Entries from March 2007The Posts You Asked For
Charging your batteries via radio — no wires required
Posted 03/30/07
Not quite up to Nikola Tesla’s dream of sending electricity long distance through the air, but still a wonderful invention — even better because it’s real and going into production.
Powercast’s platform uses nothing more complex than a radio–and is cheap enough for just about any company to incorporate into a product. A transmitter plugs into [...]
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Problem with Yahoo groups?
Posted 03/29/07
My wife, who’s a member of several Yahoo groups, reports that for the past couple of days she’s been getting multiple copies of every e-mail sent to the group — in some cases, a dozen. And, she says, it’s happening to all her groups. Being that she has a lot of interests, from job-hunting to [...]
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The advantages of friends
Posted 03/29/07
Specifically, friends in low places.
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The ITT story — the details
Posted 03/28/07
You may have read the story of how ITT shared secrets with foreign countries. ITT Night Vision, the division involved, is based in Roanoke, so I got to help cover the story here.
<brag>
The stories in other newspapers are fine, but if you want to read the details — e.g., what secrets were ‘leaked,’ and why [...]
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3400 Circuit City employees killed
Posted 03/28/07
According to an announcement today, Circuit City has resorted to extreme measures to improve its financial performance: It plans to dismember about 3400 employees.
From the release:
The company has completed a wage management initiative that will result in the separation of approximately 3,400 store Associates. The separations, which are occurring today, focused on Associates who were [...]
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Bush comment on eve of Iraq war
Posted 03/27/07
Looking up something else (the use of the phrase “Secret – No Foreign”), I came upon a story about Bob Woodward and the beginning of the Iraq War.
After giving the order to start the War, Bush took a walk and told Woodward the following:
I prayed that our troops be safe, be protected by the [...]
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Galactica musings (and spoilers)
Posted 03/26/07
If you aren’t a Battlestar Galactica fan, you can ignore this post.
If you are, but haven’t seen the season-three finalé, “Crossroads,” you should ignore this post.
I just want to put this out there so some day I can look back and say, “Boy, were you wrong.”
* * *
Based on the events in the show, and [...]
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Katherine Kersten: What the…?
Posted 03/25/07
In an editorial in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal (OpinionJournal), Katherine Kersten of the Minneapolis Star Tribune has written something so inane, so incredibly narrow-minded, that it boggles the mind.
She says in her first graf that “hard-line Muslim activists are injecting an element that is anything but nice” into Minnesota.
As evidence, she brings up two [...]
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Back to XP
Posted 03/24/07
Whew. Last night was the last Vista straw for me. I’d been getting a variety of minor errors since I installed Vista (and got past the bigger issues), but nothing that would stop me from working.
Still, getting regular errors every time I view a folder full of thumbnails was annoying, as were things like a [...]
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Back to XP
Posted 03/24/07
Whew. Last night was the last Vista straw for me. I’d been getting a variety of minor errors since I installed Vista (and got past the bigger issues), but nothing that would stop me from working.
Still, getting regular errors every time I view a folder full of thumbnails was annoying, as were things like a [...]
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Mars Petcare to other pet-food companies: Thhhhpth!
Posted 03/23/07
“Your food kills animals and ours doesn’t! Nyah, nyah, nyah!”
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From the scary recall files
Posted 03/23/07
I was looking through some old product recalls for a story I’m working on, when I came across this one that struck me as A) particularly scary, and B) quite understated when you consider what would happen.
On February 15, 2005 Brave Products recalled about 4000 log splitters because “The log splitter’s hydraulic cylinders can have defective [...]
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Browser stats
Posted 03/23/07
The latest browser-survey results from W3Schools are here.
For both charts, click ‘em to enlarge ‘em.
Here’s the broad-stroke breakdown, in which I combine Internet Explorer versions, and Firefox with other Mozilla-based browsers:
And the more-detailed breakdown for those who like such things:
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The Net: Don’t have it, don’t want it
Posted 03/23/07
Here’s an interesting stat from the folks at Parks Associates. According to the company’s most recent data and survey, 29 percent of all U.S. households do not have Internet access — that’s about 31 million homes — and don’t plan on getting it.
There are several reasons for this: They can’t afford it, they get it [...]
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Still laughing
Posted 03/22/07
From a collection of best unintentionally funny comic panels:
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Chow for the gander
Posted 03/22/07
Remember that L.A. firefighter who was awarded $2.7 million because he was fed dog food by his coworkers as part of a series of pranks? He claimed that somehow dog food and black people had some kind of bad history.
I wonder what he’d make of Derek McGinty of WUSA in Washington, D.C., who voluntarily ate the [...]
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Fundy fun!
Posted 03/22/07
This could be the mostest wonderfulest thing I’ve ever read from a Christian extremist ever:
From a post to SmashBoards.com:
One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted [...]
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Why I hate Steve Bass
Posted 03/21/07
He sends me to sites like this.
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Yer news lede of the day
Posted 03/20/07
LONDON (AP) — A first-class passenger on a flight from Delhi to London awoke find the corpse of a woman who had died in the economy cabin being placed in a seat next to him, British Airways said Monday.
(From Airline moves dead body to 1st class.)
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Oh, my head
Posted 03/19/07
The apocalypse is upon us.
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