Moo.

I've been greeted at my door step.

And promptly had to bump the elf to one side.

Figure Prints

So, my order shipped the other day. I should have a Raga by the end of the week. Pics to follow. :)

Toot toot toot!

Behold my horn!

Quickies!

First up is a confirmed holy cow for your reading pleasure. I think they said his name was Mooses?

And last but not least, I got my trumpet last night. You should be amazed at my personal impression of the sound a cat makes when it gets tossed in bath water. Pics will follow later. ;)

Tooting my own horn.

So I took the plunge last night and decided to order a trumpet. I'm really not sure how I feel about this but I figured it'd be fun to give it a try. The price wasn't too bad and it wasn't too cheap-o either so hopefully I picked a good one to start with.

We'll see!

LHC Smashes a Tevatron!

Huh? Ooook... they're smashing particles. Still this article is rather amusing from The Register. If anything I really need to invest in a crowbar just in case!

Sinkholes!

Behold the sink hole just outside my wall! In just a year or two that sink hole grew over three inches in depth till the concrete slab was ripped out tonight and it gets filled in.

On the Shelf...

So, Bullhoof sits on my dresser right now next to an elf. I did some thinking last night and decided to not condemn him to an eternity of sitting next to an elf the rest of his days. Next month she should arrive I'm guessing and I'll post a picture of them when she does.

Obviously he will still be sitting next to the elf, but she will be on the other side so she doesn't sit next to the elf. ;) Now I just have to find a small keg to put there with them.

It's dark, I think I'll shine a Torchlight...

Sometimes a game comes along that is just really good. This is one of those times, like Plants vs. Zombies this game is the bees knees.

Check out a trailer for Torchlight here.

Check out the Torchlight game sight here.

And yes, it plays just like Diablo 1 only much more updated. :)

Holy Ubuntu's Batman!

So today I sat down with my netbook, which is an EEE PC 1000 40G, and I was greeted by an upgrade notice from my operating systems update feature. It told me there was a new version of Ubuntu out that I could download and install. In a nut shell, my little PC would upgrade the whole operating system from 9.04 to 9.10.

Being of sound mind and not wanting to lose anything I backed up everything in my home directory to a USB drive and said, "Ok! Sure!" What happened next is the stuff of legends, something even Microsoft has yet to achieve in all their Windows 7 glory. The operating system downloaded all the files necessary for the upgrade and installed everything without a hitch. I didn't even have to restore from my backup, everything was just there.

Now I realize everyone has different hardware and things going on their systems but for my configuration of hardware and what I was expecting (DOOM) I was really shocked to see it go smoothly. It went better then my Windows 7 install which was easy peasy from the DVD it installed from because I didn't have to wipe the drive or anything.

After everything installed and I booted up things looked different.



I have to say it was a great experience and things look snazy and respond very nicely.

More pics!

The hole starts to close!

More here!

For those that keep track of Linux things...

Specifically...

Some More Pictures!

I has more pictures, first my wall and lack of bookshelf. (qq)

Check out the rest here!

Daily HAHAs!

First up, a pigeon is faster then the internet at sending data! In South Africa a pigeon beat the countries leading internet service provider in a time of 2 hours and 6 minutes, half of which was flight time for the pigeon and the other half downloading the data from the hard drive it carried. Meanwhile the ISP only transmitted 4% of the data during that period.

Next up, last night President Obama gave his speech about health care on TV. Regardless of what side of the fence you sit on for this issue, I found something quite amusing about the whole deal. Before his speech began last night a reporter on CNN commented on how he'd face a tough crowd and how our legislation is not like the British legislation where they got hecklers and whatever else going on in there. In a sense they said we were more polite and respectful. I have to admit, it was quite an amusing build up to this.

Work or not work?

Someone said to me yesterday that I spent a lot of time solving technical problems and must be tired.

Recently I finished a loan disbursement application for the financial aid office at the college I work at. It grabs all the students loan disbursement information, packages it in to PDF files, and mails the files to the students school email accounts.

There were technical bugs, but things worked out and I ended up replacing a system that was originally running on Cobol and doing line printer output with a nice neat form. Now that it's done the application is working and people are saving money on printing and postage costs. (5000 letters is a lot of stamps!)

I feel like I didn't do any work, I just had fun.

Repairs...

So recently four of the floor boards under my bed supporting the floor rotted away on the one side of the house. Here's the pic's of the start of the repair work!

Tute my flute!

So I finished it and most likely it's not perfect but it plays! Though I can't play a tune so; yeah. It was still fun to make though.

Adaptive Eyecare

I'm not sure if it's snake oil or actually something good but I found it interesting either way.

First up a man by the name of Stephen Kurtin is working on a pair of glasses that has an adjustable slider for you to twink your prescription on the fly. It's pretty cool and you can check it out here.

Next up is Joshua Silver, he's apparently made an adjustable pair of glasses that are simple to use. To adjust your sight just add or remove water. He's a professor at Oxford and has a project going on for third world countries to get his glasses.

All and all interesting stuff to read about, though I'm not sure how valid it really is.

Inspirational Poster!

I had my first bout of inspiration today after watching gold farmers rain trolls down in Orgimmar. Please don't visit the link in the picture, I can not verify if it's safe to do so. Just admire it for the art.

World of Goo

Physics and fun wrapped in to one! The goal is to get as many goo balls in to the pipe by shaping them in to various forms so they can reach the pipe! Think of it as Lemmings with physics. :)

World of Goo

All the world is a buzz about something...

And this guy was buzzzzzzzzy.

Moving Day...

I has a new cubical. Last week a guy who's been in my department for 30 years retired. My boss decided to keep the cubical so I got moved. Now I have a large picture window of the campus. :D We'll see how long this lasts since there were other people interested in it but I got it because it had all the 30 year guys files. >_>

Drying, drying, drying...

So I'm waiting 18-24 hours after putting a coat of Limseed oil on my flute. During this time I've come to the realization that I'm bored so I went and cut down another stalk of bamboo. This time I'm making a pan pipe as the flute dries.

Oddly enough the first pipe sounds much better then the flute did initially. Then again I'm not worrying about drilling holes in it, just sanding it down good and trying to come up with a way to tie them all together nicely once I finish the other pipes. I guess I'll look up pan pipes now to make sure I have the right number of pipes and get the sizes I need for each pipe. :P

Update: Found a guide!

Flutes...

I've been tinkering on a side project slowly. I've been building a bamboo flute. It's not the greatest of creations but it's my first and it actually makes half decent sounds. Don't ask me to play a tune right or if it's in tune. I have no clue, it's just cool to mess around with.

Update: This afternoon I applied a coat of Limseed oil over it. I'll see how it looks tomorrow after it dries. Right now it's hanging in the basement and drying.

I finished my walk...

Windows 7 Tonight

So.. tonight I'm going to try and install Windows 7 on my Windows drive along with WoW and Vent. We shall see how this works. Worse comes to worse I log in for raid tonight and have no vent under Ubuntu. :P

Alliance and Guilds

So I decided to start an Alliance guild for when I'm over A-side on Nim. I'm now taking signatures for Tauren Gone Bouncy. >_>

I went for a walk today...

and I took my camera with me.

Nim has Arrived!

Behold!

Obama JibJab!

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

The Next Blog >> Button

So I decided to take a little virtual trip today. I clicked on that Next Blog >> button like crazy. I saw all kinds of neat things from pages that look like they fell off My Space to some really nifty looking blogs. The travel adventure was also world wide so I got to see a little of everything, including that one annoying Italian politicians blog that came up 200 times on a random Next Blog >> tour. >_>

So take a trip down Next Blog >> if you haven't, keep in mind if you hit a blog that has no bar at the top, use the back button on your browser to go to the previous blog and then hit the reload page button on your browser. This will randomly generate a new blog to go to when you click on Next Blog >>.

Voting

I don't care for politics too much, especially in other countries since it's none of my business but I hope someone does answer their question since they seem to think their vote was stolen over there in Iran.

I hope the people of Iran get an honest and truthful answer as well as their wish for transparent, open, and honest elections. I don't think they'd make that big and amazingly peaceful of a fuss if something wasn't rotten in Tehran.

Netbook Rambling

Last year I bought an Asus EEE 701 4G netbook. It had the small 7" screen and tiny keyboard but it was a dream come true for work. Low powered computer that just worked. I was so happy with the 4G I bought a second netbook a few months later. I got a shiny new EEE 1000 40G.

Well I started out using the Xandros Linux on the EEE's and it worked great but I wanted more. So I tried Windows XP for a short time but XP was such a bloated and slow mess I went back to Xandros. Then along came UbuntuEEE (Now EasyPeasy) and I was really happy what it did for my 40G. Finally Canonical came out with Ubuntu 9.04 netbook remix and it's the bees knees for netbook OS's.

So now what do i want in an upgrade? Well I imagine I won't bother upgrading for a long time. My 701 4G sits around doing nothing but my 1000 40G is chugging along great, still the day will come when it will need replaced so here's my list what I'm looking for now.

• Solid state drive.
• 2 gigs of ram
• 10" display that will handle 1024x768 natively.
• Processor isn't too big a deal. These are supposed to be low powered machines where heat isn't a problem and battery life goes on and on. Little faster wouldn't hurt so long as it's low powered.
  
• Battery life lasts a very long time. (Greater then 8 hours)
  
• The rest of it can basically be like the EEE 1000 40G.
• Support for Linux drivers from the manufacture or Ubuntu Netbook Remix preinstalled. :)
  

Now over time this will change somewhat I imagine, but that is what would make me buy a new netbook at this point.

Air France and Debris...

So I was reading CNN today and they said that the oil slick that is like 12 miles long if I remember right. Well the debris they found think was not from the lost plane, apparently it's from other sources.

It's sad to think we messed up the oceans so bad we can't tell a plane wreck from the garbage dumps floating out in the oceans. I guess we got one going in the Atlantic now too.

Older sometimes isn't what it seems...

Remember what I said in the last post about Money? Forget it... It was working great yesterday though today when I went to import an account it forgot I had already setup my accounts. Needless to say Money 2000 does not work well with Linux.

Update: Meh, I'll go with GNUCash. It's nice, does the job, and my only complaint really is how it breaks up all my transactions in to different accounts. I don't normally think of things like "Education" as an account but a category in my account. Ah well I can live it since it remembers to leave my real accounts open.

Side Note: I still think Money 2000 is better then Money 2007. I just liked how it felt.

Newer isn't always better...

When I was playing around with Linux, I found that there wasn't much out there for personal finance software. What I did find didn't really appeal to me and while GNU Cash and KMoney are nice they were a bit overkill in the ways of accounting. I always bounced around from Quicken to Microsoft Money for a simple check book. Last time I played with Ubuntu I found that my current copy of Money 2007 didn't work with Wine.

So this weekend I was cleaning out my closet. In a box of CD cases I found my old Money 2000 CD. I did like Money 2000 and didn't really want to upgrade. Sadly I bought Windows Vista and *HAD* to upgrade to Money 2007.

I decided to give it a shot on my EEE and see if it'd run in Wine under Ubuntu and it installed and ran fine. So older software that ran perfectly fine back in the day is useful again. It also may be running a little snappier since it's on newer hardware with less overhead. :)

What Bad Things Your PC Can Be Used For...

If you think because you don't do online banking or anything sensitive that a malicious computer user would not bother with you? Think again.

It's a good idea to keep your computer up to date with the latest operating system patches as well as any anti-virus updates you can get. The other thing is be careful where you surf or click.

Home Made Computer

It's an 8 bit home built computer that runs at 2-3Mhz. Check out the Big Mess O' Wires!

Computer Memory

A new memory technology is being worked on that could potentially store date for about a billion years while holding 10-100 gigabits of data.

Now you really have to worry about making sure your old drive is wiped clean before disposing of it. People may laugh at you up to a billion years from now when they find that not so flattering picture. :P

He has arrived...

Bullhoof!

Say what???

First up... a beauty pageant contestant is stumped by Confucius. Apparently he invented confusion.

Next up, this really stinks, but not for the person who cleaned it.

Just two videos that stick out after a day at work.

Tinkering...

Not content with having a binary clock on my blog I decided to start playing with LEDs. Behold!

The Board!

The Program!

I now can count to 31 with LEDs. The yellow is zero and on the left the last red is 16. If I had more parts I'd actually make the whole clock. :P

UPDATE: In case your curious about getting one for yourself.

Unngghhh nnggghhh rannggnnfhhh

Plaaaanntsss vs.. Zoooombiessssssssss!

Fun game, check it out. :)

A simple question...

Did you know?

Losing Billions of Dollars Pennies at a Time...

Interesting article on how someone found they were getting over paid, reported it, and repeatedly got ignored for being responsible in the defence industry. Check it out here on MSNBC.

The real kicker? He first reported it back in 1969 and the problem has never been fixed even to this day!

Mercury

Wired is running an article on Mercury. Apparently it's more interesting to visit then Mars since it has a ton of active vulcanism and also magnetic tornadoes that link Mercury to the Sun.

Plunging in to a black hole.

CNN has a video that simulates falling in to a black hole. Check it out here.

Take it with you.

Ever wonder if you could take your character with you? Oddly enough Blizzards forum ads showed me a way to. I found this site when I was looking through the WoW forums and their ad came up on Blizzards banner ads.

If you ever want to get an actual figurine of someone and have $130 laying around. That's how you do it. Also they don't have to be your characters, you can order a figure of anyone in the armory.

Tauren invades grocery store!

Ok so there was no china shop near by, but being a resourceful bull this Tauren decided to grab a few things for the fridge at the grocery store. Thankfully it appears nobody got hurt, including the bull. (Video had no sound for me.)

Yay!

New Ubuntu for my Netbooks. Grab it here if you want to try it out.

Note: Not just Netbooks but also has regular desktop flavors as well.

World of Warcraft Addicts...

Rejoice! Science and technology have come up with a way for you to enjoy WoW without ever having to leave your computer. BEHOLD!

Brains and computers...

A cool application for human brain and computer interfaces. Hooking your brain to an EEG and Twitting messages. So long as there isn't anything coming back in to the head I'm all for this.

Argent Tournament

Behold! Sir Clucks'A'Lot!

It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

Ancient microbs that breath iron! They live under the glaciers in Antarctica.

Sing a little song...

So I was driving in to work today and the radio had this report of a woman named Susan Boyle who went on a talent show and surprised everyone on the show with how well she could sing. Take a look for yourself, awesome performance.

Easter Eggs!

A list from Computer World of neat Easter Eggs in software.

Some neat ones:

In Firefox type either "about:robots" or "about:mozilla" in the URL bar.

In Open Office Calc (the spread sheet program). Type =game() and then respond to it's question with =GAME("StarWars").

If you're running Ubuntu for your computers operating system. Hit ALT-F2 and type "free the fish".

A nagging buzz.

So for a while now our horse hasn't liked being put out in the paddock. Found out why today. No wonder she was nagging us to stay in.

Great Red Shrinking Spot

Apparently Jupiter's "Great Red Spot" is shrinking. They say it'll be circular around 2040. Check out the details here!

*Cues the black obelisk* It'd be kinda funny if that spot was a lite fuse all along set to ignite Jupiter in to a new star.

Thank God thats over...

It was a blast, I learned quite a bit about Oracle PL/SQL and web programming, where Banner is going in regards to Java and Flex. Scripting goodies with Perl and shell scripting, and working with XML in PL/SQL. Pardon me while I saw some logs now on my own bed.

Day 3

.. for me and the conference has officially kicked off. The keynote speech was given by Maya Angelou and now I have visions of cloud computers with rainbows. I really enjoyed her speech. :)

SungGard Summit Precon Day 2

Today we covered some more complexed topics in Banner web development. Today was more interesting then yesterday for me. I actually learned how to setup a table form and process it with PL/SQL. Basically I can now present someone with a web form that lets them edit multiple records at once and save the multiple record changes all at the same time. I also learned more about the underlying tables Banner uses.

So yeah today was great and I feel like the Greatest American Hero after he found the book on how to use his super suit. :)

End of the Day

Went pretty good, picked up a few tid bits of knowledge. Looking forward to tomorrow when we dive in to the more advanced stuff. The work book I got looks like it'd be really nice as a reference for doing things later on. Wish I would have had this when I first started my job.

Stopped at a place called Chilli's in Phily, good food and great service. Had a chicken sandwich and some fries. I should get foods for the fridge tomorrow, less eating out that way.

First Session

Went good, at the 10 minute break now. A lot of introductory stuff for how Banner web works. A lot of this stuff I wish I would have had when I started at Millersville, ah well. :)

Some info on:

* How the client talks to the web server and the web server talks to the database.

* Priviliges given to PL/SQL packages so they can be accessed from the web.

* General info on using modules to create web pages that take files.

On a lighter note most of the people in my class are from all over the world. Some as far as Egypt. Even though they have jet lag I'm just as awake as they are cause I was up at 4am to catch the train here. :P

Made it!

Whoot! Made it up to the SunGard summit in Philadelphia. My room is pretty snazzy, two beds with like 8 pillows on each bed. I got a fridge and everything. The conference center isn't a far walk either. I just got to stock up on goodies tonight after class. Fridge needs fill'n, but at least I get breakfast and lunch at the conference in the cost of the conference.

Built his own laptop...

This guy built his own laptop computer, not just the computer, but the OS, file system, and everything. Check it out here.

Deer on a Beer Run!

Whats a deer to do when you don't have a bunch of Tawa's and Noxi's booz'n it out in the Barrens? Go on a beer run!

Conventional Convention

So I'm off next Friday to the SunGard summit in Philadelphia. Six glorious days of edumacation on Oracle, Banner, and other fun things. This also means I have six days of no WoW since I'll just have my EEE with me.

Assuming I have a net connection somewhere I will be getting on IRC if it's not pay by the minute/hour or whatever. I'm trying to decide if I want to take my camera along or not. Most of the time I will be in a convention center and I don't want to carry too much junk with me.

Friday morning next week I have to be at the train station at 5am to catch a 5:30 to Philly. I'll get there around 6:45 and grab a cab to the hotel, stow my bags there if I can't check in right away, and then head over to an 8am registration. Busy busy day. :P

Planet of the Swedish Apes!

This devious little chimp decided to start a rebellion. He actually gathered weapons and attacked visitors to a zoo. Check out the scoop here!

Rumble rumble rumble...

So I watched Obama the other night and saw the rebuttal as well. After what happened at Mt. St. Helens, how big a vacation spot Hawaii is, Super volcanoes (*Waves at Yellowstone*), and knowing how volcanoes have wiped out places in the past, I figure I'd submit a little neat thing I found on the USGS site.

Volcano Hazards Program is pretty slick. It uses Google Maps to show locations of volcanoes and has a neat little chart showing which ones are rumbling along.

I'm happy when politicians point out wasteful spending, I'm even more happier when they do something about it. Still some things when mentioned should be elaborated more on as to why it's wasteful. Especially when said things are used to help save lives and educate people.

So ends my rant for the day.

*Pinky to Lips* 1 million beer bottles!

It seems some monks took to collecting beer bottles since 1984, apparently they put them to good use and built a temple.

My god!!!

It's full of action figures!

You know it's going to be a good day when...

You walk in to work and sit down at your computer and you notice the little anti-virus icon is different from yesterday. Well on my campus we use a product called LanDesk to push software out to users. All well and good and apparently they switched anti-virus packages last night.

Now here's the problem, I right click on my recycle bin to empty it and suddenly the Symantec Anti-virus installer pops up instead of the recycle bin menu. Apparently from what I read out on Symantec's site their uninstaller is broken and from the looks of things on my computer, leaving left-overs when it should be cleaning up.

Right now I'm having a blast uninstalling Landesk AV (Because it broke while trying to remove Symantec) and get ready for a 10am meeting. FUN!

Update: I killed it! WITH FIRE!!! My PC is fixed now.

Little things...

Today is one of those days where I got a bunch of little things done at work. Since completing my sumer contract project and still doing testing (which is going really well); I now have time to go back and take care of a bunch of other little things that have been simmering.

So now I sit here looking over VB code to keep it fresh in my head for when that project picks up but next week is a meeting on the big upgrade happening soon. That will be fun because there's a bunch of custom work to be updated for the upgrade of a software package we use at work. This will be exciting and I've got my hair puller ready in case the code I find gets really fun. ;)

Nothing to say...

Other then that I love my job. I'm working on a summer contract project for my university so they can generate faculty contracts in Banner. Things are really going good, bugs are being squished left and right, and the code I setup with FormFusion is working awesome since I'm not using a regular Banner but Banner Web to talk to FormFusion.

Weirdest thing is I'm actually so happy with what I'm doing I almost don't want to leave work some nights. o.O

Crayon Physics Delux

The game Crayon Physics Delux has been released. Check it out here.

Your life is a hologram...

...Just maybe! In fact according to this our whole universe might be a huge hologram. Really makes you wonder don't it?

SunGard Summit

So I work at a university and being in IT has it's good times. Well this March I get to go to Philadelphia for a weekend for the SunGard Summit. Six days of learning and geekdom (training) that my university pays for.

Some of my courses will include:

* Javascript and Banner web stuff.
* Free food.
* Pro*C programming.
* Oracle APEX stuff.
* Free food.
* Security and authentication stuff.
* And... free food.

So yeah I'm going to have fun. :P

Banner is an enterprise business software package used by my university. It's made by Sungard.

The dangers of shapes...

In a follow up to the Yellowstone post I made the other day, I'm bringing you important coverage of the dangers of shapes. Check out this news feed here.

Yellowstone Earthquakes

I'm not out that way, but this is interesting stuff.

Recent quakes.

Google Search.