East of the Sun, West of the Moon

2007/10/10

Linkage on 2007-10-10

Filed under: Humo(u)r,Linkage,Music,News — Erwin @ 6:33 pm

Happy birthday Pär! I promise to catch up with you in about 2 months, as usual. ;)

Case of vodka used to treat poisoned tourist:

Australian doctors used a case of vodka to treat an Italian tourist who poisoned himself with a highly toxic substance found in anti-freeze.

The man was unconscious on arrival at Mackay Base Hospital in Queensland and doctors immediately started treating him with pharmaceutical-grade alcohol, which works as an antidote to the poison.

But the hospital’s alcohol supplies were soon exhausted and staff were forced to buy a case of vodka, which they administered through a drip in his nose.

I Love Mars, and I Vote:

Carberry is the political director of the Mars Society, a nonprofit group that pushes relentlessly for human exploration and settlement of the red planet. He’s the point man for Operation President 2008, in which Mars Society members lie in wait for presidential candidates at campaign stops in the early primary states, then leap out to pop the question: As president, would you send a man to Mars?

Kwik-Fit sued over staff radios:

A car repair firm has been taken to court accused of infringing musical copyright because its employees listen to radios at work.

I suppose it was time

Filed under: OS X,Technology — Erwin @ 4:20 pm

I’ve had an unpleasant week of unpredictable behaviour from my MacBook Pro where it would simply power off while the battery still looks like it should have enough charge (typically over 10% and under 40%), several attempts to fully and utterly drain and then recharge the battery, resetting the SMC (System Management Controller) data to make sure there is no anomalous data there. This forced me to draw the conclusion that after 476+ cycles it may not be entirely unexpected that the battery is due for a replacement!

The MBP has been here since July last year, so nearly 15 months now. If you’ll do the math with me you’ll see that I’ve had the battery go through at least one cycle per day, on average. To have the next one last a bit longer I’ll have to try and keep it on the adapter, I guess. I was already trying to do the drain it fully, once a month thing, but will also try to do that more consistently.

Any other suggestions?

Linkage on 2007-10-09

Filed under: Humo(u)r,Linkage,News,Software — Erwin @ 12:49 am

His silence mistaken, deaf man attacked:

The cashier tried to speak to him but got angry when Goodnight didn’t respond, Goodnight told police. The cashier threw Goodnight’s change at him, scattering it on the floor.

As Goodnight picked it up, the cashier hit him in the side of the head with the crowbar, Goodnight said.

The Inflation Calculator may seem useful but mostly to fuel bogus arguments, I think. After all, your $200 CD player from 1990 didn’t cost $313 in 2006, did it?

Duty Cycle Calculator is a slightly different calculator, one that makes it easier to estimate how much it costs you to leave the television on, leave light bulbs on over night.

2007/10/9

Facebook Apps

Filed under: Software — Erwin @ 3:14 pm

The downside of the Facebook Applications and the desperate wish of almost all of their developers to have them go viral and make a fortune is this:

FB-madness.png

And I assure you that if I didn’t regularly clean out the list it would look a lot worse. What Facebook desperately needs is one or two checkboxes alongside each invitation with which you can indicate that you don’t want to be bothered with future invites from the same application, whether that’s for a month, or forever.

2007/10/8

Resellers are people too

Filed under: General — Erwin @ 8:56 pm

Last week I had the dubious pleasure of realizing that Amazon‘s shipping charges suck when you want to order more than a few items from the same reseller because they absolutely do not bother to take into account that the items can and most likely will go into a single box. Makes me wonder how many resellers earn a large chunk of their profit from that fact, when customers buy 2 or more items, Amazon pays them as if the items will be shipping in separate boxes, and in practice the cost is about as much as it would be for just one item.

Thankfully the resellers — or at least the two I dealt with — were responsive to my request to cut me a deal. In the first case I was ordering 20 small individual items, cost of the items being just over $50 and Amazon charging me nearly $100 for shipping those. After contacting the reseller and emailing back and forth a bit, he offered (and I agreed to) a refund of around $70, which made the deal a lot more acceptable. Thank you Hot_Wires! The second also responded positive, but then it turned out that the reseller didn’t have the needed number of items so I’m still waiting to try a substitute item and then decide on what to do.

The lesson is, I guess, twofold:

  • Pay attention to what your online store is about to charge you.
  • It never hurts to ask for a discount.

Happy Monday!

2007/10/5

Note to self

Filed under: Humo(u)r,Software — Erwin @ 7:59 pm

When your computer tells you that the CMOS checksum was incorrect and it’s reset to defaults, it may be a good idea to go in and at least set the time and date to something vaguely correct, to avoid having the filesystem checks kick in twice: First when it’s confused about going back in time a few years, and again after you’ve corrected the time and it goes forward in time a few years, both times saying “Well, it’s been too long since the last time, I better check”, even though of course the system was rebooted without crashes or anything.

Gah. And with that 1TB that I have here now, it takes a while! :)

Quote of the Day

Filed under: Humo(u)r — Erwin @ 6:44 pm

I can’t believe I’m driving through VA texting a guy in KS to go online and ask a guy in GA about my sleeping arrangements. My life is so not normal.

Attribution left out to protect the innocent. :)

2007/10/4

Pet Peeves of the Day

Filed under: Humo(u)r,Technology — Erwin @ 2:37 pm

Using compliment when you mean complement! These are not interchangeable words, people.

When you have a 7-port USB hub you do not get seven more outlets than you did before. After all you will need to take up one previously available outlet to hook up the hub!

2007/10/3

Testing new software

Filed under: Tests — Erwin @ 9:35 pm

MarsEditPardon me while I test how MarsEdit does its magic and whether I like that. :)

Update: It does WordPress just fine, and LiveJournal, but not Xanga. I don’t actively use the latter and only sparingly use LiveJournal, but I figured I’d give it a try.

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