"#3 - Find a local swimming pool, strap on a pair of rollerblades, get a bicycle."
I actually tried this and found I worked up a sweat very quickly. But a word of warning -- when cycling with rollerblades in a swimming pool, stay in the shallow end. The deep can be treacherous and the bike will weigh you down like you wouldn't believe.
--spir0
I am tempted to go to the local pool and give this a shot just to see what people would say/do.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
best financial site ever: mint.com
http://www.mint.com/mint-demo.html
Still beta, but it is the best financial software out there at the moment.
Once they get the investment category to go live... blows the socks off of quicken.
Ways to save is really nifty too (actually looks at your spending habits to find ways to better spend your money). Again, beta, so it's not perfect, but still really, really cool.
Check out the demo before signing up...
Still beta, but it is the best financial software out there at the moment.
Once they get the investment category to go live... blows the socks off of quicken.
Ways to save is really nifty too (actually looks at your spending habits to find ways to better spend your money). Again, beta, so it's not perfect, but still really, really cool.
Check out the demo before signing up...
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
having your own VPN=win
esp when 92% of your job can be done by just vnc'ing in and esp since everyone is behind a corporate firewall (eg ssh tunnel won't work, needs an open port).
just wish my wrt54g v2 had more NVRAM (not sure if it has enough to store the script to start openvpn, if it uses all of the NVRAM ~4mb it won't boot and you have to resort to JTag'in it, and those cables cost $$/time to make)
plus wherever I go I can access everything as if I am there locally (hello bonjour services working as if I were on my LAN)
not to mention using our 1337 hax0rz skillz at work today. old server, nobody knew the admin password. Terry/I were the only ones who knew how to go about using a live linux CD to decrypt the password (been a long time since I have done it, good to see I am not alone in knowing how. sometimes some people surprise me since I think I will be the only one who would know how, other times... they let me down). actually hacking our own system.. ironic no?
just wish my wrt54g v2 had more NVRAM (not sure if it has enough to store the script to start openvpn, if it uses all of the NVRAM ~4mb it won't boot and you have to resort to JTag'in it, and those cables cost $$/time to make)
plus wherever I go I can access everything as if I am there locally (hello bonjour services working as if I were on my LAN)
not to mention using our 1337 hax0rz skillz at work today. old server, nobody knew the admin password. Terry/I were the only ones who knew how to go about using a live linux CD to decrypt the password (been a long time since I have done it, good to see I am not alone in knowing how. sometimes some people surprise me since I think I will be the only one who would know how, other times... they let me down). actually hacking our own system.. ironic no?
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
stick with DVI-I for backwards compatiblity
While it's bulkier (and more sturdy), thanks to carrying the VGA signal as well it doesn't have HDMI's (sometimes show-stopping) disadvantage of being unable to drive the still most common projectors with analog inputs.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
The customer comes first
I have been quite frequently getting calls at my desk from random customers who have dialed the company switchboard and then punched in a random extension in the hopes of reaching a human who can help them with a problem.
In a perfect world, this would be a reasonable strategy. In a perfect world, I would know everything about every Ultra product, I would be able to help this poor desperate customer, and then maybe they would tell their friends what a great company Ultra is because they randomly dialed a Technician who was happy to give them the help they needed.
Unfortunately, the world is not perfect and I know very little about the products we offer. I don’t even know everything about some of the things I work on. The odds that someone with a tech support question would dial a random number and actually reach me rather than one of the other 650 Ultra employees are infinitesimally small. So, naturally, the people who randomly dial my number invariably ask questions about products that I know nothing about.
By the time someone resorts to dialing random numbers, they’re pretty desperate. Sometimes they’re very upset. They don’t care that I’m a Tech working on something completely unrelated to whatever it is they’re having a problem with; to them, I am the human personification of Ultra the Big Faceless Corporation, and they expect me to have at my fingertips the entirety of Ultra’s corporate knowledge.
When I explain that I can’t help them, they expect me to be able to transfer them to someone who can, and they find it incomprehensible that, as a Ultra insider, I don’t have a handy list of Top Secret support phone numbers. Sometimes this makes them angrier, and sometimes this makes them ask again really, really nicely in the hopes that I’ll decide to rebel against my cruel superiors and transfer them to one of the Top Secret numbers.
In the end, I’m unable to help these desperate people. I give them the support phone number, but usually the questions they’re asking are about something for which (as far as I know) there is no phone support.
It’s not that Ultra doesn’t care; we do. It’s just that there’s no (economically feasible) way we could possibly hire enough human beings to provide personal support for every one of our hundreds of thousands of customers. It’s a simple problem of scale; no company in the world could afford this.
Even so, whenever this happens, it pretty much ruins my day.
Obligatory disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this post are mine alone and do not represent the views of my employer.
In a perfect world, this would be a reasonable strategy. In a perfect world, I would know everything about every Ultra product, I would be able to help this poor desperate customer, and then maybe they would tell their friends what a great company Ultra is because they randomly dialed a Technician who was happy to give them the help they needed.
Unfortunately, the world is not perfect and I know very little about the products we offer. I don’t even know everything about some of the things I work on. The odds that someone with a tech support question would dial a random number and actually reach me rather than one of the other 650 Ultra employees are infinitesimally small. So, naturally, the people who randomly dial my number invariably ask questions about products that I know nothing about.
By the time someone resorts to dialing random numbers, they’re pretty desperate. Sometimes they’re very upset. They don’t care that I’m a Tech working on something completely unrelated to whatever it is they’re having a problem with; to them, I am the human personification of Ultra the Big Faceless Corporation, and they expect me to have at my fingertips the entirety of Ultra’s corporate knowledge.
When I explain that I can’t help them, they expect me to be able to transfer them to someone who can, and they find it incomprehensible that, as a Ultra insider, I don’t have a handy list of Top Secret support phone numbers. Sometimes this makes them angrier, and sometimes this makes them ask again really, really nicely in the hopes that I’ll decide to rebel against my cruel superiors and transfer them to one of the Top Secret numbers.
In the end, I’m unable to help these desperate people. I give them the support phone number, but usually the questions they’re asking are about something for which (as far as I know) there is no phone support.
It’s not that Ultra doesn’t care; we do. It’s just that there’s no (economically feasible) way we could possibly hire enough human beings to provide personal support for every one of our hundreds of thousands of customers. It’s a simple problem of scale; no company in the world could afford this.
Even so, whenever this happens, it pretty much ruins my day.
Obligatory disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this post are mine alone and do not represent the views of my employer.
Friday, July 04, 2008
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