In this eBay listing for a Canon 10D digital SLR, the seller mentions that he’s “upgrading” to a Nikon system. Would it be rude to send him a message asking him to correct his description to “downgrading”? 😉

My brother’s out visiting for Thanksgiving, and his Vista-powered (or was it ready?) notebook is having an incredibly difficult time connecting to our wireless network (for whatever reason). I was, of course, quick to place the blame on Vista — and not just because I’m being bigoted; this isn’t the first time I’ve heard someone complaining about Wifi problems under Microsoft’s “best” OS.

Anyways, I began searching Google for problems specifically related to his PC/chipset, but, in the process, stumbled across a completely scientific method of proving which operating system — Vista or XP — was better.

First, I searched for “Vista wireless problems”: 15,400,00 results.

Then I searched for “XP wireless problems”: 13,700,00 results.

Not quite as overwhelming a victory as I’d hoped for, but it’s pretty clear who the top contender is.

(As a purely academic exercise, I then typed in “Linux wireless problems”. A scant 46,200,000 results. Maybe this method isn’t really as accurate as I was hoping for. Or, more likely, people are posting lots of comments about how Linux fixed their wireless problems. Yeah.)

Only T9 can completely obscure the meaning of simple words. Today, my team lead fired off a quick text message wondering whether a specific employee would be coming into work. The coworker was on his way in, and attempted to send the following message:

In the car.

But he was driving, which means he couldn’t really check what he was typing. What the lead received was:

Go the bar.

Slightly concerning.

Last night kicked off a week of television premiers with the second season of Heroes. My wife and I watched (in real time; that’s an important distinction in the TiVo age). We went to bed shortly after, since we’re now old and perpetually exhausted. Our conversation went as follows:

Me: “So, were you impressed by Heroes tonight?”
Mindy: “No.”
Me: “Me neither.”

There was short span of silence before our conversation continued:

Me: “Have we ever been impressed by Heroes?”
Mindy: “No, not really.”

The magic of television is how it captivates you with nothing.

‘Tis Talk Like a Pirate Day, mates, so break out ye ol’ bandanner and eye patch and throw some yars ‘n arghs into yer speech.

Yup. Very Rejected.