Tag Archives: technology
Does clothes dryer exhaust reveal the detergent you use?
By assuming the background of this canvas is the subculture in which I live/work, I present to readers, through their interpretive experiences or experiential interpretations, the idea that this background is an acceptable form of living.
Indeed, it is.
I can get in my car, waste petrol to drive 1 mile, walk into the big box store to buy replacement halogen T-bulbs so my wife can continue her scrapbooking after I return home and replace the burned out lightbulb in the back bedroom/scrapbooking supply room, grab a George Killian’s Irish Red beer, go back to typing and keep track of Bristol racing and NCAA hooping at the same time.
If I want.
When was the last time you played cricket?
Do you have the power to create thunderstorms and waves of lightning where it is seemingly impossible?
Do you keep a salt lick in the backyard in case your freezer supply is running short and you need some more wild game meat?
Have you ever wrestled and killed a whitetail deer with your bare hands?
As a vegetarian, do you know how many animals you’ve killed with your vehicle or by vehicles driven by people who support your lifestyle? What did you and/or them do with the animals/meat?
Trying to get outside this set of states of energy to create originality is going to keep me fully occupied the rest of my life.
A nod to the guy with the Lockheed-Martin hat – I read your thoughts and they were very interesting. I assume your poker playing days are over and the mask has been put away.
My roving eyes are on the move.
Time to figure out which set of emperour’s clothes to write about.
When you know the plans you’re developing/implementing involve something vaster than and outside the realm of influence of your solar system, what does any one of us matter anymore?
I recommend you no longer read this blog, if you exist at all.
What I’m going to type about next might make your ordinary plans far less interesting than they might have been had you given them any thought.
As far as the reason for enforcing the no-fly zone? Well, the atrocities committed by Qaddafi’s family in the name of their personal megalomaniacal entertainment will be sufficiently documented in their spectacular trials before the court of the people by the people and for the people.
That’s the way it’s been and going to be.
Somebody’s always finding a way to revive the Spanish Inquisition.
Morality plays draw the biggest audiences, especially when we find ways to make them personal for everyone. Were you associated with the Qaddafi family and if so, how much?
Do they still tie handkerchiefs over faces facing firing squads?
Cue the dramatic music and teaser trailer for the upcoming persecution of corrupt members of the old Libyan regime.
I’ve ordered my front-row seat. Better hurry, executioners are promising a lot of screams and pleas for mercy.
Aah, repetition. Pro-government forces out of favour once again.
Is a rope too good for Qaddafi? I don’t see him (or his body double) hiding in an underground bunker.
You know that Hillary doesn’t negotiate, don’t you?
I hear they’re creating a new torture chamber – keel-hauling over razorbacks, it’s called.
Women in power – I told you 2010 was a good year for them. Now they’re exercising their right to excise.
And you thought your government’s debt was going to be the death of you!
Merkel, you get a back row seat this time. You had your chance and you blew it with Olde World diplomacy.
Word to remember me by
Obama: U.S. will not send ground troops to Libya
I’m not opposed to protecting the interests of the seriously vested but what is the definition of “ground” because I’m pretty sure I know what the word “troops” means.
Take a wait-n-see approach ’cause my weight and sea attack approach is…
Wait and see. 😉
It’s one world.
All is all.
What is that LHC doing?
Humbled by Community after Pi Day
Always good to know you’re not the first
Found this entry about a science fiction writer I probably read in my junior high (primary) or high school (secondary) years.
Another Post-Aggression Depression Post
Today, many people on this planet celebrate St. Patrick’s Day which, oddly enough, is day when drunk revellers imbibe in the name of a Catholic saint.
Are you willing to share your traditions with others who’ll shape the traditions to their whims, desires and traditions?
Hard to believe only 14,295 days are left and I want to spend this day in a cloud of oblivion, not eating, drinking or consuming more than moist air for my lungs.
Smelling the wind. Feeling vibrations in my feet.
Looking at sweetgum tree buds.
Thinking about no time in particular.
Almost not caring about the arrangements of these words sdfps8′ 3ehp4nh’N#g;p3.
What do you do with yourself in a closed-loop system?
There is a stinkbug caught between the window screen and the window, finding a crack somewhere to get in but unable to find its way back out.
There are an unnumbered number of dead insects at the bottom of the window.
Some days I feel like the stinkbug, unaware that my time spent crawling on the screen, my antennae fully aware of familiar smells/vibrations but unable to get to them, is time spent not knowing I’m not going to get out alive. Perhaps a spider hidden in a corner will find me and make use of me.
Otherwise…
Perfectly, happily, soberly aware I really know nothing.
My brain an Intel Celeron M running Microsoft Windows Vista Basic on a Compaq Presario C501NR Notebook PC, generations and magnitudes less complicated than the world’s fastest human-made supercomputer.
More than sitting on a horse and buggy counting on my fingers, in comparison, but comparison to what?
Who am I to deny any one of the seven billion of us the right to procreate?
Who am I to say billions of us will die for my benefit?
I’m not presumptuous. I’m not the wealthiest or the poorest.
A racetrack or sports arena is more familiar to me as a place of worship than a place of worship.
If more people in the U.S. watch films and shows on the tellie than go to sporting events or participate in formal religious service, what does that say about what we call religion? That is, how are we defining our definitions of morals and ethics for normal social interaction?
How does a child know the difference between fantasy and reality?
When did we start believing food comes in brightly-coloured bags and boxes, not out of farms and ranches?
When did we convince ourselves it’s all right to turn homes into chemical experiments on humans, plants, animals, insects and other living things?
What does it profit me to profit if I’m going to contract cancer from unintentional concoctions?
I’m going to die anyway, right?
Who or what entity is going to test whether the aerosols of chemical lawn fertilisers will mix with aerosols of underarm deodourant, hairspray, furniture deodouriser, kitchen surface disinfectant and cologne/perfume to create a force more invisibly deadly than anything dreamed up by military chemical warfare departments, because no one took into account the change to the microorganisms inhabiting our bodies and the poisons they’ve been, through no fault of any one person or entity, chemically genetically-modified to cover us and fill our pores with?
The Law of Unintended Consequences.
I didn’t get drunk today but, because I mentioned the phrase “St. Patrick’s Day,” someone reads these words and decides it’s okay to have one or two extra litres of beer to show he’s more manly than anyone in the room, stumbles out of the pub, trips on the curb and bangs his head, ending up in a hospital emergency room where he meets a nice nurse he decides to introduce to his forlorn son, their love convincing the father to give up drinking heavily because he can finally forgive himself for not taking good care of his wife while she was dying of cancer she got while visiting her sister’s family near a chemical waste dump they didn’t know existed behind their house that was built in the shape of a stinkbug on an idea an architect got from reading random blog entries one day.
We are an ignorant species so let’s keep looking for ways to increase our wisdom and not just our collections of esoteric information that we cleverly yell out while watching television trivia game shows.
If you knew exactly where a large chunk of galactic material was going to hit Earth’s atmosphere thousands or millions of years from now, would you figure out how to change Earth’s rotation ever so slightly to keep the resulting sonic boom and burning debris from hitting major centres of your species’ population, knowing the destruction of trillions of other microorganisms would have a small but not detrimental effect on your species thousands of years later?
How big a picture can you work with without resorting to using literary devices like magic, superpowers or time travel?
When the timescales of your species have little effect on galactic timescales at which you operate, what does one life matter?
Finding the humour in that scenario is the challenge of my lifetime.
14,295 days, as we call them, to get it right.
What the world of at&t Internet users should already know
Broadband Usage FAQs [from: http://www.att.com/esupport, as of 16 Mar 2011]
Are there any usage limits for my broadband service?
Yes. As of May 2, 2011, AT&T’s residential DSL High Speed Internet plans will have a usage allowance of 150 Gigabytes (“GB”) per month, and its residential U-verse High Speed Internet plans will have a usage allowance of 250 Gigabytes (“GB”) per month. The usage allowance is the amount of data you can send and receive each month.
Why is AT&T implementing a usage allowance?
AT&T has experienced a dramatic increase in the amount of data that is sent and received over its wireline broadband networks. This dramatic increase is driven primarily by a small fraction of our customers. In fact, the top 2% of customers use about 20% of the total capacity on our network. A single high traffic user can utilize the same amount of data capacity as 19 typical households. Lopsided usage patterns can cause congestion at certain points in the network, which can slow Internet speeds and interfere with other customers’ access to and use of the network.
What is a gigabyte?
A gigabyte is a unit of measurement of the amount of data that is transmitted over the Internet. Approximately 50,000 single-page e-mails (without attachments), for example, equate to about 1 GB. It is important to remember that a GB represents the amount of data sent over the network, and not the amount of time spent using the Internet.
How much is 150 GB?
150 GB is far more data than most customers ever use in a month. Our average DSL customer uses only about 18 GB per month. In fact, less than 2% of DSL users utilize more than 150 GB per month. We estimate that 98% of our customers will not be affected by this change because the monthly usage allowance includes so much bandwidth.
How much do I get with 150 or 250 GB?
You can do a lot with 150 or 250 GB. Here is an example.
| Monthly Activity | 150 GB | 250 GB |
| Send/receive one page emails | 10,000 emails
-and- |
10,000 emails
-and- |
| Download/upload a medium resolution photo to social media site like Facebook | 3,000 photos
-and- |
4,000 photos
-and- |
| MP3 Songs downloaded | 2,000 songs
-and- |
3,000 songs
-and- |
| Stream a one-minute YouTube video (standard quality) | 5,000 views
-and- |
5,000 views
-and- |
| Watch hour-long TV Shows (high quality) | 100 shows
-and – |
200 shows
-and – |
| Stream full length movies (Standard Definition: SD; High Definition: HD) | 20 SD or 10 HD movies | 25 SD or 13 HD movies |
Usage examples are estimates based on typical file sizes and/or duration of file transfer or streaming event.
Will spending a lot of time on the Internet cause me to exceed my monthly usage allowance?
Time alone is not the determining factor; it is the activity that matters. You could spend several hours reading e-mails, for example, and use less than 1 GB of data. You could spend 30 minutes downloading a movie, on the other hand, and use 2 GB of data. It is important to remember that it is what you are doing on the Internet, not how long you do it, that determines the amount of data that you use.
Can anyone other than someone in my immediate household affect my bandwidth usage?
If you have not secured your wireless gateway/router, someone nearby with a computer or Wi-Fi enabled device could access your home network and use your High Speed Internet Service, which could increase your monthly usage. AT&T recommends that you secure your wireless router/gateway to prevent others from using your High Speed Internet Service. We suggest that you use common encryption protocols, such as Wireless Encryption Protocol (WEP) or Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) for security. Check www.att.com/esupport for support with AT&T provided devices, or your manufacturer’s support website for help with securing your wireless router/gateway.
What will happen if I exceed my monthly usage allowance?
You will receive a notice the first time your usage exceeds the applicable monthly allowance.
In the following months, we will send you additional notices each month when your usage exceeds 65%, 90% and 100% of your monthly usage allowance. If you exceed your monthly allowance a second time, AT&T will send you a notice advising you that the next time you exceed your allowance – the third time – you will be billed $10 for each 50 GB of data over your allowance.
We will continue to send you courtesy notifications when your usage exceeds 65%, 90% and 100% of your monthly usage allowance to keep you informed about your usage patterns. All of these notices will remind you of what your monthly usage allowance is, provide you with information to help you understand broadband data usage, offer you tips on how to effectively control your usage to stay below your monthly allowance, and explain what your options are if you exceed your allowance in future billing periods. For example, you can modify your usage patterns to stay below your monthly usage allowance; continue your normal usage patterns and pay $10 for each additional 50 GB of data over your monthly allowance; or terminate your service, consistent with the terms of any special pricing offer that you previously accepted.
Importantly, if you do not receive a notice from AT&T, it means that you have not exceeded your monthly usage allowance. In some cases, it may mean that we cannot measure your usage yet. Either way, you should not be concerned about your usage patterns for billing purposes.
Where will I receive notices about my broadband usage?
You will receive notices about your broadband usage at the primary e-mail address that you set up when you registered for Service. We will send a letter by U.S. mail if we cannot reach you by e-mail or do not have your e-mail address.
How will AT&T help me to monitor my usage?
AT&T will provide a website with two options to assist customers in managing their High Speed Internet usage.
First, AT&T will provide a personal usage report at www.MyUsage.att.com where customers can view how much actual data they have used in a given month from the January 2011 bill cycle to the most recent billing cycle. To protect confidential customer information, this site is password-protected. The login process requires your Internet access login and password. The login is your AT&T primary account email address (e.g., John_smith@att.net). The password is the same password used to access your att.net homepage and primary email account.
AT&T initially will report usage data on a weekly basis. When a customer uses 70% of their monthly usage allowance, we will supplement their personal usage report on a daily basis. A customer’s usage will be posted on the website within 1 – 4 days after it is collected.
Second, AT&T will provide a website with examples of what kind of Internet activity can impact your actual usage. In addition, on the same site AT&T will provide a usage calculator, which will enable customers to input data about how they typically use their Service and calculate an estimate of how much data they are likely to use in a given month. This website will be available in late April 2011.
I can’t seem to access the usage tool. What should I do?
Many of our customers have access to this tool already. For those who don’t today, until your usage is available for viewing on www.MyUsage.att.com, you should not be concerned about your usage patterns for billing purposes. Once the tool is available, you will be notified if you exceed your allowance.
Two Points
- Our Body the Ecosystem: Understanding the Interplay Between Man and Microbe
- Is This a “Killer Spray” for Kitchen Microbes?
From Wikipedia:
A microbiome is the totality of microbes, their genetic elements (genomes), and environmental interactions in a defined environment. A defined environment could, for example, be the gut of a human being or a soil sample. Thus, microbiome usually includes microbiota and their complete genetic elements. The human microbiome contains over 10 times more microbes than genetically human cells.[1]
The expression “microbiome” was coined by Joshua Lederberg. In his opinion, the microorganisms should be included as part of the human genome, because of their influence on human physiology.
[1] Zimmer, Carl (13 July 2010). “How Microbes Defend and Define Us”. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13micro.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all. Retrieved 17 July 2010.
Random shoutout of the week
…to Katharine’s Sanctuary Without Walls.
Ear Mail :)
Happy 2nd Anniversary, The Melting Pot of Huntsville!
A nod to Stephen Wysock at Aviagen – may you have another 10 great years with the company. Happy Birthday to your better half today.
Tonight, while enjoying the company of our server, Malarie (no, not malady or malaria, but named after the character on “Family Ties“), my wife and I observed the goings-on at the Melting Pot.
Friendly workers, seemingly happy.
The owner, Steve Hagins, and his son David in MBWA mode.
Steve’s proud (but not biased, of course) about his son’s second sense when it comes to customer service, able to detect a problem before it’s a problem and find a solution before his father knows there’s a problem.
Steve is well on his way toward handing the business over to his son in the next few years, allowing himself to take a long-term break, if not retire completely.
We remember the opening two years ago.
So does Steve.
After 19 months in preparation, working something like 125 days in a row, Steve was in automatic mode as the Melting Pot was set to open.
Realising his father was near a breaking point, David recommended he take a couple of days off.
And collapse he did.
We’ve all been there, Steve. We rarely know when we need rejuvenation until someone near and dear points it out.
We’ll be back at the Melting Pot because you put customer Numero Uno.
Speaking of customer service, I am focusing on helping another friend, Gary Shelton, and the product invention he shares with Joe McGinty over at Invetex. If you’re in the computer rack business and want a little extra security and peace of mind for your customers, give Invetex a look-see. An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of gold where data and cash flow is concerned.
It’s time for our annual support of UCP during An Irish Evening, hosted at the new Jackson Center. We’ll bid on some Irish gifts to share with our nephew, Jonathan, and his lovely new fiancée, Tammy, who’re planning an Irish-themed wedding soon.
‘Twill be a chilly evening tonight and I ran out of birdseed earlier this week, a mass of sparrows taking over the birdfeeders and cleaning me out. Maybe the raccoon in the attic won’t wake me up in the wee hours of the morning.
But Merlin will be at home tomorrow and the missus and I will have our two feline frolickers back under one roof again.
While the French (the French?) want to bomb Libya and the Germans (the Germans?) want to wait, there’ll peace in this household on the weekend.
Somebody tell that loudmouth at the New York Times to shut his trap so we can spread the love of franchising all over the world.
The new liberal way is to make everyone rich enough we can afford to fund our own social services or cause célèbre – no more depending on government assistance for the underprivileged, only for the companies in power, of course.
Obama tricked everyone (or was he tricked?) – now that he’s a millionaire, he’s a Republican wolf in Democratic sheep’s clothing like all the others on the list of “I’m wealthy and I’m not giving up my hard-earned cash” adherents to Reaganite Randianism – the whole healthcare/welfare thing was a typical politician’s ruse until the purse was full.
And I wonder why my presidential vote is counted but never counts…
Someone suggested we bomb an airliner over Libya and call it Lockerbie’s Revenge – be careful what you wish for ’cause I guarantee your wish will be what you want and not what you need.
If only I could tell you what you don’t really know…
The usual suspects in the lineup.
But we can still break free.
Wild beyond our wealthiest dreams!
treetrunkdings 