Monday, November 21, 2005
TiVo adds Apple iPod support to TiVoToGo
TiVo Inc. is expanding its video recording service so users will be able to transfer recorded TV shows onto Apple Computer's iPods, according to an Associated Press report. By adding support for the MPEG-4 video format, TiVo hopes to capitalize on the immense popularity of Apple iPods.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Friday, November 18, 2005
Spyware may soon be illegal
Senate committee passes spyware bill. Spyblock Act would also outlaw installation of adware without a user's permission.
It wouldn't change a whole lot except that now we can take legal action against those who abuse adware/spyware.
read more | digg story
It wouldn't change a whole lot except that now we can take legal action against those who abuse adware/spyware.
read more | digg story
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Traffic sucks
OK, so driving in to school today (my one hour, one-way commute) I get caught up in traffic. HEAVY traffic. I'm less than two miles from where I normally stop every morning and get my daily Egg McMuffin. I can see that everyone is getting into the right-hand lane so I figure that there must be some road work going on up ahead and I follow suit.
Now, I could have flew up the left-hand lane and vaulted myself to the front and likely saved myself a ton of time but I decided to take the moral high ground and sit tight. It seemed that everyone was doing the same thing so I felt good in amongst my fellow courteous drivers.
Looking in my driver's side mirror I could see a white van flying up the left-hand lane with many other cars right behind it. I decided to whip out my jerk hat and pulled into the left-hand lane and sat there, matching the crawling pace of traffic and effectively blocking anyone else from getting past the line of cars that were patiently waiting. The van, of course, tried to be intimidating and rode my bumper like it was my siamese twin. I was tempted, at one point, to stop my car completely and get out. I'm a big guy and have been told that I'm extremely intimidating. I would have loved to have seen the look on this guy's face. At any rate, traffic started to pick up speed so I pulled back into the right -hand lane (the car behind me having saved my spot for me) and we continued on. But, not for long.
Traffic again came to a dead crawl and this time, I didn't have the option of blocking it off because it was now packed in both lanes. To make matters worse, the traffic in the other lane seemed to be making better time than I was. For me, that seems to be par for the course. If I'm in a grocery store, no matter how short the line I am in is, the next line over that I passed up to get into this short one is always moving faster.
50 minutes and 2 miles later (I wish I was exaggerating) I finally reach my exit. Unfortunately, so does everyone else. There is apparently a huge accident on the highway ahead and traffic was being completely routed off the highway and along back roads to the next exit. Which also meant that "MY" McDonald's was being overrun with customers. The drive-thru was packed but it looked as though the inside of the restaurant was just as bad. Plus, I had had a run-in with one of the extremely inept workers inside before so I decided to just sit in the drive-thru lane and continue listening to the radio. Another error in judgement.
In front of me in the McD's drive-thru is a minivan full of kids and a woman who, I see in her rear-view mirror, is talking on her cell-phone. On the rear-view window of the van is one of those white and black static-sticker soccer balls. The line for drive-thru extends all the way out to the edge of the parking lot and it easily takes 10 minutes before she gets to the box where you place your order. This is the moment when, while still talking on the phone, she decides to find out what her kids want for breakfast. I begin beating my head against the steering wheel in an attempt to make the bad voices go away. As evil and heartless as this woman may be, seeing her beaten senseless with her cell-phone would likely leave some sort of emotional scaring on the children.
Finally, my turn at the squak box and I place a simple order of two Egg McMuffins and a small diet coke. It takes another 5 minutes just to get to the payment window and I again sit and wait while the woman in the minivan deals with her phone (she must have a great rate plan) and bags upon bags of food. My steering wheel is beginning to develop a dent in the top from where my head is banging against it.
OK, so driving in to school today (my one hour, one-way commute) I get caught up in traffic. HEAVY traffic. I'm less than two miles from where I normally stop every morning and get my daily Egg McMuffin. I can see that everyone is getting into the right-hand lane so I figure that there must be some road work going on up ahead and I follow suit.
Now, I could have flew up the left-hand lane and vaulted myself to the front and likely saved myself a ton of time but I decided to take the moral high ground and sit tight. It seemed that everyone was doing the same thing so I felt good in amongst my fellow courteous drivers.
Looking in my driver's side mirror I could see a white van flying up the left-hand lane with many other cars right behind it. I decided to whip out my jerk hat and pulled into the left-hand lane and sat there, matching the crawling pace of traffic and effectively blocking anyone else from getting past the line of cars that were patiently waiting. The van, of course, tried to be intimidating and rode my bumper like it was my siamese twin. I was tempted, at one point, to stop my car completely and get out. I'm a big guy and have been told that I'm extremely intimidating. I would have loved to have seen the look on this guy's face. At any rate, traffic started to pick up speed so I pulled back into the right -hand lane (the car behind me having saved my spot for me) and we continued on. But, not for long.
Traffic again came to a dead crawl and this time, I didn't have the option of blocking it off because it was now packed in both lanes. To make matters worse, the traffic in the other lane seemed to be making better time than I was. For me, that seems to be par for the course. If I'm in a grocery store, no matter how short the line I am in is, the next line over that I passed up to get into this short one is always moving faster.
50 minutes and 2 miles later (I wish I was exaggerating) I finally reach my exit. Unfortunately, so does everyone else. There is apparently a huge accident on the highway ahead and traffic was being completely routed off the highway and along back roads to the next exit. Which also meant that "MY" McDonald's was being overrun with customers. The drive-thru was packed but it looked as though the inside of the restaurant was just as bad. Plus, I had had a run-in with one of the extremely inept workers inside before so I decided to just sit in the drive-thru lane and continue listening to the radio. Another error in judgement.
In front of me in the McD's drive-thru is a minivan full of kids and a woman who, I see in her rear-view mirror, is talking on her cell-phone. On the rear-view window of the van is one of those white and black static-sticker soccer balls. The line for drive-thru extends all the way out to the edge of the parking lot and it easily takes 10 minutes before she gets to the box where you place your order. This is the moment when, while still talking on the phone, she decides to find out what her kids want for breakfast. I begin beating my head against the steering wheel in an attempt to make the bad voices go away. As evil and heartless as this woman may be, seeing her beaten senseless with her cell-phone would likely leave some sort of emotional scaring on the children.
Finally, my turn at the squak box and I place a simple order of two Egg McMuffins and a small diet coke. It takes another 5 minutes just to get to the payment window and I again sit and wait while the woman in the minivan deals with her phone (she must have a great rate plan) and bags upon bags of food. My steering wheel is beginning to develop a dent in the top from where my head is banging against it.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
How Much Money Can I Make Off of Google?
OK, so here's the deal. I'm trying to get enough money scraped together to finish off my senior year of college. I don't want an exhorbitant amount but I want to make enough that I don't have to worry about whether my bills are getting paid.
So where do you come in?
Just click on the white button to the right that says "Get Firefox with Google Toolbar".
That link will take you to a page where you can opt to have the Google toolbar installed on your Firefox browser. By doing so, Google will credit $1 to me. That's all you have to do! It costs you not a dime!
What the heck is Firefox?
Firefox just happens to be the best thing to ever happen to the internet. OK, that's a slight exagerration but, Firefox is at its heart a powerful web browser that does a fantastic job of replacing Internet Explorer. So what makes it so great? For one thing, tabbed browsing. Sure, this little idea has been around for a while but with the advent of Firefox it has really come into the main stream. So much so that Microsoft will be including this feature on future versions of Internet Explorer.
Firefox has many additional features such as extensions, themes, live bookmarks, and improved security. To download Firefox for your computer, just click on the Firefox logo on the right. Then make sure to download and install the Google toolbar above!
You'll be helping me finance my education and pay bills as well as introducing yourself to a better, richer internet experience!
-OR-
If you are a major web site and planning on using Google Adsense, use my referral button on the right! I can get credit for your click-through! Thanks.
OK, so here's the deal. I'm trying to get enough money scraped together to finish off my senior year of college. I don't want an exhorbitant amount but I want to make enough that I don't have to worry about whether my bills are getting paid.
So where do you come in?
Just click on the white button to the right that says "Get Firefox with Google Toolbar".
That link will take you to a page where you can opt to have the Google toolbar installed on your Firefox browser. By doing so, Google will credit $1 to me. That's all you have to do! It costs you not a dime!
What the heck is Firefox?
Firefox just happens to be the best thing to ever happen to the internet. OK, that's a slight exagerration but, Firefox is at its heart a powerful web browser that does a fantastic job of replacing Internet Explorer. So what makes it so great? For one thing, tabbed browsing. Sure, this little idea has been around for a while but with the advent of Firefox it has really come into the main stream. So much so that Microsoft will be including this feature on future versions of Internet Explorer.
Firefox has many additional features such as extensions, themes, live bookmarks, and improved security. To download Firefox for your computer, just click on the Firefox logo on the right. Then make sure to download and install the Google toolbar above!
You'll be helping me finance my education and pay bills as well as introducing yourself to a better, richer internet experience!
-OR-
If you are a major web site and planning on using Google Adsense, use my referral button on the right! I can get credit for your click-through! Thanks.
Monday, November 07, 2005
Diggnation gets "Explicit" tag
Despite Alex and Kevin's efforts iTunes gave diggnation the explicit tag. ahahahahahahahahaha.
--OK, so I wasn't the first one to notice this.
read more | digg story
--OK, so I wasn't the first one to notice this.
read more | digg story
Digg draws explicit rating?
I'm not sure what exactly they did to garner this rating but, Diggnation seems to have received an "Explicit" rating in the Apple iTunes music store! Check it:
Not sure how long this will last as I'm sure Kevin and Alex will be contacting Apple shortly. Having listened to the podcast for a while now, I know that while they often walk the edge of what may be a "PG" rating, the guys always do their best to make their show at least "teen friendly".
So what's the story here? Any ideas? Anyone?
I'm not sure what exactly they did to garner this rating but, Diggnation seems to have received an "Explicit" rating in the Apple iTunes music store! Check it:
Not sure how long this will last as I'm sure Kevin and Alex will be contacting Apple shortly. Having listened to the podcast for a while now, I know that while they often walk the edge of what may be a "PG" rating, the guys always do their best to make their show at least "teen friendly".
So what's the story here? Any ideas? Anyone?
Not-So-Handicapped Parking
Parking spots at my university are pretty limited, especially for the first four hours on a Monday morning. Most of the students who decided to skip out early on the previous Friday show up on Monday to find out exactly what they missed. So unless you show up twenty minutes prior to your first class you are usually relegated to "No Man's land" as far as parking is concerned which means you have to walk anywhere from an extra 30 seconds to two extra minutes to get to class. OMFG, the horror!
Like any public or private institution, our university has a specific number of parking spaces set aside for handicapped employees, students, and visitors. These are, of course, the "prime" parking spots being the closest to the buildings. Before someone starts raising their eyebrows, let me first say that I do not begrudge the parking spots going to those who have the most difficulty navigating to and from their cars. They have a hard enough time as it is. I believe the Disability Rights Laws are a necessary part of our society.
That being said, I saw one of the most disgusting things imaginable this morning. Returning from class to pick up my next set of books and my clothes for the fitness center, I had to walk through the area of our parking deck where the handicapped parking spaces are. I saw a hunter-green Ford Explorer and a silver Grand Am pull into adjacent parking spots. As I continued to walk towards and then past these two cars I saw two extremely un-handicapped students jump out of these cars and head for their respective buildings. At first I thought that maybe they were late for class and just didn't care if they got a parking ticket or that maybe they were gambling that the parking services folks wouldn't be through the deck that particular hour. But on second glance I saw dangling from each mirror a Handicapped Parking Pass!! I looked back at the two students as they headed towards the building. One was on her cell phone, walking at a brisk trot and the other was taking the steps into the nearest building two at a time!
Now, I suppose it is possible that there was something going on there that I wasn't aware of. There are handicapped classifications that are not immediately apparent. For example, a person might have fully functional prosthetic limbs hidden by clothing or some sort of visual impairment.
However, more likely was the fact that these two students weren't in any way handicapped and were using some relative's handicapped parking tag so they wouldn't have to worry about parking out "in the boondocks" a full two-minutes away.
I need to make up some static stickers for instances like this. Just to leave something on their window that says, "Hey Tool! You're not handicapped, don't park here!" Only, of course, in a better way.
Parking spots at my university are pretty limited, especially for the first four hours on a Monday morning. Most of the students who decided to skip out early on the previous Friday show up on Monday to find out exactly what they missed. So unless you show up twenty minutes prior to your first class you are usually relegated to "No Man's land" as far as parking is concerned which means you have to walk anywhere from an extra 30 seconds to two extra minutes to get to class. OMFG, the horror!
Like any public or private institution, our university has a specific number of parking spaces set aside for handicapped employees, students, and visitors. These are, of course, the "prime" parking spots being the closest to the buildings. Before someone starts raising their eyebrows, let me first say that I do not begrudge the parking spots going to those who have the most difficulty navigating to and from their cars. They have a hard enough time as it is. I believe the Disability Rights Laws are a necessary part of our society.
That being said, I saw one of the most disgusting things imaginable this morning. Returning from class to pick up my next set of books and my clothes for the fitness center, I had to walk through the area of our parking deck where the handicapped parking spaces are. I saw a hunter-green Ford Explorer and a silver Grand Am pull into adjacent parking spots. As I continued to walk towards and then past these two cars I saw two extremely un-handicapped students jump out of these cars and head for their respective buildings. At first I thought that maybe they were late for class and just didn't care if they got a parking ticket or that maybe they were gambling that the parking services folks wouldn't be through the deck that particular hour. But on second glance I saw dangling from each mirror a Handicapped Parking Pass!! I looked back at the two students as they headed towards the building. One was on her cell phone, walking at a brisk trot and the other was taking the steps into the nearest building two at a time!
Now, I suppose it is possible that there was something going on there that I wasn't aware of. There are handicapped classifications that are not immediately apparent. For example, a person might have fully functional prosthetic limbs hidden by clothing or some sort of visual impairment.
However, more likely was the fact that these two students weren't in any way handicapped and were using some relative's handicapped parking tag so they wouldn't have to worry about parking out "in the boondocks" a full two-minutes away.
I need to make up some static stickers for instances like this. Just to leave something on their window that says, "Hey Tool! You're not handicapped, don't park here!" Only, of course, in a better way.
Saturday, November 05, 2005
XBOX 360 playable at Best Buy.
Had to run to Sam's Club for some Crystal Light Lemonade mix (it's one of the few things I buy in bulk now) and decided to stop off at Best Buy to try to spend my McDonald's Best Buy bucks. Figured I'd grab a video game or a good movie to burn onto my iPod. So I'm trolling the PS2 isle when I see a guy about my age playing at a kiosk at the end of the isle. His girlfriend/fiance/wife (I don't know, I didn't ask) was standing patiently nearby and seemed as mesmerized as he was. I rounded the corner and saw it....
There it was in all it's silvery white lusciousness. The XBOX 360. Had they been for sale right then I probably would have picked one up. Instead, I got to sit and watch this guy play King Kong. I have to say, the graphics are pretty damn cool. There's this scene where your friends are trying to get through some giant door on the island and you have to distract a monstrous T-rex for a few minutes using only spears while they get the damn thing open. The sense of depth was decent and the details were pretty cool. I saw a few bugs in the game that detracted from it, though. It suffers, like many other games, from polygon intersections (fingers disappear into the wood on a lever you are trying to pull) but it will probably be a while before some genius figures out how to fix that one. Also, there's a scene where Kong (played by you now) is fighting off another (presumably the same) T-rex. It's supposed to look like two giants fighting each other but the scene doesn't have the depth that the first one had and it winds up looking like a 3D version of Rampage World Tour. There are more polygon modeling problems as the T-rex's head and tail frequently disappear into Kong's midsection when it's turning and the huge amounts of water that are supposed to be getting splashed around end up looking very flat and artificial.
I'm hoping that the programmers get better at coding for the 360. If this title's rudamentary graphics are indicative of what the XBOX 360 has to offer, I think there's going to be a lot of disappointed kids at Christmas.
Had to run to Sam's Club for some Crystal Light Lemonade mix (it's one of the few things I buy in bulk now) and decided to stop off at Best Buy to try to spend my McDonald's Best Buy bucks. Figured I'd grab a video game or a good movie to burn onto my iPod. So I'm trolling the PS2 isle when I see a guy about my age playing at a kiosk at the end of the isle. His girlfriend/fiance/wife (I don't know, I didn't ask) was standing patiently nearby and seemed as mesmerized as he was. I rounded the corner and saw it....
There it was in all it's silvery white lusciousness. The XBOX 360. Had they been for sale right then I probably would have picked one up. Instead, I got to sit and watch this guy play King Kong. I have to say, the graphics are pretty damn cool. There's this scene where your friends are trying to get through some giant door on the island and you have to distract a monstrous T-rex for a few minutes using only spears while they get the damn thing open. The sense of depth was decent and the details were pretty cool. I saw a few bugs in the game that detracted from it, though. It suffers, like many other games, from polygon intersections (fingers disappear into the wood on a lever you are trying to pull) but it will probably be a while before some genius figures out how to fix that one. Also, there's a scene where Kong (played by you now) is fighting off another (presumably the same) T-rex. It's supposed to look like two giants fighting each other but the scene doesn't have the depth that the first one had and it winds up looking like a 3D version of Rampage World Tour. There are more polygon modeling problems as the T-rex's head and tail frequently disappear into Kong's midsection when it's turning and the huge amounts of water that are supposed to be getting splashed around end up looking very flat and artificial.
I'm hoping that the programmers get better at coding for the 360. If this title's rudamentary graphics are indicative of what the XBOX 360 has to offer, I think there's going to be a lot of disappointed kids at Christmas.
God, what a slacker I am. I should be working on my algorithms homework that was due yesterday but I just can't bring myself to get started. I'm still a little hung over so maybe I'll just grab a bite to eat and then nap for a bit before getting started....Yeah, that's the ticket. A turkey and pepper-jack cheese melt on wheat.
Watched "Christmas with the Kranks" last night as well as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". Nice light-hearted stuff. Gonna burn 'em onto my iPod today at some point. Well, maybe only Charlie. "the Kranks" was funny but not THAT funny.
Need to get my fiance to take down all of the Halloween crap. Man does she love the holidays.
Found out about Amazon.com's "mturk" service yesterday. So far I've made a whole $1.80. It would be a great site except that it's unbearably slow.
Watched "Christmas with the Kranks" last night as well as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". Nice light-hearted stuff. Gonna burn 'em onto my iPod today at some point. Well, maybe only Charlie. "the Kranks" was funny but not THAT funny.
Need to get my fiance to take down all of the Halloween crap. Man does she love the holidays.
Found out about Amazon.com's "mturk" service yesterday. So far I've made a whole $1.80. It would be a great site except that it's unbearably slow.
Friday, November 04, 2005
2 whole years since I last wrote. I guess I never was much into the whole blogging thing but who knows now?
OK, for anyone who actually runs across this diatribe of self-indulgence, here's a run-down on what I've been doing since my last post:
OK, for anyone who actually runs across this diatribe of self-indulgence, here's a run-down on what I've been doing since my last post:
- Got deployed to Iraq with my National Guard unit
- Bought an Ipod
- Lost 20 pounds thanks to the worst chow hall in Iraq
- Came home from Iraq mostly intact (my hearing was a little screwed up from a couple of IEDs)
- Proposed to my girlfriend (she said yes!)
- Put the 20 pounds back on plus 15
- Bought my fiance and I bikes
- Lost my Yahoo! account to a script kiddie
- Threw out my back (L4-L5 disc started moving, man that's painful!)
- Went back to school (15 credit hours)
- Working at the Rec Center
- Back seems better so I started working out again
- Actually spent a week without caffeine (yep, I ended up with the headaches)
- Stopped drinking so much alcohol
- Bought another iPod (I love the iPod video)
