Triscribe

Super Bowl’s coming. Yes, there’s football, there’s “Survivor” (coming after the football) and there are the ads in between. Hmm… Hopefully this year’s Super Bowl’s ads will be interesting; I recall not being particularly thrilled by last year’s.

The other day, I finally saw the latest Priceline ad, the one YC referred in his commentary (I think I’ve linked it correctly). Amusing!

Ad’s summary: Priceline executives are trying to bring excite back to Priceline.com. Actor William Shatner is brought into a meeting with them; they tell him that they’re taking Priceline in a new direction. “My Priceline?!” says Shatner. Said executives reassure him that it’s still Priceline, still name your own price and all that, but more; so, Shatner’s no longer in the equation? “But, who can replace ME?” says Shatner. Leonard Nimoy emerges, “Hi, Bill. Let’s do lunch.” Shatner looks up, “Hi, Len. Sure. Lunch. What? Wait. Len?!” Nimoy, the new Priceline man? Hmm. Only Spock would do in Kirk. I loved the interplay; and, Nimoy and Shatner seemed like they were having way too much fun. And, yep, Shatner’s still one scary man.

Check out Slate.com’s latest “Ad Report”: scribe Seth Stevenson reviews the Linux ads – the ones with the weird platinum little boy (Linux himself) loading up info from such wise sorts as Penny Marshall (huh? how is she wise?); Henry Louis Gates (which is cool, since it’s not often that a professor gets to be in a mainstream commercial and outside of PBS or Sunday morning news shows); and others like Muhammed Ali. The latest Linux ad has the little boy inserted in weird black/white colored photos or whatnot. Apparently, they’re not just Linux ads; they’re IBM’s way of selling the brandname on CEO’s and other such types to irritate Microsoft or something. Stevenson thinks they’re cool ads. The first one was interesting to me; the latest ones looks surreal – just my opinion. Take it or leave it. I liked the Slate article, all in all.

Ctrl-Alt-Del Inventor To Retire From IBM (Slashdot)

Dr. David Bradley, leader of the original IBM PC engineering team and creator of the “CTRL-ALT-DEL” interrupt key combo, is retiring from IBM to teach. He didn’t really place much importance to CTRL-ALT-DEL, thinking that only programmers would have any real need to use it. Little did he know that it would become ubiquious (for better or worse) in operating Microsoft products. It’s used for getting out of stuck or “blue screen” situations, logging into a multiple users system, and showing active programs and CPU usage. The technical and historical reasons for the key combo’s versatility are at this web site, but basically it’s the only keypress that can’t be paused or interrupted by something else the computer’s doing (although in practice, I’ve managed some real doozies ).

NY Times’ Quotation of the day:

“We are about to embark on what is arguably the coolest geologic field trip in history.”
DR. STEVEN W. SQUYRES, the Mars mission’s principal science investigator.

See also corresponding article. I wouldn’t think that the words “cool” and “geologic field trip” would go together, but Mars is a different world, after all.

I was actually watching a little “Smallville” tonight. Could it be – a hint of Batman – is the character making an appearance? (my favorite superhero anyway)….

The NYC snow texture was something like those Dunkin’ Donut white powder doughnut – fluffy and crumbly. On unshoveled sidewalks in Brooklyn this morning, it was ankle deep. Not that bad a commute though. In Manhattan, it’s slushy muck, with the sidewalks looking nothing like it is in Brooklyn.