Ramblings from the Marginalized

Sometimes real life is better than a reality show!

It seems that Paris Hilton was dragged back to the court house after her overnight slumber party at home. She was then sent back to jail to complete her 45 day sentence.

The hearing was requested by the city attorney's office, which had prosecuted Hilton and wanted sheriff Baca held in contempt for releasing Hilton despite Judge Sauer's express order that she must serve her time in jail.

It turns out that the sheriff sent her home due to an unspecified "medical condition" a condition that the judge was told about but never sent paper work for. During the day in court the judge continually interrupted Hilton's attorney, pointed to the clock and asked where the medical documents were.

Eventually he just sent her back to jail, pointing out that to do otherwise sends the message that people who are famous or who have money are above the law.

Paris cried throughout the proceedings and was lead away in tears. Through out the proceedings she kept turning to her parents and telling them "I love you," as if she were going to the chair.

Well, I guess jail is like the chair for someone as soft as Paris Hilton. How rude could those cops be? They even dragged her away from her "house arrest" before she had time to put her make-up on! The nerve of some people, don't they know who she is? I mean she did offer to attend the trial by phone!

It's only 45 days Paris and it's not like you'll be spending your time in Sing Sing! Think of it as a mini-vacation.

• Rockstar Mommy, a blog my wife introduced me to
• Ikea – Swedish for ‘crazy kids’
• Video game save games
• Wii VC Review: The Legend of Zelda
• Dell Black Friday Deals

Not too long ago my wife told me about a disorder she had read about on a blog. It was called Male Attention Deficit Disorder or MADD for short. The idea behind this disorder is that men can not track a conversation with a women if too many sentences are thrown at them. When a man has this problem he shuts down and becomes unresponsive to the woman speaking.

I took some time to think about what she told me and I have figured out why this happens.

Unlike the premise of the article she read this is not a male disorder but a female one. If my wife were to say to me:

"Hi honey. I was just thinking about changing the oil in the car but I'm not sure where the socket set is or the drip pan. Do you know where they are? I'd really like to get this done before lunch time so I can cook you something tasty."

Steve's imaginary wife.

I would very quickly (and happily) show here where all the tools she needed were and encourage her to change the oil in my car too. That is not what happens though. Woman are never this straightforward. What often happens is the following:

"Oh look at this dress! Isn't it beautiful? Oh do you think it costs too much? Does it go well with my hair and skin tone? Oh I really want to get it. You sure you don't think it costs too much? Does it make me look fat?"

Steve's real wife.

That is what my real wife would say to me and yes, I would shut down and not respond. Why is that? It's because she did not give me anything to respond to. She is not looking for an answer she is looking for me to say, "It is nice, go ahead and buy it. Make you look fat? Why you'd have to gain another 50 lbs. before you even started to look fat... blah blah blah..." I'd be tempted to tell her what I really think (which she does not want to hear) and then I would suffer for days for doing so!

When a man is asked a question he listens and then processes the question. He looks for the logic in the question and answers accordingly. This works wonderfully when a woman asks a question that is seeking a logical answer. It breaks down when a woman phrases a question as if she wants a logical answer; "does this make me look fat" but only wants some sort of sympathy answer rather than a real answer.

A man wants to "fix" the problems his woman has. He sees this as a sign of his love. The woman sees this as a sign that the man is an ass because she (obviously) has no problems. No problems other than that she is suffering through life with this man who has no idea what she wants!

Many years ago a man, who had been married longer than I, explained to me how to get out of one of the most deadly husband-to-wife encounters. When your wife points to a woman who is more attractive than her and asks you if you find that woman attractive there is only one response. It's not yes and it's not no. The correct answer is to say, "what woman?"

• Are you dedicated?
• Game Review: Kung-Fu Fighting!
• With Stress You Lose
• Google, Webmasters and the Page Rank Dance
• Did You Read the Article First? Some Thoughts on Social Bookmarking

I'm sure everyone remembers the episode of Seinfeld when George Costanza did his best to secure a good parking spot in the city. The problem he ran into was that he could never move his car because then he would lose his great parking space!

Though on-street parking in New York City is cheap, getting and keeping those spaces makes it far more expensive. So, how much would you pay for a parking spot in New York City?

The most expensive spot currently known is located at 2 E 60th St. between Fifth ave and Madison Ave. This space costs $1,183 a month for a regular car. If you drive a more exotic car it will cost you $1,300!

So, at $1,183 a month that breaks down to (about) $38 a day. This is actually a bargain because many places that offer hourly rates charge $40 for a 12 hour block of time! That $1,183 is beginning to look like a bargain.

Not all parking in New York City is that expensive, just the good spots. You can get parking in the $400 a month range but those spots may not be where you want to park your car.

Another problem with these parking garages is that they are not the parking garages you see at the mall. Your car does not have a space marked out by white lines. Nope, New York parking garages are more like a can of sardines with all those cars packed as close together as possible so as to be able to squeeze in more cars. This makes it easy to drop your car off but a real pain when you are ready to leave! Before they can give you your car they have to find it and move all of the other cars out of the way.

Some people who live near train stations have even begun to lease out space in their driveway to eager commuters who want to avoid the hefty price of parking in the city. The commuter also gets the security of knowing there car is not packed away in a sardine can of a garage.

Something on the horizon for Manhatten commuters is Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan. Bloomberg’s plan, which would charge cars $8 and trucks $21 to enter Manhattan south of 86th Street during the week from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., is designed to curb traffic congestion in Manhatten. It may also have the chilling effect of adding $240 to your parking bill every month!

Those in the parking garage business are worred that this will have a drastic effect on their business and they suggest that the city simply raise the meter rates. Even they understand that adding $8 a day to the cost of your commute may be enough to push people onto the rail system.

image used under Creative Commons License from Flickr user Libär

• You know you’re in California…
• Week in Pictures
• Wii Review: Alone in the Dark
• Real Dumb Criminals: The Paralyzed Robber
• The Nintendo DSi is Coming

In a fit of jealous rage a two-timing pregnant woman ran over the father of her unborn child, then she backed up and did it again!

Janine Harrington (25) was so obsessed by the belief that her boyfriend, Jeffrey Moore (45) was sleeping around behind her back that she took her live-in boyfriend's Nissan Pathfinder to run him down. She found him, sitting on his bike, in a one-way street. She turned the vehicle down this one-way street (the wrong way), jumped a curb and ran him down. She then backed up and did it again and again!

Relatives of Jeffrey Moore have said that Janine had threatened him before and had even tried to run him down on two prior occasions. "She was very jealous of him," said Moore's sister. "She comes down a one-way street on the sidewalk to murder somebody. This ain't the first time. So she finally succeeded."

"The bike was under the wheel. She got out, pulled the bike out from under the car, backed up and left. He was just lying there looking straight up in the air," said Eric, who withheld his last name.

Cops credit her long time live-in boyfriend with calling the police on her.

She is also being held for possession of a deadly weapon, the SUV!

Source and more information.

• Super Mario Galaxy Release Party
• Metroid Prime 3 Launch photos from the Nintendo World Store in NYC
• Nintendo launch party for The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass to be held in New York City
• Professor Layton comes to New York
• How much for parking?

In the Steve Jackson game Car Wars there is a well known slogan: "The right of way goes to the car with the biggest guns", followed closely by, "Drive offensively". These two short quips work well enough in gaming but they do not work so well in real life.

Over the many years I have spent behind the wheel I have picked up my own view on "rules of the road" and I'm going to explain a few of them here.

1. When merging on a highway, the car with the most dents has the right of way - I learned this one early on. If your car is nicer looking than the car that crazy guy who is trying to merge is driving just let them in. Do you really want them to scratch your car up? It's obvious that they don't care about their car.

2. People who try to merge onto an exit ramp by speeding ahead of the long exit ramp traffic line and trying to sneak in at the top deserve no right of way - You know these people. Here you are, being a good driver, stuck in a long line to get off the highway and you see this guy fly up the left lane and then try to sneak into the exit lane at the opening of the ramp. They are betting that someone will let them in or that they can sneak in when some of the cars move up. These folks deserve no right of way and should be left to wait, and wait, and wait.

3. People who do not signal - Much like number one above you have to let these people in. It is obvious that they are oblivious and a danger to all within 50 feet of them.

4. The car with the out of state plates needs a big buffer - This rule is based on the idea that the further away from their home state someone is the less likely they have a clue as to where they are going. Because of this you need to leave them a nice buffer zone. This is especialy true in those bad areas where traffic planners got the bright idea to mix left and right lane exits together.

There is nothing worse than seeing an out-of-state driver caught in the left lane, that is now becoming an exit only lane, because they thought it was the high-speed lane. It's even worse when it's the left two lanes that are exit only!

5. When taking a road trip always ensure your co-pilot knows how to read a map - The shotgun seat is a very important seat in every vehicle. It is a seat that must be earned! The person who rides shotgun for me better know how to do the following things:

Shotgun skills
• Read a map
• Read road signs
• Warn me of cops
• Warn me of crazy drivers
• Know when not to talk
• Be able to quickly acquire any item I request
• Be able/willing to pump gas
• Understand that the visor in front of them is for the driver's benefit, not theirs
• Know where we are going

There are a few more items I could add to the list but I think you get the picture.

image Creative Commons from flickr user Thiru Murugan

• Do police have jurisdiction on a private road?
• Game Review: Figaro
• Xbox Live Arcade: Carcassonne
• I werk fer da toun
• Pokemon Battle Revolution: First Glance

If you were around in the 80's you probably remember Jenny and her phone unmber "867-5309". Tommy "Tutone" Heath penned the famous rock song in 1982 and after the previous owner of the phone number, Brown University gave it up after growing weary of the constant prank calls, it was acquired by a plumbing company in Rhode Island.

Gem Plumbing & Heating of Lincoln, R.I., trademarked the phone number and it can be used from the 401 area code in Rhode Island and the 617 area code in southern Massachusetts.

Everything sounds OK so far but there is a hitch. Florida-based Clockwork Home Services uses a toll-free version of 867-5309 in New England. Yes, they are also a plumbing company!

Gem and Clockwork both went to court over this and even though Clockwork argued that you can only trademark a vanity number (i.e. 1-800-FLOWERS) they lost and a Boston judge barred the Florida-based company from using their 800 number in the Rhode Island and Massachusetts markets.

Tommy "Tutone" Heath was asked about this and he said that he would prefer if no one used the number. "It's ridiculous," said Heath. "If I wanted to get into it, I could probably take the number away from both of them."

• Obama’s Plumber Problem
• What I’m Playing These Days

I get a lot of spam comments here on HMTK. Most days I get between 600 and 1,200 spam comments. Since I ported the blog over to WordPress back in February I have gotten hit with 53,666 spam comments.

Akismet grabs 99% of them and has only mislabeled one comment as spam. Well, I think it was only one. When you have over a thousand spam comments to look through you tend not to look too deep!

At any rate, while cleaning out my spam comments today I encountered this one and I have to say that at least the spammer tried harder than just dumping links:

Good afternoon
Sorry if it is offtopic but i saw thread in this forum. Please forward it to correct category.
Someone wrote that he considered to buy tramadol, viagra and xanax drugs online.
Yes. i guess these pharmacy pills espesially tramadol can make your life easier. Some people use internet stores in order to buy cheap tramadol buy viagra online buy xanax
Tramadol, viagra and xanax could arrive to your appartment quickly if you order online.
Its is very convinient. I consider to buy tramadol online very soon.

I removed the plethora of drug links but at least he tried to make it look like he reads the forum blog. Well, maybe not considering I don't cover drugs on this blog!

About 95% of the spam comments I see are drug related. The other 5% are pr0n.

• Fighting the MyBlogLog Spammers
• Barracuda Networks Releases Annual Spam Report
• Blog Review: Untwisted Vortex
• Netscape: Let the Clone Wars begin!
• Truemors – Rumors, News, Gossip and more

Dateline: La Habra California

A man used a circular saw to cut off his mother's head and then turned it on himself and tried to do the same. He failed in trying to cut his own head off but he did kill himself in the proccess.

Police responded to an early morning 911 call for a family dispute. The police entered a locked bedroom where they found the decapatated body of 60 year old Guadalupe Ruiz on a bed.

On another nearby bed they found the body of 32 year old Arthur Ruiz Jr. The circular saw was near him but he had died from injuries sustained to his neck in his failed attempt to remove his own head.

A neighbor said she heard the saw while she was on her morning walk but thought someone was just getting some work done. "If it would have been a gunshot or something, I would have called the police," she remarked.

You know, we often read stories about people using swords to cut off heads and we make Highlander jokes about it. In this case I just can't come up with something funny to say.

• NetFlix to keep profiles
• Why God Made Moms
• Heroes – It’s all Hiro’s fault!
• Looking at stocks: Three months later
• Of hot chocolate and patents