Comcast sucks

Our internet and tv has been out SINCE LAST TUESDAY. We have called and/or live-chatted with Comcast every day about it. Every day, they said it would be 24 hrs. This morning, I called them and after telling them that we've been out that long, I was told that the outage was cleared last thursday. Then I was left on hold for 22 minutes. When a different girl finally picked up, I asked for a supervisor. That girl set up a tech to come out one WEDNESDAY while we waited for the supervisor. AFter ten more minutes, I finally had to give up because I had to get back to work.

Caprica

Anybody been catching Caprica, on SyFy? I saw the pilot and some of the 2nd episode. So far, it's a pretty cool concept, especially the way they have explained the creation of the Ceylons.

Basically, young people go into a cyber world, where they interact with other people online. Like World of Warcraft, except there it's much more realistic-looking and they log in with a little 3-D headset, that looks like it directly beams into your brain.
One teenage girl gets the idea of basically "Googling" herself and accumulating all the information on herself that's been collected over the years; everything from school records to ATM cameras. In this SyFy world there are far more "Big Brother" devices than here on earth. She creates an avatar of herself from this and dumps it into the "World of Warcraft"-type online cyber game.
Then she gets killed, but her avatar lives on in cyberspace. Her father finds out about it and, missing his dead daughter, logs on and interacts with her. After a while, he decides he wants her in the real world and downloads her avatar into the first Ceylon.

Cool Technology

Damn! That's my Problem!

Jesus, Microsoft. You do Suck

After taking a few days off for the holidays, I returned to discover that Windows needs to install 60 updates to my work computer. I unfortunately clicked ok.

My pc has been bogged down all day, bringing productivity to a crawl.

I've had to reboot TWICE so far, causing Norton's to activate a new scan each time, further killing productivity.

Windows also wants to install "Windows Advantage", aka "We want to approve everything you do".

I now have IE 8, whoop de fucking do. Now, none of the shit I had embedded in anything is visible anymore.

FUCK YOU Microsoft. I'm installing Firefox at work as soon as I get a chance.

Does this make anyone nervous?

From an article in the April edition of COTS journal.

The article is about UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) in development by the military. The following line caught my attention:

As the largest UAV yet built in the UK, its computing payload will be able to autonomously control the aircraft to taxi, take off, and navigate its way to a search area while reacting to any threats or other events. It will then route its way around the search area in whichever way it wants to, locate the target, and then use its sensor system to transmit a series of images and views back to the operator to confirm it is the target to be attacked. Then, once it has been authorized to do so, it autonomously attacks that target, routes its way back home, lands and taxies back. Ground testing is expected to take place in early 2009, with the first flight trials taking place in 2010.

Seen any of those Terminator movies? What's the worst that could happen?

Buy Stock in Battery Companies

You may recall, I did a post on the pitfalls of electric vehicles. The major one being the batteries that would be required.
According to NPR's series on the power grid, The Messiah also wants more green energy, like wind and solar.
The big problem is that wind and solar aren't reliable or consistent. This means your lights would be constantly getting brighter and darker; your electronics would be having a fit. In a word, unworkable.
The only solution to this is to store some of that power, so that the grid can smoothly ride through the valleys. The most likely source of that storage would be batteries.

"You put a large number of small batteries around a neighborhood," Gyuk says, "just like the neighborhood transformers — just a little green box that's innocuous."

By small, he means about the size of the battery in a hybrid car, and it would be hooked up to the grid.

They didn't say how many batteries would be needed, but a safe bet would be that the number would be in the thousands. Manufacturing and disposal? We'll worry about that later. By the way, batteries don't live very long in hot environments, so if you want any longevity, look to be putting those batteries in air conditioned sheds.

Remember! It's all for the environment!

Energy independance

The democrat freefall has begun. That idiot, Waxman (of Beverly Hills) has been elected to run the House Energy and Commerce committee. That'll be great. We can look forward to plenty of moronic global warming BS, further crippling our economy.

Meanwhile, the Fruits and Nuts Mecca, San Fransisco, has announced it's going to be the electric car capital. I'm going to look forward to the video of the EVs running out of juice halfway up those cliffs SF calls streets.

And then, this morning, NPR does a story on electric cars. They point out that the materials for the batteries come from other countries that are arguably even worse than the middle east.
Lithium-ion batteries require large amounts of cobalt, which comes primarily from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, Tibet and Siberia.
Lithium comes from Bolivia.
Lead Acid is still out there, but it doesn't have the energy density, it's heavy, and lead is banned from most products anyway.

All that, and there currently aren't any batteries that will last 100K miles. Nobody says how frequently the batteries will need to be replaced, at what cost, or what environmental impact that will have.

One guy wisely pointed out that governments shouldn't put all their eggs in one technology's basket. That makes sense, except that it's going to be hard to standardize around anything when there is no standard in use. How do you get EV plug-in stations when there are so many Hydrogen cell cars, or ethanol, or whatever else. How much are lithium ion batteries going to cost when half the cars are using nickel metal hydride?

But then again, good luck getting the federal government to NOT try to paint the country with one, broad brush. Standardization is what it does.

Either way, the liberal seem to be right on track to screwing things up.

Switching over to Digital

Ooooooo...Fancy

Mrs Schwartz had to get a fancy new phone; a Motorola imitation of the iphone, with the fancy touchscreen and the scrolly software.

The funny part is that she has no idea how to operate it, so she is currently talking to her family on my plain old razor.

HA haaa.

UPDATE: I just got flipped off.

Queen Nancy's Strategy

I read this a while ago, but haven't had time to comment on it. Politico had an article out that outlines the democrats' strategy for making sure you keep paying more at the pumps.

Basically, it comes down to Nancy taking all the heat on no-drilling, while secretly telling at-risk democrats to scream like they want drilling, in order to get re-elected. All the while, Nancy will block the issue from coming to a vote and the rest of the democrats will tell their voters that they they are doing all they can.

Nancy doesn't have to worry about her job, since the dirty hippies that make up her district will only love her more for 'sticking it to Big Oil'. (cause they're dumb, that way).

Sadly, the rupublicans are dumb enough to play right into this. Notice that they had their big temper tantrum, bringing more attention and focus on Nancy, exactly as she wants.

Instead, they should be hammering the news with the point that the other democrats are in on this scam. Take the long view, republicans. Your first goal should be to get more seats in congress, so you can get rid of Nancy and Harry.

“There is no crisis on our side of the aisle,” a top House Democratic leadership aide said. “We have a plan, and we will stick to it.”

Want Lower Gas Prices Now?

The left has been fighting the idea of domestic drilling with the argument that it will not give immediate relief to high gas prices. While it's true that the oil wouldn't hit the market immediately, that's not a reason not to do it.

If the country had ignored them when the tree huggers were saying that in the 80's, we'd have it now. Besides, it's not like the internal combustion engine is going to disappear anytime soon. But there are other reasons.

When Bush retracted the ban on offshore drilling, gas prices dropped a nickel. This is because of oil speculators. If the US began domestic drilling, the market would respond in two ways. First, the speculators, as before. Second, the market would respond to the fact that we are seeking other sources. We would have leverage in the market. Opec has shown in the past that, when we pursue other sources for energy, they suddenly decide to pump more oil and prices drop. The want to keep us on the teat.

But there is a more direct way to drop prices. Eliminate the tariff on imported ethanol. Currently, there is a 54 cents/gallon tariff on ethanol imported from places like Brazil. We could drop the price of gas overnight.

Why don't we do it? Blame your local corn farmer. Even though it is not feasible to make ethanol from corn, the farmers have got enough Midwestern congressmen in their pockets that there will not be a change that effectively puts those farmers out of the ethanol subsidy business.

Should we be Drilling?

This image is from the Energy Information Administration, the official energy statistics from the US government.

Toyota Maintenace

I was driving to work this morning when my "MAINT REQ'D" light came on. I'm old enough to have grown up with the "OIL" light being the primary dashboard light. When your "OIL" light came on, that meant you had seconds to get your engine stopped before doing serious damage. Take your time, and your engine will seaze up. So when a light come on, I have that brainwashed feeling of panic that it's important. With my Nissan, I learned that the "CHK ENG" light typically meant that the O2 sensor was whacky because I had not tightened the gas cap enough.
Immediately after seeing the "MAINT REQ'D" light, I noticed that my odometer was reading exactly 5000 miles. That told me that this was probably some stupid maintenance thing.
Sure enough, I do a web search and there are a zillion hits on how to turn this stupid light off. It turns out that you are supposed to reset it after an oil change, so that it will remind you to do the next oil change. Apparently the non-dealer garage that I had my oil change done at, is not familiar with this feature.

How Cool is this?

Mrs Schwartz found these cool heart-shaped heating pads. They were 50% off because they were all already activated. Once we read the directions, which explained how to reset them, we were ready to go.

Pre-set, they look like they are filled with a clear liquid, resembling water. Once you "CLICK" the little heart inside, the chemical reaction is initiated. It's exothermic, so they are a great heating pad.
We got them at Bed Bath and Beyond.

What a pathetic effort.

I got this spam today:

First, that's not my email address. I don't know who vlr_dckns@yahoo.com is.
Second, check "Adrian's" address: "Adrian Numbers" john.naughton@comcast.net

Is Adrian even a girls' name?

Compromises

There is a constant battle in design work, between the perfect design and getting something to market.
I understand that. The company has limited resources. We need to get product designed and shipped.
Still. It bugs me when I know I am taking short cuts because there's a deadline.
If it were just me, I could get past it by working more, but sometimes it's because other company resources aren't there.

I hate that.

When toasters attack

For some reason, the electronics in my house are rebelling. My ceiling fans have remote controls, so they have these little receiver modules.
My bedroom ceiling fan quit working all together. I traced it to the module. I tried to bypass it, but it backfed into the module and shorted something.
Then, on the same day, my other ceiling fan decided it would not allow my to adjust the light. The fan works, and the light comes on fully bright, but I can't dim the light or turn it off with the remote.
Did a comet pass the earth yesterday?

Get with it, Docs

Why don't doctors' offices use email for contact? That would be so much easier than all this voicemail crap.
Refills? Referals? Questions?

Ugh! Get with it!

Website of the Day

That would be...

When Will Amy Winehouse Die . com

She's taken more drugs than Kieth Richards, and she weighs in at about 45 lbs, and her teeth are falling out from the drugs, allegedly (don't sue me).