Life, technology, and pursuit of happiness

Fast cars, slow drivers

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:14:10 -0500

OK, this is my rant for those clowns who drive a Ferrari, Lamborghini, Viper, Corvette, {insert fast car here}. How in the hell can you drive a car like that like a Prius? I am a chronic fast-accelerator. It never fails, I pull up to a stop light and there is a {insert fast car here} in one lane, and a bus/Prius/SUV in the other. Naturally I get behind the fast car, which oozes away from the stop light like a granny in a Mercury and gets smoked off the line by every car that should not do so!

Nothing says douche-bag like driving a fast car like a slow one. My advice to you whom fall in to this category: Proceed immediately to the nearest Toyota dealer and trade your car in on a Prius. You will have a car that suits your driving style, save money on gas, help the environment, and save yourself the embarassment in front of your girlfriend/wife when I go around you like you’re in reverse.

via farm4.static.flickr.com Hilarious!

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 09:35:53 -0500

via farm4.static.flickr.com

Hilarious!

Kogan Agora: Why the New Android Handset Matters

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:20:47 -0500

Kogan Agora: Why the New Android Handset Matters: Yes! This is what I was hoping to see happen with Android.

Driving with phones ... multi-tasking?

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:34:00 -0500

On my way to work, I was noticing damn near everyone was talking on the phone while driving. I even do it now and then, but it is not a good thing. If you must talk while driving please get a bluetooth or plug-in headset, at least you eliminate the physical distraction of holding/dropping/slobbering on the phone.

The interesting thing is it got me thinking about “multi-tasking”. You know, humans SUCK at multi-tasking. The term is really an illusion when applied to humans, because I don’t think we can do more than one non-trivial task with excellence. OK, you are probably going to say “walk and chew gum” or some other silly example. Those are things you can do without thinking about them, I am talking about things that require focus and/or thought. Can you juggle chainsaws while riding a motorcycle? Can you drive while playing a video game? Can you totally absorb a TV show while hammering out code? Sure it might be possible by a few (attributed to practice where it is more subconscious), but most people would suck at one or both of the activities. My point is that in general, we can only do one thing with excellence.

Stop reading unless you have no objection to geeky content

Let me relate it to technology. Think of true multi-tasking like ethernet networking. With ethernet, packets are just flying around like mad and can (and do) collide with each other in the chaos. Many clients can truly have many requests in the ether at any given time.

Humans are more like token-ring networks. With token-ring, only the computer that has the token is free to blast out data, the others must wait for their turn. We are token-rings with multiple tasks awaiting our attention. The one we give our attention to has full access to our faculties, while the others must sit idle for their time. This (like token-ring networks) can be quite efficient, but it is not truly “multi-tasking”. Some things lend themselves well to this. Take cooking and doing laundry, you can switch back and forth between these two without much effort. Now take reading a technical manual and designing a web page, this is much harder because each time you switch you must “ramp up” back to where you left off.

So, the ability to multi-task is inversely proportional to the complexity of the tasks involved. I promised geek stuff didn’t I? Keep this in mind when you’re driving down the road and your phone rings … I’ll be the one honking and cursing when you inevitably slow down or swerve due to lack of concentration!

Ghetto campaigning! Look at the lovely McCain sign that some...

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:09:00 -0500

Ghetto campaigning!

Look at the lovely McCain sign that some craftsman prepared with much skill and time. The local candidates have better signs!

I think this is more of a deterrent than encouragement … maybe that was the plan?

How I would reform elections

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:23:00 -0400

Every presidential election, I end up totally disgruntled with our outdated election process. Previously, I blogged a little about this here. So if I were suddenly bestowed ultimate power on running the next campaign, what would I do. *drum roll*

Choose One:

Abolish the party system. I previously said get rid of the party system and let candidates run on their own merits. I like this approach because getting rid of this eliminates cop-out straight party voting.

OR
Ensure each party has equal opportunity. One of the primary tenets of this is fixed campaign budgets. We set aside (for example only) 2 million dollars, and each major party gets their share of it. If there were 5 candidates, each one would get 400K to campaign. We have five somewhat major parties, why not give them all a fair shot. The way things are now it is a two-horse race … and who wants to watch a two horse race? The more horses the better, to a point.

Other changes:

Separate Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates into separate campaigns, not nominated by the presidential candidates. Each VP candidate would run their own campaign for the #2 spot just like the presidents. This would allow for a mixed party executive team. Blasphemy you say! This would foster non-partisan executive planning and decision-making. If they are not big enough to play nice they have no business in the white house IMHO.
Eliminate the electoral college and let popular vote determine the winner.

Note that though I mainly talk about Pres and VP here, I think these principles should be applied all the way down the ladder. Why do I only have one, in many cases, choice for a state/local representative?

If you don’t get it, stay away from me. More gems like...

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:53:00 -0400

If you don’t get it, stay away from me.

More gems like this at http://failblog.org

SQL Server 2008 Color-Coding Connections

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:42:01 -0400

SQL Server 2008 Color-Coding Connections:

Say that three times fast!

The SQL 2008 client has a cool, yet obscure, feature that enables you to have quick visual feedback on what server you are connected to. This is a long overdue…

How soon can I have it?

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:31:00 -0400

How soon can I have it?:
I wanted to share a pearl of wisdom, especially with the younger guys/girls in the beginning of their IT career. Executives are notorious for asking things like “When can I have it?” or “How long will…

Orphaned Users

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:22:00 -0400

Orphaned Users:
Eric Johnson wrote up a great article about orphaned users. Any DBA has to deal with this when refreshing databases from one environment to another (e.g. prod to stage, or prod to dev). If…

New Firefox beta even faster than FF3 - Download.com

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:23:28 -0400

New Firefox beta even faster than FF3 - Download.com: Competition is a good thing. Beware of installing this, as many of your add-ons may not work with this beta.

Sunset in neighborhood

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:03:08 -0400

Sunset in neighborhood

Apple - MacBook Pro

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:58:27 -0400

Apple - MacBook Pro: So the hype is over, the new MacBooks are out and I must say they look SWEET!

Mono 2.0 released!

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:03:58 -0400

Mono 2.0 released!

Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Stop sending mail you later regret

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:07:04 -0400

Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Stop sending mail you later regret: This is hilarious! My favorite is one of the links below it is titled Gmail Goggles: An Electronic Wingman

Does anyone know who manufactures or sells these pens? I got...

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:39:58 -0400

Does anyone know who manufactures or sells these pens? I got this as a freebie from EMC, but am interested in getting more for my company. These are the smoothest pens ever.

TinyPaste

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:27:03 -0400

TinyPaste: Cool utility to let you shorten text like TinyURL does for URLs. You can send a tiny URL instead of a big block of text using this.

12 Tricks To Teach Your USB Thumb Drive

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:45:06 -0400

12 Tricks To Teach Your USB Thumb Drive: Some pretty cool stuff here … unleash your inner geek!

Installing Visual Studio 2005 SP1 on Virtual PC image

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:00:00 -0400

Installing Visual Studio 2005 SP1 on Virtual PC image: After wasting mucho time with trying to install this and repeatedly erroring out, I found this link. Scroll down to “WORKAROUND” and follow the instructions.

House ignores Bush, rejects $700B bailout bill - Yahoo! News

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:34:33 -0400

House ignores Bush, rejects $700B bailout bill - Yahoo! News:

So much for all the blabbering and back-patting I watched on the news about how they came to bi-partisan agreement, casting aside party affiliation. *rolls eyes*

This might be a good thing though, as I am not convinced this bailout is a wise move anyhow…