Just as a reminder, not only did we forget yesterday, we ignore what’s going on right under our noses.

When BP bought Amoco, they made a few promises. Cleaner stations, brighter lighting, and a friendlier atmosphere. In the process of the takeover, they converted all the old Amoco stations to BP stations and renovated each and every one of them with new pumps, new signage, and an overall new look that was in line with the new corporate identity. For all intents and purposes, Amoco was wiped off the map.

Last night, I had to get gas before I met my wife for dinner, and I didn’t feel like driving to the Mobil station I would normally go to. The BP is closer to my office and, while I don’t particularly care for BP gas, it is more convenient and a few cents cheaper, so BP won out over Mobil.

As I pulled into the station last night, there were only two pumps available, and only one of them was in the position I needed to fill my tank. As I pulled in, I noticed a yellow “out of service” cover on the premium pump. No big deal; I don’t go in for that premium gas bullshit anyway. I got out of the car, put my card in (it didn’t ask me if it was credit or debit, either) and the pump was authorized. I put the nozzle in my tank, pulled the trigger and… NOTHING. The pump was on but the screen wasn’t moving and the gas wasn’t flowing. I tried a few more times, and finally decided I would just move to a pump that had just opened up. Apparently an out of order cover on one of the nozzles applies to all of them.

I got back in my car, pulled over to the pump, and what I saw made me nauseous. To say the pump was in poor condition is an understatement. Here are a few choice pictures I snapped with my phone as I stood at the pump.

Notice the melted cover on the nozzle? Doesn’t that just instill a sense of confidence in the maintenance of the station? It wasn’t gross, per se, but it showed to me that the owner of the station doesn’t really care about the station or its appearance. You might see that as a stretch based on one photo, of course, so here’s another photo of the exact same pump.

Not bad, huh? Instills real confidence in what you get from that station.

I’m not unreasonable, and I know that gas pumps aren’t usually handled with kid gloves, but this didn’t get this way overnight. Note the worn out “start” button on the keypad and the damn-near impossible to see through cover of the screen for the meter.

This station is an utter disaster and BP is probably not even aware of it, and for a company that’s heavily into presenting a clean friendly environment for its gas stations, this station is a black eye on their corporate image.

For those of you in the New York City area, you can visit this trainwreck yourself and tell me if you think this is the kind of premium experience BP promises in its commercials.

Three years ago today, Terri Schiavo’s “husband” got his wish and got to finish a job he so desperately wanted to finish and was able to starve and dehydrate his wife, who he claimed to love, to death, secure in the knowledge that he had the backing of a corrupt court system that disallowed evidence and testimony with startling callousness.

It’s a good time to reflect. Since that disgrace, we’ve had no progress on a bill that would require hospitals or doctors to act to preserve the life of a patient when there is no living will stating otherwise. Instead, for all we learned about how completely ridiculous the living will and power of attorney system is in this country, we’ve sat around and done nothing.

We don’t know if Terri Schiavo ever would’ve lived a normal life again, but I do think that if starving a dog is a crime and mistreating animals punishable by time in prison, we seriously need to consider the correctness of starving and dehydrating a human being to death, regardless of her mental capacity.

Judging from the lack of action, however, it’s a lesson lost on us, and that’s the biggest tragedy of all.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime critic of China’s human rights policies, said Friday it would be wrong to boycott the Beijing Olympics.

She said in a statement that while the Chinese government has failed to live up to its commitments to improve human rights conditions in China and Tibet, “I believe a boycott of the Beijing Olympics would unfairly harm our athletes who have worked so hard to prepare for the competition.”

Nancy Pelosi, you, dear woman, are a hypocrite. For years you’ve talked about what you’d like to happen to China and when you can hit them where it hurts the most, their pockets, you decide that it isn’t a good idea.

Why isn’t it a good idea? Because some kid that works in Home Depot might not get to show the world he can run? Are you serious? That’s the reason you don’t want to stand up a country that opens fires on nuns and monks?

“As I said in India last week where I met with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, if freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China’s oppression in Tibet, we have lost our moral authority to speak out on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world,” she said.

Actually, you lose that moral authority when you refuse to do something, not when you refuse to talk about something. There’s a world of difference between the two.

I’m sure a stern talking-to is just what China needs.

This is what happens when you let the San Francisco liberals run the show. All talk, no action.

I’m so jealous of these 14 year old kids that get to boff their cute teacher… I never was that lucky…

Beth Ann Chester, a teacher in the Moon Area School District, has admitted to having sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old student, Moon police said today.
Beth Ann Chester

Ms. Chester, 26, is scheduled to have a preliminary hearing tomorrow on nine charges that she sent lewd text messages and nude photos of herself to the boy.

Moon police Chief Leo McCarthy said today at least one additional charge of sexual assault will made against Ms. Chester when she appears for her preliminary hearing.

“She waived her Miranda rights and admitted to having sexual intercourse with the boy in her car,” Chief McCarthy said in an interview this morning.

He said the sexual encounter happened in a school parking lot after an activity. Moon detectives were trying to determine the date.

“At the absolute minimum, there will be one new charge against her,” Chief McCarthy said.

Ms. Chester, of Scott, submitted a letter of resignation to the Moon district on Dec. 27. But she remains on the public payroll because the school board has yet to meet on personnel changes, the district solicitor said.

*sigh*

When I was a kid, we didn’t have a whole ton of money. Every car we ever had as far back as I was alive to really remember them (with one exception) was either used or a hand me down. In 1992, my parents decided that the time of having hand me down after hand me down was over, and they bought the first new car I could ever remember (again, with one exception).

That’s the 1992 Dodge Spirit we had. Oh sure it wasn’t top of the line, but it was ours. It had that new car smell. It had working air conditioning. It had a 3.0 liter V6 engine as compared to the 2.2 liter 4 cylinder the prior car, a 1988 Plymouth Sundance, had.

That car made it to West Virginia 3 times in its life, and helped us move to Staten Island from Brooklyn. It also served as my mom’s “everyday car” going to work both when we lived in Brooklyn and when we lived in Staten Island, making the 2 hour commute to Brooklyn every day.

Last week, it started gushing oil, and our mechanic warned my dad that if he continued to drive the car, it may just leave him wherever he stopped it. He finally decided the time had come and after 15 years, he parted with the car we bought on a shoestring the year it came out, donating it to charity with the hopes of getting a halfway decent tax write-off.

I’m gonna miss it. Sure it was a car, and in reality, it’s a family car. It wasn’t sexy. It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t luxurious. What it was, however, was ours, and I’m going to miss it.

Technorati Tags: dodge, dodge spirit

No shocks here, except for how well I did in Math. I suck at Math.

Found on Sodapop’s site.

Paris Hilton and 50 Cent were spotted canoodling in Las Vegas.

The rapper made his move on the hotel heiress at the launch party for his new album Curtis at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino on Saturday night.

A source said: “50 played a few songs and then made straight for Paris. She was laughing and unashamedly flirting and couldn’t keep her hands of him. He nuzzled up to her and they cuddled.”

Get rich or die tryin’, right 50?

Technorati Tags: 50 cent, paris hilton

Poor little guy…

The Berlin Zoo’s popular polar bear cub, Knut, is not feeling well and had his daily public appearance in front of thousands of visitors cut short Monday after only 30 minutes.

The zoo’s veterinarian, Andre Schuele, put the 4 1/2-month old cub on antibiotics and said the Knut is “off stage to get some rest while we watch him closely.”

There was no specific diagnosis “but he is still a young animal and therefore susceptible to infections,” Schuele said.

“At the moment he is resting on his blanket and sleeping,” Schuele said, adding that despite his lethargy Knut did eat his regular meal in the morning.

Get well soon you incomprehensibly cute little thing!

MyWay news, AP Photo.

Something to be aware of as we head into the appropriate season for the greatest candy on the Easter menu…

via Lost Remote

Technorati Tags: cadbury, creme egg, sad, disappointment

A federal appeals court granted Vonage a temporary reprieve late Friday from an injunction granted earlier in the day that would have prevented the Internet phone provider from signing up new customers.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which hears patent disputes in Washington, D.C., blocked the injunction from taking effect until the judges were able to consider arguments in the patent case brought by Verizon Communications.

During a Friday morning hearing here that lasted about an hour, U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton ordered Vonage not to accept any new customers while it continues to infringe on Verizon’s patents covering some aspects of Internet phone calls.

A copy of the one-page appeals court order(PDF) provided to CNET News.com by Vonage’s legal counsel gives Verizon until April 13 to respond to the voice over Internet Protocol company’s request to lift the injunction during the appeal process. It was signed by Chief Judge Paul Michel.

Roger Warin, Vonage’s attorney, protested Hilton’s no-new-customers order during Friday’s hearing. Arguing the decision was just as threatening to Vonage as a full injunction, he said “it would be the difference of cutting off oxygen as opposed to a bullet to the head.”

I’d like to be idealistic and say that the good guys (Vonage) would prevail over the government-endorsed monopoly and stagnant non-innovative phone company, but it really looks bad for Vonage. I’ve said it before, though. If Verizon thinks suing Vonage out of business is going to get me back as a customer, they’re sadly mistaken. If anything, I’ll just turn my phones off altogether and use only my mobile phone (which incidentally isn’t a Verizon phone either).

Call me an idealist, but I have a real problem when a big company tries to sue a more innovative smaller company, particularly when the bigger company claims to have patents for things its been sitting on for years and not actually doing anything with.

A patent is not a business model.

via Cnet

Technorati Tags: verizon, vonage

Yet another reason to not vote for the Judi Rudy tag team in 2008… Apparently, Judi has a bit of a nasty history with regards to animals…

April 2, 2007 — Judith Giuliani once demonstrated surgical products for a controversial medical-supply company that used dogs - which were later killed - in operations whose only purpose was to sell equipment to doctors, The Post has learned.

“It was a horribly cruel, outrageous program,” Friends of Animals President Priscilla Feral said about the demonstrations of medical staplers on dogs conducted by U.S. Surgical Corp. employees during Giuliani’s tenure there in the late 1970s.

Feral said U.S. Surgical’s demonstrations on hundreds of dogs each year through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s were done to boost sales, not for medical re search or testing.

And just so you understand, Friends of Animals is not PETA and isn’t some always-angry activist group. Anyway, here’s some more information:

In Sunday’s Post, Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign spokesman, Michael McKeon, said of Judi Giuliani’s work with U.S. Surgical, “She was in the operating room hundreds of times, using her nursing skills and training doctors in the stapling technique.”

Asked yesterday about the procedure being performed on dogs, McKeon said, “I’ve never heard any of this before.”

Then McKeon said he would have to ask Judi.

Finally, he said only that Judi had not been involved in procuring dogs for sales demonstrations - but did not comment on whether she participated in demonstrations involving dogs.

So she “bought” the dogs, but didn’t kill them herself. Kinda like a guy who drove trains to Auschwitz saying he didn’t kill the prisoners, he just drove ‘em to the place.

Whatever.

Ethical issues are going to be a major problem for Rudy and this isn’t going to help. Yes I understand she’s not running, but let’s be honest here… No first lady just sits there and does nothing.

Technorati Tags: judi giuliani, rudy giuliani, animals, animal rights, disgrace

I consider myself a fan of Anna Nicole Smith. Not because she showed up in Playboy. Not because she was, as one documentarian once called her, the “cadillac of bimbos.” Not even because she went down in a blaze of glory.

I liked Anna Nicole Smith because she never shied away from who she was. Anna Nicole Smith knew that men looked at her as a sex object. She knew that the world never really took her seriously. She also knew that people thought of her as a gold-digging opportunist. Yet, no matter what, she always had a smile on her face.

Her television show was a disaster. She looked seriously stoned 99% of the time. In fact, she was barely coherent just about every time she opened her mouth. Criticism flew like jets and yet through it all, she kept smiling and never made any excuses.

Any was what she was, was proud of what she was, and she never let any of the idiots in the “business” drag her into a black hole or a pissing match.

Anna will be missed and she died way too young.

Technorati Tags: anna nicole smith

I’ve had my moments where I’ve flipped off flickr and been angry with them. Truthfully, I think their community is mostly good, but in a lot of cases is more or less a high school do over for the artsy kids who got their lunch money jacked.

I’ve met some great people on flickr. I’ve made a few friends and I’ve even learned a lot. The groups (when you find a good one that isn’t just a pissing contest) are a ton of fun. I can go on and on and on. I even got to see parts of the city I live in that I had never seen before.

That being said, it’s time to go.

A few weeks ago, flickr decided they were going to limit your contacts to 3,000 and limit tags to 75 per photo. On first blush, you would think “3,000 contacts? Who has that many?” That really isn’t the point. Nor is the point, “Why would you need 75 tags on one photo?” The point is there are some people who do. My friend Thomas Hawk did. He has thousands of contacts he watches and for a lot of them he’s reciprocating links.

After much cajoling, flickr got the message that people were displeased and modified this new requirement ever-so-slightly. They won’t count reciprocal links toward your contact limit. Whoopdeedoo flickr. That really isn’t the point, though.

Aside from the fact that these limits seem arbitrary, it gets right to the heart of what people don’t like about the new Yahooized flickr. Instead of “getting” social media / social networks, they seem to be buying their way into it so they can mould it to their comfort.

The whole point of digg, del.icio.us, flickr, zooomr, and all the other great social sites that we all use on a day to day basis is exactly that. Social. It’s that warm fuzzy feeling when you wake up in the morning, flip on flickr, and see a whole bunch of photos from one of your contacts’ photos there waiting for you. You share interests, which is why you are sharing photos. Or you may even enjoy someone’s body of work, which is another reason to share photos.

You’re starting to get the picture.

Yahoo’s limits seem artificial for flickr. I can’t think of one practical reason for the 75 tag limit. If you want to say it lessens server load, I’ll laugh. Server load is not an issue for flickr or it would crumble under the weight of serving millions upon millions of photos every day while at the same time allowing them to be blogged elsewhere on flickr’s dime. Yahoo has bandwidth and servers galore, folks.

Yahoo also has a desperate need to log you into Yahoo, which is why they’ve finally announced they’re going to be locking you out of flickr unless you merge your old account with your Yahoo account. I’m already not liking where this is going, and it gets progressively worse from there because if you have a private account for sharing with family, and a public account for participating in the service, you now have to have multiple Yahoo accounts to do that.

By now you see how this gets exponentially worse as the possibilities unfold, and these aren’t hypotheticals; they’re real. People are having these issues as we speak, and are beginning to look for alternatives.

And frankly I don’t blame them.

flickr used to be folksy and comfy. Now it feels like Yahoo: cold, impersonal, and disinterested. Whereas the attitude used to be “good idea, we’ll try that,” it seems now to be more of a “this is how we do it, but you’ll love it if you just shut up and adapt.” Is that the way to run a site that’s supposedly one big happy family and community? I certainly think not, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.

They even changed the mobile site to an utter disaster and then required a Yahoo login to get to it.

Gee guys, thanks.

What burns me most is that I like flickr. A lot. I’ve tried a lot of services that didn’t measure up for one reason or another. The closest I can come to flickr is Zooomr, but (no disrespect intended to those guys) it just “feels” slow. Tabblo was cool because it had a flickr migrator and page layout features, but the problem was that the stupid thing only imported 24 of my 500 photos and left them at small sizes. No one has the UI down the way flickr does. That’s a fact.

But I’m no longer willing to sit around and watch Yahoo destroy flickr because it’s a loss leader. I don’t like what’s happened over there. I didn’t, for example, appreciate Stewart’s shit attitude when Thomas caught a yahoo employee redhanded editing the Wikipedia entry for Zooomr.

That’s the company flickr is a part of now.

Flickr is doing these crappy things all in the name of making things better. If Yahoo is so out of touch that they think mangling a service that so many people have come to love is a good thing in any way, then they’re truly a company I want no part of in any way.

I’ve already moved my photos to Smugmug. I’ll leave whatever is on flickr right where it is, but I won’t be renewing my pro membership this year. Hopefully lots of other people follow me. You don’t send a message to these folks by hanging around and dealing with stuff you don’t like.

Technorati Tags: flickr, yahoo, disaster

LOS ANGELES - Sidney Sheldon who won awards in three careers_ Broadway theater, movies, television_ then at age 50 turned to writing best-selling novels about stalwart women who triumph in a hostile world of ruthless men, has died. He was 89.

Sheldon died Tuesday afternoon of complications from pneumonia at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, said Warren Cowan, his publicist of more than 25 years. His wife Alexandra and his daughter, author Mary Sheldon, were by his side.

Rest in peace Mr. Sheldon…

He was one of my favorite authors. As my mom called him her “favorite dirty old man.”

Technorati Tags: sidney sheldon

Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon’s scandal- shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America’s history, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday. He was 93.

“My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age,” Mrs. Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband’s office in Rancho Mirage. “His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country.”

The statement did not say where Ford died or list a cause of death. Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments _ including an angioplasty _ in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

He was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.

via Breitbart

Technorati Tags: gerald ford, sad

Diggnation has fallen down into a lot of “dude” and “wtf?”

Sorry guys. I just listened for the first time after a long time not listening, and I truly feel like I missed nothing.

Dude… Wtf?

Technorati Tags: diggnation, digg, kevin rose, alex albrecht

(CBS 3) PHILADELPHIA Police said a teen is fighting for his life and another is under arrest following a shooting outside a recently opened movie theater in North Philadelphia.

Authorities said a 17-year-old male was arrested Thursday in connection to the shooting of a 16-year-old male outside the Pearl Theater near Broad Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue one block away from campus of Temple University.

The victim, identified as Kyle McCreary, was rushed to Hahnemann University Hospital with a gunshot wound to the groin and remains in critical condition.

“There were roughly six gunshots, basically it was commotion, everyone started to get scared and run,” said neighbor Jeff Thomas.

Police believe the shooting was in retaliation against one group of teens that had been bullying another.

Jesus Christ…

The violence upset neighbors who were thrilled when the new entertainment center opened several days ago. The $100-million complex is the first new movie house in North Philadelphia in 60 years.

And now you know why…

Technorati Tags: philadelphia, guns, violence, sad

Technorati Tags: philadelphia, guns, violence, sad

One of the true “good guys” in the tech news business is no longer with us. James Kim’s body was found today after he and his family were missing for 9 days. His wife and two daughters were found two days ago in their abandoned car.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Kim family.

It’s truly a great loss.

Okay. Not that the guy wasn’t a sick puppy (no pun intended, I swear), but can you really, in your heart of hearts, tell me you would you do this to your husband (or wife if the roles were reversed)?

Pierce County prosecutors say 26-year-old Michael Patrick McPhail was caught by his wife on Wednesday night having intercourse on the back porch with their four-year-old female pit bull terrier.

The wife took photos with a cell phone and called police.

Okay. Let’s for a minute assume this happens to you. Would you honestly report your husband and have him sent to jail or would you keep it in the family and warn him that the next time he pulls a stunt like this you’d cut his jewels off?

I can only assume their marriage was crap, she wasn’t putting out, he sought some elsewhere, and she got jealous.

Or maybe he just liked it doggie-style.

Either way, there’s only one bitch in this story and it wasn’t the 4 year old that got boinked on the porch.

via Fark

Technorati Tags: dog sex, doggie style