Here’s some disclaimer text from a healthcare eligibility file that I hadn’t really read before which nicely illustrates the conceptual gap (okay, really more of a gaping chasm) between the legal and the real worlds:
Recipient’s receipt and use of the data herein constitute Recipient’s disclaimer of any and all reliance by it on the data [...]
Oh, the prior information I got regarding wireless access from the college library: bogus. Works just fine as long as you have a DNS server address to use.
In other news, we’re 100% moved out of the old place (major kudos to my sweetie for cleaning like a madwoman), and maybe 15% moved into the [...]
Nice — this watch has up to 128 MB of USB-accessible flash memory built in. I’m surprised it’s not digital, though. That’s okay… I’d try to remember how to read an analog watch anyway if it meant always having backups of my most important files. ;>
(link via gizmodo)
80% moved in
Okay, one frivolous post this week. There are some Mac rumors going around about a feature in the next OS version called “piles.” What this lets you do, supposedly, is group related files together within the same directory in a quasi-intuitive way. Here’s a Flash demo to show how it works.
Frankly, one [...]
We now own (20 percent of) a house.
Pictures currently exist of: front exterior, kitchen, dining area, living room (1, 2, 3).
Now commences the craziness of moving. We’re going to try to do everything tomorrow and Saturday. All the other utilities were completely unproblematic, but the freakin’ phone company, thanks to “de”regulation, will [...]
The hotel’s restaurant (named, in a flight of fancy, the “Coffee Garden” to distinguish it from the hotel’s “Characters” sports bar — actually, Boise does have some culture, but you’d never know it from staying here) has a typo in their breakfast menu. One of the section headings reads “HEATHY START”.
The population of the entire state of Idaho is about the same as the population of the Portland Metro Region.
The locals pronounce it “bOY-See,” not “BOizee.”
Telephone surcharges being $1 for the first hour and $0.10/min thereafter (per call, thankfully), I won’t be online much. Which is just as well, considering how much homework I [...]
Adventures of the Human Spell-Checker, Part 31,345,972: A printing business downtown has some vinyl lettering in its windows advertising the various applications for… vinyl lettering. One of the uses: Vechicles. I kid you not.
Naturally, when I went in there to tell them, they said something like, “Wow. Those have been [...]
Very interesting piece in Discover Magazine about an industrial process that turns just about any sort of waste into usable fuels at about 85% efficiency, kills any pathogens that might be present, and even safely disposes of PVC. It doesn’t sound particularly hi-tech, either, which is nice.
But here’s the line that gets the sci-fi [...]
I got an email today from someone via my resume page asking about my availability for a contract gig. Apparently they Googled for “custom vb6 database” — turns out I’m #11 in those results. Wacky!
Gotta love those really cool screensavers. Of course, it’s only available for OS X… so this is mostly in order for the_misha to have another jaw-dropper for his already pretty butt-kickin’ new machine. Here’s a screenshot for everybody else. (=
Quote found at This Modern World:
“It’s untidy. And freedom’s untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”
– Donald Rumsfeld
Would someone get this guy in conference with John Ashcroft, please?
Carfree Cities — interesting website posted by one of my fellow students in an online writing class. Could stand some additional support for the arguments, but I’m going to hazard a guess that the book provides the extra detail. (= I’d absolutely love to live in a city where I could get [...]
Here’s a post from boingboing.net, quoting a post from another blog… and I’m just going to reproduce it here as is for maximum effect.
Firms scramble to own “Shock and Awe” trademark
I’m shocked and awed. Noah blogs on Defense Tech:
One day after the start of Gulf War II, Sony rushed to the U.S. Patent [...]
The next time they declare an International Loony Day, would someone please send me the memo, so I can decide ahead of time whether I want to do something so obviously provocative as ride the bus? I had one person tell me I was a psychopath because I asked him politely not to talk [...]
Groovy. In the space of the past hour or so, I’ve installed MySQL, PHP and phpMyAdmin on my Mac, with a Minimum Of Fuss And Bother. Yay, precompiled binaries!
Some more tidbits:
Video from the International Space Station of an astronaut drinking tea with chopsticks,
Some fascinating (to me, anyway) physics demonstrations involving water droplets in microgravity (yes, I know it’s one click off of the prior page, but the picture’s so pretty I wouldn’t want anyone to miss it),
“A Heuristic Evaluation of the Usability of [...]
The caption for this image read:
Berkeley resident Clay Hinson (R), who was shot once in the chest and twice in the back during an anti-war protest, shows his wounds to an Oakland Police sergeant (L) who takes his statement at the West Oakland train station, April 7, 2003. Oakland police fired rubber bullets and wooden [...]
Must remember to send this to them before the job posting gets deleted for being insultingly underpriced. But not now. Now I sleep.