I Never Thought I’d Agree With A Convicted Murderer

But it genuinely sounds like he’s not only trying to better himself with this, but better the prison community.

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) — A convicted killer who sold postcard-size paintings he created with dye from M&Ms and brushes fashioned from his hair broke prison rules by running an unauthorized business out of his cell, officials said.

While Donny Johnson hasn’t profited from his art — all the money is being used to start a program for children of inmates — prison officials said he was wrongfully engaged in a business without the warden’s permission.

Thanks Cheryl for the link.

August 8, 2006

It’s Sad When Your Stuffed Animal Travels More Than You Do

But if you really want to send your Teddy Bear on an exotic vacation, this is your place to do it.

Thanks Susan for the link

August 8, 2006

OpenDNS — Anybody Using It?

The DNS system is the fundamental building block of the Internet, and a bunch of your time online is spent doing DNS lookups. Why not make that process faster? I was getting really slow lookups from my office’s DNS servers (we’re using the ones provided by the ISP). I recently switched to using the OpenDNS servers. My DNS lookup times are stupidly fast now (at least in my initial testing), and Open DNS protects me from phishing scams, as they block access to those sites.

Granted, I’ve only been using the thing for about two hours, so this is a limited bit of experience, but it seems much faster than Unicom’s DNS lookups (we have a T1 through them at the office I’m at).

The one problem with the system is obviously the question of how OpenDNS makes money. If you incorrectly type in a domain (that it can’t automatically correct, as it does fix many typos in your requests) it will send you to a search page that has ads on it. So obviously that’s how they’re making money, and I’ve yet to see if this causes problem with domain lookups.

As somebody who recently had a co-worker nearly get scammed by one of those sites, I’ll be making these the name servers on at least one of the office networks I work at. But has anybody had experience with this setup, good or bad, that would cause problems?

August 8, 2006

What If You Were Darth Vader’s Younger Brother, Chad?

You’d manage a grocery store, and you could never live up to your older brother’s standards.

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August 7, 2006

Is this toy in your closet?

If you got a little bendable toy from the library this Summer or from the children’s fair in downtown Bend, you might want to take it away from the kid, as I just got this from the Deschutes County Library:

The Deschutes Public Library is alerting parents about the potential hazard of a bendable toy that has been given to children as a reading incentive during the summer reading program, “Paws, Claws, Scales and Tales.” The dog and the cat bendables were purchased from Highsmith, the company that supplies materials to the 34 libraries nation-wide that belong to the collaborative summer reading program. The alert began in Indiana, where State health officials issued a consumer health alert on August 4 for bendable animal toys that were given away at libraries around the state.

Heather McNeil, Youth Services Coordinator for Deschutes Public Libraries, became aware of the alert today. The toys were found to have 0.4 and 0.24 percent of lead. The maximum safety limit is currently 0.06 percent. They toys are roughly 3.75 inches in length, and are easily bent into different poses.

“If parents find one of these toys they should return them to the library for safe disposal,” stated McNeil. “If parents have specific questions about lead poisoning they should contact the Oregon State Lead Line at 800-368-5060.” In addition they can visit the Oregon Department of Human Services web site on lead poisoning at http://oregon.gov/DHS/ph/lead.

McNeil stated that several of the branches have given away the toys as door prizes at special programs. In addition, the bendables were given away during the Children’s Fair on July 22 at Drake Park in Bend. Prolonged exposure to lead can cause serious and irreversible health effects, including damage to the brain, nervous system, and kidneys. It may also cause hearing, behavior and learning problems in young children.

August 7, 2006

Getting Back DMA For Your CD/DVD Drive

I’m mostly bookmarking this for my reference, but maybe somebody else will run into this on a Google search and it might help.

After struggling all week with poor DVD drive performance (DVDs were skipping really bad, data transfers were really slow, burning took forever, etc…). Come to find out that, for some reason the drive had been switched to “PIO Mode” instead of the faster DMA transfer mode. How that happened, I have no idea. I figured it happened when I upgrade the firmware for the drive last week. So switched it to use DMA if available, rebooted, and it was still in PIO mode. Removed the drive to have it reinstall/redetect on reboot, still no dice.

After looking around on Microsoft’s site and reading all about the CRC errors that can cause this to happen (along with a partial fix), I came across this fix as well. Did both, and am now back up with DMA mode, and everything is hunky-dorey.

August 7, 2006

I Hope This Is A New Trend

Because I personally hate those stupid subscription cards in magazines.

For magazines, subscription cards long have been a double-edged sword. The palm-size slips of thick paper are a cheap, reliable way to win new readers. But their habit of tumbling out of magazines tends to drive people crazy.

In its latest marketing effort, Philips Electronics is paying Hearst $2 million to eliminate the cards from the September issues of four Hearst titles — Redbook, O At Home, Weekend and House Beautiful. Each magazine will instead run a two-page Philips ad with the line “Simplicity is not having subscription cards fall out of your magazine.” The ads give information about Philips-branded Web sites, created specially for the promotion, where readers can subscribe to the magazines.

The first thing I generally do when I get a magazine in the mail is shake them loose, and the pull the ones out that are attached. It makes reading the magazine so much easier when you don’t have to press down half of it so your pages are automatically turning.

Thanks Barn for the link.

August 6, 2006

How To Find What You Love To Do

Honestly, if I were more financially stable, I’d quit my job right now and do something I love for the rest of my life — if I only knew what is was.

August 6, 2006

Need Portland Lodging Help

I’m looking for some good lodging in the Portland area for this upcoming weekend (nights of Friday the 11th until Sunday the 13th — possibly coming in on the 10th if the price is right). I’m going to a wedding in Oregon City, but I’d probably like to be on the other side of the freeway so I can take the kids to the zoo, etc… . The rub is that there will be 5 of us: Me, my wife, my 18 year old sister-in-law, and my two small children (6 and 3) so ideally we’d either need a suite or a small home or something.

The various vacation rental sites didn’t have much (I’m used to Central Oregon that has hundreds of vacation rental homes), and the chains that we’ve tried are all booked or too expensive for the room size we need.

Anybody got a good hookup? Email me at jake [at] utterlyboring [dot] com or comment here.

Update on 8/6: Thanks for the offers and the help, but we actually found some relatives that live really close to where we need to be, so we’ll be crashing with them. Thanks anyway!

August 5, 2006

Bill Gates Is Retiring In A Couple Years

Hopefully his farewell address doesn’t go something like this.

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August 4, 2006