30th July, 2004
SysAdmin Day
Have you thanked your SysAdmin today?
Posted at 6:20 am | Comment (0)
27th July, 2004
Recycling Redux
Following up on my previous post on Office Depot & HP’s free PC recycling gig (going on now through Labor Day), I dropped off an old, battered PC of mine today and was pleasantly surprised how easy and quick it was. Just walked up to the Customer Service desk, told the woman who was staffing it that I had a PC to recycle, she smiled, said “great” and took it. That’s it. No questions, no forms, no nothing. Just drop it off.
Unfortunately, you can only drop off one item a day, but it’s still a very nice service while it lasts (you have to pay in one way or another for most other recycling programs that I’ve seen). If you’ve got old equipment sitting around (they even take TVs under 27″), I suggest you check it out.
Full details on the program can be found here or if that oddball URL doesn’t work, you can go to Office Depot’s promotion page and click on the Recycle banner.
Posted at 12:07 pm | Comment (0)
23rd July, 2004
Dark and Stormy
It’s been a long week, so to help kick off your weekend the right way, I present you with this bit of jocularity: the 2004 results of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. My fave entry:
She sipped her latte gracefully, unaware of the milk foam droplets building on her mustache, which was not the peachy-fine baby fuzz that Nordic girls might have, but a really dense, dark, hirsute lip-lining row of fur common to southern Mediterranean ladies nearing menopause, and winked at the obviously charmed Spaniard at the next table.
Posted at 8:48 am | Comment (0)
22nd July, 2004
Is that a knife in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Gotta love the Japanese and their overbearing concern for their children. First, came news of using RFID tags to keep an eye on what the little tykes are doing after school, now you can get a knife-resistant jacket or sweatshirt (which you can have embroidered with your initials! – how very L.L. Bean-esque) to clothe your progeny in. This is apparently in reaction to a couple of incidents involving knives in schools over the last 7 months. The article is sadly lacking in details, such as just what exactly “resistant” entails, but you can check it out here. [via Engadget]
Posted at 12:46 pm | Comment (0)
16th July, 2004
Overload
I’m not sure how this site stayed off my radar so long, but it did. Maybe I need to lay off the huffing. Regardless, this cat has a metric fuckload of quality music info including, but not limited to, news snippets and mad linkage. And it even has an RSS feed. Hurray.
Posted at 1:03 pm | Comment (0)
13th July, 2004
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
Well, you can do at least one of these at an upcoming program hosted by Office Depot (who is partnering with HP). Starting July 18 and running through September 6, you can bring one electronic device per day to any Office Depot store and they’ll recycle it for free.
The offer includes all brands of electronics, and products including computer monitors, digital cameras, copiers, fax machines, cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and TVs that are 27 inches or smaller, the report said.
CNN has some details on the program. No word if they mean “free” as in beer or “free” as in as long as you sign up for a mobile phone plan. I plan on taking some of my old crap in (I’m too cheap to pay the usual $25 processing fee that my local municipality charges to recycle PCs) and I’ll update regarding the process.
Posted at 2:29 pm | Comment (1)
12th July, 2004
Hornets vs. Bees, redux.
As a follow-up to my first post about hornets and bees, I see that Eric over at Incoherent Rantings has some really cool info on how Japanese bees deal with these hornets. Dig:
With approximately 500 honeybees surrounding the hornet in a tight ball, the temperature within the cluster rises to 47º C (117º F), which is above the upper lethal limit range of 44-46 degrees for the hornet. This temperature is too high for the hornet, which quickly expires, but does not harm the honeybees.
Posted at 2:32 pm | Comment (0)
12th July, 2004
Suppression. Distortion. Undermining.
Ahh, the good ol’ Bush Administration and their slanted view of science. Some of you may recall back in February of this year when 62 big-name scientists joined together as the Union of Concerned Scientists to call for the Bush Administration to stop misrepresenting and suppressing scientific knowledge for political purposes.
Well, here’s a shocker for you, Bush and his cronies have continued to ignore or suppress any sort of data that would interfere with them making money or that would conflict with their religious beliefs. In response, the number of scientists in the UCS has now ballooned to over 4,000 – a number that includes 48 Nobel laureates, 62 National Medal of Science recipients, 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences and former senior advisers to administrations of both parties. This influx of new members has unearthed even more examples of scientific abuse by the Bush Administration. How is it that this man is not being impeached at this very moment?
Posted at 2:17 pm | Comment (0)
6th July, 2004
Collect ‘em All!
I’m not really sure what to think about this: collectible cards from the Centers for Disease Control. [via BoingBoing]
Posted at 9:13 am | Comment (0)
1st July, 2004
Frating Green
A little humor to start your (US) holiday weekend off right: I give you The Meaning of Liff by the sorely missed Douglas Adams.
Posted at 12:28 pm | Comment (0)
1st July, 2004
Ringworld
Engadget has an amusing blurb about the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft which is currently orbiting Saturn.
Interesting fact: Cassini has a DVD record of 616,400 handwritten signatures from 81 countries around the globe, including the mission’s namesakes, Jean-Dominique Cassini and Christiaan Huygens, lifted from 17th-century letters. We kinda wonder what region encoding they put on that and if it’s CSS’d so that there won’t be any aliens bootlegging it.
Posted at 8:12 am | Comment (0)
