On ramp signalling is stupid. How in the world is a 18-wheeler supposed to reach the speed of regular traffic after a full stop before reaching the end of the ramp?
My four banger little corolla can do it, but I have to run it up to engine wearing 3000-6000rpm to get the appropriate acceleration before reaching the end of the ramp.
The merge lane is never clear after a green ramp light. It seems better to ignore the ramp signal and try to get match speed before entering the merge lane. Thankfully I have only hit metered ramps only a few times.
What is really required is Enforced lanes. Anybody going farther than 8 exits should get out of the right hand lane, anyone going farther than 30 exits get the far left lane.
Walmart uses Time in a box, barcode reading time clocks. I dont have any real data on them, I just know that Tiger direct used to carry them, and my still do so.
The associates usually have a unique barcode for themselves on a sticky label on the back of their badge. Some of the more rough and tumble people that tend to drop, mutilate, lose their lame badges keep their barcode on their discount card or a shopping card in their wallet. After losing my badge about five times and noticing one of my older badges turning black, I decided to take the barcode on a sticker route.
The timeclocks themselves offer the ability to list hours worked since last update (usually you can see hours worked up to the day before). Lost badges/missed punches are a big pain in the ass, and require filling out a time adjustment sheet including your social security number, your associate id number and a signature from an hourly manager and a signature from a salaried manager which takes an act of God to find one of each in less than 3 hours unless you break into a meeting, fake a death or accident.. and even then they may not show up. (just kidding)
The time clocks tie into the SMART system running on an AIX server (SMART is some software walmart contracted for themselves if I understand correctly, which runs absolutely everything except the registers, video on demand, music on demand, walmart tv broadcasts and walmart radio. Those as I understand run from NT machines). Reliability? Well, I have been there for 2 1/2 years. During my first year the clocks were always having brain farts. The left one had forgotten everything, and didnt reconize associates several times. The right clock only went bonkers once because the HR lady didnt do a download for a long time.
The associates decided for reliable punches, it is best to use one specific punch clock the entire day, not to switch between punch clocks.
I took a IT sabbatical. I work for a walmart now, as inventory control specalist. Though, I wear countless number of hats. I also unload trucks, stock, pull department manager duites, drive and maintain various heavy lift equipment with great ease requiring operating lisences and a mechanic's wrench to keep things in order. The unloading trucks part of the job does me better than a gym. I am one of the managers' "Ill give it all I got" people and train everyone in my department to be the same. (Now I just have to teach them to think ahead of management without relying on me to do so for them)
I haul around about 20 to 30 1/2 ton to 2 ton pallets for 2 hours with a manual pallet jack and stock for 2 to 3 hours and unload trucks for 2 to 3 hours (depending on other activities). I swear after Q1 of 2004 when I go back to IT work, I will be one of the strongest IT guys with the ability to handle anything thrown at me. I have learned to enjoy the odd jobs as they break up the monotony of things, and told management that fact. Just so long as they realize odd jobs are to break up the regular duties, not the other way around.
Type last You wont be able to find out a why without taking a stroll down/var/log/messages and guessing what lead up the a problem, but then again how often does that happen anyways?
The only trouble with my DL-614+ is that it doesnt like dirty power. I am about to replace my old ups which has a relay that sticks when the load has been high or the ups got hot. Im going to move that ups over to power the dlink wap.
I have only had to unplug/plug my dlink 6 times since november and had to factory reset it once last month after a bad power sag. I think just keeping the power clean would help the thing.
DRACO-
We caught the majority of mice in the bathtub during summer droughts. We would leave a little puddle of water in the bottom of the tub, and the dumb boogers would get stuck in the tub because of the slick surface. We even caught 2 opossum in the same tub at different times. We live in the rural coastal plains of texas.
ever hear of a rat terrier? That's what they were bred for, killing vermin.
I have a cocker spaniel that constantly hunts opossum. Its amazing to watch him chase, corner, then yank and throw these little beasties in the air and break their backs over his nose. He will grab them at the back of the neck and shake the daylights out of them, then he will fling the bastards high in the air trying to break their necks. He also attacks moles as will the cats. He has yet to figure out how to get the armadillo (though I wish he would as the brat keeps digging up the garden). I dont know if he actually bothers with mice, we dont really have any anymore. We had a whole gaggle of cats, 13+ cats which oblitherated the population of mice a few years ago. Now we are down to 2 cats. The most amazing thing in the world to see is a baby kitten and it's first mouse. We had one that would steal what the mother brought to the nest and would growl, squeal and fight over the thing even tho it was as big as she was.
Just think about that one, imagine the mail carrier getting this thing stuck to the side of their exit doorway of the mail truck. They could potentially be puzzled as to how to remove the box. Im tempted upon ordering a couple just to see if they make it through the mail..
People talking on cell phones in restaruants arnt annoying, it's the people talking on the cell phone in the mens bathroom while sitting on the toilet. The echo alone makes then want to talk louder anyways, combined with the regular fact that they have to talk loud because it's a cell phone then combine that with the fact that they have to talk loud enough to drown out the sound of their own ass farting into the ceramic echo chamber under thair ass!
OH and that girl driving the Huge ford f150 that almost sideswiped the speed limit sign (stating the limit is 60mph) while talking away at 90mph and driving at a rate of 25mph. You cant even attempt to pass her as she also weaves into the oncoming lane before slamming on her brakes and trying to turn right then realizes that's not her turn and jerks it back into the lane.
I have a 2001 toyota corolla, 5 spd manual, no ABS, no electric windows, no electric locks, no security system. And with all the dents in it from shopping carts at walmart during tornadoes (yes it's amazing how fast a cart can get up to speed when your car is the only one in it's path for 4 rows.) it's practically theft deterrant. Add to the fact that I drive 30 mi to work on the coastal plains region of texas where the winds will only toss you into the oncoming lane on a good day and the Size of the dern june bugs. My car looks like crap because I refuse to wash it till the dust and pollen settles. Alas, we are in the midst of a HUMID period with no rain. Been at least 3 weeks since we had a Good rain.
I dont know how to drive with abs, the previous vehicles I have driven regularly didnt have abs. I have driven 3 that had abs, and only had one activate the abs system while breaking in the rain. That was interesting, while breaking on a straight the vehicle managed to Walk right then left during the braking. I tell ya it worked as I didnt cross the line but stopped 20 ft short of it, but it was disconcerting to have the vehicle suddenly decide it's going to wiggle right and left.
I drive stick, I tend to leave a lot of extra following space when I find a good groove and pace. The corolla is a front wheel drive vehicle so downshifting does assist braking. My brakes may likely last to the next decade, like the last truck I had (tho truck brakes have a harder brake pads, the truck's brakes needed replacing about 3 months before the hydrolic clutch cylinders cratered. It had a 5 spd transmission as well). I have brake skid several times dry and wet, I have never crossed the line still skidding. I just hold the clutch, and release the brake allowing the wheels to spin freely then reapply firmly. Generally if you are going brake while driving straight, all tires will slow at basically the same speed. Strangly ABS systems tend to find a single tire out of sync and readjust the braking on that tire and in my experiences doing too much and taking the vehicle out of line in a straight line stop almost causing a skid. (now the system I drove was a early 90's chevy astro van)
I have put a 98 model chevy suburban with ABS in the ditch once on a wet day. ABS was useless as braking would not have helped at all. I had the rear end break loose when the automatic transmission shifted and spin slightly and the rear end went right. Engines have the tendency to ramp down slower than needed in this situation and with an AT, it is still connected to the engine even though your foot is off the gas. With a manual transmission, you would just hit the clutch which the wheels would usually stop spinning immediately and you would be back at full control, tho rolling. All of this trouble would be averted totally if the AT didnt decide to downshift at that moment, or it was a manual transmission and I left it in 2nd gear. Skidding right, I looked at the ditches and said Im not going into the 10 ft deep ditch on the right, and turned the wheel left to have the vehicle swing into the left 3ft deep ditch. The locals who are famillar with the turn's nasty right ditch swollowing cars whole were amazed at the fact that I was able to steer the front end to the left ditch and the rear followed around. I only needed a gentle pull from another vehicle to get back ontop of the pavement as I knew there was no way I would get the suburban out of the ditch without a wrecker if it ever broke the sod. I did some farm work in my past and know how easy/hard it is to get a heavy set truck stuck on particular grounds.
throw them out to the noaa.gov If they are interested, they may never get out of the domain as there are many many subdomains in there. I think they even have a Kids area too.
www.snort.org and www.netstumbler.com could keep them busy if they have a laptop and a wireless card for those long vacation trips.:P
Wireless mic needs should be less than 5 for most stages. I worked for a church which incorprated only 2 wireless mics.. One lapel and one handheld. The lapel was used by the preacher in combination with a pulpit mounted lightwight gooseneck mic. The handheld used by the choir director to pass to guest soloists and used in audience discussions. We also incorprated a left stage mic, right stage mic, a right and left front stage mic and 2 hyper carnoid choir mics (phantom powered, works with only certain boards but there are adapters)
You should consider Very high sensetivity hyper carnoid mics suspended above stage areas. These little boogers can pick up interesting whisper conversations from a choir. We used 2 of these mics for a 25 foot wide choir section. They were also able to pick up people who couldnt get their wireless mic to work, if your sound tech is good enough he can pull enough from one of these mics to at least let a monolog speaker be somewhat heard even with the mic behind them 5 to 9 ft and 8ft from the ground.
You really should tell us what production you are doing, and a few of us ex or current audio techs can tell you what we have done.
I have also had my hand in doing all string instrument band concerts, choir contatas, school and church plays and several rock band concerts.
If I were to use wireless mics, i would at the most use 4. 3 on stage (lead, left, right), and 1 for MC-DJ all handheld design (though I dont consider the left and right singers to really need a wireless, the lead needs it the most). If a band member wishes to use a wireless with their guitar, they may provide their own barring they can find a free frequency. I will not provide a wireless for a guitar-bass or otherwise as latency comes into consideration (been there watching the band member play and come back a moment late, bad situtation tho, the soundboard was like 200ft from the front lots of latency)
I have a Traxxas Tmax RC truck (the first version with the.15 cc engine). This monster does run well (when it did run). I had mine stall out in a parking lot and got ran over by a crown victora, which just crushed the fuel tank and nipped the heatsink. I think the.15 cc engine is gone anyways. This thing can do jumps great. Weeks before it got put in the "ICU ward" (the shelf, waiting for me to go buy a new engine), my brother had made some small bike jumps about 2 - 3 ft tall. I would run it over these jumps and it would make the jump and land with a whump! The 3rd time around the jump I blew out a shock. Oh well, that's the one I had um reegineered before when it busted. (I didnt have the right oil on hand, so I dumped in some sewing machine oil).
I think this time the shock got well stripped. It's holding ok for sitting on the shelf...:P I think tuesday when I go drop off a resume Ill go buy a new generic brand engine, maybe get something a little bigger bore:)
What's really fun is taking it out to the street (nearly dead as I live in a rural area NW of Houston). Donuts, forward, Donuts backward... My stock tires are showing some wear on the outer edges (possibly due to the toe in I set for tighter turning in the dirt). Go to a loose dirt spot and put the thing in reverse, turn the wheel and hit the gas hard and the front end drops to the ground and you will be doing donuts nearly in place.
What I really like to do since we have a dirt parking area and an asphalt driveway, I like to track around the asphalt and head over to the dirt lot and make a wide slide across the dirt lot (caution as rocks do get kicked up by this monster about as bad as a lawnmower).
I have taken this thing into a gym with polished concrete floors, did multiple 360's in reverse in place. Instant 180's forward, turn and brake! (boy i wish my reverse gear wasnt so finicky.. tho I might have fixed that since I adjusted it after the crown vic wacking dunno yet if it helped)
On a whim I drove it up a slide.. almost reached the top and braked slowly slid right back down (I only have mud tires right now, maybe if I had some street tires it would have stayed up there)
The best thing about this toy(???!?!??!) is the gawkers, kids and adults alike stop in complete awe of the ability. It takes some a while to figure out what it is, as I dont run it with a body on (It rolls too easy and I have yet to paint it in the 3 years I have had it). Speaking about rolling too easy, I try my best to watch the turns, but sometimes Ill get cartwheels out of it.
DRACO-
Re:Ah yes...sound free from me to thee
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Soundless Music?
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LOL Barking spider...
One of my brother's friends calls them "Chinese barking spiders"..
I topped it with "Tazmanian albino barking spiders".
Sometimes I just say "Damned spiders" or slam my foot on the floor and say "Got the stinky 8 legged bastard".
(For those that dont have a clue, blaming a fart on your dog isnt the norm anymore. Now we blame it on barking spiders which confuses the hell out of anyone new to the concept and gets stuck in the stink as everyone else makes a move away from the explosion site)
Tires really do squeal on dirt roads.. Done it with a 2001 toyota corolla.. Just needs to be a well compacted and dry dirt road, with very little loose gravel/dirt. It was pretty funny getting a lil 4 banger's tires to squeal down the road on the way to drop off my brother and his friend at the end of the drive.
I used to do a lot of virus removals on an undernet irc channel. We always had spectators, people wanting to learn what we are doing how we are doing and what we are doing to tackle new viruses (note new as in now causing problems).
I personally have ran across a few viruses our team was not famillar with and typically could have a complete cure within an hour, or within 2 hours I could be taking advantage of code that created IRC drone bots that come as payload with a few viruses.
One I received in particular was attached to leaktest.exe from grc.com. Before testing it on my near dead laptop I searched for leaktest.exe via google and found it was in connection with grc.com. I downloaded a fresh copy and checked the md5 checksums.. Totally off.
I then took the infected one to my guniea pig and executed it and watched my tcpdump on the linux box, noticed an outgoing irc session to an unfammilar network. So I tuned my client to it. I couldnt find anything. So I just idled around for a little bit in a main channel (had like 6 ppl) while I examined the laptop for out of place files.
I found something in windows dir so I took the files back to the linux box and ran cat file | strings, didnt see anything useful then took a hex editor to it and found a name and a version number. I googled for the name and version and found an exploit site with packages and control information as well as a little file that explained, nowhere near in laymans terms, how the setup information was obsfuscated, just an 8 char pad. So I looked at the setup trojan and the original trojan in hex and located where the setup info was, and tried decrypting it. Took 8 passes (needed 8 different things to get full control) to get the info i needed. I found out the commander needed elite in their userid so i created a new account on the linux box and irc'ed from there. I joined the channel I had unobfuscated and sent the bots the master password and got reconized. I was so sure I would get dossed off the face of the earth. I then executed a file delete command on all the drones and then commanded them to all die. Then left with a message saying they really should have made it harder by using newer trojans! I then published all my findings and logs, omitting my last message, to the group I worked with.
A few months later I got kicked from the group and 3 weeks after that I got contacted by a member that got canned as well and started her own chan. She was trying to break open the door on the same trojan but couldnt get anywhere with it so she googled and ran across a reply I placed to a virus examination technique article I commented on. She said out of everything she has looked thru I was the only person that had much information on the virus.
I think a better show would be to invite 30 regular users that easily get infected with things to be handed pc's and have teams have to protect and disinfect their own number of users. Have the court open to having team members attempt to infect other users. It would be good to show the techniques teammembers use to identify, stop and disinfect trojans and viruses. Anyone who administrates multiples of pc's could benefit from learning the techniques. It's mostly research techniques and trial and error on guinea pig machines. I wouldnt do the infections/disinfections live, I would instead run a week or month trial and have them documented by paper and video and show the good cleanups in the show 30min-1 hour in 13 min spots with 2-3 min explaination spots then at the end have a free for all Q and A session for 30 min to an hour (possibly with demonstrations).
You were in a small store. You should find a Walmart Supercenter that is in the top 10 of the district, You wont know you are in the top 10 till you notice the store has things other stores dont. (The buyers tend to send items that they are testing market on to the biggest stores in the districts and they also seem to send stuff they cant sell anywhere else to the bigger store.) I work at one of the larger stores, just last week our store's sales hit the highest in the Texas district.
Over beside the vision center they carry educational toys including the smithsonian stuff. You should locate the telescopes and that expanding plastic ball thing, that is where the klidescope would be at. Other interesting things i have seen there are First electric guitar (and amp), First acoustic guitar, desktop rock garden (im considering getting this one sometime). Several other things appear there, i just dont remember them
I dropped search hal-pc.org into my resolv.conf. http://www failed to work in mozilla. Dropping to a shell and running lynx http://www worked, I was presented with www.hal-pc.org's website instead of www.com. Im running mozilla 1.0, I have ran thru most of the settings (without diving into a text editor) and havent found a disable for the automatic.com suffix.
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Why not try something a little cleaner.. some el strips (electro luminecence). You could super glue these pretty cleanly to the bike body. Im considering ordering up some el strips for the interrior of my car. In my town people always expect me to feature some out of the ordinary gadget somewhere near me.
During the strike my local walmart was unable to recieve a certain advertized dvd player and had to sub in an apex player at the price of the advertized unit.
You can also say the trucking industry is another choke point in the shipping lanes, and FUEL PRICES! Raise the fuel prices enough and the truckers are going to strike like they did laste year in europe (i think).
You can also say electric power would royaly screw everything up.. if power is out across the nation (only a few hundred suicide terrorists needed) production, sale and shipping will all be halted for the next 12 years while power co's try to rebuild and repower industry. (if that happens we will probably die before they get power stations rebuilt unless the europe-asia gives us a hand rebuilding power plants (basic machined parts)
I use my Handspring Visor Platnium for a while now. I have owned 2 palm III's both broke from face down falls, one fell from my full hands on the way up the stairs to the house; the other fell within the beltclip holder about 13 ft while I was doing some work on a sissor lift in the warehouse.
As I work at a walmart in the reciving area on the Inventory Control Team. The management use palms as well to track various things. As the Christmas buying season is near our store has rented 78+ cargo containers to hold excess inventory buildup for the holidays (yay thanksgiving is almost here we can empty about 12 of them Friday morning). The management occasionally takes a walk through the trailers to examine contents, verify locking mechnisims and check for leaks, ants, and free space and recommend condensing into other trailers. After they do this they run across me and beam me their notes. This helps our team out tremendously as we dont have time to check what trailers have changed as there are 3+ teams (ICS, auto, stockers, unloaders & dept mangers) that work through them.
Im always using my palm to record my schedule (3 weeks at a time), Im always writing down upc's item numbers and other work related stuff. When im on break I go through my palm annotating changes to trailers, noting pallets Im required to remove from loft spaces or add to loft spaces.
I have a yahoo account which I can sync my palm to/from. The yahoo acount is tied to tv.yahoo.com where i can add tv shows to my schedule with a click then sync. Only thing is the sync sofware only works in windows (i havent tried emulation yet). With my palm synced to the net, my yahoo messengers will alert me of schedule stuff while im online (windows and linux, i love yahoo for being the only, abosolute only company to write their own IM for linux). I just wish they would create a sync program for linux to sync to my yahoo calendar.
I have at least 2 fujitsu limited hard drives.. no problem with them.. (may have another as i dont know what the third one is in my system, I havent pulled it out in awhile and it is hot now)
Now for the track record for failed hard drives, i have 1 dead segate 1 dead western digital 1 dead maxor and one dead caldera 2 dead quantum fireballs and a dead connner.. (all of them arnt mine, just hard drives i have replaced for people)
On my parent's suburban you can add new remotes by holding down both buttons on a alredy coded remote till the door locks cycle then do the same with the new remote.
My el chepo $59 Bulldog alarm can add new remotes as well, i forget how, but the instructions has the info.
What I have seen lately that looks kind of interesting is no door handles! Instead the alarm system has a relay which pops the door lock. I saw this on a 90's chevy pickup at a walmart. I laughed when I realized there was no handle. Check some import car magazines, they have that gear.
Something else I have seen, some bmw that didnt have keylocks, had a handle but the keylock was replaced with a pair of lights and seemingly some type of swipe detector like Mobil uses for their speedpass system.
Now what I wish for is longer reaching remote and a car with enough brains to drive over and pick me up at the door!
If the tubes are barren of air, bearings on wheels will definately be constantly replaced. What the hell are you going to do when a bearing siezes in the middle of a tube causing your awesome airless tube system to completely shut down for one burnt out bearing. Even if you use maglev style support, how many coils are you willing to burn up because they are unable to disappate heat?
Maintence would royally suck (pun intended). Will the maintence workers have to wear ev suits in order to apply lubes, replace coils or will the system be willing to shut down the entire line barring they dont install fully sealed doors every section of tube. How in the world are you going to keep the airlock systems running without failure?
I belive It would be better to design a pnumatic style, high speed turbines that intterconnect inside or outside of turns as a unreachable spur to the cars, use pitch changing blades so that you could spin up the turbines to a very high speed (flywheel mode) and then when suckion is needed for a nearby car, pitch the blades to provide the suckion. Never spin down the turbines, just zero the pitch and let it continue like a flywheel add power just before it's needed again and pitch to provide more suction. You will need air bypasses around station stops so that a stopped car does not stop the efficency of the entire circular line.
Maybe cancel the thought of a circular line, run parallel tubes and make intake and exaughst of turbines be between separate tubes. The lines wont have to be circular if you cut the circle shorter. This will be better than a spur turbine. Though you will have to time the turbine useages between cars so that you dont end up blowing a car backwards:P
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On ramp signalling is stupid. How in the world is a 18-wheeler supposed to reach the speed of regular traffic after a full stop before reaching the end of the ramp?
My four banger little corolla can do it, but I have to run it up to engine wearing 3000-6000rpm to get the appropriate acceleration before reaching the end of the ramp.
The merge lane is never clear after a green ramp light. It seems better to ignore the ramp signal and try to get match speed before entering the merge lane. Thankfully I have only hit metered ramps only a few times.
What is really required is Enforced lanes. Anybody going farther than 8 exits should get out of the right hand lane, anyone going farther than 30 exits get the far left lane.
Walmart uses Time in a box, barcode reading time clocks. I dont have any real data on them, I just know that Tiger direct used to carry them, and my still do so.
The associates usually have a unique barcode for themselves on a sticky label on the back of their badge. Some of the more rough and tumble people that tend to drop, mutilate, lose their lame badges keep their barcode on their discount card or a shopping card in their wallet. After losing my badge about five times and noticing one of my older badges turning black, I decided to take the barcode on a sticker route.
The timeclocks themselves offer the ability to list hours worked since last update (usually you can see hours worked up to the day before). Lost badges/missed punches are a big pain in the ass, and require filling out a time adjustment sheet including your social security number, your associate id number and a signature from an hourly manager and a signature from a salaried manager which takes an act of God to find one of each in less than 3 hours unless you break into a meeting, fake a death or accident.. and even then they may not show up. (just kidding)
The time clocks tie into the SMART system running on an AIX server (SMART is some software walmart contracted for themselves if I understand correctly, which runs absolutely everything except the registers, video on demand, music on demand, walmart tv broadcasts and walmart radio. Those as I understand run from NT machines). Reliability? Well, I have been there for 2 1/2 years. During my first year the clocks were always having brain farts. The left one had forgotten everything, and didnt reconize associates several times. The right clock only went bonkers once because the HR lady didnt do a download for a long time.
The associates decided for reliable punches, it is best to use one specific punch clock the entire day, not to switch between punch clocks.
DRACO-
I took a IT sabbatical. I work for a walmart now, as inventory control specalist. Though, I wear countless number of hats. I also unload trucks, stock, pull department manager duites, drive and maintain various heavy lift equipment with great ease requiring operating lisences and a mechanic's wrench to keep things in order. The unloading trucks part of the job does me better than a gym. I am one of the managers' "Ill give it all I got" people and train everyone in my department to be the same. (Now I just have to teach them to think ahead of management without relying on me to do so for them)
I haul around about 20 to 30 1/2 ton to 2 ton pallets for 2 hours with a manual pallet jack and stock for 2 to 3 hours and unload trucks for 2 to 3 hours (depending on other activities). I swear after Q1 of 2004 when I go back to IT work, I will be one of the strongest IT guys with the ability to handle anything thrown at me. I have learned to enjoy the odd jobs as they break up the monotony of things, and told management that fact. Just so long as they realize odd jobs are to break up the regular duties, not the other way around.
DRACO-
Type last /var/log/messages and guessing what lead up the a problem, but then again how often does that happen anyways?
You wont be able to find out a why without taking a stroll down
Quick tip, try checking your irq's..
DRACO-
The only trouble with my DL-614+ is that it doesnt like dirty power. I am about to replace my old ups which has a relay that sticks when the load has been high or the ups got hot. Im going to move that ups over to power the dlink wap. I have only had to unplug/plug my dlink 6 times since november and had to factory reset it once last month after a bad power sag. I think just keeping the power clean would help the thing. DRACO-
We caught the majority of mice in the bathtub during summer droughts. We would leave a little puddle of water in the bottom of the tub, and the dumb boogers would get stuck in the tub because of the slick surface. We even caught 2 opossum in the same tub at different times. We live in the rural coastal plains of texas.
DRACO-
ever hear of a rat terrier? That's what they were bred for, killing vermin.
I have a cocker spaniel that constantly hunts opossum. Its amazing to watch him chase, corner, then yank and throw these little beasties in the air and break their backs over his nose. He will grab them at the back of the neck and shake the daylights out of them, then he will fling the bastards high in the air trying to break their necks. He also attacks moles as will the cats. He has yet to figure out how to get the armadillo (though I wish he would as the brat keeps digging up the garden). I dont know if he actually bothers with mice, we dont really have any anymore. We had a whole gaggle of cats, 13+ cats which oblitherated the population of mice a few years ago. Now we are down to 2 cats. The most amazing thing in the world to see is a baby kitten and it's first mouse. We had one that would steal what the mother brought to the nest and would growl, squeal and fight over the thing even tho it was as big as she was.
DRACO-
Just think about that one, imagine the mail carrier getting this thing stuck to the side of their exit doorway of the mail truck. They could potentially be puzzled as to how to remove the box. Im tempted upon ordering a couple just to see if they make it through the mail..
DRACO-
People talking on cell phones in restaruants arnt annoying, it's the people talking on the cell phone in the mens bathroom while sitting on the toilet. The echo alone makes then want to talk louder anyways, combined with the regular fact that they have to talk loud because it's a cell phone then combine that with the fact that they have to talk loud enough to drown out the sound of their own ass farting into the ceramic echo chamber under thair ass!
OH and that girl driving the Huge ford f150 that almost sideswiped the speed limit sign (stating the limit is 60mph) while talking away at 90mph and driving at a rate of 25mph. You cant even attempt to pass her as she also weaves into the oncoming lane before slamming on her brakes and trying to turn right then realizes that's not her turn and jerks it back into the lane.
DRACO-
I have a 2001 toyota corolla, 5 spd manual, no ABS, no electric windows, no electric locks, no security system. And with all the dents in it from shopping carts at walmart during tornadoes (yes it's amazing how fast a cart can get up to speed when your car is the only one in it's path for 4 rows.) it's practically theft deterrant. Add to the fact that I drive 30 mi to work on the coastal plains region of texas where the winds will only toss you into the oncoming lane on a good day and the Size of the dern june bugs. My car looks like crap because I refuse to wash it till the dust and pollen settles. Alas, we are in the midst of a HUMID period with no rain. Been at least 3 weeks since we had a Good rain.
I dont know how to drive with abs, the previous vehicles I have driven regularly didnt have abs. I have driven 3 that had abs, and only had one activate the abs system while breaking in the rain. That was interesting, while breaking on a straight the vehicle managed to Walk right then left during the braking. I tell ya it worked as I didnt cross the line but stopped 20 ft short of it, but it was disconcerting to have the vehicle suddenly decide it's going to wiggle right and left.
I drive stick, I tend to leave a lot of extra following space when I find a good groove and pace. The corolla is a front wheel drive vehicle so downshifting does assist braking. My brakes may likely last to the next decade, like the last truck I had (tho truck brakes have a harder brake pads, the truck's brakes needed replacing about 3 months before the hydrolic clutch cylinders cratered. It had a 5 spd transmission as well). I have brake skid several times dry and wet, I have never crossed the line still skidding. I just hold the clutch, and release the brake allowing the wheels to spin freely then reapply firmly. Generally if you are going brake while driving straight, all tires will slow at basically the same speed. Strangly ABS systems tend to find a single tire out of sync and readjust the braking on that tire and in my experiences doing too much and taking the vehicle out of line in a straight line stop almost causing a skid. (now the system I drove was a early 90's chevy astro van)
I have put a 98 model chevy suburban with ABS in the ditch once on a wet day. ABS was useless as braking would not have helped at all. I had the rear end break loose when the automatic transmission shifted and spin slightly and the rear end went right. Engines have the tendency to ramp down slower than needed in this situation and with an AT, it is still connected to the engine even though your foot is off the gas. With a manual transmission, you would just hit the clutch which the wheels would usually stop spinning immediately and you would be back at full control, tho rolling. All of this trouble would be averted totally if the AT didnt decide to downshift at that moment, or it was a manual transmission and I left it in 2nd gear. Skidding right, I looked at the ditches and said Im not going into the 10 ft deep ditch on the right, and turned the wheel left to have the vehicle swing into the left 3ft deep ditch. The locals who are famillar with the turn's nasty right ditch swollowing cars whole were amazed at the fact that I was able to steer the front end to the left ditch and the rear followed around. I only needed a gentle pull from another vehicle to get back ontop of the pavement as I knew there was no way I would get the suburban out of the ditch without a wrecker if it ever broke the sod. I did some farm work in my past and know how easy/hard it is to get a heavy set truck stuck on particular grounds.
DRACO-
throw them out to the noaa.gov
:P
If they are interested, they may never get out of the domain as there are many many subdomains in there. I think they even have a Kids area too.
www.snort.org and www.netstumbler.com could keep them busy if they have a laptop and a wireless card for those long vacation trips.
DRACO-
Digital Warrior or Chaos Warrior
Mutilate
I hunt
Destroy
Plunder
Create
Design
Conspire
Burn
Ill do anything to fix anything, to get things ship shape before the next shift.
DRACO-
Wireless mic needs should be less than 5 for most stages. I worked for a church which incorprated only 2 wireless mics.. One lapel and one handheld. The lapel was used by the preacher in combination with a pulpit mounted lightwight gooseneck mic. The handheld used by the choir director to pass to guest soloists and used in audience discussions. We also incorprated a left stage mic, right stage mic, a right and left front stage mic and 2 hyper carnoid choir mics (phantom powered, works with only certain boards but there are adapters)
You should consider Very high sensetivity hyper carnoid mics suspended above stage areas. These little boogers can pick up interesting whisper conversations from a choir. We used 2 of these mics for a 25 foot wide choir section. They were also able to pick up people who couldnt get their wireless mic to work, if your sound tech is good enough he can pull enough from one of these mics to at least let a monolog speaker be somewhat heard even with the mic behind them 5 to 9 ft and 8ft from the ground.
You really should tell us what production you are doing, and a few of us ex or current audio techs can tell you what we have done.
I have also had my hand in doing all string instrument band concerts, choir contatas, school and church plays and several rock band concerts.
If I were to use wireless mics, i would at the most use 4. 3 on stage (lead, left, right), and 1 for MC-DJ all handheld design (though I dont consider the left and right singers to really need a wireless, the lead needs it the most). If a band member wishes to use a wireless with their guitar, they may provide their own barring they can find a free frequency. I will not provide a wireless for a guitar-bass or otherwise as latency comes into consideration (been there watching the band member play and come back a moment late, bad situtation tho, the soundboard was like 200ft from the front lots of latency)
DRACO-
I have a Traxxas Tmax RC truck (the first version with the .15 cc engine). This monster does run well (when it did run). I had mine stall out in a parking lot and got ran over by a crown victora, which just crushed the fuel tank and nipped the heatsink. I think the .15 cc engine is gone anyways. This thing can do jumps great. Weeks before it got put in the "ICU ward" (the shelf, waiting for me to go buy a new engine), my brother had made some small bike jumps about 2 - 3 ft tall. I would run it over these jumps and it would make the jump and land with a whump! The 3rd time around the jump I blew out a shock. Oh well, that's the one I had um reegineered before when it busted. (I didnt have the right oil on hand, so I dumped in some sewing machine oil).
:P I think tuesday when I go drop off a resume Ill go buy a new generic brand engine, maybe get something a little bigger bore :)
I think this time the shock got well stripped. It's holding ok for sitting on the shelf...
What's really fun is taking it out to the street (nearly dead as I live in a rural area NW of Houston). Donuts, forward, Donuts backward... My stock tires are showing some wear on the outer edges (possibly due to the toe in I set for tighter turning in the dirt). Go to a loose dirt spot and put the thing in reverse, turn the wheel and hit the gas hard and the front end drops to the ground and you will be doing donuts nearly in place.
What I really like to do since we have a dirt parking area and an asphalt driveway, I like to track around the asphalt and head over to the dirt lot and make a wide slide across the dirt lot (caution as rocks do get kicked up by this monster about as bad as a lawnmower).
I have taken this thing into a gym with polished concrete floors, did multiple 360's in reverse in place. Instant 180's forward, turn and brake! (boy i wish my reverse gear wasnt so finicky.. tho I might have fixed that since I adjusted it after the crown vic wacking dunno yet if it helped)
On a whim I drove it up a slide.. almost reached the top and braked slowly slid right back down (I only have mud tires right now, maybe if I had some street tires it would have stayed up there)
The best thing about this toy(???!?!??!) is the gawkers, kids and adults alike stop in complete awe of the ability. It takes some a while to figure out what it is, as I dont run it with a body on (It rolls too easy and I have yet to paint it in the 3 years I have had it). Speaking about rolling too easy, I try my best to watch the turns, but sometimes Ill get cartwheels out of it.
DRACO-
LOL Barking spider...
One of my brother's friends calls them "Chinese barking spiders"..
I topped it with "Tazmanian albino barking spiders".
Sometimes I just say "Damned spiders" or slam my foot on the floor and say "Got the stinky 8 legged bastard".
(For those that dont have a clue, blaming a fart on your dog isnt the norm anymore. Now we blame it on barking spiders which confuses the hell out of anyone new to the concept and gets stuck in the stink as everyone else makes a move away from the explosion site)
DRACO-
Tires really do squeal on dirt roads.. Done it with a 2001 toyota corolla.. Just needs to be a well compacted and dry dirt road, with very little loose gravel/dirt. It was pretty funny getting a lil 4 banger's tires to squeal down the road on the way to drop off my brother and his friend at the end of the drive.
DRACO-
I used to do a lot of virus removals on an undernet irc channel. We always had spectators, people wanting to learn what we are doing how we are doing and what we are doing to tackle new viruses (note new as in now causing problems).
I personally have ran across a few viruses our team was not famillar with and typically could have a complete cure within an hour, or within 2 hours I could be taking advantage of code that created IRC drone bots that come as payload with a few viruses.
One I received in particular was attached to leaktest.exe from grc.com. Before testing it on my near dead laptop I searched for leaktest.exe via google and found it was in connection with grc.com. I downloaded a fresh copy and checked the md5 checksums.. Totally off.
I then took the infected one to my guniea pig and executed it and watched my tcpdump on the linux box, noticed an outgoing irc session to an unfammilar network. So I tuned my client to it. I couldnt find anything. So I just idled around for a little bit in a main channel (had like 6 ppl) while I examined the laptop for out of place files.
I found something in windows dir so I took the files back to the linux box and ran cat file | strings, didnt see anything useful then took a hex editor to it and found a name and a version number. I googled for the name and version and found an exploit site with packages and control information as well as a little file that explained, nowhere near in laymans terms, how the setup information was obsfuscated, just an 8 char pad. So I looked at the setup trojan and the original trojan in hex and located where the setup info was, and tried decrypting it. Took 8 passes (needed 8 different things to get full control) to get the info i needed. I found out the commander needed elite in their userid so i created a new account on the linux box and irc'ed from there. I joined the channel I had unobfuscated and sent the bots the master password and got reconized. I was so sure I would get dossed off the face of the earth. I then executed a file delete command on all the drones and then commanded them to all die. Then left with a message saying they really should have made it harder by using newer trojans! I then published all my findings and logs, omitting my last message, to the group I worked with.
A few months later I got kicked from the group and 3 weeks after that I got contacted by a member that got canned as well and started her own chan. She was trying to break open the door on the same trojan but couldnt get anywhere with it so she googled and ran across a reply I placed to a virus examination technique article I commented on. She said out of everything she has looked thru I was the only person that had much information on the virus.
I think a better show would be to invite 30 regular users that easily get infected with things to be handed pc's and have teams have to protect and disinfect their own number of users. Have the court open to having team members attempt to infect other users. It would be good to show the techniques teammembers use to identify, stop and disinfect trojans and viruses. Anyone who administrates multiples of pc's could benefit from learning the techniques. It's mostly research techniques and trial and error on guinea pig machines. I wouldnt do the infections/disinfections live, I would instead run a week or month trial and have them documented by paper and video and show the good cleanups in the show 30min-1 hour in 13 min spots with 2-3 min explaination spots then at the end have a free for all Q and A session for 30 min to an hour (possibly with demonstrations).
DRACO-
You were in a small store. You should find a Walmart Supercenter that is in the top 10 of the district, You wont know you are in the top 10 till you notice the store has things other stores dont. (The buyers tend to send items that they are testing market on to the biggest stores in the districts and they also seem to send stuff they cant sell anywhere else to the bigger store.) I work at one of the larger stores, just last week our store's sales hit the highest in the Texas district.
Over beside the vision center they carry educational toys including the smithsonian stuff. You should locate the telescopes and that expanding plastic ball thing, that is where the klidescope would be at. Other interesting things i have seen there are First electric guitar (and amp), First acoustic guitar, desktop rock garden (im considering getting this one sometime). Several other things appear there, i just dont remember them
DRACO-
I dropped search hal-pc.org into my resolv.conf. http://www failed to work in mozilla. Dropping to a shell and running lynx http://www worked, I was presented with www.hal-pc.org's website instead of www.com. Im running mozilla 1.0, I have ran thru most of the settings (without diving into a text editor) and havent found a disable for the automatic .com suffix.
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search
Search list for host-name lookup. The search list is normally determined from the local domain name; by default, it contains only the local domain name. This may be changed by listing the desired domain search path following the search keyword with spaces or tabs separating the names. Most resolver queries will be attempted using each component of the search path in turn until a match is found. Note that this process may be slow and will generate a lot of network traffic if the servers for the listed domains are not local, and that queries will time out if no server is available for one of the domains.
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DRACO-
Why not try something a little cleaner.. some el strips (electro luminecence). You could super glue these pretty cleanly to the bike body. Im considering ordering up some el strips for the interrior of my car. In my town people always expect me to feature some out of the ordinary gadget somewhere near me.
DRACO-
During the strike my local walmart was unable to recieve a certain advertized dvd player and had to sub in an apex player at the price of the advertized unit.
You can also say the trucking industry is another choke point in the shipping lanes, and FUEL PRICES! Raise the fuel prices enough and the truckers are going to strike like they did laste year in europe (i think).
You can also say electric power would royaly screw everything up.. if power is out across the nation (only a few hundred suicide terrorists needed) production, sale and shipping will all be halted for the next 12 years while power co's try to rebuild and repower industry. (if that happens we will probably die before they get power stations rebuilt unless the europe-asia gives us a hand rebuilding power plants (basic machined parts)
DRACO-
I use my Handspring Visor Platnium for a while now. I have owned 2 palm III's both broke from face down falls, one fell from my full hands on the way up the stairs to the house; the other fell within the beltclip holder about 13 ft while I was doing some work on a sissor lift in the warehouse.
As I work at a walmart in the reciving area on the Inventory Control Team. The management use palms as well to track various things. As the Christmas buying season is near our store has rented 78+ cargo containers to hold excess inventory buildup for the holidays (yay thanksgiving is almost here we can empty about 12 of them Friday morning). The management occasionally takes a walk through the trailers to examine contents, verify locking mechnisims and check for leaks, ants, and free space and recommend condensing into other trailers. After they do this they run across me and beam me their notes. This helps our team out tremendously as we dont have time to check what trailers have changed as there are 3+ teams (ICS, auto, stockers, unloaders & dept mangers) that work through them.
Im always using my palm to record my schedule (3 weeks at a time), Im always writing down upc's item numbers and other work related stuff. When im on break I go through my palm annotating changes to trailers, noting pallets Im required to remove from loft spaces or add to loft spaces.
I have a yahoo account which I can sync my palm to/from. The yahoo acount is tied to tv.yahoo.com where i can add tv shows to my schedule with a click then sync. Only thing is the sync sofware only works in windows (i havent tried emulation yet). With my palm synced to the net, my yahoo messengers will alert me of schedule stuff while im online (windows and linux, i love yahoo for being the only, abosolute only company to write their own IM for linux). I just wish they would create a sync program for linux to sync to my yahoo calendar.
DRACO-
I have at least 2 fujitsu limited hard drives.. no problem with them.. (may have another as i dont know what the third one is in my system, I havent pulled it out in awhile and it is hot now)
Now for the track record for failed hard drives, i have 1 dead segate 1 dead western digital 1 dead maxor and one dead caldera 2 dead quantum fireballs and a dead connner.. (all of them arnt mine, just hard drives i have replaced for people)
DRACO-
On my parent's suburban you can add new remotes by holding down both buttons on a alredy coded remote till the door locks cycle then do the same with the new remote.
My el chepo $59 Bulldog alarm can add new remotes as well, i forget how, but the instructions has the info.
What I have seen lately that looks kind of interesting is no door handles! Instead the alarm system has a relay which pops the door lock. I saw this on a 90's chevy pickup at a walmart. I laughed when I realized there was no handle. Check some import car magazines, they have that gear.
Something else I have seen, some bmw that didnt have keylocks, had a handle but the keylock was replaced with a pair of lights and seemingly some type of swipe detector like Mobil uses for their speedpass system.
Now what I wish for is longer reaching remote and a car with enough brains to drive over and pick me up at the door!
DRACO-
If the tubes are barren of air, bearings on wheels will definately be constantly replaced. What the hell are you going to do when a bearing siezes in the middle of a tube causing your awesome airless tube system to completely shut down for one burnt out bearing. Even if you use maglev style support, how many coils are you willing to burn up because they are unable to disappate heat?
:P
Maintence would royally suck (pun intended). Will the maintence workers have to wear ev suits in order to apply lubes, replace coils or will the system be willing to shut down the entire line barring they dont install fully sealed doors every section of tube. How in the world are you going to keep the airlock systems running without failure?
I belive It would be better to design a pnumatic style, high speed turbines that intterconnect inside or outside of turns as a unreachable spur to the cars, use pitch changing blades so that you could spin up the turbines to a very high speed (flywheel mode) and then when suckion is needed for a nearby car, pitch the blades to provide the suckion. Never spin down the turbines, just zero the pitch and let it continue like a flywheel add power just before it's needed again and pitch to provide more suction. You will need air bypasses around station stops so that a stopped car does not stop the efficency of the entire circular line.
Maybe cancel the thought of a circular line, run parallel tubes and make intake and exaughst of turbines be between separate tubes. The lines wont have to be circular if you cut the circle shorter. This will be better than a spur turbine. Though you will have to time the turbine useages between cars so that you dont end up blowing a car backwards
DRACO-