Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,524 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 143 of 153).

Freecycle

Just caught on to Freecycle after hearing our friends had great success using it in the DC area. Freecycle is like Craigslist but for stuff you want to give away. Its all about free (thus the name, duh).

Wake County has its own Freecycle group with 6,036 members. Orange County has 1,904 members and Durham has 2,312. Looks like a good place to get some bargains and give away some stuff.

The Story of Stuff

Matt sent this to me this morning. It’s a 20-minute-long Flash movie explaining how your stuff gets to you and why that process is not sustainable. Living near the North Wake Landfill as I do, I can’t help but wonder how much of that big pile of garbage could’ve been avoided.

Check out the Story of Stuff and begin thinking of ways we can be living a little more responsibly on our planet (hint: vote with your wallet).

SR-71 Blackbird

SR-71 Blackbird

Last night I was talking with someone familiar with our country’s premier spy plane, the legendary SR-71 Blackbird. He sent me a link to this exciting account of a mission over Libya in 1986.

Intelligence agencies hate to give up capabilities. The rule in intelligence is that no system is ever retired unless something has taken its place. There is no known aircraft that can match the Blackbird’s performance. The “sled,” as it was known to its pilots, has been retired. Just imagine what we must have now.
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Bad behavior from Bad Behavior

I was blogging away happily from the Atlanta airport tonight when suddenly MT.Net didn’t like me anymore. I got a message from my Bad Behavior blog spam blocker flagging my IP address. Since I was coming from the airport WiFi’s gateway address, I assumed that spammers and the like may have sent spam from the airport and gotten the address blacklisted. Still, I managed to get in one post from the WiFi before it blocked me, so that didn’t seem to be the right answer.
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Citation needed

I was reading up on the xkcd meetup that happened in Cambridge in September. A bunch of geeks descended on the local park which was previously mentioned in the comic strip.

Wherever geeks gather, trouble can’t be far behind. This is one of the funniest protest signs I’ve ever seen. Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales must be proud.

Donate computers to the Kramden Institute

I spent my lunch break gathering up old computers and parts I’ve been meaning to recycle for months now. I piled the back of the minivan high with this gear and drove over to the Kramden Institute in RTP to donate it all. Folks there were very friendly and appreciative of the gift. Thanks to my donations, two families will have nice computers that wouldn’t otherwise have them. Kids will be able to write papers, do research, and build their own ugly MySpace pages thanks to my gift.
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Q+E Software Photos

I was rummaging through my bookshelf this weekend when I discovered four photographs from my first software company, at times called Pioneer Software, then Q+E Software, then Intersolv. These shots are from around 1994 during the Intersolv days. Carolyn Sparano, director of technical support, asked me to take photos of the department to include in our customer newsletter. I don’t think I ever really looked at the shots until now. Look closely and you can see Jeff and Scott, as well as see what I looked like with a full head of hair.

That company was a wonderful one to work with. It set the standard for me for all the startup companies to follow. Someday I shall write a nice long post about my time there.