Humor
Don't shout at your disks - they don't like it
January 05, 2009 03:46 PM Filed in: Work
One of the research engineers at Sun just made this interesting discovery.
Original posting originated here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/05/shouty_sun_engineer/
An excellent example of useful telemetry you can gain from the latest Sun storage software....
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The Day the Music Died
December 31, 2008 10:23 PM Filed in: Apple
I have been amused by the postings today that many 30GB Zune players died today. The cause is apparently, Microsoft forgot that there are leap years which have 366 days per year.
I love the item on the www.zune.net webpage. "Trouble with your Zune 30? The fix is simple." If you click on the link, it essentially tells you to let the batteries run out, and wait until January 1st to restart it.
I wonder if Zune owners can get compensated for the fact that they can't use their players on December 31st.
On the good side, Microsoft has promised a fix before 2012....
White House Tour and the Presidential Motorcade
December 22, 2008 08:48 AM Filed in: Personal
Saturday, we went for a tour of the White House and thoroughly enjoyed seeing the public parts of the White House in full Christmas decorations. Unfortunately, no pictures as cameras were not allowed inside (you had to pretty much leave everything in your car). Our gracious guide was a patient of Zandra's. She is one of the handful of permanent staff at the White House that serves regardless of the administration in office. So she told us of lots of interesting little stories.
A funny moment came right off the bat - we were having our identities checked at the entrance (you must submit your names and social security numbers in advance for screening). Turned out, the person checking our IDs and names had the same name as Andrew! We were thinking, gosh, wish Andrew could have borrowed his ID....
Lots of interesting history and sometimes humorous information behind what you see. Coming in, we saw a portrait of Hillary Clinton in the hallway. We were told that that location is always reserved for a portrait of the immediately preceeding First Lady. So when Obama is sworn in, the picture of Hillary will come down and up will go the portrait of Laura Bush. This tradition, though, did lead to the awkward occurrence of George W. having to take down the picture of his own mother and put up Hillary's portrait in its place. Wow!
There's also a portrait of George Washington that she told us Dolly Madison saved when the British burned the White House. Dolly Madison was just finishing a chocolate cake when the British arrived (so much for advanced intelligence gathering in those days), so she ordered the staff to break the frame and she rolled up the portrait and took it with her. There's often a portrait of Dolly Madison hanging around nearby so "she can keep an eye on the portrait".
We were told about the Christmas trees inside and the Nativity scenes, and learned of the "private" dining room that is a much more intimate setting with "only" about 25-30 seats. Hmmmph!
We also heard an interesting story involving the Presidential Motorcade. For security reasons, President Bush had to take a motorcade from the White House across the lawn to light the National Christmas Tree. We were told there was too much empty space around to make a walk to the tree safe. The Presidential Motorcade has 27 cars (by the way, we found you can tell how important someone is by the number of vehicles in their motorocade - it's all set by protocol...). It's so long that to the Tree Lighting Ceremony, half the motorcade was still in the White House driveway. A cat chasing its tail moment....
No Oval Office tour. No Lincoln Bedroom tour (those are all off limits). That said, still a great tour with insider insight into the day-to-day operations of the White House!
Funniest Hold Music
December 19, 2008 09:42 PM Filed in: Personal
I just got off the phone with Southwest Airlines because I needed to cancel a flight. They were very busy this evening handling flight cancellations due to bad weather, so I got the very unusual opportunity to listen to their "hold music".
I have to tell you, I was laughing so hard when the agent picked up, I almost couldn't talk to ask her to cancel my flight. They've got a lot of great one liners - like "The Captain has turned off the fasten seat belt sign. You are now free to move about the cabin. Of course, unless you're calling from your car." Then there was the "Pirate Song" which I didn't get to hear all of, but started off with an intro of "It's always more fun to say Caaaaarrrrgo if you're a pirate, so here's a pirate song..." or something like that.
More businesses really need to approach things this way.
Good work Southwest. You made my evening.
Bart Simpson and Google
December 05, 2008 01:52 PM Filed in: Personal
The Matrix doesn't run WIndows
Found on an internal mailing list today.
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/11/10/how-we-know-that-matrix-doesnt-run-on-windows-xp/
This is a good one, in my opinion.
Inexpensive weather station
October 29, 2008 03:40 PM Filed in: Personal
iPhone Camera Malfunction
September 15, 2008 02:36 PM Filed in: Apple
After upgrading my iPhone to the new 2.1 version of firmware, the first picture the camera took was, well, bizarre. You can click on the picture for the full size version....
It’s not just bizarre because of the bumper sticker I was taking a picture of (that was just funny), but it has to do with the way this picture is broken up. Also realize that that soccer ball on top was part of the bumper and this bumper sticker was on the tailgate. So the camera took a picture, put the bottom half of the picture on the top half, vice versa, and then offset the last 1/3 of the picture by a bunch of pixels...
The camera appears to have been fine since.
Hmmph!
Nerdy items from MIT
September 02, 2008 10:31 AM Filed in: Personal
(I struggled for a bit to decide whether or not to tag this as “humor” or not....we’ll give it a shot)
So one of the things we did when in Boston was visit the Coop at Kendall Square so Zandra could load up on a few items from her alma mater. The Coop at MIT is more interesting than most typical college bookstores, simply because of the intellectual culture that exists there.
Here are a few items we did not buy, but that I found pretty interesting.
First - the childrens’ books:
Next - an explanation of light (could I have gotten away with this in physics?):
Finally, something that came close to making the list home:
Packaging the HP way
July 23, 2008 09:58 PM Filed in: Personal
Someone sent me the following two links as overpackaging demonstrations by HP.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/18/hp_packaging/
and
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/23/enormouse/
Ayup....items definitely overpacked. Must be that oversized European A4 paper....
Comments to my sister's blog
June 17, 2008 12:31 PM Filed in: Personal
A couple of entries ago, I noted that my sister had a blog. Since then, she's made more than a few references to me that I just feel compelled to respond to. So I will. In *my* blog.
In the entry Momma' Night Musings, the question about censorship "...I realize I have passed this blog info to my big brother....hmmmm, maybe censorship is good,." Big brother says...."write what you want." I'm probably not the one you need to worry about reading your blog. There's always the future employers, etc., who will find the blog and wonder about the person they're considering hiring....there's no such thing as anonymity on the internet. Not with Google around.
In the entries Suds, Glorious Suds! and Work, glorious work!, my sister makes a reference to the recent Thomas the Tank Engine release "Mud, Glorious Mud". I'm disappointed that my sister fails to cite the correct reference to the (noun), Glorious (noun) phrase to the lyrics of "Food, Glorious Food!" from the musical Oliver! based loosely on the great work Oliver Twist by none other than the beloved Charles Dickens. However, the fact that it shows her total dedication with her kids (because everything is now referenced from the starting point of something related to her children) indicates that she is doing great as a parent. Or at least fully immersed with being a parent....
Sis also notes I probably have all the tunes memorized since I have a 6 year head start. That's actually probably not true since with a 6 year head start, I've learned to start filtering out children's music in my head. It's on, but it's more like white noise than anything else. Nothing really sinks in. Except Barney. Which is why Barney is banned in our house. Sis should learn in another few years this little trick to successfully tolerating parenthood.
As far as the question, "Was I like this to my mother? Is this payback?" Hmmm....well, we were both prone to doing things like that, so payback? Probably. I have Declan (who by the way, just broke another dish in the time it has taken me to write the last 8 lines of text - but he was trying to be helpful by throwing the dish (literally) into the sink). You have your Asha and Aisha. Oh, and your ever-so-articulate Nate.
Finally, as I've been reading my sister's blog, I'm having great fun with each entry clicking on her "Location". It appears that in her blog, what location she types in gets fed into Google Maps. It leads to some very interesting results. "Padded room" sent me to the Excalibur Hotel in Vegas of all places. Interesting what those pidgeons pecking at the keyboard come up with at Google....
Are you wishing you'd never told me about your blog yet, sis?
I love you!
Steve Jobs Bloopers
May 23, 2008 12:16 PM Filed in: Apple
Two Interesting Videos - Humorous and Serious
March 14, 2008 11:42 AM Filed in: Personal
Set aside about 20 minutes total to watch both of these videos if you are so inclined. And be prepared for a major mood swing between the two.
The first one is called Treeless Squirrel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k22oHm0O3Sg The squirrel in this video is the son of a good friend of mine (who also does other advertising design when he's not busy being nuts (sic)). This one is funny.
The second one is one you may have seen. http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=ithct48cqw Randy Pausch is a CMU professor dying of pancreatic cancer. Given I've lost a couple of friends to this disease and know currently of two others with it, it's a very interesting view on living life. http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/ is his website which folks should visit for more information. This video may lead you to tears. The full length video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo .
Phone music humor
February 28, 2008 01:59 PM Filed in: Personal
Tissues, Taxis, Technology, and Cigarettes
January 31, 2008 03:46 PM Filed in: Work
When traveling anywhere, you often notice things that not only do you not see at home, but really draw your attention as being interesting, or worthy of mention at the least. Especially true when going overseas.
On my last trip the following items kind of stood out in my mind:
Package of Kleenex from Hungary with a Ratatouille theme. Just kind of cute. And the package is interestingly square instead of rectangular.
Our taxi which had an ominous telephone number...
This is most interesting - this is the switching control panel from the Hungarian Railroad station that we visited. One of the members of the group from our partner company had a big interest in trains, so our assembly plant staff arranged for a "Behind the Scenes" tour of the local train station. This was "State of the Art" when it was installed in the mid 1970's. And is still in use today. I wonder if it even has solid state technology...
Finally, a picture from the Duty Free shop at the Vienna Airport. We put these tiny little warning labels on our cigarettes. These are nice, big, simple, easy to read labels. Love them. Wish we could have them here. But interestingly, you see a lot more smoking in Vienna. I came out feeling a bit like an ashtray every time I went indoors to a restaurant or some other public place. Wonder why this is? Maybe they should have the warnings in German/Hungarian/local language? Or is it in English because the cigarettes are American?
Calendar of the year
January 09, 2008 02:56 PM Filed in: Personal
Every year, I wait until the weekend after New Years to go calendar shopping for a calendar for my office. I kind of started this tradition years ago for a number of reasons.
First was that some years, I received calendars and didn't have to go out and buy one. Whereas, if I bought one before Christmas, sometimes I'd end up with an extra calendar.
Second, the calendars are always dirt cheap (at least 50% off) after New Year.
The bad part, of course, is that you are stuck with the selection of calendars that no one else wanted.
Last year, I ended up with the "Dubious Saying of George W" calendar which contained all sorts of humorous quotes from our President. Even die hard right-wing supporters usually see the humor in George W's choice for words.
This year was more challenging. No, I really didn't want an Obama or Hillary calendar. I've long since tired of Far Side calendars, and I have to put up with too much of Zack and Cody to want one of their calendars. We have a Thomas Kinkade calendar in our bedroom.
The verdict was the "GTV Garfield Television 2008" calendar. A bunch of drawings of Garfield making his favorite editorial comments about today's TV shows and commercials.
It tells the date and is at least mildly tolerable.
A different perspective on Leopard upgrades
October 27, 2007 08:43 AM Filed in: Apple
Yesterday (Oct 26) was the official "release" day of Mac OS X 10.5 or "Leopard". Highly anticipated and awaited by the Apple faithful.
The "bleeding edge" folks were trading comments back and forth on several Mac mailing lists I'm on about when their copies would/did arrive. I found one particular comment amusing. One person reported that their package arrived in the late afternoon, and that the UPS driver said it took so long because the number of deliveries of this "iPod" (sic) nearly doubled her route and the routes of all drivers in San Francisco.
Makes me wonder what Harry Potter did to UPS....
Brokeback Mountain?
August 31, 2007 04:16 PM Filed in: Personal
My friend Fourth Breakfast posted this link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=D9bMM3prOFo which is an, um, "interpretation" of Brokeback Mountain. Absolutely hilarious!
End of the School Year
June 17, 2007 03:39 PM Filed in: Personal