Vista piracy way down – for good reason

Microsoft is doing away with the “kill switch” feature in Microsoft Vista, according to the Beeb. According to Microsoft, its anti-piracy features have served their purpose:

Microsoft said efforts to tackle piracy had seen numbers of fake copies of Vista at half the level of XP, the previous Windows operating system.

What doesn’t get mentioned is that perhaps more people prefer XP over Vista, hmm?

Anti-piracy tools have never, ever been a match for determined crackers. Pirates consider these measures to be mere speed bumps. In light of this, how bad does an operating system have to be to make even pirates not interested in it?

South Florida

I’m on my way to South Florida today for a meeting tomorrow. In spite of being born in Florida this will be my furthest venture south in the Sunshine State. Tomorrow’s high temperature is forecast to be 76 degrees. Any other time that might sound tempting but we really haven’t had a bad winter here (nor do I expect us to).

Great night of sleep

I don’t know what to attribute it to but I had a fantastic night of sleep last night. I woke up refreshed and happy. Kelly did, too, and mentioned only being somewhat awakened by the sound of a train horn in the distance. If we had a train go by last night, I certainly didn’t notice!

A few nights prior, I had a terrible night of sleep and thought to get that sleep study rescheduled that I’d canceled way back in January. I’m thinking I may need some surgery as my ENT told me then that my tonsils are larger than normal and that might be blocking my airway. Is 39 a few decades too old to get my tonsils taken out?

Don’t be fronting

Having fun looking at my weather stats right now. A mere two hours ago the relative humidity was 82%, winds were solidly from the south, the temperature was rising on its way to 65 degrees, and the barometer was dropping quickly. Thirty minutes ago the front passed by, as the temperature began to drop from 65, humidity is dropping below 38%, winds have shifted to the north and the barometer has bottomed out. I get a kick out of watching this stuff happen in real-time.

Compostin’

Hearing the city’s leaf-vacuum truck making its rounds this morning reminded me of a project we completed this weekend. Saturday’s weather was superb, so while Kelly and Hallie attended a birthday party, Travis and i spent the morning raking (and leafblowing) leaves. Travis really enjoyed aiming the leafblower as we cleaned the yard. He especially enjoyed jumping into the leaf piles we created!
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Focusing rain

I’ve found our rainwater tank seems to focus rain. A sprinkling of rain fell overnight. Though my wheelbarrow was out it only collected enough water to fill up a mug.

I didn’t expect much to have been added to the tank this morning but I was surprised. The tank showed 12 to 15 new gallons! That’s from just half the roof, too. It always amazes me just how much water can be collected just from the rainfall.

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.

MPD – Music Player Daemon

I’ve been under a rock (and roll – hah!), but I just found out about MPD, otherwise known as the music player daemon. I’ve had my music server parked by my stereo for years and have been logging into the command line to play music. MPD makes this unnecessary.
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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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