Who’s that Kid with the Oreo Cookie…

I’ll sometimes hear a phrase and make a random association to something completely unrelated. Frequently to some bit of music.

So when a co-worker recently had an insight into a problem and exclaimed, “Oh, oh, oh!” it should be no surprise that I latched on to an old commercial jingle for Oreos. “Oh, oh, oh, Who’s that Kid with the Oreo Cookie, licking out the creamy middle like he did when he was little?”

Despite being close in age, my co-worker had somehow never run across that commercial. The poor fellow has obviously been deprived.

So, here’s a classic Oreo commercial

And here’s a celebrity version, with Louis Gossett Jr.

E-Mail Productivity Tip

We’ve all been there, you took a couple days off from work. Maybe you even took a week to go on vacation. And now you have to pay the piper. Because even though you were away from work, the work kept going on without you and now you have a gazillion emails waiting for you.

Here’s a quick tip to help you deal with that inbox in no. time at all. These instructions are written for Microsoft Outlook, but similar steps will work for most email systems.

  1. Open your Inbox
  2. Press Ctrl-A (on Mac, Use Command-A)
  3. Hold down the Shift* key and press Delete
  4. Click the “Delete” button.

And just like that, you’re completely caught up on email!

* Note: Using the Shift key on step 3 is critical.

(Image via Pixabay user Deans_icons used under Pixabay License.)

Music for Dogs

(Or should that title be “Music To Bark By”?)

I know some folks who are involved with dog rescue groups (Lucky Dog Animal Rescue and Homeward Trails Animal Rescue). As a result, I get to see a lot of photos of dogs that are available for adoption. Frequently, these are puppies which are being fostered (along with their mother) until they are old enough to be weaned. On occasion, they’ll also share when dogs are being transported away from areas with high-kill shelters.

This causes problems (not big problems to be certain).

First, I want the dogs. All. The. Dogs. I don’t have room to raise more dogs, but that does little to stop the wanting.

Second, and perhaps more significantly, my weird brain makes all sorts of random associations. Often associations with songs.

With apologies to the late Jerry Reed:

🎶 Eastbound and down, loaded up with puppies,
We gonna do what they say can’t be done.
We’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there,
I’m eastbound, just watch those pup dogs run. 🎶

And with that out of the way, here’s the original version of the song.

(Cover image created via Dall-E.)

I’m a Little Teapot…

Even if they don’t know about HTTP status codes, most folks know that a “404 error” means “page not found.”

Lesser known is the 418 status, meaning “I’m a teapot” (in response to a request to brew coffee).

Today, I stumbled across a somewhat legitimate use for it. Not an actual internet connected teapot (though that would be awesome), but someone using it in the spirit of “This server can’t do what you’re asking, but another might be able to. (It’s a hack, but not an unreasonable one.)

The 418 “I’m a teapot” status code itself started off as an April Fool’s joke in RFC 2324, the “Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol”. Rather than badly summarizing it myself, I’ll refer you to Wikipedia’s Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol article which details not only the origins of the protocol, but also the story of how the “I’m a teapot” status code became an official part of the HTTP specification and is baked in to a number of mainstream HTTP frameworks.

(Header image by A.cilia, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Educational Videos …. Where?!?

So here’s an unusual story from 404 Media about a woman posting explainer videos about calculus, neural networks, and the like. And the twist is, she’s posting these educational videos, on Pornhub of all places.

Why on Earth is she publishing educational videos on a porn site? Her rationale makes perfect sense – Pornhub pays better than YouTube (though she posts there too).

There’s also a mention that when she shared a link to her videos on her Linkedin profile, that service responded with a ban and won’t explain why. My guess is they found the link inappropriate (I mean, it is a porn site), but refusing to explain the ban takes inappropriate to a whole other level.

(Read the article)