Recursion
So w
hat happens when your can of WD-40 is left out too long and the trigger gets stuck and won't stop spraying? Spray it with some WD-40?
Did you know that WD-40 stands for "Water Displacement - 40th Attempt"? Thanks Wikipedia!
Price Tracking
Price tracking can be confusing online. Retailers like Amazon and Newegg (two that I buy from frequently) seem to sometimes change their prices daily. One expects prices to drop over time but this doesn't always happen. I was surprised to find that prices for Solid-State Hard Drives have actually been rising recently (although the real deals appear to have been back in October/November). Thankfully there are some tools that can help. One of them is the Camelizer -- a Firefox plugin. Alternatively, you can access the same data at the website camelcamelcamel.com (for Amazon) and camelegg (for Newegg). The same group also tracks prices at BackCountry, Best Buy, OverStock.com, and Zzounds,
Here's an example of one of the SSD's that I'm interested in:
In this digital age it's nice to have something that keeps some history around. It's easy to get information these days but it's always easy to change information (which is why I'm also a big fan of the WayBackMachine -- check out the original Google page!) We don't keep coupons, flyers, or catalogs anymore, we just remember the website.
Anyone experience this sort of problem?
Happy New Year
It's 2010 everyone! It's ridiculuous how fast 2009 went by. I have high hopes for the year. We'll see how things go...
Office Setup
I seem to remember talking about this already but I've further upgraded my man-cave to new levels of geekiness. I know have two 26" screens that I've wall mounted just above my desk (keeps them in the same position regardless of all the clutter on my desk.)
Currently I'm running OS X on my right screen and Windows 7 on the left. I use Synergy to share mouse/keyboard commands so it feels like one continuous background. I'm mostly using OS X still but the new machine has 6GB of RAM which gives a lot of breathing space if the Mac gets bogged down.
What I'd like to do is switch out my aging Logitech system with two simple monitor speakers -- I still haven't decided what make/model to get but they have good stuff for pretty cheap. I'll plan on mounting these on a small shelf along with all the hard drives and accessories that I have. If that all works, I could simply get rid of the desk and bring the leather chair from downstairs. Should be a nice setup.
I have visions of punching a hole behind the monitors and making an in-wall rack that I can use to store my rather large 4U case. The wall there backs into the garage rafters and there's quite a bit of room. Ventilation and cooling would be an issue but I'm sure I can come up with something that works well.
What's your work/play area set up like? I'll post any pictures I receive...
Ice and Keeping Warm
We've been having some icy weather of late. The frosts have been beautiful -- much heavier than usual. Some of these last few days have just been gorgeous. Cold, crisp, but wonderfully clear!
Most of the plants are holding up well. With the exception of the new maple sapling and the new rhodedendron which our new puppy Jack 2.0 has decided to eat. I think they're goners.
In order to keep Jack warm, I made a dog house. The design is pretty simple, should be big enough for him even when he's full-grown and as a plus, it's insulated. It's not the prettiest thing inside but my woodworking skills are pretty rudimentary. I did get a new DeWalt Jigsaw (which works great). I was amazed by just how much this thing weighed... It's heavy enough that I really need a hand-cart to move it around. I suppose that's good -- the boys and the dog won't be able to move it around. The walls are about 2 inches thick -- outer hardi-plank, 1" foam insulation, and 1/2" plywood sheathing inside. I was able to use a lot of scraps that I had. I think the total cost was under $100.
I made it to match the house so at least it fits in nicely with the yard. The roof is done pretty poorly. I actually have enough to put on a second layer of shingles (which would probably help keep it dry) but I got lazy and decided to wait and see what Jack does to this before moving on.
Google Public DNS
Google today announced that they're providing a high-performance public DNS server. This sounds like a great idea from a performance perspective ... I've not had too many complaints with my DNS servers provided by Comcast but I've definitely had some issues at my work with slow/non-responsive DNS servers.
However, I suppose this is just one more thing that can go wrong. Now there's one BIG target to attack and if someone happens to poison the cache, we're all in a world of hurt.
I do plan on updating my home router though to start using this. I'll post a follow-up with my review.
From: Official Google Blog: Introducing Google Public DNS.
Update: They're definitely taking security very seriously. Some more info can be found here that's quite helpful.
Types of People
Found this in some notes from a while back (I believe it was at a series of classes at Faith):
VRP - Very Resourceful People
These people IGNITE Spiritual Passion (Mentors)
VIP - Very Important People
These people SHARE Spiritual Passion (Peers)
VTP - Very Trainable People
These people CATCH Spiritual Passion (Proteges)
VNP - Very Nice People
These people ENJOY Spiritual Passion
VDP - Very Draining People
These people SAP Spiritual Passion
(If someone knows the source I'll post it -- I can't remember)
Scuttle Firefox extension
I use Scuttle on my server (for storing bookmarks). The beauty of the solution is that I have a centralized repository of bookmarks (which isn't too special considering that many services provide this feature) but in addition, it's very nicely set up to server as Live Bookmark lists in Firefox. So for example, I can have a single Live Bookmark drop-down for all work-related links, or all my "daily" websites or whatever and automatically add and remove from them as I see fit. The Live Bookmarks mean that all I need to do to reorganize links is retag them and it's instantly working on all the computers I have.
It's handy. But there's a problem. The Firefox extension for Scuttle isn't really being maintained. It's pretty simple but needed a new "max firefox version supported" string in the configuration. I've updated this and am now posting the unofficial 0.4.2 release of the Firefox Scuttle plugin with support for Firefox 3.5+.
Install Firefox Extension for Scuttle 0.4.2
Unicorns?
I don't know how many people reading this may know, but you can use Google as a calculator. Doing a search for "4 * pi" will in fact return a special "first result" that is the calculation. This is handy as it also does unit conversions like in order to convert 22 km to furlongs. There are some easter eggs though, and this is definitely the best: number of horns on a unicorn. Maybe it's just me, but this is incredibly funny to me.
I've been playing with the very impressive WolframAlpha and wondered if they had done anything similar. Sure enough "number of horns on a unicorn" return the expected result. Even more amusingly, my second guess, number of horns on a horse shows that they really having some fun:
