So today I was slowly walking towards the hallway on my way to the bathroom at work. A distinct pattern of rapidly modulating footsteps approached from behind and caught my attention. I observed a short man in my peripheral vision obviously in somewhat of a hurry. Based on his movements and facial expression, my hypothesis was that he was destined for the same bathroom. He neared my position as we approached the corner before the men's room. At my workplace, there are large 3 1/2 foot square pil... (more)

So e-Books through the library seems like a super awesome thing to exist. Now there are 32 "standards" and DRM and all that. But I am not even going to get into that. This post is just to discuss the purchase models that libraries are considering for e-Books.

First consider a physical book. A library might purchase one or more copies to circulate. If a book circulates non stop, never sits on a shelf, and remains primarily in the hands of reading patrons, the library's purchase is well... (more)

For anyone living in NJ (or nearby), you may have attended a little event called the New Jersey State Fair (tm). It's a little over a week long, and is the best place to kill yourself on delicious foods like deep-fried Oreo cookies or blooming onions. For the most part, it's a great place to see things like tractor pulls, what cow won the blue ribbon, and the display of "#1 bale of hay in NJ."

However, if you're an artist like myself, I recommend you stay the fuck away from their art exhibits... (more)

So the entertainment industry has been up in arms about piracy for about the last decade or so. True, it's been a problem for much longer, but not as pervasive of one, now that music can be downloaded with the click of a button. The music industry fought tooth and nail to convict anyone and everyone they could, frequently criminalizing dead grandparents, single mothers, and many others very publicly. The end result showed their valid cause in a terrible light, and they have yet to stop. The bigg... (more)

And commercial commercials in general...

OK, It has come to annoy me when I see a commercial on television, which, is advertising, a commercial. "Tune in on Fox during the season premier of <Insert Whatever Overly Dramatic Fox Action Series> to see the exclusive world premier of the trailer for this upcoming movie.

This week the commercials have focused on Super Bowl commercials. Miller light has an entire add campaign regarding their upcoming ad campaign for the Super Bowl. Peopl... (more)

Decisions to purchase and install endless software packages for security, performance, asset management, patch installation have crippled the employee.

I understand fully the need to protect corporate assets, but not at *any* cost. The first tool to go on any PC is some sort of anti-virus, and anti-malware/spyware tools. These scan all files upon read or write access. They also periodically do full sweeps. Windows cant help but just move files in and out of page files and swap space all d... (more)

Optimim online made me very angry today. But now its fixed. Thanks for costing me 5 hours of life Optimum.

OK so I put a fresh copy of CentOS on my server with 2 new drives today. Everything came up smooth except for some stubborn samba problem. I worked it for a while, and noticed that my client PC ( no changes made to this oc ) and my new imaged server, were resolving each others netbios/smb hostnames via the internet rather than locally.

DNS redirection service decided to be helpf... (more)

Dear people walking around my office (and countless others in the world, I'm sure),

It's not "Happy New Years", it's "Happy New Year". Singular.

While on the subject (and well in advance), it's Valentine's Day. It is not, nor has it ever been, "Valentime" or "Valentimes".

Thanks!
-g.