Month: June 2010

Find a hobby before you upgrade your iPhone to iOS4

Find a hobby before you upgrade your iPhone to iOS4

I just upgraded my iPhone 3G to the new OS today. I must admit that the new features (especially the ability to group apps together) is quite nice. I wish I could take advantage of the backgrounds but that doesn’t work for a 3G phone.

The biggest complaint on the entire process is that it took FOREVER to do the upgrade.  It took over 4 hours to do the backups, reflash the ROMs, and then re-sync the apps, movies and songs back to my phone

My biggest advice to anyone that is going to do this upgrade soon – take your time.  Plug it in, get it started, and then go do something else for several hours.

23 names that you may not know

23 names that you may not know

I picked this up over at CNN. Sorry to those good people for recreating their article here but it was funny and interesting enough for me to republish completely.

You know the characters, but you might not know their full names. Store these away for future trivia nights.

1. Did you know the Comic Book Guy on “The Simpsons” has a name? It’s Jeff Albertson. But that wasn’t the decision of creator Matt Groening.

“I was out of the room when [the writers] named him,” he told MTV in 2007. “In my mind, ‘Louis Lane’ was his name, and he was obsessed and tormented by Lois Lane.”

2. Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts. (Ken’s last name is Carson.)

3. Cap’n Crunch’s full name is Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch. His ship is the S.S. Guppy.

4. In the Peanuts comic strip, Peppermint Patty’s real name is Patricia Reichardt

5. Snuffleupagus has a first name — Aloysius. Want more Snuffleupagus trivia? In a Sesame Street scene that never aired, Snuffy’s parents announced they were separating. But in testing, children were too devastated by the news, so the idea was scrapped.

6. The Wizard of Oz rolls off the tongue a lot easier than the man behind the curtain’s full name, Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs. From Frank Baum’s Dorothy And the Wizard in Oz:

“It was a dreadfully long name to weigh down a poor innocent child, and one of the hardest lessons I ever learned was to remember my own name. When I grew up I just called myself O.Z., because the other initials were P-I-N-H-E-A-D; and that spelled ‘pinhead,’ which was a reflection on my intelligence.”

7. Mr. Clean has a seldom-used first name — “Veritably.” The name came from a “Give Mr. Clean a First Name” promotion in 1962.

8. In a deleted scene in the 2006 Curious George movie, The Man With the Yellow Hat’s full name was revealed as Ted Shackleford. (Since the scene was deleted, perhaps the last name doesn’t count.)

9. The real name of Monopoly mascot Rich Uncle Pennybags is Milburn Pennybags.

10. The policeman in Monopoly has a name, too. You can thank Officer Edgar Mallory the next time he sends you to jail.

11. On Night Court, Nostradamus Shannon was better known as Bull.

12. On Entourage, Turtle’s real name is Salvatore Assante.

13. Sesame Street’s resident game show host Guy Smiley was using a pseudonym all these years. He was born Bernie Liederkrantz.

14. The Michelin Man’s name is Bibendum.

15. On Gilligan’s Island, Jonas Grumby was simply called The Skipper.

16. The Professor was Roy Hinkley.

17. The unkempt Shaggy of Scooby-Doo fame has a rather proper real name — Norville Rogers.

18. The Pillsbury Doughboy’s name is Poppin’ Fresh. He has a wife, Poppie Fresh, and two kids, Popper and Bun Bun.

19. The patient in the classic game Operation is Cavity Sam.

20. The true identity of The Lone Ranger was John Reid.

21. MacGyver’s first name? Angus.

22 & 23. OK, these last two aren’t fictional, but just in case it comes up, Bono was born Paul David Hewson, and The Edge’s name is David Howell Evans.

Will Clinton take over as VP?

Will Clinton take over as VP?

A recent article on FoxNews suggests that Barack Hussein Obama should drop Vice President Joseph Biden from the ticket in 2012 and put Hillary Clinton in the job instead.

I don’t think she will do it.

She will stay Secretary of State for the balance of the first term. If BHO is re-elected, she will resign shortly into the second term and no one will blame her as the SecState job is brutal.  This will allow her to publish one more book and do the money-raising chicken-dinner circuit.  She will then run in 2016 to succeed BHO, taking credit for thegood that she did as SecState but distancing herself from BHO’s screwups.

If BHO would lose in 2012 , she would be even better positioned for ’16.

Also, dropping Biden in 2012 (unless he is sick) will be seen as intensely disloyal by the American voters.  No President has changed VPs for an election since FDR put Truman on the ticket.  Nixon ran through a couple VPs but that was because Agnew was even more crooked than Tricky Dick and even then it wasn’t for an election – it was mid-term and Agnew had to resign the position.

It would be near political suicide to switch VPs in the 21st century just based on politics. Even George W. Bush didn’t do it with Dick Cheney which would have been a good move for the party. Cheney had terrible numbers and was never a candidate for President in 2008. Putting a fresh face on the ticket would have allowed Bush to weasel out of some of his mistakes and would have setup a successor candidate (rather than the very limp and inadequate McCain).  For that matter, GWB could have put McCain on the ticket and given him a better standing to run for President with fewer competitors in the primary.

If Biden should become very ill, Clinton is the obvious choice for VP. I have nothing against Mr. Biden, so I don’t want anything bad to happen to him, but if for some reason he is faced with a life-threatening illness, Hillary will be the logical and politically-prudent choice for VP.

Biden is here to stay if he is healthy. Look for Clinton on the ticket in 2016.