Mecworks

So, one of my friends and co-workers Eric, just came to my office and asked if I had a couple AA batteries that he could borrow. I searched and looked and finally found two in a Maglite flashlight I had in my backpack. I held the flashlight up and said “here’s a couple” and he said “Uh, you don’t have 4? OK, I’ll keep looking”.

I could have sworn that “a couple” meant two. I think he’s just focused elsewhere - his last day here is tomorrow.

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I don’t want to have to go through some winding, confusing process of reading HOWTOs, hand editing xorg.conf files, restarting X over and over again just to get decent support for my wacom digitizer pad. Especially when the experience on windows and mac is completely painless.

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Late one night this week…

Googleearth gallery
   > 2007 Tour de France route
      > Noticed amazing Carcassonne which the route passed by
         > Jump to Wikipedia to learn about Carcassonne
            > A thought leads to Labyrinth the book
               > Which makes me think of the (unrelated) Labyrinth movie
                  > Learn that the fancy manipulation of the ball is called Contact Juggling
                     > Search Youtube for Contact Juggling
                        > Amazing:

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So, I was really upset a month ago when one of my headlights in my Jeep Cherokee went out. It’s not the first time and that’s actually the reason why I was upset. I just replaced both of them one year ago and again, a year before that! For some reason I’ve felt that headlights should last longer than one year (apparently, misguided in these perceptions). They seem that they are not made of tissue and therefore one should expect them to not function like a short term, disposable item.

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The only thing good about being sick is that I get to sound like Barry White for a while. Whereas White was often affectionately referred to as “The Man with the Velvet Voice”, being sick, just makes me sound like him. It’s hard to make out with anyone while coughing up a lung.

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Who says you need a ricer to drift… apparently you only need a couple of wheels and lots of sugar.

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OK, this is just too cool.  When I’ve lived in or visited Japan, I’ve seen several amazing things.  It seems they always tend to be intruged with the bizarre.  Whether it’s the Tokyo Goths or the amazingly yet ordinary mix of old with modern or the astute attention to detail, it’s one of my favorite places.  The food, art and culture are awesome.

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Another video of Steve. Below is a video of a great interview that Steve Irwin did on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Very funny.

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So, one of my favorite conservationists and genuine people has died. Steve Irwin, known to most people around the world as the Crocodile Hunter passed away today in an accident while filming a documentary about the sea’s most dangerous creatures off the coast of Australia. A stingray barb pierced his chest and heart.

I remember watching his shows on television many times and having to look away because what he was doing or the danger he was in was too hard to watch. He lived his life like that, on the edge but he enjoyed what he was doing and died doing just that. Below is a video tribute of Steve Irwin’s live originally broadcast on Australian television on September 4, 2006, the day of Steve’s death.

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Amazing, cool rhymes, awesome video. Nice commentary on the worlds view of beauty and what it imposes on beliefs and affects behaviours. (if you are viewing this from a site that aggregates my blog, there is an embedded video below that you won’t be able to see so click through to see the actual story on my blog).

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So, it was late last night and not really wanting to sleep, against my better judgement I began browsing some of the cool links I have collected over the past few weeks. One of my favorites has been a collection of free or otherwise freely available movies and documentaries at http://www.jonhs.net/freemovies/

OK, so I have an equity line of credit at US Bank on my home which equates to an interest only loan/second mortgage. My goal has been to pay it off as soon as possible and so when I have a significant amount saved, I pay some of it down. Last month I went to my local US Bank office and deposited two checks, one for $8,000.00 and the other for $200.00. I explained that the $8000.00 check was to be paid on the principle of the loan while the $200.00 was for the next automatic withdraw and should be deposited in my checking account.

The clerk deposited the checks and claimed to have made the application of the $8000.00 to the principle, thereby reducing the amount of my total mortgage. She even gave me a new balance that seemed to reflect the applied money.

Today I went in to deposit some money for my next payment and learned that there was nothing due. Asking why, the clerk responded that “oh, you have paid an $8000.00 payment towards future payments so you have paid ahead of schedule”.

What the crap!!!!!!!!!

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I know this is old stuff but the reloaded trailer is too funny….

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So, I have been using Verizon for years as my cell phone provider and have thought it funny that they claim such good coverage yet it seems that I have terrible coverage. In fact, in my lab at Novell, the indicator says “roaming” which I have always thought was weird and I get hardly any signal and have to step out of the lab or go to my office to make cell phone calls. Last night, the service was so bad that every single call was dropped in a matter of seconds or would not connect at all. After calling technical support, I found that I had not updated my Preferred Roaming List (PRL) in over a year. Hey, how was I supposed to know that I should do that? I didn’t see any notice about it anywhere. However, I did find this FAQ on the subject:

(especially note item #4)

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Despite the wonder of the winter Olympics, I wish spring were here. I’m itching to get outside and put on some road miles. I did see the amazing half-pipe competition last evening and thought that Shaun White did a great job and deserved the gold. I was upset that Apolo Ohno slipped up because he tried to pass Hyun-Soo Ahn on the right and get a first place finish when he had a respectable 2nd place finish in the bag. Had he been satisfied with his position, he would have made it on to the next round. It’s as though he didn’t have the larger picture in mind and could only see the current race rather than building for future competition.

The Olympic games have been pretty good so far though. I’m looking forward to the upcoming competitions.

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Ran accross a story on EL’s blog about technical interest of males vs. females. EL’s post on the subject is quite humorous. From her blog:

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I’ve been riding for hours every day for the last two and a half weeks. Tonight I rode around the west side of Geneva Steel, over to the South end of American Fork, up through North Orem to the mouth of Provo Canyon up to Vivian Park, then back home. This is too hard…its not working.

Here’s wishing you and your’s the happiest System Administrator’s Day ever.

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The Globe and Mail has an article about how net marketers are worried about how ineffective cookies are in marketing as a large percentage (40% or so) of surfers purge their cookies on a monthly basis.

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Orkut’s performance is miserable these days. All of the icons and graphics rarely (if ever) show up when going to a new page or refreshing the current one. I get more server errors than I can shake a stick at. Messages show up in my inbox more that once.

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