Tozai Todd

Japanese goblin shark.

So many good quotes in this:

“The sauce was sweeter than I expected, and that slowed me,” said Chestnut, who once ate 66 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes. “I couldn’t find my rhythm. And Kobayashi is a machine.”

and

Nerz insisted competitive eating is a legitimate sport, and Kobayashi and Chestnut are world-class athletes. “This is like Ali-Frazier, Federer-Nadal,” he said.

and

“Singapore rarely gets events like this so I think it’s good,” said Rachel Tan, a 21-year-old student. “It’s entertaining, but I also feel a little sick after watching that.”

It’s still disgusting.

Singapore devours first professional eating contest; Japanese eater chews up, spits out foe

“Everyone loves a cane.”

“It’s perfect cane weather.”

Goofus and Gallant.

Borders: Looks nice, but a pokey site with crap status checking. Oh, and if you want to cancel that order that hasn’t shipped yet, sorry, it’s just not possible. That’s order fulfillment, you know. Check our Returns Policy for some, you know, information.

Amazon: Looks adequate, but fast as hell. You want to cancel that order? No problem. Just log in, check your orders, and cancel it before it ships. Done and done. See you next time.

Update: The above still stands, but to be fair to Borders, they did ship the order after 2 days and they even honored a coupon code that backfired on them (instead of $5 off the whole purchase, it gave $5 off each item in the cart), and the books arrived as scheduled. If they could do anything to improve the experience, it would be:

• Work out the bugs in the website as quickly as possible, and add some caching or something to make pages load faster;
• If an order is going to take a couple of days to fulfill, in addition to sending an email confirming an order has been placed, send another one just letting me know that it is actually being processed. Better yet, work on getting the order processed within just a few hours. Don’t leave me hanging for two days wondering if you’re doing anything, especially when your site says an item is usually processed within 24 hours. That makes me feel lied to. At least keep me informed, but best to just follow through on the 24-hour expectation you created;
• Give me more control over the process. If I want to cancel some items or an entire order, let me do it. If it takes a couple of days for it to be processed anyway, there’s no technical reason not to let me. A business reason? Sure. But here’s an idea: See the above and work on faster fulfillment.

Carnegie Mellon and iTunes have two of the late Randy Pausch’s lectures available for free downloading. His Last Lecture did more to move me than most movies, or even most other people, and the thought of watching it again, or reading his book, this soon after his death still stings too much to actually do so. Save this one for later, forever.

Randy Pausch - Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams (in iTunes)

I swear, I think I remember watching this episode when it was on:

This is incredible. Seven and a half minutes devoted to one film and it’s clear they didn’t prepare too too much for talking about it. The whole thing feels honest. I love how low-key and bare bones the show feels. Video podcasters should take notes.

014/365 – 7.23.08: Family playtime, originally uploaded by tozaitodd.

The mirror is new, and has been a great investment so far. We love it, but not nearly as much as he does.

After seeing one too many photos of me looking like a shlub, I am instituting a new clothes policy for when I’m in public:

• If a shirt is meant to be tucked in (e.g., Oxford button-up), tuck it in for chrissakes.
• If a shirt is meant to be left out (e.g., any t-shirt), leave it out. Don’t be a dork.

When I’m home, anything goes. I’m also reserving exceptions for shirts that may be button-up but through years of love and wear, have clearly made the transition to something more casual.

Only one act in, but Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog is a lot of fun.

See also Jonathan Coulton’s Skullcrusher Mountain:

Words fail. Outrageous? F’ing ridiculous? Ludicrous? Nothing is adequate to describe this mess.

American Civil Liberties Union : Terrorist Watch List Hits One Million Names