General Rambling

Five simple strategies that might help if you’re driving in snow and ice. 1. Turning, stopping, and starting are problems. Going in a straight line is not. You can go fast in a straight line as long as any movement of the steering wheel or brake pedal is done with care. No sudden movements! Because starting is a problem don’t stop where you or those behind you won’t be able to start again, such as on a hill. 2. Centripetal force is what keeps you going wanting to go in a straight line, off into the ditch or parked cars, while you are trying to go around a corner. Your tires fight this with traction, but when it’s slick you …

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It’s time for another edition of “Ask My Readers.” You folks did so well guiding me to places in San Francisco that I am going to ask you again, only with a different slant (basically not so much drinking advice). 🙂 My mother will be just south of Windsor, CA in March, for a week. That’s 60 miles north of SF. I’m trying to put together a list of suggested destinations, but I need help. She’s a crafty sort of person, likes quilting, not so into art or tech stuff. She’ll be with a couple other ladies who have similar tastes, and who aren’t afraid to drive. I am going to try grouping some of the suggestions into groups, including …

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I’m tired, as I was up sort of late last night. One of our storage arrays, the kind that is advertised to never fail, failed briefly. It took out our enterprise mail system and a variety of other databases and applications, all of which had been moved to this array because it was supposed to be super reliable. In my queue of things to write about is putting all your eggs in one basket while trusting vendors. “Where Data Lives” is more like “Where Data Dies And Support Shrugs At You Like They Think You Are An Idiot For Believing The Spec Sheet Or The Sales People.” In the meantime, xkcd has a cartoon today that hits pretty close to …

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“Hey, a package came for you.” “Sweet!” I reply. “Open it because I need one of those cards.” “These aren’t the fibre channel cards we ordered. It’s my egg cooker from Amazon.” “You bought an egg cooker?” He is looking at me like I am an alien. “Yeah. It boils eggs. I love hard boiled eggs but I always screw them up and I’m tired of it. Plus I had a gift certificate I had to use. And it was cheap.” “Dude, boiling eggs is super easy. Boil water. Insert eggs. Start timer. Maybe just learn to not be an idiot?” “Do you know how many eggs I’ve wasted? Plus all the power to heat all that water? I’m results-oriented, …

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Some quickies that don’t necessarily need their own posts. Most of these are micro-rants. Boy, I’m getting negative these days. I should write about something that makes me happy. Well, the post about Etsy is sorta positive. Sorta. 1. “The 5 Sins of Vista” – amen, brother. I agree with Mr. Kaplan over at blackrimglasses.com that these sins have been around a long time. Making things look better is not the same as fixing the problems. I’m especially annoyed with the network control panels. 2. “Twitter” – “A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?” – Who gives a damn what I’m doing? I’m hard-boiling eggs. I’m talking on the phone with my …

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One minute forty nine seconds but worth all of it:

The announcement today about Sun and Intel getting together is interesting. This looks like them snubbing AMD. I’m an Intel fan myself, so this is good. I’ve had several very bad experiences with AMD hardware, to the point where I won’t use or recommend it to anyone (the jury is still out on ATI, though). Overall, I think it’s good to have options, just like Dell is now adding AMD to their product lines. This also looks like Sun and Intel snubbing Linux, underhandedly deeming it not mission-critical. If this has the effect of rallying the Linux camp to clean up the rough edges then it will be worth the snubbing. I have plenty of mission-critical stuff running on Linux, …

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A favorite concoction of mine, since fifth grade. I just found the recipe again and I thought I’d share. Ingredients: – Borax powder – 4 ounce bottle of white glue (not school glue) – Water (preferably distilled) – Food coloring (optional) Materials: – Teaspoon – Big jar or 1-quart measuring cup – 2-quart bowl – Measuring cup Procedure: Squeeze the glue into the jar. Fill the empty glue bottle with water and add it to the jar. Add food coloring, if desired. Stir. In the 2-quart bowl mix 1 cup water with 1 teaspoon Borax powder. Stir well. Slowly add the glue mixture to the Borax mixture, stirring as you do so. Although there will be excess water in the …

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