Month: January 2009

01/14/2009

Geeky thoughts from Slashdot:

Why can’t computers boot in a second or less?

Imagine a visionary like Steve Jobs. He goes to his team and says “I don’t care what it takes, build me a computer which boots in one second”.

Ignore the past, the legacy of tens of years of layer after layer of OS software. Can it be done?

A 3 GHz dual-core processor can process 6 billion instructions in that first second. I know the disk is a problem. I’m not asking for all possible OS services to be up in a second… But I’m sure this could be improved greatly. It’s all out there in the open. People want this.

Good question. Back in The Day, my trusty old Apple IIe booted in maybe 20 seconds, and most of that was spinning up the five-and-a-quarter disk drive. Now it takes ten times that long for my Linux system to present me with my KDE desktop. Yet the hardware is literally millions of times faster than it was back in the 1980’s.

Hmm.

01/14/2009

I just got an awesome piece of spam titled Claim your share of Government BAILOUT!

Apparently it’s that easy! Get this little blue box (shown in the lower left corner) called the “Government Grant Kit” and you’ll soon be riding a yacht through an ocean of money. And your wallet will literally be spewing one-dollar bills.

Wait, one-dollar bills? Couldn’t they even get twenties for their hokey ad?

01/14/2009

Snippets of a conversation between me and a designer friend of mine:

Me:

I built a one-page form for a client yesterday because she told me it would probably take their agency until February to get it done.  So I sat down for about 30 minutes and did what was needed.

Her:

Yeah, it’s like the agencies are playing hard to get. The clients say, “They can’t design my site until 2011? I MUST work with them!”

It’s funny only because it’s true. If it took me ten times longer (and I charged ten times as much) then I’d be just like the big agencies in New York and Los Angeles.

01/12/2009

Today at lunch Tony posed a teaser question:

Today the phase of the moon is waning gibbous (meaning it was full just a few days ago, so it’s nearly full now but getting smaller each day). What’s the phase of the Earth as seen from the moon?

We debated it for a few minutes and basically decided it would be opposite. In other words, the Earth would currently be waxing crescent (small and getting bigger).

Tony joked that I’d have to look up the answer tonight to make sure, so indeed I did. Here’s what I found:

The phases of the Earth and moon are always the reverse of each other. When we see the moon as nearly full, any moon people would see a slim crescent Earth. When we see a completely full moon, the moon, Earth and sun are in a line– with Earth in the middle. Then people on the moon wouldn’t see Earth at all because it would be hidden in the sun’s glare.

Props to Tony for a puzzler.

01/11/2009

The other day I was down at the co-location facility where I lease space for my web hosting servers. I’ve been continually growing for the past few years, adding servers and other hardware to keep things running smoothly as the need for more capacity increases. I decided to take a few pictures of the servers so I can track everything for maintenance (and insurance) purposes.

When I looked at the photos I realized this whole setup looks like quite a mess.

And that’s only about half of the refrigerator-sized rack that I have: there are more servers (and wires) above the top of this photo, and a few below as well.

Amazing that things work as well as they do…

01/11/2009

My friend Rick took a surprise trip to the hospital this weekend, and I texted him today to see if I could come over and visit. His response was awesome.

Hot nurses! A nice reclining bed! Jell-o for every meal! What’s not to like about the hospital?

01/09/2009

Every now and then God looks down on His creation and decides that it’s time for a good ultimate game.

So yesterday, in His infinite wisdom, he graced us with an absolutely gorgeous day: sunny, 60 degrees, and a slight breeze (hey, He has to challenge us just a little bit). And fourteen of us headed out to the fields and had a great time.

Disclaimer– this photo wasn’t taken yesterday.

Of course it made me realize how out of shape I am; it’s been a few months since I went running around for a solid hour. But hey, at least I wasn’t the only one huffing and puffing on the field.

Now today it’s chilly, windy, and they’re predicting snow. So it goes. Hopefully the Almighty will give us another nice day next week.

01/07/2009

Well, it’s that fun time of year again: the part where I have to send an estimated tax payment to the IRS. Since 2008 is over, I owe personal taxes against the profits of my corporation. And if I don’t pay them by January 15th the IRS gets all huffy and demands interest and other fees.

I always hate writing checks to the IRS, but these days it feels particularly hard because I know that my money is just going to get channelled to some big corporation who happens to have persistent lobbyists. So I decided that I might as well suck it up, face reality, and encourage the government to do what they’re going to do anyway.

I wonder if smart-aleck comments on your tax checks flag you for an audit…

01/04/2009

After a grueling recount, it looks like Al Franken’s friends will have to start addressing him as “Senator Franken”. It appears he’s beat out the Minnesota incumbent by just over 200 votes.

How awesome that a former Saturday Night Live star can rise to such an… err… auspicious office.