So we haven't exactly discovered A.I. yet, but a computer is already ordering people around. A company called Hyperactive Technologies has a product that is used for kitchen production management, and now a fast-food chain is using it to order around its employees.

Zaxby's [a fast-food chain] has 330 counter-service chicken specialty restaurants. This artificially intelligent computer system not only takes orders, it gives them as well.

Hyperactive Bob makes use of different forms of robotics technology to help manage fast food restaurants:

• Sensing the environment: The system uses robotic vision to count the cars in the parking lot, gathers feedback from employees and collects point-of-sale information in real time.
• Artificial Intelligence: Hyperactive Bob analyzes historical and real-time data to learn about each restaurant individually. Hyperactive Technologies claims that HB is more accurate than most seasoned employees.
• Taking Charge: Hyperactive Bob uses touch screens to tell employees what to do. Employees are instructed how much of which foods to cook; when the food is ready, they tell HB.

So if the computer crashes, do the employees get the day off? I wouldn't want to work for a computer, especially if all I was getting was minimum wage. What if a sensor malfunctioned and it suddenly thought 800 cars just appeared in the parking lot and told the employees to throw everything they had stocked into the fryers? "Quick! Make 400 lbs. of fries!"

"I started punching the otter in the face which I felt really bad about because it's cute..." How could I resist posting this story?? Apparently a woman's dog was getting attacked by an otter, so she jumped in the water and started punching it to save her dog.

Leah Vanon watched in horror last week as an otter grabbed her Labrador retriever and began to pull it into the water in the Tampa Bay area community. "This one large otter ... came swimming across and before I knew it she ran up the embankment and grabbed Jasmine the lab by the snout and pulled her down into the canal," Vanon said.

She had seen otters behind her West Boca home a few times but never anything like this. Vanon jumped in the water and started pushing her 8-year-old lab up the embankment. Then her fox terrier, Wiley, jumped in. "The otter immediately starts going after him and goes after his snout and starts flipping him and dunking him and to drown him like they do to a fish. I started punching the otter in the face which I felt really bad about because it's cute and I didn't want to hurt it but it was killing my dog," Vanon said.

The otter finally backed off. The dogs had some cuts on their snouts but they'll recover. Wildlife experts say otters are very curious but would only attack if they felt threatened. They also say a mother with pups is extremely protective.

If I went by the official launch on August 9, 2006, it would actually be 5 more days. But I posted the first story on here on August 4th and I'm going with that. This site has hit the one-year mark, and it's time to celebrate!



The past year has seen 361 stories (including this one), resulting in an average 0.989 posts per day (so close!). Of those, the breakdown is as follows:

niraj: 245
dave: 108
junosand: 3
Panicle: 2
Kirat: 2

The Chronicles of Narnia Lazy Sunday story has about a quarter of the 40,000+ total story hits the site has seen. Dave and my riddle has amassed 8,029 visits and 78,955 pageviews.

Unfortunately yesterday I was forced to disable anonymous commenting since in the last week there were 4,000 spam comments that were caught by my spam filter. The spam was inflating traffic stats and causing a general slowdown, so anonymous commenting is disabled for the time being. I do plan to bring it back in some form, but in the meantime registered users can still post comments, and registration takes about 2 seconds.

This blog has also seen the creation of several handy tools like custom countdowns, a DVD price comparison tool, and a movie database tool (currently only catalouging my own collection, but I may look to expand this to registered users).

I don't think this blog is going to slowdown anytime soon. I like being able to have a place to find and put funny, crazy, and interesting stories from all over and hopefully you do too.

So what's up next for this site? I've heard rumors of *cough*a significant redesign*cough*. Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by.

This is fantastic news. According to an IGN article, there is going to be a new version of the game Rampage that will come out this year for Nintendo's new Wii console which debuts in the fall.

...today Midway announced that a Wii-enhanced build of Rampage: Total Destruction is in the works and set for release "this winter."

Rampage: Total Destruction for Wii will feature an additional 10 creatures over the previous games, upping the roster to some 40 beasties. Each will include individual super moves and exclusive combo attacks. Notable characters include George, Lizzie, Ralph, Sarah the Spider, Plucky the Chicken and Fifi the Rabid French Poodle. The game will also spotlight seven different city backdrops, from Chicago and Hong Kong to London, each with destructible environments. And finally, the version will boast improved visuals.

"We are extremely excited to be bringing the mayhem of Rampage: Total Destruction to the Nintendo Wii," said Steve Allison, chief marketing officer, Midway. "With updated graphics and even more extreme monsters, fans of this classic arcade series, as well as new players, will have more than a handful this winter."

Anyone that ever played arcade games (or the original NES version) knows this is a classic game, and this is going to be awesome. For those that don't know, Rampage was a pretty simple game where you are a monster that is basically destroying everything - buildings, cars, helicopters, etc. You could eat people, and had to avoid ingesting poison or clinging to an exploding building.


The original arcade classic (1986):




The new version:

Local6.com has a story about a guy that could face jail time for a message he left on the $10 check he sent the Berkley District Court for a parking violation.

The computer programmer [Robert Militzer] from Allen Park got the ticket May 29. When Militzer wrote the check to Berkley District Court, he scribbled on the memo line, "BULL (expletive) MONEY GRAB." That got Militzer an in-person court appearance -- on a contempt of court charge.

He's scheduled to go before a judge Wednesday, accompanied by an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who will argue Militzer's remark is protected by the First Amendment.

Militzer, 38, was ticketed for parking in front of a friend's house overnight. He said he obeyed signs prohibiting parking between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. during previous visits, but the signs weren't there the morning he was cited. "I thought they were gaming me, collecting fines without giving people a fair chance to avoid it," Militzer told The Detroit News. ...He added, "It let them know I felt they were being unfair."

Richard Eshman, Berkley's public safety director, said Militzer could have requested a hearing to argue against the ticket. "There's an avenue for protesting that kind of thing," he said. ACLU lawyer Elsa Shartsis said Militzer's "choice of words may not be the best, and it may offend some people, but it's not illegal."

This story's ridiculous. Does this also mean you can no longer write "for sexual favors" in the memo line of checks you write?

There's a hilarious story on The Denver Channel about how a waitress was carding a woman ordering a drink, and was given her own ID.

The waitress, a 22-year-old Lakewood, Ohio, woman, had reported her wallet stolen from a bar on July 9. Her driver's license and credit card were in the wallet. The credit card had already been used for $1,000 in illicit purchases, police said.

As the waitress called police, the woman apparently got suspicious and took off, according to police. She was identified by a friend as Maria Bergan, 23. Bergan was arrested at her home Saturday night and remains in the Westlake City Jail. She has been charged with identity theft and receiving stolen property.

The woman was already over 21! The best part of the article is the quote at the end: "Police Captain Guy Turner said the odds of something like that happening defy calculation."

This rant is inspired by 2 domains I have been interested in for some time now. Anyone that's been looking for a domain (something like www.mywebsite.com) knows how painful it can be if the name you want is already taken. And unless you're going for some totally bizzare name like www.kdlsjfsdak.com, odds are good the site you want is already taken. Why are so many sites taken? It's not actually all just website owners. Major domain registrars hold on to thousands of domains and try to sell them to you. Until someone buys them, they sit unused. But if you want one, you could have to pay hundreds of dollars to get it. Basically the whole thing is a free market where the domain is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. And the domain registrars are going to hold out to get the best price for the domain.



For the 2 domains I have been interested in, one expired recently. It would seem that since it expired, I should be able to get it, but it's not that simple. There's first a grace period (30 days) where the original owner can renew the domain. Then there's an additional 45 days that the registrar is allowed to hold on to the domain, allowing them to try to auction it to the highest bidder. If the domain you're eyeing survives all of this, it finally gets released to the public.

So you can finally get it, right? Ok, that was rhetorical. The answer is no, or I wouldn't be ranting about this because that would have been logical and meant that I just had to be patient for 75 days. But it gets better. The big registrars are constantly looking for dropped domain names, so they can buy them the second they become available to add to their domain portfolio and hold onto until they get a huge asking price for it. The more popular the domain, the more companies that are fighting to get the domain the second it expires. And these large companies have more resources than you or I, so we're SOL. Unless you pay a company that engages in this desparate grabbing. But since they're not the only ones doing it, there's no guarantee they can get what you want. Sweet. The second domain I want it one which is owned by one of these large companies, and they're asking for hundreds of dollars, so I get to watch it sit there unused.

I suppose if you have a boatload of cash or are trying to get a lucrative domain for a business this whole thing won't really bother you much, but for the individuals trying to grab domains, it's a huge pain in the ass. On top of which the procedures change frequently...the 45 days of holding by a registrar was a recent change.

This person has waaaaaay too much time on their hands. But this is absolutely incredible.

And here's another funny video about a gas station prank:

There's an article about how grocery stores are losing potential revenue through self-checkouts. It's because without having to stand around waiting for someone to scan all your crap, you're not as tempted to buy impulse items like magazines and candy.

That's the upshot of research being released tomorrow by IHL Consulting Group in Franklin, Tenn., which provides market analysis to the retail industry and its IT vendors. According to IHL, consumers report buying junk food, supermarket tabloids and the like 45% less frequently while scanning their own purchases than when checking out the old-fashioned way.

"Retailers are being forced to rethink their merchandising at the front end as they deploy self-checkout systems," says IHL President Greg Buzek in a press release. "The impulse displays have not caught up to this new technology. By definition these are impulse items – thus they must engage the senses. Retailers such as Meijer and Kroger have adjusted by offering items such as rotisserie chickens and fresh baked breads to rely more on the sense of smell to drive sales rather than simply visuals when trapped in a staffed lane."

I think the study doesn't tell you much though. The real question is how that 45% less frequent purchase in self-checkout stacks up against more impulse buying in the regular lanes, but also takes into account the cost of the cashier's wages. It may only be $8 an hour, but I gotta think that that would tip the balance at least a little bit. Especially if there's a second person bagging...then that's double wages!

One idea could be extending the racks of impulse items past the start of the self-checkouts, since usually you have to wait in a line that starts further back if they're all occupied.

Governor Rod Blagojevich just signed a law that will allow Chicago residents to take home unfinished wine from a restaurant.

Restaurants will have to seal the partially consumed bottles of wine securely in tamper-proof bags that would remain sealed during the trip home. If the customer were to be pulled over by a police officer, the sealed bottle of wine would not be considered an illegal open container. The restaurant must also give the patron a dated receipt for the bottle, which is intended to prevent people from carrying the bags in their car and sealing up open bottles of wine during a traffic stop.

"I think a lot of times, when people spend a lot of money for a bottle of wine, they feel compelled to finish it, because they can't take it home," said state Sen. John Cullerton (D-Chicago).

The law won't go into effect until January 1st, so don't go reverse BYO'ing just yet.