Must have been too many stories in the pipeline or yesterday was busy and today is slow. In any case, I posted this story to/. sometime yesterday and it just hit the front page now.
You neglected to specify digital or film. In general, many cameras of both types have optional waterproof housings. For both light-gathering ablilty and waterproofness weight will be an issue.
For landscape type photos you may be better off concentrating on camera shake instead of lens/film speed. Take a pocket tripod or clamp. I've shot quite reasonable night photos with an old digital camera just by using the tripod hand-held against a wall or tree.
For film, choose your camera based on how much weight you are willing to carry vs. the f-stop of your lens (the larger your light gathering opening the lower light you can shoot in for a given ISO but of course that is also going to make for a heavier camera). Once you have settled on that, take film of a high enough speed to get the shots you want.
For digital, I've always liked the Olympus cameras. IIRC, the Olympus C-series support ISO equivalents up to 400 and have optional waterproof housings. Also check out the Olympus "Stylus Digital" series of "ultra-compact, metal, all-weather digital" cameras that according to Olympus "can be used in rain, snow and any other situation Mother Nature throws at it"
Sure the "black-box" provided some evidence but it probably just corroborated other evidence making the case somewhat stronger.
I don't know all the evidence the police have but it probably includes: severity of damage, lack of skid-marks, testimony of the passenger in the vehicle, and distance that objects in the collision were thrown.
I'll bet they have a pretty good idea of the speed involved without the black-box. Maybe not that he was doing 3.14 times the limit but, say, 2-3 times the limit. Two decimal accuracy isn't important. The fact that he was way, way over the limit combined with his driving history is what sealed his fate.
A better question is why, given his track record, was he allowed to drive and why is his punishment for wildly reckless driving resulting in the death of a human being a mere 18 months and why is he banned from driving for a mere 3 years? He obviously didn't learn his lesson after the previous triple-the-speed-limit crash.
First consider your goal. I presume it is to get them to fix the problem rather than to extort money, humiliate them, etc.
Given that assumption remember that there are many players. There are the software writers and network admins. They may be afraid of being made to look bad in front of their superiors. They may know the problems and be working on them. They may simply be doing all they can with the resources that have been given them.
Work your way up from there. IT Department heads may try to claim it isn't a problem (prevent embarassment), indicate the need for more resources or may be in the dark because their people screwed up and hid the problem.
The legal department and higher administration will be worried about liability and bad press. As such, any "demonstration" you put on can be used against you. Suddenly you will be the bad guy - the evil cracker. They may even try to go after you legally to cover their asses.
Others have mentioned S-O legislation. There may be a compliance officer on campus who you can contact.
So what to do?
I would write a detailed letter describing the problem in layman's terms. Profess ignorance to allow people to save face (phrases such as "perhaps I am unaware of fixes that are already in the works", and "I know running a student network on a tight budget is difficult...") and express your desire that this matter be handled quickly and without the need to involve outside parties but insist that it must be handled.
The "ignorance" method also allows you to send the letter to a wide recipient list without looking like you are trying to skewer any particular person or department: "I apologize for the wide distribution but I'm not sure who is in charge of such a matter as it involves S-O compliance, student privacy, IT etc..."
You may want to offer recommendations (perhaps this system should be taken offline to protect the sensitive data until the security problems are repaired) and offer your assistance. If you offer to arrange a demo and they accept, request that they set up a dummy account. This helps isolate you from liability and demonstrates your concern for privacy.
Other avenues if the "good-guy" method fails: many universities have a student ombudsman, there may be state or federal S-O compliance resources and finally, there is the press.
I'm actually moving the other way - toward hosted DNS. This is especially important if you only have one data line - dual DNS is useless if both servers are on the same connection (just ask Microsoft - that's why they ended up outsourcing theirs a couple of years ago after a big DNS problem).
But sometimes it's great to be able to do quick changes for test/development and such so you can either delegate a sub-domain that you run internally or you can set up a test/dev domain and run your own DNS for that one.
It can make you want to die
on
Death by Coffee?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The description of seasickness is that at first you are afraid that you're going to die...then you are afraid that you won't. I had a similar experience with coffee.
I used to work mostly in the field but was in the office on a chilly day working on some new equipment. I had learned that my coworkers, who loved coffee, hadn't had chocolate covered coffee beans. I brought in 1/4 pound. They each tried one bean.
This left me absent-mindedly munching them and pouring repeated cups of coffee. I ended up eating the whole box and drinking over a pot of coffee.
By quitting time I was quite sick and facing a commute across the SF-Oakland bay bridge. I found a box and lined it with a bag in case I threw up and endured the commute - not fun when you are extremely hyper and sick.
I got home and just wanted to curl up in bed but every time I tried I was way too jumpy and had to get up again. My heart was pounding so hard and fast that it scared me.
My recommendation: don't do it - it is really, really unpleasant.
Back-in-the-day the dot-coms had an amazing array of metrics: it's hits - no, it's page-views, no - it's eyeballs, it's stickyness, it's repeat visitors, it's burn-rate...
Of course we look back and find it amusing that profit was never a metric.
This conference was more of the same. Lots of metrics and requirements tossed about (money raised, page views, video clips on your site, etc.) but the currency of politics is a vote and votes didn't seem to be dicussed much as a metric.
The hype was there. Once again I heard that "the iinternet changes everything" and about the need to be a "first-mover". We heard repeated comments about how the great Dean and his sidekick Trippi had come down from the mount to show us to the promised internet land and stories about the amazing internet campaign to get Clark to run. But where are they now? Clark merely dropped out but following a butt-kicking up and down the campaign trail, Dean's head was handed to him on a platter. This is the advantage of using the internet??
In fact, it was almost as instructive to see who was not well represented: people from the Bush and Kerry campaigns. I guess they are too busy getting actual votes.
Sure, the internet is becoming a more important tool in politics and it was fun meeting the techies but at the end of the conference my colleagues and I had exactly the same reaction: we've been here before.
I still hear sound "icons" like the chunk-chunk-chunk of a teletype in the background of an "important news flash" or the sound of a needle skidding off a record in current radio ads. These technologies have been out of widespread use longer than the floppy.
At least the floppy icon is fairly standard so unlike icons such as the magnifying glass (is it "search" or is it "zoom") it doesn't leave me guessing.
First, your employer will be responsible for the fees. They may be charged up-front as an included part of the cost (and hope the company is still around when you need to dispose of the batteries) or they will be charged at the end.
Second, some manufacturers do take back the battery. APC includes a pre-paid UPS return for spent batteries. I don't know if it's true for every battery they sell but it is for all I've looked at.
Third, many recyclers take batteries. My city recycling center has a place to recycle lead-acid batteries for free.
Remember that deep-discharging is very hard on lead-acid. If you only need to prevent data loss then set up a quick auto shutdown on the UPS protected machines. If you need long run time consider an extended-run UPS with a large enough battery that they don't end up deep discharging. (I know, they won't spring for the $$$)
Alternately, get some sort of generator that fits your situation so the UPS is only running a short time and not deep discharging. (I know, they won't spring for the $$$)
You may want to review the OSHA and environmental laws - not to be a whistle blower but just to point out the potential risk of keeping stacks of dead lead-acid batteries around. We have to include ours on an annual report to the city.
Although you (or most likely "they") won't like the answers all you can do is document the frequency of power failure, the resulting annual costs, backup options and associated costs and any relevant regulations of which you are aware. (I just found out we had to add a backup battery to our PBX due to an employment regulation requiring access to 911 even in a power outage.)
They may not decide (their job based on your input combined with other knowledge) to give you what you want but you will have done your job.
OK, I know you asked about PC based scopes but if a plain old scope will do the job consider used.
A friend of mine bought a couple at a ham radio swap meet from a guy who buys surplus lots. IIRC they were dual-trace and something like 20MHz (he ended up getting one for me and for several other interested friends).
They were selling for ~$20 which means you could have a scope for every student in a class of 20 and still stay in your budget.
Not just "back in the days". In the past three months I had two WD 40GB drives go bad at work. In one case repeated power-cycles "revived" the drive long enough to copy off the couple files that weren't already on the server. In the other case I had to resort to the drop method. I dropped the machine about 5cm onto the carpet and the drive spun right up. We copied a couple files and replaced the drive.
I also had a machine that had been sitting idle at home for quite a while (even my wife doesn't turn on the one remaining Windoze machine anymore). It wouldn't boot but worked fine after the drop treatment.
Code to the standards. Absolutely. Without Fail. Yes, IE (Windows) is a gawd-awful abomination when it comes to supporting CSS standards. Not that M$ can't do better - that's shown by IE on Mac. Mozilla has some warts, too, but recent versions are far more compliant than IE.
Sure it's a bit of work (read that as "being a professional") but you can make cross-platform standards-compliant web sites.
Failing to adhere to standards will bite you in the a**. Just look at what happened to those who assumed (though the RFCs don't allow it) that http://user:password@some.site/ was valid because it worked when they tried it. All their crap broke when M$ issued a patch that removed that non-standard behaviour.
Even M$ has problems with this. The "box model bug" gave rise to the "box model hack" which lead to M$ having to include a "compatibility" mode in later versions of their browser.
So I repeat. Stick to the standards - any deviation is at your peril.
Don't limit yourself to computer-based solutions. There are devices like this for the aviation industry that allow you to replay clearances and instructions. One failing of this particular one is that it stops recording when you are replaying but it's only one of many similar products. Check Google.
I suspect a clever bit of scripting along with the "record" and "play" programs on linux would do what you want as well.
It won't. It was recently discussed to death on the Postfix mailing list. It's a nice idea and I encourage more such brainstorming but SPF breaks too many things.
An easy example: mail forwarders. Lots of places like you@alumni.your.edu forward mail to your "real" account.
Now let's say your ISP starts enforcing SPF. Your friend at AOL sends a message to you@alumni.your.edu which gets forwarded to you@yourisp.com. Your ISP's server notes that this message from someone at aol.com is being sent from a server other than one listed in AOL's spf list and rejects it.
People have suggested workarounds like sender rewriting but each of those suggestions breaks something else. You really don't want to see all the problems it causes for mailing lists.
For now, I'd settle for enforcing strict compliance with RFCs and good practice (helo must be a FQDN that can be forward and reverse dns matched with the connecting IP would be an excellent start - I can't believe how many large corporations can't get this one right).
You apparently don't understand the problem. The virus FORGES the sender address so the bounce goes to a third party, not to the person who was infected.
Probably the cheapest is wire-ties. Simply bundling similarly routed cables (say keyboard, monitor and mouse for a given machine) helps a lot. Then coil and tie excess wire at the end. Use flush-cutting diagonal cutters to trim the ends of the wire ties so there are no scratchy points and you will have a reasonably tidy setup. Unfortunately, this is a PITA if you frequently move things since it requires cutting/replacing lots of wire ties and pretty soon you will be back to a mess.
You can try wire duct of the type that Panduit sells. Run a long channel or two along the back of your desk and you can pop the top and stuff all your extra cable inside the channel and route the wire neatly out the slots where they are needed. More expensive but easier to reconfigure.
Now, as to part two - keeping my wife happy: I try to hit the toilet when urinating and wipe up if I don't. I do my share of the dishes, cooking, laundry, etc. I take out the trash. I surprise her with flowers when she isn't expecting any. I help fix problems at her mother's house. I stop what I'm doing and give her a hug and kiss when she gets home from work. Somehow, the issue of a couple of stray cables hidden under the back of the desk hasn't concerned her at all.
You might want to check out Lithium Technologies. This is what they do and their customer list includes Dell, AT&T, Nintendo and a host of other big-name clients.
I've never known anyone who is really proficient user to say nothing of becoming a programmer or administrator who doesn't experiment. It's the people who are afraid to touch anything on their computer who drive me nuts. You can't teach them anything because they are to afraid they will damage something.
Take a kid with a bit of curiosity using a command that the school made available to him and saying nothing more than "Hey" and expelling him for being curious and experimenting with things. This is a really sad statement on how this school is run. And the pundits lament the low numbers of students who go into science/math/etc. With curiosity beaten out of them it's no wonder.
Disclaimer: I couldn't get the article to load so I'm only going on the posted message. There may be more to the story than I know.
I completely agree. I no longer have much trouble getting up (I go to bed on time and get up on time everyday - even weekends so I'm not jetlagging myself every week) but back in the day I had a small electronic timer and a compact flourescent bulb. The timer was set to come on about 10 minutes before the alarm clock and, since many CF light bulbs tend to get brighter as the warm up it provided a sort of ramp-up light. It also only came on on the weekend.
Next, my clock-radio would start.
Finally, as a backup for me turning off the alarm and for power failures, the battery-powered clock on the other side of the room was set for a few minutes later still.
Soon, I found that the light woke me up and I was out of bed before the radio came on.
Once upon a time I returned a "defective" digital alarm clock since the alarm was "broken". They decided it was not repairable but then I discovered that I had learned to open the top and press the alarm-off button in my sleep.
I hate paying bills so before I was married I would prepay my bills. Most (phone/cellphone/power/water) are so small that it costs me more in monthly stamps than I would lose in interest. I would generally write a check for at least 3 months rounded up to the nearest $100. Made checkbook balancing really easy. Each month I'd glance at the bill for correctness then file it. Saved lots of time. A friend of mine was more extreme. Every January he paid all his bills for the year in advance.
Now my wife pays the bills and she is ruthless about getting rid of paper. Almost everything gets shredded immediately after being paid.
I used to be paranoid about dumping stuff 'cause "I might need it someday" but I've gotten the bug and shredded lots of old statements and gained at least a foot of space in my file drawer. My desk is lots clearer and I can find the stuff I actually need to find lots faster.
Slashdot Mirror
Must have been too many stories in the pipeline or yesterday was busy and today is slow. In any case, I posted this story to /. sometime yesterday and it just hit the front page now.
You neglected to specify digital or film. In general, many cameras of both types have optional waterproof housings. For both light-gathering ablilty and waterproofness weight will be an issue.
For landscape type photos you may be better off concentrating on camera shake instead of lens/film speed. Take a pocket tripod or clamp. I've shot quite reasonable night photos with an old digital camera just by using the tripod hand-held against a wall or tree.
For film, choose your camera based on how much weight you are willing to carry vs. the f-stop of your lens (the larger your light gathering opening the lower light you can shoot in for a given ISO but of course that is also going to make for a heavier camera). Once you have settled on that, take film of a high enough speed to get the shots you want.
For digital, I've always liked the Olympus cameras. IIRC, the Olympus C-series support ISO equivalents up to 400 and have optional waterproof housings. Also check out the Olympus "Stylus Digital" series of "ultra-compact, metal, all-weather digital" cameras that according to Olympus "can be used in rain, snow and any other situation Mother Nature throws at it"
Sure the "black-box" provided some evidence but it probably just corroborated other evidence making the case somewhat stronger.
I don't know all the evidence the police have but it probably includes: severity of damage, lack of skid-marks, testimony of the passenger in the vehicle, and distance that objects in the collision were thrown.
I'll bet they have a pretty good idea of the speed involved without the black-box. Maybe not that he was doing 3.14 times the limit but, say, 2-3 times the limit. Two decimal accuracy isn't important. The fact that he was way, way over the limit combined with his driving history is what sealed his fate.
A better question is why, given his track record, was he allowed to drive and why is his punishment for wildly reckless driving resulting in the death of a human being a mere 18 months and why is he banned from driving for a mere 3 years? He obviously didn't learn his lesson after the previous triple-the-speed-limit crash.
First consider your goal. I presume it is to get them to fix the problem rather than to extort money, humiliate them, etc.
Given that assumption remember that there are many players. There are the software writers and network admins. They may be afraid of being made to look bad in front of their superiors. They may know the problems and be working on them. They may simply be doing all they can with the resources that have been given them.
Work your way up from there. IT Department heads may try to claim it isn't a problem (prevent embarassment), indicate the need for more resources or may be in the dark because their people screwed up and hid the problem.
The legal department and higher administration will be worried about liability and bad press. As such, any "demonstration" you put on can be used against you. Suddenly you will be the bad guy - the evil cracker. They may even try to go after you legally to cover their asses.
Others have mentioned S-O legislation. There may be a compliance officer on campus who you can contact.
So what to do?
I would write a detailed letter describing the problem in layman's terms. Profess ignorance to allow people to save face (phrases such as "perhaps I am unaware of fixes that are already in the works", and "I know running a student network on a tight budget is difficult...") and express your desire that this matter be handled quickly and without the need to involve outside parties but insist that it must be handled.
The "ignorance" method also allows you to send the letter to a wide recipient list without looking like you are trying to skewer any particular person or department: "I apologize for the wide distribution but I'm not sure who is in charge of such a matter as it involves S-O compliance, student privacy, IT etc..."
You may want to offer recommendations (perhaps this system should be taken offline to protect the sensitive data until the security problems are repaired) and offer your assistance. If you offer to arrange a demo and they accept, request that they set up a dummy account. This helps isolate you from liability and demonstrates your concern for privacy.
Other avenues if the "good-guy" method fails: many universities have a student ombudsman, there may be state or federal S-O compliance resources and finally, there is the press.
I'm actually moving the other way - toward hosted DNS. This is especially important if you only have one data line - dual DNS is useless if both servers are on the same connection (just ask Microsoft - that's why they ended up outsourcing theirs a couple of years ago after a big DNS problem).
But sometimes it's great to be able to do quick changes for test/development and such so you can either delegate a sub-domain that you run internally or you can set up a test/dev domain and run your own DNS for that one.
I used to work mostly in the field but was in the office on a chilly day working on some new equipment. I had learned that my coworkers, who loved coffee, hadn't had chocolate covered coffee beans. I brought in 1/4 pound. They each tried one bean.
This left me absent-mindedly munching them and pouring repeated cups of coffee. I ended up eating the whole box and drinking over a pot of coffee.
By quitting time I was quite sick and facing a commute across the SF-Oakland bay bridge. I found a box and lined it with a bag in case I threw up and endured the commute - not fun when you are extremely hyper and sick.
I got home and just wanted to curl up in bed but every time I tried I was way too jumpy and had to get up again. My heart was pounding so hard and fast that it scared me.
My recommendation: don't do it - it is really, really unpleasant.
Further reading: the caffeine material safety data sheet
Back-in-the-day the dot-coms had an amazing array of metrics: it's hits - no, it's page-views, no - it's eyeballs, it's stickyness, it's repeat visitors, it's burn-rate...
Of course we look back and find it amusing that profit was never a metric.
This conference was more of the same. Lots of metrics and requirements tossed about (money raised, page views, video clips on your site, etc.) but the currency of politics is a vote and votes didn't seem to be dicussed much as a metric.
The hype was there. Once again I heard that "the iinternet changes everything" and about the need to be a "first-mover". We heard repeated comments about how the great Dean and his sidekick Trippi had come down from the mount to show us to the promised internet land and stories about the amazing internet campaign to get Clark to run. But where are they now? Clark merely dropped out but following a butt-kicking up and down the campaign trail, Dean's head was handed to him on a platter. This is the advantage of using the internet??
In fact, it was almost as instructive to see who was not well represented: people from the Bush and Kerry campaigns. I guess they are too busy getting actual votes.
Sure, the internet is becoming a more important tool in politics and it was fun meeting the techies but at the end of the conference my colleagues and I had exactly the same reaction: we've been here before.
I still hear sound "icons" like the chunk-chunk-chunk of a teletype in the background of an "important news flash" or the sound of a needle skidding off a record in current radio ads. These technologies have been out of widespread use longer than the floppy.
At least the floppy icon is fairly standard so unlike icons such as the magnifying glass (is it "search" or is it "zoom") it doesn't leave me guessing.
What's all this I hear about 8-track - didn't that format die in the 70's?...
Oh...ATRAK??...
Never mind.
</Emily Latella>
Second, some manufacturers do take back the battery. APC includes a pre-paid UPS return for spent batteries. I don't know if it's true for every battery they sell but it is for all I've looked at.
Third, many recyclers take batteries. My city recycling center has a place to recycle lead-acid batteries for free.
Remember that deep-discharging is very hard on lead-acid. If you only need to prevent data loss then set up a quick auto shutdown on the UPS protected machines. If you need long run time consider an extended-run UPS with a large enough battery that they don't end up deep discharging. (I know, they won't spring for the $$$)
Alternately, get some sort of generator that fits your situation so the UPS is only running a short time and not deep discharging. (I know, they won't spring for the $$$)
You may want to review the OSHA and environmental laws - not to be a whistle blower but just to point out the potential risk of keeping stacks of dead lead-acid batteries around. We have to include ours on an annual report to the city.
Although you (or most likely "they") won't like the answers all you can do is document the frequency of power failure, the resulting annual costs, backup options and associated costs and any relevant regulations of which you are aware. (I just found out we had to add a backup battery to our PBX due to an employment regulation requiring access to 911 even in a power outage.)
They may not decide (their job based on your input combined with other knowledge) to give you what you want but you will have done your job.
Um, no. If you will recall, the mice have names. They are Bengie and Frankie.
Oh great. We've taken one more step toward the "parlor room" from Fahrenheit 451.
OK, I know you asked about PC based scopes but if a plain old scope will do the job consider used.
A friend of mine bought a couple at a ham radio swap meet from a guy who buys surplus lots. IIRC they were dual-trace and something like 20MHz (he ended up getting one for me and for several other interested friends).
They were selling for ~$20 which means you could have a scope for every student in a class of 20 and still stay in your budget.
Not just "back in the days". In the past three months I had two WD 40GB drives go bad at work. In one case repeated power-cycles "revived" the drive long enough to copy off the couple files that weren't already on the server. In the other case I had to resort to the drop method. I dropped the machine about 5cm onto the carpet and the drive spun right up. We copied a couple files and replaced the drive.
I also had a machine that had been sitting idle at home for quite a while (even my wife doesn't turn on the one remaining Windoze machine anymore). It wouldn't boot but worked fine after the drop treatment.
Code to the standards. Absolutely. Without Fail. Yes, IE (Windows) is a gawd-awful abomination when it comes to supporting CSS standards. Not that M$ can't do better - that's shown by IE on Mac. Mozilla has some warts, too, but recent versions are far more compliant than IE.
Sure it's a bit of work (read that as "being a professional") but you can make cross-platform standards-compliant web sites.
Failing to adhere to standards will bite you in the a**. Just look at what happened to those who assumed (though the RFCs don't allow it) that http://user:password@some.site/ was valid because it worked when they tried it. All their crap broke when M$ issued a patch that removed that non-standard behaviour.
Even M$ has problems with this. The "box model bug" gave rise to the "box model hack" which lead to M$ having to include a "compatibility" mode in later versions of their browser.
So I repeat. Stick to the standards - any deviation is at your peril.
I suspect a clever bit of scripting along with the "record" and "play" programs on linux would do what you want as well.
It won't. It was recently discussed to death on the Postfix mailing list. It's a nice idea and I encourage more such brainstorming but SPF breaks too many things.
An easy example: mail forwarders. Lots of places like you@alumni.your.edu forward mail to your "real" account.
Now let's say your ISP starts enforcing SPF. Your friend at AOL sends a message to you@alumni.your.edu which gets forwarded to you@yourisp.com. Your ISP's server notes that this message from someone at aol.com is being sent from a server other than one listed in AOL's spf list and rejects it.
People have suggested workarounds like sender rewriting but each of those suggestions breaks something else. You really don't want to see all the problems it causes for mailing lists.
For now, I'd settle for enforcing strict compliance with RFCs and good practice (helo must be a FQDN that can be forward and reverse dns matched with the connecting IP would be an excellent start - I can't believe how many large corporations can't get this one right).
You apparently don't understand the problem. The virus FORGES the sender address so the bounce goes to a third party, not to the person who was infected.
You can try wire duct of the type that Panduit sells. Run a long channel or two along the back of your desk and you can pop the top and stuff all your extra cable inside the channel and route the wire neatly out the slots where they are needed. More expensive but easier to reconfigure.
Now, as to part two - keeping my wife happy:
I try to hit the toilet when urinating and wipe up if I don't. I do my share of the dishes, cooking, laundry, etc. I take out the trash. I surprise her with flowers when she isn't expecting any. I help fix problems at her mother's house. I stop what I'm doing and give her a hug and kiss when she gets home from work. Somehow, the issue of a couple of stray cables hidden under the back of the desk hasn't concerned her at all.
You might want to check out Lithium Technologies. This is what they do and their customer list includes Dell, AT&T, Nintendo and a host of other big-name clients.
SCO also gave IBM some of the purported evidence the judge required them to divulge. Story today at InfoWorld.
I've never known anyone who is really proficient user to say nothing of becoming a programmer or administrator who doesn't experiment. It's the people who are afraid to touch anything on their computer who drive me nuts. You can't teach them anything because they are to afraid they will damage something.
Take a kid with a bit of curiosity using a command that the school made available to him and saying nothing more than "Hey" and expelling him for being curious and experimenting with things. This is a really sad statement on how this school is run. And the pundits lament the low numbers of students who go into science/math/etc. With curiosity beaten out of them it's no wonder.
Disclaimer: I couldn't get the article to load so I'm only going on the posted message. There may be more to the story than I know.
I completely agree. I no longer have much trouble getting up (I go to bed on time and get up on time everyday - even weekends so I'm not jetlagging myself every week) but back in the day I had a small electronic timer and a compact flourescent bulb. The timer was set to come on about 10 minutes before the alarm clock and, since many CF light bulbs tend to get brighter as the warm up it provided a sort of ramp-up light. It also only came on on the weekend.
Next, my clock-radio would start.
Finally, as a backup for me turning off the alarm and for power failures, the battery-powered clock on the other side of the room was set for a few minutes later still.
Soon, I found that the light woke me up and I was out of bed before the radio came on.
Once upon a time I returned a "defective" digital alarm clock since the alarm was "broken". They decided it was not repairable but then I discovered that I had learned to open the top and press the alarm-off button in my sleep.
Check out Charles C. Benton's Site for collections from years of kite photography.
I hate paying bills so before I was married I would prepay my bills. Most (phone/cellphone/power/water) are so small that it costs me more in monthly stamps than I would lose in interest. I would generally write a check for at least 3 months rounded up to the nearest $100. Made checkbook balancing really easy. Each month I'd glance at the bill for correctness then file it. Saved lots of time. A friend of mine was more extreme. Every January he paid all his bills for the year in advance.
Now my wife pays the bills and she is ruthless about getting rid of paper. Almost everything gets shredded immediately after being paid.
I used to be paranoid about dumping stuff 'cause "I might need it someday" but I've gotten the bug and shredded lots of old statements and gained at least a foot of space in my file drawer. My desk is lots clearer and I can find the stuff I actually need to find lots faster.