How to Shave a Squid AKA LA MoFi Meetup Pix My head is cold.

Curious George - Automated labels and postage? Ok. I got the final pricing in and have started the printing of the T shirts. They should be done in a week or two. I'm gonna need all the LA monkey's help doing a "t shirt envelope stuffing meetup" soon. Which leads me to my question. Does anyone have experience in doing a mass mailing of this nature? more inside

Curious George - deals on ibooks? Hola Monos! I've been lugging my G5 desktop and cinema screen monitor every other week into work where I do video graphics for a television show. I NEED to get a laptop and can use all the processing power that I can get for around $1200 bucks more or less which is what I am getting back from my tax return. I've shopped on ebay and am hoping for a deal to come my way, but am also looking for a deal on new machines. Does anyone have any ideas on mac deals? BTW, I am a confirmed mac user so any windows machines are out of the question. Thanks ahead of time for your help. SR

Curious George - Courier Air Travel Experiences? I was reading mothninja's invite for the Florence meetup and was seriously considering trying a courier flight to Italy. I've done the requisite google seach, but alot of the information seems a bit confusing and it seems like there are some scammers out there as well. Have any monkeys had any experience doing the courier thing?

video from the LA meetup I thought that this deserved a front page post.

Cinematic George - Favorite Under-Rated Movies I know that there have been posts about our favorite films, but since I have been renting a bunch of DVDs of films that I should have seen, but haven't yet from my local video hut, I was wondering if you monkeys have films that you enjoyed, but were underappreciated by the great unwashed. They don't have to be highbrow, just something that you liked and most others didn't, including "guilty pleasures".

Serious George - Reccomendations on a home alarm system? Hi all, does anyone out there have a suggestion on an (realitively) inexpensive home alarm system. I don't need it to be wired to a security company or the cops since I live in an apartment building with lots of nosey neighbors, but a friend of mine's apartment has been hit a couple of times recently and it made me want to be a bit safer with "my stuff" than I had in the past. I have a cat, so motion detection is out, but I'd like to get my windows and front and back doors on a (hopefully) wireless system and I'd like to keep it cheap (under $200?). Thanks.

Epi-curious George Has anyone been to the "soup nazi" that was made famous on Seinfeld? And if you have, was the soup that good, or was it just sort of fun being waited on by a surly chef? This leads me to my real question. Do you have any places that you like to go where the wait-staff/chef/bartender is a nazi? I remember hearing about a bar in San Francisco that only serves old school martinis and will bodily eject you if you order a "sour apple" martini (god bless them) and when I went to Philly I was taken to a cheese sandwich shop where I was told that I had to order in a local dialect ("one steak with everything") to get served. So monkeys, do you have any dining/drinking establishments with such strict rules?

Curious George - Music for an Anti-War Documentary Trailer? Hi all, you all have helped me on stuff like this in the past and thought that I'd try and go to the well one more time. A friend of mine is directing/producing a documentary on the effects of the war and it's casualties on military families. He asked me to help him cut a quick trailer (about 2 minutes) to raise money for the project. more inside

Curious George - How to Dump a "friend" Potential stalker problem. more inside

Dogs and monkeys trained to herd sheep Title pretty much says it all.

MoFi T Shirt Orders Ok kids, the voting's over and it looks like this design won. I've volunteered to get prices on getting them printed up here in California, but will need to get an idea of how many and in what sizes before I can get real numbers. Depending on the size of the run, real silk screened shirts can cost anywhere from 25 to 7 dollars a piece, so a real accounting of pre-orders is critical. It appears that Tracy will try to make it as easy as possible for you to pay (paypal, credit card, checks and money orders, etc...) so now it's time to walk the walk... Who's really gonna order one (or two, or three)? PS-Remember to give the sizes that you want as well.

How you can break Murphy's Law "There's grim news for people who worry that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. A new mathematical formula has proved Murphy's Law really does strike at the worst possible time."

Vote for the MoFi Shirt, MoFo's!!! Now that we all have the holidays out of our hair, I would like to remind you all of the t shirt competition again. We got all the designs in, so click on the link above and make your vote for your favorite t shirt. Once we figger out what design we all like, we'll order a bunch and perhaps the sales will help Tracicle keep this mad house running.

More fun that a barrel full of, you know... Some video from the last LA MoFi Meetup. Enjoy.

Curious George - Patenting an Product Hi everyone. I have what I think is a clever idea to slow speeding cars (I live on a narrow street that people think is a freeway) and even though I know the item could be put together pretty cheaply using existing technology, I am not an engineer. Nonetheless, after polling friends with the idea (after swearing them to a double pinky swear) it does seem to have potential. First off, I was wondering if any of those businesses you see advertising on daytime TV (i.e. "...patent your idea with Inventor's Submission Service...") are legit? I'm guessing probably not. Second, how would I, a smart boy but not a mechanical engineer get something like this patented, and then even more importanly, marketed? I'm not exactly rich, so hiring someone to build it is out of the question. Can one just patent an idea for a product, or do you need to build a working prototype? Thanks. PS- Regarding the legal stuff, I live in California in the USA.

Swiss Yodel Song This is a Korean (!!!) website I used to visit from time to time to get my yodel fix (it's genetic since I'm part Swiss) until it came up 404. I just did a search and happily found it on another host. This' got yodels up the ying yang...

Curious George - Are there any buddhists in the hiz-zouse? We've had a poll about our sexuality, our food likes and dislikes, pets, hell, just about every damn thing. I'm a semi-practicing (meaning I rarely meditate anymore) zen buddhist (Japanese Soto/Rinzi lineage) and was wondering if there are any other monkey-mind buddhists out there?

Susan Sontag Dead at 71 Love her or hate her, Ms. Sontag contributed tremendously to the intellectual discourse of the 20th century.

City of Socks DATANG, China - You probably have never heard of this factory town in coastal China, and there is no reason why you should have. But it fills your sock drawer. Datang produces an astounding nine billion pairs of socks each year - more than one set for every person on the planet. People here fondly call it Socks City, and its annual socks festival attracts 100,000 buyers from around the world. more inside