So it would take just over 350 cans of Coke to kill me. And 170 of my favorite Starbucks drink, a Venti Cafe Mocha, to do me in. How do I know all this? Easy, I calculated it over on Death-by-Caffeine. Input your poison of choice and your weight and you now have a recipe for a super charged death sprawl. (Via Boing Boing – How Much starbucks is fatal?)
Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category
Killer Caffeine
Saturday, November 5th, 2005Information Overload
Thursday, October 13th, 2005It is an interesting phenomenon which poses a catch-22 situation. Lemme ‘splain.
We are told that “Knowledge is Power.” If you know something about anything, it shows a level of education, even more so if that particular bit of knowledge is not common. In a world with ~6.5 billion people in it, events take place every second. Someone dies. Someone lives. He was arrested. They discovered that. It’s shinny. You name it, it’s happening right now. I mean now! So with all these little things happening on this sphere in space, how are we to keep up with it all?
Enter the media. Instead of me going to ‘X’ country to learn about ‘Y’ event, I watch someone else tell me about it. And it’s not just me watching, it’s thousands, even millions of my fellow sphere inhabitants watching that same event. Now we all know about it, except of course those who did not watch it. But what if I missed said news report? I am behind my fellow neighbor who does know. What does it matter to me if this event didn’t affect me in the slightest? Only that John & Jane Doe know something I don’t.
Enter the pride machine. Not wanting to be one-upped, I seek to discover this new information. And not only that but I seek out other events so that I may have the upper hand. Take that John & Jane. Naturally I will have a tendency towards information that is of interest to me. In so doing I make definitions in my social circle. I talk to her cause she knows the same things I know. Don’t talk to him. Before I know it, I have a set of friends and acquaintances with their own events in their lives that I must keep up with. Email is a quick and easy way to do this, so I do. Social network, set.
How do I contribute to my social network? By letting them in on information that I discover, and they likewise do the same for me. I get my information for a variety of sources: TV, newspapers, online news sites, RSS feeds, word of mouth, scrawling on napkins, etc. I got information coming at me from every direction. Have I got a prayer of keeping track of all this? No. Glorious.
So hundreds-of-emails-a-day and ad-infinitum-news-sources later I am confronted with Information Overload. The pandemic sweeping this sphere for which there is no nice cure. I say “no nice cure” because the only solution is for everyone to stop, just stop, driving their fellow sphere dwellers to the brink of madness in attempts to learn everything there is to learn. Don’t look to the information outlets to change, they aren’t going anywhere.
So what is my point? For you to make your own decision on who you view information. How do you view those less influxed with information? Here’s a novel idea, accept them. Accept them for where they are at, not how much they know. I say “Acceptance is Power.” We are compelled to learn and become knowledgeable, as such knowledge becomes a crutch, a weakness. But we shall always have the power to accept someone regardless of their privileges in life. Think on that one for a bit.
Welcome Home, Don’t Mind the Me
Friday, September 23rd, 2005As the two people who have been reading my site have noticed, I have made a few changes here. The look has changed along with an overhaul/upgrade to the software running this site. It is just shy of year since my last post on this blog. To say things have changed in that time would be an understatement. I am taking part-time classes now. I have been making great strides in helping my company develop its product. On a side note, working with overseas developers is laboriously slow.
As I try to get back into a blogging rhythm, I will undoubtedly change my focus concerning the topics I write about. Before, my focus was to write about web technology in general with a few flourishes into related threads. I found that doing so restricted my material and I quickly lost the drive to keep up the experience. Now, I think my topics will be farther reaching and will change with what has captivated my interest for that particular moment in time. As of yet, I hold no pretenses as to any schedule but rather I hope to make this a come and go thing for me. I am not the first to say so, but blogging is hard. A lot of thought and time is required to make it happen. This is a challenge for one such as myself who has a hard time staying motivated on laborious tasks.
So with that I leave you in the precious void of my mind and I do hope you find your way and find it well. It’s a precarious place filled with many things unexplored as of yet. Not just yet…
I Am Geek
Friday, May 7th, 2004Via Simon, MeriBlog : Because We Are Geeks. As geeks we are gifted (cursed?) with an abnormal longing to know how things work. I owned The Way Things Work book for kids when I was younger. My curiosity into tech is still driven by reading that book. Meri is looking for what compells non-geeks to buy the things they do. Why geeks and non-geeks can never understand each other. Does strike a chord with anyone out there? I know it does for me.
Windows XP Woes
Friday, March 26th, 2004If I had a dollar for every time Windows shot itself in the foot, I would be richer than Bill Gates – as would many other people.
Where to begin… Wensday, I was doing some routine disk maintance. The “Disk Cleanup Wizard” presented a new option to “Remove Windows 98/ME Installation Files”, telling me that lest I should decide to go back to that version of Windows I should delete these files. So I hand Windows the meat cleaver and within 30 minutes I have 6 Windows File Protection alert boxes telling me that critical files to the operation of Windows have gone AWOL. But didn’t I tell it to delete said files? Thought so. For the record, don’t ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever (don’t think I got enough “evers” in there) delete these files. The updated OS still needs these files.
I was getting tired so I left this task till the morning. I began trying to copy these needed files from a working Windows XP in an attempt to avoid disaster. That is assuming the shell stays stable, which it didn’t. Reboot. Hal.dll is missing (for those who don’t know, this is a bad thing). Can’t even get a command prompt now. I start a new search for bootdisk solutions that have NTFS support. My goal: attempt to back up my files and wipe the slate clean.
Three hours and 8 tools later I come apon BartPE. This tool is genius. So very fleible. And most important, native NTFS support. I make my back ups and then go to finish the job that Disk Cleanup Wizrd started.
Slowly I am recovering from the loss of 4+ years of customizations. Quickly I am developing a psychosis at the hand of Microsoft.
Close to Home
Thursday, March 11th, 2004And I don’t mean the comic strip. I mean this thread hit close to home. To those of my friends and family whom I have aided in the past, please do not take this as a slant against you.
But I must say that at times I am truly amazed at what destructive activities some people can accomplish with their computers. Back in high school I had a class which was a position in the school’s Help Desk (cheap labor ;)). I have lived the life of a computer technician at the beck and call of a working group. Reading threads and rants and articles of this nature is relaxing and a humorous pasttime. I also like to share these with people to let them see my side of my work. I do take pride in the fact that I have a skill set that many stuggle to grasp. And with that I love to help. Us IT guys are funny people and we live in our own little world. Sometimes we must be handled with care. But we are people, just like you.
The Passion of The Christ
Thursday, February 26th, 2004Last night I witnessed The Passion of The Christ. This movie literally left me speechless. It is so moving. After the movie, I (along with nearly half of the audience in the theater) sat stunned, attempting to digest what I had just seen.
There has been much debate as to whether this movie could raise anti-semtic feelings. I honestly believe this is not the case. Sure the Jewish high priests were the chief architects of Jesus’ death, but if it had not been them it would have been someone else. Jesus came with the sole purpose of dying for all of our sins. In that light, we are all equally responsible for the death of Jesus. Unfortunately there are to many people that want to point the blame. To few who realize what Jesus’ sacrifice means.
Another issue that people have about this movie is the violent content. I feel it was absolutely warranted. Crucifiction was the most brutal form of punishment and death at the time and for many years following. That was life under the rule of the Roman Empire. Jesus’ sacrifice would not have meant near has much as it does had he been afforded and easy death.
Finally I would like to say that everyone should see this movie, and see it without any preconceived notions as to its content. Then, if you have not already done so, go and read the text that inspired the movie, the Bible.
To Mel Gibson, thank you so much for putting forth this so poingant reminder of Jesus’ sacrifice.
Happy Thanksgiving
Thursday, November 27th, 2003It’s that time of year again. When we all (in the US at least) sit down and gorge ourselves on prime food. Hope everyone out there is enjoying the day with friends and family. My best regards to all.
New Job Progressing
Saturday, September 13th, 2003If there was an award for the least used blog, I think I would win it. But thats beside the point.
Within a month or two I shall be in the employment of Azura Technologies. It is a very exciting time for me. I am learning a slew of new technologies (new to me at least). The biggest learning curve was learning, compling and using OpenSSL. I am also having to learn web services and the various forms it can take.
A side project of mine has been to re-work the company website. It is laid out with tables and untold lines of javascript. I am redoing it in XHTML/CSS. So far I have been able to cut the download size from 13kB to 4kB for the front page alone (that figure is for the markup alone). My partner in the company is so far impressed with the changes I’ve made. Unfortunately, I am unable to provide an example of my work at this time. Soon though. I might even officially change the company page. Who knows. Time will tell.
Happy Birthday to Me!
Thursday, July 17th, 2003At 12:05pm EST today I officially turn 21 years old. I don’t feel any different yet. Probably won’t for a few days. We’ll see.