...and personally at work with coffee-related incidents (and yes, drinks are a *VERY* common cause of computer mishap).
I got a ticket from someone who spilled a drink into their laptop. One of those big bottles of sugar-free clear soda from Walmart. When I came by to pick up the laptop, she smiled confidently and said, "Oh, don't worry. It was sugar-free."
They're probably Toshiba or IBM drives. Toshiba makes the worst laptop drives. They work great for the first month or two, but then they start getting louder and louder and eventually die.
There's one in particular where you plug the cord into the outlet and a hard plastic cover snaps over to hold the plug in place. It will prevent you from damaging the cord as well as unplugging it.
I used to use a Toshiba Tecra 8100 with two batteries. I used it to wirelessly surf the web on the train. My battery life was 4-4.5 hours with the display turned to a medium brightness, and with a serial port constantly churning. With dnetc running in the background, the laptop would be at the shutdown point after barely 1.5 hours.
BTW, I bought a Portege 3440 with a broken screen for peanuts and turned it into my home file/print server. Sure, a larger hard drive is more expensive, but the power usage is extremely low, and with the rates we pay, we can't afford to have a massive tower serving files. We only need 20-30GB of common space, so it works great and has a built-in 2 hour UPS!
Working on writing software to make my old Atari 800 into a display and control center for a home automation system (security, HVAC, etc.) It has four fully controllable joystick/serial ports and an SIO port on the back. Also has a great video controller, low current draw and boots to a ROM cartridge in under three seconds.
My previous employer recently pulled a DHCP box out of one of my remote offices. It was an HP Vectra 486DX/66. It was running some old version of Linux (Red Hat, I believe), and it was one of those "stash in the back of the wiring closet and forget it" setups.
It looks like it was booting off a floppy, probably so that configuration changes could be made by sending a floppy to a user. But damn, that was a rock-solid machine--no failure or tweaking needed in three years.
The company replaced it with a $16,000 Compaq server as part of their "purge everything that isn't W2K" blitz. Last I heard they were pulling the Compaq server and preparing to serve DHCP over a T1 from a hub site. (Yes, they are that stupid.)
IT skills in 6th grade are useless. When I was in 6th grade, they were teaching us Bank Street Writer on the Apple//e. Needless to say, computing changed in nearly every way since then.
"Every so often" means three to four times a day for my house. These cretins continue to use tactics like calling with machines, hard sell and calling back, even when pressed to "put my number on your Do Not Call list."
Pity my wife is at home. She just tells them to fsck off and hangs up on them. If I were the stay-at-home, I'd have a couple dozen lawsuits going right now because of their existing illegal tactics.
My parents have Caller ID and have to let the phone ring to the answering machine whenever it's "unknown name/number." I finally answered the phone for them once yesterday. The calling machine made me wait for an operator. When I informed him that it was illegal to call with a machine, he said, "Not until October 1st." I then told him to place my number on his do-not-call list, and he promptly hung up on me.
Yeah, "slight convenience of a few." If it takes inconveniencing of a "few" (meaning a few million) to keep 500 minimum wage lackeys employed, let them collect unemployment and look for a real job.
Interested in making a set-top box for the living room using a Mini-ITX board. I've done some searching, but most of the cases are rather, well, PCish. What's your favorite ITX enclosure? Looking for quiet (or no) fan, something not so PC-looking, external power supply fine.
One of the columnists at Car and Driver was talkinga about the charm of small econoboxes. Basically, the limits are so much lower on an econobox, you can generally push one to its limits without killing yourself. For instance, I can drift the Metro around some of the tighter curves at 40 mph. A Porsche might have to do the same corner at 90 to push the same limits.
Mine's a 4-door, and I generally get 38-40 mpg with my uphill antics. Granted, the three transmissions and 8 CV joints have more than made up for the savings on gas. At this point, I'm ready for a better car, but I figured I'll just drive this until it dies, and then leave it on the side of the road with the pink and keys on the seat.:-)
Agreed. My commute home is a 3,600 foot climb on a very windy and hilly 12 mile stretch of mountain road. I regularly spank Civics, GTi's and Camaros in my Metro. Why? Because they blast past me on the straight, then have to jam on the brakes because they're afraid to take the next corner. Meanwhile, I'm gently sliding all four tires around the corner and accelerating to the next one.
I had a hotshot in a Dakota break a little loose, panic, stomp on the brakes and do a 360 behind me once. This was after he diligently blocked me for the two miles before the curves started and I passed him on the first corner.
"I was passed by one of these mothers once, out by the Axel Nebula," said Ford, "I was going flat out and this thing just strolled past me, star drive hardly ticking over. Just incredible."
Zaphod whistled appreciatively.
"Ten seconds later", said Ford, "it smashed straight into the third moon of Jaglan Beta."
"Yeah, right?"
"Amazing looking ship though. Looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow."
Speeding causes or contributes to only 7% of accidents. That includes both exceeding the limit and inappropriate speed - going too fast for the conditions.
When NHTSA tallies up accidents where "speed" was a factor, that includes driving too safe for conditions, driving faster than the posted limit (even when it is safe), and even driving too SLOWLY for conditions. Also, if a "speeding" driver, having the right of way, is T-boned by someone else who failed to stop at a stop sign, that's considered a speed-related accident--even though the speed had nothing to do with it.
And even then WHAT IS THE POINT? It seems like people just do this because THEY CAN and are not asking whether they SHOULD be doing this?
And I still don;t see the use for it. What are you possibly going to do with Linux on an Xbox that you couldn't do with Linux on your computer?
Because while your NES, Sega Master System and Atari 2600 went out with the trash when you were finally tired with them, an XBox can be modded and reused. Maybe by the time you're ready to junk it, you'll find you could really use a firewall, network storage appliance, Linux PVR, etc., and it'll get a second chance at life.
I honestly believe that anyone owning any vehicle that weighs over X pounds (let's say 4500-ish) for reasons OTHER than commercial use should be immediately eligible for either life imprisonment or death penalty if involved in an accident that was an obvious result of careless driving.
Nah, I just think that vehicles should be taxed fairly for the environmental damage, road damage and casualty damage they cause. Perhaps part of the regular smog check can report the mileage back to the DMV, and that vehicle can be taxed based on pollution levels, weight and injury/damage statistics, and yearly mileage.
I know that everybody hates the "unamerican" taxes on fuel in the EU and other countries. I personally think that $2.00 a gallon in taxes would cover at least part of the cost of our Middle East policy, not to mention discourage people from buying a 7,000 pound 9 mpg tank just to commute to work in.
and what good would that do in this era? Have you noticed the cost of natural gas lately? Did you know that it is going WAY up?
Dunno about your area, but at $2.13 a gallon here for cheap unleaded, a TDI or CNG car looks mighty nice right now. In California, there are plenty of refilling stations and you can also drive solo in the HOV lanes.
Know what the number one complaint is about the new H2? Fuel economy. Sure, we all think, "Duh, you're driving a V10-equipped 6,000 pound brick; of course your mileage is going to suck." From my understanding, because of their size, they aren't required to have the mileage stickers on the windows, so people are relying on the sales reps to give them mileage figures before they buy.
What's amazing is when people who buy a $60,000 Hummer to tow a $40,000 boat to the river will bitch about a $20,000 hybrid because "I can get the gas version for $3,000 less."
Yeah, like those fucking advertisements that march across your screen and cover up what you're trying to read. I swear, I would love the day that I can turn Flash/Shockwave on and off. I'd leave it off 99.5% of the time and turn it back on only for Homestar Runner.
Same deal here. I was given a survey where I got a preview of the "new" website by my local commuter line (www.metrolinktrains.com. I insisted that their stupid new flash page was harder to use, especially for those on slow connections that have to wait 60 seconds for the homepage to load.
Second problem? Until you wait for the Flash animation to launch, you CAN'T get any station information! While the schedules and pricing are hyperlinked, you can only get station location information by clicking in the Flash animation.
So now, when I'm on a low-bandwidth connection or using a browser that can't handle the Flash, I have to do a Google search for the station name so I can get to the HTML page for that station!
Sadly, enough people must have been drooling over the "cool animation" to not realize that the site is harder to navigate now.
If they're a Windows (and IE) convert they're so used to ads popping up all over the place that any ads in the browser will likely be a downstep anyway.
Well, the installer for Windows is also full of ads. Granted, those are ads for "features" in Windows like MSN, and only advertise other Microsoft products, but they're ads nonetheless. You avoid them by walking away after you get your Windows install running.
The phone, on the other hand, is a mutex lock on you...a very rude medium for low-importance/low-urgency communications.
Then there's the phone's bastard stepchild: the conference call. I am required to be on a conference call every day--even if there's nothing important that couldn't have been said in an email. Worse yet, if I'm out of the office or working on a high-priority outage, I might miss some project or other announcement on the call, to which there is never an email follow-up. (Sigh.)
My favorite mouse was a keyboard/mouse combination called the KeyCat II, made by some company that's probably long since gone. It had a nice large trackball to the right of the numeric keypad, and the mouse buttons were actually keys, at the top left of the keyboard. The keyboard felt great, the key placement was awesome, and the trackball was the best I ever used. Sadly, the keyboard wouldn't work with the 486 or above, and the Keycat 3 had a tiny trackball with the buttons spread around it. (The best thing about the Keycat II was that you could rest your hand and arm on the trackball without clicking anything.)
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I got a ticket from someone who spilled a drink into their laptop. One of those big bottles of sugar-free clear soda from Walmart. When I came by to pick up the laptop, she smiled confidently and said, "Oh, don't worry. It was sugar-free."
[sigh]
They're probably Toshiba or IBM drives. Toshiba makes the worst laptop drives. They work great for the first month or two, but then they start getting louder and louder and eventually die.
There's one in particular where you plug the cord into the outlet and a hard plastic cover snaps over to hold the plug in place. It will prevent you from damaging the cord as well as unplugging it.
BTW, I bought a Portege 3440 with a broken screen for peanuts and turned it into my home file/print server. Sure, a larger hard drive is more expensive, but the power usage is extremely low, and with the rates we pay, we can't afford to have a massive tower serving files. We only need 20-30GB of common space, so it works great and has a built-in 2 hour UPS!
There sure is, and you can get it for free. Pick up your favorite emulator and do a Google for XLSearch, which has every Atari game known to man.
Working on writing software to make my old Atari 800 into a display and control center for a home automation system (security, HVAC, etc.) It has four fully controllable joystick/serial ports and an SIO port on the back. Also has a great video controller, low current draw and boots to a ROM cartridge in under three seconds.
It looks like it was booting off a floppy, probably so that configuration changes could be made by sending a floppy to a user. But damn, that was a rock-solid machine--no failure or tweaking needed in three years.
The company replaced it with a $16,000 Compaq server as part of their "purge everything that isn't W2K" blitz. Last I heard they were pulling the Compaq server and preparing to serve DHCP over a T1 from a hub site. (Yes, they are that stupid.)
IT skills in 6th grade are useless. When I was in 6th grade, they were teaching us Bank Street Writer on the Apple //e. Needless to say, computing changed in nearly every way since then.
What's really weird is that I'm an Atari person, but I still remember that.
"The planet's average penis size is 8.5 inches. You can increase your size with our no-nonsense easy-to-use kit."
"And now let us bow our heads in payment."
Pity my wife is at home. She just tells them to fsck off and hangs up on them. If I were the stay-at-home, I'd have a couple dozen lawsuits going right now because of their existing illegal tactics.
My parents have Caller ID and have to let the phone ring to the answering machine whenever it's "unknown name/number." I finally answered the phone for them once yesterday. The calling machine made me wait for an operator. When I informed him that it was illegal to call with a machine, he said, "Not until October 1st." I then told him to place my number on his do-not-call list, and he promptly hung up on me.
Yeah, "slight convenience of a few." If it takes inconveniencing of a "few" (meaning a few million) to keep 500 minimum wage lackeys employed, let them collect unemployment and look for a real job.
Thanks.
Mine's a 4-door, and I generally get 38-40 mpg with my uphill antics. Granted, the three transmissions and 8 CV joints have more than made up for the savings on gas. At this point, I'm ready for a better car, but I figured I'll just drive this until it dies, and then leave it on the side of the road with the pink and keys on the seat. :-)
I had a hotshot in a Dakota break a little loose, panic, stomp on the brakes and do a 360 behind me once. This was after he diligently blocked me for the two miles before the curves started and I passed him on the first corner.
Methinks I'm ready for that WRX now.
Zaphod whistled appreciatively.
"Ten seconds later", said Ford, "it smashed straight into the third moon of Jaglan Beta."
"Yeah, right?"
"Amazing looking ship though. Looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow."
When NHTSA tallies up accidents where "speed" was a factor, that includes driving too safe for conditions, driving faster than the posted limit (even when it is safe), and even driving too SLOWLY for conditions. Also, if a "speeding" driver, having the right of way, is T-boned by someone else who failed to stop at a stop sign, that's considered a speed-related accident--even though the speed had nothing to do with it.
And I still don;t see the use for it. What are you possibly going to do with Linux on an Xbox that you couldn't do with Linux on your computer?
Because while your NES, Sega Master System and Atari 2600 went out with the trash when you were finally tired with them, an XBox can be modded and reused. Maybe by the time you're ready to junk it, you'll find you could really use a firewall, network storage appliance, Linux PVR, etc., and it'll get a second chance at life.
Nah, I just think that vehicles should be taxed fairly for the environmental damage, road damage and casualty damage they cause. Perhaps part of the regular smog check can report the mileage back to the DMV, and that vehicle can be taxed based on pollution levels, weight and injury/damage statistics, and yearly mileage.
I know that everybody hates the "unamerican" taxes on fuel in the EU and other countries. I personally think that $2.00 a gallon in taxes would cover at least part of the cost of our Middle East policy, not to mention discourage people from buying a 7,000 pound 9 mpg tank just to commute to work in.
Dunno about your area, but at $2.13 a gallon here for cheap unleaded, a TDI or CNG car looks mighty nice right now. In California, there are plenty of refilling stations and you can also drive solo in the HOV lanes.
What's amazing is when people who buy a $60,000 Hummer to tow a $40,000 boat to the river will bitch about a $20,000 hybrid because "I can get the gas version for $3,000 less."
Yeah, like those fucking advertisements that march across your screen and cover up what you're trying to read. I swear, I would love the day that I can turn Flash/Shockwave on and off. I'd leave it off 99.5% of the time and turn it back on only for Homestar Runner.
Second problem? Until you wait for the Flash animation to launch, you CAN'T get any station information! While the schedules and pricing are hyperlinked, you can only get station location information by clicking in the Flash animation.
So now, when I'm on a low-bandwidth connection or using a browser that can't handle the Flash, I have to do a Google search for the station name so I can get to the HTML page for that station!
Sadly, enough people must have been drooling over the "cool animation" to not realize that the site is harder to navigate now.
Well, the installer for Windows is also full of ads. Granted, those are ads for "features" in Windows like MSN, and only advertise other Microsoft products, but they're ads nonetheless. You avoid them by walking away after you get your Windows install running.
Then there's the phone's bastard stepchild: the conference call. I am required to be on a conference call every day--even if there's nothing important that couldn't have been said in an email. Worse yet, if I'm out of the office or working on a high-priority outage, I might miss some project or other announcement on the call, to which there is never an email follow-up. (Sigh.)
My favorite mouse was a keyboard/mouse combination called the KeyCat II, made by some company that's probably long since gone. It had a nice large trackball to the right of the numeric keypad, and the mouse buttons were actually keys, at the top left of the keyboard. The keyboard felt great, the key placement was awesome, and the trackball was the best I ever used. Sadly, the keyboard wouldn't work with the 486 or above, and the Keycat 3 had a tiny trackball with the buttons spread around it. (The best thing about the Keycat II was that you could rest your hand and arm on the trackball without clicking anything.)