Thanksgiving Dinner with a Geek
Posted by Administrator in Technology on November 22, 2005
TOP 11 – Signs You’re Having Thanksgiving Dinner with a Geek
11. Dark meat is separated from white meat using a light probe.
10. Everyone mentions broadband, Linux or dual-core processors in their “I am thankful for…” speech.
9. A round of Counter-Strike: Source determines who gets to carve the turkey.
8. House decorated with plush microbes to celebrate the pilgrims bringing diseases to the new world.
7. Someone constantly keeps saying “The pilgrims had coffee, didn’t they?”
6. Plates have a heatsink attached to them so you don’t burn your mouth.
5. The cranberries are caffeinated.
4. Whipped cream for the pumpkin pie made with Dremel.
3. Three words: Lego gravy boat.
2. Pilgrim decorations have red hats instead of black ones.
1. The turkey is given the opportunity for a saving throw before being butchered.
Originally posted on:
BBSpot – Click for full story.
Technology of Killing Mosquitos
Posted by Administrator in Technology on November 21, 2005
Now AmBio, as the company is commonly called, is upping the ante with a “smart” mosquito net, or computerized defense system, to serve the corporate and public health sectors. By the first quarter of 2006, AmBio executives hope to have finalized sophisticated software to control a network of magnets–forming a kind of wide-scale fence–which will be able to communicate with a central network through wireless 802.11b technology.
Originally posted on:
News.com – Click for full story.
Sounds like a fun to me! Now if we can just apply this technology to controlling idoits…
IT Workers Worst Dressed Employees
Posted by Administrator in Slashdot, Technology on November 18, 2005
Poorly Dressed Anonymous Coward wrote to mention are article run in the Syndney Morning Herald saying that IT workers have been dubbed the worst dressed corporate employees. From the article: “Help-desk staff were named as the worst offenders, followed by those working in technology start-ups, many of whom had continued to wear T-shirts to work as a consequence of the casual web culture of the ’90s. ‘The internet is now such a massive industry but people haven’t caught up in terms of their dress’.”
I am offended! I am willing to admit we’re possibly not the best dressed employees in town, but it could be sugnificately worse. I mean really… I could be a professor!
Join IT Support For Abuse and Despair
Posted by Administrator in Slashdot, Technology on November 10, 2005
tomhudson writes “The Register is reporting that IT support people feel abused and frustrated, with 2/3 swearing, almost half being depressed for the rest of the day, and 15% throwing things. Personally, I thinks their stats are off: I’ve thrown a monitor, a laser printer, keyboards, books, CDs, drives, kicked a few chairs, etc. Who hasn’t? What have you thrown lately?”
It takes a special type of person to handle IT. The funny thing is, in my opinion, the best people are those most unlikely to get involved. Keeping your sanity requires a special touch of apathy. You can’t care what people think, or how people feel. I know its been said a million times but you’ll never make everyone happy. Lawyers would make fantastic IT people.
A Whole New World
Posted by dwright in Red, Technology on November 8, 2005
I am in love with a Geek. It’s true… a big brain and lightning fast typing speed is a turn on. With such a love comes a wide range of new experiences however. I would like to take you on a magic carpet ride to the world of “geek” told from an outsiders view. It has been quite an experience trying to learn all the in’s and out’s of the IT world without seeming completely stupid.
First thing that I had to learn was slashdot. Yes, the wonderful world of slashdot….the last viewed page in every geek’s web browser. At first, I thought that this portal to the IT community was simply a page of enjoyment, a place to go when there is no better thing to do at work. I, however, was wrong. It is my firm belief that slashdot has hypnotic powers that are beyond my comprehension. Five, Six, Seven times a day I will see my geek viewing this site. Not much has changed from the last view, maybe a new post or two. Every time though, he goes to the site with anticipation…hoping….praying for new content. To me, this is absolutely silly. I have learned that I sometimes take the backseat to a good Slashdot post. Geeks need their slashdot, and I have just learned to respect that.
The next thing I have learned was that in every room of the house there needs to be some computer equipment. While it is helpful at times to be able to check my email at any point, sometimes such equipment can be excessive. Take for example the VERY large, cumbersome antanea in the upstairs “lab.” This antanea was in fact pointed at the neighbors house for weeks, before I relized that the neighbors probally assumed my geek was taping into their personal lives. The antenea was bought because my geek wanted to broadcast wireless internet to the neighborhood and market it. Well….for a year now that antena has been sitting in the “lab” doing nothing more useful than collecting dust. Why is such equipment so nessecary….well because it is “cool” of course! Why else would you need 17 computer cases, 2 boxes of mice, 2 boxes of keyboards, 37 “semi-functional” hard-drives, 3 non-working wireless network cards, 20 phone modems, 17 motherboards, a broadcasting antena, 295 feet of coax cable, 428 feet of ethnet, 12 access points, 3 routers,a voice of IP box, oh…and a partridge in a Pear tree.
So, in conclusion. Loving a geek isn’t easy…but hey, I guess someone has to do it.
Ajax Is the Buzz of Silicon Valley
Posted by Administrator in Slashdot, Technology on November 7, 2005
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes “Ajax, or ‘Asynchronous JavaScript and XML,’ is allowing webpages to update as quickly as desktop software, powering applications like Google Maps and attracting money from Silicon Valley investors, including for a collaboration-software company called Zimbra. The Wall Street Journal reports: ‘Zimbra’s chief executive, Satish Dhamaraj, says that when he started his company in December 2003, “I really thought that Ajax was just a bathroom cleaner.” Now his San Mateo, Calif., business has amassed $16 million in funding from venture-capital firms including Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Benchmark Capital, the firm that famously funded eBay Inc. Peter Fenton, an Accel partner, says Ajax “has the chance to change the face of how we look at Web applications” and could boost technology spending by corporations, because Ajax is also being used to develop software for big companies, not just for consumers.’
AJAX RULES! We have just started to impliment this technology into our new websites. Although there are still a few browsers in the world which do not support this technology, its definately a set in the right direction. Specific we’ve found the original Safari browsers seem to have problems. For the most part no one is using old Internet Explorer 4, but I have noticed the original safari browser is still out there. This technology makes the websites sugnificately more power.
NetBSD 2.1 Released
Posted by Administrator in Slashdot, Technology on November 7, 2005
jschauma writes “NetBSD for everyone! Lots of news regarding new NetBSD releases: On October 31st, 2005, NetBSD 2.0.3, a source-only security update of the NetBSD 2.0 release, was announced. Since many people are still somewhat confused by the new versioning scheme used in NetBSD, this release was preceeded by an explanation of the NetBSD branches. Only two days after the 2.0.3 announcement, on November 2nd, 2005, NetBSD 2.1 was released. NetBSD 2.1 is the first maintenance release of the netbsd-2 release branch, and was announced with binary distributions for 54 architectures. Primary means of distribution include bittorrent.”
Although I have never used NetBSD, I have heard good things and really support the principle of their project. One of my clients runs a fairly nice e-commerce web site using a pair of old Sparc workstations. These things are 13MHz beasts. All 8MB of RAM is working on this job. I can tell you however in the 3 years i’ve hosted their servers I have never had a single problem. If NetBSD can offer 3 years of uptime using extremely old equipment its defiantely a contender.
Google Desktop 2 Live
Posted by Administrator in Slashdot, Technology on November 7, 2005
An anonymous reader writes “Combining desktop search and the Google Sidebar, Google Desktop 2 is now available for download. Dozens of new third-party sidebar panels are now available, Google said. Also launched was Google Desktop for Enterprise (free).”
We can only hope this one works better then the last. We have a number of “google-heads” in our office who insist on using all the newest technology, often with huge consciences. I am glaf their making an effort to improve desktop search. I am also extremely excited about the prospect of an enterprise solution. We have a NAS device which is approx 300GB. There is no need for 20 workstations to all individually index this massive network share. Its good to know Google is keeping the system administrator in mind while developing these new applications.
Password Unification
Posted by Administrator in Communications, Education, Technology on November 4, 2005
Premise
“Just because you’re big doesn’t mean you have to be dumb.�
First let me point out I’m one of those life-long students. Not because if love college, but because I can never make up my mind on what I want to do. After making some big life changes I decided to take a full year away from school. Yesterday I attempted to register for this coming spring semester to get back on track. Interestingly enough my account has been disabled… sort of… This is where the fun starts.
I expected my account to be disabled, that isn’t the issue here. The problem is how it was disabled, and the messages which I received back from the University. First my account still worked to access class registration, and the University portal but my E-Mail had been completely locked out. This is the main point of my concern. If the university had a unified technology structure the login / password information would be centralized. An account disabled one place should be disabled across campus. Instead some departments disabled my account, and other left it running while I was gone. Worst some parts of the university left it partially running, but unusable.
Strange isn’t it? Why not completely disable my account rather then just PRETEND it works only to give me a nasty permissions error when I attempt to USE the portal which I am already logged into.
Rule #1
“Never let the user see the nasty error.�
Building an application or networked system on any level requires more then just getting the job done. A developer should take the additional time to build functionality for the unexpected. In my case there should have been two things.
1.) A friendly message explaining why my account was disabled.
2.) Directions on how to re-enable my account.
Rule #2
“Avoid the circle of death; take personal responsibility for the problem.�
First I talked to my counselor who said I should talk to computer services. Computer services told me to talk to the registration office. The registration office told me to talk to my counselor. FAIL, never ending loops are bad, not just in programming but in the real world.
This could have been avoided at each step, but instead the problem was passed onto someone else. All someone had to do was research the problem, and they would have known the problem has come up in the past. The eventually solution was to force someone to register my classes over the phone rather then using my account on the Internet.
Rule #3
“Record problems and make proactive steps to resolve known issues.�
I work in IT and I know how incredibility complicated things can get. But it’s important to always take steps to prevent the situation from coming up again. I am sure that I am not the first person to have their account disabled, and because no one is following rule three; I will likely not be the last. A few simple changes to the application would easily fix the problem, but no one cares enough to do anything about it. This means me, THE CUSTOMER, THE STUDENT, THE IDOIT, to run around trying to convenience people to do their job.
Thanks for the warm welcome back akron,