Exstatica

We just got one of those Edison SmartConnect power meters. They are all digital, and now the electric company can read the meter from the central office. Its got some crazy wireless 2 way system, that is government encrypted system, but i’ll get to that in a minute. Basically they sample your power usage every five minutes. Store that data, and then they can tell when they can shift power away from you and give it to other areas, Its suppose to reduce your rate if you opt in.

Edison has to pay for these things right, so what do you think they are going to do? Power rates are going to go up 1.3 percent over the next few years while they finish upgrading everyone to thise new system. This new plan called something like SmartGrid is suppose to save you money, which I’m all for. Whats the drawbacks? I don’t know, it might mean you will get reduced power during a bad month or something. The kind of data that Edison can get from this is almost futuristic. Think about it. You could display every house in the entire power grid, every business, everything. And know when they go on and off, and where the biggest zones are, the heavy hitters, and then also remotely turn off power as needed, or unpaid. Its like Lo Jack for electricity. Government will probably have access in some form, be able to turn off a grid or a single location in seconds.

I think its a great idea. I just wish the power data was opened up a little more. They will show you your data on their website, but only what they want to see, like daily usage. I want to see the raw 5 minute data. Imagine if you could just play with your house and watch your usage and figure out what is causing that major drain that you could get rid of. For all I know my power bill is high because of the printer i have plugged in and don’t use, haha.

What about using something like this for a large open internet? The government is sitting here trying to find ways to build a new national infrastructure for broadband everywhere. Why not use every power metter as a hot spot, bridge them all together, and you have the largest wireless network.

Think about bit torrent for the internet. Edison sets up these larger pops, they are the main backbone feeds. You have the smaller transformers handling relays for long distances.  All these wireless carriers buy into it to get access to the grid. You now have a universal platform for all kinds of networks, from cell phones to internet, to anything really.

You essentially build a giant fully redundant meshed network. Sure you still have to deal with power outtages, and blackouts, but have a small backup battery in each unit, that way the power company can use it to diagnose power issues and find exactly where the power problem is.

I’m just saying…

via WorldMysteries9

Thats all, thanks

Seriously? Do people have nothing else to do?

ok backstory…

The Mojave Cross is a memorial that was created in 1934, put there by the Veterans of Foreign Wars as a memorial to World War I dead. It was originally made out of wood, but is now currently made out of painted metal. It was situated in public land until about 1994, it then became part of the 1.6 million acres known as the Mojave Land Preserve. In 1999 some Douchey Mc Douche named Frank Buono from the ALCU decided that his life wasn’t already worthless enough, and decided to complain. His complaint is that the cross is a symbol of Christians, and as a war memorial it wasn’t equal rights because not all people who went to war were Christian.

So they want the cross removed. Who f-ing cares? I mean seriously. Its a cross in the middle of the desert, that serves as a reminder to some people who went to war and sacrificed their lives for our country.  Its not about religion, it was about freedom. Who cares if there was a Jew, a Muslim, or any other religion. They fought not for any of those things, they fought for our freedom.

Just leave it, its not hurting anyone, if it is get over it. Its not like my neighbors wind chimes that offend my Audiology, make me want to call the ACLU. They are just wind chimes.

So let me get this right. Were broke, the economy sucks, natural disasters everywhere, war, and all the other crap going on in this country, we are complaining about a cross in the middle of the fucking desert.

I’m going to build a super high tech, crazy fast rocket engine, build me a space ship, and find me planet Common Sense.

So this super douche Frank, who used to work for the park service by the way, and is now retired and hates his pension, decides its a great idea to sue the government.  He took it to court, won, and they ordered it removed. In 2003 the Congress ($$$$$) decided to move land private. So now the big bad SUPREME COURT steps in and eventually refused to order the removal of a congressionally endorsed war memorial cross by a vote of 5 to 4.

I just don’t see the point, leave it be. Its called preserving history. If there was a penis carved in cement for 75 years on my front porch. I’d leave it. History is our lives, its how the world changed, and it changes by people, nature, moments, and things that actually matter like how we take care of the present.

Anyway the Supreme Court judges all made speeches on their person opinion. Which I think is very fair, at least we know they are still people. One particular Judge I found spot on. His name, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, and he said:

“A Latin cross is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs. It is a symbol often used to honor and respect those whose heroic acts, notable contributions and patient striving help secure an honored place in history for this nation and its people”

Lets just stop wasting time on political correctness and focus on real issues.

company A just enforced signatures to be standard. While I agree there should be some standardization across the company, the way they are requiring them to be formated is complete insanity.

For example, this is the signature they are requiring.

FirstName LastName | Position
Company X, Inc.
123 Place St, Suite 1,  City, ST, 12345
Office: 310-555-1212 | Toll Free: 800-555-1212
Direct: 310-555-1222 | Fax: 310-555-1234

Email: n...@company.net    Web: http://www.company.net

Business Grade Voice & Data Solutions
VoIP | Broadband | Co-location | Professional Services

- Notice: Please use “Reply to All” when responding to this email.
- For general support please call 800-555-1234or email supp...@company.net.
- For billing, sales or the general office please call 310-555-1234.

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail transmission, and any documents, files or previous e-mail messages attached to it may contain confidential information that is legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, or a person responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of any of the information contained in or attached to this transmission is STRICTLY PROHIBITED. If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately notify the sender. Please destroy the original transmission and its attachments without reading or saving in any manner. Thank you.

Alright, so lets make an signature that takes up an entire page. Here is an alternative

FirstName LastName | Sr. Network Engineer
Company Inc.
123 Place St, Suite 1,  City, ST, 12345
Main: 310-555-1212, x123| Fax: 310-555-1222
n...@company.net | http://www.company.net

Notice: Use “Reply To All” when responding.
For general support please call 800-555-1212 or email supp...@company.net. For billing, sales or the general office please call 310-555-1212.

I would make the company name a little bigger, but disclaimers don’t really do anything, granted they might have some purpose in court but for the most part they are going to be looking at the content of the email. If it is the intended recpient taking you to court the content has no value, if its someone else, someone that the email wasn’t intended for then it might serve a purpose. However employees shouldn’t be sending email that could put the company at risk to people in the first place. We provide support and sales stuff. I’m not sending medical records, the whitehouse blueprints.

Also in the first example the numbers are duplicated, why would we put such information twice in an email? why do we need to put all this office stuff and then in a notice put it again? I can’t really imagine why.

Anyway thats my rant for the day.

Who doesn’t like presents? OK maybe you don’t, but I’m all about getting random stuff shipped. I’ve tried taking this idea to Think Geek a few years ago, but it apparently fell on def ears. Here is the idea. Hopefully Woot will go for it.

1. User specifies a per month cost. (Say 20 per month).
2. User specifies a frequency (lets say once or twice a month).
3. Woot uses a Magical Random Surprise Detection Algorithm or Mrsda as I like to call it, to send me a package, it can use all or some of the monthly allotment, anything not used rolls over. In a month I may only get 1 item that cost 3 dollars, the next month however I might get something for 35. Users of course could choose to turn this on and off.
4. Woot ships me the package via fedex or unicorns, I prefer unicorns, on a random day of the month
5. Bam surprise!
6. ???
7. Profit

Now of course you should be able to choose some options, like I would enable it for both woot.com and shirts.woot.com and maybe even wine.woot.com (man I really want that Bonsai Tree). You would also be able to select types of things, like nothing USB, or Only computer crap, or only kitchen things. That way the surprise is tailored kind of to you. Plus if it it was built around the Pandora method then you could go online and rate your surprise, but maybe on a scale of one to 10 instead of thumbs up and thumbs down. Even if I hated the gift I could give it to someone else and make it their problem.

So Woot, how about it? I’m sure your amazing groups of item description writers could help with the Mrsda system and then I could start getting presents in the mail. Like Tiger Woods would say… Just Do her it!

Its interesting with the current Facebook outage, and the last year or so of various cloud services failing that we learn how much we rely on the internet. Just 5 years ago we didn’t have such a vested interest in communicating online. The shift of information has changed.

Think about just 5 years ago. Facebook was still closed to college students only, it had only been around since feb 2004. No Twitter, No Youtube. Social media as we new it didn’t exist. We relied heavily on email, and instant messaging.  Broadband was still expensive and slow. You were lucky to get 1.5/128 broadband. Things like Google Maps wasn’t even around in 2004. I’m sure 99% of us used Mapquest since it was the only real online map site.

With a sense of disconnect we continue hitting refresh in the hope that we will get a glimpse or a update from someone somewhere telling us that things will be ok, or what shoes you are wearing. Information that seems so silly yet so vital to our daily lives.

We then turn to other online media sites and flood them trying to get the word out to increase the buzz yet we all already know its down just from a twitter search. Which in itself creates a catch 22. If no one reports it, no one knows about it, if tens of thousands of people twitter it then it becomes an epidemic, and more wildly known. Even if the outage only last for a few minutes. The 5 minutes of downtime will circle the blog-o-sphere casting a much needed doubt in the reliability of the information we rely on.

We complain when there is an outage but build cloud based services because some niche needs to be filled on the internet for us to store our content. yet is still prone to failures as is with anything.  Whats the next move? Cloud based computing, lets remove local storage and put it on the cloud and build a computer around it. Don’t get me wrong, I think Chrome OS is great, and for someone who just needs to browse the web, check email, and look at pictures. My parents who are getting better at using the internet as long as I tell them what browsers to use, what services to use, and most of all a virus/spyware program that emails me. Plus I tell them they are not allowed to install anything unless they call me. Usually I have a better idea of what they are looking for than some program they don’t need.

What do I tell them if they are using Google Docs, and Gmail, and Wave and Google breakfast maker and the cloud goes down?

What if its like my father who would use it for work and handle customer tracking. What does he tell his clients when something goes down? What if a service goes out of business. I wonder if someone has built a graph of startups with cloud/remote storage and failures vs success. I don’t Google would fail, because they have some of the most amazing technology, and Microsoft is releasing Office Live which is a cloud based document center. Everything is just moving to the web. I don’t even think I could function without a computer for more than 2 weeks. Not only would my Email get backed up, my work would explode, I wouldn’t even know how to pay bills via snail mail let alone check my account balance without going to an atm. Even then I’d have no idea how to figure out how to get a balance. I mean I’m sure I could figure it out, but the browser and online banking is just so much easier.

I dunno, honestly its going to be very interesting to see where online media and social network takes us next. If the U.S. was the broadband leader and we all had 100mbit wireless internet I think the web would jump a few version numbers from 2.0 to 16.9 in a matter of months. Everyone wants instant content, and they want it now.

Search engines alone are getting crazy accurate. The next logical step for them is to plus directly into our brains and make our memory searchable. How awesome would that be? Google Brain Search.

Yes, If I could have a internet connection planted into my brain with audio and video playback, and just think what I want. I would rob you, get it implanted, go on every knowledge game show and then pay you back with my winnings. Hey I’m just saying…

Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention. I’ve just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. I need all of you, to stop what you’re doing and listen. Waffle Shortage!

– The waffle situation is critical

– The waffle situation is critical

This news comes at such desperate times when an a mass of children form to create what I like to call the Colostomy Effect. After further research I’ve been able to report the more detailed reason behind this shocking news.

Kellogg Company recently experienced supply constraints caused by flood damage at our bakery in Atlanta. In addition, we’ve been making significant equipment enhancements and repairs in our largest waffle bakery. Unfortunately, this is taking longer than anticipated.

The Eggo™ team is working around the clock to bring everyone’s favorite waffles back to store shelves as quickly as possible. We hope to regain full distribution of Eggo products by the middle of 2010. This is a top priority for Kellogg Company.

Click here to receive periodic updates from the Eggo® brand about your favorite products, including news about when they will be back on shelf, or for more information, call 866-971-3320. Thank you for your patience during this time, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

I hope that this team of waffle engineers is getting the government support they need to correct this national waffle emergency. I’ll keep you all updated as new information comes in.

I’ve been kinda sorta playing wow for almost 4 years now. I’ve worked my way up and up into the hardcore raiding and then well burnt out. I have only one 80, its my Druid. I haven’t really played another character much, just my druid. I went Resto, and became the best healer in my guild. I enjoy healing, I’m good at it, and I’m fast. But raiding 4-5 nights a week is overkill. I have a real life, it keeps me way to busy and I just can’t find the time to play anymore.

Sister and myself used to be in the same guild, we raided together, we pretty much always played together. I got burn’t out before her, but she was not far behind. She recently began playing again on an alt. She rolled a Druid on another server to kind of enjoy the fun parts of playing wow. She is around 25. I have a 31 priest on a server that I never play so I moved that character over so we could all just screw around again.

Not 24 hours later did I move my 80 . You see as my low 31′ness, I helped a guild sign a charter (if you have no idea what I’m talking about you can just ignore this whole post) Became a “founding” member of a guild and noticed that everyone in this guild was transferring from other servers, it was kind of a fresh start for everyone. So why not me? Its a local server, great raid times, and I don’t have to be all hardcore raid. Since I have great gear, and I can heal like Sushi heals my soul. Why not.

So we’ll see how it plays out. I’m kind of excited, but I’m a little weary as I have a pretty busy life as it is. Between work, and general life. I don’t want to be sucked all the way back into this fictitious world. Although PVP is always a great way to get some stress out, I mean who doesn’t feel good to just go and kill something with some friends? I know I do.

Screenshot of my UI

WoW UI

Ok so Look at this picture to the left. This was a post titled…

If My Brain Ran Windows, This Would Be How My Task Manager Looks

So this is a great image, however the order is all messed up for me. Food and Drinks are usually important, sex is great. If I had to reorder this it would be as follows

Drink
Play
Sex
Food
Work

So ok, Well there is an issue here, sadly work tends to be first. I love playtime. It doesn’t have to be sexual, just has to be fun, random, and probably a little crazy. Only because if you can’t enjoy life, than what is the point. While I can be the responsible adult that I forced myself to become due to the way I grew up. I am still a kid at heart, and while some people don’t get my sense of humor, I frankly don’t care. If you don’t like me… well I hate you too.