Mostly Harmless

Mostly about my amusement

Year: 2009 (page 3 of 17)

November 18, 2009

Ice cream anyone?

At work I had offered months ago to walk over to Carvel on 2nd Avenue between 24th and 23rd streets.  This was in return for the help I had gotten from the NOC.  It was turning into an on going joke and today when I was reminded about it I said “It’s not too cold, why not today?” and took orders.

I headed out for the ice cream run and this is what I found.

Photo

Nice! They went out of business. Probably just to spite me. I took the photo because no way the guys were going to believe this. My timing is still perfect.

November 17, 2009

Borderland 2nd Pass through

I completed the game Borderlands and I’ve started the second pass through the game.  It’s the same as the first time but all of your opponents are juiced up to your level or above. It’s hard for a game publisher to keep the game going. It’s still great fun but I can see this getting too repetitive soon.

Beating the bosses is fun. You meet the boss monster, you die, you run and get leveled up completing other missions. Then you go back and wipe out that boss. I have not gotten to a big boss in the second pass through yet but I expect it to be much the same as the first time.

November 12, 2009

Get your red hot WordPress 2.8.6

WordPress 2.8.6 is out and it’s a security release so update now.

I’m expecting the usual complaints on the support forum but so far it’s been pretty sedate. I’ve been using WordPress since version 1.5.2 and I’ve never had a bad upgrade. Of course, I have a good idea what I’m doing and have never used the automated upgrade process, so your mileage may vary.

As is usual, using SVN only took me a few minutes to upgrade 6 blogs on 3 different machines.

November 8, 2009

DPReview’s Canon 7D review

I purchased my Nikon D300s for a simple reason: I was sold on the D300 and I’m a stickler for getting the current model. I’ve been very satisfied with it.

Now Canon has come out with the 7D which lines up directly against the D300s. DPReview has a really good in-depth write-up of the Canon 7D. Look at this page for a comparison of the 7D, D300s, and the Pentax K-7. No surprises there, but what I found interesting is that the K-7 is much cheaper and yet competes with the two big boys.

I’ve invested in Nikon and unless they suddenly go out of business, I’m not getting a new DSLR system.  But for new buyers Pentax might be a workable option.

November 4, 2009

The most important election was decided last night

This morning I heard the results of an election I was following: NY-23 went to Bill Owens.

Just to be clear, NY-23 is a district that is on the Canadian border and except for it being a special election it was no big deal. What made it a big deal is that when a moderate was selected to be the Republican candidate, prominent national Republican groups went ape. So the other Republican candidate ran on the conservative ticket and trashed Dede Scozzafava. And of course these prominent national figures played the “Purge the Party! Get rid of all the RINOs!” song.

Toss in President Obama’s name and you get people around the country weighing in just for the press (yes I do mean that Alaskan Quitter and professional public speaker).

So now Bill Owens is going to represent NY-23. The Republicans will keep going after their loyalty oath and any moderates in the national spotlight will have to change their spots or lose any hope of getting re-elected. Any chance of these geniuses getting it is out the window.

This is not a gun totting white-christian only country. Most people I know are moderates. It’s just that the radicals on both side of the aisle get most of the press. I don’t want a radical government from either side, I want one that will actually solve problems without violating the law or sacrifice the constitution for security. This name calling and purging of people in the middle is just plain stupid.

November 1, 2009

IT Band-aid solutions

This is what happens when you want to save money. You work around problems. See that power strip above my PC? It’s super velcro’ed to my desk.

it-band-aid

My PC has been acting up for a while this year. After a few hours of usage, it gets to a point that if I need to restart the PC, it’s 50/50 if it will come back to life. The common denominator is that if I leave my PC plugged into the power socket over night, I won’t be able to use my PC in the morning.

I would have to reach behind my PC and pull the cord out of the power supply. I don’t know if it’s the power supply or the mother board, but I don’t want to spend any money on this machine. I just got into the habit of pulling the plug when I shut the PC down.

That’s not very technical so today I went to Radio Shack and picked up a power strip and some super velcro. I stuck the strip onto the side of my desk and have my PC, speakers, monitor, and WD MyBook plugged in. When I shut down the computer, I wait till it’s fully off and toggle the strip’s on off switch.

It’s low tech but does the job for now.

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Jan Dembowski

Jan Dembowski

I am a software enthusiast who is easily amused and definitely mostly harmless.

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