Sunburn Art

Have you ever been sunburned? Did you find your exposed areas a deep red color, itching badly with your skin peeling off?

Graham Plumb, got his backside sunburned, and instead of suffering in silence, he took his peeled skin and put together a map of the world. I saw it and it looks very cool, but if you are easily grossed out, don't see it.

You can find the map here.

Coffee, Starbucks, Lebanese Restaurant

I am impressed by Starbucks, not because of how good their coffee is, but in the way they package the whole experience. It starts with walking in Starbucks and being greeted by the Barrista. The warm colors and comfortable relaxing sofas tempt you to sink in them. The different Coffee selections have foreign names like Machiato, Latte, Frapuccino, cup sizes are in Italian. Ordering your coffee makes you feel like you are buying something exotic like a Lamborghini sports car or Bulgari jewellry.

You pay 1 KD (around $3) for your Latte and sit down to sip it, listening to the smooth jazz music being piped all over the Coffee shop.

Effectively, what you just bought was hot milk with coffee, which you could prepare at home by heating some milk and adding two spoons of Nescafe instant coffee, costing you around 100 fils (30 cents) or less.

I am not complaining, I still drink Starbucks and other coffees and happily pay the 1 KD or more for the experience. I am simply in awe by how they are able to sell me and others and we gladly come back for more. I thought no one else could beat those smart people at Starbucks.

Well, I had a heavy dinner at a Lebanese restaurant yesterday, after the dinner was over, the Lebanese waiter offered some sweets and white coffee (ahwa bayda). I never tried white coffee before. I thought it would be some light colored coffee beans from the green hills of Lebanon. The waiter came back with cups and a kettle. I poured the white coffee and what I got was flower scented hot water.

I thought no one could beat Starbucks in packaging and selling overpriced coffee, well I was wrong. Those ancient Phoenicians traders did. My hat off (or rather ghutra) to all the Lebanese. I will go again to that same Lebanese restaurant just to order white coffee.

Life and Death and XBox

Chopper dude's post - in loving memory - got me thinking about life and death. The wisdom I got from that post is live life to the fullest, don't hurt yourself, don't hurt anyone else and treasure good memories.

This Xbox banned ad sort of says that also:

What Year Do You Belong In?

You Belong in 1968

If you scored... 1950 - 1959: You're fun loving, romantic, and more than a little innocent. See you at the drive in! 1960 - 1969: You are a free spirit with a huge heart. Love, peace, and happiness rule - oh, and drugs too. 1970 - 1979: Bold and brash, you take life by the horns. Whether you're partying or protesting, you give it your all! 1980 - 1989: Wild, over the top, and just a little bit cheesy. You're colorful at night - and successful during the day. 1990 - 1999: With you anything goes! You're grunge one day, ghetto fabulous the next. It's all good!

What Year Do You Belong In?

Drugs? Does panadol count?

World's Best iPod utility - Introducing Artie

You filled your iPod with all your favorite music, all legal of course, no p2p downloads. If you bought your music from iPod's music store then you would get nice album art to go with your collection, but not all of us are that fortunate, so you settle for just seeing the song and artist's name.

Well, I proudly present to you, Artie, the best iPod utility I have ever used. Artie lets you select a group of songs from your iTunes and searches for the album art and automatically updates your music collection. You can find Artie here.

Artie is still a work in progress, don't worry it won't damage your iTunes music collection, it will only abort but you can always restart it. Another bug I found was that it cannot handle real long lists, so 50 songs at a time would be appropriate.

Enjoy.

Frogger

Tired of playing solitaire on your comp, I present to you frogger in flash.

Frogger is here.

Video Games save real lives

You are stuck to the screen, the world is in peril, you must save it from the evil slithering beasties as you get promoted from perilious level to level. Your palms are sweaty, you fingers are flying on the controls, you outmaneuver the opponent with a quick move to the right and a laser blast vaporizing it.

You awaken from your trance, look at your watch, 5 hours have passed. You wonder, what have you done with your life, 5 quality hours gone for a mere video game. You stretch your tense crouched muscles and sit up. Don't give up on video games yet, Video games can help cut surgical errors. According to the article:

The research involved 303 surgeons participating in a medical training course that included video games and was focussed on laparoscopic surgical procedures -- which use a tiny video camera and long, slender instruments inserted through small incisions. The study was conducted by Beth
Israel Medical Centre in New York City in conjunction with the National Institute on Media and the Family.

Doctors were measured on their performance of the "cobra rope" drill, a standard laparoscopic training exercise used to teach how to sew up an internal wound.

Researchers found that surgeons who played video games immediately before the drill completed it an average of 11 seconds faster than those who did not. Any errors committed during the training lengthened the time it took to complete the task -- indicating that faster finishers made fewer mistakes.

So play some more, you will be saving real lives soon.

Actor's Brother says "Climate change is the major challenge facing the world"

Richard Attenborough is famous for playing Ghandi and Chaplin among other movies. Everyone recognizes those two characters, Ghandi being the pacifist who managed to liberate India from the British and Chaplin the comedic tramp character that became popular during the movie industry's infancy.

Richard Attenborough has a younger brother called David who says that Climate change is the major challenge facing the world. Richard Attenborough did produce some nature programs for television and acted in a few minor unknown films.

I have two comments first about global warming and the second about minor actors stating major scientific conclusions.

Global warming, whether true or not is good for me as a Kuwaiti and Kuwait. Kuwait's intense summers have cooled down and are now bearable and our previous extremely short Winter and Autumn period are now much longer. Kuwait is getting rain showers as late as May which would have never happened 20 years ago and the dust storms are less intense. I can see more greenery in Kuwait when it was previously all sand and rocks. Our customer nations that buy our oil are experiencing severe winters and hotter summers, therefore increasing their demand for oil which helps us sell more oil and raises the price of oil because of increased demand.


If Global Warming is true, then we need more of it.

Now why do we listen to actors when they spout scientific truths, they do not have the knowledge, the research discipline or the complete facts. They make statements and we just digest them.

Anyway, have an excellent weekend.

Meatloaf - The Monster is Loose

Do you remember Meatloaf with his epic song, "I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)"? The song was great but it had to be shortened for Radio but you can get the full 9 minutes and more on the album. There was also an unforgettable beauty and the beast themed video, that amazed everyone. Meatloaf is known for Operatic songs and the Video was like a mini movie.

Meatloaf released 2 Albums from the Bat out of Hell Series, the first one being:



Bat out of Hell


Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell

Meatloaf is now working on a third album:



Bat out of Hell III: The Monster is loose.


I love the album covers. Coincidentally, the title track, "The Monster is loose", got leaked out on the Internet, and now the monster is really loose.

You can find "the monster is loose" track here, it is also on myspace and Meatloaf's site but I could not find it.

From Meatloaf's Web site,

Bat Out of Hell III is Meat Loaf’s long-awaited next installement to the most successful rock music series of all time, with the two previous albums selling a total of 45 million around the world! Bat Out of Hell, released in 1977 and produced by Todd Rundgren, is the third best-selling album of all time, with 30 million copies sold worldwide, featuring such Meat Loaf/Jim Steinman standards as “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth” and the show-stopping “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights.”

The Steinman-produced Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, which came out in 1993, sold more than 15 million, with the classic “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” earning Meat Loaf a Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Performance.

Bat Out of Hell III continues the epic saga in grand fashion, with contributions once again from Steinman and Rundgren, and produced by hitmaker Desmond Child. Bat Out of Hell III promises to mark the triumphant return of the Bat Out of Hell franchise, completing this legendary trilogy!"

What's Wrong with this Picture?

  


Click on the picture to see a bigger view, can you guess what's wrong with it?

How to Create an Awesome Logo

Gary Simon has an excellent tutorial on how to create an awesome logo. My blog logo is ok, but not awesome. I should follow his tutorial and rethink my logo (or lack of it), if it turns out awesome, you can expect to see the new Don Veto logo on T shirts, mugs and graffiti.

Hope it helps you also.

Who is your Daddy?

Here is a snippet from Chris Rock's Bigger & Blacker HBO special:

-Men!
-Women!


Men lie the most,
women tell the biggest lies.

Men, we lie all the time.
We lie so much, it's damn near a language.
It's like, to call a man out for lying...
is like playing basketball with a retarded kid
and calling him for double dribble.
You gotta let some shit slide.

Men, we lie all the time.

You know what a man's lie is like?
A man's lie is like, ''l was at Tony's house.

''I'm at Kenny's house.'' That's a man's lie.

A women's lie is like, ''lt's your baby.''

We've all heard that one.

-''It don't even look like me.''
-''He's got your hat.''


That's right. Who the biggest liars?
Women the biggest liars.


The point here is not who is the worst liar, but rather being told it's your baby when it isn't and then finding out you are not the biological father, What would the result be? Well someone in Australia did a research and the results are here.

Eurovision Song Contest

Parliament is gone, Stock Market is up, 5, 10, 25, 50, 666, forget all that.

Listen to some Eurovision Music, you can get them all here, MP3 and videos.

Da Vinci Code - Spoiler

I read the Da Vinci Code book a long time ago, it was mildly entertaining although it felt like reading a screenplay. Being a bestseller, Hollywood made a movie that has now been released. If you cannot wait for the movie, then here is the spoiler. Enjoy.

Time Management

25 - 10 - 5 - Whatever

A lot of Kuwaiti blogs are writing about wanting 5 electorate areas to avoid corruption, etc. etc. What was meant in corruption was the issue of selling votes.

Excuse my ignorance, but the problem is not in the number, the problem is with the voters selling their votes. Has anyone been reprimanded for selling his vote? Has a parliament member been removed from his seat for buying votes? Is it even illegal to do that?

When driving and we see a red traffic light, we all try to honor that red light and stop our cars, because if we did not, the camera would catch us, the policeman might take our driver's license away or we would face a fine or a nasty accident. That proves that we can follow a few simple rules if there was a punitive incentive to do so.

If you have a misbehaving child and he does something wrong, do you scold the child and send him to his room and make sure he does not repeat that mistake, or do you change district?

Maybe, the full story is not being told about the significance of 25, 10, or 5.

Maybe it has to do with demographies appealing to the different sides rather than merely buying votes.

Someone enlighten me please.

Telemarketting Blues

Is it just me or do phone calls from telemarketers piss you off? They call you on your mobile from strangers that address you by your full name. I get calls from all sorts of different people, mostly female ranging from the bored of life Egyptian house wife to the overenthusiastic Filipino girl trying to sell to me their discount card subscriptions, free tickets if I buy a bucketful of junk to hotel sport gym memberships.

They always call when I am taking a nap, or expecting an important phone call. I try to be civil and tell them I am in a meeting with myself and press the disconnect button.

Once, I could not resist, this Filipino girl called me trying to sell to me a one year membership to a hotel sports club for 550 KD yearly, so I thought I would have a little fun cause I liked the way she said things:

[Mobile Rings]

Filipino girl (fp) : Hello, is this Don Veto?
Don Veto: Speaking.
fp: I am from X hotel and I would like to give you the opportunity to join or exclusive club for pipe hundred and pipty KD.
dv: how much?
fp: pipe hundred and pipty
dv: did you say five hundred and fifty?
fp: that is right, pipe hundred and pipty
dv: can I get a fifty five KD discount on that?
fp: we don't give pipty pive KD discounts.
dv: if you discount fifty five? How much would it be?
fp: the price is pipe hundred and pipty, sorry, we cannot give you a pipty pive discount.


This went on for around 20 min, then my ear started feeling hot, so I said.

dv: Sorry, I am already a member of another club.

(click)

Why do we say 'um', 'er', or 'ah' when we hesitate in speaking?

Ummmm, I always mmmm wondered about aaahhh this, hmmm why do we say mmmm, or ummmm when we hmmm want to say something. Well, according to Dr Stephen Juan, in a two way converstation, you say hmm or any other expression to indicate that you you still have more to say and to signal that you should not be interuppted.

Makes you go hmmm, full article is here.

Angry Email = You are fired

The president of EMC China, comes to his office and finds the office door locked, he shoots off an angry email to his secretary, saying:


You locked me out of my office this evening because you assume I have my office key on my person. With immediate effect, you do not leave the office until you have checked with all the managers you support,


The assertive secretary, replies back, copying everyone in EMC China:


I locked the door because the office has been burgled in the past. Even though I'm your subordinate, please pay attention to politeness when you speak. This is the most basic human courtesy. You have your own keys. You forgot to bring them, but you still want to say it's someone else's fault


The email leaks out to the public, and the result is, the boss gets fired.

The full story can be found here.

Ah L'amour

A Couple, 33 and 104, Reportedly Marry, the dashing groom is 33 an the beautiful bride is 104. If the groom cannot be present at the wedding, he can always have a Phone Wedding.


Moral of the story: Loves knows no limits, neither age or distance.

The 10 Fastest growing jobs according to CNN Money

According to CNN Money, the 10 fastest growing jobs are:

1) Network systems and data communications analyst
2) Physician assistant
3) Computer software engineer, applications
4) Computer software engineer, systems software
5) Network and computer systems administrator
6) Database administrator
7) Physical therapist
8) Medical scientist
9) Occupational therapist
10) College instructor


Full Article here.

I suggest that the 10 fastest growing best jobs in Kuwait are:

1) Member of Parliament
2) Restaurant Owner
3) Startup business with your close relative as a Minister
4) Doctor in a Private clinic
5) ....

Ran out of job ideas, can you think of some?

The Five Most Common Lies in Business

Lie: "People are our most important asset."
Lie: "This was a rational decision."
Lie: "We judge people by their performance."
Lie: "This is business, it isn't personal."
Lie: "The customer comes first."


Full article here.

Now which lie did you hear recently?

The Wonders of Technology

There was a gentleman walking with two heavy suitcases in an airport terminal. Someone approached and asked him what time it was. The gentleman bends down to park the two heavy suitcases and stares at his watch. But this was no ordinary watch! He touches a tiny button and his administrative assistant's face appears.

He asks her, "Mary, what time is it?" Mary answers instantly and with a smile!

The questioner is thoroughly impressed!!!

He asks, "What kind of a watch is that?"

"It's like a TV with two-way real-time communication," the gentleman explains. He adds that the watch is the latest technology with Intel's brand new 128-bit chip with processor speed of 10 Gigahertz.

The onlooker is now quite impressed and wanted to know if he could buy this watch from the gentleman. They agree on a price and the cash was handed immediately. The gentleman takes his watch out and hands it over and then walks away.

The new owner stares at the two heavy suitcases and shouts, "Sir, you forgot your suitcases."

The gentleman stops, smiles, and replies, "No, they are yours now. They are the modems you need for your new watch.

One thing that comes to mind after reading this joke is all the new gadgets like the iPod, no matter how small they build them, you still need a laptop and / or desktop to make it useful.

Eros Ramazzotti

I was sitting in cattle class (coach class) taking a window seat and trying to get my long legs in a bearable position. Two older Italian ladies sat in the two seats next to me. They looked at me, and then looked at each other and started whispering in Italian. I felt a little uncomfortable, sensing they where talking about me. I checked my shirt, my pants, no noticeable funny stains on me there. I looked out of the airplane's window, watching as the plane took off.

The stewardess came with the complimentary juice, I took orange juice and drank it quietly. The ladies where still stealing glances at me. Let me break the tension, I thought, so I smiled at the lady next to me as she took another look at me. She smiled back, and said, "Eros Ramazzotti". "huh?", I thought, "What?", I asked, "Eros Ramazzotti", she repeated, and her friend bent forward and nodded her head in agreement. What was she talking about? I was baffled. My calculating mind did a quick search, there was this Italian / English song by Tina Turner called Cose Della Vita with an Italian singer called Eros Ramazzotti. I remembered the song, it was very catchy sort of Italian pop song with Tina in her well known rough voice complemented by Eros who had a similar rough voice singing the Italian part.

I understood, she either thought I was Eros, or I looked very much like him. She started to speak to me in Italian, I responded with "Non capito", meaning I don't understand, which is the most Italian I know except for a few choice swear words which I reserve for bad taxi drivers.

She then asked, "Italiano?". "No", I replied. "Francais?" she persevered, "No again", I said. I answered her by saying "Kuwaiti", flashing my blue passport which I took out of my jacket's inside pocket. I opened it at the picture page, showing my picture in full ghitra and iqal. "ooh", she said, then said something to her friend.

It was a quiet flight after that.


Here are a few pictures of Eros which I googled for those of you, just like me, that only vaguely heard about him or never did.