Google Wave kills MS Exchange dead

That wouldn't that be cool? And the sauce is open!

http://wave.google.com/about.html

Apple compact USB keyboard FAIL

I needed to run a few simple tests booted to Knoppix on my Mac Mini but the Mini refused to boot to the cd drive, despite me holding down the "c" key during boot. I resorted to using the Startup Disc applet in the System Preferences and finally I was able to boot to Knoppix.
I ran my tests in Knoppix and rebooted, ejecting the Knoppix cdrom. I expected the Mini to boot into OS X since that was the only boot volume available.

Guess what? The screen turns black and there's a message saying there is "no bootable device." Yay!

I scurried off to google and the Apple formus to find a solution. I tried every key combination they suggested and none worked. After wasting an hour trying everything short of defenestrating the Mini, I stumbled over a post suggesting my compact Apple keyboard was blame. Turns out these compact, USB aluminum keyboards Apple makes are incapable of producing the signals required to do important stuff like access the boot manager, reset the nvram etc.

In short, they are not real Apple keyboards.

I had to attach a full-sized,  Apple keyboard to invoke the boot manager. What bullshit!

My thanks to Apple for charging me $50 for a crippled keyboard.

Bacon on the grill

If you have a bbq fire that's burning low and slow, try cooking some bacon on it. You need to keep the bacon away from the coals so it doesn't catch fire. You want to cook it "indirectly," i.e. you want the heat and smoke from the coals and or wood but you want the fire on one side of the grill and the bacon on the other. Man, it's good!

check-as-you-type spell checkers are bad

Urgh. I just realized why so many people misuse the apostrophe these days. If you type "CDROMs" into a post on slashdot or the like, the automatic spelling checker flags the string as a misspelling. The user needs only to add an apostrophe before the "s" and the spell checker is satisfied.

Just another example of computers making people dumber.

Ingredient List

www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/19/penguin-cook-book

Oh poo. Blogger.com does not support animated gifs.

porfreeder needid

Dyndns.com is a great service but they seem to be in need of a proofreader.

"A nameserver is a computer that answers questions about domain names, such as IP addresses."

http://www.dyndns.com/support/kb/what_is_dns.html#how

This is what happens when you try to dumb stuff down too much. The goofy graphics don't help either.

Volcanic Fallout Curtails Air Travel in Europe

I'm in awe of this Icelandic volcano's effect on European airline travel. Just think of how fscked Europe would be if they did not have a great rail system. Not that the trains can accommodate all the stranded air passengers but the situation would be vastly worse without them.

If you were a jingoistic, teabagger type you might say, "we have nothing to learn from the Europeans." Since I'm not one of the aforementioned knownothings I'll say, "we need a high speed rail system connecting the twenty largest cities in the U.S. and screw the mission to Mars." The rail system would employ vastly more people (of all skill levels) than a Mars mission and it's actually needed.

Let this rail system be a mix of public and private operators for all I care as long as it works. We'll be especially glad we built it when one of our own volcanoes erupts.

Trampstamp Barbie

This made me want to hurl.

Defendor

Not a bad flick. Has some funny moments. Kat Dennings looked too healthy and fleshy to play a crack whore. By fleshy I don't mean fat; I mean curvy in a good way. Kat looks great but crack whores are supposed to be emaciated. I'm pretty sure you lose all interest in food when you become a crack addict.

Osprey crashes AGAIN

Osprey down!

 Damn. They should have killed this project 20 years ago. Afghanistan is dangerous enough without our guys having to fly around in those deathtraps. Can you even bail out from one of those things without being chopped up? Apparently they don't do auto-rotation well enough to crash land like most helicopters. I read somewhere that even Dick Cheney called this project a "turkey."

dropped vs dropped

I love how the creative geniuses (rappers) who are driving our popular culture are weakening the already tenuous ability of American English to convey simple ideas.
These days a new album or book "drops" onto the shelves; ex: "Yo homes, the new Jay-Z joint just dropped."
Until recently "dropped" meant something had been removed or deleted from an inventory. "I dropped that literature class. There were no podcasts for any of the books." Or, "the author was dropped by his publisher."
Once again thanks, you ignorant thugs, for making it more difficult for us old snowflakes to understand wtf you're trying to say.

Who added Joe?

They should have added a string of drool hanging off Joe's lip. Or maybe that's not Joe in the picture. Maybe it's the Windows admin who just realized he added Joe to the domain admin group.
He does look like a Windows admin :)

TD Banknorth Garden

I almost don't want to call it The Garden anymore. It's been Disneyfied. It is now a sterile theme park for corporate weasels and their overstuffed brats. You can't go there and just see a basketball game anymore. These days seeing a Celtics game means being deafened by hideously loud pop music and blinded by giant plasma displays which are 2x brighter than the court. I guess this transformation was inevitable but that doesn't make it any easier to take. If you don't object to being bombarded from every direction with adverts for the entire game, the new Garden will suite you fine. Would all that flashing electronic signage would be dangerous to someone with epilepsy?
I wonder if there is a venue anywhere in the U.S. where you can see an NBA game without the ridiculous multimedia circus. I doubt it.
Give me the obstructed views, rats and cigarette smoke of the old Boston Garden any day. The place had soul.

Ethernet Broadcast

I just took an exam and flubbed a question regarding broadcasting. During the exam I was thinking, "broadcasts are an IP thing since they are sent to 1.1.1.1."
I had forgotten (or never learned) that Ethernet devices can send broadcasts to FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF which is the MAC address equivalent of 1.1.1.1.