order to accept Chip as a contributor, we required he wait outside the door of our house for three days without food, shelter or encouragement and endure our verbal abuse without giving up. Chip succeeded and was invited into our ranks. Below is his first post as a guest contributor.

If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring? That's right, a new spring wardrobe! And if you're looking for the hottest trends, you will find no better role model than the perennial tiger, who burns bright in his jungle home. Tigers are slim, sleek, powerful, and always ready to kill. Here are ten eleven reasons that tigers are the greatest fashion and lifestyle freaks around:

1. Tigers have stripes.
I know what you're thinking. So do wasps, zebras, and "construction zone" signs, all three of which are not likely to appear in the latest issue of... whatever you read to keep up with style. But hear me out. You are forgetting that stripes are an old staple when it comes to pajama pants, which, in a glorious merging of hip culture and pariah college derelict culture, have become quite a hit for Spring of this year. So, stripes it is!

2. Tigers work out.
Tigers don't sit around in classes doodling and writing funny class notes, although that is a pretty snazzy thing to do. Nor do tigers pant on the treadmill. No—tigers run 50 miles per hour through snow and consequently they are pretty ripped.

3. Girls like tigers.
Don't believe me? Well, think back to the last time you saw a girl wearing a shirt that said something like "I heart Tigger." Actually, it's more likely to have mentioned Pooh, but that's a different story. Let's just say that A.A. Milne was pretty with it.

4. Tigers are tech-savvy.
Yes, I'm talking about Mac OS 10.4, "OS X Tiger." Since Apple chose a tiger as the mascot for its operating system, tigers must be cool. For one thing, Macs don't run Windows. For another, Macs are chic and youthful, just like Obama.

5. Tigers are down-to-earth.
Every lion claims to be king of the beasts, but have you ever heard of a tiger putting on airs? In fact, the tiger is so humble that it occasionally deigns to breed with a snobby lion and has a liger baby. That's a good thing, because ligers are seriously the greatest animal, and they have skills in magic.

6. Tigers are rich and famous.
At least the Asian Tigers are. Check out your T-shirt: it was probably made in Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, or South Korea. Or if it wasn't, it will be as soon as McCain abolishes trade quotas.

7. Tigers are into sports.
The Detroit Tigers started their season by losing to the White Sox and beating the Red Sox, which shows that they're into clothes (i.e. socks), if not fashion. It also shows that tigers like sports, which is a plus when it comes to trendiness.

8. Tigers kill animals.
Killing animals is a valiant thing to do and, if you're of the male persuasion, you can always count on a good kill to show how macho you really are. Consider that day last Fall when you sauntered into the house of your old family friend, and found yourself staring into the glassy eyes of a giant buck, whose head had been impressively mounted on the wall. Chances are, your friend noticed your glance and offered some welcome explanation:

"Like it? Just had the thing mounted. We'd walked for ten miles, me n' Jim, and our water was running out. Then Jim put his hand on me and pointed. The wind was in our direction, so we knew it was gonna sniff us out fast. I leveled my sight on 'im and Bang! But the durn thing jumped up just then and set off running, so my shot got 'im in the left thigh, and he disappeared into the leaves, so we had to track him. We followed the trail of blood for five miles and found the thing curled up by a stream, with the buzzards circling overhead and the wolves howling in the distance. So we gutted it there and hoisted the meat up our shoulders..." Etc. Then your friend probably showed you the buck's hide, with two bullet holes in it, and told you that the taxonomist had said it was a first-rate piece of skin, et cetera.

9. Tigers kill people.
Have you noticed how popular the Bourne movies are? We're not talking about geek-popular, or even man-popular. Even your glitter-clad, texting teenage teenybopperette has seen them. What's the attraction? Having breathlessly watched all three installments, I can see only one reason for their popularity: the amount of people killed. Deadly is the new sexy. In California, they even made an "exterminator" their governor. Go figure.

10. Tigers procrastinate.
Have you ever been to the tiger cage at the zoo? Those lazy things lie around all day in the sun, their bellies full of free fresh meat and their tails too sleepy to bat a fly off their magnificent fur coats. If you're an average cubicle slave you probably grit your teeth at the sight and wish the government would support you instead of those feline dukes and duchesses. If, on the other hand, you're a college derelict, you probably don't even look twice. Those tigers know the secret of a happy life, just like you.

11. Tigers are carnivores
A tiger is one of the few fell creatures besides a human that would enjoy an animal-style feast from In-N-Out. Tigers don't eat sissy greens or wimpy fruits. If they went to Subway, they'd pass on the peppers and have a sandwich, not a salad. They gorge themselves on bleeding red flesh with the gusto of an obese American.

How my love affair with an analog computing device left me completely and utterely single in my tech life.

Two weeks ago, my family owned three computers. The first was a shiny new laptop I had received for Christmas. The second was an ancient unnamed desktop from the late '90s that sat in a closet gathering dust.

The third computer, a laptop named Cidny (yes, it is spelled like that), wasn't as old as our unnamed PC, but, unfortunately, young age is not equivalent to young looks. Poor Cidny had traveled to over 16 states, been on two different continents (three if the Hawaiian volcanoes keep erupting) and has been dropped approximately 12 times.

As one would expect, Cidny eventually went kaput. Or capoot. While this was expected, Cidny's death was untimely, considering I was in the middle of writing the most brilliant FCN post ever. On February 14th, 2008 Cidny quietly slipped away into analog non-existence and joined the masses of outdated PCs and all useless Macs. The FCN crew quietly (or in C's case, loudly) added this to the long list of things to mourn.

So we were down to one laptop and one old desktop. This created an interesting dilemma, considering the size of our family. So we developed a system for choosing who used the computer first. The process consisted of the following important steps:

1. International Dibs Protocol - Upon the arrival of the involved participants at the breakfast table, the person who first calls “dibs” becomes the moderator for the following discussions.

2. Daily Planner and Presentation - The participants give their plan for the day and why they believe they should be allowed to use the computer first. Everyone is allotted ten minutes for their presentation. All speech material that is not original must be sourced and the original documentation available for further discussion.

3. Cultural Constructivism - The participants then cross-examine the presenter. If his/her projects are deemed harmful to mankind, s/he may be expelled from any further discussion and will probably lose the communal vote.

4. The Communal Vote - All participants are allotted one vote, which they may give to any person other than themselves.

Because there is no clear way to measure the cultural usefulness of reading online comics and playing video games, this process often takes a long time. The end result is a very long debate on the benefits of Monkey Ball Junior.

This democratic system worked for a few days until some of our family members attempted to start a revolution. Although the supporters of peace and democracy (that would be me) eventually won the long and bloody battle, my laptop was destroyed in the process. To make a long story short:

Buy computer insurance.

If you don’t have computer insurance, don’t put soda by the keyboard.

If you don't have computer insurance and put soda by the keyboard, spare yourself heart ache and don’t arm wrestle by the soda and the computer.

So my family is left with one ancient desktop that doesn't even have FireFox. Maybe someday I will find a new love. Until then, I sit here typing on a library computer, tragically, hopelessly and technologically single.

2007: Clearing the fog off the rear view mirror

Wow. I can't believe how long it's been since I opened a window and began typing an FCN post. It's been longer than Mike Vick's prison tenure; longer than the gestation period of the Short-nosed Echidna, an egg laying mammal that looks like a porcupine but really isn't. It's been long enough for the cobwebs to form in our minds and the eggnog to settle comfortably in our stomachs and cork our sense of humor, as you can tell from the Echidna joke.

As I sit down to lovingly caress Kato's keys and move my fingers gingerly across letter markings that have yet to fade with heavy use, I wonder what in the world I am going to write about. This is supposed to be a year in review post, but all I can really think of is that final I bombed like Errol Flynn and Fred MacMurray. Thinking back further - and this is digging up ancient history, yellowed with embarrassment - I remember a bad date I had in early December. Remembering a whole year back, well that is going to burn some mental calories.

But I can afford to lose the weight. So, with a crack of my knuckles, a tilting of my head to pop those stressed vertebrae in the neck and a clearing of my throat, we're off to look at the biggest events of 2007:

Biggest yawner: Bulgaria and Romania join the European Union

Did anyone other than lordration read past the words Bulgaria and Romania? I mean, this issue has got to have someone's blood pumping (otherwise the nations at issue wouldn't have waited 'till the Year of Bond to join), but in this camp everything is very placid. What a yawner. I've heard that even important European diplomats couldn't keep their composure during the negotiations. I cannot look at that picture without yawning. Can you?

But seriously, we should be congratulatory. I mean, for the EU, this represents an almost 8% increase in the number of member nations. And while Bulgaria's big sunflower seed production numbers are unlikely to engender much excitement, the nation does have some quality exports in other areas.

Event most representative of America: Takeru Kobayashi

Looks like a typo, doesn't it? Something the fingers thought of before the head? Ah, grasshopper, you must let the white guys at FCN explain it to you. Kobayashi (a Japanese Kobe Bryant, hence the name similarities) is a champion speed eater. In front of a televised audience and against daunting and overweight competition, he is able to quickly shovel down inhuman quantities of hot dogs, burgers and auto parts. I made the last one up, but the hot dogs and burgers really did go down the gullet.

Kobayashi is the Tiger Woods of his sport. Nobody else is able to wolf down that much food and keep it down for the mandated twenty minutes (a process some competitors analogize to giving birth). Unfortunately, this mastication great ran into a rough patch when he was placed on injured reserve after hurting his jaw. Apparently he tried to talk with his mouth full.

Second biggest yawner: Presidential Campaigning

Apparently a passel of overweight white guys (including a white guy disguised as a black man and a man hiding in the body of a woman) have traversed the greater Iowa area saying the same things over and over again. News reporters have gotten especially excited about this process and have devoted months of coverage to this issue over the last year. Predictably, nothing has happened. 2008 promises some new developments, but the word is we'll have to wait until November for anything definite.

Biggest disappointment: Windows Vista

Kato had a hard time accepting that I was typing the word "Windows" using her hardware. She's acting up a little. Giving me a little feminine static. This is my first female computer and I am still trying to figure out how everything works. Please, give us a minute.

Oh yes, Mac released an operating system, too. It's called the Leopard, but it only comes in white.

EDITOR'S NOTE: There was a vicious FCN board meeting over this item. The sweat poured from our brows like Samurai Jack solving a riddle. We yelled till we were hoarse. We pounded our fists on the table. By table, I mean each other. Eventually us Vista users were "convinced" to let the item slide. After all, nobody can really get excited about Vista. Even if it does have cool see-through title bars. That you can change the color of. And the transparency. And saturation.

Biggest shocker: Kucinich tried to impeach Dick Cheney

Apparently a duck hunting accident is a crime of moral turpitude and an act of treason, because Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich put his already tenuous relationship with the Vice President on the rocks by filing impeachment papers against the former Wyoming Senator. Boy, Dennis, doing something like that is going to make those double dates really tense. And that's one more person you can't go duck hunting with.

Biggest cheaters: Floyd Landis, Marian Jones, Barry Bonds and Bill Belichick

You're right. Nothing has actually been proven and test results are inconclusive. But whether the sport is cycling, track, baseball or football, 2007 has had its share of suspected cheaters. Bonds applied the clear and the cream and then lied about it to under oath (uh oh!) and Floyd Landis' cup runneth over with positive testing. Jones lost all five of her Olympic medals and Belichick had to make NFL history with an undefeated regular season to earn forgiveness from the gods of football.

Yup, it's been a good year for sports.

Biggest almost: 10 people almost overthrew the government of Laos

It's the kind of thing that would have been really nice, had it actually worked out. Consider: Your own, tax free vacation nation. Granted, it's a landlocked, southeast Asian country known more for its textile sweatshops than tourist acumen, but the ownership factor has to be counted as a point in favor of the enterprise.

As it is, the partakers of the would-be coup have a different vacation spot. And this one looks to be a retirement home: the federal pen. But hey, I hear you can get some great pick-up football with Mike Vick. And with old Orenthal potentially joining the 2008 prison draft, they have something to look forward too. Maybe with Barry Bonds on board, ESPN can start a new channel ESPN CONVICTS. The only downside: the normal ESPN would lose all its programming.

Biggest heat attack other than Alex Trebek: Dow Jones Industrial Average

Early in the year, the Dow was up like a New England point spread. Then the floor fell out of the market experts predicted your money would go the way of Heather Graham and Sharon Stone. In the end, nothing much has changed, Charles Schwab's hypertension notwithstanding.

With such an expansive review, it's hard to imagine I missed anything important. If you think of something, feel free and post a comment or beam us an email directing us to our omission. Thank you, as always, for reading FCN through our first full year of blogging. If classes next year are as interesting as classes in 2007, 2008 will be a great year for FCN. If they're half as interesting, we'll probably win a Pulitzer.

Happy Thanksgiving!

If you load the date application on your cell, double click the clock icon on your Windows, Mac or Linux computer or check the paper calendar hanging in the next room, you may notice that today is Thanksgiving.

If November twenty-second isn't marked as Thanksgiving on your calendar - a realistic possibility given the number of calendars in circulation made before Abraham Lincoln recognized the holiday federally, just look for the date labeled Black Friday and subtract one day. That's the Day of Happy Tummies and Sad Turkeys, or at least that's what the calendar on my ice-a-boxa announces.

I joke about the euphemisms for Thanksgiving, but there is actually a serious issue at root here. Not a sinister, dark issue like Dane Cook in Mr. Brooks, but a light and fluffy concern like Dane Cook in Waiting. Thanksgiving, by that name, is being replaced by a host of alternatives, the most common of which is Turkey Day.

But is Thanksgiving really Turkey Day? Isn't that discriminating unfairly against the stuffing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie? What would the other food items say about calling out the meat dish for special recognition? What about the three football games and 3,000 calories? How about the Cowboys Spank The Jets Day? Or The Lions Are Really Out Of It Day?

I don't know anyone who called May 28th of this year Dead People or Cemetery Celebration; most folks just called it Memorial Day. And September 3rd was Labor Day, not Last Day to Wear White.

Like warm soda deliquescing ice in a Dixie cup, the meaning and title of Thanksgiving have melted away to a new reality.

The traditionalist in me says that not only should the turkey (small "t") should not be the core of the holiday, a couple of Presidential pardons and seasonal decorations notwithstanding. Maybe this day should be about giving thanks to Someone for all the stuff we've got and will get over the course of a generous Christmas season.

Giving thanks. Two words, twelve characters and a concept so profound, it takes a whole day to celebrate. In typical American fashion, it's a time to take stock and add pounds.

But giving thanks requires some deep thinking to finding someone to give thanks to. Mom? Dad? Nature? Some kind of omnipotent power or, dare I say it, God? That kind of pondering leads to stress-induced indigestion, which can ruin the feast, so we don't do it.

Who am I kidding? I should lay off the idealism pills and rejoin the 21st Century. I should leave the Wampanoag and William Bradford behind and embrace the new reality of, well, pretty much whatever you want to make it.

That's right. Go celebrate. Pork out (or is it gobble out?). Stuff your face 'till Romo throws his last touchdown. And never give a second thought to this strange custom of Thanksgiving.

Kato, FCN; FCN, Kato

I am writing to you now, not from a cluttered and abused Windows-encumbered terminal, nor from a white, overpriced Macintosh. Nor, faithful few, am I writing this by hand and giving it to some unmentioned scribe, an unsung Nichomachea whose glib fingers and slow mind transcribe better than they imagine. Rather, I type to you through a new intermediary, a new mechanical companion whose mission is as sombre as it is repetitive and who has more zeros and ones in his head than any living human being (except, maybe, Vinton Cerf.)

FCN, meet Kato (not like the think tank; that's spelled with a "C" you libertarian illiterate), a Linux-powered notebook with a great personality and killer looks. Steve, you may recall, was my old personal computing machine who made FCN notoriety for not having any drivers and for making unique and unexpected noises when called on to work harder. Kato is similarly situated, in that it takes great computer know-how to install drivers on Linux and I’d just as soon listen to the system beeps and look at a blurry screen as mess with a command line terminal.

Kato does have an amazing personality. In fact, she told me the other day that she needed to be connected to a power source by notifying me with a subtle facial expression (actually, it was an small icon in the corner of the screen, but it was subtle). Kato has also placed well on objective standards of looks, winning best of class against many other similarly situated laptops.

But Kato’s real winning points are all found under the lid. For the size of her brain, Kato is super intelligent and can do abstract mathematical calculations rapidly and with stylish grace. She is also very communicative, able to network with others quickly and often without their knowing it. Kato is also virtually impervious to viruses and, though she has trouble having fun through any of the popular PC games, she stays healthy and fast. Kato even did the photo editing above using GIMP, a major upgrade over MS Paint.

Can you tell I’m infatuated? Just watching the little cursor blink in the command terminal is enough to get me going and on more than one occasion I have put on her screen saver as a stress reliever.

In fact, I even wrote some lyrics, to be sung to the tune of George Strait’s “How ‘Bout Them Cowgirls” about Kato:

I felt the rush of the Windows operating system
And I've seen first-hand Macintosh
And the motherboard
I've Criss-crossed down to nVIDIA
And Vista via XP and 2000
Think I've seen it all
And all I can say is


Chorus:
How 'bout that Linux
Boys ain't it somethin'
Sure are some proud distros
And you can't tell them nothin'
And I tell you right now
May just be seven wonders of this big, old round world
But how 'bout that Linux.

OK, I’ll stop. Everyone, say hello to Kato. And say goodbye to Steve, who, by the way, is sobbing on the curb like an abandoned woman and is about to Let Himself Go. Off with the old, on with the new, eh?

Smile, You're On Google Earth!

The other night a couple of friends and I dragged our sleeping bags outside and, roughly a hundred feet from our comfortable beds, lay down on some uneven cement to watch the stars and sleep in the great outdoors. The material we laid our heads on was designed more for aesthetics than comfort, but our goal in spending an entire night outdoors was so pure and altruistic that we scoffed at all insinuation that a little hard ground could deter us.

When we first started making plans for this outdoor night adventure, I had expected the party to include Reginald, who often tags along in unpleasant activities if his friends are doing them. In fact, Reginald was all ready to go, extra stuffed sleeping bag and all, until we told him there would be no tent overhead. He insisted, for several argumentative quarter hours, that a tent is an absolute must for any outdoor adventure and that he wouldn't go along without it. We intoned that a tent defeated the purpose of star-gazing and invited him to stay inside while we roughed the outdoors.

Only after we implied that we would be going outdoors no matter what did Reginald get a wide-eyed look in his earnest commie eyes and beg us not to go out alone.

"It's Google; they'll see you." Reginald whispered the words as if Google had a sound detection device in the room with us. Then he ran into the room he appropriated some years ago, shut the door and, as is his custom, pulled the comforter over his head.

Are you reading this, Luce? He pulled the comforter over his head, like a small child; like a scared papoose in need of his Sacajawea. Reginald's afraid of Google! A search engine with fewer employees than that little town in Iowa that John Edwards was campaigning in yesterday, and he runs for his blankie! Poor Reggie!

Ok, back to the story.

Only slightly discombobulated by Reginald's behavior, my friends and I made our way outside and lay down on the hard cement. Small pieces of gravel had accumulated between the decorative cracks in the deck and I had to wiggle for several minutes before finding a place to rest that didn't stab me like Brutus. Then, if I could ignore the jostling of my friends, I gazed at the wonder of the star-scape in tranquility until an appendage started to fall asleep.

The first part of the night followed a seemingly endless cycle of adjust, pain and readjust, until I discovered I could live with something poking into my back or no feeling in the left part of my body. The affliction was severe, but I could cope.

At about 2:37 AM - for reasons that will soon become apparent, I checked my watch to memorialize the moment - a series of bright flashes filled the sky. I saw the first of what looked like small sulfur-fueled explosions come up from the western horizon and then ease gently overhead, creating a colorful line in the sky. One by one the tiny flash bulbs entered my vision and then slowly eased away.

"Hey, did you see that?" I shook my friends to see if they had noticed the spectacle. Their murmured replies expressed disgruntlement at the rude awakening and the fact that they had missed the lights in the western sky.

Maybe, I thought, the explosions were the result of an overactive imagination fueled to eccentric ramblings by the hard surface upon which I was laying. But I've never had these kinds of dreams before, even in past rough excursions. Maybe it was some terrible accident like a plane crash or space satellite failure. Or perhaps I had witnessed something I shouldn't have seen, like a missile test, alien invasion or the posthumous rise of Anna Nicole Smith. In fact I couldn't think of any good reasons why the explosions weren't all of those - maybe even at the same time.

Later that morning, after a pained levitation exercise and a shuffle into our house that was more fitting for Bill Walton, I sat down in front of Steve to resolve a hunch. Something Reginald had said made me wonder if those late night flashes were generated by the worlds' most fantastic search engine.

I ordered my computer browser to Google Earth and entered my address. Then I zoomed in as far as the pixels would allow and strained with bloodshot eyes to make out the image. There, clearly impregnated into my computer screen, was the image of three teenagers lounging outside a large house, at least the house looked pretty large zoomed all the way in.

I couldn't believe it! I had made the Google pictorial! Reginald was right! How in the world Reginald was able to figure out that Google was taking pictures that night is a query too distressing to even contemplate. But he had, and they did.

I wanted to scold Reginald for not telling me more sincerely, so I could have made some signs beforehand or had a Google photo party, but instead of going to see him, I printed the image and showed it to my friends, both of whom had an attack of the privacies and became hysterical.

My new picture makes me very proud. I sincerely wish I could show them to you without completely violating my personal privacy. Regardless, the pic shows that Google and I have a connection; we picked the same night to do our thing. And the photo really isn't that bad, either. If you squint just right, the pixels align to almost make it look like I'm smiling. Almost.

Explaining our Poll

The observant among the faithful FCN few may have noticed the evolution of the FCN sidebar poll over the last month or so. The poll started out as third party HTML code that we found at a free survey manufacturing site. The site asked us to simply enter our polling information and press enter. The necessary HTML was then auto generated and we sent the code via email to Uncle Wally who then updated our page. The results are the entertaining surveys you have undoubtedly seen and maybe even participated in a few times.

We were genuinely happy with this arrangement and saw no impetus for change, until Blogger introduced its own polling widget. The HTML is always sweeter on the other side of the broadband, or something like that. The beauty of Blogger’s innovation is that the FCN reader can instantly view poll results without having to navigate to a third party webpage. Those of you who run webpages are familiar with the concept of an exit path; quotidian readers will return no matter what but the transient visitors will forget their browser’s back button.

Techno jargon notwithstanding, we all thought the new poll format was snazzier, so we made the switch after little discussion. No sooner did the new poll grace FCN’s page when it encountered some insurmountable error and was forced into an early retirement.

You may recall the question “Who would you rather see gain 400 pounds?” which graced this page for a period of some weeks with an error message beneath the caption. The normative reader would think the question excessively cruel unless she actually read the answer options, which turned the query into a comic setup. Believe us; the error deprived you of a great laugh.

We had two ways of fixing the broken poll. Both involved deleting the offending section of code and one required returning to the third party poll host to satiate our desire to find your opinion on arcane interrogatories. But instead of acting to resolve the problem, we did nothing. For over two weeks we let the error message reside high on our sidebar, occupying valuable blog space and keeping a working survey from gracing the page.

It would have been so easy to fix the problem, but none of us had the necessary gumption or resolve. In fact, the page started to look more welcoming, more familiar with the error message. We grew accustomed to seeing the weight gain question without any working answers. We got a couple emails helpfully informing us of the problem and we answered both the same “thank you” and “we will notify Uncle Wally,” but we never did notify our web geek.

We got our “F” back from his tour of the subcontinent and we still took no action to remedy our broken poll. To the contrary, we practically gloated in our laze. At first he wanted us to remove it, but after a few days of inaction he too began to see the beauty of a broken poll.

Eventually Uncle Wally logged in and removed the poll. The action was first met by shock and horror from the contributors; we felt we'd lost a part of ourselves and wanted the problem reinstated post haste. Then the new simplicity of a working blogpage, unencumbered by error messages was realized. Our love for the status quo was and is solidified; pretty much whatever the status quo is. For the time being, we will continue without a survey. Afterall, there is a certain beauty to an unadorned page. A very certain beauty.

Study: Xbox 360 Fries Users' Brains

PHILADELPHIA, PA – A new study by the National Association of Really Concerned Moms and the Scientists Who Back Up Their Claims (NARCMSWBUTC) says playing Microsoft's latest game console may actually inhibit brain functionality. The study, titled Functional Undertaking for Brain Understanding (FUBU), measured mental activity in over 1,000 teenagers and found that those who play more than an hour a week of Xbox 360 have a measurably lower Intelligence Quotient.

"It's actually quite stunning," said Neil Wormer, the study Chair and staff writer for Junk Science, at a press conference in front of a small collection of obviously stressed mothers. "We were able to find evidence that not only correlated Xbox 360 use to brain decay, but actually linked the two."

Researchers had 1,081 students wear brain activity monitors while playing the console and required weekly IQ tests to measure their progression. The volunteers also filled out periodic surveys and had a complete physical before and after the experiment.

"By breaking up the group into different playing times, we were able to correlate time spent with the console to the disadvantages addressed in the study," said FUBU data analyst Morgan Ponty. "There is no doubt that the more you play, the dumber."

Rodney Sisters and Peggy LaRoue have become poster children for Xbox-induced low IQ. Both of them have signed hefty contracts with NARCMSWBUTC to do television and radio ads decrying the mental dangers of static entertainment. In a conference telephone conversation with the FCN staff, they answered our questions with earnest monosyllables. From what we were able to gather, they sincerely regret the combined thirteen years they have spent playing video games, but are also really excited about the financial opportunities generated by their decrepit mental states.

"Take some of the stuff you guys write: Before 360, your writing was really dry; now man, it's hilarious!" Sisters said when he finally understood who FCN was, putting together his only complete sentence in the entire interview.

Sisters and LaRoue's agent sent us a webpage picturing the two spokespersons as fatter version of Napoleon Dynamite and a young Janet Reno clone. Both are holding a facial expression that can only be described as vacant and a caption below the picture says: "Don't be like us; turn it off." During our interview, LaRoue took credit for the line.

But not everyone is so sure about the study results. Chad Flute of EA Sports is skeptical of the results. "I'll bet [NARCMSWBUTC] couldn't make heads or tails of the results so they shook their tails," he told FCN. "These data could be interpreted any which way, and they have. To blindly assume that FUBU is right is foolhardy; I'm sure my office will have a study out in a few months proving the opposite is true."

"I actually think that the whole experience balances out," argues Microsoft hardware developer Randy Ewberg. "Sure, you get a little brain cell deterioration, but your hand eye coordination improves drastically, your fight skills go through the roof and you can actually burn calories and stay in shape by depressing the thumb controls."

NARCMSWBUTC, meanwhile, has another project up its sleeve. "Functional Undertaking for Brain And Reasoning" or FUBAR will tackle iPod ear buds. "I can only imagine the kind of deaf poster kids we'll be digging up for that study," said Wormer.

FCN Classic: Bad Game Ideas

Game ideas that didn't make it out of the brainstorm room:

The Barney Hunter
Sim City - Atlantis
The Mammoth Hunter
Escape from Kansas
Halo 4 - The Teenage Years
Escape from Lone Palm Island
Pirates! 3 - Terror of the Oil Rig
Kansas: Total War
Night of the Living Dead Sims
Age of Plumbers
Ghost Recon 5 - Trouble in Kansas
Frankenstein - The Game
Half-Life 3 - Flowers for the G-Man
The Plumber Hunter
Huxley 2 - Apocalypse Kansas
Escape from Greenland
Command and Conquer - Kansas
Goldilocks - The Game
Splinter Cell 5 - Homeland Security
The Pedestrian Hunter
Red Sky at Night
Doom 4 - Teleport to Kansas
Unreal Tournament 2007 - Plumber Wars
Call of Duty 3 - Mushroom Kingdom
Plumber: Total War
Quake V - So Happy Together
Spanish Inquisition: The Game
Civilization V - Stone Age Kansas
Medal of Honor - Main Street Plumbers
Battlefield Kansas
Escape from the Oil Rig
Barney - The Game
Doom 4 - Lone Palm Island
Sim City - Kansas
Halo 4 - Feisty Little Porkers
Barney: Total War
Day of Defeat 2 - Nobody Wins
Pirates! 3 - Marooned in Kansas
Revenge of the Rubber Duckie
Resident Evil 5 - Barney's Revenge

And the worst game idea ever to be squelched in committee:

Counter-Strike 2 - All Steam, No Game

FCN’s Wager

The following post was inspired by Ellen, an FCN reader with a penitent heart who sent us the following email:

I need to confess that I have been a unfaithful reader. When I was young [I] read FCN every day, now *sigh* I don't even glance. My mid-year resolution it to read FCN every day. -In unbearable pain

FCN either has new content or it doesn’t. In the morning when you check Funny Class Notes (indeed, whether you check or not), we have either posted something new or we haven’t; there is no third option.

Based on the testimony if this site and the regular post habits of its contributors, it is safe to assume that there will be new content on FCN, but that assumption cannot be guaranteed. Illness, a poor internet connection, an idea deficit or girl problems may have robbed us of creativity and left the site more barren than an Old Maid. Despite these barriers to new content, it is abundantly fair to conceive that there is at least a 50% chance that FCN does have new content.

If FCN does have new content, and the reader believes in that reality enough to actually load the page, he or she will be rewarded with infinite humor. There is no limit to how funny a blog post can be and the only way to enjoy that comedy is by loading FCN and checking.

If you don’t load the page you deprive yourself of these potentially infinite benefits.

By the same token, there is a certain amount of embarrassment that accompanies an unproductive page load. Maybe you have to leave a comfortable social situation to sit at your terminal; perhaps your friends will criticize you if you load an old page. Whatever the hazzards, they are finite. They are pre-defined and limited. Your friends can only criticize so much. There is a limit to how much you can suffer while surfing the internet.

The reader has four basic options:

• You live as though FCN has been updated
• If FCN has been updated, you get to laugh: your gain is infinite.
• If FCN has not been updated, your loss is nothing.
• You do not live as though FCN has been updated.
• If FCN has been updated, you lose the chance to laugh: your loss is infinite.
• If has not been updated, you gain nothing & lose nothing.

Or, for the more visual reader, here is the wager broken down in a diagram:

Therefore, since the reader stands to gain infinite humor, and thus longevity, laugh lines and all the other fun things that come from poorly conceived farce, the wise and safe choice is to live as though FCN has been updated and load the page.

If you are right, you gain everything, and lose nothing. If you are wrong, you lose nothing and gain nothing. Therefore, based on simple mathematics, only the fool would choose not to load FCN. That is FCN’s wager.

I expect all of you to come back tomorrow. Including you, Ellen.

This Post Wis Wratten By Chance

In order to write today’s entry, we took Steve to the FCN Lab and inputted several hundred random characters. Some of the letters were capitalized, others were numerals or punctuation marks; the space bar was pressed as well. Using a computer program designed just for this purpose (a macro for Excel, in case you just have to know), we guaranteed that all the characters were truly random.

The result was a painful amalgamation of symbols, letters and, believe it or not, one legible word. Line 26 of our experiment had the following:

*SNdi sln 9eoOn*(`~ ;lHneO LOVE d9J8%,=ksnz+52*ne

Romantic, isn’t it?

Unless you are reading a lot into the page and a half of disorganized text Steve produced, it meant nothing; at least not in its first stages.

We decided that including numeric characters made generating a random post without any numbers very unlikely, so we cut all but four numerals out and reduced the chances of a punctuation mark or capital letter appearing to more accurately represent real prose.

To add meaning to the text, we “bred” different lines together, giving sentences a chance to become more refined. For instance we took the first generation line:

T tstWaPiih Bosr ntnChyW esace

and bred it with itself. Over successive generations, we were able to decipher some meaning to these seemingly random letters.

Generation 2:

Th tsch ssn nyarW etoWC aP tBiie

Generation 3:

T scenW tsiaorha hyWi Bn ttPCse

…

Generation 20:

Thos Pist Wis Wratten By Chance

Generation 21:

This Post Wis Wratten By Chance

It took until the twenty-first generation to achieve our goal phrase, and even then the dang computer substituted the “i” and “a” in “written” and “was.” No matter what we did, we couldn’t fix that.

On the way to achieving our goal phrase, we discarded twenty lines by the cyber-wayside. These wasted letters, if you will, mean nothing to anyone and were therefore be short-lived and quickly killed. The hard drive space they occupy will soon be filled with something more provocative.

The meaningful letters, however, survived to make this post. They assembled, without knowing us or one another, and formed words; those words formed sentences and those sentences paragraphs. And this crazy collection of symbols makes sense - at least as much as any other FCN post. With only a couple grammatical and style mistakes – all of which are normal for FCN’s writers, derelicts that we are – this post manages to find order out of randomness. At 2,935 characters (including spaces and punctuation and the four numerals in "2,935"), it’s a real feat of chance.

We’d keep going and explain the how amazing this is, but the more ambitious we get with this post the longer we’ll have to sit in the FCN lab.

Steve has a new system sound!

I just wanted to update all of you on the Steve situation. My computer has a new system noise. I was really getting tired of the abrupt “beep” he always made when he wanted to express some kind of emotion (happy or sad), so I was elated to discover this morning that he also has a “swoosh” sound. It's quieter than the beep and demonstrates more subtle feeling.

Steve won't swoosh when he is really mad or his battery is getting dangerously low, but he might if he thinks the Internet connection is a tad slow or if he gets lonely. It's a 100% improvement in variety and will make my computer experience that much more gratifying.

If you're curious to hear the sound, simply turn off the sound on your system and press your Shift key five times quickly. If you want to hear it again, just press cancel and repeat.

The XP Conspiracy

Yet another reason to switch to Vista?

We're all familiar with conspiracy theories about subtle messages in rock music or the Bible. But who would have guessed that these sneakyisms could be hiding under the noses of hundreds of millions of PC users for the last half-decade?

The folks here at the FCN Lab grew suspicious after a tragic but non-lethal spill of lemon juice on the non-glare coating of my not-so-new IBM Thinkpad T42. While carefully wiping it off with the back of my sleeve, I noticed an odd shape in the clouds of the classic Bliss wallpaper that has become a trademark for XP. Without removing any more lemon juice, I rushed my wounded computer to the FCN Lab. After several hours of testing, we managed to pull out the hidden image.

That's right, folks: There is a hidden image in the clouds of the windows XP desktop! What it means exactly is anyone's guess, but we think it's safe to say that Bill Gates has some explaining to do (if he didn't already after evidence of sweatshop cubicle conditions surfaced on the BSOD).

Further testing revealed other images hidden on other popular XP desktops. We would have done them all, but someone found us and kicked us out of the Science building with a warning. We have attached our limited but significant findings below for your objective analysis (click the thumbnails). The questions are many: how did these pictures get here? What do they mean? How could they appear on so many desktops without anyone noticing - until now?

We here at FCN will be lying awake at night cuddling our teddy bears for the rest of the week.