I can’t believe Paris Hilton released a CD. That seems like the biggest waste of time. She’s not going on tour, and I seriously doubt she really cares about her music career. I’m also pretty sure she can’t sing live.

The only way I would ever listen to a Paris Hilton song is if I was poisoned and the ingredients to the antidote were hidden in her lyrics. (Thanks wwtdd)

The other day while stuck in traffic (as usual) in downtown Dallas, I was struck with an epiphany. I was listening to a Gnarls Barkley CD and I realized that I hadn’t heard anything so interesting and fresh to my ears since Bobby McFerrin 16 years ago. Gnarles Barkley’s music is very interesting. I’d call them Experimental Rap/Hip-Hop, but they’re way more complicated than that. They have gospel, soul, underground hip-hop and even indie rock undertones. I haven’t heard this much creativity in popular mainstream music in a long while. That led me to my next conclusion: I think these guys should do at least one or two tracks with Bobby McFerrin. That’d be some really good music. By the way, if you haven’t heard “Thinkin’ About your Body” by Bobby McFerrin, you should–You’ll get a kick out of it.

Tonight I prepared a rather detailed and complicated graph depicting how the increase in work hours has an affect on the relative happiness on a person. I conducted extensive research and asked well over 4 people if they felt my findings were true– All respondants indicated yes. This leads me to believe without a doubt that my findings are an absolute truth. My findings state that as the workload of a person increases (in this case, the number of hours said person is required to work each day) the relative happiness decreases. I also found that the relative happiness is inverse to the number of hours worked, and that it forms a nice looking curve. Imagine that!? (Excel is good at making neat lines)
I decided to post this after working this weekend, and working 16 hours today at work. Excuse me if this post is incoherent.

Forbes is reporting that Skype has “outrun” Myspace. They make this claim based on the number of users the respective companies have.

Skype reports having 113 Million users. Myspace (as of Aug. 08) reports having just cleared 100 Million users.

I think this is a poor comparison when it is the only inidicator used for comparative analysis. I took a look at what Google said. Google Trends aims to provide insights into broad search patterns. Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time.

While Skype may have more users (and much more financial backing), myspace still rules the roost when it comes to sheer searches, and popularity. I’ve seen Myspace plastered over every media outlet I can think of. They’re everywhere.

Is forbes backing Skype? Maybe this is something for the sharesleuth to investigate. The guys over there are pretty good about digging up information.

Click the image to view the full trend report generated by Google.

A buddy of mine sent me a recording he made today when a telemarketer called him. His tactic won’t stop telemarketers from calling, but it sure is funny.

I found a more serious approach to stopping telemarketers on junkbusters.com
This information was originally provided by http://www.junkbusters.com/script.html. I’d like to thank them for compiling this data. To learn more about stopping telemarketers, please visit the junkbusters website.

Every time you get a call you consider junk, just ask the questions in this script. If they answer no, you may be able to sue them. Be sure to put your phone number on the National Do-Not-Call registry by visiting http://donotcall.gov or by calling 1-888-382-1222.

1. “Are you calling to sell something?” (or “is this a telemarketing call?”)
2. “Could you tell me your ful name please?”
3. “And a phone number, area code first?”
4. “What’s the name of the organization you’re calling for?”
5. “Does that organization keep a list of numbers it’s been asked not to call?”
6. “I would like my number(s) put on that list. Can you take care of that now?”
7. “And does the company you work for also make telemarketing calls for any other organizations?” (If they answer no, skip the next question.)
8. (If yes) “Can you make sure your company won’t call me for any other organization?”

You may need to ask to speak with a supervisor if they sound lost. When you’re ready to let them off, you might close with “Is it clear that I never want telemarketing calls from anyone?” and just say goodbye. If you feel like making them pay, keep going:

1. “Will your company keep my number on its do-not-call list for at least ten years?”
2. “And does your company have a written policy that says that on paper?”
3. “Can you send me a copy of it?”
4. “What’s your supervisor’s first and last name?”
5. “What’s your employer’s business name, address and main telephone number?”
6. “Are you calling for a tax-exempt nonprofit organization?”
7. “Is this call based on a previously established business relationship?”

That should help you, if you’re still suffering from Telemarketer hell.

Update: A budy send me this link. It details an alternate way to stop telemarketers. Very nice!

It is my (somewhat candid) belief that Mark Ruffalo and Fred Savage could be brothers. Hollywood, if you’re reading this, hire me as a casting director. I’d be awesome at the job. I can pick these out all day long.

I bet Mark got his start because he looked like Savage, but that’s just a guess.

You may know Mark Ruffalo from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or from Collateral, but I know him as the guy who lost out in the role of Kevin Arnold to Fred Savage in The Wonder Years. Ok Maybe not. I do wonder if they looked alike as kids though. The Wonder Years was probably the most amazing TV show I ever saw as a child and I miss still miss it.

Savage is still working. It’s good to see child actors make it. He’s been all over the T.V. since his departure from The Wonder Years. He was in Austin Powers (Goldmember). “Moley moley moley…”.

He’s also appeared on Saturday Night Live and was in Mooseport. He’s been busy. I wonder if he’ll ever get around to marrying Winnie Cooper? They were meant for each other.

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?

I signed up a couple of days ago and it was pretty painless. If you can make an  80×80 image, you’ve got an avatar. Simply register, activate your account, and upload your avatar. After their reviewers are done ‘rating’ it (using the MPAA style of rating) you can begin seeing your gravatar here on the website when you make a comment. Cool eh?

As long as the email you sign up with gravatar is the same one you use here, you’ll see your gravatar on the comments here.

That’s all it takes.

It’s been 24 hours since the Family Values Concert yesterday at the Smirnoff Music Centre in Dallas, TX. My ears have finally stopped hurting. Not only was it wicked loud, but also very hot–Texas hot. Luckily we were under the covered area. The people on the lawn baked. I saw quite a few red faces.

Here are the bands that played in order of performance:

• Deadsy
• Bury Your Dead
• 10 Years
• DIRENGREY
• Flyleaf
• Stonesour
• The Deftones Funny, because I always thought their lead singer was tone deaf. They put on a great show though.
• KoRn
  

Now for the rundown. Bury Your Dead was mostly screaming. 10 Year’s frontman was a really good singer, I thought they were good. I couldn’t figure out DIRENGREY. They took enormous pauses between each song and I didn’t connect with the music. They were interesting to watch though. Flyleaf was spectacular. Short set but the music was great. They had the best sound coming off the stage of all the bands. Stonesour I didn’t really know except for their last song–guess I’m not that big a fan but they were good. The Deftones were loud. They rocked the place. KoRn was the same as last time I saw them–completely awesome. I was just happy they still play A.D.I.D.A.S. It was a great show.

Highlights:

• 10 Years guy nearly busted his arse once. It was funny
• Seeing a Japanese hardcore rock band for the first time
• Jonathan Davis. When he played the bagpipes, the crowd went nuts.

Lowlights:

• The long line getting in.
• The searing Texas heat.
• The massive amount of decibels flung towards my ears.

When I was 14 years old, I had summer reading for my AP (Honors) English class. Don’t blame my English teacher for my bad grammar, that’s my fault. Anyway, back to the story…

One of the books I had to read was Fahrenheit 451. It is a book by Ray Bradbury, and I really liked it. I had never read a book all the way through before this book, so it felt like somewhat of a milestone for me. In order to do it, though, I had to listen to music. One day, while listening to a local NPR station on the radio, I recorded a classical piece of music onto tape. I listened to this music every day while reading the book and it was ingrained into my memory. After that year in school was over, I lost the tape. I never knew the name of songs on it. All I knew was how it sounded. I asked my dad then if we could call NPR, but i didn’t think I could explain to them the song I wanted to know about. I listened and listened to all kinds of classical music, but I could never find it. I made a promise to myself then to try as hard as I could to find it–That was 14 years ago.

Last week, while listening to the Rhapsody music service, I stumbled on a familiar sound by a romanic-period composer by the name of Anton Bruckner. I knew instantly that this guy must have composed the music I had listened to every day when I was 14, so I kept listening to more and more of his symphonies. Finally, after about 20 minutes, I found it.

Listening to it brought back so much emotion in me and so many memories from when I was 14 that I could hardly get a grip on reality. I was fixed on my younger days. It’s been nearly 11 days since then and I’m still listening to it every day.

In case you’re curious, the Symphony this is all about is “Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 2 in C Minor”. Listen to it in its entirety if you can. It’s really amazing. It may not hit you like it hit me, but then again I have this really old connection to it.

Have you ever had an experience similar to mine with music? Share it!

Today I questioned myself. I wasn’t sure if I was a good manager or not. I haven’t been a manager long, and after what I did today I might not be a manager much longer.

I decided to dig around online for what other people think it takes to be a good manager and after much introspection, I have come to the conclusion that I am, in fact, a good manager–at least in some respects. I like to have fun and I like my guys at work to have fun.

Let’s take a look at what some website I found today considers to be good traits of a manager:

[Some] management qualities to look for:

• Action-oriented
• Approachable
• Able to deal with ambiguity
• A sense of humor (CHECK!)

Yeah, I think i have a pretty good sense of humor. At least I have one of the four traits as a manager. Case in point: One of my employees, Kevin, has a birthday tomorrow. I and another one of my employees decided to give him a birthday “present”. We wanted the present to be big, and not necessarily costly for us. Well, the office has plenty of chairs, so we thought it’d be a great idea to give him some…or a bunch. We even neatly stacked them on and around his desk for him. That way when he gets in tomorrow he will certainly see his present.
Another thing: for some reason Kevin is an Abe Vigoda fan. I don’t know why, but I think it’s funny. So I decided to print a really big picture of Abe and stick it on his door. That’s really nice right?

By the way, if you’re wondering if Abe is alive, check here

Here are the two pictures of Kevin’s desk area: [Picture 1], [Picture2]