I recently took a short business trip to New York and used Hotwire to get a discount on a hotel.  With Hotwire.com you can select a general area, price, and number of stars and the hotel is a surprise (but discounted).  I have used it twice and landed some great deals on what I would call luxury rooms for under $100 a night. 

On my New York trip I ended up with a room at the Club Quarters, World Trade Center.  The cool thing about this room is that it overlooked the ongoing construction of the WTC memorial. Below are two pictures taken from my hotel window – the view is not pretty but it is interesting.

People Gathering at the makeshift memorial:

We all get those fine print emails about privacy from various places like eBay, Paypal etc..  Normally they basically say "your info is safe with us bla bla bla".  Then I recieved this spammish looking email below from Sprint today. 

If you read the fine print, it basically it says "we will use the infromation we collect about you to serve you targeted ads unless you tell us not to".  Then the hard part...  The link in the email is to an equally fine print mobile privacy policy with writen instructions on how to opt out (no opt out links or direct links to the opt out page on their site).  I followed the directions on my EVO - manually typing in the URL of the opt out page in my phone browser - but get a blank black page with a tiny Sprint logo.  I then tried to opt out online via my computer but could not find anywhere in my Sprint admin to opt out.

Perhaps they are or are not collecting my data.  They do throw out this one liner: "Sprint may not include you/your device in this Ads program. If you are not included, these options will not appear on your SprintWeb panel."  So either I don't know what I am doing or they are collecting my information.  If they are not collecting my information, but do so  a few weeks from now, will an opt out link suddenly appear in my Sprint account management center that I'll never see?

I am just trying to figure out what it really means.

How to get rid of that stubborn 10% that just won't do their part. 

I still love going to concerts as much as always.  During the last few month I saw 3 great concerts Kid Rock, Eminem, Jay-Z, and James.  Over the years I have definitely decided how close you get has a big effect on how much I like the concert.  The Concerts where I was up front are always clearly and fondly remembered for years while concerts where I have crappy seats are quickly forgotten.  Now that there are ways to get top notch seats for just about any concert I don't go unless the seats are great (or someone else is in charge of the ticket buying and I am stuck).  

The latest concert we saw was James at the small Royal Oak music theater.  James has alway a band that was a lucky break away from making it big, so few people are lucky enough to know there music -  which makes good seats easy.

Guess which concert we had the better view..

James

Eminem/Jay-Z

Good time had by all at James:

The best seats I ever had were Row 1 isle for David Byrne. Best show ever.  Here is a video I took during the show:

I spend many a night hanging out at Cass Corridor punk clubs back in the day.

Here are some great "how to" videos on dealing with snarky web developer (always remember, you are better then them and they work for you)   :)

Part One - The Negotiation

Part Two - Out of Scope

Part Three - More Work

Enjoy!

Quote from Dr. Evil from his therapy session with his son Scott Evil:

"The details of my life are quite inconsequential... very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum... it's breathtaking- I highly suggest you try it.

Happy Fathers day to all dads!

I was reading this Gizmodo article about the new Nintendo 3DS and this "super mario" 3d picture made me do a double take.  Are you seeing what I am?