I saw this on BoingBoing. A laptop bag manufacturer has included special washing instructions in the French portion. Pretty funny.
NCAA Champion?
Bumper Snicker
Every day I drive by a pickup truck with a sticker that says “My Other Car Is A Jet.” Which is pretty impressive, if you think about it: driving a jet. Not bad, right? Except I once saw one that had that one beat.
Back in the early 90’s, my ship was visiting Alameda, CA for some repairs. At an adjacent pier was the USS Abraham Lincoln, a massive, floating steel city. In the commanding officer’s parking space was a tiny Honda Civic with a sticker that read (wait for it): “My Other Car Is An Aircraft Carrier.”
It don’t get much bigger than that.
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TV Kills Attention Span
Research indicates that TV permanently affects the attention span of kids. Seems the fast-paced images are to blame, permanently altering how the brain develops.
“The newborn brain develops very rapidly during the first two to three years of life. It’s really being wired” during that time, Christakis said.
“We know from studies of newborn rats that if you expose them to different levels of visual stimuli … the architecture of the brain looks very different” depending on the amount of stimulation, he said.
Overstimulation during this critical period “can create habits of the mind that are ultimately deleterious,” Christakis said. If this theory holds true, the brain changes likely are permanent, but children with attention problems can be taught to compensate, he said.
I find the whole topic fascinating because … hey, have you seen penguin baseball?
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Line Of Sight
I was on the roof today cleaning out gutters. At least, that was the official reason. I also wanted to adjust my weather instruments because I was afraid I’d mounted them too low. As I sat on top of my chimney and moved the wind vane a foot higher on my mast, I looked around and realized I could easily see about 30 houses around me. It got me thinking how easy it would be to mount an access point up on my mast and share the Wi-Fi love with my neighborhood.
I need to build a Power Over Ethernet cable, buy a plastic container to mount to the mast, and firewall the whole thing off of my home network before I can distribute the bits. By the time I actually want to do anything, though, we’ll probably be close to selling the house.
Maybe I should add ‘elevation’ to the list of things we need in our new house.
Daylight Evil Time
There’s something evil about Daylight Savings Time. I’m not sure if it’s the mucking with the time that ticks me off (so to speak), or the fact that time is so rigid the rest of the year.
Once upon a time, we humans got up when the sun came up, we did our thing during the day, and when nightfall came we slept. This is just how the other 99.9999 % of Earth’s life forms perceive time. Why mess with a good thing?
I think we should either pick a time and stick with it, or ignore the clock all together and go with the sundial. This semi-annual flip-flopping has got to go.
Banking Prints
I had a very strange experience going to the Coastal Federal Credit Union at lunch today. I was there to reopen my account, which had been closed a few years ago. I thought it’d be no big deal, but I was in for a surprise.
Sure, there was some paperwork involved, and a required $25 deposit to maintain the account, but the bank required one thing I was not prepared to give: a thumbprint.
The branch employee placed the signature card in front of me to sign, in order to have a copy of my signature on file. No problem with that, I suppose. I expect them to verify my signature.
Then she put an inkpad down in front of me and told me she needed my thumbprint. Well, this is new, I thought. I suppose the fact that I’ve had an account (albeit dormant) at the credit union for over twelve years isn’t proof enough that I am who I say I am. They certainly didn’t ask me for a thumbprint when I first opened the account. So, I wondered, why now?
A plaque on her desk showed a picture of the flag with the words “The USA Patriot act requires positive identification to open an account.” I felt all patriotic when I read that. Hey, no problem with that, either. I happily supplied my driver’s license as ID.
After doing some pecking around, I’ve decided that the print was needed only for the credit union’s anti-fraud measures. That’s why it went on the signature card. When I banked at a commercial bank, I refused all efforts to provide my thumbprint. Yet, I gave in and supplied it today.
As far as I know, the Patriot act doesn’t require fingerprints. At least, I hope it doesn’t. But the whole thing would have been more palatable to me if they’d explained the reason they needed the thumbprint. And thumbprints aren’t part of the non-public information they claim to collect in their privacy policy.
C’mon, guys. Save the fingerprinting for the crooks, ok?
(All this from a guy who just days ago ranted about there being no more secrets. Man, am I a contradiction or what?) 🙂
I Never Picked Cotton
“I Never Picked Cotton”
By Johnny Cash
[Chorus:]
I never picked cotton
But my mother did
And my brother did
And my sister did
And my daddy died young
Workin’ in the coal mine
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Giving Up On The DTA-310
I’m pretty-much giving up on the Packet8 DTA-310 being a client on my Asterisk server. The unlocked one I own crashes within seconds of power-up. I’ve never had any luck placing calls with it, either.
I’m going with a Sipura SPA-5000 instead. One hundred bucks gets you TWO voice ports. And no headaches. Woot.
Banner Month for MT.Net
March was a very good month for humble ‘ol MT.Net. The eleven readers out there hit refresh enough times to register 26,162 hits for the month, 5,152 visits, with 166 average visits per day: all records. Compare that to last March, with 7,570 hits, 926 visits, and 29 visits per day, average.
It’s all proof that there are lots of people out there bored silly.