If you're not watching 24 on Fox, you need to start. One of the best shows on TV just started Season 5 last night with 2 hours, and another 2 hours air tonight (7pm central). After that it's back to its one hour a week schedule. If you think "But I missed several (or all) previous seasons, so I won't know what's going on," that's not really true. You'll miss little things here or there, but it's easy to figure it out pretty quickly. The best part of the show is there's always something new grabbing you, the past is usually just backstory. So what are you waiting for?

dave submitted a CourtTV.com story about a family suing Benihana.

A shrimp a hibachi chef tossed at a man eating at a Japanese steakhouse ultimately led to the diner's death, his family claims in a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit against the restaurant chain Benihana.

Jerry Colaitis wrenched his neck when he ducked to avoid the shrimp in the chain's Munsey Park restaurant, attorney Andre Ferenzo said in opening statements Wednesday. Months after the January 2001 incident, the 43-year-old Long Island man died from complications caused by neck surgery he required afterward, the lawyer said.

Benihana lawyer Charles Connick said it was unlikely a chef who works for tips would toss food at customers after being asked not to, as Ferenzo claimed. Even if that happened, Connick added, the cause of Colaitis' death was an infection or neck injury unrelated to the shrimp.

Benihana chefs mix dining with entertainment as they grill Japanese food in front of patrons. Ferenzo said some of them have become more daring in recent years, but Connick said customers enjoy the experience.

When will these frivolous and stupid lawsuits end? It's not like they threw a sword at the guy. Benihana should countersue, saying the guy was a moron for choosing death over getting hit by some shrimp.

dave submitted a Financial Times article about how Alex Tew earned $1 million in under 6 months as a result of the insanely successful www.milliondollarhomepage.com, which sold ad space at a dollar per pixel (in increments of 100 pixels).

On Wednesday Alex Tew, a 21-year-old entrepreneur from Wiltshire, sold the final 1,000 pixels on his site for $38,100 on eBay auction – a handsome increase on the starting price of $1,000 – reaching his goal of earning a million dollars. "I will confirm the sale in 24 hours when I’ve cashed the money," he told the Financial Times.

Mr Tew’s initial investment was £50 to buy web space and a domain name. He divided the blank homepage into 10,000 squares of 100 pixels each. Each pixel was worth $1, minimum purchase: $100.

The "million dollar homepage" expanded without an established brand name or target audience.

The site went live on August 26, 2005, and three days later Mr Tew sold his first 400 pixels. Through word of mouth, chain e-mails and ever-growing media coverage, the website built a name for itself and gained popularity and interest from web surfers.

Within a month Mr Tew had earned some £20,000 ($37,000) – "enough pixels to cover the entire cost of my forthcoming three years at university," Mr Tew said.

The site also led to several copycat sites, including the Million Penny Homepage and my favorite, the Zero Million Dollar Homepage (some humor from Google Blogoscoped).

The final 1,000 pixels were sold through an ebay auction, which at one point reached 6 million dollars. However, after some retracted bids and other fake or supposedly "erroneous" bids, the auction ended with a winning bid of $38,100.

There's a great site called Package Mapper that lets you enter your FedEx, UPS, or USPS tracking number, and then shows you where the package is on a Google Map, with markers for each place it stopped. As if tracking packages weren't fun enough already! And if you think that last statement was sarcastic, it really wasn't.



(Via Google Blogoscoped)

dave submitted an ABC article about a Texas town changing its name as part of a deal with DISH tv.

Back in the 1950s, Hot Springs, N.M., was renamed Truth or Consequences, N.M., after a popular quiz show. During the dot-com boom of 2000, Halfway, Ore., agreed to become Half.com for a year.

This week, Clark, Texas, morphed into DISH in exchange for a decade of free satellite television from the DISH Network for the town's 55 homes. Residents in Santa, Idaho, meanwhile, are weighing the pros and cons of changing to Secretsanta.com, Idaho.

Across the nation, small communities are being courted by large corporations who say renaming a town provides a marketing buzz that can't be bought in television ads. Though some worry about corporate America's increasing influence in local government, many towns seem eager to accept.

I'd say a decade of free satellite TV is worth changing the name of the town.

This rant is inspired by a violation I received yesterday while parked in the company parking lot. Apparently, they don't like when you're parked opposite to the flow of traffic in the one-way aisles with diagonal spaces. Even though it was because I was the first one to park in the further lot and it was empty, and I just pulled ahead to the next space since I was the first car in the row and therefore had an easy exit later. I didn't get in anybody's way or obstruct the aisle.

Here's some images from the fantastic Y can't park - a Flickr site whose purpose is to document the worst parking offenders in the Yahoo employee parking lot.


There's something about a parking lot that seems to render 20-30% of people completely inept. For these people, lines on the ground are nothing more than suggestions (maybe they appear squiggly to them?), compact spaces apply to anything smaller than a 747 - including Hummers and Escalades, and parking so that your neighbors have about an inch of space to squeeze into their cars is perfectly acceptable.

The Y Can't Park page does a good job of documenting most of these instances. Cars parked on curbs, striped lines, and fire lanes appear frequently. However these are not as bad as those who park on speed bumps and arrows directing traffic in the middle of the lane. While many of these pictures seem extreme, and may have been taken over a long period of time, I have seen too many of them too often to believe this is exclusive to the Yahoo parking lot. How do you get out of your parking spot when the adjacent car's side view mirror is directly behind yours?

To those that can't park, do us all a favor and get a scooter and park it in the bushes. As for me, I hope I continue to get penalized for increasing my own convenience while not decreasing anyone else's.

You read right. If a senator gets his way, the state of Missouri will not be allowed to sell beer colder than 60 degrees Fahrenheit (AP article). Why? Because of a 5th grader:

A state senator wants to force Missouri stores to sell warm beer. Under a bill by Sen. Bill Alter, grocery and convenience stores would risk losing their liquor licenses if they sold beer colder than 60 degrees. The intent is to cut down on drunken driving by making it less tempting to pop open a beer after leaving the store.

"The only reason why beer would need to be cold is so that it can be consumed right away," Alter, who has been a police offer for more than 20 years, said Thursday.

He said the idea came from a fifth-grade student in Jefferson County who was participating in a program to teach elementary students about state government. He sought their suggestions for new laws and chose the cold beer ban from a list of the top three ideas.

"I thought it had the best chance at getting legislative attention," said Alter, R-High Ridge. "Plus, I think it's a good idea whether or not other people do."

Yep, the best chance of getting attention. Why would anyone ever want cold beer right away? ...I always make sure to get it several days ahead of time so I can buy it warm and then cool it in time for when I want it. This guy's an idiot.

The Enquirer has a great rundown of Chad Johnson's TD celebrations, and it also ranks them. I'm including the rankings here, click the article for their descriptions why. Previous article about his reindeer joke is here.

1. The Riverdance, Sept. 25 at Chicago

2. CPR, Oct. 9 at Jacksonville

3. The Proposal, Nov. 20 at Paul Brown Stadium vs. Indianapolis

4. Santa Chad, Dec. 24 at Paul Brown Stadium vs. Buffalo

5. The Putt, Nov. 27 at Paul Brown Stadium vs. Baltimore

6. Isaac Curtis Tribute, Sept. 18 at Paul Brown Stadium vs. Minnesota

7. Understated Chad, Dec. 18 at Detroit

8. Push-ups, Sept. 25 at Chicago

9. Delay of game, Oct. 16 at Tennessee

According to an AP article, a man stole diamond earrings donated for an auction, and valued at $4,600.

Police said the man was arrested after he brought the $4,600 earrings to Wimmer's Jewelry at the West Acres mall. Store owner Brad Wimmer said the man had the original box along with the description of the jewelry.

"It was all very goofy," Wimmer said. "The value of the earrings was right on the description."

Charges were pending against the 23-year-old suspect, from Ada, Minn.

Wimmer's had donated the earrings to the North Dakota State University Development Foundation for its silent auction. They apparently were stolen from a storage area sometime during the Oct. 21-22 event, said Jason Wohlman, a development foundation spokesman.

Yes, he tried to get an appraisal when the value of the earrings was in the auction description.

According to an NBC affiliate, 2 postal workers were caught after an undercover investigation into why hundreds of Netflix DVD's were going missing.

During a two-month period last year, hundreds of DVDs intended for Netflix customers in Lyons, Colorado never arrived at their destinations. Investigators say the problem stopped after postal inspectors caught two postal workers red handed.

In March, a Lyons Post Office employee, Gloria Flores of Longmont, was arrested when postal inspectors caught her with 6 stolen DVDs as she left work. Court records show at the time, inspectors thought Flores was responsible for all the thefts that were occurring.

But in April, Netflix again complained about thefts in the Lyons area. So the US Postal Inspectors went undercover. In late July, they started following a contract postal driver, Karen Durante of Loveland. In a court records obtained by 9News, the investigators write that they observed Durante leave the Lyons Post Office and drive away to a gas station about a mile away. There, they report that they watched her throw away 33 Netflix envelopes, and one Blockbuster envelope. None of the envelopes were addressed to her and all of them were empty.

In October, Flores pleaded guilty to a felony count of embezzlement for the 6 DVDs found in her car. She was given three years probation. Postal inspectors wouldn't comment on the status of Durante's case, saying it was still under investigation.