And we're back

Two weeks! That's how long my blog was out of service. At best, I could get blogger to post in one of my feeds, but the main page was never updated. There are a lot of updates to talk about, but I need to earn my paycheck now.

Techincal Difficulties

Been having problems posting via blogger for the past week. Still working on it.

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Stupid blogger refuses to make me post. It's censorship ... I know it.

Sccccreeeeaaaccch!!! BOOM!

That sound you hear is our gallery coming to a screaching halt and crashing. Yup. The entire thing went kaput. The main problem is our albums directory was not being backed up due to the inordinate size it consumed (many, many gigs were lost). A few months ago, the machine on which this account resides suffered catastrophic disk failures requiring a brand new hard drive. Our uploaded pictures went with it. Now, we still have all our pictures residing on 2 separate hard drives at home. There just isn't anything viewable by the general public. All the album structures are intact and I can still see my comments, so I can rebuild it. However, that means manually uploading all the pictures going back 3 or so years. I think, at this point, just starting at 4th quarter 2007 is going to have to suffice. After all, we still have all the images and gallery is just a way to share them with out friends

You're such a virago!

The internet is awash in random crap for people to learn. Being a crapologist (as opposed to a poopologist) myself, I enjoy looking for this crap so I can whip it out later and seem smarter than I really am. For that is the definition of a crapologist! A few days ago, My random crap search brought to me a beautiful little word:

virago: an ill-tempered, overbearing woman; also, a woman of great strength and courage.

I read the first definition and thought little of it. It is the second definition that really caught my eye. How could this word be used then? It appears to be an insult and a compliment at the same time. Amazingly enough, there are several women I know to whom this word applies, I just won't tell you which definition fits best. :)

Dictionary.com definition of virago

An Answer that Actually Shuts People Up.

Last night's Mythbusters intrigued me in ways no show has ever done before. The myth they were tackling was "Plane on a Conveyor Belt". The myth goes like this:

"A plane is standing on a runway that can move (some sort of band conveyer). The plane moves in one direction, while the conveyer moves in the opposite direction. This conveyer has a control system that tracks the plane speed and tunes the speed of the conveyer to be exactly the same (but in the opposite direction). Can the plane take off?"

If you were to print out all the discussions and arguments devoted to this one topic, there would be no trees left. It was one of those interesting theoretical questions that caused physics experts and novices alike to ponder.
Last night's episode ended all discussion and proved once and for all the answer to this, now not theoretical, question. I won't spoil the answer, but I was very intrigued

Are you sure my dog needs new batteries?

Had to take the car to the shop today. The problem I have is that mechanics and veterinarians are both the same beast to me. They can pretty much say anything they want, quote any price I want, and I have no idea if they're pulling my leg or not. The key phrases from the mechanic today were:

Blown Intake Manifold
Cracked Sway Bar

I have no idea what these things are. I can't turn around and pointedly ask if the manifold is actually blown or is it just winded. Maybe my car doesn't want to sway so why worry about a cracked bar? How do you determine a fair price when your knowledge of cars is "They go vroom vroom". It would be like my vet saying my dog needed new batteries. My only response could be "Is that double A's?". *sigh* I just hate it when you can actually hear the cash register sound in their mind when you say stupid shit like that.

Doing My Duty

One Wednesday or so a month, you can find me at the Algonquin Library from 6:30 - 8:30 tutoring kids in math. I enjoy it, but it does provide for some surreal experiences. Take tonight. We were quite busy so I was handling 3 students at once. Normally, this doesn't stress me a whole lot, but the issue was the subjects. One tutee was studying about polygons, one was studying exponential growth and decay, and the third was in AP Calculus doing derivatives with the product, quotient, and chain rules. This disparity resulted in some interesting conversations, like the following:
"So, when you add the angles of a quadrilateral, what should you get?" *turn to student 2* "If you are given the population is increasing by 3%, what should your growth factor be?" *turn to student 3* "What rule do you need to use when finding the derivative of x/(x²+2)^1/2?" *turn back to student one* "That's right, so if you are given 3 angles of a quadrilateral, what do you need to do to find the fourth?" *turn to student 2* "Close, but if the population is increasing, should your growth factor be less than or greater than one?" *turn to student 3* "Good, you correctly used the quotient rule, but there's a little problem with g(x). We can't directly take the derivative of (x²+2)^1/2, so what rule should we apply to find that?"
It was a rather exhausting session tonight. So much so that I looked at the clock and said "Is it only 7:30?" Despite all that, I really love doing this. Lauren is funny too, because Mommy has told her I couldn't put her to bed tonight because I had to help kids at the library. So, when I went in to say good night, she asks "You help kids?". She asked about the kids and why daddy helps them, but she does seem to understand this is a good thing and the kids need daddy. It's quite touching.

Know who's selling your data

If you have a gmail account, there is a nifty feature that you may want to start using immediately. Essentially, your one gmail address can be expanded into an unlimited number of emails by simply adding a "+" to the end your user name. For example, if Mr. Foo was submitting his gmail address foo@gmail.com to the Bar corporation, he could write the following: foo+bar@gmail.com.
Seems pretty neat, but why would you want to do such a thing. Here is where that little trick becomes invaluable. Later on, Mr. Foo notices his account is getting bombarded with spam. He's given his gmail address to his bank, to his credit card company, and to various other institutions that seem to require email to do business. By using this feature, Mr Foo might notice that most of his spam is coming not to foo@gmail.com, but rather foo+bar@gmail.com. Pretty neat! We've just determined that the Bar Corporation has been selling Mr Foo's information.
Just a little FYI for those out there who may not know it already. For more information, you can check out my source for this: Extreme Tech.