General-purpose musings
There are 780 posts filed in Musings (this is page 75 of 78).
Dang, I hate it when I think of a fantastic topic to write about and then I don’t have time to write about it! Day job, you know. This one will take a few dayss to write and research so it’ll have to wait until later.
For now, nibble on some Mickey D’s.
I’ve been interested in learning the tricks to telling a good story, so I dropped a line to the Real Paul Jones thinking he would know where to find good storytellers in the area. Paul passed my query over to his friend Brian Strum, who sent me the following links:
Good stuff, y’all.
Continue reading
I awoke yesterday morning to the sweet sound of thunder: it was raining! I’d seen some of that in Australia but around here it had been a while. Yesterday evening’s stormy weather didn’t dump any rain, but the winds were freakishly strong. The horizon looked eerily menacing, with black clouds swirling as if alive. If only those clouds had offered any rain.
The home weather station reports that yesterday we received an inch of rain, at times falling at 1.5 inches per hour. That brings my rain gauge’s yearly total to 4.76 inches. That’s far below the average of 12 inches this time of year, but at least its more consistent with RDU Airport. Last year our house received 5 fewer inches of rain than the airport.
I wonder if we’ll start seeing hybrid Abrams tanks? Imagine the progress made in alternative fuels if the military put its purchasing power behind it.
Imagine a battlefield of soldiers, all riding Segways . . .
The N&O ran a front-page article yesterday detailing how numerous banks have recently reissued debit cards as a result of a security breach. It seems that hackers may have compromised the security of OfficeMax, according to the article. OfficeMax denies this.
What makes this story notable is that I found out about it a day earlier as a result of the local tech crowd. Folks on the Triangle InternetWorkers mailing list mentioned the reissued cards, providing links to additional information on the breach. I knew all about this well before the paper mentioned it to me.
The article did have news I didn’t get online, like the name of the “national retailer” involved, but other than that it didn’t provide me anything I didn’t get online somewhere else. It just goes to show how quickly Internet-based (and citizen-journalism based) news sources are outpacing the traditional news sources (a.k.a., the “mainstream media”).
Update: here’s some more detail coverage of recent ATM fraud cases.
Every time I read stories like this, it makes me realize just how absurdly vulnerable our banking system truly is. No wonder banks choose to pay ransom to the hackers to sweep incidents under the rug: if people found out how fragile things really are, they would totally freak out. It would cause a rush on banks.
It’s one big house of cards, so to speak.
I was buying some things at the local grocery store last week. I saw the total was going to provide me a wad of singles so I do what I usually do: I kicked in a quarter to make my change a fivespot. You’d think this was simple math, but you’d be wrong. The slacker at the register gave me a blank look.
“Aw, man,” he sighed, fumbling with the money. “The last math I did was advanced trigonometry.”
Dust off those advanced trig skills, dude. NASA may be calling you.
I’ve been thinking this weekend how the past year has flown by faster than any I’ve ever known.
This is most bizarre. I have met more Marks today than ever in my life. Everywhere I turned I saw “Mark” on a namebadge. After the first 5 or 6 I just had to laugh.
As I returned to my hotel room tonight, the message light was flashing on my phone. When I asked the staffmember what the message was, he told me they were looking for a gentleman named Mark who had earlier dropped off some postcards. Even at this hour I’m discovering other Marks.
Okay, universe, you got my attention. What are you trying to tell me?
As I was leaving the San Diego airport yesterday, I watched as two men paused to choose which of two escalators they were going to use.
They chose the one that was less crowded. Because, you know, you get there quicker.
I loved the Lord of the Rings movies because I loved the illusion they presented of another world. While the Rings were fiction, news broke last week that is almost too good to be true. Astounding, even. Scientists have discovered a place on Earth heretofore untouched by man, where exotic, previously unseen plants thrive and animals have no fear of humans. That place is the Foja Mountains area of western New Guinea. It’s like discovering the Garden of Eden.
This discovery fascinates me. Of course I’d love to go, but then the area would cease to be pristine, wouldn’t it? 🙁 While nothing compares to seeing it myself, hopefully the expedition’s documentation will satisfy my fix.
It’s only February and we’ve already had the story of 2006.
