A story by the popular food section of Houston food blog 29-25, Whine + Dine, is sweeping the Internet and quickly earning Houston food server Michael Garcia, of Laurenzo’s Prime Rib, the title of “Hero,” after refusing to serve a group of Lorenzo’s regulars who heckled a special needs child with Down’s syndrome.

We’ve all had days where we didn’t want to work, but according to Andrew Valentine, a principal for Verizon Enterprise Solutions, a man he calls “Bob” took it to a new level by by outsourcing his own six-figure-salaried job to China for $50,000/year, while he surfed Reddit and looked at cat videos.

Yesterday we reported a few fixes for the bug affecting the “Do Not Disturb” feature on iOS 6, which resulted in the feature to not turn off once it was set, causing the users of iOS6 devices to miss appointments, phone calls, and alerts. But it appears that Apple is promising an automatic fix by January 8th.

Donald Trump has yet again managed to create controversy just by opening his mouth, or rather, updating his Twitter account. This time he got his behind handed to him by Chrysler Veep Ralph Gilles for perpetuating false claims stated by Romney, when Giles told Trum – very publicly – that he was, and we qoute, “full of shit.”

Mother Jones has released Internet video that some are saying are pretty damning for the Romney campaign. Between insulting 47% of Americans as being lazy, entitled victims living off the government, and saying that he thinks that Palestinians aren’t interested in peace and so Romney himself is not that concerned about a middle east peace process, all in his own voice, on video, it’s hard to see how he can recover from this. Is this the sign of a new era of Internet video having the power to change entire presidential campaigns? (See the full video below!)

A Chinese American Sun Kaisens employee, an ex employee of Motorola, has been sentenced to four years in federal prison for stealing trade secrets from Motorola, including their IDEN technology, and attempting to smuggle them to a Chinese technology company in China. Hanjuan Jin, a 41 year old female employee, was a software engineer with Motorola for nine years. During sentencing, U.S. District Judge, Ruben Castillo, found that Jin made a “purposeful raid to steal technology.” In addition to being charged with three counts of stealing trade secrets, Jin was also charged with three counts of economic espionage.

A pen for women must mean that it has lipstick on one end, right? BIC pens is the latest group to find themselves in hot water with women. Did they make politically incorrect commentary on the anatomy and physiology of women? No. Did they donate $100 million to the “I hate women for life” campaign? No. What they did make, though, is a pen. A lady pen, to be specific, and it has the women of Amazon.com fuming.

Paypal’s Terms of Service (TOS) regarding disputes for “significantly not as described” (SNAD) section lead to a heartbreaking situation in which an eBay buyer who requested a refund when he decided that an antique violin for which he’d paid $2500 was a fake, was ordered by Paypal to first destroy the violin (why the buyer didn’t just arrange with the seller to return it for a refund is beyond us). This is a fine example of why it’s such a bad idea to do business with a company that controls both halves of the transaction (Paypal and eBay are now two sides of the same company.)

In what is being called an “epic PR failure”, and “the biggest PR fail in history” (well, we’re not so sure about that – but still) Paul Christoforo, the man behind Ocean Marketing, and a representative – make that a former represenative – for N-Control’s The Avenger XBox 360 Adapter basically turned a customer support request into a big “F-ck you” fest between himself (Ocean Marketing), a customer named only “Dave” and, eventually, Penny Arcade, Pax East, and Kotaku, to name a few. What Christophoro forgot was that the “real Internet”, to which he sarcastically welcomed Dave during the exchange, has a far reach, and a long memory.

You’d think (and hope) that someone like an elected official would know better than to play the nasty with women, online. You’d think (and hope), but you’d be wrong. Again. This time it is New York Representative Anthony D. Weiner, who, for at least a week, claimed that the raunchy and inappropriate communications sent by him to women online were the work of hackers, and who earlier this week finally admitted that he was the one who sent them. The photo that brought it all tumbling down was a picture of his own plumped weiner (encased in his jockey shorts), which he allegedly sent to Washington State college student Gennette Cordova. The picture was in the Yfrog.com account associated with Weiner’s verified Twitter account; his Yfrog account is now devoid of any pictures.

Wow, it must really suck to be a student in Pennsylvania (at least the south-eastern part of it). First Montgomery county’s Merion school district spies on its students, now we find out that right next door, in neighboring Bucks county, they hire teachers who hate their students, and blog about it! Witness the tale, and blog, of one Natalie Munroe. Natalie Monroe is a high school teacher who clearly has even less respect for her students than they have for her.

Amber Duick was minding her own business when she suddenly started receiving a series of scary emails from a Sebastian Bowler – a stranger who seemed not only to know who Duick is, but to know how to find her. Indeed, he knew her previous address, and generally where she lives now, and, he said, he was coming to her house to hide from the police. Amber was terrified – even sleeping with a machete by her bed and insisting that her boyfriend keep mace and a club by his side. Terrified, that is, until she learned that it was all an elaborate marketing stunt being carried out on behalf of Toyota. Toyota’s response? She asked for it, they say, by opting in to their marketing emails.

Microsoft announced some time ago that it was going to set up Microsoft stores, similar to Apple’s highly successful Apple store. But it seems that Microsoft doesn’t think that imitation is the only form of flattery. Apparently actually poaching Apple’s employees to run the new Microsoft stores is right up there too.

Amanda Bonnen – the woman formerly known as @abonnen on Twitter – was apparently unhappy with the mold growing in the apartment which she rented from property management company Horizon Group Management LLC. Earlier this year she said as much on Twitter, tweeting a Tweet (a Twitter message) in which she said “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”
Whether or not Horizon thinks that a moldy apartment is ok, they clearly think that talking about their moldy apartments isn’t – this week Horizon slapped Amanda Bonnen with a lawsuit in which they ask for $50,000 in damages for that single Tweet.

Starting tomorrow, January 1, 2009, sex offenders in Georgia will be required by law to provide the state with all of their Internet usernames, email addresses, screen names, and passwords. Georgia joins Utah in this requirement.