I have Gmail invites!

I have Gmail invites, boys and girls. 5 left, in fact. You should IM me and tell me why you deserve an invite, and I will dole out invites at my sole discretion.

My AIM: AdamBrewer
My Gmail Review: Click Here
Link: Google Gmail

EDIT: Oh yes, I forgot to mention... someone actually rejected a Gmail invite. Ann Virden decided she'd rather stick with Hotmail instead of Gmail. I guess having 2 MB of space is better than 1000 MB, tons of spam better than no spam, slow loading better than quick loading, and ads galore plus pop-ups are preferable to no graphical ads at all, and conversation threading isn't a feature she'd use at all. There isn't a rolleyes.gif big enough.

September 11th

It's sometimes really difficult to regain the perspective we had on that day... to remember the feelings we had, to remember our shock, our sorrow. BBP offers us a unique perspective into 9-11-01 that we can't really get from any other source -- our own thoughts, emotions, and feelings as written by ourselves.

Charlie Nordstrom broke the news that day, editing his post throughout to explain the events. Others wrote shortly thereafter with their thoughts and feelings. Nick Basile and Charlie later used Pro Wrestlers as the basis for a soothing post or two. Matt Ward disputed the word directly from Dave Nordstrom that gas prices weren't going to go up, and was later proven wrong (as we all know). Nick Kilburg and Jake Thomas offered eloquently written posts on the situation.

We were all at Washington High School that day, trying to celebrate a homecoming that no one really felt up to. Much has changed since then, our feelings on the military, the president, and many other things, but it's very interesting to go back and see how we felt nearly three years ago now. I think you'll find it very enlightening / interesting to read.

BBP Archives: September 2001

Working... not as terrible as it used to be?

I remember when I used to go work how bad it sucked. I was in a bad mood the entire day that I would have to work, and I just ached everywhere would I got off work. My feet, my legs, my arms, my hair, EVERYTHING hurt.

Now, going to work isn't so bad. I don't really mind having to go to work, and I don't even feel that bad when I get off. I think it has something to do with the necessity of money. Now, I am in a bit of a money crunch and I need money pretty badly. Amazingly enough, this helps my attitude about work a lot. It just doesn't suck nearly as bad (even though I am working the worst job I have ever worked, but best pay) as any other job I have had in the past. I can't really explain it, so I guess it's just a result of needing the money so badly.

Or maybe it's just a maturity thing. I realize that I'm going to have to do this the rest of my life, so I might as well get used to it now.

Gotta go to work now, so I'll post again later.

This Is Spinal Tap

I have never seen This Is Spinal Tap, and I've never seen Best In Show, although I've heard both are good (and from the same creative crew). Is this the kind of humor I'd be interested in Charlie? I'm always looking to increase my film knowledge, especially of such heralded classics like Spinal Tap is rapidly becoming.

Who remembers our old logo?

I sure do. I was afraid it was gone forever. Thanks to the magic of the Wayback Machine, I was able to retrieve our beloved logo to show to future generations!

EDIT: It breaks the tables, so I'll have to link it.

Click Here

Descartes

Does everybody remember the previous downfall of BBP? We added commenting to the site, and someone quickly started making very disturbing threats and insults to both the posters and readership of BBP. Then they reported us to Tripod, and got us shut down. Their chosen screen name? Descartes.

Want to know who Descartes was?

Matthew Thomas Ward. I shit you not.

RE: Have the Beasties Lost It?

Just wanted to say, great post Charlie. It's good to see your musical tastes are as strong as ever. I'm disappointed to hear that the new Beastie album doesn't live up to past performances. I haven't heard the new album yet, but I'll definitely have to give it a spin and form my own opinions.

It's too bad that more and more groups are getting increasing political, particularily anti-Bush. I don't really have a problem with musicians making political views in their songs, because at least they're saying something with their music, unlike most pop music, but when you aim it at a particular president, it's going to really date their music years down the road.

Like you said, you can put in an old Beastie album and enjoy yourself, but getting mired in the politics of this time will have a negative impact of the replayability of the album down the road.

Want to check out a real blast from the past?

Thanks to the miraculous Wayback Machine, it's possible to look at websites that have long since passed into the big WWW grave in the sky.

Here's a nifty example, it's 'Da Coww Farm from mid-2000. What other cool stuff can you find with the Wayback Machine?

You guys wanna hear a funny joke my grandpa told me?

Hey guys, here's an uncensored clip from South Park that is funny, but also ridiculously disturbing. Viewer discretion is STRONGLY ADVISED.

South Park Joke (NOT WORK SAFE) (3.11 MB; give it a few minutes to load after you click the link)

RE: Summer stopped being fun

If you guys think it's bad now, wait until you go to college for a year and then come back. This summer has been a huge mental struggle for me just because it's been so... damn... boring.

When you're at school, you can walk out of your room at 1 AM on a weeknight, go to your buddy's room and say, "Hey, want to play a game?" and enjoy a round or two of Halo. Nothing can compare to that! Or getting together to watch Chappelle's Show and South Park every Wednesday night! Of course, there's also the parties on the weekends, the late night walks, trips to the rec center, and so on. Just having your friends at your fingertips is an amazing thing.

Fuck Summer. I can't wait to go back to Ames. Mmmmmmmm... Hickory Park.

Gmail -- best web-based e-mail ever? YES!

I finally got an invite to Google's Gmail, and let me tell you, it kicks all kinds of ass. First off, it's Google (and we all love Google here at BBP).

Second, it's fast. Hella fast. Anyone sick and tired of waiting what seems like years for Hotmail's bloated interface to load will be very pleased with how quickly it loads.

Third, it has an innovative interface. Everyone's done the folders concept to death. Gmail gets away from this whole idea. Instead, there's only three places your mail can be -- Inbox, Archives, and the Trash. Adam, how can I keep my mail organized, you ask? Simple! You can apply labels to your different emails! BRILLIANT! So, I have different labels like "DPPH", "Internet", "Friends", "Family", and so on. I get an email from a friend? I label it "Friends" and then put it in my Archives.

Oh yeah, another sweet interface feature -- conversations. Sure, other clients have done this before, but not as intuitively as Gmail does it. What's a conversation you ask? Let's say I write someone a letter, and then they reply to it, and then I reply back to them. That's three emails. With any other email program, my letters to them would be in my "Sent Items", and their letter to me would be in my Inbox. With Gmail, it keeps all these letters together. So, if I am going through my archives and I find a letter Ann Cary wrote to me, I can see our entire conversation -- my replies to her, her replies to me, and so on, in chronological order. I don't know how I emailed without it!

Fourth, and this is probably the most heralded feature -- 1 gigabyte of space. Yes, you read right, 1 gigabyte. That's such an insane amount of space, most people thought Google's press release about Gmail was a joke! They couldn't believe it to be true. A few days ago, Yahoo! "upgraded" people's accounts to 100 megabytes -- that's still 1/10 of what Gmail offers.

Fifth, and this is the best part -- Google searches of your email. With any other free service, you have to delete your messages all the time to stay within their limits. Not a problem with Gmail, because you have the 1 GB of space. But now, this brings up another dillemma -- how can you find one particular email in thousands? You can do a Google search of your email! Google brings their search prowess to the land of email, so now that you can keep all of your email (instead of deleting it), you can now search for the exact email you need.

Sixth, no banner ads, and no fucking text signatures at the bottom of it. Your emails don't need to be ads for other companies, and now they aren't. That's the way it should be. No pop-ups either.

Seventh, the best Spam filtering on the planet. No matter how many filters I set up in Outlook, I couldn't stop the influx of Spam to my Iowa State email account. I started forwarding my ISU email to Gmail, and in the past three days, only one piece of spam out of 35 has gotten through. Gmail stops Spam better than anything I've yet seen.

Gmail is still in Beta testing at the moment, and you need an invitation to try it out. Trust me, when Gmail arrives to the public, you NEED to get yourself an account ASAP. Even in this beta testing phase, it is so above and beyond what everyone else has done. If you know someone with an account, you better start begging for invite. You NEED Gmail. If you want an innovative interface, tons of storage space, great search capabilities, best-in-class spam blocking and quick load times, you don't need to look anywhere else.

10/10. My highest recommendation.

Good Lord, the Lakers suck!

Wow, the Lakers have been absolutely horrid in this NBA Finals. Congratulations to the Detroit Pistons, our new NBA Champs. They actually earned the championship, by oh, I don't know, having a better offensive plan than the "give the ball to Kobe" strategy.

I'm glad a team that actually plays real ball won. Larry Brown deserves it -- first coach to win both the NCAA and NBA Championships!