To celebrate the release of Windows 7, Japanese Burger King franchises are offering a Windows 7 Whopper with 7 patties, selling for 777 Yen (CAD$8.92 as of this writing), available only for the next 7 days. I have no idea why they’re not doing this on this side of the Pacific; I’m sure it would be a big hit:

According to Julie from ObjectSharp, the Japanese text after “13cm” says “American-size buns”.

[Thanks to Ian Irving for pointing this to me!]

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

I think we’ve got an early contender for the title of “Weirdest Videogame of 2009”: Muscle March for the Nintendo Wii. As if the game weren’t weird enough, the trailer below ramps up the weirdness by presenting it in that oh-so-Japanese style with epilepsy-inducing jump-cuts and a hyper-enthusiastic Japanese TV announcer:

[Found via Waxy.org.]

Ever since I announced that I’d been laid off, I’ve had a lot of kind offers from people who wanted to take me out for a beer. I was IM’ing with one of those people yesterday.

“Sorry to hear about the job,” he said. “Did you get my email offering to take you out for a beer sometime? I was wondering if it ended up in your spam folder.”

“Thanks, and yeah, I got your mail,” I replied. “Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I’ve been busy with interviews, and I’ve accepted an offer. I’ll announce it on the blog on Friday.”

“Cool,” he said, and we both went back to work.

About ten minutes later, he IM’d me again.

“Holy crap. You’re not going to believe this. I just got laid off.”

“What?”

“I got called into ‘the meeting’, and they started talking about my severance.”

“Just after we were talking about me getting laid off?”

“Yeah. Weird, huh?”

“You know what? I will now buy you that beer.”

The timing of our conversation and his getting laid off were incredibly weird. It’s one of those things that makes you wonder if you’re not really alive, but just a character in a novel whose author has a mild sadistic streak.

Perhaps the new job will help me help him.

In Fear and Loathing at RailsConf, Giles Bowkett examines what it means to “Keep RailsConf weird”. It’s worth a read, especially if you’re attending, planning or gate-crashing RubyFringe.