FoxTrax Blog

Everyone drive safe over the weekend, and to those of you who won't be able to enjoy the three-day-holiday.

Nya nya nya.

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Labels: humor

A friend of a friend of a friend is in the Missouri National Guard, and was having a hard time deciphering an acronym that showed up in an e-mail. He scoured the manuals trying to figure out what this new acronym "ROFL" might stand for until someone kindly clued him in:

"Rolling On the Floor Laughing"

Not so much a military term, just another product of the instant message culture. And ROFL is just the tip of the iceberg--whole sub-dialects of English have emerged, ushered into existence by text and instant messaging and the need to save time/characters by abbreviating common phrases. New "words" emerge regularly--indeed, half the fun seems to be in guessing what some of the new acronyms might mean, and sometimes they can get a little bawdy. The letter "F" shows up quite often, but unlike the above example, it typically doesn't stand for "Floor".

This is proving to be problematic for the DMV, who try to avoid issuing plates that say rude or potentially offensive things. It seems the North Carolina DMV issued several plates that began with WTF (a very popular acronym, not at all new, standing for "What", "the", and... use your imagination) before someone's teenager let them in on the joke.

Of course the real problem for the DMV is that the language of text messages is ever-evolving. Something innocuous today might turn out to be horribly obscene in two years. And it's not enough to know what things mean, you have to also keep track of how popular they are, because it should be no surprise that an overwhelming number of 3-4 letter combinations are acronyms for something, often for several things.

For example, NASA, which we know as the "National Aeronautics and Space Administration", also stands for "National Auto Sport Association" and "North American Saxophone Alliance", and Space-NASA has been ubiquitous for decades. What about the wealth of acronyms that serve as short-hand for, I dunno, skinheads or call-girls? Most people wouldn't recognize those acronyms, but some people would, and they can be truly, deeply offensive. It's not a huge feat to imagine that these might slip through and be issued (accidentally or otherwise), and it's not much more of a leap to think that maybe a few already have.

Part of me wants to believe that anyone old enough to drive a vehicle is old enough to behave sensibly and maturely about the accidental possibility of unintended and obli1que references to obscenity. But it doesn't last long.

So the DMV is probably going to have to let things slide and learn responses like "you didn't think WTF was offensive when we issued you the plate". In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if we got another form to fill out that shifts liability from the issuer to the issue-ee, something to the effect of "My name is John McCain and I approve this license plate."

Either that, or we're going to start seeing more license plates with their characters seated letter-number-letter-number-letter-number.

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Labels: current events, humor

Here's a strange story coming out of New York City. The street performer known as the Naked Cowboy is suing M&M for trademark infringement. He plays his acoustic guitar in the Time Square wearing only a cowboy hat, boots, and underpants, and has become something of a New York icon.

Enough of an icon, in fact, that the Mars Corporation dressed a blue M&M up as him on a billboard and people got the joke. The problem is that the "Naked Cowboy" image has in fact been trademarked by Robert Burck, the street performer who created the persona. He's suing for $100 million in punitive damages.

That's a little steep, in my opinion. It's like, what, 400 gallons of gas (in New York)? In all seriousness, though, if M&M is going to use his likeness to sell their product, it stands to reason that he should be compensated, but if they had approached him about it and he had asked for $100 million, methinks that M&M would have gone a different route.

But I have one burning question. Actually, I have a lot of questions, but most of them are sarcasm and rhetoric. What I want to know is: how much money is he making as a street performer that he trademarked his appearance?

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888-779-8870

Labels: current events, humor

So this weekend Samsung released their new "Instinct", their computer-in-your-pocket answer to Apple's iPhone. They've had some amusing mock-trailers that have been running in movie theaters (which, between that and Honda's Navi commercials in theaters, is GPS the new Coke?). It's an entertaining spot: lots of explosions, and it manages to poke fun at movies, movie trailers, and product placement, all while explaining its features and instilling some name-recognition.

Problem is, it kept comparing itself to the iPhone. Rather than let it stand on it's merits, it essentially billed itself as "the other iPhone", and while there's nothing inherently wrong with that, it just goes to show who really owns the market for these sort of devices. Maybe if they'd only said it once.

Either way, seeing this commercial over the weekend while waiting for Get Smart to start has led me to one inevitable conclusion about Apple's next product line.

The iShoe.

FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
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866-686-2780

Labels: humor, movies, technology

GPS stands for Global Positioning System. But apparently it also stands for a lot of other things. So, courtesy of Wikipedia, here are a few of the other GPS's you might run across.

There's an Englsih Progressive Rock band GPS, which is derived from the last names of the three principal musicians: Govan, Payne, and Schellen.

A GPS could be a Gunner's Primary Sight on an M1 Tank

GPS also stands for GNAT Programming Studio, a programming development environment (IDE). Wait, GPS is a GNAT IDE? OMG!

Then there's Generalized Processor Sharing, a theoretical communications discipline that isn't actually possible. And speaking of not-quite-useful applications, there's the General Problem Solver GPS, a computer program designed to systematically solve puzzles like the Towers of Hanoi or find chess solutions. It turned out to be incapable to handling real world problems, but it eventually paved the way for future programs.

"gps" is a linux command, and GPs is often used to abbreviate "Gold Pieces" used as currency in some older video games.

Then there are a handful of schools that go by GPS. GPS Schools is an association of private boys' schools in New South Wales. Australia also has the Great Public Schools Association of Queensland Inc. There's the Greenvale Primary School, Arizona's Gilbert Public Schools, Chattanooga's Girls Preparatory School, and for you John Cusack fans out there: Michigan's Grosse Pointe South High School.

And lastly, GPS is the abbreviation for Fareed Zakaria's Global Public Square show on CNN.

Have a good weekend.

FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
Clever solutions for vehicle tracking
www.foxtrax-online.com
866-686-2780

Labels: GPS, humor

Found this courtesy of the Windsor Star. Ah, those wacky Canadian criminals.

In Leamington, Ontario, a funeral director went outside the funeral home to discover that his hearse had gone missing. Two men had stolen the six-month-old Buick while the service was going--the keys were inside.

Apparently the funeral staff were accustomed to leaving vehicles unattended for the 15-odd-minutes at the end of the service before the procession. And (because I know what your next question is) while the news article I read didn't state anything explicitly, I'm assuming that the body hadn't made it into the vehicle at the time of theft. Seriously though, what if there had been a body in there? Which leads to a whole series of bizarre questions: Do chop shops handle caskets? Would a criminal organization dispose of a body that they weren't responsible for? I digress.

The hearse was equipped with OnStar's GPS service, so the vehicle was quickly recovered and the thieves were apprehended. And that's a comfort, body or no. We here at FoxTrax are of the opinion that GPS technology, when properly used, can save lives. It's nice to think that it can save the dead as well.

Labels: current events, GPS, humor

The other night I watched There Will Be Blood, the 2007 film by P.T. Anderson that was up for Best Picture at the last Oscars. It stars Daniel Day-Lewis as an independent oil man and is based loosely on the 1927 book Oil! by Upton Sinclair. Very loosely. In fact, it retains practically none of the story, characters, or socialist underpinnings that would have been found in the original novel.

But if you're looking for a 3-hour film about an oil magnate and his deaf son that is wonderfully acted and beautifully shot, then accept no substitute.

Curiously, out of the entire movie, the most memorable bit comes towards the end, in which Day-Lewis's character is explaining (screaming about) how a particular piece of land has no oil left, even though it hasn't been drilled, because it has been drained via nearby operations in the surrounding lands. This culminates with the thundering delivery of the film's best-remembered line "I drink your milkshake."

This was a revelation for me, because I'd seen a number of T-shirts and other merch across the web emblazoned with that four-word phrase that, by itself, sounds rather stupid, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what it meant. If you type "I drink your milkshake" into Wikipedia, it takes you to the There Will Be Blood page, but it makes no effort to explain why unless you are willing to read through the entire plot synopsis.

So, while not a meme, per se, "IDYM" falls neatly into the category of Bizarre Redirects. It joins Blue Harvest, which was the covert shooting title of "Return of the Jedi". Consequently, if you go to www.blueharvest.com, you wind up at the official Star Wars website, which is downright confusing if you've heard something about "Blue Harvest" and are trying to find out more about it. The Wikipedia redirect used to be just as bad, but it's better now that there's a Family Guy special called "Blue Harvest," which clears a few things up.

"Bite the Wax Tadpole" is another great one. This refers to an extremely amusing story about the Coca-Cola company, which I'm not going to tell you. But if you have heard the phrase, which shows up in weird places every now and then (I think Dave Barry used it as a chapter heading once), and are curious about it, and enter that phrase into Wikipedia, you are re-directed to Coke without so much as a hint of what one has to do with the other. And the website bitethewaxtadpole.com brings up an Irish software firm (no help).

So, yeah, have fun figuring that one out over your lunch break!

Labels: humor, movies

(courtesy of icanhascheezburger.com)

Lolcats are one of those bizarre phenomena called memes.

A meme (in the modern context anyway) is something that spreads like wildfire across the internet for no apparent reason! Have you or someone you love recently opened a webpage only to be confronted with that awful Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up"? As anyone ever told you that all "your base" were "belong to us"? Has someone ever forwarded you a webpage of dancing hamsters? These are memes.

A bizarre side effect of the information age is the apparent need for people to share mindless, yet amusing, trifles with complete strangers.

Enter the LOLcat.

How, exactly, it occurred to anyone to write over pictures of cats using cutesy broken English and phrases like "gimme teh bukket" eludes me. But it's a big enough thing that you see it referenced on shirts, in pop culture, there are websites of lolcats, there are websites that parody lolcats, there's even a LOLCode programming language being developed that uses the bizarre sub-English prominent in LOLcat photos. Here's a snippet:

---

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
I HAS A VAR
GIMMEH VAR
IZ VAR BIGGER THAN 10?
 YARLY
  BTW this is true
  VISIBLE "BIG NUMBER!"
 NOWAI
  BTW this is false
  VISIBLE "LITTLE NUMBER!"
 KTHX
KTHXBYE

---

And once again, I sit back and thank my lucky stars that I'm lucky enough to live in a world where things that make no sense and have zero practical application can exist. Not only can they exist, they can propagate and flourish. Doesn't that make the world a far more interesting place?

kthxbye

Labels: GPS, humor, technology

There's a webcomic called xkcd that is pretty popular among the comp-sci crowd. It bills itself as a comic of "romance, sarcasm, math and language" and it frequently makes jokes that reference obscure bits of programming knowledge.

Also, it's populated entirely by stick figures.

The above entry is entitled "GeoHashing", and it's pretty funny if you know what a hash function is (hint: the image above is an example of a hash function), and if you know what geo-caching is. And if I didn't work in the world of GPS, I'd have no idea.

A geocache is a box (typically) with stuff in it. It is located at a specific place and the GPS coordinates will be available on a website. You go the location, find the box, take something out, and put something else in. There's often a log book you can sign. I'm told it's great fun with the kids, and there are supposedly hundreds of these in the country.

Or, if you are less interested in finding things and more interested in seeing a place you've never been--try the function above. Who knows where you'll end up?

Labels: GPS, humor

So the new Indiana Jones movie is coming out later this week, and the critical responses are coming in mixed, but more good than bad. The consensus seems to be that it's entertaining, if a bit clunky, but better than than Temple of Doom and not nearly as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark. The other critical consensus is this: it doesn't matter what the critics say.

Now, as a modest film buff, I will typically read multiple reviews of highly anticipated films, and the four or five that I've personally scanned all say the same thing: it doesn't matter what we think, people are going to see it anyway. One review even cited The Da Vinci Code, which was universally panned (and not just by critics--I have yet to meet anyone who genuinely enjoyed it) but still grossed $750 million in the box office. That's not really what you would call a successful film. That's a colossally successful film, even after the tens of millions spent on advertising. It was the second-highest grossing film of 2006 (following behind Star Wars Episode III), which is pretty impressive for a flick that is... well... bad.

So there's little doubt that Indy 4 will win back it's budget. And, it seems, you could film three hours of Harrison Ford in a fedora playing chess with Norman Mailer and fans would fork over $8.75 to see it, because you can sell a movie on hype and ride the wave of the film's predecessors or sources, especially if you have a substantial advertising budget.

On the other hand, a dismal Indy 4 would certainly hamper attempts to make an Indy 5, or any other film with Harrison Ford or Steven Spielberg or George Lucas... or Norman Mailer.

So it all comes out in the wash, I guess.

Labels: humor, movies

"To Whom it May Concern" has always been a pet peeve of mine. Not that there's anything wrong with it, per se, but I've never liked it. In my managerial days, a cover letter starting TWIMC always set me off on the wrong foot about the applicant. Not that I ever passed up a qualified candidate because of it--it just grates on me.

I realize that it's convention, like putting the www at the beginning of a URL. I also realize that my frustration is probably just a symptom of a broader neurosis, but follow me on this. People use it because "Dear Sir" is gender-biased and they haven't quite grased "Dear Sir or Madam" yet. But generally, if a cover-letter is well-written, the applicant has taken the initiative to find out exactly "whom it may concern" and addressed it to them personally. In my experience, 90% of the people who start a letter TWIMC would never use "Whom" under any other circumstances.

The problem, you see, is not that that TWIMC is bad writing. It's actually pretty decent writing, but it's tired, it's overused, it's cliche, and therefore it generally kicks off a letter that will embark upon a journey through many, many layers of awful prose before arriving at the inevitable KTHX BYE conclusion.

"To Whom It May Concern" is a harbinger of disappointment. It's that shiny new car that breaks down every 1000 miles. It's the promising athlete who breaks his ankle two games into the season. It's the Oscar-winner who goes on to make B-movies.

It's Cuba Gooding, Jr., really.

Labels: grammar, humor

My car likes to play pranks on me. It's a 91 Honda Prelude--a little boxy number with a manual transmission. And if I could go back in time to 1990 and have a word with the designers, I would point them towards the sunroof.

During a particularly heavy rain, water will leak through the sunroof and pool in the lip that holds the roof's cover. There it will sit and cool to approximately 33 degrees (or 1 degree Celsius) and wait, patiently, for me to back out of my parking space. Once the car has been tilted slightly, it will dump icy water on either my head and neck or in my lap.

It rained particularly hard last night, so I'm sopping wet.

This has only happened to me twice in the three months I've owned the car, but I nonetheless find myself starting the engine with trepidation after even a moderate shower. My car is waging a psychological war on me. And winning!

If I didn't absolutely need it to get to work I'd kick it to the curb. Honest. But for now, I will plan its comeuppance. Your day will come, 91 Prelude SE, your day will come. (Insert evil laughter here).

Labels: humor

It's never a good thing when your phone bill arrives in a box.

One of our testers was trying out software on his Blackberry. He has an unlimited data plan, and it occurs to me that this story will only work if I explain a couple of things about active GPS. Our trackers are constantly getting in touch with GPS satellites. They can, in theory, get a new position fix every 1-2 seconds. For most people, this is too much information--so rather than report every single position, we program trackers to report at different intervals depending on the speed and movement of the vehicle. That way, if a vehicle is driving a mile up the highway, you see 3 reports rather than, I dunno, 50.

And to whomever proofreads this, I swear, I'm advertising our service, not giving away trade secrets.

I digress. Since this tester of ours was, well, testing, he had the report frequency cranked all the way up so he could check out the data. So his Blackberry was sending data to our server every 1-2 seconds while he drove around making sure it worked. And even though he had an unlimited data plan, his carrier felt the need to itemize the activity of his phone.

And that's how his phone bill got to be 400 pages long.

That's right, we butcher forests to make sure our products are up to spec! Actually, I'm going to blame the cellphone carrier for this one. Do the math. Here's a 400-page-document (which is a novel to most people or a short story to Stephen King) devoted to a $40 unlimited data plan. In that case, every page addresses about $.10 worth of bill, which I doubt covers the costs of paper and postage (what with the rising costs of toner and gas), to say nothing of all those little data transfers.

So, perhaps, around page 50 or so, maybe the phone company could just put "et al", or ellipses or something.

Labels: humor

So the big story in entertainment news is that the opening of "Iron Man" may be eclipsed by the release of "Grand Theft Auto 4" this last Tuesday. That's right. There is a fear that people will be too busy playing the latest video game to go out and see the latest comic-book-turned-movie...

I just don't even know how to respond to that. Except to say that I saw "Iron Man" last night and was thoroughly entertained. You could do a lot worse for $8.75.

The phones have been busy today. Most callers fall into one of three categories: 1) they want more information about our product, 2) they have a question about an existing account, 3) they want to sell me toner. But once in a while I get a real doozy of a story; here are a couple of my favorites:

A woman's ex-boyfriend had installed a Tom-Tom in her car and she was afraid that he was stalking her from three states away. She wanted to know what could be done about it. I told her that I was pretty sure the Tom-Tom just did navigation, not data reporting, but that she was welcome to call their support line to verify it. Also, if you think you're being stalked, call the police. Instead of me.

Someone called wanting to know how small GPS devices were because he was interested in using GPS technology in an invention. I told him that you can find them as small as USB thumb drives, but he didn't know what that was... which is not a particularly firm footing from which to launch your career as a technology inventor, but whatever. The size of the device has a lot to do with the functionality you want to get out of it, but he wouldn't tell me any details because the idea hadn't been patented yet.

That wraps it up for me for the week. The Vista Sidebar Weather Gadget tells me that Webster Groves is currently 64-degrees and is being electrocuted (could the T-storm graphic be any more ominous?). Have a good weekend. And go see "Iron Man".

Labels: humor

I'm perpetually fascinated that the internet basically shuts down on weekends. I subscribe to a number of RSS feeds (you should too, actually, they're great--try it out right now, start with this site) and I routinely get over 100 feeds on a weekday. On a weekend, though? I'll get 12. For the whole weekend. It's kind of incredible.

I would assume that people would spend more time on the net Saturdays and Sundays than during the week, but it seems I'm completely wrong. People take the weekends to go out and have lives. People surf in the evenings because it's something to do for a couple of hours after work. Who'd have thunk it?

But I rarely get e-mails on the weekend, and no one ever seems to be on their messengers. This, of course, being when I have plenty of time to catch up, but no, it's been lively Monday through Friday and then it's dead once Saturday rolls around. But it's Monday again, so the internet is invigorated.

I just need to start frequenting sites that are across the dateline, that's all. Any good sites based out of Australia?

Labels: humor

So while driving in to work I stopped to get gas and saw a little box across the parking lot that said “Free Air” and this struck me as somewhat peculiar.

Why, for example, wasn’t air free to begin with? Isn’t “the air is free” one of those ubiquitous go-to examples in entry-level business classes? If you were to try and come up with something that was totally free, completely available, and absolutely necessary, the first thing you think of is “the air”. If you were in a political discussion and trying to find something ridiculous to tax for the an analogy, you’d say “that’s like taxing the air”. I would, anyway.

But maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe the point is not that the air is free, but that it should be free. Free air! Release it from its compressor-prison, into the vast open wild… or you tires. Air has rights too, you know.

Okay, I know I’ve completely dodged the point of the sign. It’s not the air that’s free so much as it’s the use of the gas station’s compressor that is free. Discounted from $.25, I suppose. But “Free use of our compressor” or even “Free compressed air” just doesn’t match the succinctness of “Free Air.”

Labels: humor

Happy Earth Day. We were planning a big Earth Day party, but Earth, it seems, is in a bit of a sour mood and has decided to take it out on the rest of us in the form of isolated thunderstorms. This Spring has more or less followed the same pattern: 1 day of sunny, 1 day of cloudy, 2 days of Genesis flood, repeat.

So we won’t be celebrating Earth Day this year so much as awkwardly acknowledging it at dinner. You know how it is. Actually, I was under the impression that Earth Day wasn’t a real holiday—just something tacked on by a committee that wanted to outdo Arbor Day. I don’t know anyone that genuinely celebrates either, other than Google I mean.

As it stands, Earth Day is more of an observance, kind of like Martin Luther King Day. Either you feel somewhat dejected for not getting the day off or somewhat guilty for getting the day off, because having a holiday to commemorate a murder just doesn’t seem very fitting. Although I must admit it sometimes occurs to me that we should start a petition for a John Lennon day—see if we can squeeze a little extra time off from December.

Or maybe I’m getting this all wrong. Maybe it’s not an environmental celebration, but a planetary one! Celebrate Earth, because it’s not nearly as hot as Mercury! Maybe we could set this perspective straight with a Jupiter Day or a Saturn Day. Who’s with me? Let’s start a Saturn Day and everyone (well, not everyone, but most people) should be off work on Saturn Day.

Saturn Day. Think about it.

Labels: humor