Silence of the Mind

I suffered a catastrophic containment failure on the dashboard donuts in my truck today on the goat trail that thinks it's a road to Petersville. The donuts are still ok though, its just the containment.

And I'm betting less than a dozen people will actually know what this means. The end of an era comment is because the containment system in question has been in place since May of 2003, and finally came apart today.

40 Years ago....the world changed

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/07/remembering_apollo_11.html

The BBC is tracking a shipping container for the next year, just to see where it will end up.
They painted their name on it and put a GPS tracker on it. I think the project would be both more and less interesting if no one knew it was "The Box" myself...having the huge name and logo on the side of it is a sure way to make sure that it gets used first and sent interesting places.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7600180.stm

I just finally got around to canceling my old hosting for the first domain I ever purchased. I've had it hosted at Wyenet for I believe 7 years now. Unfortunately over the years the performance went downhill to the point that I pulled photo hosting off them and put on a new domain I registered and hosted at 1and1.net. It only lasted a year there before I decided that having different hosting scattered all over the place was getting ridiculous and got a VPS with wiredtree.com and consolidated both all my domains as well as my mothers into it.

What was interesting was that my domain was so recognizable that when the cancel order went though I got a call from one of the senior partners asking if there was anything they could do to retain my business. He attempted to talk up the new network they'd been moving customers to(they had been a reseller of CI Host for the longest time but got tired of losing business due to overloaded servers there) and offered help moving my account there.

I had to stop him there to tell him I'd gotten a VPS and had consolidated all my domains, but did tell him I'd keep him in mind in the future. He said to stay in touch and they'd be happy to cut me a deal should I wish to return in the future. I may look into it too, the VPS is ok, but now that I don't have any significant photohosting(smugmug is doing it all) I am not sure I need a full up VPS(esp since the one I can afford is rather ram shy).

I just found it interesting that they considered my domain name so noteworthy.

EDIT: Actually it was 8 years to the day almost...last Friday was the 8 year mark.

I was reading this article(linked off slashdot) and spotted a gem from a user in it.
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9046858&pageNumber=2


And our favorite, from an outraged Applied Materials user's actual e-mail:

"Were you aware that at my current salary of roughly $90/hour, the requirement to log in/unlock my laptop computer more than five to eight times a day, including mistyping, takes up to 20 minutes per day, 2.9 hours per week (I work 7 days a week), 145 hours per year (I take 2 weeks off for vacation).

"So, in effect, the security requirements for my laptop are costing the company more than $13,000 per year. When you multiply this for even 2,000 laptop users, your 'need for protection' is costing the company more than $26,000,000 a year. Can't we just turn it off and save the company money?"

Kind of gives new meaning to the phrase, "You do the math," doesn't it?


The first response that came to my mind, to demonstrate WHY there is 'need for protection' would have been to walk to the exec's computer, sit down, and send an email to his boss announcing his immediate resignation.

There is a Cyclone in the Arabian Sea working its way north towards the coast of Oman. Cyclones are nothing new...but Cyclone Guno is the first recorded Category 5 cyclone ever seen in the Arabian sea. Interesting in its own right, but its current track has it entering the Gulf of Oman right about now, and thats not happened in recorded history. Guno has dissipated to Category 3 now, and by the time it finishes sideswiping Oman and makes landfall in Iran it is projected to have dissipated to a weak Cat 2 or a strong Cat 1 storm.

I've been trying to do some reading about cyclones/hurricanes in the Arabian Sea/Indian Ocean...but everything focuses on the eastern side of the basin and all the cyclones that impact India and Bangladesh. Its so unusual for a cyclone to run into the northwestern area of the basin(there are maybe 4 recorded storms like that, and none of them were strong enough to even earn names) that there are no models for prediction and the forecasters are having to make educated guesses as to storm surge areas and wind damages.

The almost ironic thing is that for as impressive and unusual as this storm is, its just like the South Atlantic Cyclone Catarina that hit Brazil in 2004....No one is talking about it except the weather geeks.

Tracking Links

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/MargieKieper/comment.html?entrynum=163&tstamp=200706

http://hurricane.methaz.org/gonu/

Lessee....Steamboat Springs is 6728 feet elevation. I drove up and over the I-70 and though the Eisenhower Tunnel which is 11,158 feet elevation, and ended up in Golden, elevation 5674 feet. I'm amazed my ears aren't killing me now

I do believe that 11,158 feet is a new record for me...first time I've ever been that high. The previous was about 9,000 feet when gows and I drove north up past Steamboat Lake near Xmas of 2005.

Coming down the east side of the mountains felt like it was a long continuous drop the whole way. Sorta interesting. I did a bit of reading on the area, and now I wish I'd been able to backtrack up though the Loveland Pass...that cracks 12,000 feet there

You know..I had forgotten just how much FUN it could be to just toss a fast lens on my camera and go shoot whatever came across my path.

I had missed that

This is the result of someone's boredom one day. And I'm sure said person never intended scanning and posting to the net when they handed the paper to me in amusement.

BUT!....I'm strange like that, hung onto the paper until I found a scanner...and scanned it.

And now I present....
( Boredom )

I was talking to kokuten about Compusa having 4 port USB 2.0 cards for $20 and thinking about getting a few just in case, and he was saying no, we don't need'm. Later I'm installing my Bluetooth dongle on the back USB ports because I've filled about all my front ones...and as I do this he's shining a flashlight on it so I can see.....I'm now out of ports on the back of my PC, and about out of ports on the front.

I looked at him and told him "Remeber those cards? I'm getting one for my workstation now." He chuckled and told me to get a USB 2 hub, and I pointed out that the card is actually cheaper right now. heh