Category: Random News

John Adair pointed out this article about what is probably the worst terms-of-service agreement ever.

Why the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum is so concerned about their site is beyond me. Among the gems in this 21,000 word opus are:

“You agree that your use of this website is irrefutable acknowledgment by you that you have read, understood, and agreed to each and every term and provision of this User Agreement . . . .”
“You stipulate, warrant and agree that you will not . . . challenge or dispute validity of our copyright.”
“[Y]ou should print a paper copy of this User Agreement . . . .”
“You are warned that computer viruses can be transmitted via e-mail, so the recipient of any e-mail should check it and any attachments for the presence of viruses.”
“Telephone calls placed in disregard of the foregoing will be charged at two hundred fifty dollars per telephone call.”
“Additionally, in the event that your actions in violation of this User Agreement result in our being deprived of our exclusive rights . . . you agree to pay us liquidated damages in the amount of five million U.S. dollars . . . .”

I’m put in mind of the SNL commercial for Happy Fun Ball®: “Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball®.”

Saw HGO’s production of Jenufa last night. Powerful. Glorious music. Fine singing and acting. Followed it up with midnight showing of Blazing Saddles at River Oaks. Hilarious. A comedy classic.

Some people might see a dichotomy…I saw two worthwhile shows.

RLOS had a Super Bowl party over here this evening. Here are our conclusions:

Best Hat Wearing: Jerome with the pointy Soviet hat
Worst Hat Wearing: John and Elizabeth who refused
Most Appropriate Hat (and Best Hat Refusenik who switched): Lauren Holmes with the deerstalker
Best Dancing: Panther receivers
Best Commercials: 7-Up Delivery Truck, Lays Fight to the Death?, Budweiser Clydesdale Donkey, Pepsi Purple Haze
Worst Commercial: Most of the rest
Most Replayed Moment: Justin Timberlake ripping off Janet Jackson’s clothes (yes, it was planned; she was wearing a pastie and it was hinted at beforehand.
Best Entree: Evan’s Enchiladas
Best Dessert: Vanilla Pudding!
Best Comment: Evan during halftime “Janet and her droogs.”
Best Distraction: Hit The Penguin (High Score: 587.6)
Best After-Game moment: Weird Al Videos

Any others, let me know.

For some reason this morning I started singing The Three Little Fishies song. I remember some old sitcom had an episode where one character was trying to remember how this song went. Someone told a third person that this person was crazy, and when the first person suddenly remembered “And they thwam and they thwam all over the dam,” the third person was very convinced. I want to say it was on WKRP in Cincinnatti, with Les Nessman the third person, but I really don’t know…anybody have a better recollection?

After the Pirates production meeting today, several of us were sitting around finishing up some stuff when I thought aloud it’d be cool to get a neat domain name for the group, since http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~rlos/ doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue like one of Gilbert’s lyrics. rlos.com, rlos.org and rlos.net were all taken, so we started brainstorming on a good alternative, and came up with hailpoetry.com. GoDaddy has a deal for $7.95 a year to register, so we got it set up for two years. It will probably just point to the space on ruf since that is already there and no need to incur hosting expeneses.

And we still need some basses!