Way to Loose Customers

radio shack has been going down hill for a while. they never seem to carry what i think they should as an electronic parts type retailer. this evening i went to get an extension for my headphones. radio shack did have a couple of extensions.... for the big ol' sound board type jacks. nothing for the predominate 1/8" mini jack that most everything uses these days. i did find a male-male connector and i asked the lady at the counter if she could check to see if they had one with a female end on one side and a male on the other in the back or if they usually carry them. she looked at the package and said, "this is for connecting speakers to a computer. we don't carry everything here, we are just a retail store..." i wasn't asking what it was... i wasn't even asking her if what i wanted was in their store... i said i wanted to know if they were supposed to stock the one that i wanted.

fortunately the people at best buy had exactly what i wanted for $7. now i can sit another 6 ft away from my computer while watching videos. and the people at the store were pretty nice too. i don't think i'll think of radio shack as a first option for much of anything anymore. actually i should just stop shopping...it takes too much effort.

killernic

ok.. i've really seen it all now killernic is a network card (that us usb onboard) build around an imbedded linux system. you can run programs in your network card. you buypass windows crappy network drivers and give the true burdon to the network card. intersteting idea.. i'm not sure if its worht $280 tho.

optomistic

snippet from a instant message conversation I had with my boss:

[me]: lots of screwed up stuff around here
[boss]: yeah I love it. These are mearly small chalenges for a positive mind
[me]: small challenges, when put back to back can permantly bind a prisoner

vr plane

story here.


another video hehre

Bogons

Ever heard of a Bogon? yeah.. me either.

free ice cream

Free ice cream on 9/28 for those near a Cold Stone Creamery

steamy

steam bike, anyone?

88-key

psycle its time to plug my 88-key keyboard in and see if I can come anywhere close to this

flickr

who wants to explain what I found on flickr

Get violent with that computer!

In this case, the video's worth a thousand words. The post shares some code that makes a MacBook respond programatically to a physical "smack" (it's actually more like a tap...). The sheer coolness of this has encouraged other people to port the code to other platforms, too.

All the details are here.

Win by losing

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that I don't really "get" game theory in general, but I found this article interesting...

Paradox in Game Theory: Losing Strategy That Wins

Death and Taxes

A coworker sent me a cool link to a poster

buy a house?

anyone want to buy a house?

nerdy pizza

this dude describes his reversing a pizza recipee.

nerd lingo

watch this
and get back to me.

dans new boat

the 118 wallypower is suppose to be in the movie the island so i'm going to have to watch it and see. at 110feet and 60 knots, carbon fiber hull and estimated $25 million sticker.. wow.. thats a boat.

is the name in honor of walmart?

Ever wonder why your water bill is so high...

maybe this is the reason

cardboard office prank

geekinvasion.com has some pictures from a cardboard prank that are very funny.

best of craigs list

best of craigslist rules. it even has one about a creepy guy and a girl poisoning her lungs. this stuff is golden.

*updated* link to creepy guy

effecient engines

I've been doing some reading on alternative engine designs (to the traditional piston/crank design most of us have in our cars) and found a weird one on angellabsllc.com The engine design is interesting, but even more interesting is the animation in Excel

I'm popular

I used toe like that song, Popular, by Nada Surf (lyrics)

anyway, maybe you've already seen this, maybe not. I tried it. Rather amusing.

white and nerdy

http://f9.putfile.com/videos/24412412355.mp3
wierd al. white and nerdy. it even mentions paintball. I think it should be an instant classic.

chair mat

I was out front cleaning my motorcycle, as its been over a week since coming back from the alaska trip and it still wasn't unpacked, and my next door neighbor came over to talk. ohh... a little more on the motorcycle since I started with that... the guys at work don't believe me that the trip wasn't a killer because I haven't ridden the bike since I returned. I keep trying to explain to them that the bike is packed (the custom luggage rack) and so dirty I'm even embaresed by it, but they arn't buying it. today was my only night off ( have class tue and thur) so I decided to work on it. it helped a little too that I voluntered to drive home to pickup a rush part to fix one of the machines, so that got me home by 3:30, a little extra time to clean. the price I pay for that is getting up at 5am, going in at 6am on thursday, where I will work until 6pm, uppon which time I will go to class for 3 hours, and then drive 50 miles home. I"m not sure if it was worth it... probably not.

so my next door neighbor comes over and thanks me for mowing her lawn all summer. I told her no problem, and we got talking about the housing market. turns out she still hasn't sold her house across town, and is paying two mortgages while she waits for the other one to sell. the kicker is, her old house is about 1 mile from my old house (which we sold, fortunatly) so we had a good ol' complain session on the local market.

I noticed a rollie chair mat in her garage and made an offhand comment that she might be getting rid of it. she said it was going out for the garbage, so, bottom line, I scored myself a rollie chair mat! I know its not big to you guys, but i've always wanted one and I have been holding out after I saw the price at the local store. ohh.. my bad, CHAIRMAT, i just now looked it up. $44 from staples for a 45"x53". I know petrolium is expensive, but COME ON.

Scientific American Podcast

i have been listening to the scientific american podcasts the weeks that i have time and today i listened to one that was pretty good. it was the august 30 edition which had a couple of interesting stories. the BEST part was the sketch at the very end of the podcast (after the moderator signs off). it is funnier if you listen to the whole podcast but you can skip to the end if you must.

Google Image Labeler

yeah.. I"m a fan of google. that is until there is anther IPO that is bigger and I fail to invest in, then I'll move on to that company. in the mean time.. I post a link to Google Image Labeler , some kind of game where you can choose words to describe a picture in an attemp to train google computers on picture recognition, or what is more likely... help them build their database of pictures/word assocations. at any rates. you get some kind of score. that should be enough to entice most of the internet world. If I make the highscore list, i'll be famous! just keep thinking that, and you too can turn yourself into a google brainless computer

google tech talks

my latest search of google tech talks revealed a little seminar on how to break web software - a look at security vulnerabilities in web software I Haven't finished downloading it yet, but the last few lectures I have watched form google tech talks have been superb. kev - let me know how this one is. I read some of the comments at google video (you can view comments on a vid) and some people thought it was pretty basic... so maybe its 'not-so-good'