That’s pretty much all I wanted to say.

Craigslist.com is a WONDERFUL website that in my personal opinion kicks the arse out of corporate-america’s biggest garage sale that is ebay. I went there the other day looking for a new (used) car. Having said that I must now say that it is the secret lair for scam artists, especially ones that aren’t very good at it. Read the following email I was sent and tell me who in their right mind would respond to this nonsense.

Hello,

As I told you in my first e-mail, I have some personal problems and I can’t manage the sale so I prearranged the deal with MoneyBookers and my
presence isn’t necessary. The car is in their possession
ready for delivery.I also made a photobucket album so you can see more
pictures (http://s523.photobucket.com/albums/w356/patrickrathburn/) You have
5 days to test and inspect the car. So if you want to make this deal I
need the following details from you: full name and address
shipping address
phone # After I will have all this details I will forward them to
MoneyBookers and I will proceed the order. MoneyBookers will contact you with
all the details that you need to complete this deal and also to see
that i am covered by them and that I am legit seller. Waiting your
email with the requested details.
Regards!!

Well, Mr. Patrick Rathburn it appears you are the worst scam artist of all time. Although I’m not sure how else you were planning on getting my money I sure hope you didnt expect me just to send it to some sketchy web site without ever seeing the damn car. And why would you need my address?? Lame.

Turns out that this car was posted all over the United States for sale, a simple google search showed that. Dumbass. So I told him I reported him and that I was depressed that he couldn’t have done any better to get my money. Criminals suck these days, wheres the Joker when you need him?

P.s. if you went to that link you will have found that yes it was a BMW and yes I really want one.

First let’s address the big ass white elephant. The girlfriend dragged me to the musical turned movie masacre.

The Good
Meryl Streep is comparable to the King Midas of the movie industry in that she turns the movies she touches into gold. Unfortunately the rest of the cast has to form the rest of the movie and sometimes they fail miserably. But Meryl Streep was great in this film, as always. I also liked the “Mean Girl” Amanda Seyfried who played Sophie, the main character. She’s won a couple of awards and is really going to come into her own in the near future I think. Look for her in Diablo Cody’s (Juno) new film Jennifer’s Body to be released in 2009.

Mamma Mia lived up to its musical nature and it was pretty important that they get the tunes right, and I feel like they did a pretty good job with the exception of one abomination that I’ll talk about in the ‘ugly’ section below…

The Bad

Dominic Cooper, the fiance… bleh. He just got casted because of his accent and his pretty boy exotic look to match the damn island. They could have done better on getting an actual actor. His chest-revealing shirts confused me because he wasn’t greek/hispanic at all- he was just living in Greece. Bottom line, I didn’t like him.

In addition, I felt like perhaps some of the directing may have been at fault and after a little fact check I’ve found that the director, Phyllida Lloyd had last directedGloriana in 2000 with little other experience in the motion picture business. It seems she had major opera experience so I’m assuming why thats why she directed.

The Ugly

Pierce Brosnan (former James Bond). If you’ve seen the movie you need not read any further. If you haven’t be warned that Mr. Bond is basically emasculated in his singing roles and has forever sealed any chance of ever being in such a role again. Ever. He was called, in-movie, a “middle-aged menopausal man” and that’s exactly the camio description he needed for taking on this role. I’m disappointed; stick with being a faux-badass Pierce.

We’re 14 days away from the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics and Beijing is still smog covered, though the monumental buildings are finished, athletes are wrapping up their training, and the performers are doing their final dress rehearsals. Being the avid Olympics follower that I am, I’ve compiled a list of links that are interesting/informative:

Events
First and foremost, the schedule of events/finals/cermonies can be found here. My favorites and probably the most popular are the Swimming, Track, and the less popular Hockey events. Michael Phelps aims to break several Olympic and World records in swimming so watch the events he’s participating in.

New Buildings/Venues
Here’s a Reuters article on the new venues that were built in Beijing especially for the Olympics, of which the only one I’m thrilled about is the Central China TV Building that a picture of can be found here. The aquatics center is awkward looking and the “Bird’s Nest” looks like an accidental pile of steel and crap.

Photos
Here’s a link to a photo gallery provided by the Olympics. There’s a couple interesting shots in there you may be interested in.

That’s about it for now. Have fun.

Today Chelsea F.C. and Manchester United competed in the first ever all-English Champions League final in a Moscow. Oddly, the game started at almost 11:00p local Moscow time because the majority of TV viewers were in western Europe 3 hours behind making this the first ever Champions League final scheduled over two days. The first half produced two goals, one for each side, with the Manchester goal coming from none other than Cristiano Ronaldo himself on a brilliant header and the Chelsea Goal a product of a Frank Lampard dink past the keeper. In the second half, nothing to write home about occurred offensively, but conversely the defense for both sides was truly top of the line, leaving the game tied and sending it to extra time.

In the second extra time, Chelsea striker Didier Drogba received a red card for a slap to the face he gave to one of the United players. The card rendered Drogba ineligible to compete in the penalty shootout that would occur and thus hurt Chelsea. After 120+ minutes of play Manchester United and Chelsea F.C. went to a penalty shootout to decide the 2008 Champions League final. John Terry, another Chelsea player, was chosen to take the 5th and what would be final penalty kick to decide the match. As he cocked his leg to kick his plant foot slipped a bit and caused his shot to barely miss the right post and causing a 6th PK for both teams. Manchester United keeper Johann Van Der Sar stopped Chelsea’s 7th penalty kick and was immediately surrounding by his teammates in jubilation for their victory of Europe’s version of the Super Bowl.

John McCain appeared on Jon Stewart’s show tonight and honestly, despite all the politicking that necessarily occurred, I gained some respect for the old Senator. He has a sense of humor that I hadn’t realized, considering he’s a war mongering 90-year-old politician. I suppose when you’re on Jon Stewart you have to have some sort of sense of humor, though McCain really made me laugh a couple times. Props to the old man.

My views on John McCain are simple in the Presidential sense; I think he’s the best candidate. Sen. Barack Obama next and if you’ve read my posts on Hillary you know how she sits in my books. McCain is best when it comes to the economy, which is the primary concern to me right now. He’s twice as old as Obama and that’s simply experience that cannot be imitated. I don’t want to get into this too much because I get into enough debates day-to-day and I don’t need more online. Feel free to leave your opinion, however there’s no guarantee that I’ll get back to you about it.

Prediction Markets are the new thing for money makers. You get paid for correctly predicting worldly events before the happen; what could be easier? For example, if you are just so confident that God forsaken Hillary Clinton is going to win the Presidential nomination (not the race mind you, just the nomination) then you could buy a contract for 5 (at the time of the article), or as it translates, 50 cents. When the time comes and the nomination is actually revealed, if you are right the contract pays 100, or 10 dollars. See how it works? So basically the going rate for a contract is the markets aggregate prediction of the probability that a certain event will occur- in this case 5% chance that Hillary Clinton will get the nomination.

You can bet on anything from Presidential races to Olympic city bids for 2016 to whether or not Elliot Spitzer will get indicted on felony charges before a certain date. I think this is a great way to make money especially if you’re an insider at one of these places. I’m assuming that insider trading laws from Sherman don’t apply to this sort of thing. If you’re with team Obama and he dies- go bet the farm before the news breaks. Whether or not that’s ethical is arguable but take it for what its worth. Not only is it a good way to make money, its a really interesting way to waste time.
Intrade.com is the prime example of such a market- real money traded here… be careful!

I said how long ago how there was absolutely not an iceberg’s chance in hell of Hillary Clinton getting the nomination. OK, so she got closer than I thought, but all I’m saying is, she pisses me off- she is probably the worst thing America could put in office. I’m ecstatic she didn’t get the nomination so now theres no chance of her ever being able to reign terror on this country all while being able to call her husband ‘First Laddie’ or the like. Alright enough ranting. Please, if you are a Clinton supporter, leave a comment so I can really hear what good reasons you may think you have for holding such an opinion; I’d love to hear them.

Hey everybody- this is a list of the software that I use every single day and more than likely couldn’t live without, or at least live comfortably without. Leave comments with the software that you use daily and/or experience with the ones I’ve mentioned below. Here they are:

Mozilla Thunderbird
For Email and RSS I haven’t found anything easier to use in one application. Thunderbird is cross-platform and works basically on any machine made after 1842. I like it because I can check all of my email addresses and stay up on all my RSS feeds in one simple user-friendly window. There’s good filtering and even several plug-ins that you can link to your other Mozilla applications (and others as well). Which brings me to my next one:

Mozilla Firefox
If you haven’t heard of Firefox you either live in a cave or just had severe amnesia set in. This is the best browser on the market period. Screw internet explorer 12 or whatever they’re on now. Great plug-ins, great toolbars, and very user friendly.

TiddlyWiki
I very recently started using this super-handy piece of code. HTML and Javascript in a single page stored on your hard drive is all it is but it’s super useful. You have to check it out because it’s rather hard to explain how it works in such little space- but basically I use it to keep notes and random things, as well as a to-do list and reminders to myself. Long story short: personal wiki = awesome.

Pidgin
I don’t know about you but I really got tired of having Google Talk, AIM, ICQ, and MSN all going at the same time (not to mention skype- but that’s a little different). Pidgin takes care of all of those, and many more, in one basic instant messaging application. Check it out.

Honorable Mentions
Skype Don’t really use it everyday because of lack of friends/family that use it- but I would if they did… so spread the word.
Sunbird Sure everything that mozilla makes is wonderful but enough is enough. No, actually I used this until I got a super-phone and then I switched my calendar-ing over to that instead. If you’re looking for a calendar for your computer, use Sunbird.
SciTE Awesome text editor for those of you that program. I use this alot actually but not quite enough to make my list. Another one that’s awesome for especially java is Eclipse.

Hopefully you got something useful out of that. I didn’t include any web applications (except for TiddlyWiki, kinda) but I must say theres a long list of those I use frequently as well. Another day maybe.