30 March 2009
Students Today
I had some of the same feelings back in the mid 80's. Obviously, not so much with the online stuff. I think I got my first dial up account in '87, but even before FaceBook (BFB?) there was the feeling that a lot of the lecture hall style of teaching was losing effectiveness. Where some of your TAs didn't know your name much less your professors. I can't imagine reading 1200 FaceBook profiles... I got up to 666 MySpace "friends" for a while, but have mostly limited FB to people I know in some capacity BFB. I wouldn't want to be on the phone for 2 hours a week, much less on my cell phone 2 hours a day. (I still blame my years of phone support for MS and Fidelity for my phone phobia).
I've thought about taking a class online, but not very hard.
29 March 2009
Sunday Blasphemy: Being Accountable
Happy Sunday morning.
Coffee is ready and I’m about to make banana pancakes.i
27 March 2009
Gay Rights are Civil Rights
If you have 25 minutes to listen to a great speech, this is one. (you can even just listen to it in the background while surfing).
26 March 2009
22 March 2009
Food for Puppies
Shortly after getting the puppies out of quarantine I thought about cooking their food. I’d heard of other dog owners that made their pet food. I figured as long as I was in the kitchen everyday cooking the meals for our CSIRO diet plan, I could put together meals for the dogs.
I mistakenly thought those tubes of dog food in the cooler section were more like ground beef, and the diet plan meals ended up taking more time than I thought they would, so the plan was quickly forgotten.
I’m not sure what it was specifically that got me thinking about it again the other day (I have a cold so there’s no focus). I remember being online reading that dogs should never eat grapes or raisins. This really surprised me as our family has had a number of dogs that seem to really like them. Earlier in the days I’d given the dogs a few grapes as treats, almost every morning before we leave for work, we break off a corner of our raisin toast. I guess we’ll stop doing that.
It got me thinking of making meals for the dogs again and I started surfing for info and recipes. There is a lot of conflicting things out there. Some sites will claim that dog food companies use diseased animals, dead dogs from pounds, even embalmed animals. One site I was on said to give dogs raw beef bones as treats and to keep their teeth clean but on the same page said to never give your dogs raw meat.
If there is anyone out there that would like to give their input, please feel free to fill the comments section. As of now, I’ve decided to mix some home cooked food in with their normal kibble. Tonite I made a turkey and rice mixture. I’ve seen some recipes for dog biscuits that look good (from a dog point of view). I can see why most people choose to trust in regular dog food companies. Good nutrition is hard enough to figure out for us humans.
20 March 2009
It’s no surprise – Diebold lies
It really doesn’t come as a shock to anyone that has been listening since the owner of the ballot “counting” machines first promised he would deliver the election to George Bush.
Newspaper reports, websites and even documentaries have been made explaining how the ballot boxes can be easily hacked in a variety of ways by very few people with absolutely no way to prove the reported votes are representative of the actual votes.
Now, with another election come and gone, Diebold… or Premier Election Solutions, as they’re now called, has admitted that all their voting machines are STILL extremely easy to hack. These are systems used in over 2/3rds of the states in the US. Regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, everyone should at least agree that votes should be accurately counted. Computers are very good at counting – it usually takes work to make them count wrong, or forget votes, or not-so-randomly flip votes.
19 March 2009
How to Make Money on Wall Street
There are a lot of things that the US should look at regulating on Wall Street. Not only the whole sub-prime mortgage fiasco but the practice of short-selling as this man describes. It hurts companies and people.
As the man says – As long as it’s legal…
15 March 2009
12 March 2009
Fireman Ross
The older video of Ross and the Crocodile Hunter was very popular. This clip is very funny too.
10 March 2009
Stupid Pet Tricks
In the monkey version of “Get off my lawn!”, a Swedish chimp has been caught stockpiling rocks to throw at annoying humans. To further blur the line between us and them, the chimp not only planned the events ahead of time, he showed insight in determining which bits of concrete were ripe for picking. Zoo staffers have been removing hundreds of rocks over that last decade in an attempt to spoil all the fun.
Closer to home – it wasn’t a lunatic ninja that burst thru their bedroom window, as Beat Ettlin first thought. A kangaroo jumped thru the window and into the master bedroom. I’ve heard of boxing ‘roos, but luckily this one wasn’t a good wrestler as he was put into a headlock and dragged down the stairs and out the door. Almost makes me want to start sleeping with a machete next to the bed again…
8 March 2009
7 March 2009
The Dancing Baby of a New Generation
The Dancing Baby from over 10 years ago. Made famous to the non-internet folks by the Ally McBeal show.
5 March 2009
New MS Web Services
There are a lot of interesting things going on with internet offerings. Some good, some not so great.
In the not so great arena, it seems like everyone is coming out with their own browser. Firefox and IE have divided the market for a while with Opera keeping a niche for those wanting light and fast. I’ve switched over to Flock at home for the integration with social websites. Apple is trying to shove Safari on people who use iTunes and Quicktime. Google is pushing out Chrome, which works especially nice with their new version of Google Desktop (online documents, calendar, and gmail). As I’ve tried some of the different browsers I’ve noticed many pages that don’t work that well with all browsers.
While I’ve been a huge fan of Windows Live Writer for blog posting, and the 25 GB online storage of SkyDrive (as well as the flexibility and spam filtering in Live Mail). There are a couple web offerings from MS that I hadn’t yet noticed: Live sync seems like a nice way to add on to the ease of having files on Skydrive, but on the local drive. Live Mesh seems to add on to the sharing of Skydrive – but don’t expect it to work with some of the other browsers. I like the MS Office Live Workspace for sharing documents (those without MS Office are still able to view the files, just not modify them).
You may have noticed a theme running through some of the offerings – making your files and documents available wherever you are and with whoever you like. Of course people would have to buy in and adopt a passport/Live ID. (MS sounds like they will make it easier to link your Windows user account with your Live ID). The ease of availability and collaboration may also raise security flags for some companies, but whatever makes things easier for ME… :)
4 March 2009
Newly Released Secret Laws of the Bush Regime
The essence of this document was to declare that George Bush had the authority (a) to deploy the U.S. military inside the U.S., (b) directed at foreign nationals and U.S. citizens alike; (c) unconstrained by any Constitutional limits, including those of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments. It was nothing less than an explicit decree that, when it comes to Presidential power, the Bill of Rights was suspended, even on U.S. soil and as applied to U.S. citizens.
I won't get around to blogging about this but it’s definitely worth the read.
3 March 2009
New Stock Market Terms
- CEO - Chief Embezzlement Officer
- CFO - Corporate Fraud Officer
- BULL MARKET - A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius
- BEAR MARKET - a 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry, and the husband gets no sex.
- VALUE INVESTING - The art of buying low and selling lower.
- P/E RATIO - The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.
- BROKER - What my financial planner has made me.
- STANDARD & POOR - Your life in a nutshell.
- STOCK ANALYST - Idiot who just downgraded your stock.
- STOCK SPLIT - When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.
- MARKET CORRECTION - The day after you buy stocks.
- CASH FLOW - The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.
- YAHOO - What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.
- WINDOWS - What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Yahoo at $240 per share.
- INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR - Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse.
- PROFIT - an archaic word no longer in use.
2 March 2009
What passes for Fox ‘News’
I’m not a huge fan of Biden, but calling a momentary lapse of memory a gaffe makes it seem like you’re really reaching.
1 March 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)