Education

How I Broke Into Our Van (with Video)

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There have been some questions about my Houdini act, so I’ll set the record straight…

1) I am not the one that locked the keys in the car. I think that’s important to note. So, noted. 🙂

2) Our van is a 2007 Caravan, and doesn’t lend itself to jamming a coat hanger anywhere. Well, not with any actual hopes of doing anything useful.

3) I used the piece of plastic (a cheap cutting board) to jam in between the door and the car. The baffles that prohibit stuff getting jammed in there are pretty easily (read: hour of jamming and wedging) fooled by a piece of stiff yet flexible plastic.

4) Once I had the plastic half in and half out, I poked a hole in the plastic and set a snare with the string.

5) Using physics to both bend the plastic so it would properly lasso the lock mechanism, and gravity to aid in the targeting system, I looped a slip knot around the lock and snugged it up.

6) I shimmied the string up the plastic sheet and then tugged to unlock the door.

7) The theft deterrent system immediately honked my victory to the neighborhood. 🙂

For those of you that are visual learners, here’s a reenactment of the whole thing:

Requesting Song Suggestions

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The thing you don't suspect is that this dog actually "Ahwooo's" with a deep bass voice.I like music, I really do. I don’t listen to music as much as other people, largely because I like music so much that it sucks me in. I can’t work with music playing, because I just stop and listen to the music. I can usually watch TV while working, because it doesn’t draw me an as much as music.

Here’s my problem: After my car accident, I don’t really recall all the music that I used to. I know of many artists, but my knowledge is usually responsive rather than something I can call up at will. (ie, I hear a song and I recognize it, but I’d never think of it before hearing it first)

I’m hoping those that read my blog can help with directing me to songs I might like. Please don’t hesitate to suggest something. My likes are widely varied, and change from day to day. The kind of music I really want to rediscover would be music that:

  • Shows off really good vocals
  • Showcases unique vocal talents, a voice that is easily identifiable.
  • I prefer lighter instruments. If it’s not terribly clear, I’m big on vocals. 🙂
  • Art trumps perfection. The reason Miles Davis was so great was that he was perfect at his imperfections. The way he would fall off a note at the perfect time would add character not attainable with mere musical perfection. You can feel free to disagree, but that’s the kind of music I’m looking for. (Ironic I used an instrumental musician to showcase what I mean about vocals I really like — but a really good instrument counts too. Maybe it’s not just the human voice I like.)
  • I really hope for specific song suggestions. Norah Jones, for example, I find to be absolutely brilliant. I don’t *feel* all of her songs though. So please, be specific.

So what do you think? Do you have any suggestions? Here are some random artists I enjoy from time to time:

Norah Jones, Jane’s Addiction, Nirvana, 3rd Day, Barry Manilow, Randy Travis, The Carpenters, Elton John, REM. I know there are tons more, but sadly I just can’t recall all the good ones. Please help me. 🙂

The Student Has Become The Master

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Today I put this together:

Some of you may have seen my tweet about it earlier. The part that was really interesting for me is that a former student was chatting with me over IM while I was assembling it, walking me through some of the things that have changed since I last built a white box machine. (Several years)

He also chatted with me on Wednesday, because along with being uncertain about how to put the things together, I also wasn’t sure what kids are buying these days. 🙂 I was struck by the notion that memory is once again meant to be bought in pairs. It made me chuckle a bit, because I remember buying 30 pin memory in sets of 2 or sets of 4 because you had to. It was also the era that CPU fans weren’t heard of, and we had to worry about IRQ and memory address settings on our ISA cards. But I digress.

It was a fun time, and great to see a student and friend doing so well.

Oh, and for those of you wondering what the computer is for — I’m trying to see if off-the-shelf hardware might work to replace some of our Mac hardware that has fallen out of warranty. If the EFI-X chip I bought works well, we might be able to save some money. If it doesn’t work well, well at least I’ll have an interesting triple boot machine. And that’s pretty cool.

Incorrect Aspect Ratios: A Huge Pet Peeve

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The scary thing is, after about 20 minutes you can't tell if it's stretched anymore. It scares the crap out of me. I hate it.
Look, you have a new 16×9 high definition television. I get it. So do I. There is something in us that WANTS to have every single, beautiful pixel filled with entertainment awesomeness. But here’s the deal — your 4×3 footage was never meant to be displayed like that. It’s just wrong. Picard did not have a head that fat.

I’ve had this discussion in real life, and people say they are annoyed by the black bars on the side of the television if they watch it in the native aspect ratio. These are (ironically) the same people that bought “fullscreen” DVDs because they didn’t like the black bars on the top and bottom of their old 4×3 televisions. Fullscreen DVDs are wrong. Stretched 4×3 video is even wronger. Just don’t do it, you make big screen TV people everywhere look bad.

Now go rent Star Trek the Next Generation, and watch it like it’s supposed to look. You won’t be sorry. 🙂

UPDATE: OMG, I see THIS on Engadget today. Can you imagine the insanity?!?!?!

D.A.R.E.

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photo-99.jpgThis is Amanda. This is Amanda’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education diploma. She completed the course, passed whatever tests need to be passed, and made her parents proud.

I’d like to take this time to share my views on speaking to your kids about drugs. Do it. Often.

Yes, yes, that’s a pretty common mantra, “Talk to your kids about drugs.” What I want to stress though, is that you really need to talk with them about drugs. Openly. Freely. With it being OK to joke about it, and ask questions, and be comfortable about the topic. We should discourage drug use, but encourage drug awareness.

If your child associates “drug talks” as some dark, threatening, awkward thing that must be endured from parents — your talks will do very little once your child grows “wings” of their own. Don’t let that happen. Make it so that your kids know more about drugs than the peers trying to force them into it. Let your kid be the one that confidently and correctly calls them idiots for doing drugs.

Ok, that’s my public service message. I’m proud of Amanda. She’s awesome. 🙂

It’s 9:30 PM

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And I’m at work. Because there’s work to be done. And that’s what I do. 🙂

UPDATE: 10:30 — still here. 😉
UPDATE: 11:30 — uh hu. Still here. 😀
UPDATE: 12:24 — going home. Gotta work in a few hours!
UPDATE: 12:56 — OK, I forgot a server that needed to be updated. Really going home now…

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Congratulations Donna!!!

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images.jpgMy beautiful and talented wife interviewed for a position as a paraprofessional in the school library yesterday. Apparently she blew away the competition, because the interviewing process didn’t even go into a second round (normally it does).

Donna loves books, so I’m sure her enthusiasm came through in the interview. AND, the library is conveniently located approximately 2 feet from my office! (This is a good thing, my wife is teh awesome.)

So if you see my wife, be sure to congratulate her.

Numb3rs, Revealed.

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After an overindulgence of melange spice turkey, I had a realization that the numbers were in fact television stations. In our audio/video behemoth system, we have the ability to tune in several cable stations, and rebroadcast them throughout the school. One of the custodians wanted me to switch one of the stations so he could watch basketball or some such thing while he worked. His numbering was slightly off, but I’m certain that’s what the note meant: (UPDATE: The top transceiver is broken, so in fact “6” had to become “27”)

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So is the truth less exciting than you’d hoped, or more far fetched than you’d imagined? Either way, feel free to keep eating turkey sandwiches.

If You Can’t Do It Right, Bugger Off

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Dear software developers:

If you are unable to create your software in a way that follows standards clearly put forth by Apple, Microsoft, etc — please don’t sell software. As a possible exception, if you feel the need to create non-standard software that only works on a standalone computer and only works for the user that installed it, offer instructions on how you’ve done your misdeeds, so someone like me can fix it post-install. As a last resort, if you must sell absurdly written, voodoo requiring software, advertise in your sales pitch that it’s total crap and will only work if you use it at home. Institutions actually rely on well designed software, so that our network infrastructure can like, function and stuff.

I’m talking to you Adobe.
I’m talking to you Inspiration.
I’m talking to you Microsoft, but I know you’re not listening.

I’m sick of writing scripts, moving folders, creating aliases/symlinks, chmod -R 777ing, and otherwise borking my workstations so we can use your new whizbang crap. I hate you all, just so you know.