Actually, I'm pretty sure my selective eating does a good bit for me.
It's not just the fried vs grilled vs whatever.. I prefer rare beef, but I also eat well cooked chicken and fish. Well, except sushi, which is obviously not well cooked if done right.:) A good meat is a nice thick steak, that was on a BBQ for long enough to barely cook the outside (hot enough to kill surface contaminants) and just body temperature inside. Bring on the fresh kill Zebra!:)
I don't like sauces, so no mayo, mustard, McD superspecial sauce, etc, etc.
I prefer vegetables raw over cooked, so usually both are out. McD lettuce and tomato that they provide on their sandwiches may as well have been in the back of a truck for a month. I have yet to get one that tastes like I should really eat it. Panera is usually better there.
I'm not a health nut though. I do like my fizzy caffeine drinks.:) I love french fries, but not from McD. I like to make them myself, fresh from cutting up potato's. I still fry them in vegetable oil. Mine taste good. McD don't. I don't think Panera offers fries.:)
As for starving myself one day a week, I'm pretty close to it. I don't eat breakfast. I eat a small lunch, and sometimes a small dinner. I haven't been very active for a few years now (mostly desk jockey), so I don't get very hungry. I keep my blood sugar up with soda for most of the day, so I don't fall asleep at my desk. Sometimes on weekends I forget to eat. It's just a matter that I'm not that hungry, so I keep doing what I'm doing. My life isn't planned out one meal to the next like some people.:)
I'm 99% positive that they don't even need the 2 man crew to do it. But, I'm sure they would. How many seats are there on the Endeavor, and how many folks are up in the Atlantis? Gotta have somewhere to tie everyone down. I wouldn't want to make a re-entry standing in the back holding on tight.:)
It's the same reason the American shuttle has a crew and the Russian shuttle didn't. Americans take a lot of pride in sending people into space. There's fame, glory, and feeding the PR machine. NASA has to keep the taxpayers satisfied that the missions are worth something. Sending up robotic missions don't have the same awe value. This was decided years ago.
Russia on the other hand, didn't have to satisfy the taxpayers. They did their mission to compete with the Americans. Why do you think the Russian shuttle looked so much like the American shuttle? Unfortunately for the Russians, their budget went away (like a lot of things there), and the program was scrapped.
Unfortunately for us (Americans), the NASA budget is big, but eaten by lots of bureaucracy. Every step is so wrapped in politics that it makes it almost impossible to do the newer better things that they'd like to do. "Secret" private operations like Lockheed Skunk Works and Boeing Phantom Works make some really neat stuff that people usually only get to find out parts of years after they've been developed and tested. I hate bursting bubbles, but Area 51 (among quite a few other places) doesn't house alien spaceships, but they do house really cool aircraft that the companies and our government won't tell us about.
If they could have left the bureaucracy out of NASA (good luck with that), all of our existing shuttles would be in museums not because they're flawed or old, but because newer better stuff would already be in use. Why fly a shuttle, when you can fly the STS Mark 14? Without the government red tape tying everything up, the existing budget would be enough to do all kinds of things. We wouldn't be looking at Mars now through the eyes of a robot stuck in the dirt. We'd have a tech in an EV suit pushing it out of the dirt, and waving as the next extra-solar system flight was passing by. "See you guys in a week. Pick me up some cool rocks from the far side of the termination shock"
Actually, I remember the advertising and planning on it. I also remember all the nifty artists concept drawings showing multiple shuttles in orbit, servicing various space stations, ferrying passengers to and from places, etc, etc. It was either said or implied that there would be multiple shuttles both ready to launch and docked at space stations all the time, so a pickup mission for a defective unit wasn't that inconceivable.
I believe it was after the first manned shuttle mission, that they had tile problems. Several fell out, but that was more or less ok. There's plenty of surface area, what are just a few tiles missing.:)
It will be interesting if they send a second mission up. I believe it will be the first (and probably last) time we have two orbiters up at the same time. I'm almost positive if we did have a dual mission already, that they never docked together. That'll be a cool trick.:) I wonder if they'd try to bring them down in formation.:) Nah, they'd probably bring the crippled one down by computer (no one on board) at a different landing site on a different day.
They'd have to bring the orbital velocity down from the 17,000+mph to 0.
The reason for the high heat is the extreme orbital velocity required to keep them up. If they reduced it to 0, when they dropped back into the atmosphere, the atmosphere itself would act like a cushion, and as they fell into the atmosphere, their own terminal velocity would slow them down gracefully.
Search around for Joseph Kittinger (jump from 102,800 feet in 1960) and Roger Eugene Andreyev (jump from 80,325 in 1962)
There are a few problems with it though.
I don't know that there's enough fuel on the shuttle to bring it down to a geosynchronous orbit. They have oms thrusters, good for changing altitude on a mission and maintaining their orbit, but not dropping so much speed.
If they brought the whole shuttle in that way, assuming in a flat orientation (bottom down, top up, 0 ground speed), it would slow down very gracefully, but once in the atmosphere they would be in a stall, and I doubt the oms engines would be able to maintain it's attitude. It may be unrecoverable once it's in the air.
If they rode the shuttle down to a low geosynchronous orbit and then jumped, they would be in very close proximity to the shuttle for a long time. There would be a huge risk of encountering the shuttle or debris as they re-entered in such close proximity to each other. Getting smacked in the head by a 2,000 ton airplane in a free fall can hurt. People would likely have a higher terminal velocity than the orbiter (the orbiter has a lot more surface area than an EVA suit), so the people would likely drop faster, but once their parachutes deployed, they'd slow dramatically, where the still falling orbiter wouldn't.
It would take a lot of planning to avoid existing debris in orbit.
It would take a lot of planning and luck to drop them anywhere close to where they'd want to land. Landing in Nevada or landing in the Atlantic or Pacific ocean would almost be a crap shoot. If they came down in just EVA suits, landing in the water wouldn't be practical.
Dropping the orbiter out of the air, even aiming for Nevada, may land in an unpredictable area. Hitting a metro area within say 1000 miles would be a bad thing(tm).
The crew don't have EVA suits with enough air to make the jump from orbit to breathable atmosphere (10k feet).
I don't believe the EVA suits carry beacons that are trackable from the ground.
Most importantly, they don't have parachutes.
This would have been something excellent to test out years ago, and they've had plenty of chances to try it out with "crash dummies" and timed/altitude parachute deployments.
Down it with one of their large fully synthesized shakes, and you'll clear out all the toxins you just ate. Mmmm.. Nothing makes you run for the bathroom than their chemical shakes..
Panera usually has better stuff. I'm selective about what I eat from there, so the nutritional value of anything from there is much better than what I can get at McD. Then again, when I order from McD, it's not all that bad, because I don't put all the slop (err, sauces), cheese, etc on it.
That's still Southeast Florida only (Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach county). The rest of the state doesn't get it. According to their map, they have 22 stops in 3 counties, along a single line.
If you could even say that the tri-rail "services" 3 counties, that leaves 64 counties without service, and even the counties that are serviced are only on the one line.
I think you got not only the Simpsons episode, but the plan.:) Milk the cities for some cash, make some drama, and then... nothing. Or maybe a magic collapsing monorail driven by Homer.
I know those same ideas have come and gone here in Florida too.
In the late 80's, there was a proposed St. Petersburg -> Tampa -> Orlando -> Miami high speed train idea.
In 2001, it included Pensacola, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Lakeland, Bradenton, and "other larger cities". It was voted on and approved in 2000. It was dropped in 2004.
In April 2009, Obama mentioned new high speed train systems for improving the economy (bring construction jobs, and the rest will follow).
People like this will come up with ideas, make a few bucks from the local governments, and then run away quietly. Some may even start construction, but few will ever happen.
> If you are not still convinced. Try to imagine how to recover the raid array after one disk dies... > Search the net and you'll find a lot of people that was unable to recover arrays because they used cheap > hardware.
I was amazed when it first happened to me. I was called to help someone with a cheap array. A single drive failure took the whole thing down. I followed the intuitive steps (pull the bad drive, put a new drive in it's place). The rebuild didn't start. I consulted the book. Then the manufacturers online documentation. And finally, we called the manufacturer. In going through the steps, they said "oh that was a bug on the firmware that shipped with the unit. Back up your data and upgrade the firmware. You'll need to wipe the array when you upgrade the firmware.
They had backups, so it wasn't a big deal, but the idea of having a nice expensive RAID 5 is that you can survive through a single drive failure without losing anything.
I've always made it a point to test failure scenarios. I love to bring an array up, get it really busy, and pull a drive out, just to see how it reacts. Usually putting the same drive back in, it's now out of sync, so it will rebuild.
For anything that I have control over now, I use Linux MD devices. I had a drive failure, and through my own stupidity, I messed up. It's a machine with 6 internal drives on 2 2 port add-on controllers, plus the 2 ide ports onboard. I hadn't labeled any of them. I knew it was/dev/hdi that had failed. I mentally switched the controllers, so I replaced/dev/hde instead. Oops. Now we have a 2-drive failure of the array. Very not good.
At this point, being that it was really late, I was tired, and I probably should have stopped working well before it got this far, I continued.:) I ended up switching a few cables, which just made it worse. Luckily through mdadm, you can find what drive belongs where, so I was able to straighten myself out over the next hour, and brought it up with 5 working drives of the array, plus one rebuilding. It took a few hours to rebuild, but it was functional. I just verified it was rebuilding, and went to sleep. In the morning, I checked in on it, and then couldn't figure out how I screwed up so badly. In many other arrays, they'll get really upset, and sometimes start attempting to rebuild over the good data, so you'd lose everything in a matter of seconds.
So.. test your failure scenarios, and understand what the capabilites and faults are in your array before you discover that a single-drive failure of a RAID5 will actually take your array down.:) If you get a piece of crap, return it for a better unit, or just build yourself a nice little machine with a big power supply, and do it yourself with Linux MD devices.
For old drives that I pulled from servers, I just stuck them in a cardboard box on the floor of my office. When I needed an old small drive for something, I'd pull it from the box.:) I wasn't confident in wiping them to sell or dispose of, so staying in my control was safer. Hey, they were old, they weren't worth anything to sell anyways.
Except for the drives that already had stickers that said "bad sectors" or "clicks", they usually worked years later.
The static bag and desiccant isn't a bad idea, but it's not always necessary. Now, if they were in a very dry static or high humidity environment, I'd definitely want them stored that way.
They just have stylized SGI text at the top of their though. Not that I've ever had much of their equipment though. I had a few machines, but the longest used piece was a SGI monitor (Sony trinitron 17" CRT)
Occasionally (very occasionally) I get one from a number I didn't recognize that was actually a friend or client who called from a new phone number. Since I'm to the point of not answering strange numbers, it helps them. It's rare, but it happens.
But I've never seen a business who accepts cash set a lower limit on what they will accept. Sure, I've seen "no bills larger than $20", but never "we don't accept pennies"
So, if you are offering to pay with a legal tender of the nation you're in, you're in the right.
Basically, they can refuse the pennies, but when they try to take action against you, your simple statement that you attempted to pay the debt with legal tender means they simply refused your payment.
Back in the day, when you could pump gas and THEN go in and pay, I pumped a few dollars worth into my car, and then realized I had left my wallet at home. I dug through the car for enough change to pay what I owed. When I went inside, the clerk refused my payment. I told her I didn't have anything else to pay with, and she still refused. Finally, I asked, "So, if I just leave, what will happen?" She said she would call the police and file charges. I told her to call now. Being that she knew she was being stupid, (not taking legal tender for an owed debt), and the police would tell her so, she finally just took my loose change and we left without breaking the law.
If I had left, and I had a witness and she had her security camera, that would both confirm that I had tried to pay but she refused to accept my legal tender, it would probably keep me out of jail.:)
With the normal situation now being that you must pay before you get your item, they can refuse you service. It's not nice, and you probably won't shop there again. Usually for change under $1, people don't even count it.
Now, back on topic.. The law firm will probably lose their merchant account, or have to change it, with too many fraudulent transactions. They may simply refuse any transaction under a particular threshold. I doubt they get too many transactions for $1 or less, so why accept them. This can all be worked out with the bank. It's not going to help PB at all. If they get $10 million in $1 transactions, it most likely won't satisfy the court order, as I'm sure it can be argued that the induced bank fees made that value nothing. They will probably end up in court again for civil charges, but I don't know the law at all there.
I've used a lot of various wireless devices. Some play very nicely with others. We had a baby monitor that would pick up some digital noise and had no option for changing channels.
One cordless phone set I bought (name brand, of course) managed to make noise on just about every channel. It knocked out the other wireless phone (the other phone line), and 802.11g wireless. I initially played with the 802.11g, trying to make it work, but regardless of the channel I chose, it couldn't talk. I messed with it for about an hour, before I packed it back up and returned it to the store.
Oddly enough, another from the same manufacturer worked very nicely.
I recently had to change channels on my AP because something moved in on it. I don't know what. It could have been a neighbor's AP, phone, baby monitor, wireless front door cam, or even a crappy microwave oven. I kinda doubt the oven though, since it was so frequent, their power bill would be huge (who besides Slashdot readers microwave anything at 3am?)
With my voicemail, it's been pretty simple to check them.
When the call comes from 800, 888, 877, or 866, I hit delete before I hear the rest of the number. Voila, 99% of my calls disappear.
Now if they only had a filtering mechanism, I'd be a happy camper. "Sorry, your number is categorically denied from contacting this user. Go away." Then I'd get 3 voicemails a year and be happy with it.:)
I have had the occasional complaint that my voicemail is full. When I have to spend a few minutes deleting 20 BS calls, that's the obvious problem. They don't quite get that I don't need new aluminum siding for my funeral plot that I can pay for with my winnings from the lottery I didn't sign up for.:) Oh ya, and the spanish calls. I get those about twice a week, saying that there's something gratis telefono, but my spanish is so bad the rest doesn't make a lot of sense.
For me, any of the keyboards I had simply didn't fit in my laptop bag. I also carry a lot of gear, so I'd have to sacrifice something essential for work, to keep an extra keyboard in there.
That, and it was hard enough to use my laptop in some places, like airplanes, with just the laptop. The keyboard would just be too much stuff in the way. I was happier when it died, so I had an excuse to get a better laptop that I could actually get parts for.:)
I bought a refurb alienware laptop several years ago from a 3rd party. It worked ok, but one of the keys would stick. They wouldn't sell me a new keyboard, because I wasn't a direct customer, even though it had the Alienware markings all over it. I found who the real manufacturer was of the chassis, and they said I have to talk to the retail outlet (Alienware). I tried to go through the 3rd party, who sold a lot of refurb Alienware stuff, and they couldn't get a new keyboard.
Alienware said I could use a USB keyboard instead. Ummm, this was a laptop, that I carried for work. I didn't want to carry a keyboard too, just so I could use my laptop.
I also tried to get the second drive carrier, which turned out to be almost the same as the story said. It would have taken an act of god, and a virgin sacrifice to even hope to get one.
In the end, I suffered with the bad keyboard for quite a while. Finally on one work trip, it overheated and died. The hotel's A/C was broken, and I had to work in the middle of the night (with it 90+ degrees in the room).
I weighed my options. I had this really neat looking laptop that I couldn't do anything with, or try to beg Alienware to fix it (good luck there). I was out of country, and the exchange rate was great then, so I bought a new PC and LCD monitor, and worked from the hotel for a month like that. I went home for a week before the next 1 month job at the same site, and bought a HP laptop. Actually a HP Pavilion zv6000. That was about 3 years or so ago. I'm still using the HP, and I've put it through more abuse than the Alienware ever saw. So far it's been to 3 countries, and more US cities than I can even begin to count. I even did a live stream with a Verizon air card, 2 USB cameras, and a GPS receiver, for the length of I-10 (California to Florida) in the middle of summer. Come on, hot car, long drive, laptop sliding in the passenger seat. It never hit the floor, which was good. I left it running on my porch in Florida for 6 months straight, so I had a terminal to read my mail on, and it never failed, regardless of humidity, heat, or anything. My only complaint since then? The HP draws a lot of power, and I popped the fuse in my power inverter.
I've bought a few replacement parts for the HP, more out of want than need. I need part of the case now, because my laptop bag fell off a luggage cart, and cracked some plastic. That was easily found on eBay for about $30.
For those making car analogies and saying "the ownership should have been transferred, blah, blah", I work on other people's cars as a hobby. I've bought all kinds of parts, and never have I been asked to prove that the car was "mine", or that I was an authorized repair person. I walk into the store or even dealership and say "I need part.... for a....", and they had it to me. The ONLY part that's ever required any sort of proof was a factory reproduced key for a lost key, so the owner has to go with registration in hand to get it. That hasn't stopped me from buying replacement ignition and door locks with new keys. I could steal your car, buy new locks, and it would be mine (without legit plates, obviously). I've even had my car towed, without any proof that it was mine. My word of "It won't start, tow it to here please" and a cash payment has always been enough. Maybe that's because I'm a fine upstanding appearing citizen, but those who know me know better.:) No, I wouldn't steal a car, but still.. A $40,000+ car is worth a hell of a lot more than anything Alienware has to offer.
I had a look at their.com site. santarosajunioncollege.com. I guess they run a link farm too. Oh, they're just being annoying, picking worthless battles with the people that pay their bills.
I agree totally. Our meat was far superior to anything we ever bought in the store. We raised black angus, and I haven't had meat like that from anywhere else.
Even our chicken and eggs were better. But, when "fresh" chicken is one that was slaughtered an hour before, it's always fresher than anything that came through the grocery distribution system.
And, we knew what was fed to our animals, and how they were raised. We didn't give them growth hormones. They were medically treated as needed, so they weren't pumped full of drugs. For the most part, they were healthy from birth to slaughter, and we knew it. A potentially unhealthy animal wasn't suitable to make food from. You just can't know that of anything bought in the store.
Obesity is a self induced problem. I was on my way to being overweight once. Not obese, but I saw the problem and took care of it. I started exercising more, and eating less. For years now, I've maintained a BMI of about 23. It was a personal problem, and I took care of it.
I guess ours would almost qualify. My dad was retired (he had me late), so we had the cattle, chickens, goats, pigs, and some crops (corn, potatoes, etc).
We only had about one steer a year slaughtered, which generally gave us meat for a year. We sold a little to neighbors, and sold the occasional cattle at auction. I don't believe it ever made money, but it gave us lots of fresh food.:)
We were on 13 acres, so it was a little bigger than a lot of "farms" around us, but there were plenty of larger farms too.
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Actually, I'm pretty sure my selective eating does a good bit for me.
It's not just the fried vs grilled vs whatever.. I prefer rare beef, but I also eat well cooked chicken and fish. Well, except sushi, which is obviously not well cooked if done right. :) A good meat is a nice thick steak, that was on a BBQ for long enough to barely cook the outside (hot enough to kill surface contaminants) and just body temperature inside. Bring on the fresh kill Zebra! :)
I don't like sauces, so no mayo, mustard, McD superspecial sauce, etc, etc.
I prefer vegetables raw over cooked, so usually both are out. McD lettuce and tomato that they provide on their sandwiches may as well have been in the back of a truck for a month. I have yet to get one that tastes like I should really eat it. Panera is usually better there.
I'm not a health nut though. I do like my fizzy caffeine drinks. :) I love french fries, but not from McD. I like to make them myself, fresh from cutting up potato's. I still fry them in vegetable oil. Mine taste good. McD don't. I don't think Panera offers fries. :)
As for starving myself one day a week, I'm pretty close to it. I don't eat breakfast. I eat a small lunch, and sometimes a small dinner. I haven't been very active for a few years now (mostly desk jockey), so I don't get very hungry. I keep my blood sugar up with soda for most of the day, so I don't fall asleep at my desk. Sometimes on weekends I forget to eat. It's just a matter that I'm not that hungry, so I keep doing what I'm doing. My life isn't planned out one meal to the next like some people. :)
I'm 99% positive that they don't even need the 2 man crew to do it. But, I'm sure they would. How many seats are there on the Endeavor, and how many folks are up in the Atlantis? Gotta have somewhere to tie everyone down. I wouldn't want to make a re-entry standing in the back holding on tight. :)
It's the same reason the American shuttle has a crew and the Russian shuttle didn't. Americans take a lot of pride in sending people into space. There's fame, glory, and feeding the PR machine. NASA has to keep the taxpayers satisfied that the missions are worth something. Sending up robotic missions don't have the same awe value. This was decided years ago.
Russia on the other hand, didn't have to satisfy the taxpayers. They did their mission to compete with the Americans. Why do you think the Russian shuttle looked so much like the American shuttle? Unfortunately for the Russians, their budget went away (like a lot of things there), and the program was scrapped.
Unfortunately for us (Americans), the NASA budget is big, but eaten by lots of bureaucracy. Every step is so wrapped in politics that it makes it almost impossible to do the newer better things that they'd like to do. "Secret" private operations like Lockheed Skunk Works and Boeing Phantom Works make some really neat stuff that people usually only get to find out parts of years after they've been developed and tested. I hate bursting bubbles, but Area 51 (among quite a few other places) doesn't house alien spaceships, but they do house really cool aircraft that the companies and our government won't tell us about.
If they could have left the bureaucracy out of NASA (good luck with that), all of our existing shuttles would be in museums not because they're flawed or old, but because newer better stuff would already be in use. Why fly a shuttle, when you can fly the STS Mark 14? Without the government red tape tying everything up, the existing budget would be enough to do all kinds of things. We wouldn't be looking at Mars now through the eyes of a robot stuck in the dirt. We'd have a tech in an EV suit pushing it out of the dirt, and waving as the next extra-solar system flight was passing by. "See you guys in a week. Pick me up some cool rocks from the far side of the termination shock"
Actually, I remember the advertising and planning on it. I also remember all the nifty artists concept drawings showing multiple shuttles in orbit, servicing various space stations, ferrying passengers to and from places, etc, etc. It was either said or implied that there would be multiple shuttles both ready to launch and docked at space stations all the time, so a pickup mission for a defective unit wasn't that inconceivable.
I believe it was after the first manned shuttle mission, that they had tile problems. Several fell out, but that was more or less ok. There's plenty of surface area, what are just a few tiles missing. :)
It will be interesting if they send a second mission up. I believe it will be the first (and probably last) time we have two orbiters up at the same time. I'm almost positive if we did have a dual mission already, that they never docked together. That'll be a cool trick. :) I wonder if they'd try to bring them down in formation. :) Nah, they'd probably bring the crippled one down by computer (no one on board) at a different landing site on a different day.
I know it was a joke, but it would work.
They'd have to bring the orbital velocity down from the 17,000+mph to 0.
The reason for the high heat is the extreme orbital velocity required to keep them up. If they reduced it to 0, when they dropped back into the atmosphere, the atmosphere itself would act like a cushion, and as they fell into the atmosphere, their own terminal velocity would slow them down gracefully.
Search around for Joseph Kittinger (jump from 102,800 feet in 1960) and Roger Eugene Andreyev (jump from 80,325 in 1962)
There are a few problems with it though.
I don't know that there's enough fuel on the shuttle to bring it down to a geosynchronous orbit. They have oms thrusters, good for changing altitude on a mission and maintaining their orbit, but not dropping so much speed.
If they brought the whole shuttle in that way, assuming in a flat orientation (bottom down, top up, 0 ground speed), it would slow down very gracefully, but once in the atmosphere they would be in a stall, and I doubt the oms engines would be able to maintain it's attitude. It may be unrecoverable once it's in the air.
If they rode the shuttle down to a low geosynchronous orbit and then jumped, they would be in very close proximity to the shuttle for a long time. There would be a huge risk of encountering the shuttle or debris as they re-entered in such close proximity to each other. Getting smacked in the head by a 2,000 ton airplane in a free fall can hurt. People would likely have a higher terminal velocity than the orbiter (the orbiter has a lot more surface area than an EVA suit), so the people would likely drop faster, but once their parachutes deployed, they'd slow dramatically, where the still falling orbiter wouldn't.
It would take a lot of planning to avoid existing debris in orbit.
It would take a lot of planning and luck to drop them anywhere close to where they'd want to land. Landing in Nevada or landing in the Atlantic or Pacific ocean would almost be a crap shoot. If they came down in just EVA suits, landing in the water wouldn't be practical.
Dropping the orbiter out of the air, even aiming for Nevada, may land in an unpredictable area. Hitting a metro area within say 1000 miles would be a bad thing(tm).
The crew don't have EVA suits with enough air to make the jump from orbit to breathable atmosphere (10k feet).
I don't believe the EVA suits carry beacons that are trackable from the ground.
Most importantly, they don't have parachutes.
This would have been something excellent to test out years ago, and they've had plenty of chances to try it out with "crash dummies" and timed/altitude parachute deployments.
Down it with one of their large fully synthesized shakes, and you'll clear out all the toxins you just ate. Mmmm.. Nothing makes you run for the bathroom than their chemical shakes..
Panera usually has better stuff. I'm selective about what I eat from there, so the nutritional value of anything from there is much better than what I can get at McD. Then again, when I order from McD, it's not all that bad, because I don't put all the slop (err, sauces), cheese, etc on it.
That's still Southeast Florida only (Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach county). The rest of the state doesn't get it. According to their map, they have 22 stops in 3 counties, along a single line.
It's a far cry from a real transit system
If you could even say that the tri-rail "services" 3 counties, that leaves 64 counties without service, and even the counties that are serviced are only on the one line.
That's one way to do a power fail scenario. I prefer the swift yanking of the power cord, but to each his own. :)
When I do it, I prefer to have at least someone watching.
"Is it busy?"
"ya."
"Really busy?"
"ya."
"POWER FAILURE!"
[YANK] :)
I think you got not only the Simpsons episode, but the plan. :) Milk the cities for some cash, make some drama, and then ... nothing. Or maybe a magic collapsing monorail driven by Homer.
I know those same ideas have come and gone here in Florida too.
In the late 80's, there was a proposed St. Petersburg -> Tampa -> Orlando -> Miami high speed train idea.
In 2001, it included Pensacola, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Lakeland, Bradenton, and "other larger cities". It was voted on and approved in 2000. It was dropped in 2004.
In April 2009, Obama mentioned new high speed train systems for improving the economy (bring construction jobs, and the rest will follow).
People like this will come up with ideas, make a few bucks from the local governments, and then run away quietly. Some may even start construction, but few will ever happen.
> If you are not still convinced. Try to imagine how to recover the raid array after one disk dies...
> Search the net and you'll find a lot of people that was unable to recover arrays because they used cheap
> hardware.
I was amazed when it first happened to me. I was called to help someone with a cheap array. A single drive failure took the whole thing down. I followed the intuitive steps (pull the bad drive, put a new drive in it's place). The rebuild didn't start. I consulted the book. Then the manufacturers online documentation. And finally, we called the manufacturer. In going through the steps, they said "oh that was a bug on the firmware that shipped with the unit. Back up your data and upgrade the firmware. You'll need to wipe the array when you upgrade the firmware.
They had backups, so it wasn't a big deal, but the idea of having a nice expensive RAID 5 is that you can survive through a single drive failure without losing anything.
I've always made it a point to test failure scenarios. I love to bring an array up, get it really busy, and pull a drive out, just to see how it reacts. Usually putting the same drive back in, it's now out of sync, so it will rebuild.
For anything that I have control over now, I use Linux MD devices. I had a drive failure, and through my own stupidity, I messed up. It's a machine with 6 internal drives on 2 2 port add-on controllers, plus the 2 ide ports onboard. I hadn't labeled any of them. I knew it was /dev/hdi that had failed. I mentally switched the controllers, so I replaced /dev/hde instead. Oops. Now we have a 2-drive failure of the array. Very not good.
At this point, being that it was really late, I was tired, and I probably should have stopped working well before it got this far, I continued. :) I ended up switching a few cables, which just made it worse. Luckily through mdadm, you can find what drive belongs where, so I was able to straighten myself out over the next hour, and brought it up with 5 working drives of the array, plus one rebuilding. It took a few hours to rebuild, but it was functional. I just verified it was rebuilding, and went to sleep. In the morning, I checked in on it, and then couldn't figure out how I screwed up so badly. In many other arrays, they'll get really upset, and sometimes start attempting to rebuild over the good data, so you'd lose everything in a matter of seconds.
So.. test your failure scenarios, and understand what the capabilites and faults are in your array before you discover that a single-drive failure of a RAID5 will actually take your array down. :) If you get a piece of crap, return it for a better unit, or just build yourself a nice little machine with a big power supply, and do it yourself with Linux MD devices.
For old drives that I pulled from servers, I just stuck them in a cardboard box on the floor of my office. When I needed an old small drive for something, I'd pull it from the box. :) I wasn't confident in wiping them to sell or dispose of, so staying in my control was safer. Hey, they were old, they weren't worth anything to sell anyways.
Except for the drives that already had stickers that said "bad sectors" or "clicks", they usually worked years later.
The static bag and desiccant isn't a bad idea, but it's not always necessary. Now, if they were in a very dry static or high humidity environment, I'd definitely want them stored that way.
I hope they keep the logo. I always liked it.
They just have stylized SGI text at the top of their though. Not that I've ever had much of their equipment though. I had a few machines, but the longest used piece was a SGI monitor (Sony trinitron 17" CRT)
Occasionally (very occasionally) I get one from a number I didn't recognize that was actually a friend or client who called from a new phone number. Since I'm to the point of not answering strange numbers, it helps them. It's rare, but it happens.
But does Cyrillic work yet? ? Nope.
But I've never seen a business who accepts cash set a lower limit on what they will accept. Sure, I've seen "no bills larger than $20", but never "we don't accept pennies"
So, if you are offering to pay with a legal tender of the nation you're in, you're in the right.
There's a good writeup on this at snopes.
Basically, they can refuse the pennies, but when they try to take action against you, your simple statement that you attempted to pay the debt with legal tender means they simply refused your payment.
Back in the day, when you could pump gas and THEN go in and pay, I pumped a few dollars worth into my car, and then realized I had left my wallet at home. I dug through the car for enough change to pay what I owed. When I went inside, the clerk refused my payment. I told her I didn't have anything else to pay with, and she still refused. Finally, I asked, "So, if I just leave, what will happen?" She said she would call the police and file charges. I told her to call now. Being that she knew she was being stupid, (not taking legal tender for an owed debt), and the police would tell her so, she finally just took my loose change and we left without breaking the law.
If I had left, and I had a witness and she had her security camera, that would both confirm that I had tried to pay but she refused to accept my legal tender, it would probably keep me out of jail. :)
With the normal situation now being that you must pay before you get your item, they can refuse you service. It's not nice, and you probably won't shop there again. Usually for change under $1, people don't even count it.
Now, back on topic.. The law firm will probably lose their merchant account, or have to change it, with too many fraudulent transactions. They may simply refuse any transaction under a particular threshold. I doubt they get too many transactions for $1 or less, so why accept them. This can all be worked out with the bank. It's not going to help PB at all. If they get $10 million in $1 transactions, it most likely won't satisfy the court order, as I'm sure it can be argued that the induced bank fees made that value nothing. They will probably end up in court again for civil charges, but I don't know the law at all there.
The assumption of "sane" is a big one.
I've used a lot of various wireless devices. Some play very nicely with others. We had a baby monitor that would pick up some digital noise and had no option for changing channels.
One cordless phone set I bought (name brand, of course) managed to make noise on just about every channel. It knocked out the other wireless phone (the other phone line), and 802.11g wireless. I initially played with the 802.11g, trying to make it work, but regardless of the channel I chose, it couldn't talk. I messed with it for about an hour, before I packed it back up and returned it to the store.
Oddly enough, another from the same manufacturer worked very nicely.
I recently had to change channels on my AP because something moved in on it. I don't know what. It could have been a neighbor's AP, phone, baby monitor, wireless front door cam, or even a crappy microwave oven. I kinda doubt the oven though, since it was so frequent, their power bill would be huge (who besides Slashdot readers microwave anything at 3am?)
With my voicemail, it's been pretty simple to check them.
When the call comes from 800, 888, 877, or 866, I hit delete before I hear the rest of the number. Voila, 99% of my calls disappear.
Now if they only had a filtering mechanism, I'd be a happy camper. "Sorry, your number is categorically denied from contacting this user. Go away." Then I'd get 3 voicemails a year and be happy with it. :)
I have had the occasional complaint that my voicemail is full. When I have to spend a few minutes deleting 20 BS calls, that's the obvious problem. They don't quite get that I don't need new aluminum siding for my funeral plot that I can pay for with my winnings from the lottery I didn't sign up for. :) Oh ya, and the spanish calls. I get those about twice a week, saying that there's something gratis telefono, but my spanish is so bad the rest doesn't make a lot of sense.
For me, any of the keyboards I had simply didn't fit in my laptop bag. I also carry a lot of gear, so I'd have to sacrifice something essential for work, to keep an extra keyboard in there.
That, and it was hard enough to use my laptop in some places, like airplanes, with just the laptop. The keyboard would just be too much stuff in the way. I was happier when it died, so I had an excuse to get a better laptop that I could actually get parts for. :)
I bought a refurb alienware laptop several years ago from a 3rd party. It worked ok, but one of the keys would stick. They wouldn't sell me a new keyboard, because I wasn't a direct customer, even though it had the Alienware markings all over it. I found who the real manufacturer was of the chassis, and they said I have to talk to the retail outlet (Alienware). I tried to go through the 3rd party, who sold a lot of refurb Alienware stuff, and they couldn't get a new keyboard.
Alienware said I could use a USB keyboard instead. Ummm, this was a laptop, that I carried for work. I didn't want to carry a keyboard too, just so I could use my laptop.
I also tried to get the second drive carrier, which turned out to be almost the same as the story said. It would have taken an act of god, and a virgin sacrifice to even hope to get one.
In the end, I suffered with the bad keyboard for quite a while. Finally on one work trip, it overheated and died. The hotel's A/C was broken, and I had to work in the middle of the night (with it 90+ degrees in the room).
I weighed my options. I had this really neat looking laptop that I couldn't do anything with, or try to beg Alienware to fix it (good luck there). I was out of country, and the exchange rate was great then, so I bought a new PC and LCD monitor, and worked from the hotel for a month like that. I went home for a week before the next 1 month job at the same site, and bought a HP laptop. Actually a HP Pavilion zv6000. That was about 3 years or so ago. I'm still using the HP, and I've put it through more abuse than the Alienware ever saw. So far it's been to 3 countries, and more US cities than I can even begin to count. I even did a live stream with a Verizon air card, 2 USB cameras, and a GPS receiver, for the length of I-10 (California to Florida) in the middle of summer. Come on, hot car, long drive, laptop sliding in the passenger seat. It never hit the floor, which was good. I left it running on my porch in Florida for 6 months straight, so I had a terminal to read my mail on, and it never failed, regardless of humidity, heat, or anything. My only complaint since then? The HP draws a lot of power, and I popped the fuse in my power inverter.
I've bought a few replacement parts for the HP, more out of want than need. I need part of the case now, because my laptop bag fell off a luggage cart, and cracked some plastic. That was easily found on eBay for about $30.
For those making car analogies and saying "the ownership should have been transferred, blah, blah", I work on other people's cars as a hobby. I've bought all kinds of parts, and never have I been asked to prove that the car was "mine", or that I was an authorized repair person. I walk into the store or even dealership and say "I need part .... for a ....", and they had it to me. The ONLY part that's ever required any sort of proof was a factory reproduced key for a lost key, so the owner has to go with registration in hand to get it. That hasn't stopped me from buying replacement ignition and door locks with new keys. I could steal your car, buy new locks, and it would be mine (without legit plates, obviously). I've even had my car towed, without any proof that it was mine. My word of "It won't start, tow it to here please" and a cash payment has always been enough. Maybe that's because I'm a fine upstanding appearing citizen, but those who know me know better. :) No, I wouldn't steal a car, but still.. A $40,000+ car is worth a hell of a lot more than anything Alienware has to offer.
Well.....
In an ideal (and RFC compliant) world, schools use .EDU. Government agencies use .GOV. National institutions use their country code.
Now lets look at how it really works. I arbitrarily picked Florida.
Many government services are handled through myflorida.com . Florida State University has both fsu.edu and fsu.com.
It's much harder to squat on a .edu or .gov than it is to squat on a .com, .net, or .org.
junior. I typed it right in whois and the browser, I just mistyped it in the posting. But, I'm sure you've already figured that out.
I had a look at their .com site. santarosajunioncollege.com. I guess they run a link farm too. Oh, they're just being annoying, picking worthless battles with the people that pay their bills.
I agree totally. Our meat was far superior to anything we ever bought in the store. We raised black angus, and I haven't had meat like that from anywhere else.
Even our chicken and eggs were better. But, when "fresh" chicken is one that was slaughtered an hour before, it's always fresher than anything that came through the grocery distribution system.
And, we knew what was fed to our animals, and how they were raised. We didn't give them growth hormones. They were medically treated as needed, so they weren't pumped full of drugs. For the most part, they were healthy from birth to slaughter, and we knew it. A potentially unhealthy animal wasn't suitable to make food from. You just can't know that of anything bought in the store.
I never claimed I wasn't one.
Obesity is a self induced problem. I was on my way to being overweight once. Not obese, but I saw the problem and took care of it. I started exercising more, and eating less. For years now, I've maintained a BMI of about 23. It was a personal problem, and I took care of it.
I guess ours would almost qualify. My dad was retired (he had me late), so we had the cattle, chickens, goats, pigs, and some crops (corn, potatoes, etc).
We only had about one steer a year slaughtered, which generally gave us meat for a year. We sold a little to neighbors, and sold the occasional cattle at auction. I don't believe it ever made money, but it gave us lots of fresh food. :)
We were on 13 acres, so it was a little bigger than a lot of "farms" around us, but there were plenty of larger farms too.