March 2011
1 post
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Funny Amazon Reviews
The following are some funny links a co-worker told me about the other day. Even though it’s been a year and a day since I’ve posted anything to tumblr, despite a plethora of list and bookmarking services, I’m not entirely sure where else to put a small grouping of links where I might actually find them again. So, hello once again, tumblr!
Oh, also, be sure to check out the...
January 2011
1 post
July 2010
2 posts
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Good Stuff
Well, it’s been a year and a day since I’ve even logged into tumblr, let alone posted anything, but I had a great experience with a mechanic today (yes, those are actually possible!) and I just thought I’d give a shout out to Tires Plus (in Athens, GA by Home Depot off Epps Bridge Road).
For the past day or two the A/C in my car hasn’t been working correctly. I figured...
June 2010
1 post
1 tag
Random Mac Tips
Just a few things that I found out today:
In order to transfer large files (say, a hefty iPhoto library) between two macs that support firewire, plug in the cable and reboot the old mac (the one with the files to be moved) while holding the ‘T’ key. Eventually, you’ll see a firewire symbol dancing around the screen. On the new mac (the target computer) you should see the...
May 2010
4 posts
3 tags
Connecting to MS-SQL Server 2000 from Python on OS...
This document explains how to get the pyodbc module in python (version 2.6) on Mac OS X Snow Leopard to connect to a SQL Server 2000 instance using FreeTDS and unixODBC. Although much of the info is contained in the sources at the bottom of this article (and I highly recommend reading through them), I found I had to tweak a few of their steps in each tutorial. I suspect this is mostly due to...
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Hilarious Camping Product →
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Thanks, Lightroom (and more)!
I was just going through photos from my camping trip this weekend, and noticed in many of the pics it appears I had something on the lens, which I didn’t realize until I saw the results on my monitor. I tried out the Spot Removal tool that a friend had told me about using my Lightroom 3 Beta. Impressive is not the correct word. It made what could have been quite tedious or possibly even...
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April 2010
7 posts
2 tags
History Channel Mini-Series
I just finished up the first episode of the new history channel mini-series, “America: The Story of Us” (http://www.history.com/shows/america-the-story-of-us). It moves a little slowly and the special effects are both good and at the same time a bit corny, but overall it’s really a well-told, nice concise history. Plus it’s full of all kinds of random stats and facts....
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Jobs is rolling up the sleeves on his turtleneck
Granted I’m not really a huge fan of Gizmodo, however, I’m even less of a fan of an abuse of power. If you somehow haven’t heard about this story by now, here it is:
http://gizmodo.com/5524843/police-seize-jason-chens-computers
Sure. I don’t have all the facts and from what I’ve seen so far, nobody seems to even state exactly what the search relates to, but from...
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Spring Time
Spring is rather exciting to me. Only a 10% chance of precipitation in the forecast tonight, yet there is an absolute downpour outside right now. I absolutely love the sound of rain!
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Silly Python
A few of the things I’ve run across that I thought were kind of funny while learning Python recently:
‘import time’ - if only this were possible (outside of the language, that is)
‘pyodb.ProgrammingError’ - I’m just glad this is restricted to pyodbc and not a core module. Otherwise I would be seeing it a lot more often! :)
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Pop Quiz
For all Club Partner transactions, including Priority ClubRewards, members may exchange up to 100,000 Club Points for only $45 per transaction and $5 for each additional 10,000 Points using current or future Use Year Holiday Inn Club Points.
Nope. It’s not tax code. It’s worse… it’s timeshare rules! They probably offer a class on deciphering the terminology here, but...
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POV: Tech savvy or stupidity
So, I recently changed the password on my Capital One website (trying to be a half way responsible end-user), however, I soon discovered (thanks to a notice from Mint.com which is my new hero), that I had failed to update my login info on my Bank of America website. Now I admit this was my own fault, but honestly I don’t think this is that terribly intuitive of a thing to expect people to...
March 2010
9 posts
2 tags
No, Google, No!
It looks like Google shutdown development on google.com/notebook. I would like to think it’s because it wasn’t called notepad. It was quite a handy and extremely speedy tool for quick lists without the excess of features found in the Docs app. I guess for now I’m restricted to Google Docs, Remember the Milk and Backpackit. Somehow, I’ll be just fine (and technically I can...
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Nikon dSLR Starter Info
My boss recently suggested he’d like to purchase his first digital SLR and asked for some info to help him get started. His only stipulation was to keep his initial purchases below $1000 if possible. I only purchase my first SLR, a Nikon D40 less than a year ago, but I love to research! As a disclaimer, I also made sure he understood in person that he’ll want to research all of this...
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A Reminder For When I'm Upgrade Eligible...
The iPhone doesn’t make you reboot your phone every time you install an app like the Blackberry. Oh yeah, that’s right — and there are apps.
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Why Java?
I understand you like counting starting at zero Java. I don’t mind that one bit, but do you think you could have made an exception just once for GregorianCalendar? I know you’re a stickler for consistency, but representing today as: ‘new GregorianCalendar(2010,02,15)’ is not intuitive — it’s March!
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Silent Buzzing
I’m sure I’m missing something, but why does Google buzz keep telling me I have new messages when I don’t see anything new?
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Mint.com: A tasty web treat
So, this Friday turned out just a bit different than the last one, but I decided to take advantage of the quiet night and get a head start on some of the weekend tasks. One of the ones that’s been sitting on this list for way too long was checking out mint.com. Of course the main draw being, at least for me, that I’m often on many different computers and oftentimes a Mac so I feel I...
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Advertising Kudos →
I just had to give a shout-out to this site. I saw a banner ad on Grooveshark… and not only clicked it, but actually stayed around their site for more than 5 seconds. That might be the first banner ad I’ve clicked in literally years! Yeah, it was partly based on the domain name, but lots of sites have great names. Whether you believe in their theory or not, it’s hard to deny...
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The Shark's Playlists
Just realized that apparently you’re supposed to save playlists in Grooveshark. Odd. I would assume it understood that when I added something I intended to add it for longer that my browser session. Perhaps it auto saves at some point, but my playlist sure looks a bit short! Maybe the music had a duel and the lesser music was run off. The songs that remain are pretty strong!
February 2010
11 posts
2 tags
iTunes * 10 Billion
Not that it has any impact on me whatsoever or has any hope of influencing my music purchasing habits, but I thought it was kinda neat that a person from GA bought the 10 billionth iTunes download. Turns out it was “Guess Things Happen That Way” by Johnny Cash, but seeing as how you just knew that iTunes was going to link to the download I kinda wish it had been something crazy or...
1 tag
Another CSS Reminder
Just a reminder (mostly to myself) about the difference between the CSS properties ‘display’ and ‘visibility’. Check it out: http://www.devx.com/tips/Tip/13638.
And more importantly, don’t try to use JavaScript to adjust the ‘style.visibility’ property once you’ve set ‘display’ to ‘none’. :)
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“I don’t know how things work in Florida, which from your description...”
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Streaming Music: Branching Out and Snapping Back
Since the Napster software has been a bit buggy for me with my primary complaint being the lack of ability for it to correctly sync up playlists between multiple desktops (using the downloaded software), I decided to see what else is out there. It’s primary competition for the streaming world seems to be Rhapsody. Here are some notes from my brief foray into the Rhapsody world:
There is...
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The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: A Day Ski Trip
I just got back from Wolf Ridge for a quick trip to continue honing my mad skiing skills (AKA sliding down a mountain on my back skills). I tried getting some friends in on it, but they were all either busy or actually had to work. (A special thanks to my boss who knew how badly I wanted to ski). Anyway, the forecast looked too good to pass up a chance, so I took off for Asheville last night,...
molls:
(via suckafuck)
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Chrome Extensions
I finally played around with some Chrome extensions today. I’m definitely glad Chrome added them and it really took me back to the good ol’ days when I would tweak the hell out of Firefox (and IE only dreamed of supporting extensions), but just like Firefox’s extension library I’ve discovered there are some very good ones and some very bad ones. The ones I currently have...
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CSS / IE -- Quirks Mode Reminder (CSS Centering)
I often forget that IE resorts to “Quirks Mode” if you don’t include the proper DTD line (as the first line in your HTML file), so this is mostly a reminder to myself. Include the following line and save yourself some debug time!
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd”>
Once you include this, you...
3 tags
Resolving Domain Usernames from an Intranet-Based...
We’ve had the desire for a while to find the username of the currently logged-in domain user who is requesting a jsp page on our Intranet without the need for IIS / ASP / Integrated Authentication. Our theory is the user has already logged on to their computer on our network, so we want to find out who that person is (then we can query Active Directory to find group membership info for that...
Neat Winter Photo →
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Southern Skiing
I just got back a little while ago from a fantastic ski trip! Some friends and I took off on Thursday up towards Banner Elk / Sugar Mountain in North Carolina. Normally we hit up Wolf Ridge because it’s a bit closer and that was the game plan this time, however, our cabin rental called the day before we left to let us know the hot tub had frozen over and cracked, so we had to decide do we stay...
January 2010
8 posts
1 tag
Is "fast moving" air actually colder?
A while back a friend in a thermodynamics class mentioned they were reviewing the phenomenon where if you blow air slowly across your arm it feels warm, but if you blow quickly it feels cool. I didn’t remember exactly what he said was the cause of this (perhaps due to the fact we were discussing it over beer), but I did remember it interested me. So, I just looked it up again and figured I...
2 tags
Movie Marathon
After three weeks of an all-out assault on my condo, prepping it to put it on the market, I just took advantage of the 3-day weekend (plus a day off work) to hang out with my mom in Cary, NC. Other than a couple of errands, we pretty much hung out and did nothing but play XBox and watch movies. It. Was. Awesome. Before I forget all about them (as I tend to do with most movies no matter how...
2 tags
Thanks, China!
While painting the kitchen tonight I accidentally grazed the paintbrush against the screws holding down the power cables to a live outlet. I heard a familiar arcing sound, and felt the equivalent of a mild shock by an electric fence. Just scared me more than anything I think. After it happened, I glanced down at my brush and noticed one of the only pieces of writing on it… “Made in...
December 2009
8 posts
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More knowledge is, um, more power?
In response to an earlier post about how Napster playlists were syncing up for me (or rather not syncing up for me), I contacted Napster tech support and received the following response:
Thanks for contacting Napster Customer Support. In order for your playlists to be synchronized between computers, it is necessary to sign out of your Napster account. It is during the sign out process that...
2 tags
CSS Selector Precedence
Well, I was going to have a beautiful post, including code examples, of a CSS issue I encountered today and how I got around it, but apparently the support for posting code on tumblr is quite lacking. I guess I need to sit down for a night and play with some updated CSS for my current theme maybe, but in the meantime, a very abbreviated version of what I wanted to so say is the following…
...
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Chicken and Rice
Just tried out a new dish tonight.
http://bit.ly/5e0SqQ
Came out pretty well for a first try I think and is a great dish for a cold night. Seeing that I felt under the weather today it was incredibly easy and felt like a good, nurturing, “get-well-soon” type of dish. Next time I might leave out some of the rice so it comes out a little more creamy. Also, I think I’ll cook it...
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I Dream of Gear
Even though I love my trekking poles and day pack I purchased in the fall, I sure am wishing I had the backpacking stove, a larger pack, and a griddle right about now for my upcoming car-camping trip this weekend. Damn, the outdoors gets expensive fast! The only thing saving my bank account right now is the fact that REI is 40 minutes away… without holiday traffic.