Site Tweakage...

...has happened.

That is all.

May The Fourth Be With You

That pretty much covers it.

Also, today is officially World Password Day!

Ain't technology great?

Lost my phone in one of the cars I drove yesterday at work.

Discovered something interesting just now - I can track, lock, erase, and ping it from Google.

It is currently southbound on I-81, near Mt Crawford, Va (+/- 5 meters), locked and ringing.

I put a message on the screen that says: "I was lost  at MAA on Monday".

There's also a call button on the lock screen, with a friend's phone number. I want it back because it contains the last pictures I took of Baxter.

Blog Stats

I don't often look at the statistics for my blogs, but the last few time I have, I've noticed that my traffic has increased considerably. I have no objection to this, mind you, but it puzzles me a bit.

Looking at the "All Time" stats overview, we have this:

 

You'll notice the two ginormous spikes in traffic, one last summer, and one starting around Thanksgiving.

I shan't bore you with the trend for the last month, but I do want to show you what's been happening on a weekly basis.

The site gets these regular spike, regular in both size and interval. And it looks like they take the weekends off.  Looking at the monthly stats, tings seem to be trending downwards. Whatever the cause, it has just about doubled my hit count since last summer, going from somewhere around 35k to almost 80k.

It's a mystery.

Twiddling... (Updated)

You may have noticed a couple of small changes in the last few days. I've changed the background picture, removed the Hillary Hydra pic and caption, cleaned up a busted link, and changed the page width slightly.

That is all.

UPDATE: Not quite all - I fixed the Trump clock - I created it using Zulu (UTC) time, instead of East Coast US time, which is the TZ in which he was inaugurated.

Duh.

Annoyance

So, the appliance dealer seemingly couldn't get a replacement door for my fridge, so he offered me $100.00 to close the 'ticket'. I accepted, and with that money, ordered a new motherboard, CPU and memory for the 'media' computer.  Amazon did their usualy spiffy job of getting it to me, it was here when I got home from work last night.  Just for fun, I thought I'd install the memory, CPU and heat sink last night. I didn't feel up to the challenge of doing the whole job, so I thought I'd gut the case and install the new guts today.

Or, not.

The heat sink attachment set up is a new one to me. Instead of the old spring loaded clamp mchanism, this one has two spring loaded hollow pins that fit through two attach points on the heat sink, then snap into the motherboard. They're held in place by a second pin that gets pushed through the first pin to anchor it.

So, no new media computer today. I pinged AMD (the CPU manufacturer), to get a kit sent out, and let Amazon know that the order was missing a part. I received a reply from AMD saying they had opened a trouble ticket.

 This is an automatically generated email, please do not reply.
Dear Customer,
Thank you for contacting AMD Global Customer Care.
We have created a Customer Care Support account based on the details you submitted with your service request.
A separate email containing your service request reference number will follow.
Thank you for choosing AMD!
Best regards,
AMD Global Customer Care

This is an automatically generated email, please do not reply.
Dear Customer,
Your Service Request has been received and will be processed shortly.  Depending on the nature of your inquiry, further automated messages with additional instructions might follow.
Service Request: {ticketno:[xxxx4114]}
We thank you for your patience.
Best regards,
AMD Global Customer Care

 We shall see...

DVD Archiving

If you are like me, and want to make back-up copies of your DVDs, but find that they are stubbornly encrypted, here is a free (for the rest of the month) tool to help you:

Passkey can run in the background, so when you insert a DVD into your computer, it will make it ready to be backed up. Once it's ready, you can use something like ImageBurn to either burn a new DVD, or write a DVD (.iso) image to your hard drive.

From the folks at DVDFab.

Money Can't Buy Happiness,

...but it can be used to tickle your brain!

Randall Munroe, the genius who runs XKCD is putting out a book, in the style of Up Goer Five:

It's in pre-order now, due to ship in November.  Click the ad on the left for more info!

How I spent My Weekend

I was invited to @PeeteySDee 's place for BBQ on the 5th, provided I bring the .45 for some shooting.  I brought the 1911, and the Hi Point .45 carbine, just for completeness on the .45 part of the deal.

We had my two .45s, an AR-15, and a nice little laser-sighted .380.  Damage ensued:

Before:

After:

Petey said he'd gotten them from a gal named "Lois", who used to work at the I.R.S. He said she was glad to get rid of them.

@DoreenHDickson showed up later. Embarrassingly and sadly, I had comsumed was too many "Chocolate Cake" shooters, and some interestingly nasty North Korean Ginseng liquor to be good company.

Which is why I don't keep the hard stuff at home.  Important safety tip.

The Day We Fight Back

 

From Day By Day (obviously!)

I Knew This...

...from way back!

My personal rule has always been, "Do not interrupt the person you are talking with for someone else."  Unless. of course, it's the boss, or my kid (or her mom) with an emergency.  After that, flames, not smoke, and only for arterial blood.

I watched a fair number of folks get real uncomfortable when I ignored my phone and continued our conversation.  I never actually timed anyone, but my best guess is that it was less than a minute before I was asked "Aren't you going to get that?"

I suspect that anxiety is behind the compulsion to be in constant contact (and not the other way around, as stated above).  So I suspect that some people are just not comfortable in their own skin.

Via Drudge

Juxtapositions du Jour...

First this...


...from the daily Caller


Then this...

Going Boldly

December 5th, 2013 - 7:25 am

Faster-than-light travel — made real?

And explained in layman’s terms for those of us (especially me) who struggled through these things in high school and college.

...from the ever-suave Mr. Green!

Mmmmmm, Could Be...!! (Updated)

This is probably not exactly true (he is speculating, after all), but it sure sounds plausible!

Head fake! Is Healthcare.gov only an

empty shell MOCKUP of a working

Obamacare exchange?

Wednesday, October 09, 2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: Obamacare exchanges, programming failure, mockup

(NaturalNews) As the days of glitches, snafus, down-time and critical errors mount up, evidence is mounting that the Healthcare.gov Obamacare exchange is not actually a fully-formed online application. More and more, it appears to be a mockup of a health care exchange enrollment system.

Go.  RTWT!!

(Via Mr. Taranto)

Update:  Added the "giggle du jour" tag so you all know that I'm not taking this article seriously.  You'll understand if you read the first few comments.  And, "The Health Ranger"?  Too cute...

Feeling Gerard's Pain

When I got the "bad ware" alert from Firefox/Google about the comments section on one of the posts are Gerard's site, I sent him a e-mail by way of a heads up, and we had a little conversation  (bottom-up post order):

Condolences.

 

On September 1, 2013 at 11:37 PM Gerard Van der Leun wrote:

I'm working to fix it and eradicate the code the bastards snuck in.

On Sun, Sep 1, 2013 at 3:17 PM, leelu <lawebber@cwassociates.net> wrote:

Got this on my Firefox browser when I clicked the comments ;ink on the Michelle's shower curtain dress comment link:

 

https://www.stopbadware.org/firefox?hl=en-US&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americandigest.org%2Fmt%2Fmt-comments.cgi

 

Maybe Bill got miffed about something?? 

But, when I saw this post this morning:

For those who have come through the deadly warning barrier!

My apologies. This is a very annoying time. Fixing this issue takes, I have found, lots of digging with the superb staff at Hosting Matters, a good deal of digging out of code that came in from Croatia, a resetting of all security params, a restore from a backup and then a review from Google.
It is indeed a royal pain.

I felt I should condole him some more.  (Read from the bottom up...)

...sorta sounds like my last divorce. 

On September 4, 2013 at 2:16 PM Gerard Van der Leun wrote:

It takes, I have found, lots of digging with the staff at Hosting Matters, a good deal of digging out of code that came in from Croatia, a resetting of all security params, a restore from a backup and then a review from Google.

 

It is indeed a royal pain.

 

Sigh.

On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 11:14 AM, leelu <lawebber@cwassociates.net> wrote:

STILL at it!?  Wow... that shit is nasty.

 

Have you tried re-generating the dilithium crystals??

 

"When is leelu not in trouble?"
Korben Dallas

 I suspect he would appreciate prayer in any denomination at this point.  It does sound as if he's getting good support at Hosting Matters, tho.  Big plus in his favor.

Look Out! It's A Trap!!

Richard Stallman, the man who wrote the GNU half of "GNU/Linux" and started the Free Software movement (which has forked into the Open Source movement) was interviewed a while back by The Guardian.  He cautions against "cloud computing" because he sees that as yet another way to suck people into closed-source, "...proprietary systems that would cost them more and more over time."

More importantly, he says that computer users should be reluctant to hand over their data to a third party.

Which got me to thinking... in light of the whole U.S. Government stomp on privacy, and given the apparent size to the government data centers in Ft Meade and Nevada Utah, it's probably safer to assume that the "top" of the cloud is there, and Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, et. al . are just renting space.

It's just cheaper and easier for everyone!

Funny Peculiar...

Drudge has a link up to this Daily Mail article, and a bunch of others.  A flight from Heathrow to Oslo was interrupted because the left engine nacelle covers popped open on takeoff.  The pilot decided to return, and while on approach, the right hand engine caught fire.

I'm not an engineer, but I have spent a significant part of my life in and around airliners and transports.  Two engines going south at  the same time are extremely rare.  The officials are calling it bird strike.  Maybe, but after the beheading murder, I'm wondering if something else might be in play.

Am I paranoid?  Dunno...

RTWT

How Long Until...

...a transporter??

NASA is funding a prototype food synthesizer.

They're working on pizza!

Via Ars Technica

Pop Quiz

Go see how well you do in this science quiz over at the Pew Research Center!

Via THS at the Coalition!

Ten Hundred Words

One of my friends from Boeing sent my this article:

Science in Ten Hundred Words: The `Up-Goer Five' challenge.

By Chris Rowan | Scientific American – Sun, Jan 27, 2013

Related Content

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A central question of communicating science to a wider audience often boils down to this: can you take a complex scientific topic and explain it in a way that someone unfamiliar with the field can understand? The commonly-cited techniques for meeting this challenge, such as cutting out jargon and using relatable analogies, sound easy in principle but are often quite tough in practice.

Thus is born the Up-Goer Five Text Editor and its younger sibling,  the Up-Goer Six Text Editor.

I loved (and hated) the Up Goer Five xkcd comic.

 

Any good trainer/teacher knows that you gotta do something like this to help students understand the basic concept of a thing. (Why I love it.)

 

But, then you need to move them on to a broader vocabulary (which is why I hate it). 

 

My old girlfriend used to upbraid me when I'd use a 'big' word to answer a question posed by the Swedish au pair.  I was trying to stretch her vocabulary. 

As far as lawyers..., if you think legal documents are wordy now, try doing with only ten hundred words.  The point of a broader/specialized vocabulary is to say something in as few words as possible.

 

We've gone from fairly literate newspapers, to USA Today, to infographics.  A "ten hundred" word vocabulary would be a serious handicap to anyone. 

 

Kind of reminds me of many of my ITT students...

 

And, yes, it does help understanding to strip something down to as simple a statement as possible.  Like explaining "grabity" to a bright 4 year old.  If you can do that so she understands it, it's a certainty that you do, too.

 

As the U.S. Marine mondegreen motto says, "Simplify!"

UPDATE!  Just for grins, I took the paragraph I quoted above, and ran it through the Up-Goer Five editor, replacing all of the flagged words.  I could not find a replacementy for "jargon" that I was happy with.  Here is my effort:

The problem of talking about our world to lots of different people often comes down to this: can you take something that's hard, and explain it in a way that someone who doesn't know about the field can understand? The usual approaches, such as cutting out the strange words used only in the field and using simple stories, sound easy, but are often quite hard to do.

More Tech Politics

Via Morgan