I’ve been asked quite a lot of times why I hadn’t put up any pictures of my new ride yet. There’s still a couple of things missing such as the Audi logos for the rims, at least I got the alarms installed yesterday, this is now officially the most secure car in Denmark, sporting a Viper 5000XL, Cobra CONNEX GPS/GSM tracker and a Credex VGS MK-III smoke machine :D
Yes, those plates are mine :)
First off, let me give you the good news. I just bought a new car. A ‘2000 Audi TT 1,8T to be precise. The bad news however is that I’m 21 years old, only got about one and a half years seniority and at last, I’m male. Those three properties make up for a worst case scenario for any insurance application form. Anyways, here’s a chronological list of the insurance companies I called and their reponses:
Tryg was able to offer me an impressive price of 94.000 kroners ($16.337) per year. Thats roughly 1/3 the price of the car. Thanks… I guess.
Forget it. GF is my current company, they didn’t want nothing to do with my new car.
Topdanmark just saved me 60k, they were able to offer me the same insurance for 34.000 kroners ($5.909) per year.
Alka didn’t want to insure me, even though I offered to take their “Respekt for fart” (respect for speed) training course.
“NO way, we don’t insure cars like that”.
The best so far, giving me an offer of 27.000 per year ($4.692).
The Fair CS started laughing after I’d mentioned my age and car, then he hung up.
Trekroner is the winner. They offered me an insurance of 25.000 per year ($4.345).
“I wouldn’t bet on that”, that’s what they told me before giving me the price of 69.000 per year ($11.992).
After explicitly requiring me to move all my other insurances over to them, Codan offered me an insurance on the car for 36.000 per year ($6.256).
IF thought I was joking when I called them and told my age and car. While trying to reason with them that I weren’t joking, they hung up.
All in all, calling around to the various insurance companies took me a total of about two hours. The result of those two hours is that I went from $16.337 per year all the way down to $4.345 per year. That’s a saving of $11.992, giving me an hourly wage of about $6.000, that’s not too shabby!
A series of pictures I took at the 2007 CES show.
Microsoft didn’t exactly hide itself at the CES, you could see Vista icons, banners, stickers and posters everywhere!
Honda showcased it’s famous ASIMO robot, pronounced very much like the awesome-o robot from South Park.
The whole north hall was full of custom car manufacturer showoffs and ICE equipment.
The finish of this car was incredibly cool, unfortunately it’s absolutely impossible to maintain.
Without doubt, the most impressive woofer system on show was the dual 22” Jackhammer Escalade, featured by Pimp my Ride’s Mad Mike.
By placing your hand in between the censors, you could control a cursor on the screen.
The Microsoft booth / hall.
LG’s combined Blu-ray & HD player.
Do not underestimate the deadly power of vending machines!
Hellgate London, oh the joy of trying it. Can’t wait until it releases!
Hmm, I don’t really know what this booth was about.
Intels F1 simulator.
An LCD monitor mounted on a glass plate, almost invisible wires.
Sharp/Aquos’ 108” LCD. There was a thinly veiled line down through the middle, revealing that it’s probably just two smaller panels stitched together.
Panasonics monitor booth.
This is a reply to the Top 5 sins of Vista blog post written by Steve Wiseman.
Yes, Notepad’s great, we all use it, whether we want to admit or not. The file browsing interface however, is also great. That is, if you’re willing to acknowledge it!
Admitted, there’s no reason for the web site addresses to figure in the drop down. But why use the drop down at all? Haven’t you noticed the button on the bottom left hand side, cleverly called, “Folders”? Click this and you’ll see the usual tree view of folders that you seem to miss so much. Keep in mind that this file browsing interface is in every new Vista aware application - including the tree view.
I think we can all agree that the new almost instantanious application search feature of the start menu is just great! You however, as I, would like to open various folders in an easy way as we used to. You say you used to click the start menu, click Run, type in the location and click enter. I however, do not believe you. You seem like someone who knows the system better than the average person.
Surely you know of the Windows key + R key combination that opens the Run dialog - as it also does on Vista. Pressing Winkey+R gives the run dialog in which you can type “C:” and have that drive open up for you. Much faster than going through the start menu in any way.
When I first started up Vista and went into the network configuration, oh boy was I disappointed. I had more or less the same feelings as you describe. Luckily for me I was able to accept that Vista is an all new milestone compared to XP. Are Microsoft not allowed to change something that was - admittedly - working before? Having used Vista for no more than a week, surely you’ll have gotten used to the new way of browsing the networks as well as the network configuration. “If you have never used Vista before - Quickly tell me how to change the IP address on my wireless card!”. Now, how in gods name can you expect anyone who has never used a system to be able to tell you this? Were you instantly able to change the IP address of a network adapter the very first time you launched Windows 2000, XP?
Simply click “Manage network connections” from the tasks section of the menu and we’re back to the good old interface. It really isn’t that cumbersome.
Windows Search is not broken. It actually works. Have you tried it? Ok, so you can’t do a content based search on unknown file types, but have you ever been able to do so using Windows Search? You can however easily search through your email, documents, file name based search and so forth.
Please, please, please don’t tell me that a command prompt wildcard directory search enables you to do content based searches. Click the Location:Everywhere item and you’re all set for directory searches as we used to in XP.
Given the title of my website I should know what the word “improve” means. To improve something requires that you change something for the better. To improve something you must not make it worse than before. “Sure they have made the interface look cooler, a snazzy progress bar here and there.” You don’t call this an improvement? Sure, it’s not the robust search that you’re looking for, but honestly, isn’t it an improvement? I would really like to have seen the WinFS file system to have been a part of Vista. But surely, even though WinFS did not make it to Vista, I’ll not go as far as saying that Vista is not an improvement over XP. Explorer still has the old bugs, especially in regards of network sharing (shame on you Microsoft!), but still, you cannot say that it has not been improved.
I for one, love the fact that we can now see the transfer speed during transfers, even during network transfers!
One of the few places left that I haven’t played at is Caesars Palace. Fortunately I can now cross Caesars off my list.
The room is separated from the usual casino area by a small walkway. This separation ensures that the room is very quiet, in contrast to the extremely noisy MGM Grand room. The chairs are great swiveling office chairs, quite comfortable. The felt is absolutely perfect, just the way I want it, just the way the Venetian has it - though it seems to be somewhat older at Caesars.
While the Venetian usually has one or two regulars and then drunks or new players for the rest, Caesars seemed to be dominated by regulars and nits. There were a couple of exec guys coming from the CES, but other than that people knew what they were doing, even at the $1/2 level.
Talking about 1/2. Caesars has an absolutely great structure for the 1/2 game, allowing you to buyin for $500, that’s 250BBs! That makes for some great deepstacked play. And while the max buyin is at $500, most people bought in for $1-200, that means you’ll have everybody covered from the getgo, another advantage.
All in all I’ll certainly be back. Caesars is great, but it still won’t be able to change my mind, The Venetian is without doubt the greatest poker room on the strip so far.
Now I just have to cross out Bellagio and Wynn from my list…
Since I woke up at 6 AM this morning I decided to just stay in bed and watch The Prestige through the hotel movie system.
When I got up I realized that the only power adaptor that I’d brought was a US - EU style, not the required EU - US… Friggin typical! So I went to every Futurama fans favorite electronics store, Fry’s Electronics, which is also the largest electronics store in Vegas!
I’ve always spoken badly of the Zune on absolutely no grounds other than my own prediction of it’s success. However, when I came by a stand of Zune’s I simply couldn’t resist buying one, not really because of it’s looks (I think it feels far too like plastic, it just doesn’t have the same iPod quality feel), but because… Well, I dunno, I bought one, that’s what matters.
This is what met me when I started up the Zune for the very first time:
iPod 1 - 0 Zune
A bit later I went to the Venetian to get my first poker session. A couple of hours went by, nothing in particular to report, I ended about even in the $1/2 game.
I met up with Nicholai from work later on and got a couple Gin & Tonics as well as enjoying the Mandalay Bay buffet. I think we walked about Mandalay Bay for an hour or so before giving up on finding the supposedly impressing pool.
I wanted to log a lot of poker playing hours today. At about 12 PM I went to the MGM Grand, a room that I’d never visited. After playing there for about 5-6 hours (please don’t ask how it went, I got butchered), I’ve got mixed feelings about the room.
The cocktail service is absolutely great. Although they’re not the lookers as they are at the Wynn, they’re among the quickest on the strip. There’s allways a cocektail waitress around, ready to take your order. The tables are among the most sophisticated ones I’ve seen. Naturally they have automatic shufflers, but most casinos have that these days. Registration of player cards it done automatically at the table itself, no need for a floor to bring it to the cage. Also, the dealer is able to call for cocktail waitresses and chiprunners by pressing buttons on the dealer tray, very efficient! I hate the felt they use, it’s the hard stiff kind you’ll also find at casinos like Royal in Århus, totally impossible to get your fingers beneath the cards to flip’em up or just to take a look at them. It is however rectified by the marble border around the table, creating a litthe gap in the felt, making it easier to get ones finger under the cards. The MGM seemed to have a lot of totally new players, player who’ve never sat in a live game. It’s probably due to the fact that the MGM poker room is placed in the middle of everything, right next to the lion cave and the night club, effectively causing a lot of people to wander by. That also has the effect of causing a ridicilous amount of railbirds as well as contributing to making the room intolerably noisy.
As I had a dinner appointment at the Venetian in the evening, I went to the Venetian at about 6 PM to continue my play. While I was being butchered at the MGM, I made a slaughter at the Venetian game, ending up quite a bit. I’d established quite a loose image at the table, just the way I want it. I was dealt TcJc. The flop came AcKc8c. Although I can’t really remember the action, I bet on the flop, got called by a single guy at the end of the table. A blank hit the turn which we both checked. Finally at the river, Qc, I bet out about half the pot. It was not until then I realized that I’d just made a Royal Flush! The other guy eventually folded. I showed my cards, saying, “I think I had you”. The table went crazy, so did the dealer and the floor person. Through December they’ve had a Royal Flush promotion that resulted in you winning Venetian jacket if you hit the Royal Flush. Although the promotion weren’t running anymore, Nate, the floor person on duty told me to come back one of the following days and look him up, he’d find a little something for me, great service. To make matters even more special, in the hand right after my Royal Flush I hid a set of threes that quadded on the river, consecutive Royal Flush and quads, what are the odds? Please don’t tell me live games aren’t rigged as well as online games!
Honeeey, I’m home!
It’s good to be back. After all, it’s been about 4 months since I were here last, that’s simply too long time!
The flight went pretty well. On the long route, Frankfurt - Denver I sat in front a some american family. It was really obvious that they were american, the whole way they talked, acted and so forth, hard to explain, but they where soo stereotypical. Anyways, shortly after taking off, somebody sneezed nearby… “Bless you” the woman behind me almost screamed. Oh well, whatever. Five minutes later somebody else sneezed - bless you! Now, this started to get a bit awkward when somebody in business class, separated by a curtain from where we were sitting, sneezed. Bless you she screamed again, though it was absolutely certain that this guy could not hear her. Making a long story short, besides the few times she slept, everytime someone sneezed, no matter how far away they were, she simply HAD to bless that person.
When we were about to land in Denver, appx 10 feet above the ground, suddenly the plane thrusted upwards at maximum thrust, we had to do a goaround, apparently there’d been a major gust of wind, blowing us off the runway. As a result we got in about 20 minutes late, not really the best of timing since my Las Vegas flight departed just an hour and a half later. Ever since 9/11 the security checks have been insane in the US airports, and Denver is no exception. I had to wait 30 minutes in line for the customs inspection, fortunately this time there were no problems. After the customs check I had to get my bags from the conveyor belts before I could recheck them for my domestic United flight, again, taking about 30 minutes in line. Everything’s a caos since the airports aren’t equipped to these extra checkins that have taken place since 9/11. After being checked in, another 30 minutes of wait before arriving at the front of the security inspection line. At this point there were 10 minutes till my flight departed - not until it boarded, until it departed. Luckily the woman checking my boarding pass noticed and put me through to another line that was somewhat shorter, phew - at least so I thought. After being sprayed with air in some kind of drug sniffing machine the security guard said to another guard: “Give this one the full quarter pounder”. With 5 minutes to go I had to unpack my whole bag, letting him check my camera, cell phone, laptop and everything. I politely asked him how long it would take to get to my gate as my plane left in 2 minues - luckily he understood what I meant and made a quick inspection before letting me go. Running to the gate I arrived 5 minutes late, but fortunately the plane hadn’t left yet, I made it a minute or so before the gate closed.
Originally I’d planned to take a hot tub bath before heading into town. I arrived at my hotel at around 8:30 PM. Before I realized it, I was sleeping at the couch, and at 10 PM I had to retire to bed, totally exhausted after the trip.
Ahh, Vegas, I just can’t get enough of that place!
I’m leaving for Vegas again on the 6th of January, planning to be back on the 16th of Janaury. Just a short trip to cope with my dependance on the greatest town in the world!
I will be participating in the 2007 Internal CES as well as hopefully being able to get a spot at the Venetian Palazzo Ballrom on the 7th when Bill Gates himself holds a Pre-show Keynote Address.
Also I’d be rather surprised of myself if I didn’t pay some of the greatest poker rooms of Vegas a revisit :)
Is your name William? Do you normally write mails with the subject “Re: hi”? Are your mails usually 11,304 characters in length? Guess what, you’re a spammer! I present to you, an article containing a textual analysis of about 15,000 spam mails.
Before you ask, what can these numbers be used for? Good question, I’m open to suggestions!
The following numbers are based on 15,073 spam mails in total. Naturally demographics will play a part, such as my interests, part of the world and so forth. Let me give you the 5 word tour of myself: Denmark, male, 21, development, poker.
All mails can be marked with an importance flag ranging from low to high through normal. I’d think spammers would consider their mails rather important, guess not.
Most anti spam applications today are extra sensitive towards HTML mails so it’s no big surprise that they’re not that common.
A lot of mail servers as well as anti spam clients will filter out mass mailed emails, that is, emails that have a lot of recipients. Some mails will figure as having zero recipients, these may be caused by bad header formats / values in the mail.
The reply-to field enables you to specify an email address used for replies other than the one that was used to send the email with. How many mails utilize this field? (0 = not used, 1 = used)
Don’t you just hate it when you startup Outlook and you have to wait for ages due to several terabytes of spam mails waiting to be downloaded? But how many bytes does an average mail actually take up?
How long is the average spam mail? The more text, the less chance one will actually read it, right? As for the subject (in number of characters):
Note that the 255 upper limit is usually caused by either the mail servers or the mail clients capping the subject at 255 characters. As for the body:
What’s William and Richard got to do with each other? They both send a major junkload of spam.
I’m quite surprised that Viagra is not even in the top 10 subjects, almost disappointed.
What’s the number one used word in the body of spam mails? Pretty boring: “the”.
I’ve defined an unusual word as one that’s not among the top 300 most common english words - according to: http://www.esldesk.com/esl-quizzes/most-used-english-words/words.htm.
How about the subject?
Same definition as for the unusual body words, this time in regards of the subject.
Trying to make any sense out of a common spam mail is not an easy task. Hence the following top 20 common sentences may not make a whole lot of sense either.
Count: 494
The attention to detail is paramount and they are comparable to the originals in every way.
Count: 481
Having had this same model for several years i was hesitant to spend the money again.
Count: 481
You will be very impressed with the quality.
Count: 475
Lange sohne glashute original audemars piguet jaeger-lecoultre officine panerai alain silbersteini got my watch yesterday and love it.
Count: 464
Replicated to the smallest detail 98 a accuracy includes all proper markings wide selection and fast worldwide shipping authentic weight true-to-original self winding and quartz mechanismsour faithful duplications include these prestige brands rolex mens rolex ladys rolex boys watch box sets patek philippe iwc cartier bvlgari frank muller breitling omega tag heuer chopard vacheron constantin a.
Count: 344
Comprestige replicasregards-mens and ladies prestige watches for all occasionsthese replicas have all the presence and poise of the originals after whome they were designed at a fraction of the cost.
Count: 168
General fewer your on can try answers for expert help with search.
Count: 135
The only way to solve it is to take viagra or cialis super viagra medications before you have sex.
Count: 135
You can spend thousands and buy them at your local drug store.
Count: 134
03 this problem is called erectile dysfunctioned.
Count: 132
Globally the potential market is a staggering 45 billion.
Count: 132
Video streams to wherever you choose to watch it.
Count: 105
20as the population ages the economic value in the us market for adult daycare is projected to grow nearly 600.
Count: 95
Major discoveries are happening all the time and wbrs is in the thick of it.
Count: 95
With the array of drilling projects wild brush has going on at the moment tension is building.
Count: 95
As the drilling gets closer to completion insiders are accumulating ahead of that major discovery announcement.
Count: 94
Get the latest messages emailed to alerts.
Count: 94
All we can say is that this one is going to see amazing appreciation in a very short period of time this is your opportunity.
Count: 90
You have seen it on 60 minutes and read the bbc news report — now find out just what everyone is talking about.
Count: 90
Suppress your appetite and feel full and satisfied all day long increase your energy levels lose excess weight increase your metabolism burn body fat burn calories attack obesity and more.
That’s all for part 1. Hopefully I’ll have come up with some more interesting analysis for the next part :) Feel free to post a suggestion if there’s something specific you’d like to see some numbers of. Also, if you have access to large quantities of spam mail (no, not in the form of signing me up for billions of sites) in Outlook PST format, please de send me a message, I’d really like to have a larger sample to base my analysis upon.