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Archive for the 'Everything else' Category

SBC traceroute weirdness

1 Comment Published March 27th, 2006 in Everything else.

I’m in Berkeley for 2 days. I’m using my host’s SBC internet connection. Out of curiosity I did a quick traceroute to www.gnu.org (in Boston):
$ traceroute www.gnu.org
traceroute to gnu.org (199.232.41.10), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 10.xx.xx.xx (10.xx.xx.xx) 0.943 ms 0.897 ms 0.851 ms
2 obfuscated.snfc21.sbcglobal.net (xx.xx.xx.xx) 8.286 ms [...]

Google Mars

0 Comments Published March 13th, 2006 in Everything else.

OK, this is way cool: Google Mars. If you’ve ever read Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, some of the names of geological formations should be familiar. Check out Olympus Mons - 21 km (!) above… above what actually? How do they determine the ’sea level’ if there is no sea?

wasteful

0 Comments Published February 12th, 2006 in Everything else.

Our tea kettle broke. It’s an electric model. I took it apart, and sure enough, the heating element inside that was supposed to have a 10 Ohm resistance now has an infinite resistance.
So I thought I’d get a replacement part, and I’d be all set. Google’s my friend, right? Forget it. I couldn’t find spare [...]

German

0 Comments Published February 11th, 2006 in Everything else, Personal.

OK, today I learned a most impressive German word from a Spanish friend. In German, when you want to say ‘receding hairline’, you say Geheimratsecken. It sounds mysterious, doesn’t it? Litterally, it means ‘the corners of the secret council’. How cool is that!

Challenger

0 Comments Published January 28th, 2006 in Everything else.

I remember this day, 20 years ago. Rest in peace, astronauts.

silly mailing lists

0 Comments Published January 24th, 2006 in Everything else.

I really wonder what list I’ve ended up on. I’ve been getting ‘business subscription’ offers for the Wall Street Journal in the mail. And for Men’s Health. Yes, I believe it was a business subscription offer to Men’s Health.
But the weirdest one came today, via e-mail. The subject of the message was
Early Bird Discount Finishes [...]

wp 2.0

0 Comments Published January 23rd, 2006 in Everything else.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are now running WordPress 2.0! The upgrade was pretty seemless. No visible changes for now, but the admin interface is considerably better.
Weekend
Somehow, this weekend involved several scorpion bowls. Ours didn’t have that cool smoke floating over them though.

Ergonomics

1 Comment Published December 11th, 2005 in Everything else.

I’ve been looking at upgrading my work-from-home environment to make it more ergonomic. The department of labor has some information and a checklist that is quite handy to evaluate your current work setup, and see where improvements can be made. In my case, on quite a few of their points.
So I’ve been dreaming up an [...]