Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

A certain muggle has asked that I divulge to the world my middle name. But little does the muggle know how big a challenge this is.

Why, you ask? Because to know the name of a Ninja, is to know him for who he is. And if you knew who he is, then he is no longer a Ninja because, well, you know who he is.

Stealth is a Ninja’s only true friend. And if a Ninja loses his stealth, he becomes very vulnerable. To little kittens who may nibble on him. To the vagaries of the stock exchange (speaking of which, is it me or does anyone else think that Fox Business News is run by Ninjas?). To private equity monsters.

To this man. Or this woman.

My middle name, my friends, is Michraphangelatellardo. Lardo for short.

L is for the L that’s not in Ninja. Or my name.

A is for Yet Another Ninja. Or me.

R is for, well, Rhinoceros (variety and all that). Or Raptors, who are outside your house right now.

D is for Deadly Ninja. Or me.

and O is for “O! It’s a Ninja!” Turn around!

And now, you all have made me vulnerable to the most dangerous things known to man.

For a Ninja, one is many and many is one (which would explain Rajnikanth, who is secretly a Ninja). And one nut is the same as many nuts. So, Mr. Almonds, I nominate you.

Earlier, I had posted about some guy driving through the wall of our apartment’s garage and on to the street below.

Well, turns out that it was on the news and that apparently, the guy’s accelerator was stuck (and he was going backwards, alright). So, here’s the video. Enjoy!

This evening, as we were driving out of our garage, we noticed something funny.

There was a hole in the wall.

Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal. I mean, wall, holes. Hell, if you punched hard enough, you could probably cause one. What’s the big deal, right?

Except for the fact that this was on the third floor of the parking garage (and the second floor of our building) and there was a car hanging off the hole in the wall. Yes. A car hanging off a hole in the wall.

And apparently, I was not the only one who was curious about taking photographs.

Of course, the cops were not quite happy and we were asked to move away.

We drove out and were trying to see if we could get around to seeing where the car ended up, but we had no luck because the entire area was being cordoned off.

And when we finally got back a few hours later, we finally realized just how bad it looked from the outside.

Apparently, those green pipes stopped the fall.

And here’s how big it looked, with all the debris cleared out.

I wonder just who on earth issues these people driver’s licenses?

Welcome to the subprime meltdown – you can check out any time you like, you can never leave.

(via Dealbreaker)

Today, I was hanging out with some of Beck’s friends (who, ironically enough, are detectives at the Cincinnati PD) and I absent-mindedly forgot my copy of Fooled by Randomness at the local Starbucks.

I went looking for it and asked the people at Starbucks if they’d seen it around. Sean, the ever-insightful barista, returned the book with a quip –

“You’ve gotta watch out for that random chance when things go wrong, man.”

Indeed.

…EVER!

No, really. The former chairman of the federal reserve meets our very own tongue-in-cheek comedian. Greenspan makes a rather a interesting comment:

“What a sound money system does is to stabilize all the elements in it and reduces the uncertainty that people confront.”

I really think he should meet this guy.

(Thanks to PD for the link.)

I snagged the following screenshot off Nokia’s Nseries website.

Of course, this is probably because they gather generic RSS feeds tagged with Nokia or Nseries and display it on their website, but it is still surprising that a company as large as Nokia would let content seep through to their website that has not been approved by QA folks first.

That said, it is a neat website (if you forget the fact that it’s done in Flash, for a moment). And I am indeed a big fan of Nokia – wouldn’t dream of using any phone other than their’s.

Now, I wonder if my blog entry will show up on their website!

Q: What’s worse than one Bell Labs guy working on trying to fix the phone?

A: Two Bell Labs guys trying to fix the phone, duh.

And of course, my favourite:

Q: How many Bell Labs guys does it take to change a light-bulb?

A: None – they just hold all the patents to it.

…silence can say a lot more than words would. Take, for instance, the pictures below:

This is one clip that never fails to crack me up. Oh boy.

Thus spake The Cydonian:

“Let me go through with you once again on how this works – I’m the pessimist guy. Shanks is the nihilist guy. You’re the what-the-fuck-shall-we-do-it guy. Savvy?”

Quite.

As a long-time Slashdotter, I was quite disdainful of Digg when it first came around. It looked like a bad ripoff of the fundamental idea behind Slashdot, taken to the heights of the new fangled “Web 2.0″ thingy.

But truth be told, I do find myself reading Digg from time to time. While the quality of comments and the average maturity of the users seems rather low, they do come up with some interesting stories (which tend to cover a broader range of topics, too).

Now, despite everything that Slashdotters whine about, Slashdot is one of the more mature forums out there. Not only does the crowd tend to be a little older, it also tends to be remarkably mature (you always have the occasional frost pist posts, of course – and I can’t believe I’m using mature and Slashdot in the same sentence).

So, today, I was reading Digg when I noticed something — it sounds like every other article was submitted by a 14 year old. For instance, look at this screenshot of the top stories active on the home page right now:

And in case you did not catch it, here is a list of the articles:

• Digg’s Blog This Feature is a Haven for Spammers
• Ubuntu Ultimate Edition!
• Steve Jobs Keynote Bloopers!
• Antarctica Errupts!
• Supermarket asks man, 87, for ID
• Do You Know What Lives In Your Eyelashes?
• Guy Selling every NES game ever made on eBay!! With pics!

With the number of exclamation marks out there (not to mention the 13 year old-ish comments that abound on Digg), a profound (and perhaps divine, even) revelation came to me.

I was stuck by the following image, from not too long ago:

See the similarity? That’s it! Slashdotters want to be like Digg users. That is why they went OMG PONIES!!!

Damn, I should write this stuff down. I’m good.

Lately, I have been receiving a lot of messages from people looking to spread the word of God (their version of this God character, anyway).

Sometimes, I think that this is all a great conspiracy of sorts because these “devotees” do not seem to spare any medium whatsoever.

“It’s less satisfying to punch you when you run away.”

The remarkably insightful statement above was uttered by none other than my partner-in-crime Rebecca, who has enough medals in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Judo, Muay Thai and other assorted beat-the-crap-out-of-each-other arts that they scare away half the people I know from talking to her.

And she wonders why I run away. When she’s aiming a punch at me.

Don’t you love friends? Especially when they delight in beating the crap out of you and are upset when you don’t let them?