Original ExistDifferently.com Weblog of David, a Christian Network and Systems Manager, with topics ranging from Apologetics to Worldview, and some crypto, open source, programming, opinion, and daily life thrown in between.

Tue, 2004-12-28 (Dec 28)

Bomb on a Plane

Filed under: Blog,Funny,General,Hardware,Tech (General) — David @ 06:04

Reading a “post over at Slashdot”:http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134143&cid=11197391 and someone mentioned this:

There is a 1 in 1,000,000 chance that someone on the same plane as you has a bomb.
There is a 1 in 25,000,000,000 that two people on the same plane have a bomb.
So always take a bomb with you on the plane, then you’re pretty sure you’re safe.

I don’t know if it’s being up at 5:30 in the morning or not that makes that hilarious. Probably, but I’m pretty used to this schedule after 1.5 weeks at it. Just getting to be bedtime, now, as soon as I go find a snack. Already ate some leftover ham a few hours ago while watching TV, but I’m hungry again.

To prevent a complete waste of space: “ZipZoomFly”:http://www.zipzoomfly.com/ (one of the two best, and usually cheapest (hence, best) online stores for computer stuff, the other one being “Newegg”:http://www.newegg.com/) recently got some “Refurbished Seagate 200GB IDE”:http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101560-RFB hard drives in, for only $112.50 with free 2-day shipping (their usual shipping deal). Very good price…although the “new version”:http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101560 they sell for $125, which dropped from $127 a few weeks ago but was as low as $117 a month or two ago.

That particular hard drive is my favorite out of all the hard drives I’ve used personally. It’s the quietest, most reliable, and best of all has a FIVE YEAR warranty, something you can’t get anywhere else on that kind of drive. Go Seagate! I’ve got two of those drives, and a Hitachi Deskstar 200GB that I like all right (I have to RMA one of the Seagates and the Hitachi though, but their failures one right after the other within three days in the same computer less than two months after the purchase of both may or may not be the drives’ problem…I bought a new motherboard and processor just in case, and treated myself to the “3EGHz Pentium 4 with HT, an 800MHz FSB, and 1MB of L2 cache”:http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80661-1 while I was at it, so I can’t complain except for the money :-) But hey, a motherboard for $74.49 (the “AOpen AX4SPE-UN”:http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=13-137-041&depa=0) and 3 GHz processor for $186.90 (it’s dropped by ninty cents since then at ZipZoomFly and it’s three dollars more at Newegg) isn’t a bad deal at all, especially when you have (more…)

Fri, 2004-12-24 (Dec 24)

Wal-Mart’s UNrollback

Filed under: Blog,Funny,General — David @ 01:11

Wal-Mart UNrollback close-up (click for full-size)Wal-Mart UNrollback medium shot (click for full-size) Apparently Wal-Mart is UN-rolling back prices now. At the store tonight, I snapped this shot of an aisle-end display headed by the photo at the left (click for full-size version).

The original price of $2.28 each would have made the price $4.56, which is a savings (for the mathematically challenged or lazy) of $0.44 over their “rolled-back” price. Yummy.

Wal-Mart Subway In better news, the old candy shop (hmm, never saw any parents let their kids in there. I wonder why?) right inside the entrance is gone, replaced by a much more respectful Subway. Now there something I can sink my teeth into! That, or the ice cream pops my Dad and I bought tonight. Speak of which, those and the movies we rented are calling, must go. (The Bourne Supremecy and Hero are the movies, in case you’re interested. My brother wants to see Hero, which we’re watching first, even though I want to see Bourne Supremecy. Don’t worry, somehow I think I’ll survive. Next I’m going to get I, Robot, possibliy with Ballistic.)

Thu, 2004-12-23 (Dec 23)

Christmas Lights Crazy

Filed under: Blog,Funny,General,In The News — David @ 02:22

Christmas Lights Seen while Caroling (click for larger view) I mentioned in my “last post”:http://www.existdifferently.com/archives/2004/12/23/white-christmassnow-kidding/ that while Googling to make sure I spelled “Griswold” correctly (in reference to the Christmas lights we saw when out caroling last night…click the thumbnail image to see a full-sized view–gotta love (hate) the bad low-light quality of my Treo 600’s camera!) I ran into some really interesting stuff online. Well, here it is: “Alek’s Christmas Lights Webcam”:http://www.komar.org/cgi-bin/xmas_webcam

Basically, during certain evening hours, you can remotely turn this guy’s Christmas lights on and off via the web, and watch it on his webcam. This is just cool enough that I am interested in trying it, except I’m probably too lazy to spend the time (and money) setting it up. His site got “Slashdotted”:http://www.komar.org/faq/slashdot-effect/ at least once a year since 2002 it looks like, which resulted in his ISP popping a 40-amp circuit breaker in 2002, plus a stress-test of his analog on-off switches! The actual 2002 “Slashdot article”:http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/25/0118201.shtml has some pretty funny comments to go along with it (be warned that Slashdot isn’t known for it’s ultra-tasteful comments but this post doesn’t seem to have much of the worst at first glance, and some are pretty darn funny). Slashdot user CableModemSniper, for example, said, “The only way to create a fire-hazard from half-way around the world…Light ON, light OFF, Light ON, Light OFF, Light ON, Light OFF, Light BOOM! –Sparks everywhere…”, and TheOnlyCoolTim said, “We just slashdotted CHRISTMAS. What next, do the editors engineer a DDoS on GOD HIMSELF?”.

“Alek Komarnitsky”:http://www.komar.org/ also has some links to “other sites”http://www.komar.org/xmas/faq/other_sites.html with similar crazyness, like “‘Drive Me Insane!'”http://www.drivemeinsane.com/ which appears to be down temporarily but has much more web-based control of stuff. He also has links to some of the more “‘interesting'”:http://www.komar.org/xmas/2004/cool_pictures/ pictures he has from his webcam (personally, I like his shots of “‘watching grass grow'”:http://www.komar.org/faq/watching_grass_grow/ even better :-)

Want to see the “world’s biggest interactive computer display”:http://blinkenlights.de/? Just more random webcam-coolness…time to go watch more TV!

Oh yeah…I found out about this thingy in the first place from a Google search that lead me to “this Netscape article”:http://channels.netscape.com/ns/atplay/story.jsp?floc=FF-APO-1120&idq=/ff/story/0001/20041214/1914631691.htm&sc=1120.

Fri, 2004-12-17 (Dec 17)

Shark Tank: Computer Support Humor

Filed under: Blog,Funny,Internet,Personal,Tech (General) — David @ 04:30

Shark Tank his hilarious. You need to read it if you’ve ever helped anyone with computer, or even thought, “man, that person needs to get a clue–and by the way, ha ha ha ha ha!”

It’s really the only humor “blog” (it’s got an RSS feed) I read consistently and completely. I’m starting to read “Dilbert”:http://www.dilbert.com/ regularly though…used to read a lot of Dilbert but just forgot and got busy for a while. Still funny if not a bit recognizable sometimes. Actually I’ve got a pretty darn good setup at my current job, and I think trying the same thing somewhere else would resemble Dilbert quite a bit more, so for now I read Dilbert in a spirit of thankfulness (that I don’t have to deal with it that bad).

I’m in a funny (‘ha ha’-type) mood, at least underneath the, “I’m so tired I should be sleeping rather than blinking my eyes trying to get them to stay open long enough to finish typing this sentence” mood that comes from staying up ’till close to 4:30 in the morning :-) The funny part probably comes from the fact that I’m finally on vacation (read: “not at work” rather than “out of town”) for over two weeks! I don’t have to be back at the office until January 3rd! Of course I’ve still got to be there those three Sundays during that time, but three days instead of the usual fifteen (and that’s on a normal, 40-hour week…what is that again?) isn’t bad.

I have a feeling I’ll be really bored at some point during that time, but for now I’m just tired. The episodes of “Stargate: Atlantis”:http://www.scifi.com/atlantis/ I watched until 2:30am were good though; then I caught up on some news/blogreading, now I’m doing some blogwriting, then I’ll be doing some blogsleeping (not so much…to the blog part anyway, kind of hard to blog while sleeping).

Which leads me into another point: I was thinking earlier how I really find the usage of the phrase “not so much” very amusing throughout the Atlantis series (may be in SG-1, too, but I can’t remember right now. Okay now I can…I know in the first Atlantis episode, Gen. O’Neill is in the helicopter with Maj. Sheppard and they out-maneuver the Ancients’ missile and Sheppard says, “That was different.” O’Neill replies (in traditional Jack style), “For me, not so much.”). I know I heard the phrase in at least one of the three episodes I watched tonight (the first three new ones that are coming Jan 21, 2005…you’ll have to ask if you want to know why I have them already…I still have two more to watch but I figured I’d quit while I was awake). I think it was Maj. Sheppard who said it, but like I said I can’t remember. It’s just one of my favorite quotes right now (when delivered correctly), and I thought I’d mention it. And I not only thought it, but I actually did mention it, as you now know (unless you skipped to the end of the post without reading about it, which I must scold you for (why? I don’t know…)). I also love (nested (inside each other (in case you couldn’t tell))) parentheses…

Thu, 2004-11-18 (Nov 18)

What? I am NOT Apple DOS 3.1!

Filed under: Blog,Funny — David @ 12:01

I don’t usually bother, but I was kind of curious when a friend had it on her “blog”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/librarygal/126835.html and was Palm OS (my fav PDA OS), so I tried it out: (more…)

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