Virtually Paul

Rejected by Hannah

If you’ve been reading Geoff’s blog lately, you’ll probably have seen this post which he quite cleverly used to get a bunch of Christians to read his blog through a sensationalist blog title. This post attempts to do much the same. So, if the thought of Paul asking out some extremely unlucky girl called Hannah just ran through your mind and you became curious about this post… firstly: “Sucked in!” and secondly: “Why are you so interested?”

I watched some of Hannah Montana this morning. Not because I’m creepy either. I was eating my weetbix. I like the show a little bit. It reminds me of old shows that I used to watch back in school days like Saved By The Bell and California Dreams, which were Saturday morning favourites for my sister and I. Anyway, in this morning’s episode, Hannah came up with a ripper of a quote, which I wanted to share because it’s such a good shut down. I think more girls should use it when they’re being chased by guys in their “just friends” category.

[to her closest male friend, at the suggestion that they would make a good couple]

Hannah:  “Eeww! I don’t love you!… I mean…

I love you… but like a brother, or even… a pet goldfish.

I’d cry if I had to flush you down the toilet but I don’t want to kiss you.”

It’s just perfect on so many levels.

A Lightbulb Moment

I was watching TV one night earlier this week with someone who shall remain nameless when an ad for Channel 7s “The Rich List” came on. Feel free to identify yourself in the comments if you’d like to take responsibility.

If you haven’t seen the show, you’ve got two teams that play off against each other. During part of the game, individual teams need to communicate with the host, without the other team hearing the interaction. So, Andrew O’Keefe, of “Deal or no deal” fame, has two big red buttons on his desk. He tells the TV audience that these big red buttons make the “pods” containing the opposing teams, soundproof. It’s all rather simple really.

My TV watching counterpart had this question to ask me:

Person: “Hey Paul, you know how he presses those buttons? … Yeah, well… How could pressing a button make something soundproof?”

Me: “Um… I think you’ll find that the pods are soundproof to start with and the button just switches off the microphones and speakers inside them.”

I tried to back-pedal at this point and convince them that the buttons actually raised and lowered sets of hydraulic flaps off-camera… but it was all too late for that.

The person looked at me curiously for a few seconds, taking in the explanation. Then the light went on and they smiled sheepishly at me. Needless to say I’m not going to be letting this one go just yet.

Getting Ripped Off

Maybe this is just the first time it’s happened to me… but has anyone else had vultures coming and stealing their posts and republishing them?

That’s seriously just low. If you want to talk about something, fine, quote part of what I said with a pingback and talk… but ripping off my whole post on some automated site that doesn’t even claim to be anyone… I’m not happy.

I want the post removed immediately.

Copyright and Links Policy

Seeing as the author left me no other recourse, I’ve contacted the host. We’ll see what happens.

Dreamhost support,

It has recently come to my attention that the following URL, which you are hosting, contains plagiarised content from my weblog.

Offending content:
http://gospel.blogarium.net/2007/02/06/the-australian-public-doesn%e2%80%99t-click-with-jesus/

My corresponding post:
http://virtuallypaul.com/2007/02/06/the-australian-public-doesnt-click-with-jesus/

As you can see, the entire content of the post has been syndicated without consent. The owner of the offending website on:

Name: apache2-linus.mills.dreamhost.com
Address: 208.97.170.4

seems to be borrowing and resyndicating content from various blogs.

Please advise as to what action you will be taking towards this violation of your Terms of Service.

Kind regards,
Webmaster
VirtuallyPaul.com

EDIT - I’ve removed actual links to the vultures as this seems to be encouraging their automated pilfering of my content.

Great Quote: Habits of a High-Tech Heart

“How could the software of a billion-dollar company - Microsoft - become susceptible to a simple virus program that probably hundreds of thousands of moderately savvy programmers could have written?”

-Schultze, Q.

Book review on the way…

Quote of the Week