Author: Thom

Yesterday included a very pleasent surprise in the form of Sandy and her beautiful little girl, Caitie, dropping by work (she’s the one who got me the job here before callously leaving to have her baby). So I joined her, Bhavna, and Sandhya for a nice stroll over the Steak & Ale to get Salad & Water – what’s wrong with me? It was mucho fun, and since I keep missing out on chances to see the two of them (oh yeah, and Steve), way too delayed. I took a bunch of pictures, and as soon as I decide the direction my photo gallery is going, they will be posted.
Continue reading “Surprise visits and spider fights”

I know that, like, everybody and their mother has Gmail at this point, but if any of you still feel left out in the cold, I happen to have 1 invite right now. Let me know if you are interested.

More importantly, how do I tell this story? There are so many ways for me to try to convey the sheer stupidity and absurdity of just a few hours of time. I could use a list, like a real step-by-step instruction guide. Maybe some pictures would better hammer home the point. Then again, a simple storytelling is still one of the best forms of communications.

Of course, I could always just kick you in the crotch repeatedly to illustrate the process.

Let me start off by saying that one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen involved some bungee cord, a boxspring, and a minivan doing 40 MPH. Most importantly, I was in the driver’s seat.
Continue reading “How not to move a bed”

I am an Asteroid. I am a drifter. I go where life leads, which makes me usually a very calm and content sort of person. That or thoroughly apathetic. Usually I keep on doing whatever I’m doing, and it takes something special to make me change my mind. What Video Game Character Are You?

And for Lisa:

I am Mario. I like to jump around, and would lead a fairly serene and aimless existence if it weren’t for my friends always getting into trouble. I love to help out, even when it puts me at risk. I seem to make friends with people who just can’t stay out of trouble. What Video Game Character Are You?

That’s a pretty good summary, I’d say.

(Thanks to Steve)

Today marks a very important victory in the P2P battles. Grokster has won its case in the 9th District Court of Appeals. The government may just be starting to understand this whole software deal. The ruling provides that de-centralized software that has legitimate uses should not be held accountable for the illegitimate uses. I haven’t had the chance to read through all of the information starting to pour in, but Boing Boing has a short write-up and Andrew Raff gives us a nice breakdown of the meaning. Hopefully this points to more sensible legislature down the road.

(Thanks to Waxy.org: Links)

My server has a lot of storage space. Most people seem to be happy when they have 80 gigs on their desktop. Heck, that’s just my secondary drive with another 60 gigs for the primary. My server, on the other hand, is filled with several hard drives of varying capacity from 120 GB to 250 GB. But my sporadic storage purchasing habits (“Hey, look. Another sale on 160GB hard drives. I can always use another”) has left me with several large capacity drives with no particular use. That is, until now.

My (former) roommate Brian once mentioned the idea of getting an external USB enclosure. Last I had checked they were in the $150 – $200 range, but he assured me that you could pick one up for $20 these days. As with all of my purchases, I made up my mind immediately, but took months to look at all the possibilities anyway. That’s led to a great deal of wasted bandwidth transfering gigs of mp3s between work and home, not to mention never having the pictures I want on my person at any given time.

The other day, however, I started sorting through various drives at work to put into a machine being reassembled. Unfortunately I wasn’t sure what was what and couldn’t install the new OS until all the data was definitely backed up. Since ripping apart yet another machine just to check out the contents of the drive was out of the question, everything just sat around in a state of lifelessness. Then it hit me – why not pick up one of those devices for work? Sure $80 unit on the shelf the other day seemed to pricey, but this would be pruchsed by work, and I could simply use it at home, too, until I found the perfect unit for myself (I was hoping to get a USB-powered enclosure for starters). Besides, the usefulness at work would easily justify that expense.

This time around, though, CompUSA had one of their self-branded, repackaged devices for $40 that was even sleeker looking than the more expensive unit from the other day. And guess what? It works! I’m now going through hard drives with great ease. And after a simple disconnect, I can power down the unit, swap in another drive, and keep on working through the stack. Even better still, I held onto a 120 GB drive Mike picked up for me out of a vendor’s “as is” pile for $25. I never got it to work in a computer, but it’s working in this thing. Now I have a whole assortment of storage units for backing up and transfering gobs of info wherever I need it. It’s like a technological revolution of the geek kind (wait, isn’t that redundant?).

Ok, I know that Wired hasn’t had anything technologically reasoned to say in about… a decade, so don’t yell at me for the link. In an attempt to once again buck trends and show their cluelessness, Wired has changed their style to ‘internet’ with a lowercase ‘i’. In typical wannabe techno-geek fashion, their editors have decided that proper nouns are passé. Afterall, since the Internet is not owned by a company, how can it be capitalized? The matter is slightly up for stylistic debate, but the fact that they say “there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words” (also lumping in web and net) shows how technically inept they truly are.

Internets are all around us. Anytime you use a router, you are creating an internet. My intranet here at work is also an internet. The term simply refers to any collection of multiple networks. Once you combine 2 or more networks – voilá, instant internet. However there is only one Internet. Just as dirt is also called earth yet we all live on a planet called Earth, a generic term can be capitalized to signify a particular unique instance or entity. The Internet was not capitalized as a marketing scheme. It was capitilized to differentiate it from the thousands of little internets all over the globe, many of which happen to be part of the Internet.

After reading this article I feel that it is necessary for me to correct my own style. Therefore effective now, anytime I reference wired it will be with a lowercase ‘w’. Don’t think of this as “some kind of symbolic demotion”, rather a relevance reality check.

(Thanks to Waxy.org: Links)

There are by some estimates more than a million weblogs. But most of them get no visibility in search engines. Only a few “A-List” blogs get into the top search engine results for a given topic, while the majority of blogs just don’t get noticed. The reason is that the smaller blogs don’t have enough links pointing to them. But this posting could solve that. Let’s help the smaller blogs get more visibility!

This posting is GoMeme 4.0. It is part of an experiment to see if we can create a blog posting that helps 1000’s of blogs get higher rankings in Google. So far we have tried 3 earlier variations. Our first test, GoMeme 1.0, spread to nearly 740 blogs in 2.5 days. This new version 4.0 is shorter, simpler, and fits more easily into your blog.

Why are we doing this? We want to help thousands of blogs get more visibility in Google and other search engines. How does it work? Just follow the instructions below to re-post this meme in your blog and add your URL to the end of the Path List below. As the meme spreads onwards from your blog, so will your URL. Later, when your blog is indexed by search engines, they will see the links pointing to your blog from all the downstream blogs that got this via you, which will cause them to rank your blog higher in search results. Everyone in the Path List below benefits in a similar way as this meme spreads. Try it!

Instructions: Just copy this entire post and paste it into your blog. Then add your URL to the end of the path list below, and pass it on! (Make sure you add your URLs as live links or HTML code to the Path List below.)

Path List
1. Minding the Planet
2. Luke Hutteman’s public virtual MemoryStream
3. geek ramblings
4. neverhood.net
5. (your URL goes here! But first, please copy this line and move it down to the next line for the next person).

(NOTE: Be sure you paste live links for the Path List or use HTML code.)

I am so far behind on movie reviews there’s little hope for me to get caught up. I’m thinking of starting a section that just lists every movie I get in from Netflix followed by a brief summary of my thoughts.Hmmm, we’ll see where that goes. In the meantime, here are the three latest flicks I’ve had the opportunity to check out:

The Village – M. Night is at it again, which makes for another must-see in my mind. And what can I say, Lisa and I loved it. It wasn’t the scariness of it (only a few scenes got me at all) or the twist ending (not very surprising, and only slightly relevent). No, once again it was the masterful way in which he tells a story. I was really interested in the characters and the story behind them. The creatures surrounding them were only a backdrop to the people’s lives. And as far as acting goes, Joaquin Phoenix has proven to be one of the best in the biz these day, and almost everybody seems to agree that Bryce Howard looks to be the next big thing. I don’t want to say anymore, because I might spoil it for some. But to be honest, even if you know any of the “twists”, it’s completely irrelevent. Just like the aliens in Signs were just props for a story of lost faith, so are the village and the creatures and exploration of the different forms of fear (and, I might add, an excellent commentary on society and government today).

The Bourne Supremacy – What can I say, The Bourne Identity was quite a surprising film and a sleeper hit. I finally picked it up on DVD after multiple cable viewings, and decided to take advantage of the free ticket included. Supremacy is an admirable followup to one of the best spy thrillers in recent years. Once again, the film includes some intense action (maybe a little too frantic at times) and amazing chases to pull together an intriguing plot. Diane Lane’s character was a great addition, as one of those “I’m not sure who’s good and who’s bad” types that just walked into a messed up situation. Brian Cox has gotten so good at playing a bastard it’s impressive. I also have to give Julia Stiles credit for sticking with two movies that gave her such a limited role, and still giving it her all. And I can grit my teeth and sneer all I like, but Matt Damon is actually a good action hero. Dammit. Anyway, if you liked the first one, you’ll like this one, too.

The Station Agent – Possibly one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in a long time. Seriously, I don’t think I could even begin to exaggerate how wonderfully beautiful, funny, witty, touchy, and real this movie is. I will be purchasing it at my earliest convenience and making room for it in my top 20 movies list (the one in my head that is). Peter Dinklage is absolutely perfect as a lone little person (I never know what term to use) who just wants to be left alone. At least, that’s what he thinks. And the lovely Patricia Clarkson puts together another stunning job, this time as a woman afraid to let her life continue after losing her son and her marriage. But what brings them together is the brilliant performance Bobby Cannavale as the loud and overly friendly Joe. Even though he’s a grown man, he still gives off this childlike wonder and acceptance that makes those around him realize how important human contact is. If you haven’t seen it yet, just go out and rent it now. A stunning film that I’ve been looking forward to seeing since I first saw it’s trailer (more than a year and a half ago) and can honestly say that I was not only not disappointed, but absolutely thrilled with the results.

Ok, I think that’s all for now. Like I said, there are so many more spread out of the last few months that I need to come up with a new way of posting them. Perhaps this weekend will deliver some free time 🙂 .

What Does Your Name Mean? Find Out What The First Letter of Your Name Really Means! An interesting read, but I’m really just linking it so you can get to the letter K. Make sure you read another letter before you scroll down to it, though.

(Courtesy of Mindful Musings)