If you have an alacrity to help end hunger, you should go to freerice.com.  You’ll be rapt quickly, so make the sojourn.   All you do is click on the correct definition for a word and they donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program.  It is addicting, but it obviously didn’t show me how to use the words.  Increase your vocabulary, donate some rice until you reach a state of somnolence.

So, yeah, you’ve all seen it before but it can’t hurt to watch again. Hey, you’re the one that came here instead of doing anything productive. Just watch these guys put crazy stuff in the microwave. Props to them for having a cool website too, it looks like the screen on a Commodore 64. It took me back.

A while ago I posted a link, or two to Marmaduke Explained.  It has come to my attention that there is another nice time-killer called, Garfield Minus Garfield.  I know, it sounds like a great concept already, right?  It gets better, without the fat, orange slacker the cartoon appears to be a look into the lonely psychotic life of Jon(John?), as he talks to himself.  Have a look.

I love how crummy my phone’s camera is. It makes everything look like it has been toon-shaded. It was originally advertised as a 1.3 mega-pixel camera, however, when the phone came to VZW it had a VGA camera instead.

I took a ride out by the lake instead of working on the forum. Pardon the dust as I work on upgrades. I hope to be done with the forum tomorrow and start on the blog Wednesday.

Verizon was the big winner in the 700Mhz auction held by the FCC.  As TV moves to HD in February 2009, that frees up a few frequencies that TV used.  Everyone wants a piece of the action because, obviously, TV signals went through walls, mountains, etc.

It was rumored that Google wanted a piece of this to start their own service, however the truth that came out a few months ago is that they were producing software for phones.  Thus, they pestered the FCC to say that anyone who purchased the 700Mhz should have to make it open.  In other words, you could bring any device to that frequency, and not be stuck with whatever lame phones your carrier exclusively carries, or for that matter, not be stuck with a crappy user interface that locks you out of all the functions of your device in order to sell you more services, thank you Verizon.  The FCC decided if the bid was above a certain amount, then a portion of the 700Mhz would have to be open.

Reports seem to be mixed yesterday, and I am not sure that it was officially announced as of yet, who got what.  Yet, according to a report on NPR, Verizon pretty much nabbed most of it.  This article on engadget has some info also.  It would seem that Googs made the minimum bid forcing other bidders to go above that amount and to ensure that a portion of the frequency will be open.  Now, a while back Verizon did say they were going to open their network to any device as long as it met their “standards, ” yet, even the reporter I heard on NPR was skeptical about whether or not Verizon would try to find a way around the “open portion” legality.

What does all this really mean?  Phone service for Verizon will improve even more, but since there were no other companies out there that tried to dive into this 700Mhz, competition is going to be even more scarce.  Thus, most of us are going to end up paying more for our phone service.

Michael Bay, you suck.

I have been dragging my feet when it comes to upgrading some of the code around here, but I took the plunge yesterday.  I wanted to be professional and get this update over with quickly and smoothly, however, as a perfectionist I would never feel like I was ready to do it.  The forum is functional but lacks navigation around the rest of the site and I have yet to finish my style sheets and modifications for video.  I apologize as I have been working on(trying to perfect) upfromthebottoms.com and I picked up some dates for another free-lance type gig.  All the while playing PMOG, I might add.  Let me know if you want to join.

link via Filmdrunk