For those who work on bus or maybe have to deal with this at work, I present Pat Williams, defensive tackle for the Minnesota Vikings, weighing in at 300+ pounds:
Pat Williams – “Yes, I’m playing next week.“
In other news, I’m somewhat surprised how many stars are on my map. Kinda spiffy.
Slashdot Poll: I Backup My Personal Data..
First post:
Backup? Never.
My personal data isn’t worth backing up.
—
Slackware 12.2 Released
“Well folks, it’s that time to announce a new stable Slackware release again. So, without further ado, announcing Slackware version 12.2! Since we’ve moved to supporting the 2.6 kernel series exclusively (and fine-tuned the system to get the most out of it), we feel that Slackware 12.2 has many improvements over our last release (Slackware 12.1) and is a must-have upgrade for any Slackware user.”
First post:
Great Work!
I’m sure both of you still using Slackware will be very pleased!
Reply:
I’m sure both of you still using Slackware will be very pleased!
There’s somebody else?
Don’t complain. You don’t have to read this.
Oh, this morning (3AMish) I was editing some PowerTrip morning show. Funniest stuff I’ve heard in a long while. Then I realized: no one is going to listen to this. I closed without saving. Probably lost thirty minutes of work.
I found out this morning around 4AM that my old Belkin router actually works just fine. The problem is Windows XP, not the router. Windows XP doesn’t natively support WPA2. A little quote from Neosmart:
The only problem? Windows XP isn’t compatible with WPA2-secured networks without a special update for WPA2 encryption support. That’s understandable, after all, WPA2 didn’t come out until after Windows XP SP2. But the problem is, it’s not even on Windows Update! Windows Update, always quick on the mark with the monthly Malicious Software Removal tool and other recommended updates surprised us by not showing the littlest inkling that there was an update as important to security as WPA2 available for download. It’s been available for manual download – only with Genuine Advantage validation – from Microsoft since May 2005… That’s a long time to be waiting! ((Direct Download Link: KB893357))
So, I didn’t know that I had turned on WPA2 and that XP didn’t support it. I know I had turned on WPA on my router because I knew that WEP is worthless, but I guess I must have tried WPA2 also. After turning on WPA2, I couldn’t connect to the network. Quick conclusion? Something’s wrong with the router. So I dropped $40 on one and I didn’t have too. Hurray.
Ok, well, I don’t really have much to say, it’s just been so long that I (almost) feel bad.
I haven’t read Slashdot in a while. I just opened it up a few minutes ago and saw:
Doctor Performs Amputation By Text Message 2008-12-03 18:50
Posted by samzenpus on 2008.12.03 18:50
from the l33t-5ki11z dept.
Medicine
Peace Corps Online writes "Vascular surgeon David Nott performed a life-saving amputation on a boy in DR Congo following instructions sent by text message from a colleague in London. The boy’s left arm had been ripped off and was badly infected and gangrenous; there were just 6in (15cm) of the boy’s arm remaining, much of the surrounding muscle had died and there was little skin to fold over the wound. ‘He had about two or three days to live when I saw him,’ Nott said. Nott, volunteering with the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, knew he needed to perform a forequarter amputation requiring removal of the collar bone and shoulder blade and contacted Professor Meirion Thomas at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital, who had performed the operation before. ‘I texted him and he texted back step by step instructions on how to do it,’ Nott said."
Pretty amazing, but that’s not why I posted that. Recently, Slashdot has begun letting users tag stories with relevant words to group similar stories. For instance, some of the tags for this story are "science, medicine, sms," and the one that made me laugh and is the reason for this whole post, "canyouhearmenow."
(Tags have to be one word: "can you hear me now" would be five separate, unrelated tags.)
In other, unrelated news, after the Wild’s 6-5 loss to the Avelanche, Tenna-B (aka Brandon Mileski), the producer of the Common Man program, guaranteed the Common Man that in their next game the Wild would not give up 4 goals. As a matter of fact, he went so far as to say that if the Wild would give up four goals, he would pack up and leave town.
Good thing they won 4-0.
I can’t find the official stat, but Monday – the aforementioned 6-5 loss to the Avs – was the first time in team history that the Wild lost a game when they had scored 5 goals. I think they were around 65-0-1. That’s pretty impressive.
This happened Friday, Nov 1, 2008. Yesterday.
Warning. This will be long.
I’m getting ahead of myself. In the past, my posts have sometimes or even often showcased:
Now my English is not the best, but I will try to improve it by actually using what I know. So, I offer my apology and promise to try to improve my posts. Now, on with the story.
Bethany got a new cell phone. To be more accurate, her family got new cell phones, but her family is in Iowa and she is in Oklahoma. Her phone was mailed to her. I believe she received it last Friday after work. She was ill Saturday so I believe she activated the cell phone over the phone on Monday. Maybe it was not Monday, but that does not really have a significant bearing on the story.
Now the problem that probably many people face – getting the contacts off the old phone and on to the new. Most people probably just go in to the store with both phones in hand and demand the current phone company help them. However, considering our past experience with US Cellular (note – my parents and sister and I are with AT&T; when I say we/our, I mean Bethany and I), I thought that alternative routes should probably be sought out first, with US Cellular being the last resort. I do not believe I have told the story of “last time we went to US Cellular,” but, trust me, you do not want it included here. Suffice to say it was not good; perhaps I will post that story some other time.
Sorry, I did it. I got ahead of myself and forgot something. I pardon myself with the excuse that I do not remember exactly where this goes in the story, but I got the model number of the phone from her so I could look it up to see what it offered. Whether this happened before she actually got the phone or not I do not remember. I looked at several sites, and nothing extraordinary jumped out at me, but considering the kind of phone she had, it did offer some improvements. For those interested, the old model is an LG ux245 and the new one is an LG ux300 – blue. You can compare the models if you wish, but the most noticeable improvement to me seemed to be the blue tooth – it now claimed to support file sharing, among other things.
This is where things get very complicated. To say that a device supports blue tooth doesn’t really mean much – the question is, what blue tooth “features” does it support. There are many: serial port, audio gateway, file sharing/object push, dial up networking, PIM/vCard… there is no point in listing them all. Then, once you know it supports a feature, there is the question of how it supports it. For example, Ben Jordan’s phone supports file sharing but will not accept MP3 files. Also there is the question of whether it supports sending/receiving multiple files or contacts – and those two are not the same thing.
So, Bethany comes to work, and I want to see what her new phone/blue tooth actually does. She has no contacts on her new phone, so I turn on blue tooth on both our phones, pair them, and send a contact. Success. I try sending multiple contacts. Success again. Wonderful! Later I tried sending several photos and, again, it received all of them. Again, wonderful! So the new phone supports receiving multiple contacts and multiple files. Oh, but if things were only that simple…
I haven’t played TF2 in a long while, but here are a couple audio files that I have mentioned before, just so y’all knows what I’ms talking about:
Heavy – We Must Push Little Cart!
Yes, the heavy sounds quite Russian. Enjoy…
Quite a funny clip from a TV show. Has to do with Microsoft’s Zune MP3 player. Take a look.
I come across all sorts of things on the internet – I’m sure you do too – and so many of them just leave me speechless. I was using Stumbleupon and came across this. What leaves me speechless is that someone is smart enough to do that, and that someone smart enough to do that would actually take the time to make something that seems so pointless. Is the idea to clear the board? Or is the idea to show that it is impossible to clear the board? I don’t know, but I’m not going to devote enough time to find out.
"The World Bank Group’s computer network — one of the largest repositories of sensitive data about the economies of every nation — has been raided repeatedly by outsiders for more than a year, FOX News has learned. It is still not known how much information was stolen. But sources inside the bank confirm that servers in the institution’s highly-restricted treasury unit were deeply penetrated with spy software last April. Invaders also had full access to the rest of the bank’s network for nearly a month in June and July. In total, at least six major intrusions — two of them using the same group of IP addresses originating from China — have been detected at the World Bank since the summer of 2007, with the most recent breach occurring just last month. In a frantic midnight e-mail to colleagues, the bank’s senior technology manager referred to the situation as an ‘unprecedented crisis.’ In fact, it may be the worst security breach ever at a global financial institution. And it has left bank officials scrambling to try to understand the nature of the year-long cyber-assault, while also trying to keep the news from leaking to the public."
"If you’re going to market your expertise by inviting 1,200 IT professionals to a seminar about securing data and protecting personal information, it’s probably a good idea to protect the personal information of those you invite. On Tuesday, Verizon forgot that advice and blasted each of the 1,200 email addresses to everyone on the list … and they did it 17 times."
"Our wonderful government here in the UK has decided we’re not being surveilled enough, and agreed to spend £12 billion on a programme to monitor every Briton’s phone calls, e-mails, and internet usage. According to various sources, upwards of £1 billion has already been spent on the uber-database. Rationale? Terrorism, of course (no prizes for guessing). Needless to say, not everyone is as happy as Larry over this: Michael Parker pointed out how us Brits are being ’stalked.’ I’m just looking forward to when the data gets lost."
"Seems like nobody can keep their data under wraps these days. On the heels of the World Bank piece about massive penetrations of their servers, the British Ministry of Defense has lost a hard drive with the personal details of 100,000 serving personnel in the British armed forces, and perhaps another 600,000 applicants. This comes on the heels of the MoD losing 658 of its laptops over the past four years and 26 flash drives holding confidential information. Apparently the MoD outsources this stuff to EDS, which is under fire for not being able to confirm that the data was or was not encrypted."
These all seem to go quite well with the quote of the day at the bottom of the slashdot page:
While you recently had your problems on the run, they’ve regrouped and are making another attack.
