crazyskillsbloginitiative

So I had this experience today… I didn’t mean to be rude or certainly not cruel or anything, but I went back into the cage to retrieve a copy of office or something for a client and the nice young lady back there was going on about something.. a young girl in some other country whose father was paying for her to have the rights to perform Brittney Spears songs or something… anyway, the point is this: I thought she was on the telephone or something, but thinking back, I believe she was speaking to me.. and I was just in my own little world hoping I could locate the software for my client. So what do I do? I don’t want her to think I was being intentionally rude. But how do I approach this now? Do I say anything? Wait for it to be brought up (which it likely won’t?) Oh well.. I can think of positive and negative consequences for my inadvertent actions this afternoon. I just don’t want to come across as rude or thoughtless. What do you think? What should I do? Do I say anything? Do I just let it go? I don’t want to start any relationships on a bad note. I am still the new guy.

Half a pound of heroin
Half a pound of treacle
That’s the way the story goes
Out comes the evil

Alright - I am locked in for at least another year with Verizon. What is the best phone that I can get at a reasonable cost (I am not going to qualify for welcome-to-verizon sales) that has at least 40G of mp3 storage on it, is extensible, and just generally kicks ass.

The Droid seems like an option, but they’re going for $500 on eBay unlocked (or $199 through a welcome-to-verizon sale)

But you know what? … I already have a phone. And it works fine. I just have to carry it and my iPod anywhere I’d like to be able to talk on the phone or listen to music. If I wanted to access the net, I’d need my tablet or notebook too. I want all of these things - in one neat little package. And I am hearing I can get it through Droid. But if people are bidding upwards of $500 for these on eBay, what is the true cost of the Driod to an existing Verizon customer? And how do I go about making this thing happen?

My wife got a kickass new phone, can you tell?

“Some date the dawn of the net to September 12, 1969, when a team of engineers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) connected the first two machines on the first node of ARPAnet, the US Department of Defense-funded network that eventually morphed into the modern interwebs. But others — including Professor Leonard Kleinrock, who led that engineering team — peg the birthday to October 29, when the first message was sent between the remote nodes. ‘That’s the day,’ Kleinrock tells The Reg, ‘the internet uttered its first words.’ …A 50kbps AT&T pipe connected the UCLA and SRI nodes, and the first message sent was the word ‘log’ — or at least that was the idea. UCLA would send the ‘log’ and SRI would respond with ‘in.’ But after UCLA typed the ‘l’ and the ‘o,’ the ‘g’ caused a memory overflow on the SRI IMP. … ‘So the first message was “Lo,” as in “Lo and Behold,”‘ Kleinrock says. ‘We couldn’t have asked for a better message — and we didn’t plan it.’”

Ok so I do know what it is - I put together a “rock” playlist on my AppleTV. And it includes my favorites of the genre. Including such popular favorites as Led Zepplin and Rancid but also personal favs from a time gone by in the local music scene, Salvador Deli, the Spoo Monkeys and Shrug. It’s some great stuff. I so much enjoy listening to this. I just don’t get what “people” want in music. And by people I mean the majority. Why is pop culture so pathetic when really talented musicians have to have real jobs?

Yeah. No I’m not talking about a place for a tasty sandwich. I mean Machel Hicks and Ronnie Hall (and at times various talents such as the bassist Michael Christmas.) This, to this date, is some of my favorite music I have ever heard. I am fortunate to have done work with the band back in the 90’s and they were cool enough to burn me a full CD of unreleased stuff. Oh man. If I could have done more to see to it that they would have the exposure they needed to really “make it big,” I would have. Hell, who knows, they might be still together as the “earth’s mightiest band.” I miss these folks. Ronnie, Machel, I wish you both well - in whatever your endeavors these days.

Peace,

Orb

Lifted from slashdot comment

Helicopter Problem

A helicopter was flying around above Seattle yesterday when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft’s electronic navigation and communications equipment.

Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter’s position and course to steer to the airport.

The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter’s window. The pilot’s sign said “WHERE AM I?” in large letters.

People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and held it in a building window. Their sign said “YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER.”

The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map, determined the course to steer to SEATAC airport, and landed safely.

After they were on the ground, the co-pilot asked the pilot how the “YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER” sign helped determine their position in Seatle.

The pilot responded “I knew that had to be the MICROSOFT building because, similar to their help-lines, they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer.”

I was even a boy scout, believe it or not. Oh I know - it doesn’t get any worse than that. And OMG I owned a fork, knife and spoon [huffingtonpost.com].. And even a pocket knife [cnn.com]. And you know what? I still carry one with me much of the time. Bad bad Orb I know. The thing is.. If anyone had known and if anyone had cared, they would probably have just had me put it in my car, or put it in the office for me to pick up at the end of the day. But these days being a Boy Scout can get you in a lot of trouble. There is a difference between having a 2 inch pocket knife in your car and stabbing someone with a kitchen knife [foxnews.com].

I just don’t get it. Sometimes I think people forget why rules were created and just go on blindly following.

I just heard, from a very reliable source that the world is going to end in 2012! Isn’t that fun? The 21st of December actually is what I hear. Seems the Mayan calendar ends then, and obviously the Mayans knew when the world was going to end. I’m a little disappointed. I would have figured we’d have figured more out by the time time ends. Like more advanced space travel - you know, warp speed stuff. Or maybe time travel. At least holograms. Yeah. Well, here’s to the last few years we have. Nice knowing you.

So it looks now like the iPhone may be on multiple carriers [cnn.com] by the end of the year, breaking the exclusive relationship between the iPhone and AT&T. I see this is great news, as I would love to own an iPhone but am locked into a Verizon plan.

We’ll keep ya posted!

Technet members can download R2 of Windows Server 2008 here:

Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium Based Systems (ia64) - DVD (English) [technet.microsoft.com]
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, and Web (x64) - DVD (English) [technet.microsoft.com]
Windows Server 2008 R2 Language Pack (x64) [technet.microsoft.com]

Of course, we prefer running ubuntu [ubuntu.com], but for those interested, here you go!

Hahaha! I’m joking. No - actually I’m not. So… The company that probably believed by some “invented” word processing on computers is no longer able to sell its flagship product Word in the US?

bink.nu/news/judge-microsoft-can-t-sell-word-anymore.aspx [bink.nu]

Is it April 1? No? Has this judge ever used a computer?

I’m not particularly anti-Microsoft… though I am sick of people who credit them as originators, particularly of languages, software and operating systems. That said, they have some great products out there and have had arguably more impact on computing as we know it today than anyone else - especially in bringing computing to the masses.

If they’re really smart, they’ll GPL it. We’ll see.