Earthquake monitoring…
I was recollecting my first few days in our house here on the west coast tonight. We took possession of the house on September 2, 2000, and I was out…
Home office reno- Update #1
Progress on my office renovation is starting to shape up. Despite the minor disaster last night, I managed to finish cleanup of the room and it is now ready for the flooring to be done. Here is what it looked like before we started (2008 picture)
BEFORE
Timber!
As I mentioned previously, I’m working on improvements to my office space at home. The painting is all done, and I’ve booked installation of a hardwood floor for Monday. This means I have to (fairly quickly) remove everything from the floor of the room. That meant disassembling several computers, reorganizing wiring, and figuring out a way to keep my network switches/routers connected without anything actually resting on the floor. I thought I had it all worked out until disaster struck…
The Onion shovels some more in: wearable feedbags
The Onion is one of my preferred sources of comedy on the Internet. Their simulated news stories often hit frighteningly close to the truth, but every once in a while…
Sweet Jeebus: woman injured with saber saw sex toy…
This isn't the usual thing I write about, but when I read about it on Gizmodo and then saw it confirmed on NBC news, I was... well, amazed. Apparently, a…
MIT discovery could “supercharge” lithium ion batteries
One of the big problems with existing battery technologies is the charge and discharge rate. A battery that powers a device for several hours can take nearly the same amount of time to recharge, making it difficult to develop “continuous use” devices. There has been a lot of research into new technologies like super-capacitors, but production use of these approaches is years if not decades in the future. Thanks to the folks at MIT, however, we may soon have a simple alternative: quick-charge (and discharge) Lithium Ion batteries.
In these difficult economic times, auto workers “cut to the bone” at $55 an hour
The North American auto industry is in dire straits. The economic situation is so difficult for them that they have been forced to go to their workers unions and ask for reductions in salary and benefits. In fact, these reductions are a condition of the U.S. federal government emergency loans. So it is with great relief that I have found in today’s news an update: Ford has managed to negotiate a reduction in the average hourly wage (including benefits) of their UAW employees down to the barely survivable level of $55 an hour.
Typical… now I’m sick
I have had a rough couple of weeks at work. I won’t go into the details other than to say “security reviewer”, which should give some sense of how little fun I’ve been having.
Green tea…
I’ve been drinking a couple of cups of green tea each day. It has become a habit of mine to have a mug of green tea each night to gear down before going to sleep. But until today, I basically just bought green tea bags from the Chinese grocers not far from us and dunked them in hot water. Today, I became “enlightened”, and that simple mug of green tea will never seem the same again.
Home office refresh 2009
I’m starting on another “refresh” of my workspace at home: this is becoming a distressingly regular (annual?) activity that I’m hoping to put an end to soon. The objective this year is pretty much a total rebirth: minimizing/reducing, painting, and possibly re-flooring and new furniture. The first step was to excise a bunch of “stuff” from this rather small room, and to get ready for the painting which I intend to do myself.