Bud Light Real American Heroes – Mr. Public Restroom Cellphone Talker Guy

By Seth Cardoza | Published: June 25, 2023

I stumbled upon this idea I had way back when Bud Light had their Real American Heroes/Real Men of Genius commercials. To give you an idea of how old this idea is, it was at a time when we had cell phones, not smartphones. I thought it would be appropriate to share now, maybe they can bring back these retro ads.

Real American Heroes – Mr. Public Restroom Cell Phone Talker Guy

Real American Heroes

Today we salute you Mr. Public Restroom Cell Phone Talker Guy (Mr. Public Restroom Talker Guuuy!). Gone are the days of missing a call. Whether it’s pissing at the urinal, or dealing with a case of explosive diarrhea, you don’t let it put a stop to business. After all, you’re so important, whoever you’re talking to won’t mind hearing flushing noises in the background. That’s why today, we salute you…

Mr. Public Restroom Cell Phone Talker Guy, taking care of business – while taking care of business.
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Creating a Repository with Git

By Seth Cardoza | Published: March 21, 2017

This assumes you have already installed git on the system in use.

Creating a new repository with git is very simple. First, using your favorite command line tool, navigate to the directory you want to start using with git. Then, it’s as simple as

git init

You could also navigate to the parent directory, and

git init

so, something like

git init my-new-project

And now you have a new directory called my-new-project that is under version control with git.

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Sears Problem Is Not the Internet

By Seth Cardoza | Published: February 3, 2017

Sears was an online retailer before the internet was a thing. It’s failing because it’s poorly run. Customer service is atrocious. Online, staff is usually ignorant on how to resolve your problem. I once had a package get lost in the mail (understandable). I contacted Sears, and they told me I would have to wait 1-2 weeks while they investigate. Meanwhile, Amazon would overnight a new item to rectify the situation.

Physical locations are poorly staffed. When trying to check out, I would often have to walk the store to find a register that was open and staffed. Picking up an online order would take upwards of 15 minutes sometimes. It would have been faster for me to walk in, pick the item up off the shelf, and checkout, were it not for the aforementioned problem of checking out. Shelves and clothing racks were often poorly stocked. I shop at a physical store because I need something now, often times like a tool while working on a project. If you don’t have what I need in stock, you’re useless.

Stores were poorly lit. What I mean is that the lighting was out of date, and just made the store feel old and out of date. Stores are dirty. And, while most brick and mortar retailers have taken steps to modernize and update their physical locations, Sears has decided to try to continually cut costs.

Kmart suffers from many of the same problems.

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MySQL Crashing and Debian Open File Limit

By Seth Cardoza | Published: August 15, 2016

For a while, I had issues with my MySQL server crashing. It was simple enough to just restart the server, but that started to get tedious. So, I finally decided to try to figure out what the root problem was. I started with the MySQL error log. There were several tables that were marked as crashed. The storage engine for the crashed tables was MyISAM, so I switched them over to InnoDB. There were a few other errors and warnings to clean up. The biggest issue I had though, was:

[Warning] Buffered warning: Could not increase number of max_open_files to more than 1024 (request: 5000)

MySQL could not open the number of files it requested. I needed to increase the ulimit for the server. You can do this on a per user basis, so I actually only increased the limit for the mysql user. I restarted the MySQL server, but continued to see the warning in the error log. Running a quick ulimit -HSn showed the same default limit. My changes did not take effect. After a lot of researching, I came across this answer on Stack Exchange, which refers to a bug in Debian, and needing to add additional configuration/etc/pam.d/common-session. After following these instructions, and restarting the MySQL server again, I no longer receive the warning in my error log, and running ulimit -HSn shows the correct configuration. I’m happy to say that my MySQL server has been up for over a week now, which would indicate my problem is fixed (for now).

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Shock Top, Taking Your Concerns “Very Seriously”

By Seth Cardoza | Published: April 24, 2015

I recently wrote to Shock Top to complain about one of their beers. Their Honey Bourbon Cask Wheat Ale was honestly (I am not exaggerating) one of the worst, if not the worst, beers I have ever had. I couldn’t even finish the beer I opened. Their reply is below. The only way they could have put less care into it is if it started “Hello INSERT_FIRST_NAME_HERE,”.

Hello Seth,

Jennifer here with Shock Top. Thanks for taking the time to visit our site and write our team. It’s great to hear from our friends in Florida. I read that you recently the new Shock Top Honey Bourbon Cask Ale and that you were not happy with it.

I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with us about how you found it to be the worst beer you’ve ever had. Part of my job exists to make sure voices like yours are heard and I wanted to let you know that we have shared your comments with the right team. We are always developing a wide range of beer styles to meet the variety of tastes that exist and we will be sure to keep you in mind as we move forward with our brews.

You can learn more about our beers by checking us out online at www.ShockTop.com. Don’t forget to “Like” us on Facebook for the latest news, updates, and promotions we have going on with our beers.

Thanks again for writing us about Shock Top, Seth.  Feel free to drop me a line anytime about the beer or anything we do. Until then, I raise my glass to you.

Cheers,

Jennifer

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Free Stuff for My Birthday 2014 Edition

By Seth Cardoza | Published: November 1, 2014

I sign up for as many loyalty programs and email newsletters as I can. And, around this time of year (my birthday), it really pays off. Here’s a list of the *free stuff I received this year simply for signing up for an email newsletter. If you’re not comfortable handing out your email address, it’s not hard to signup for a secondary email account, with as little actual personal information as possible. This way you keep your private while still reaping the benefits.

  • $10 certificate to Sports Authority
  • Free double steak  burger with cheese and a side of Fries at Steak N Shake with coupon
  • Free burger or chicken sandwich at Red Robin with coupon
  • Free Denny’s Grand Slam
  • Free medium Firehouse sub with proof of ID
  • Free regular Jersey Mike’s sub and drink with coupon

*’Free’ comes with stipulations sometimes, like a minimum purchase, or it can only be used on a specific date/time.

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Lego Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

By Seth Cardoza | Published: January 7, 2014

Just some fun with a few minifigures. This might make for a good Lego themed video game, or even a Lego themed movie (couldn’t be worse than the live action one).

Lego Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

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Cocoa Cay Hermet Crab

By Seth Cardoza | Published: May 16, 2013

We found this little guy on a jetty in Cocoa Cay. He was friendly enough to pose for a few pics.

in-the-sand-4

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Javascript Explode and Implode

By Seth Cardoza | Published: February 27, 2013

This is a really simple problem that many PHP developers come across when working with Javascript. Some common tasks in PHP are to explode a string or implode an array. While there are no methods in Javascript named explode or implode, the same functionality is very easy to accomplish.

First, let’s tackle PHP’s explode. To do the same thing in Javascript, you would want to use the string method split() as follows:


var myStr = "Hello World";
var myArr = myStr.split(" ");

The resulting array myArr would contain [‘Hello’, ‘World’]

Next on to PHP’s implode. To do the same thing in Javascript, you would want to use the array method join() as follows:

var myArr = [“abc”, “def “,”ghi”, “jkl”];
var myStr = myArr.join(‘,’);

The string myStr now equals ‘abc,def,ghi,jkl’

There you have it, simple, effective Javascript equivalents for PHP’s implode and explode

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Lego Christmas Village

By Seth Cardoza | Published: December 22, 2012

I stitched together a picture of my Lego Christmas village. It consists of the four sets that are currently available.

Lego Christmas VillageLego Christmas Village

From left to right, Winter Village Cottage (10229), Winter Village Post Office (10222), Winter Village Bakery (10216), and Winter Village Toy Shop (10199).

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