houston we have a problem

so… we were in houston a few weeks back and saw this.  charge your cell for $3.00 … or … you figure it out

itunes again?

wow.. yet another itunes update.. and it breaks sync with the palm pre … a weird pissing contest if you ask me

as an apple fanboy, i hate that apple is doing stuff like this … and anytime they they add something or patch bugs (which they NEVER have) … it means another 90MB file… instead of patches that just fix what is wrong or add the features…

come on apple… ever heard of fusebox type coding?  just update what you need.

blackberry woes…

have been having issues with my blackberry bold… it has been my favorite in my 8+ years using blackberrys, but in the past month, i have had 3 replacements.

att even sent a replacement with a cracked screen…

what a pain cause it is on BES and all the apps and restore

maybe time to upgrade to the blackberry bold2 9700 onyx .. and what is with all the numbers and different names… that has been a weird change too

i just want phone to work and my emails…

prisoner treatment :: north korea vs guantanamo bay

i am perplexed by the americans that feel that guantanamo  bay  is the deepest scariest hell hole that we have detained prisoners of war or those that are hard to classify as the geneva convention do not apply …

and how dear leader kim jong il has two american reporters in work camps…

i wonder which is worse.  i wonder how guantanamo stacks against prisons, prisoner treatment in other countries, and the base accommodations that terrorists and enemy combatants are treated compared to 2 women that were filming on/near/across the border in north korea

i wonder if lisa ling had a choice for her sister… would she pick the north korean prison camp or guantanamo bay for her sister laura ling and euna lee.  i bet you that other than not having to server a prison term at all.. that she would pick 12 years at guantanamo bay versus any prision camp in any other country

it makes me mad that people have no perspective on the lengths that the US seems to take… even for caring for terrorists… compared to things that i have heard happening in prison camps in north korea.  rape, force abortions, real work camp in mines and deplorable conditions and sometimes death…. none of which have happened at guantanamo

the US is giving habius corpus rights to people picked up outside of the country… none citizens or residence of the country … and those that are trying to kill them.  yes mr ACLU … if they had a chance, they would kill you.

look at what they are going to do with the chinese muslims … they are looking in a south pacific for another island to hold these prisoners … because they know that they cant try them in a normal court of law.

it is great that they want to close guantanamo … but they are just going to have to rebuild something someplace else … or extend things in places like supermax in colorado .. and living in denver.. i do not want these guys anywhere near my family .. even in a supermax.  dont you guys watch prision break?  i dont want colorado to become a target .. we love being semi anonymous  and i would some other place being hit first if they decide to attack again

people may feel that guantanamo is bad …. but compared to north korean prison camps .. i would volunteer to go to guantanamo bay versus spending any time in anything that north korea will dish out.  they need to look at the scale of what they think is ‘torture’ that may be inflicted on terrorists… compared to day to day _torture_ that north koreans being caught trying to flee to china, having a bible, speaking against the government…  aside from some of the fringe people… most people understand that even if you voiced protest against obama .. you will not be ‘disappeared’ like you might in other countries.

the only saving grace for the women is that they are american and being used as pawns in the nuclear crazy dear leader death spiral game … and they will be kept relatively safe, fed, and in good condition to be presented on tv etc …

prision break needs a new tech consultant…

i wish i had the job of being a technical consultant to the writers for tv shows…

i went through a whole segment of the last show ’shut down’ where the asian hacker that did not understand how a datacenter worked was set to download and recover email that was delivered to someone by grabbing shadow files on the router…. the router !!!

my head almost blew up.

i mean.. if you are going to throw out a bunch of technical jargon, at least get the functionality of the network devices, email servers, software and hardware correct.

haystack — cannon beach synth

here is a synth of our trip to cannon beach or

the RNC needs tech support…

first the teleprompters blow up during the acceptance speech by sarah palin … letting her give her speech from memory while dealing with being in front of a crowd 2 times her town population….

but tonight… i think they watch stephen colbert a bit too much…. and there was a green screen behind mccain for long stretches of time…

not that i dont find the green screen challenges funny … but this is just asking for it…

windfall profits…

this is for a cousin of mine….

so hillary and barack want to put a windfall profits tax on exxon mobile cause they recorded a record profit… well.. think about it… gas prices are high, exxon is global, and they sell something that everyone is generally using more and more of than they used to even a year ago… so if you do that math … of course they are going to have a huge profit.

the thing that hillary and barack do not tell you is that the profit is what is left over…. they actually made more… but they had to give some of it to the government in taxes already… wanna guess as to how much in taxes they paid? … lets take 2007 …. in 2007, exxon mobile paid almost $68 billion dollars in taxes to the united states… heck with that amount, you would have thought they kept like like $100 billion or something… but actually.. they paid more in taxes than they made in the united states… which amounted to about $48 billion.  hmmm… that does not seem right at all … and just because the number of their first quarter earnings was $11 billion in profits… democrats went ape-crap over it… and wanted to tax the hell out of big mean old oil… cause they made $11 billion in profit. they had a margin of profit about 8% … really.. people are going batty cause the oil companies made 8% profit…

if we take that as a high mark.. then there are a lot of other companies that _should_ be in trouble…

i live next to the manager of the 5 apple stores here in the denver area… so he will not like this post.. but apple made a 31% gain in revenue due to the release of the new iphone.  and their profit margin is close to 15% .. nearly double that of exxon.  and heck… that is more than 4 times exxons growth… why not tax them.  why not make apple give everyone a ipod or an iphone… so… why not hate on apple?

even companies like ge made more in percentage than exxon … at over 10%.  computer industry had over 13%, warren buffett made more than 29% increase in 2007 with bershire hathaway, and koreas own LG made a 500%+ increase between 2006 and 2007… where were the calls to tax them?

how about our own local success story crocs sandels… they are running at about 5000 employees and they made over $64 million in profits last year… on foam sandels…

in the world of tolerance… people are getting ignorant and miopic to their own prejudices and double standards…

all the college students that have macbooks/macbook pros and ipods are not calling for the big apple empire to be taxes and hated .. because they use it and like the product… but their perception is that oil is bad …

i am glad that my daughter got to come to bring your kid to work day when i was at the oil firm… she saw all of the processes .. starting from the geologists that try to figure out where oil is, to the wildcatters and riggers that go out to see if there is anything there worth drilling for, the process from crude to refinement, from the different processes from drilling for oil to drilling for gas… and how they try to go back to ‘empty wells’ and try to get more out of them with new technologies… and then the process of paying royalties to the government for drilling for certain types of minerals and natural resources to paying for tankers to and from well to refinery, to paying to pipelines usage, getting leases for areas to drill in, fight enviromental groups for areas like anwar or the plains of colorado for shale, try to figure out alternatives like shale, oil sands, and on and on…

i dont think anyone would want to be taxed more than 60% of what they earn, and then be villified for the percentage they got to keep and have people like barack say he wants to take it away and give $1000 to every family in america…

there are commercials by t boone pickens talking about transfer of wealth … but what barack is promoting is redistribution of wealth in the classic communist model… he is not robin hood…

think about if exxon just said screw it.. we dont want to deal with the bad press and crap about windfall taxes and stopped work tomorrow…. think about the havoc.  think about actual lives that would be affected.  you could not drive to work or school.  ambulances would not be able to take patients to get saved.  not heating and air conditioning… no pizza deliveries…

and think about if a company like apple stopped producing… would anybody die? i am as big an apple fan as any… but i would be able to live without a new mac if my old one kept going… and my ipods and nanos were not dropped and destroyed.

without oil/gas.. we all die. really.  we talk about giving teachers raises because they are important… well.. why begrudge oil companies for making some money for something that we all use…

it is all a shell game (sorry not trying to bring another oil company pun) … it used to be big bad tobacco.. and we all saw how wisely the states used the funds from the settlements because people chose to light up and smoke even after everyone told them it was bad for them… and then big bad pharmaceuticals until they started making boner pills and then all the old democrats laid off them … uh.. again, not trying to use a pun.  and now the stalwort big bad oil … until they all need lube for their car or expedition into africa or private plane flight to give a speech … wait.. they have those needs now.. why do they still hate you big oil?

pick whomever you want to hate and they get the windfall profits tax…

so back to exxon mobil … they have close to 110,000 employees world wide.  that means that their $11 billion profit is like $100.00 profit per employee.

no MRI for you!

so i had to go get an MRI for something… and was told i was not allowed to have one.  it is cause i have one of these in my back and electrode leads going up my spine…

the huge magnets in the MRI would cause vibrations on the leads and they would start to heat up.. and i would get burned on my spinal cord…

oh well… so i had to do a CT scan with contrast instead…hope they find what they are looking for…

Greased Lightbox

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photosynth synthin’

finally… my photosynth is online andat 76% synthy ness

i will start posting my skillet and jeremy camp sets here in a bit

photosynth…

microsoft has let loose photosynth…

i know microsoft gets a lot of flack but for what they provide and interoperability and such… they actually do a good job … note that this is coming form a guy that has his 7 month old playing on a kubuntu laptop already

well.. there was an episode of csi: ny where they used photosynth for 3D display from a group of pictures and you can see different points of view…

i tried uploading a batch and their servers are getting hammered so they have stopped accepting uploads for now.. but you get 20GB of space for free using your passport login

so if you collected all of the pictures from a tour group at some location, photosynth looks for similarities, points of view, aspect ratios, angles etc.. and generates a 3D world where you can float thru the pictures .. zoom in, look from another point of view, just cool stuff.

one of the original samples was of a palace in korea… so automatically, they had my attention and it was amazing that you got a wireframe of the whole complex, then were able to look around from different distances based on pictures that people had taken…

i have been waiting for them to release this for a while as i generally try to do the virtual tour type captures and have burst shot enabled on my camera… so it will be neat looking at some of the structures and beaches and stuff from vacations in 3D

check out photosynth here

technical difficulties…

how embarrasing …. we are watching the olympics and wondering where the sound and pictures went..

you would think that they would have prepared a bit better for this…

read the manual…

so… if you work with me and ask a question… i am gonna refer you to the manual.  see if you have done your research before you ask..

this new guy did not and kept coming over and asking questions over and over… so he was given the answers

check it…

its on whitey

arrggggg!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my mac is dead.

after all the hassle of replacing the hard drive and getting everything reloaded… i plugged in a usb cooling pad and it shorted out the usb port so it will not boot up any more…

(tears…)

my mac is back

so… any of you that have a mac ibook g4 … have you ever had to replace the hard drive?

well… hope that you do not have a disk failure or even want to upgrade your disk to something larger..

the process is the most convoluted and weird processes ever.

with any other laptop, you have ready access either with a few screws and from the side or bottom of your laptop.. you may even have to go under the keyboard… but that is not so bad

with the ibook, not only do you not have access to it from the outside… or even below your keyboard … it is wedged under a part of the metal frame … leaving you to dismantle the whole thing to get to it..

now that would not be so bad either… but they use several different screw sizes including torx and phillips 0 size heads, but you also need a spudger or something to crack the shell open with…

total form versus function.

it looks nice not to have screws exposed on the outside of the laptop, but spending hours trying to crack the case open, making sure not to lose any of the 30 screws and figuring out where there are hidden hinges you have to spudge and cables and wires that need to be unplugged before you pull the parts apart… and not to mention the potential of cracking the plastic or breaking something…

sound like fun? check out a sample here

i  work with computer hardware allbut this is once where it was worth the $100 to have some other guy that has too much time and much more practice on this than me do it…