Paradoxical Thoughts
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Below are 20 journal entries, after skipping by the 20 most recent ones recorded in
Paul Montgomery's LiveJournal:
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| Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 | | 12:59 pm |
Amazon Kindle
Has anyone heard anything about these devices? It sounds interesting enough that I'm tempted to get one actually. I like the cellular networking so you don't have to worry about wired/wireless connections etc. You could download a book almost anywhere/anytime; pretty sweet. The display looks paper-ish which I like too. | | Monday, March 17th, 2008 | | 11:27 am |
If this doesn't scare the &@#$ out of you... it should.
I don't know why this isn't headline news on every news site. Bear Stearns (I'll appropriately call them BS here on in) is being bought by JP Morgan Chase (JPMC) for 230-250 million dollars. That is $2 per share of BS stock. One year ago BS was trading at $160 a share. It is also amazing how quickly the government is blessing this sale (they never do anything quickly). So despite BS recently needing an emergency infusion of money to stay afloat, they've been talking about how financially stable they are and that their mid-long term status is fine. I must say, actions speak louder than words in this case. Let's look at 1 asset of BS: their building at 383 Madison Ave. It's all fairly complicated as it is a "synthetic" ownership for tax reasons but folks are estimating the value of the building (for BS) is $570 million (some claim up to 1.2 billion or more based on other nearby buildings). "Effectively, this means that Bear Stearns was sold JP Morgan Chase for less than the value of its real estate assets." My friends, there is an economic meltdown in progress; be afraid. IMO, this is just beginning; don't listen to the BS. | | Thursday, February 28th, 2008 | | 11:54 am |
| | Thursday, December 20th, 2007 | | 2:42 pm |
| | Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 | | 10:06 am |
| | Thursday, December 13th, 2007 | | 2:24 pm |
OMGWTFBBQ, a new discovery in science...
... that was discussed over 100 years ago. Stop the press! Scientists finally rediscovered what causes "northern lights"!!! http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/12/13/northern.lights.ap/index.htmlSo Kristian Birkeland claimed this in 1900 basically and now it is newsworthy again for some weird reason: "Auroral electrons come from beams emitted by the sun. This was claimed around 1900 by Kristian Birkeland, whose experiments ... showed that such electrons would be guided towards the polar regions." In case you haven't noticed, this is a huge pet peeve of mine. New scientific discoveries: * ... that are old news. * ... by idiots who haven't been peer reviewed and make outlandish statements to capture headlines. | | Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 | | 10:13 am |
New computer speakers
I know nugget was interested; maybe others are too. I got some Bose Companion 3 speakers for my Mac Pro: http://www.bose.com/controller?event=view_product_page_event&product=companion3_computer_indexReviews ranged from "best speakers evar!!!oneone!one" to "audiophiles will cringe at the sound shaping". To me they sound great and aren't horribly priced IMO. My music is -really- bumping. Water on Elaine's desk was shaking very noticeably for example. In WoW, I'm hearing things I never heard before. The rumbling that occurs when someone runs on flame (a torch, etc) or a Paladin's concecration AOE is quite satisfying. :) It came from the factory with the bass all the way up but I had to turn it to the 1/2 way point. All the way up, the bass makes every single thing you do (even normal OS sounds) a teeth clattering affair that got on my nerves pretty quickly. Anyways, hope that helps if anyone is looking around; they are probably worth checking out for a nice early Christmas present to yourselves. PS: You guys missed some yummy Musashino on Sunday. Mmm mmm mmmm... | | Monday, September 17th, 2007 | | 1:25 pm |
Are you getting old when...
... buying a new vacuum is really exciting? After 10 years of a crappy vacuum which hasn't really gotten any of Jule's hair up in about a year, I finally splurged on the Dyson DC17 Animal. Check it out, it is really high tech looking: http://www.gearlive.com/blogimages/dc17animal.jpgIt has that "whirlwind technology" with --=no bags=--! One sweep over a sample area immediately made the difference apparent. I can no longer grab the floor and pull up a handful of Jules hair (that has never happened before). The clear container showed about 5x the amount of hair that I thought was on the floor and a huge amount of dust too! Going over a 10 foot square area filled up the container twice (not that it is too small, there was just so much dust and hair built up on the floors). *crosses fingers for less allergy problems* The funniest part about the whole thing is that Elaine found a nice soft brush attachment and used it on Jules. No more middle man, just vacuum up the hair from the source! hah Jules enjoyed the attention and massage. Golden Retrievers are just so cool. :) | | Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 | | 10:12 am |
Whew, been a rough few days... (and why I can't go skating tonight)
Saturday night after the Triumph party at about 4 AM in the morning, Elaine and I woke up to 3 extremely loud bangs (not firecracker sounds btw). Imagine a hammer hitting sheet metal and that probably isn't far off. I sounded like it was only 10-20 feet away just outside the bedroom wall in the back yard. After the latest breakin, we are obviously quite concerned and listen intently for more sounds. About 30 seconds later, it sounds like something heavy leans against the bedroom wall making it creak and then there are scratching noises. We wait for another 30 sec to a minute and hear nothing more. (Side note: Jules in typical form didn't even utter a single bark.) I try to think the the noise was some animal, wind, whatever... I go to the window and carefully peer out. I don't see anything (no wind btw and the back yard is completely gated in) so I flip on the flood lights confident that it was something natural somehow causing those noises (at least trying to convince myself of that). Then I see swimming goggles laying on the concrete about 1 foot from the edge of the pool. WTF? I don't even own swim goggles and they were not there before we went to bed. We walk Jules in the back yard every night and would have seen them. So someone was out there in the middle of the night swimming I guess and then decided to make a lot of noise?! I don't know this is all so crazy; hopefully it is just some kids in the neighborhood instead of some loony crackhead. The next morning I look around to see if there is any more evidence. A hard plastic part on the hot tub is broken and the goggles are laying there and that is all I can see that is different. I walk around the side of the house to look for more evidence when suddenly I look down to see a HUGE spider run across my bare leg which knocked into its web. I looked it up later and found out that it is an Argiope Aurantia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Argiope_Aurantia%28Texas%29.jpg). I believe this particular spider was female due to their size (3/4 to 1 1/8 in.) and I can assure you it is closer to the top end range of size. I have a severe irrational fear of spiders (no really, I act like a little girl - don't even joke with a plastic spider around me please) and this made me panic. I jumped the opposite direction from said huge evil spider and unfortunately that happened to be a direction that my knees don't bend. Upon landing I basically fell to the ground unable to walk for the next 2 days. PS: Don't worry about the spider, I won't even go near that side of the house now as much as I'd like it gone. :) I went for an x-ray yesterday and the good news is that the joint isn't severely compressed or anything that would indicate something really serious (at least as far as the x-ray can tell). I'm able to hobble around today with a leg brace so it is getting better rather quickly I hope *crossed fingers*. I guess this is a really long way to say that I can't go skating tonight. Sorry all. :( | | Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 | | 10:17 am |
O...M...G... my allergies are soooo bad!
I suspect it is mold; maybe it is time to go get tested. I just read something about putting ultraviolet lights in your house to kill mold. I'm about ready to try anything at this point. I already have a good filter on my AC. Ugh... I almost couldn't make it in to work today. | | Sunday, August 19th, 2007 | | 6:33 pm |
Finally found some anime that I dig
For quite some time I've been trying to find some anime that I like (and don't leave me asking myself wtf happened at the end of the movie). I finally found a couple of really good ones (IMO) that I'd highly recommend: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya - so funny, I love how the first episode makes fun of itself :) Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - fairly serious sci fi | | Thursday, July 26th, 2007 | | 8:41 am |
Austin, the new rainforest?
Is global warming turning Austin into a rainforest while other parts of the country are dry? What is happening lately? Coming to work this morning, water was shooting up out of manhole covers on 1st street! I figure we've dodged 1/3 of the 100 degree weather + no rain for 3 months at this point and all I see is rain forcasted. Also, I'm getting a bit disoriented switching between Mac OS to Windows every morning and night. The biggest thing for me right now is that Mac OS and Windows places the window close icon on opposite sides of the screen. Newbie Mac OS questions incoming: I know how to logout and close all applications (some control?, #-looking-thing, Q) but how do you just lock the screen without closing all the apps? Why does Safari sometimes let Delete (backspace on PC keyboards) go back a page and sometimes not (I have to click the back arrow). Am I using the wrong key? If I want to open two separate instances of Safari, how do I do that? If I click the icon again, it just highlights the already open browser. | | Friday, July 20th, 2007 | | 5:09 pm |
Hi, I [have a] Mac
Yep, took today off, visited the Apple store and came home with a Mac Pro. Darn near came home with an iPhone too. Now if I can figure out why the Mac says my external NTFS formatted USB drive is corrupt and won't read it. Articles indicate that Tiger can read NTFS but not write (which is fine with me). | | Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 | | 2:01 pm |
PC-BSD
I was reading an article about PC-BSD. It sounded really good (UNIX for folks unfamiliar with anything but Windows) until... "Installation went smoothly until the reboot for me, due once again to my X driver problem. If I was not a *nix professional, I would have panicked at this point. Since I am, I was able to boot into safe mode, log in as root, remount the filesystem as read-write, and try to edit my xorg.conf file. In safe mode, I found that something was wrong with the line terminations when using vi, so I had to use less to view the files and then construct a sed substitution to change the video driver from "nv" to "vesa."" That kind of stuff is just plain unacceptable if the goal is to achieve the "my mom could use this" rating. Windows will dominate until people making these distributions realize that going to a command prompt and doing -anything- is unacceptable for >90% of the users out there. | | Monday, June 4th, 2007 | | 11:14 am |
RIP bewilders.us July 2003 - June 2007
Well, the server, not the name, I'll probably keep that for some use some day. I got an email that my credit card expired and theplanet wants a new one. I'm glad credit cards expire for these kinds of things. It makes me think about what I use it for... well, more like what I don't do with it. WoW sapped any will for me to make something interesting out of it and there are plenty of free sites to store a few pictures now and then. PS: Thank goodness bike week is over, now maybe I can get some sleep. Why can't I post to LJ from Firefox anymore? grrr Oh, and now that downtown shouldn't be completely avoided, maybe Wink this saturday? | | Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 | | 1:20 pm |
" Where have all the viewers gone?"
Advertisers are moaning about reduced TV watching: http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/05/09/tv.missingviewers.ap/index.htmlThere are lots of suggestions as to why this is but the biggest reasons to me are completely left off of the list: * Non-DVR TV does not distributed the content in a way that I want. I want downloadedable content that I can watch when I want and where I want and not be bound to a TV schedule/to my couch in front of my TV. * Commercials, hate them! If they can't be as good as superbowl commercials which are entertaining, don't show them and stop wasting my time. * TV alternatives such as Netflix. No commercials, every movie and TV show (on DVD) at your choosing. * This one deserves its own bullet: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/video-on-demand-deal-bars-ad-skipping/story.aspx?guid=%7BD3E00E8E-DB73-4E1B-BCC8-2FDECF91CAE8%7DMy hypothesis is that people have been fed up with commercials and forced scheduling for a long time but haven't had much alternative. Now those alternatives exist and the advertisers need to stop trying to cram the same old garbage down everyone's throats. BTW: Cable companies, wake up! You could own Blockbuster, Netflix, etc right now if you'd just get the broad selection of movies instead of only carrying crappy (surely cheap to buy) movies and only a handfull at any time. | | Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 | | 8:41 am |
Congressman Jack Kingston, could you answer the question?
This morning, Congressman Jack Kingston was on CSPAN accepting caller questions. One series of caller questions went something like this: Caller 1: Are you for or against the war? Jack: [several minutes of discussion without answering] Caller 2: Cut the crap congressman, yes or no answer only please, are you for or against the war? We all know the scripted answer, just answer yes or no only! Jack: [several minutes of discussion without answering] CSPAN host: I think that last caller is fuming, would you agree that you did not give a yes or no to his question? Could you answer for him? Jack: Well, I didn't answer directly but... [several minutes of discussion without answering] While I'm against the reason for starting the war in Iraq, I'm honestly not sure what my stance about staying or leaving is. It is a complex situation we collectively created for ourselves. One thing I would like to hear is a direct answer from someone like Mr. Kingston especially since he is so vocal in supporting the war in normal congressional sessions. | | Thursday, April 19th, 2007 | | 4:12 pm |
LCD Monitor Questions
Yay, one of my CRT monitors blew up so it is time to finally get an LCD at home. I've been looking through a blizzard of articles about how define what a good LCD monitor is and I'm still without much answer. What company, dot pitch, contrast, refresh, etc would be my goal in getting a good quality monitor? I'm not sure I want a 30 inch monster yet. Maybe 24 inch? PS: Yes, this will be for games. World of Warcraft especially. :) | | Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 | | 3:52 pm |
Simfire!
I'm pretty excited about the industry buzz surrounding a project our team has been working on: Simfire. http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3667946(just search google, tons of hits for "simfire") The tool can be found on SourceForge and is a BSD license. AMD announced it publicly at a trade show in conjunction with several companies and the Distributed Management Task Force (dmtf.org). It is used to test DASH implementation interoperability (DASH being the new industry standard which will replace ASF). | | 10:19 am |
Solid state harddrives ftw!
http://theinquirer.org/default.aspx?article=3853264 GB drive with no moving parts. I bet that in 10 years, people will be horrified to think that we depended on components with moving parts to store our data much like we think of punch cards now. Here is my top 3 wish list: * No moving parts in systems (reliability improves - this includes hard drives and fans!) * Better batteries (for everything, laptops, cars, storing energy for buildings, etc) * New user interfaces: Keyboard, mouse and monitor has existed too long with relatively no major changes. Give me a display via goggles or a laser painting images on my eyeball so I can get a huge display while sitting on an airplane for example. New methods of inputing data that don't require bulky keyboards or having to type by thumb so we can really shrink the size of mobile computers. |
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