More reasons not to leave your computer or phone logged in and unattended

If you've been around Facebook or Twitter for even a little amount of time you've seen people with very strange status updates. Some silly, some really off color. Ever wondered what happened? More likely than not, the owner of that account left their cell phone or computer logged into those applications and not secured.

So some wise-ass friend decided to point this out by updating their status. Sometimes they are funny, but I don't know about you, but I think every one has that one friend who takes it too far. So, it isn't surprising to see that a meme is quickly building around this, call the Pants Status Meme.

The general idea is when you find an open account, don't be a jerk, but do try to be funny and preface it with 'pants meme' so people know it wasn't the owner posting. Some ideas:

Pants Status: <>
- plaid
- wrinkled
- on the floor
- not wearing any
- gone clamming (for those who don't know this one, think highwaters ;-)

To see what others are doing see this.

Also, remember if it happens to you just go to your profile or home page and delete the offending statements. Don't try to apologize.

Friday the 13th is even more unique this time!

Think the world is going to end in 2012?

Well what about this:

"At 11:31:30pm UTC on Feb 13, 2009, Unix time will reach 1,234,567,890.
Where will you be at this momentous second?" - from Bell Labs

While not as big a deal as Y2K, this could be a significant event. Or not. If you don't know what 'UNIX Time' is, be very concerned. ;-)

I know I spent Y2K with a pager waiting for the world to end, so I'll have a beer or three tomorrow night to make up for it.

Sorry, just geeking out.

Source.

geek frustration - picture frame

I just spent 3 very frustrating hours trying to figure out why the digital picture frame I bought my mom a couple of years ago wouldn't show the images I send her. It is a NuVue 561 and works fine with the 2 GB SD card from her camera, but not the 2 GB SD card I bought for her.

I finally figured out that the NuVue only supports 1.0/1.1 of the SD specification, but the new cards are all 2.0 of the specification. The problem I was having is the 2.0 GB card I bought for her camera two Christmas' ago is a 1.1 (so it worked), but anything new is 2.0.

I eventually found that the Kingston Memory 2.0 GB cards are 1.0/1.1 so that works in the NuVue.

Overview of what we're doing: I bought my mom a card reader for her Mac laptop to copy images from CD/camera to the card in the picture frame. This way I can send her CDs of the kids, she picks what pictures she wants and can update the frame.

How an engineer folds a t-shirt

While I never worked in retail (I bussed tables, washed dishes and was a 'dietary aide' as a teenager) I understand there is an art to folding shirts. This really funny article from the Wall Street Journal talks about the 'brain washing' or 'cult' of folding shirts at the Gap.

Well, I'm a geek, so my motto is 'why do something twice if you can automate it?'.

Thus, this video.



No, I don't have one of these. Yet. It is still cheaper to have the guy who comes to my door twice a week to pick up my work shirts for dry cleaning than doing it myself.

160 GB of disk for $55

Deb's computer had pretty much run out of space with all the videos and photos we are converting/scanning (more about this in a later post.) To the point where she had less than 1 GB of diskspace left.

So today I bought her a 160 GB second drive for her PC. It installed in less than 10 minutes and took about 30 minutes to copy over 20+ GB of pictures and videos.

I'm now moving her outlook PST file.

This disk is significantly faster than the current C: drive and I can already see improvements in browsing.

This is amazing since less than 5 years ago I paid over $55,000 for 200 GB of usable storage from IBM for work. Yes, the RAID chassis was a good chunk of the costs, but still I couldn't have imagined having 160 GB FREE on a computer sitting in my kitchen.

50 Reasons to date a geek

Last night Courtney and I had an interesting conversation about the geeky boy in her class who helps the teacher with technology issues. I gave her the little speech about why dating geeks is better than dating jocks and she gave me a strange look. (She is 10 after all.) I expect she'll remember the conversation in 15 years or so and do the right thing ;-)

Then I found this blog entry today: 50 Reasons to date a geek

I have to agree with a lot of them, but several are wrong. For example:

43. They’re not jerks: Although geeks have a lot to be proud of, they’re almost never full of themselves.

A LOT of the geeks I know are a!!holes when they want to prove how much smarter they are then the people around them. Usually these are the ones that don't have dates.

This one is just funny:

22. There are lots of good ones out there: Geeks tend to not be very active in the dating field, so there are plenty to choose from.

So single ladies, go find yourself a geek. Geeks in school, wait until end of Junior year and notice how the ladies who are thinking about MRS degrees suddenly show up. I remember a lot of friends at UMASS suddenly having dates and women interested in them as we got closer to graduation. Wonder why (see #42). No Deb knew me BEFORE I went to school for computer science ;-)