It’s Wednesday, so even the song is appropriate. It’s called “Weekend” and while appropriate, it’s not the greatest thing, but still… I know many men, some of whom read this blog, that would wish they could be the photocopier.

I’m all for good political humor… but this image that my son showed me earlier today, while cheesy, made my whole day. I’m posting it in an external link because I don’t believe in hotlinking and I’ve been too lazy to fix the flickr plug-in on my blog.

It is rare that I will link to an article that’s on Motor Trend. My father was an avid reader, and my brother is too, but I never got into the whole car thing like they did. I don’t understand the mechanics behind how these machines work, but I do have a moderate grasp on the physics, and I spent enough time around cars as a child to know certain things. I can tell if my car isn’t running right by how it sounds, and I may not know exactly what is wrong, but I do know when it’s time to go see the mechanic.

Lately, I have been considering the idea of getting a new car. I’m really enamored to the Mini Cooper, but there isn’t a dealership that sells them close by and the nearest warranty service center for them is 200 miles away. I’m also actually considering purchasing my third Toyota Corolla. My first corolla was totalled in a car accident. My second corolla is the one I am currently driving and it still runs great. When I took it into the mechanic for a tune up, he was impressed at how well my eight year old car was running. The only reason I’m even considering a new car is because my husband says it’s time to get a new one.

Regardless of what I choose, I think this guy has an interesting point to make about the future of vehicles and this article is extremely well written. Dozo.

Amen to this guy, who explains the science behind why it is that pizza on the west coast cannot ever approach the goodness that is true New York pizza. Apparently the secret is in 90 year old brick ovens, and the tap water. Amazing, no?

I’ve always wondered about that pizza thing. I mean, I like pizza enough to eat it, regardless of its origins, but there still is very little that competes with slices of New York style pies. Personally, I preferred my uncle’s rendition of pizza to everything else. My uncle is Sicilian and learned to make this wicked amazing pizza, which he then passed down to my father, who also makes this wicked amazing pizza, but it’s not quite as good as my uncle’s for some reason. Perhaps this exercise in scientific explanation makes sense, and can help humanity truly understand what goes in to making the best pizza in the world.

Dear Mr. Ballmer,

I understand that at the MVP Conference in Seattle this weekend, you referred to Windows Vista as a “work in progress”. As a daily user of this operating system, I have no idea how it is that you can even begin to assume that this phrase gives me confidence for my future use of this OS.

We could argue about the finer points of Windows Vista and all you have learned for as long as you like, but the reality of this situation is that I’m an end user of a product that you’re selling. I expect products that I pay for to work. There are many products I’ve passed on because they simply don’t work. With my OS, I have not been given the option to choose one that works. Windows Vista came with my PC. I called my hardware manufacturer and requested a downgrade to Windows XP one week after I purchased this machine. I told them that I’d gladly pay for the new copy of Windows if they would just send me the discs and could assure me that my machine would still be under warranty. I was told that if I removed your OS from this machine, that my warranty on the hardware was considered void. Weather I like it or not, I am being held hostage to your OS.

So when you tell me that this OS that I’m enslaved to on my own computer is a “work in progress” all I have to say is, “are you friggin’ kidding me?” I’m forced to use this operating system every single day and you’re telling me Microsoft hasn’t even finished the thing yet? Your company worked on this OS for six years and the end result of that is an unstable, unfriendly POS that you are calling a “work in progress”? Your programmers are well-compensated for their positions at your company. What possible reason could they have for allowing your company to release a “work in progress” after six years of software development on this operating system?

I’ve long thought that windows programmers were inconsiderate and incompetent. The fact that the OS only grows in its monstrosity with each iteration is just the start of it. Good programmers tighten down their code, they write a command in the simplest way possible. Good programmers wouldn’t leave so many holes in an OS that the thing looks like the source code equivalent of swiss cheese. They’d try to put holes in the thing for months or even years before they ever considered the idea of releasing their software to the public, and they wouldn’t release that software with a whole bunch of last minute add-ons to please some industry cronies because good programmers know that good software is their life’s blood. Apparently, there aren’t very many good programmers at Microsoft.

I don’t want compensation from you. I don’t really care about all of that. All I want, is to be able to enjoy using my computer again. I want everything that Microsoft took from me when they released this shoddy excuse for an operating system to the public returned to me. I’m not an idiot though. I don’t believe that this will ever happen. I don’t believe that I will ever again be able to use a windows machine and expect to get things done on it. This makes me sad, and reminds me why I so seriously considered a Mac before I decided to get a windows machine that was 400$ less. I now realize that this 400$ discount wasn’t worth the savings.

Sincerely,

Stacy Jones

Author and Administrator - Random Gemini Weirdness

And the final digg find of the day is this really neat photo essay that describes the cults that went whacko.

It’s particularly topical because of all the news stories that have been surrounding the FLDS ranch in Texas, and all of the comparisons that I have seen made to this facility and Waco, with the most interesting quotes being from the Texas officials who desperately wish to avoid a repeat of the Waco tragedy. Of course, I do not mean to imply that those living on the FLDS ranch are cult members and personally, as far as that whole scene goes, I just want them to get through the evaluations of those children and let those kids go home. I am sure that maybe 5% of the families on that ranch have not been as responsible toward their children as they should have been, but the other 95% deserve to return to their loving homes. But the whole situation does bring Waco back to my mind, and thankfully, this time no children have died… at least, not so far.

This article is very much related to the comment discussion I had with tsykoduk yesterday in this post, where tsykoduk has begun my much needed education on computer security in the wireless world.

Some of these points are really hilarious and these are more related to the corporate world than anything else, but still a good read for those of us who are interested in modern computer security. This is also a fine example of what I believe to be true, that good computer security is 90% common sense, 10% strong technology.

Today I was digging through digg. This rarely turns up anything useful, but there is the occasional link to an article on kotaku that doesn’t completely suck. Of course, the primary reason why this article doesn’t completely suck is because it’s not an article at all, it’s a video clip. The video clip isn’t even produced by kotaku, but was, in fact, aired on G4. News that comes from G4 is often interesting because it paints a picture on the video gaming industry and market that you do not see in the mainstream media. This clip is precisely one of these.

In this clip, Adam Sessler of XPlay interviews the authors of this book called “Grand Theft Childhood” in which they posit the theory that children who do not play video games are at a greater risk of being socially ostracized and of becoming more physically violent than their gamer peers.

Food for thought.

12% of consumers are leeching wireless from unsecured wireless networks.

Hello!? How can you possibly hop on the internet and not realize that people do this? There’s a very simple solution to this problem. It’s called “Network Filtering”. I’m not the huge network geek that my husband and friends are, but Network Filtering is really easy to do and from what I’ve seen, any wireless router has this feature available in its setup.

What you do is tell the wireless router to only accept connections from the mac addresses that belong to individual machines in your house (or your Nintendo DS, or your PSP… or your iPhone.) You do have to enter in new mac addresses when you replace old machines or devices, but it takes maybe ten minutes and is a great precaution against unwanted intruders on your home network. Not to mention, it’s just plain smart. Who knows what leechers are doing while pretending to look like you?

Network filtering. Learn it. Know it. Use it.

Okay, iPhone owners, you totally have to check this puppy out. It’s the Sedio Inno Case. This thing… is the stuff. It’s rubberized, but feels silky to the touch, is completely open on the front of the phone. Yes, I said completely open. No access to any part of the front of the iPhone is hindered in anyway. It fits tightly, without adding a lot of bulk to your iPhone, and the thing is lined with felt to keep the case itself from causing unnecessary scratches.

I loved this thing when I saw it. When it sold out, I asked my husband to watch for them to come back in stock so he could order it for me and he liked it so much that he ordered one for himself.

I also highly recommend the docks that go with these cases if you like to dock your phone on your nightstand at night. The case does not hinder standard cable access, but if you’re using a dock, you’ll need to buy Sedio’s dock in order to avoid taking this case on and off all the time. The docks aren’t perfect, I did have some issues getting the dock to behave when I linked it up to my pc. My iPhone got lost during a sync and I’ve never seen that happen before. They do work great for use as charging stands though, and they do free up an apple cable because the docks are USB to USB.

All in all, I’m very impressed. I’m hard to please when it comes to cases for phones. Usually I get annoyed by them and take them off, but this case is really a cut above.