Month: March 2010

Check it out: a real nickel that’s been cut in half and hollowed out, so you can hide a Micro SD card inside. It’s been dubbed a “spy coin” (although it doesn’t really do any spying).

I guess what interests me about this is the fact that you can easily hide many gigabytes of data inside something as innocuous as a nickel. We’re a long way from room-sized disk arrays that held a few megabytes…

Last night was the Boulder Dodgeball Benefit Tournament, which raised money for kids in Rwanda. Since I play pretty often with a bunch of friends, I figured I’d scrape together a team and have some fun. I struggled to get the six people needed for a team, so Rob and I decided to join forces.

I never told the tournament coordinator Therese what our team name should be, so she took the liberty of naming us (wait for it) “Jeff and Rob’s Team”. There we were on the brackets, while all of the other teams had cool names like Total Domination and Rockin’ Red Pod (whatever that means). Ah well.

While driving down there, my friend James called and said he and my other friend James (collectively they’re known as James #1 and James #2) were able to join us after all, and they were waiting at the gym. So I called Rob and told him if there was another team that needed players, he could hook up with them. Therese had been struggling to get enough teams, and I figured it would be best to divide up players as best we could.

Thus Rob went off to play with The Misfits, and the six of us became just Jeff’s Team. Our first match was a tough one– we split the first two games of the best-of-five match, and then the deciding game came down to one-on-one. Adrian pulled out the win for us, and we advanced. We handily beat The Misfits, even though Rob managed to gun me down a couple of times. Our next match was another win, pushing us into the semifinals.

Rob’s team had been soundly defeated so he was ready to head home, but I asked if he and his friend Joe would join up with us as we’d originally planned. Thus, in a happy reunion, we became Jeff and Rob’s Team once again. We crushed our next opponents to advance to the final round.

Photo props to Rob

By this point my arm was like quivering tapioca; in retrospect I shouldn’t have played the hour and a half dodgeball game on Wednesday– I hadn’t fully recovered yet. Dang this old age.

The team we’d played in the first round had won all of their games in the loser’s bracket, and we faced them in the finals. Once again we went to 2-2 and had to play a final deciding game. We lost. Since it was a double-elimination tournament, it meant we actually had a second game against them again (both of our teams had only lost once total) for the true championship.

Again, we split the first four games and it came down to a high-pressure game for all the marbles. Things went back and forth, and in the end we emerged triumphant: the tournament champs. They were a great team, and clearly we were very well-matched. Good times for all.

So I went home with a sweet, sweet trophy that probably cost $3.95 at Bob’s Corner Sporting Goods. But hey, the money was for the kids, so it’s all good.

So for many years I’ve been using Konqueror as my default browser, but it’s not being maintained very heavily, so over time there are more and more web sites that don’t work well in it. As a result I’ve had to rely on Firefox more. Sites seem more compatible with Firefox, and the web developer tools are simply amazing for programming work. However, it’s slow as molasses and just doesn’t feel as slick as Konq.

This week I installed Chrome and have been messing with it, and I must say I’m impressed. It’s very simplistic– not many options or controls– but it’s noticeably faster than Firefox and seems to handle everything I throw at it. It even has some decent development tools to aid me in my programming.

So Chrome is now my new default, and we’ll see how it goes. I even installed it for Laralee, who’s been whining about Firefox for a while now.

Rob sent me a hilarious browser comparison, created by Caldwell Tanner over at CollegeHumor:

Holy form 1040, Batman!

I’ve finished my 2009 taxes and packaged everything up to send tomorrow, and it looks like I’m actually going to get a refund! After about ten years straight of owing money every time, it’s sure a nice change to get a little back from the Gov. Now I can buy that candy bar I’ve been saving up for…

Funny.

I’m in the market for a new Bluetooth earpiece for my phone, and I really like the Motorola one I’ve had for a few years (until it gave up the ghost a few months ago). So now I’m poking around Amazon and reading reviews of the newer models, and found some awesome product photos.

Really. I guess this particular model is a top choice of suspicious-looking secret agent guys, and hot astronauts-in-training who also happen to wear biking gloves.

Sold!

Talk about a busy day at the office… I worked on 17 different client projects. Not to mention all of the “internal” stuff like new business, a few conference calls, payroll, and fixing some application code.

At least I found time to play some ultimate. 50 degrees and sunny, yeah!

Topeka, Kansas has officially changed its name to Google. As in, Google, Kansas. The city council voted in favor of it, although the name will only persist for the month of March and will then revert back to Topeka. Does that mean third-grade kids learning their state capitals this month will have to memorize it as Google?

Strangely enough, twelve years ago Topeka renamed itself ToPikachu, in reference to the Pokemon character. Yes, seriously.

Today’s science factoid:

The Chilean earthquake (among the most severe ever measured) shifted the earth’s axis by eight centimeters and shortened the day by 1.26 microseconds.

“It’s worth recognizing that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, ‘Yes, this is obviously where I was going all along.'”

— Bill Watterson