…this is research (and something I wish I could’ve done at UO).
Month: February 2007
Rudy Giuliani is a Weird Dude
While I respect Rudy and how he handled New York City during 9/11, you have to admit that somebody who had been married to their second cousin for 14 years is a little “different.”
Holy Crap, I’ve Been Busy
Between buying stuff for my sweetheart of a wife (it‘s tomorrow, guys) to a crapload of work at my day job along with three concerts and two rehearsals, my week is going to be a mess (and it’s only Tuesday, and it’s already chaos). On the bright side, I got a new cell phone, so that’s always nice — too bad I haven’t had any time to play with it.
Meanwhile, I’ve been collecting links as usual, so to get some of them out of my link dump folder, here are a bunch of fun YouTube videos (after the jump).
I Better Quit Letting My Daughter Play With My Nintendo DS…
…because she could get molested. EVERYBODY PANIC!!11!!
I’m with Ken on this one: Parents need to be more involved in their children’s lives and quit blaming technology for all of society’s wrongs. And the boneheaded media who uses scare tactics to pummel fear into already paranoid parents need to be slapped as well and quit doing stories like this.
The story is about the Nintendo DS’s PictoChat program, which is a simple little way to send simple message between systems. But it has a range of about 70 feet in ideal conditions. If a child molester is within 70 feet of your child, your kid’s Nintendo DS should be the least of your worries.
The US Postal Service probably carries letters from molestors every day. But would we shut down the postal service? Not in a million years. Just because something can be used for nefarious deeds doesn’t mean it always is and if you live life in fear of this kind of stuff instead of just getting involved in your child’s life, than you are the problem, not a entertaining little game system. If you’re going to buy a toy for your kids of this type, do yourself a favor and read the instruction manual, and talk things over with your child. Earn their trust, otherwise that 70 feet will be closer than you think.
</rant>
Link via Digg which has a bunch of great comments, too.
Speaking of my Nintendo DS, however, I am having a fun time playing it. I don’t get to play with it much (my wife enjoys it as much as I do), but I’m slowly progressing along in Super Mario Brothers. I also plan on hacking into the thing sometime.
“Why Is My Fan So Loud?”
I do a lot of tech support during my day job, handling all sorts of random problems. I’ve posted about various spyware removal jobs I’ve had to do, along with the various other problems that I’ve had to deal with (among others). But I always get a laugh at conversations like these.
Co-worker: My computer’s really loud.
Me:: The sound is really loud or the computer itself?
Co-worker: The computer — sounds like a jet engine.
Me:: I’ll come by in a minute.
As I’m walking down to her office, I know it’s probably a fan in the system that’s making noise. Generally, noisy fans that weren’t noisy before means one of a few thing:
- The fan is going bad.
- There’s something hitting the blades of the fan (loose wires or something).
- Or the system is overheating and the system’s temperature sensor is kicking the speed of the fans up to cool things off (common in the Dell systems that this person had).
I hear her computer fan the minute I walk in the office, and it sounds like the thing is heating up. I open up task manager on the system, just to make sure something hasn’t been stuck using 100% of the CPU power for an hour, and it’s sitting at 99% idle. So I reach down under the woman’s desk too look at the system to check the fan blades, and it’s hot to the touch. Then I notice the space heater sitting next to her desk, turned off.
Me: Were you using this this morning? (It was below freezing this morning out here…)
Co-worker: Yeah, it was cold in the office this morning.
Me:: Where was the space heater when you were running it?
Co-worker: Underneath my desk.
Me:: Right next to your computer?
Co-worker: Yes — was that the problem?
So basically, she was cooking her computer — the plastic on the front of the Dell probably would’ve melted had it run too much longer.
So I shut the computer down and opened up the case door to get some cooler air in there and told her to not turn it on again for at least 10 minutes (or until she didn’t feel any heat on the side panels, which were hot to the touch). And if she wanted to use the space heater again, she needed to run it from a different outlet, away from her desk.
Parenting At Its Finest
This guy deserves to die (and I’m still convinced that we need to have required licenses for people to be allowed to conceive, otherwise their kids go up for adoptions):
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (AP) — A man angry his toddler daughter wouldn’t go to bed knocked her unconscious and left her to die outside in single-digit temperatures, police said.
The frozen body of Nyia Miangel Page, who was about to turn 2, was found Sunday at an abandoned playground about a 10-minute walk from the family’s home.
Tiny footprints in the snow suggest she had gotten up and wandered around before she died, police said.
Her father, William Lorenzo Page, 23, of Braddock, was arrested Wednesday on charges of criminal homicide, kidnapping, false reports and simple assault.
He has been in custody since Sunday, when he was charged with sexually abusing another child shortly before Nyia died.
These are the kind of people that, honestly, I would shoot if I had a gun and had the chance. Anybody who knows me knows I’m not a violent person, I will probably never own a gun, but nobody should ever do that to a helpless child. Sadly, though, there are just too many nut-jobs and not enough bullets.
Would Steve Jobs Really Drop DRM?
I have no idea if Steve Jobs is serious about getting rid of DRM (I’m all for it if he does), but Boing Boing has a great round up of commentary and links on the news.
Hot Wheel’s Car Chase Video
This is a fun little video of an still-frame animated car chase using Hot Wheels cars, and it’s a whole lot of fun (even if it is hosted on MySpace videos…)
A New Way To Control Speeding
This would be a great way to make people pay attention to speed limits — or swerve off the road and crash …(a bit Not Safe For Work or NSFW — don’t say I didn’t warn you).
Pachelbel Hell
You have to be a music geek to appreciate this rant on Canon in D (thanks Dave for the tip)…