I Hate Bent Pen Clips
I hate bent pen clips.
Mr. Stevens knows this.
Being the PAL that he is, he left this for me at my desk:
[STEAM]
Do Not Put Your Hand Or Tie In This Shredder
Apparently, this shredder was not designed to shred ties or human hands. You must have to buy the next model up to get those features.
Cupertino Gets City-Wide WiFi
MuniWireless reports that Cupertino now has WiFi coverage thruought 75% of the city. Unfortunately, it’s not free, but sounds pretty reasonable at $20 per month for 1Mbps down / 256kbps up. MetroFi is providing the mesh WiFi a/b network, and in addition to selling service direct, is wholesaling the service off to the likes of Earthlink and other ISPs.
I’m pretty impressed to see something this cool back in the bay area…it reminds me of the good old days of Ricochet Wireless, which although pricey, was darn kool. I’ve been envious of all these differerent cities (mostly east coast) planning Metro WiFi, but to see it actually live, TODAY, right next to my ‘hood is pretty cool.
I’m just outside their service area for the time being, but if they start to cover Mountain View and other parts of Silicon Valley, I might just have to try it out. The MetroFi site actually lists the service as available in Cupertino and Santa Clara, but they don’t have any coverage maps up just yet. I would definitely like to check out a coverage map to see exactly what areas they cover.
Gmail as an Email Archive
A while ago, I was chatting via email with my pal Mike when he mentioned that he had all of his personal email forwarding to his Gmail account. At first I didn’t really see the point, but then I started to think about this scenario. Moments later, I setup all of my personal email to forward to my Gmail account as well. I’m pretty sure Mike uses this setup for the same reason that I do. Here’s why:
Google has been generous enough to provide over 2GB of free email storage, on what is probably very fault tolerant hardware, distributed over multiple colocations with mass amounts of bandwidth…much better than the setup my hosted email and websites are running on. By setting up my mail alias to direct mail simultaneously to both my personal and Gmail accounts, I effectively have a very nice instant email archive. It will take quite a while to fill 2 gigs of storage space so I can pretty much leave the Gmail account alone and use it in the event that my cheapo webhost inexplicably loses all of my email history. It’s not the most elegant solution, but it get’s my “thumbs up” because it’s quick, easy, and FREE!
Invention Help Services
I saw a really bad commercial late last night for Invention Submission Coroporation, which I have seen many other times. Every time I see that commercial, I wonder if they really help people or just take advantage of them and/or steal their ideas. Who knows what kind of waivers and other documents you have to sign in order to work with ISC? I googled ISC this morning and the first item that pops up is a link to the FTC website that details the findings of a lawsuit against ISC: FTC Site
I guess they really are just scammers. They don’t even appear to have a website of any source, which seems rather ludicrous in this day and age. As I continued to look thru search results, even more evidence that they are crooks is revealed. Here is a report from a news station where some lady paid ISC all kinds of cash and they pretty much did nothing. ISC claimed that they didn’t get a patent because they stopped making payments. Sounds fishy to me.
It sounds like most invention promotion companies are pretty much elaborate scams: ISC versus USPTO Director
What did I learn? That, as usual, I am KorreKt…most invention promoters are nothing more than dirtbag scam artists.
Sixty Years Ago…
This past weekend marked the 60 year anniversary of the complete and unconditional surrender of Germany to the Allied forces.
Events leading to the surrender: WWII
Images:
Patton
Signing the documents
Second signing (required by the Soviets)
Nifty WWII Timeline
German Surrender Document Text
May 7th also means my pal Mike is another year closer to the grave. Happy Birthday, OLD MAN!
Maroon 5
Went to a Maroon 5 concert in San Jose tonight. Those dudes are pretty cool. I snapped some shots with my Treo. For some really poor quality shots, check out:
Openers: http://flickr.com/photos/saucycg/12580455/
Maroon 5: http://flickr.com/photos/saucycg/12585607/
Chumps: http://flickr.com/photos/saucycg/12587222/
Sunday Morning: http://flickr.com/photos/saucycg/12591769/
05.05.05
Today is May Fifth, Two-Thousand & Five.
Savor the moment, because it won’t be 05.05.05 again for another 100 years, and you will probably be dead then.
Curious Squirrel + High Voltage Power Line = A Candle-Lit Evening For Me
I was connected to my Fedora box at home yesterday afternoon when suddenly the connection was terminated. Subsequent attempts to re-connect were an excercise in futility. I cursed the the likes of Comcast for their foolish administration tactics that must have led to the demise of my broadband connection.
Upon returning home, I noticed several very large PG&E trucks in front of my house. My earlier rage towards Comcast appeared to be unfounded. With that many trucks in the street, I thought that surely there must be some major damage. I had a quick chat with one of the PG&E guys there, and it turns out the major problem was…..a squirrel. He mentioned that the the perpetrator, or what was left of him, must have chewed thru the insulation and hit a live wire. Apparently, when they inspected the line, they noticed it was chewed thru and then they discovered the tail and a portion of the leg of a squirrel at the base of the pole.
How long to get my power back up and running? Eight to ten hours……EIGHT TO TEN HOURS?!?!?! My first thought was that I could stumble onto a neighbor’s AP and surf….however, half the block was out of power and rather than seeing the usual 8-12 AP’s in netstumbler….I saw nothing.
Once it started to get dark, I lit up some candles and sat down. Surf? No. TV? No. Radio? No. Silent Darkness? Yes.
I ended up playing Ridge Racer on my PSP late into the night, which really wasn’t too bad. I was actually pretty impressed with how long the battery lasted. Apparently, around 2am the power came back, but I was already fast asleep amid dreams of fanciful robots and skyways full of voice controlled hover-cars.