Does this mean the wine business has “jumped the shark?”

Porn star hits it big as wine-maker

By Daniel Trotta
Wed Mar 22, 2:06 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) – It seemed like the perfect gimmick: a celebrity porn star would launch her own wine, with her alluring picture on the label.

Savanna Samson did just that, but when it received a score of 90 to 91 out of 100 by wine guru Robert Parker, the project became serious. It turns out Samson, the star of “The New Devil in Miss Jones,” has produced an exceptional wine, becoming the toast of two industries: wine-making and pornography.

I have no further comment.

Argentine president to country: “Eat less beef”

Via MSNBC Argentine president to country: Eat less beef

As prices rise carnivores endanger Nestor Kirchner’s anti-inflation fight
Updated: 7:28 a.m. ET March 16, 2006
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Argentines rank among the world’s biggest meat-eaters. But President Nestor Kirchner has told his carnivorous compatriots it’s time to consume less if beef prices continue to rise and threaten his campaign against inflation.

But isn’t that like shunning the tango or telling a soccer-mad nation to skip the World Cup?

Somehow this reminds me of Shrubbo’s “addicted to oil” comment.

On an side note, I’ve wanted to visit Argentina for a while now, and the cuisine – including excellent, relatively affordable beef – is a big part of that.

My kinda mistake!

From MSNBC:
Norway, where beer flows instead of water

Woman pleasantly surprised when alcohol comes through kitchen faucet
REUTERS Updated: 6:36 p.m. ET March 13, 2006

OSLO, Norway – A woman thought she was in heaven when beer instead of water flowed from the faucets in her apartment in west Norway.

“I turned on the tap to clean some knives and forks and beer came out,” Haldis Gundersen told Reuters from her home in Kristiansund, in west Norway. “We thought we were in heaven.”

[…]

It turned out that a worker in a bar two floors below had mixed up the pipes on Saturday evening, wrongly connecting a new barrel to a water pipe leading to Gundersen’s apartment. The bar got water in its beer taps.

Definitely one to file under “News of the Weird.”

I’ve got a new job.

I will be starting shortly at Guidewire, in San Mateo.

It won’t be for another few days (*) , but except on the level of exactly which day next week I start, plans are settled and I am looking forward to getting back to a relatively “crunchy” programming position; it seems like a very cool place. More details to follow later.

(* it’s Saturday as of when I’m writing this, and I have to go on Monday to either do Jury Duty or get it rescheduled having missed my original day due to an earlier interview somewhere else…)

The shortage of posts lately… (and a recommendation)

The shortage of posts lately has basically come down to three things:

1) I’ve been busy with the job-search.

2) My home page has been getting a lot of hits from my craigslist resume, and while I’m too lazy to look through the referers, I have to assume some of them are coming here. I don’t feel comfortable blogging about my job search when prospective employers might be reading here.

3) I’ve been kind of reluctant to take up either too much fun stuff, or anything too controversial politically, because it might seem unprofessional. Now, I grant, pretty much this entire blog is “unprofessional,” and it’s unlikely I’d get hired someplace too hung up on such things. I have no idea if political opinions a “protected category,” but I suppose it’s a moot point, since I pretty well broadcast being some variety of liberal/leftist here. But in any case it’s a point of first impressions, and I’d like to avoid making a bad one.

That said, I have been having SOME fun lately, and two of them merit a quick note here.

First, I discovered Questionable Content last night via Steve Jackson’s recommendation in the Daily Illuminator a few days ago. He described it as a “a modern-day romantic comedy,” but I’d call it Soap Opera for the 20-something set. Without any spoilers, if you’re a Robotech fan, think about the Lisa-Rick-Minmei triangle sans any of the action or sci-fi elements (except a single few non-giant robots, one of them taking the obligatory talking-animal role.)

If you check it out, do yourself a favor and start from the beginning; the art does take a while to evolve, but the character development is the fun part – there aren’t nearly the same sort of random digressive plotlines or degree of geeky weirdness that Sluggy Freelance or GOATS have, so I’d imagine it would be hard to truly pick up from the middle.

One warning: there is some minor profanity at times, so depending on your sense of propriety it may not be work safe.

Second, the link I’ve had for a while for the Space Moose mirror seems to have died; fortunately, there are now several findable on google, one of which at “spacemoose.almostdead.net” had a cool URL and appears to have dropped the substitution of the author’s name with a weird one that the old DrunkAndDisorderly site did. While Space Moose uses quite a bit of profanity (and very frequent attempts to be offensive, with or without profanity), it’s really funny most of the time. Do consider yourself warned before following the link, though.

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