Ssurgul

Tesla is Teh Awesome!!!

Sun, 27 May 2012 19:26:37 GMT

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

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laughs! Bitdefender delays....

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:46:19 GMT

So, I got Bitdefender based on a MaximumPC review saying it was one of the best AV solutions. And because of that, I'm on their emailing list. So, this morning, Bitdefender sent me one touting their 'new, innovative' Internet storage/sync solution called "Safebox". Um, innovative? Dropbox has been doing this for over a year now. It's not exactly innovative to be lagging so far behind someone doing the same solution. Oh, and Dropbox gives 2GB free, too, but gives a huge breadth of options to get some additional free storage. Come on computer software firms. It's definitely time to grow up and accept that you're far from innovative any longer. Sure you might be making something 'better', but it's not innovative to add one single feature somewhere that's hardly used while copying 99.99% of the existing software solutions already used.

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Parts list to keep handy

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 11:04:41 GMT

Again, just something to track:

Bissell 9200 T floor cleaner part list. The little latch plastic bit broke, and now it's $20 to replace the entire assembly. Not too bad really, assuming the stupid thing can't be plastic-glued back together.

http://www.bissell.com/parts/?id=9143&sc=product&productid=2786&fp=1

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Robotic greyhounds and Swedish Home Mafia.

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 03:29:15 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmlRK8Da6GE&feature=related

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Political catchup

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 03:49:49 GMT

I was watching the Up w/ Chris Hayes from last Saturday, finally. They were talking about the scariness of the social media avalanche of outrage that hit over the Komen Foundation and the Blunt Amendment and such. Chris made the statement that this might be overstating the realities of political 'will' based on the novelty/newness of this new type of activism and information being sent around. But I have to disagree with him, actually. It has been well-documented for decades that people are incredibly short-sighted, that we have such short attention spans regarding actual political changes and such. And one of the things cited, the ERA, took such a MASSIVE awareness campaign to alert people. And yet, now, we still don't have the ERA.

I think social media provides a more immediate solution to a lot of the enduring problems with the political infrastructure with this country. Shows such as Chris' and Rachel's and Ed's and Lawrence's also contribute to the 'reality' awareness in the field. It all helps to pull back the covers on various bills in Congress, exposing the truths about their titles that are actually exactly the opposite when you get into the nuts and bolts of the legislation.

At least now, with social media intervention we can get a decent amount of awareness out there BEFORE nightmare bits of legislation like the vaginal probe prior to any abortion bullshit happens. The OH/IN games played highlighted that there is already passed legislation like this in TX. No idea about that for just about anyone, prior to the social media driven awareness of the current push to get these things passed with the majorities won 2 years ago.

This is what ALEC is afraid of. This is where the Founders, in my mind, really envisioned us as being. With broader information and understanding, even if it's not necessarily 100% factual, of our current political situation and the antics of at least one party that LOVES to overreach and then eat their own dead, we can all truly start making informed decisions about how we'd like to be governed in this country.

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Oh, and further note to self....

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 03:40:07 GMT

When considering taking apart a trackball to clean it thoroughly to try and get more life out of it, don't bother. At the very least wear disposable coveralls, rubber gloves, and a gas mask. Christ those things get DISGUSTING!

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Well, that's that.

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 02:38:40 GMT

Seems that the FBI and DOJ seizure of MegaUpload and other such sites have sparked many other, ancillary sites to close down. One of my long-term favorites is dead now, not because of the MU stuff directly, but at least because the owner and coder of it was in touch with some of those folk. And now, those emails may well be in the hands of the Feds. Thank you media companies for cracking down on sites that host 'illegal' downloads of movies that you don't have available at all anymore. Yet again, you're stunning vision and corporate business practices leave us all flabbergasted at your acumen and quality.

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Being Human SSN1

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 08:04:13 GMT

You can run but you can't hide BluRay disc pack. I WILL find you again and very soon. Just because I bought SSN2 and 3 on DVD doesn't mean I love you any less. Quite the opposite since you have that wonderful BTS series with the werewolf. Just stop hiding. This is getting tedious.

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 03:46:42 GMT

So I finally got off my ass and watched this movie. First, it's exceedingly fucked up, so I liked it a lot. ;) Second, I was stunned to see the killer (not revealed here for those that haven't yet seen it) give the little talk he did about kindness. It REALLY reminded me of the Retardican higher-ups. Just one small act of humanity, and a small hope kindles that they'll treat you with mercy and kindness, when they really do just want to filet and skin you and watch you die.

It really is how I view their actions against their 'base' of lower income and lower middle income Americans.

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Some quick Windows things to track

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 23:04:41 GMT

Robocopy: an actually useful *gasp* tool built into Windows Vista/7 for copying/mirroring files and/or directories. With the /dcopy:T flag used, it copies the files with the original date/time stamps as well. http://superuser.com/questions/146125/how-to-preserve-file-attributes-when-one-copies-files-in-windows and http://ss64.com/nt/robocopy.html

Creating a RAMDisk to hold various temp/cache files. (Not as useful as when I finally get the mega-computer together of a Core i7 on the 2011 platform, with up to 64GB of RAM, but even at 16GB a 4GB RAMDrive will help somewhat.)

Create: http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/19205-how-make-ram-drive-win7-64-a.html

Recreate at bootup: http://reboot.pro/7789/

Moving Firefox Temporary Internet files: http://www.infohole.com/blog/computing/firefox-cache-location/

Finding the hard drive slaughtering process. How to determine which process(es) are filling up your hard drive queue with requests and operations and such.

http://tweaks.com/windows/39199/how-to-detect-what-process-is-thrashing-your-hard-drive/

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Fri, 24 Feb 2012 05:40:08 GMT

It's now fully official. I'm ancient. I just applied the new Icy Hot Naturals to my knees and my knuckles, and suddenly all my pain went away for a while. At least this version of Icy Hot covers the stench of menthol with other fragrant oils.

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Power supplies for computers...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:18:42 GMT

seem to be pretty damn important indeed.

So, I'd been having more and more problems with my machine. I thought it had more to do with the BitDefender install I put in over the top of the AVG install. However, there had been some odd, flaky problems that had arisen from time to time, too, that just seemed very curious. Anyway, as part of an effort to test and verify some of the modular power supplies for implementation into the computers in client offices to avoid the delightful problems of hardware failure courtesy of shitty power supplies, I plugged in an OCZ 850 80+ Gold unit into the computer (finally) and got it hooked up fully and such (finally).

I had nothing but blue screens and other issues, not the least curious of which was that the system 'magically' re-recognized every drive and every USB device on my system. All this, after I had connected the power supply up. Seems that the other one, which wasn't all 'that' old to start with, had something going on in the background that was making it unhappy and taking the system with it.

Rebuilt the computer, and now I can OC my CPU to 3.7GHz fully stably and everything seems to be zipping right along. Definitely need to move forward with using modular, 80+ cert. power supplies in the future. I think we'd save ourselves a LOT of headaches and sustainability issues.

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Today's date....

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 07:21:30 GMT

I just realized there are a heap of 2's today. Quite interesting.

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OMFGod.

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:47:32 GMT

So, I was watching The Ed Show from 2012/02/17 much like I do all the time. DVR's are so very handy that way. Anwyay, I saw the below image and was shocked. It seems that the 30+ year campaign of direct disinformation and lies and games has a notable effect on moronic Americans. It's shocking how blinded people allow themselves to be, and they continue to vote against their own interests because of it.

Come on America. WAKE UP!!!

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Amusing quote

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:12:05 GMT

From Scott Thompson (of Kids in the Hall fame) on IMDB:

"What? I won the lymphoma? I had no idea I was even nominated. There are so many other people that are more deserving."

Oddly, I can think of dozens and dozens right off hand. ;)

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Transformers: Energon

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:07:16 GMT

Wow. I have to pray, at my darkest, deepest core that the original series was not even 1% as atrocious as this series is. I'm not even 9 minutes into the first episode, and already it's beyond stupid.

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Bread Making simplicity

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:46:26 GMT

Ok, so it's not 'that' simple, but making the bread is nice. Anyway, to this point, I've been having issues with the loaves coming up .... uneven in the pans. It was put in unevenly dense on one side, because the dough can't be 'worked' in a traditional sense. (Without gluten, bread becomes a much different experience, unfortunately.) Consequently, even with shaking and spatula attempts to correct it, it's almost always coming out Leaning Tower of Pisa like. Until today.

Today I used the paddle attachment (yes, yes, snicker-snicker from the Peanut Gallery, I know) and it was a much smoother mix. Then, after pouring the bread into the pan, I used a second pan, with a non-stick spray coated layer of plastic wrap to press the bread more evenly into the loaf pan. It is coming up substantially more evenly this time. It's an extra step, and all, but it seems to be much, much better this way.

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Underworld: Awakening

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:09:28 GMT

Rather fun. And the Lycans improved in this one too. No, not the CGI ones. They still can't do those for crap. I mean the guy in suit ones. Very intriguing and tasty. Too bad there weren't more of them. :) Overall an entertaining Underworld flick. Definitely without the plot of the first one, or the 'surprises' of the second one, but amusing nonetheless.

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Windows Live Photo Gallery

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:18:11 GMT

So I've been amusing myself, in my spare moments, with tagging my tens of thousands of pictures. My collection has grown to the point where even the rigorous folder structure I use has become a detriment in many cases. So, I know that most photo formats support tagging, and Windows and other search tools support searching against the tags as well, so it makes sense. If I want to see some Brian Steele pics, I'd rather they were aggregated for me from the various suits I have pics of him in. ;)

However, one of the only handy ways I've found to tag multiple pics at once has been WLPG. And for a basic, free program, it's actually pretty good. It has some facial recognition built in, and so forth; pretty handy all around. Except when it's dealing with 10's of thousands of pics. It seems to be decidedly not-happy in that circumstance. And I'm quite sure I'm making it even less happy with things like my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pics. I've been doing facial recognition tagging on the various turtle heads. Yes, I'm doing it 'accurately', but I have to wonder if my antics are causing the gallery to break more often. After all, those suits look amazingly similar facially. Yes, yes, I know the suits were made individually and have slight variations and whatnot. But I somehow doubt that simplistic facial recognition tools will handle that correctly, and having 4 faces that look quite similar but are all tagged differently probably gives the software a minor stroke every time it gets to those directories. ;)

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Win7 Media Center bizarrenesseses

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:25:23 GMT

So.

For weeks now, for whatever reason, MC7 has opted to fuck up my HD signal feeds on the Guide. (That, for those not in the know, is the listing for channels and what is on when.) It had duplicates for SyFyHD, ComedyCentralHD and various other channels. No idea what happened; they just appeared. And apparently, when they appeared, they also entirely decoupled the feed for Comcast, Digital, West Coast for those stations. Meaning, whenever the Guide data did its update magicks, it didn't actually download the data for those stations any longer. Hooray for no recordings for those stations, since the system rightly interpreted 'No Data Available' as NOT being The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, etc.

Courtesy of http://www.hack7mc.com , a terrific website that gives all kinds of nifty tricks and add-ins and such for Media Center, I found the GuideTool. http://1geek1tool.com/guidetool This allows you to find all the relevant possible 'feeds' for each channel, as well as mark up the guide settings for which channels to show or not show. With it, I was able to relink the channels with the right info. Why Win7 doesn't have such a tool by itself, I'll never know. Anyway, if anyone else has a HTPC, and needs such info, I highly recommend both sites.

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Spider-nom's??

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:56:54 GMT

http://marvel.com/videos/watch/2200/the_amazing_spider-man_movie_trailer_2?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Pulse332&utm_term=Link2&utm_content=TopStories2WatchAmazingSpiderManTrailer&utm_campaign=Pulse332Newsletter02072012

Oh, hellz yeah!! July 3, I can't wait!

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Amusing HD sizes

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 05:00:01 GMT

It's so distressing that my 500GB, 750GB and even some of my 1TB drives are being back-benched to being only used for backup drives. And yet, these were top of the heap just a few years ago. How far we've come.

But then, on a tech note, I was having a snack and drink at Moon and Six Pence (a cute little English Pub down in Portlandia) and a very, very interesting option struck me for Yelp. Walking tours, built on demand, and based on entertainment types. So, you can hit up Yelp, based on your current location, and then you select the entertainment type, the number of reviews, the percentage of 4 or 5 star reviews, and the average cost, and then Yelp spits out a map with 5-15 stops along a mile or two route in any downtown area. Just like that.

And just like that I realized that technology really has come far too far. That convenience now outweighs any level of rationality associated with that much convenience. :)

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Follow up to the alt universe idea

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:14:32 GMT

So, I have been giving more thought to that idea of weaker alternate universes based on the validity/possibility of the choices breakouts. Don't ask why; questions are burden to others, answers a prison for oneself.

I thought about one universe breaking through to another (yes, this was inspired by Fringe again). If there are a near-infinite number of universes breaking apart with each decision point, each one could be rated with a relative rating of, say, 1 to 1000. The higher up the scale, the more set and firm the universe is. So, an experiment with tossing cows off a cliff scores a 1000 for universes that split off based on blood spatter patterns from the cows hitting the ground. The same experiment scores a 1 based on universes that split off for cows sprouting wings spontaneously and flying to safety.

Now, given how fragile and 'weak' a lower number universe is, I hypothesize that if a higher validity universe tries to break into a weaker one, that weaker universe just ... collapses. The imposition of order from the bleed-over is just more than the weaker universe can handle. The same with a weaker attempting to break over into a stronger. The collapse simply .... 'recycles' the matter and energy into the same void-pool that the universes spawn from. Thus, any universe will simply plow through any weaker universes until it finds a suitable one to connect to logistically, and stands a better than even chance of just blinking out for breaking the barriers. After all, each universe is likely to be unaware of any breakage of 'set' physical law; in that universe it would simply 'be' that way.

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Dark Knight Rises

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:50:14 GMT

So, I'm definitely going to see it. This reboot is amazingly good, to my mind.

BUT!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1345836/fullcredits#cast

Wow. There are far more 'uncredited' actors on the IMDB page than credited ones. Seems like a good many folk are pinning more of their hopes on the movie doing especially well. :)

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Gaming snob

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 07:03:31 GMT

My ghods, I've become one. I looked through Steam's cheap games again today, and I realized I dismissed out of hand the side scroller, and a mystery game of the same genre as Leisure Suit Larry, with those types of graphics. Both these games are MUCH more recent, but yet.... If it's not an FPS or an RTS with a decent engine and graphics system, or a somewhat captivating turn-based game, I seem to have zero time for it all. How sad a realization that is. I used to love so many types of games, and now..... Ah well. Games evolve, and I guess I still like the eye and brain candy more than I do 'just' a decent story wrapped in a crapola system.

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