When the iPad allows flash support, I’ll consider getting one.  Until then, thanks, but no thanks.  I would rather watch this on a real web browser than surf with one of those things.

I have a friend Irina in Ukraine, who has a friend Ivan in Russia.  Ivan has a girlfriend, Yulia, for whom he wants to buy an exotic gift.  He chooses some perfume and body mist from a foreign boutique.  But there is a problem: Victoria’s Secret’s website only ships within the US.  He knows Irina has a friend in America, and has her translate his desires.

After inquiring a trusted source regarding the legal issues at hand, I agree to ship it to him, if he reimburses me somehow.  He orders the gift himself and ships me the box.  He offers to pay my shipping costs himself, or to send me a Russian souvenir.  I choose the latter.

Days later, an unmarked package arrives at my house.  Victoria’s Secret, wisely, chooses not to place their name on the exterior of their boxes.  But, knowing I am only expecting a box ordered by Ivan, I am suspicious.

I open the box, and true to Ivan’s word, there are three smaller boxes, one for perfume, the other two for body mist, whatever that is.  I feel guilty for the mistrust, noticing the shipping manifest and Victoria’s Secret catalog also included.

I proceed to the post office, where I fill out the customs declaration form.  Immediately, the postman informs me that perfume cannot be shipped Internationally under any circumstances.  Even domestically, it can be shipped only by parcel post.  I am beginning to feel like a criminal.  They explain that because perfume contains alcohol, it is very flammable, and is not allowed on commercial airliners, which are used for all international shipping, for the safety of the passengers aboard.  They agree to send the body mist, and suggest UPS or FedEx for the perfume.  I pay the roughly $20 charge, and head to UPS.

UPS wanted at least $150.  I drive to FedEx, which wanted to charge $115, for shipping a 6 oz bottle (tiny) of perfume!!  The body mist weighed 10 times as much.  I was not about to pay so much.  Furious, and later, guilty, I tell Irina the whole story, who informs Ivan.

Ivan is surprisingly happy.  He got 2 out of 3, not bad.  The 3rd item, now contraband, is left in my hands to dispose of.  An unsuspecting coworker of mine is currently giving the contraband to his girlfriend for Valentine’s Day.

No, really, true story.  I’m still waiting on that souvenir, Ivan!

The World Health Organization announced this morning that a total of 9 people have died from Swine Flu. That’s nine, as in, one less than ten. Total infections of Swine Flu are 331. That’s a death rate of 2.7%. On average. But if you live in a developed country, the death rate drops dramatically.

Compare this with the annual statistics on general influenza. The flu affects tens of millions of people per year, killing a few hundred thousand. And in general, the only deaths that occur in developed countries are the very young, very old, or already ill.

So while the death rate for swine flu are higher than that of seasonal influenza, you sort of get what you deserve, for playing with pigs. Coming into direct contact with the most filthy animal on the planet is the only way to contract the disease. Who honestly expects there to be no risk in such an action?

But, if, on the other hand, you’re like me, and have never touched a pig your entire life, the risk is non-existent. You can’t get it any other way, unless of course someone is stupid enough to go out in public when they’re sick. I guess I should stress that. Don’t go out if you’re sick! Also, the only risk in eating pork or bacon is your cholesterol.

The coverage of this story is absolutely ridiculous, laughable. The media are profiting from fear, and it has angered me over and over again. People, spend 5 minutes and look up the facts, will you? There’s absolutely no reason to spend two minutes worrying about this. I’m kind of upset that I’ve had to spend more time than that writing this.

Current unemployment is 7.6%.  I’d like to point out that in the early eighties the unemployment rate was much higher, over 9%.  I’d like to point out that during the depression the jobless rate peaked at near 25%.

Going into the depression, domestic production was down annually 9.4% and 8.5% in 1930 and 1931 respectively.  Never have we seen numbers like that since.  In the fourth quarter of 2008, GDP was down 3.8%.  Much more dramatic numbers can be found in the early 80s: second quarter of 80 was -7.8%, first quarter of 82 was -6.4%.

So not only is this no where near the depression, it doesn’t even compare to the recession in the early 80s.

Don’t call it a depression, and don’t say it’s the worst in 60 years.  I hate hype.  And yes, hate is the right word.  25 years is the correct figure.

Other countries are suffering much worse economic conditions right now.  Some even have problems like inflation.  Some stock exchanges have lost twice the value ours has.  Count yourself lucky.  What if the little money you did have was worth 1/10 what it is now?  What if the Dow dropped below 4000?

As it turns out, their suspicions were correct.  I called Comcast about an unrelated issue recently, and my television lineup became a topic of conversation.  Most government-sponsored ads on TV about the digital switch say that if you have cable, you will not need to make any changes.  But the representitative from Comcast said, “Oh no, everything is changing.”  When asked about the details, he said, “All those TVs you have that aren’t connected to a digital box will lose channels 30 and up.”  They’re moving over half of their analog channels to a digital tier, which requires a Comcast-owned cable box to decompress.  Renting these extra cable boxes will require all customers to pay more money per month, unless they don’t watch any channels above 30.

Comcast freely admitted it was guilty to me.  Probably because I’m just a customer who will be pissed if what he says turns out to be true on February 17.

The FCC investigation has proven difficult.  The cable companies are complaining that the amount of information requested by the FCC simply could not be gathered and presented by the deadline.  I read that as either their entire IT department is incompetent or they don’t want to get caught.  I’m guessing the latter.  Big cable is simply ignoring the FCC.

Most recently, the FCC has fined all of the cable companies under investigation a five figure sum for not complying.  Laughable!  Comcast,  the largest cable provider in the US, is a 30 billion dollar annual revenue generator.  Proportionately, a similar fine would require me to cut a penny into about 30 equal pieces and give one of those to the FCC.

From an Ars Technica article, which summarizes a letter by Kevin Martin, who was the chair of the FCC under the Bush adminstration:

The price for every other service that the FCC regulates has gone down, Martin charges. Wireless down 85 percent, long distance calling by 50 percent, and international calling by almost 90 percent. But not cable, whose prices the FCC’s now ex-chair says have doubled since 1992.

If cable prices continue to grow at a similar rate, I can imagine a very vivid future without cable televsion.  Internet video is growing in quality and popularity every day.

With all the companies committed to bringing Android to the market, you’d think Sprint would want to jump on the bandwagon, for fear of being left behind.  This is almost as bad as Ford deciding it is going to be one of the few motor manufacturers not looking into alternative fuels/technologies.  I smell bad things in both companies futures.

In fairness, Sprint has said it’s committed to bringing an Android product to their lineup eventually.  But the clock is ticking.  They’ll certainly lose me as a customer if they don’t get one out by next fall.  My next phone will most definitely be an Android phone… the only decision to be made is which.

Update: I sent Sprint an email letting them know my stance: Android or die by next year.  They called me back, letting me know why they thought Android wasn’t good enough.  They listed two reasons 1) it doesn’t support WiMax, and 2) it doesn’t support 3G.  This is kind of a ridiculous set of reasons, honestly.  My current phone doesn’t support wireless anything, much less WiMax.  And neither my phone nor the current city I live in have 3G.  So to me, even supporting an older wireless standard such as 802.11b, g or n would be a step up.  So my current phone, the Treo, is just as “bad” as Android, in that it support neither feature, and yet it’s still offered?  I smell BS.

Ever since getting my first VOIP phone line with voicemail notifications via email, I’ve always wanted that feature on my cell phone.  Basically, if someone calls me on my home phone (my VOIP line), and leaves a message, I get an email at work saying so.  I can click on a link and the message is played in a browser that I can listen to on any computer with a web connection.

This website, messageSling, promises to do that for cell phone calls also.  No more burning daytime minutes listening to voicemail!  It works like this: you sign up through the website, and they give you a voicemail line, which you can forward your unanswered calls to, and listen to later on the web.  The site emails you or texts you every time you have a new voicemail.  

I was thrilled when I heard about this, and signed up immediately.  However, when I went to forward my unanswered calls to this number they gave me, Sprint let me know how to do it, but said that it would be 20 cents per minute!  That’s ridiculous.  The website is completely free, otherwise.  I would only be paying Sprint.  I would be PAYING Sprint not to use their ancient voicemail system that doesn’t do email notifications.  

Count me out.  I’ll deal with a touch-tone interface if I have to.

What sounds very ominous about it is the amount of energy involved.  And the types of things they are exploring.  They’re trying to recreate conditions as they existed a trillionth of a second after the big bang.  Except small.  That’s the part most people miss.

So there’s no reason to fear the destruction of earth.  I bet some new info about particle physics will come out of this.  Good things, not bad.  If you’re interested, lots of fun pictures have been made available.

I watched an instant movie on Netflix for the first time a couple of nights ago, after signing up again. I was very impressed. The quality is better than any streaming video I’ve ever experienced. It was even better than hulu, but I think that’s because hulu uses flash video, rather than a Windows Media Player Activex plugin. Hulu is great, but this Netflix video was flawless: no buffering delays, no noticeable compression artifacts, and no processing jitter (from my computer needing cpu cycles for other tasks).

My only (minor) complaint, is that because the streaming video requires a Media Player plugin, Media Player is free to be compatible with whatever browser it wants (or more to the point, doesn’t want) to be.  Typical monopolistic Microsoft has forced this particular feature to be compatible with Internet Explorer only.  So whatever, I have to start IE to watch a movie on my computer.  I only use IE when absolutely forced to, by websites like this that don’t like FireFox.

But, when I receive my Roku Netflix box, I’ll have solved that problem.  I hope the quality is every bit as good as it was on my PC.  We’ll see.