Another f$%ing sleepless night...I'm at my wits end

I do not know what to do and it's start to ware me out. If it weren't for the ADD medicine on, I don't think I would get anything accomplished. But, that's enough about me.

The good news is we found our next home. We have been complete discontent with our current home. It's the same size in square footage as the home in Houston, but it's 2 story. Our older greyhound, Gracie, the one pictured on the right doesn't do stairs. The home is also situated with a bonus room above the garage which never gets used. Therefore, our primary family room is downstairs which has the kitchen (smaller than most galley kitchens) the family room, dinning room and 1/2 bath. Therefore, we re confined to a single room apartment living with 3 dogs.

You can only imaging how much work it takes to keep this place clean. There are days we don't do a good job.

The good news is, that the dogs have about a 1 acre fenced in lot to run around. The floor plan is single story and open. And most importantly, it's in the country.

I'm going to have to buy a riding lawnmower and some overalls! We'll get a does of the "real life". Don't have the pictures yet, but you can see the satellite images from google with the home was first being built. Also, it has a septic tank...I heard they work good if you don't try to do 15 loads of laundry, run 2 showers at the same time, and do 15 loads of dishes.

Here's to a bubble free yard with our new home.

Praise to Time Capsule

Last week, I dropped my MacBook in our living room. The net result? A failed hard drive. After a quick trip to Best Buy, I picked up a new drive and later that night had it plugged in.

I suspect why you would find that so amazing...well, it's not. The amazing part is my Super Drive worked with the original Tiger install disks but not Leopard. What the? Dropped in a The Matrix, and it worked. Now I'm really perplexed. I've heard so many good things about Apple support, so I give them a call. After a few troubleshooting steps, still could not resolve the issue and they created an appointment for me at my local Apple store, for the same day none-the-less!

I promptly arrive for my 5:45pm appointment and after some additional troubleshooting, the customer service rep declared something was wrong with my Super Drive. He gave me 2 options for getting it fixed, and needless to say both were the 1/4 the original price of the laptop. A third option he offered was to not fix it and pick up an external drive (this is what I'll do, seeing how that will only set me back about $125). The tech then offered to install Leopard for me from an external drive, which I did.

Thirty minutes later, I walked out with Leopard installed. But, what's so cool, while it was installing, we were chatting and came up with the hypothesis that the issue with my Super Drive was that it could no longer read dual layer DVDs. After all, I was able to install Tiger (single layer DVD) and not Leopard (dual layer DVD). Either way, I was very satisfied.

Now for the cool part. Thanks to my Time Capsule and Time Machine, I only lost 3 days of work, which I really didn't loose as I hadn't done any work in the three days.

So, kudos to Time Capsule + Time Machine, there is another satisfied Apple customer in me.

And you think your system handles a high transactional volume?

My buddies at work always start chuckling when we look at some performance stats on our middle tier system. We proudly proclaim how we are pushing 5 transactions / second with a quarter second response time on average. This is all somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as we are very aware that this is child's play.

So, when I was reading the Amazon Web Services Blog about how they peaked out 70,000 transactions / second, I could help but laugh harder. Damn, I wish I had the opportunity to work on that type of system.

"Our customers are keeping S3 pretty busy too. To give you an example of what this means in practice, the peak S3 usage for October 1st was over 70,000 storage, retrieval, and deletion requests per second."

.

Goes to show just how small of a fish I really am in this big ocean.

Gassless in Nashville

Yep, that's right, we are without gas here. It started Friday. Apparently, one pipeline that is responsible for supplying gas to Nashville runs through Houston and the operator has not had power restored. The net result, a shortage of gas in Nashville. They are saying 80% of the gas stations are without gas. We have 1/2 tank in our Toyota and 1/4 tank in the Explorer. Needless to say, we aren't going anywhere anytime soon. I've reverted to emailing coworkers looking for gas. Heck, maybe this is a good time for me to go and buy a bike. I just had my annual physical and my doctor said I need to start exercising...maybe she's conspiring against me and taking up all the gas.

Ode to credit card payments using machine or human

I travel a lot. And as a result, I fly out of Houston Hobby airport and become very efficient and getting there, parking, and making a fast get-a-way. Something occur to me a few weeks ago as I was peeling out from the parking garage to head home.

When paying for parking, you have a couple of options. You can use an auto teller and swipe your credit card through a machine, or you can do it the old fashion way and interact with a parking attendant who will gladly process your credit card.

The issue is, when I use the machine, I insert my parking ticket followed by the credit card and usually 15 seconds later, a receipt is printed and I retrieve my credit card. Now, in the event that the automatic machine is down (which is often), I have to go to the parking attendant. I give them the parking ticket, a total is calculated, I give him my card, he swipes the card, I wait about 1 minute (I've timed it), he hands me clipboard, sign the receipt, and then get my card back and my copy of the receipt and then I'm out of there.

My question, why is it that I have to sign a receipt when using the parking attendant but do not have to when I use the automatic machine? I've heard that transactions under $25 don't require signatures, but most of the time, my parking ticket is on the order of $50. What gives?

What I hate about the Internet is...everyone wants you to create an account

It never fails...any website you shop on...they want you to create an account when you check out.

Why?

When I go to my local mall and buy something in my favorite shop, the store doesn't ask for my address, phone number, email address or any other personal information. Normal shopping experiences include an exchange of pleasantries with the sales person, handing over cash, debit, or credit card...and obtaining a receipt and walking away with the goods.

Why shouldn't shopping on the Internet be any different?

Judge upholds $30M Judgement against Ebay...what the?

The AP is reporting that a federal judge upheld a ruling in favor of a small Virgina based companies claim of patent infringement by EBay. The article states:

The dispute revolves around eBay's "Buy It Now" option, which sells
merchandise at a fixed price instead of fluctuating bids. MercExchange contends
the system tramples on its patented technology.

Since when is buying merchandise on line at a fixed price an infringement of a patent? The article concludes with:

Since the legal tug-of-war began, MercExchange's payroll has shrank from more
than 40 employees to three. Thomas Woolston, MercExchange's president, is trying
to revive the company's growth by licensing patents to other e-commerce sites.

MercExhange is the name of the company that filed the lawsuit...hmmmm...I guess patent holding companies are a thing of the past...at least with respect to Internet intellectual properties.

A Christmas Tragedy

Once I realized that it was the woman sitting a few chairs down from me snoring and not some special affect, I was able to realize how bad of a telling of Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol put on at the Alley Theatre really was.

From freakish choreographed ghost dances you would be proud of at your 5 year old daughters dance recital; the predictable transvestite maid servant of Scrooge; a steam clock; and to the tricycle riding ghost of Christmas future, the play was an utter disappointment. Until last night, I didn't realize it was possible for a professional stage group to put on a poor performance.

Yes, you read right, the ghost of Christmas future was riding a rocket propelled tricycle full of exhaust steam, twisty pipes, and some kind of canisters that you would see at an oil refinery.

Suffering from an identity crisis, the producers and directors tried to bring A Nightmare Before Christmas to the stage through this classic story. Needless to say, neither are a Tim Burton and their attempt was unoriginal, boring, and down right stupid. I found myself laughing out loud throughout the play as scene after scene contained some kind of cheese that Kraft would be proud of. For example, there was an entourage of 5 ghosts doing some stupid choreographed dance routine between many of the scenes wearing Halloween masks straight out of the movie Scream.

Suffice to say, I'm going to think twice next year before slapping down my $67 per ticket to avoid suicidal thoughts to rid myself of the agony of watching this play, as it was truly the worst play I've ever seen.

P.S.
I'm not kidding about the lady snoring.

Dirty Santa

While catching up on my news today, read an article from the Associated Press about a Microsoft Messenger Santa bot talked dirty to kids. The Santa bot allows kids to chat with Santa through MSN Live messenger about what they would like for Christmas. Apparently, by directing the conversation the right way, you could get Santa to talk dirty to you. For example:

One of the publication's writers replicated the chat Monday. After declining the writer's repeated invitations to eat pizza, a frustrated Santa burst out with, "You want me to eat what?!? It's fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else."

A Microsoft spokesman had the following comment about the bot:

Sohn said Santa's lewd comment was sparked by someone "pushing this thing to make it do things it wasn't supposed to do."

Now, if that isn't the response of a developer, I don't know what is.

Greyhound Garbage Raid

As some of you may know, we adopted 2 greyhounds. If you are considering a pet, I would highly recommend greyhounds if you want the following from a pet:

1. Low maintenance. Greyhounds will sleep 20+ hours a day, even more than a cat!
2. They provide tremendous amount of affection.
3. Typically, have a very quite disposition. You can go a whole year without hearing them bark, but when they do, it scares the begebees out of you.
4. Despite the perception, they are generally low energy dogs. When greys are in their racing prime, they'll race maybe twice a week and then sleep the other days.
5. Despite their size (50 to 100lbs), they don't seem like large dogs because they are content curling up into balls in their favorite sleeping location.
6. As being racers, they are handled by people more than other breeds as pups and the result, they will typically get along with humans very well.
7. They are very distinguished. When you walk them, everyone knows it's a greyhound and everyone wants to pet them.

There are a million other reasons to love greyhounds. And despite some of the trouble (see video below) they get into, they are a joy to be around.

No keyboard found, press F1 to continue

Over the last week, been working to remove some spy ware, trojan horses, and other viruses that recently got onto my mother-in-laws computer. During one of the reboots, I got an error message during the system check:

No keyboard found, press F1 to continue.

Hmmmm, would like to if the keyboard was found.

Economical Vehicles

My mom often sends my jokes and other amusing stories that float around the internet. The latest one really touched my funny bone.

• A recent study found the average American golfer walks about 900 miles a Year.

• Another study found American golfers drink, on average, 22 gallons of beer a Year.

• That means, on average, American golfers get about 41 miles to the gallon.

• Kind Of Makes You Proud

As a golfer, I would like to officially decree that I'm doing my job to save the environment.

Wow, another email...it must be my lucky year

From:   vitomas00@hotmail.fr
Subject: Please reply me as soon as possible.
Date: October 26, 2007 10:45:05 AM CDT
Reply-To:   vitomas1@yahoo.com

DEAREST ONE ,
AS I WAS ABOUT SEARCHING FOR A TRUST WORTHY PERSON  .I MUST NOT HESITATE TO CONFIDE IN YOU FOR THIS SIMPLE AND SINCERE BUSINESS IN WHICH MY WHOLE LIFE DEPENDS ON.
I AM  VINCENT THE ONLY CHILD AND OF LATE CHIEF AND MRS RUBEN JAKO WEMBER .MY FATHER WAS A VERY WEALTHY COCOA MERCHANT BASED IN ABIDJAN, THE ECONOMIC CAPITAL OF IVORY COAST BEFORE HE WAS POISONED TO DEATH BY HIS BUSINESS ASSOCIATES ON ONE OF THEIR OUTINGS TO DISCUSS ON A BUSINESS DEAL HE NEVER KNEW HE WAS THE PLAN TO BE KILLED ONLY BECAUSE HE REFUSSED JOINING THE  SPONSOR  OF THE WAR .
 
MY MOTHER DIED ON THE 21ST OCTOBER 1988, MY FATHER TOOK ME SO SPECIAL BECAUSE I AM MOTHERLESS AND THE ONLY CHILD.BEFORE THE DEATH OF MY FATHER ON 24TH JUNE 2006 IN A PRIVATE HOSPITAL HERE IN ABIDJAN. HE SECRETLY CALLED ME ON HIS BEDSIDE AND TOLD ME THAT HE HAD A SUM OF US$16,600,000 (SIXTEEN MILLION SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS) HE STOCKED IT IN A CONSIGNMENT BOX AND DEPOSITED INTO A SECURITY COMPANY HERE IN ABIDJAN, THAT HE USED MY NAME AS THE ONLY SON IN DEPOSITING THE BOX WITH THE SECURITY COMPANY AND TOLD THEM THAT I WILL PRESENT TO THE SECURITY COMPANY THE FOREIGN PARTNER AND BENEFICARY WHO WILL CLAIM THE BOXES.
HE ALSO EXPLAINED TO ME THAT IT WAS BECAUSE OF THIS WEALTH THAT HE WAS POISONED BY HIS BUSINESS ASSOCIATES, THAT I SHOULD SEEK FOR A FOREIGNER IN ANY OF THE OVERSEA  COUNTRY OF MY CHOICE WHERE ,AND THAT I SHOULD MAKE SURE THAT I TRUST THE PERSON THAT HE / SHE WILL NOT CHEAT ME OR KILL ME LATERON BEFORE I CAN DISCLOSE TO HIM WHERE THE CONTACT OF THE SECURITY COMPANY .HE SAID THAT THE CONTENT OF THE BOX MUST BE A CONFIDENTIAL BETWEEN I AND THE PERSON BECAUSE THAT NOBODY EVEN NOON OF THE SECURITY COMPANY WORKERS KNOWS THAT THE CONTENT OF THE BOX ARE MONEY.HE SAID THAT HIM DECLEARED THE CONTENTS OF THE BOX AS FAMILY VALUEABLES SUCH AS  GOLD DUSTS. 
I AM HONOURABLY SEEKING YOUR ASSISTANCE IN THE FOLLOWING WAYS AND I AM ASSURING YOU THAT THIS TRANSACTION IS  LEGAL AND 100% RISK FREE HENCE YOU LISTEN TO MY WORDS AND BE SURE THAT YOU ARE WILLING TO HELP ME FROM THE BUTTOM OF YOUR HEART
 
2) TO SERVE AS MY GUARDIAN AND YOU WILL BE PRESENTED AS LATE FATHERS FOREIGN BUSINESS PARTNER.SINCE I AM A BOY OF 21 YEARS OLD   
 
3) TO MAKE ARRANGEMENT FOR ME TO COME OVER TO YOUR COUNTRY TO FURTHER MY EDUCATION AND TO SECURE A RESIDENTIAL PERMIT FOR ME IN YOUR COUNTRY.
MOREOVER, I AM WILLING TO OFFER YOU APPRICIATIVE SUM FROM THE TOTAL MONEY AS COMPENSATION FOR YOUR IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE AFTER YOU HELP ME CLEAR OUT THE BOX FROM THE SECURITY COMPANY 
 
FURTHERMORE, YOU CAN INDICATE YOUR OPTION TOWARDS ASSISTING ME, AS I BELIEVE THAT THIS TRANSACTION WOULD BE CONCLUDED WITHIN SEVEN (7)  WORKING DAYS .IF YOU HAVE  INTEREST TO ASSIST ME PLEASE ENDEAVOUR TO FURNISH ME WITH YOUR TELEPHONE AND FAX NUMBER SO THAT I WILL FORWARD THEM TO THE SECURITY COMPANY OFFICE AS MY LATE FATHERS FOREIGN BUSINESS PARTNER WHO HE DEPOSITED THE METALIC BOX ON HIS BEHALF.
THANKS AND GOD BLESS,HOPING TO HEAR FROM YOU I WILL BE HAPPY TO CHAT WITH YOU ON THE PHONE SOONEST.
IN GOD WE TRUST.
YOURS SINCERELY,
VINCENT JAKO WEMBER.
NB: PLEASE  REPLY ME THROUGH THIS MY PRIVATE E-MAIL  FOR SECURITY REASON. THANKS
vitomas1@yahoo.com

TLAP Follow Up

joel s says:
Hoist the mizzen and swing the lead! tryin' out this new pirate talk thin'y fer MSN

joel s says:
http://messenger.zone.msn.com/en-us/nongame/upgrade.aspx?gameID=10331057

joel s says:
Swab the deck, matey or you'll kiss the gunner's daughter. it automatically translates into pirate fer yeAye, but aren't ye a fine lookin' lass.

joel s says:
lubber, this thin' is pretty sweet Aye, Aye, captain.

K3bert says:
Aye, but aren't ye a fine lookin' lass. I'm all about TLAM next year

K3bert says:
Gar. TLAM = Talk Like A Modem

joel s says:
If'n ye don't swab the deck, ye be swimmin' with the bilge rats! TLAM, what th' hell is that? some TLAP knockoff?Aye, but aren't ye a fine lookin' lass.

joel s says:
aye Measure ye for yer chains.

joel s says:
moden eh

joel s says:
medem

joel s says:
modem

K3bert says:
I BE a fine lookin' arse Aye, me bucko.

K3bert says:
who in th' fuck comes up with this shit? Avast ye scarvy scum.

joel s says:
You li'ly libbered land lubber. hows that work? beep-beep--b-e-e-p-beeee-p

K3bert says:
errrgggghhhh.....sreeeeeecccchhhhhh......ehhhhhohhhhhh.....errrrrrrr

joel s says:
You li'ly libbered land lubber. geeks, real geeks.

Death to the computer mouse

Today, I was very fortunate to come across a company that is interested in making computers more use able. What? How? Enso.

The What:

Having to change programs to perform simple tasks—for example, making a quick calculation, or looking up a definition—breaks your concentration, takes you away from the task at hand, and wastes your valuable time. Enso lets you do common computing tasks easier and faster than ever before. You get a huge productivity boost and a simpler digital life.

The How:

Enso is dead simple to use. You just hold down the Caps Lock key and type an Enso command, which is displayed in a translucent overlay. Once the command is typed, you simply release the Caps Lock key to activate it, and the overlay disappears. If you type fast, it all happens in a flash.

What does this mean? It makes using the computer, well, more useful. If you watch the video, the Atul Varma, the Vice President of the company, gives a real world example of when you are typing a letter to your mom and want to tell her about something you purchased. If you bought 4 widgets at $2.99, unless you are a mathematical genius, would need to get a calculator and type in 4 * 2.99. If you are using Windows XP, getting a calculator may mean using the mouse to move the cursot to Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Calculator. Or, if you are really lazy, open the drawer of your desk, pull out your calculator that saw you through Algebra.

Ha! Finally, I found someone else that thinks there are better ways to use the computer. Download the software and find out how.

Woa, it's almost Talk Like a Pirate Day Again

Arrr...ye time 'o ear to talk like'a pirate

My pirate name is:

Red Davy Read

Passion is a big part of your life, which makes sense for a pirate. Even through many pirates have a reputation for not being the brightest souls on earth, you defy the sterotypes. You've got taste and education. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

"Tab" key behavior in Microsoft Excel

Recent, I received a new laptop at work. When I got it, while working on an Excel spread sheet, I got crazy on the keyboard and hit some "magic" key combination that changed the behavior of the "Tab" key.

What happened after the magic combination? The "Tab" key placed the focused cell over a whole page to the right instead of one cell. That is, it would jump to the first cell out of the current cells viewed on my monitor, i.e., it would jump a "whole page" instead of a single cell.

What was the magic combination? No idea.

Time to finally figure it out? Weeks.

The solution? Tools -> Options -> Settings -> Uncheck the Transition Navigation Keys

Apparently, having the Transition Navigation Keys makes the keys typically used in Excel, i.e., Tab, Home, End, arrow, and etc. keys behave as they would in Lotus 123.

Go figure.

Boxing Dog on WII

Not a real YouTube goer, but came across this video while reading Gizmodo and got a kick out of it.

10 Reasons Why Developers do not Make Good Hardware Administrators

Early this year, we had a power spike at our house during a wind storm...the net result, our home computer became unstable. Here are 10 reasons why developers don't make good hardware administrators:

1. Can't tell if the root drive failed
2. Can't tell if the power supply failed
3. Get lucky flashing bios first time
4. Get unlucky trying to flash bios second time (note, it's not good for your machine to power off during a flash).
5. Purchase new main board because first main board got fried during the bios flash
6. Tries fitting an ATX power supply into a MicroATX case
7. When putting full size ATX power supply into MicroATX case, the optical drive (7 3/4" long) will often not fit together, i.e., can't stuff an elephant in a 32oz jar of peanut butter
8. Tries fitting a MicroATX power supply only to find out it pushes the CPU core temperature over 150 degrees within 2 minutes of turning on (still can't figure out why this happened).
9. Refuses to contact technical support (this might be more of my own fault, I'm a bit thick headed).
10. Software Makes Sense!

---------------
Update: Apparently some of the Geek Squad corporate manuals have been leaked. One of which is their trouble shooting guide, what they use when you bring your broken computer into BestBuy. I could have used this earlier.