Happy Birthday, Spam!

You old son-of-a-gun! : )

(Click pic for the birthday scoop)

Wipe Out!

I've had bad days, but this takes the cake! (From Fox News)

Computer Tech Accidentally Erases Info on Alaska's $38 Billion Oil Fund
Tuesday, March 20, 2007

JUNEAU,
Alaska — Perhaps you know that sinking feeling when a single keystroke accidentally destroy hours of work. Now imagine wiping out a disc drive containing an account worth $38 billion.

A computer technician at the Alaska Department of Revenue deleted applicant information for an oil-funded sales account — one of state residents' biggest perks. While reformatting the disk drive during a routine maintenance check, the technician mistakenly reformatted the backup drive as well and, suddenly, all the data disappeared.

A third line of defense — backup tapes that are updated nightly — were unreadable. "Nobody panicked, but we instantly went into planning for the worst-case scenario," said Permanent Fund Dividend Division Director Amy Skow, about the computer foul-up in July that ended up costing the department more than $200,000.

Nine months worth of information concerning the yearly payout from the Alaska Permanent Fund was gone: some 800,000 electronic images that had been painstakingly scanned into the system months earlier,the 2006 paper applications that people had either mailed in or filed over the counter, and supporting documentation such as birth certificates and proof of residence. The only backup was the paperwork itself — stored in more than 300 cardboard boxes.

"We had to bring that paper back to the scanning room, and send it through again, and quality control it, and then you have to have a way to link that paper to that person's file," said Skow. Staff working overtime and weekends re-entered the lost data into the system by the end of August. Last October and November, they met their obligation to the public and a majority of the estimated 600,000 payments for last year's $1,106.96 individual dividends went out on schedule.

Former Revenue Commissioner Bill Corbus said no one was blamed in the incident. "Everybody felt very bad about it and we all learned a lesson. There was no witch hunt," said Corbus.

According to department staff, they now have a proven and regularly tested backup and restore procedure.

I'll take the Hybrid...

So, finally, concept cars with fuel cell capability are becoming less of a "concept" and more of a "car." I have been waiting for something realistic and approachable (although price-wise, I'm sure it is anything but approachable) to appear on the car and driver scene. Ford unveiled its Edge with HySeries Drive (registered trademark). I don't care what a car looks like so long as it can drive up to 400 miles with zero emissions! Don't act like you are not impressed! Just go ahead and wish you had one.

No doubt there are drawbacks, like running out of electricity on the side of the road, or ending up someplace where you have to plug it in for four hours before you can drive again (is that really true? how annoying!), but, still, gasoline is such a brutal taskmaster that I'd love to see the human race get out from under its thumb.

Mmmm, efficiency!

White and Nerdy

File under "Guilty Pleasures" and rewatch weekly:
(Original Song Here)

ScreenSaver History

Did you know that ScreenSavers are purely decorational now? It's a fact! But what would we do without our scrolling pictures of cars, flowers and celebrities? I personally miss the old screen savers, like the pictured flying toasters. Remember the flying toasters? So shiny and happy! Were they in outer space? Were they winging their way to breakfasts all over the world? Or departing for Pluto? Nobody knew. You can still have them, if your little heart so desires.

Color Me Beautiful

I'm hepped up on Hex coloring at the moment. I petitioned the all-knowing web world for a guide, a key, something to lead me to a knowledgeable place of understanding to just what those little FF's and #OO's meant. My hexly prayers were answered. Here is how my friend Ian describes the complexity that is Hexidecimal Color Display:

The general principle is that the six digits are in fact three hex values (as a pair, each), first a red pair, then a green pair, then a blue pair. The pair is because it's base sixteen - so the leftmost digit of a pair is the 'units' and the rightmost digit of each pair is the 'tens' - except it's not tens, it's sixteens, because it's hexadecimal, not decimal. Next thing to remember is that it's an additive light source, not subtractive, so unlike mixing paint or ink, where the more stuff you put in, the darker it gets (because ink or paint acts as a filter in front of the paper, causing selective filtering and the paper reflects back what's left over), with a video colour display, the more 'stuff' you tell it to display, the brighter of that colour it'll give you. Greater of all three colours together will veer towards white, lesser of all three goes towards black, so that FFFFFF is white, (ie, FF of red, FF of green, and FF of blue = white) and 000000 is black.(remember, FF is hex, and if it were decimal, it'd be 255, which is the most amount of bits you can cram into a byte, which is where the limits at each end of the scale come from - the '#' is often used to indicate hex).After a while, you can take a rough stab at numbers being more or less what colour you think it might end up being. Mid grey is 7F7F7F ('cos 7F is the halfway mark between 00 and FF, in the same way that 128 is between 0 and 255). So, 7F (oh, let's round it up to 80), 00, 00 is half-bright red, no brightness of green, no brightness of blue. Sort of a blood red. Push the red value up a bit, to 90, 00, 00, or even beyond into A00000, the red becomes brighter. Full red is FF0000, but if you want to go even lighter, say, pinky colours, you add white. How? By putting some of the other colours in equally - so that FFC0C0 would be full red, about three quarters(!) brightness of green and blue respectively. Less saturated red, but still far more red than either of blue or green for them to influence the colour in those directions. After a while, you get the knack.

Additional links of colorly funness provided by Steve DeGroof:

HTML color picker
Color scheme Generator (very fun!)
and a HEX converter

What was the first 1-800 number and who was it given to?

1-800-READ-IT-YOURSELF

Das Keyboard

For you Geek writers out there. I can'r ne trisred to typw wothoit lookinh so np blank keybosrd for me...

(ian bennet foung is)

Safety Pile-Up

Mercedes piles up cars at a safety demonstration. Ouch!

(from Steve. Thanks, Bench!)

10 Worst Bugs

Software Bugs, that is...

(Thank's, Steve)

Understanding Local Max

"If your organization or even your career is stuck, my guess is that you've been wrestling with your Local Max." - Seth Godin

(Mymo shot this my way. Thanks, Mymo.)

iPod Time Warp

Steve DeGroof sent me this forum thread from 2001 about the then-rumored iPod. Very amusing to read from the perspective of 2005. Lots of interesting predictions like:
"it wont sell, and be killed off in a short time"

Nothing Works

My cellphone won't ring.
My computer stalls.
My heater is cold.
My email won't load.
My clock is slow.
And blogger won't take my pictures.

But my outfit... now that's one thing that does work.

And really, what else matters?

"Ya Whippersnapper!"

A college student at a recent Carolina football game challenged a senior citizen sitting next to him, saying it was impossible for their generation to understand his.

"You grew up in a different world," the student said loud enough for the whole crowd to hear. "Today we have satellite television, jet planes, space travel, man has walked on the Moon, our spaceships have visited Mars, we even have nuclear energy, electric and hydrogen cars, computers with light-speed processing and, uh .."

Taking advantage of a pause in the student's litany, the old geezer said, "You're right. We didn't have those things when we were young; so we invented them, you little shit head! Now what the hell are you doing for the next generation??"

(via email)

Introducing the Hipster PDA

I bet I can afford this new Hipster PDA and that's what makes me want one.

(Found it on Diva Drip's page)

I have this:

Latest technology from the phone centers in New Delhi.

Overworked?

I know the feeling. It can get you into a strange head space. I call it 'computer head.' Usually it starts to take shape around three in the afternoon as you realize the mouse is glued to your hand and your eyeballs now only interpret pixels. And by five you fall off your chair and crawl towards the door in a desperate attempt to reclaim your humanity. Here's a little video that illustrates it well:

Overworked


(found by Chris)

A Nerd's Nerd

On my way downtown to watch an international film I happened to see a group of four men wearing red helmets and riding segways. They were reaching top speeds of 5 mph and would stop frequently to be admired or to praise their two-wheeled rides to strangers and passers-by. I smirked. How silly of them, I thought, to be wearing helmets and traveling in a pack of four. How much nerdier can you get?

Just then I realized that I was wearing a "Vote for Pedro" t-shirt on my way to watch House of Flying Daggers and Ang Bok. At the library. Alone.

I have this theory that everyone is a nerd in some area. We all have that thing that makes us a little too excited, talk a little too animatedly. Some subject about which we know a little too much. Even posers are nerds. The desire to always look hot and poserly is what makes them nerds.

Well. I have to get back downstairs to watch the second feature.

"Just tell them that if they vote for you all their wildest dreams will come true."

Because they will. Live long and prosper.

if you were a robot, what would your manual say?

Random Photo of the Day

It's too big and wonderful to post here. So go here.