All posts by Shawn

Snail Mail Spam

Spam in my “normal” mailbox has gotten crazy lately. I get *maybe* one actual letter per day, and then 10-15 spam mails (free magazines, catalogs and all sorts of other crap). So today I decided to actually call these places and get removed from their mailing lists.

Guess what? You can’t be removed. Their suggestion is to put it in the trash (well that’s what I’ve been doing for years). But you *can* update your address with them, so I figured out what to do. Just change the mailing address to one of the other spammers. So now Holiday Express catalogs go to the BtoB magazine office, and vice versa. Man, I wish I thought of that earlier. I’m gonna see if I can actually eliminate my postal mail spam.

For ones just addressed to “Resident” (like the “Have you seen us?” mailings), does anyone know if I can refuse delivery on those and return to sender? 🙂

The Wall Street Journal

Dude, sometimes when you get free stuff it’s more annoying than anything else. The Wall Street Journal started sending me a free 6 month subscription out of the blue.

That’s cool and all, except I don’t have a fireplace where I live, so I don’t need newspaper to start a fire. Nor do I have a pet bird that needs their birdcage lined with papers. So really I have absolutely no use for it.

No biggie… just throw them away, right? Wrong. They are so big the post office can’t put them in my mailbox. Which means now I get to pick up my mail AT the post office. That’s awesome dude! I get something “free” I don’t want and now I have to drive to the post office to get my mail because of it. Rad.

iPod Nano

If nothing else, Apple really does come up with cool ideas. They came up with the iPod, and seem to come with with something completely new as far as iPods go just about the time the competitors are getting around to copying their previous idea.


Anyway, today Apple did away with the iPod Mini model, and replaced it with the iPod Nano. This thing is so cool and tiny I keep thinking it’s an April Fool’s joke or something. 🙂 Compared to the Mini, it got a smaller (but higher resolution) color screen, support for photos, dropped the internal hard drive and went with 100% flash memory, the whole thing is barely bigger than the iPod Shuffle (which is cool too).

Dust Devils On Mars

This picture is about a week old, but it’s still pretty cool. But I forgot about those two rovers that NASA has cruising around Mars (Spirit and Opportunity). They landed in January of 2004, and were supposed to be operational for 90 days. More than a year and a half later, both of them are still exploring the surface of Mars and beaming back pictures and data.

It would be cool if everything was made as tough as those little bastards.

DMV Locations

So my birthday is coming up next week and I realized my license expires this year (on my birthday), so I went to the DMV to renew it. Now what I want to know is when did going to the DMV become a pleasant experience? I went to the DMV today at like 8:30 am, thinking I was going to spend half the day there in line or whatever. I ended up filling out the dumb little paper, taking the eye test and getting my picture taken. Total time elapsed? 14 minutes from the time I walked in the front door to walking out. That’s too easy… what the hell dude??

1,200 Hour Work Day

When the earth was created, it rotated pretty fast (a day was about 6 hours). The moon’s gravity has slowed that down to 24 hours now. But in about a billion years, the moon will have slowed the earth’s rotation do a day is 1,200 hours.

How’s that for a work day? 🙂

Passive RFID Tags

So I’m thinking about getting a system for my new house where you can get an implant and doors will unlock for you automatically. But I also thought it would be cool if you could use those to track where someone (or a pet) was in the house in real time. Well I talked to the VeriChip guys today and they say that only the active RFID tags (ones that have a battery and transmit a signal at all times) can be used for that. The implants are tiny passive RFID tags (they have no battery) so they don’t have enough range to do it.

That sucks… now how am I going to find my cats in the house?? 🙂

Man Dies After Playing Games For 2 Days

A South Korean man (identified as “Lee”) died of heart failure stemming from exhaustion after playing an online video game for 50 hours.

Lee thought it would be a good idea to quit his job so he could have more time to play video games, which by the way, doesn’t seem like a solid plan for your life if you ask me. I’m not much of a gamer myself, but for everyone else thinking they need to quit your job so you can have more gaming time, maybe you should think twice… because gaming KILLS.

Check out the full article.

Dueling Hot Tubs

I’m starting to think I may have actually lost touch with reality here…

For my pool, I want a big (large enough to actually swim in) zero-edge pool with a swim-up bar. Then I started thinking it would be pretty cool to be in the pool and go under a waterfall into a grotto where the hot tub is. Well… what if you want to be in a hot tub and actually be in your backyard (vs. inside a cave)?

Is it too excessive to have two hot tubs in the backyard (one in a grotto, and one in the open)?

Sony’s Fictional Film Critic

A class action suit has been settled, and Sony Pictures is obligated to refund $5 to anyone who saw Hollow Man, Vertical Limit, A Knight’s Tale, The Animal or The Patriot at the movie theatre. Because those people may have been influenced by Sony’s fake film critic, “David Manning”.

I wonder if you need to show your original movie stub to get the $5? 🙂

Human Implantable Access Control

So after my last post, I was poking around the Internet regarding RFID access control systems for buildings (for a house in my case), and I found a company called VeriChip. They offer systems that are wearable (what I originally was looking for), but also implantable inside your body, which seems pretty cool to me. It would be pretty hard to lose your house key then.

//www.verichipcorp.com/content/solutions/1117566047

RFID Tagging

The US Department of Homeland security is going to start requiring foreigners to carry a “card” with them at all times. It will be an RFID type of card that can be read from 20 feet away.

Anyway… I don’t care a whole lot about that and the whole privacy concerns (I’ll let the privacy activists deal with that). But, it would be a neat technology to use for my house that I’m going to be building soon.

Maybe a card you carry in your wallet or something could automatically unlock the front door as you approach the door or something. Has anyone seen or heard of a company doing any RFID stuff for the home?

People DO Read My Blog!

Well, I posted a picture of my friend (a guy) wearing a bikini top yesterday at 4:21 pm as an experiment to see how long it would take him to notice and call me. It was less than 24 hours (without anyone telling him).

Sorry if you missed it, but I since took it down since I just wanted to see how long until he saw it. heh

Internet Explorer 7 Beta

Well, Microsoft has finally started beta testing IE7, which you can get (if you are a developer) over here.

Internet Explorer is a really sucky browser that I don’t really feel like going into WHY (because most people already know, and the ones that don’t already know, probably don’t care anyway). But hopefully they will put enough band-aids on it that people designing websites don’t need to make compromises on what they can do because of Internet Explorer limitations.

And more importantly, maybe I won’t feel the need to write such lame blog entries like this.

Battle Of The Bridges

I got invited to a golf tournament (as an attendee, not a player) that’s going on today. I guess it’s a two on two tournament with Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Retief Goosen and John Daly.

My first golf tournament I’ve ever been to (well I played in 2 before). I know everyone cares.

I need to buy some clubs and start going to the driving range, because golf is fun (but I suck).

Inhale Paint

This dude walked into a hardware store to buy spray paint. The clerk noticed his face and hands were covered in paint, so he called the cops on suspicion he might be inhaling them.

Sure enough… this fool was inhaling paint, and needed a refill so badly, he didn’t bother to clean himself up before heading over to the store.

I love paint. Paint yummy… what an idiot.

Derailing A Train

I’ve always heard idiotic people say if you put a penny on a train track, you could derail a train. Well, I proved them all wrong today. I taped $3 in quarters to a railroad track and waited for a train to come by today. And guess what? It flattened the money, but the train did not fall off the tracks.

The one thing I was worried about was someone seeing me doing “something” to the train tracks while I was down there taping quarters to it. Have them call the FBI and I get arrested as a terrorist or something. heh

You can find some pics here:

//forums.digitalpoint.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=95&c=member&imageuser=1

Mutant Turtles

Not sure what to say about this, but here’s the ad:

No Eyed Red Eared Slider Hatchlings

WELL THE PARENTS OF STEVIE HAVE DONE IT AGAIN!

These little babies are true miracles of nature. They have the same parents as Stevie our no eyed mascot. They are truly unique in every way. They are smart and adapt quickly. They aren’t shy either, when they hear your voice they become excited just like any seeing turtle does. The one thing they need help with until they are use to their surroundings is feeding and as smart as these little fellows are it won’t take long for them to get adapted to your feeding schedule. So if you have the time and love for a special needs turtle, order one of these little gems today and enjoy them for a lifetime.

Half Nectarine, Half Mango

I went to the store last night, and saw something new (to me anyway). It was a fruit that was half nectarine and half mango. basically was shaped like a nectarine, but looked like a mango. I got a few of them to try out, and they are pretty good… They taste mostly like a nectarine, but are a little stringy like a mango. Kind of weird…

Blow Your Face Up With Saline

Dude, there isn’t a whole lot I can say about this, except look at the pictures at the link below.

This guy actually blows his face up with saline for fun (okay, maybe not for FUN, but for performance/body art purposes). I wonder what day you just wake up and decide, “Hey man… let’s use my head as a canteen and see what happens.”

//www.chapter9photography.com/2005/bio/forehead_inflation.htm

He also cut off his own pinky to create a claw as an “experiment”. Neat. 🙂

Bam Margera, Steve-O and Chris Pontius

I’m not much of a TV watcher, but Wildboyz and Viva La Bam are pretty damn funny. Don Vito is such an idiot on Viva La Bam, that I’m not sure if I’m supposed to laugh and this guy or feel sorry for him (although I usually laugh).

Anyway… the whole reason for this entry, is not because I care enough about any TV show to actually write about it in itself. But I had a dream last night with Bam, Steve-O and Chris in it. For some reason (you know how dreams are), I left my Hummer running with the keys in it in some ghetto alley while I went to a friends house. To my amazement, someone stole my truck.

Okay… that sucked, so now I’m walking home (which is some weird dry river bed) where I find Steve-O stabbing iguanas and laughing because he thought it was funny (it wasn’t). I ended up grabbing Steve-O and biting his pinky off to see if he thought that was funny too (he didn’t). Then all of a sudden, I see someone driving my Hummer through the riverbed (it was Bam and Chris looking for Steve-O). I don’t really remember what happened after that, but I remember being pissed off that Bam stole my Hummer. What a dick!

Google Earth KMZ Files

Google Earth lets you generate .kmz files by right-clicking a marker and saving it. Pretty handy, but I wanted to be able to adjust the tilt and direction the default view comes up as, so I poked a little bit (well not that much… heh). The .kmz files are simply zipped .kml files (which are just normal XML). So it’s pretty easy to manipulate them.

My only complaint is that you can’t have multiple tags within a single .kml file (Google Earth will barf and give an error). I also tried to put two .kml files within a single .kmz file with no luck (only the first one was shown in Google Earth).

Anyway, for those of you with Google Earth installed, I made two little .kmz files that will plot my old and new property at Cielo.

Computer For Your Car Dashboard

Okay dude, this thing is pretty cool. It’s a full blown computer packed into a double-DIN sized chassis. the thing is made by Infill (a Korean company). I still have a hard time believing they fit it all into the chassis without a hide-away unit, but it seems like they did. It’s basically a tiny PC and includes 40GB hard drive, DVD drive, TV tuner, GPS, voice control, USB ports and even an mPCI slot. Rumor has it you could even install Windows on it if you wanted.

The site is in Korean, but you can find it over here:

//www.infill.co.kr/product/main.asp

Not only that, but the default GUI on it looks like it’s pretty awesome, and it’s cheap (compared to other car stereos with GPS/navigation)… around $2,300 USD.

Since the thing has a GPS and Internet connectivity built into it, and the $20 version of Google Earth has support for GPS, you could install Google Earth on it and have that be your navigation system.

Damn I want one of these!

AMX vs. visiomatic Home Automation

Okay, I think I have it down to two companies for the home automation stuff…

AMX, which seems to be more widely deployed (the installers I met with last week have an office here in San Diego). It’s really impressive stuff (although for the price, anything is going to be impressive).

The other company is a German company called visiomatic. I think their hardware looks much better (so does my buddy which made the comment that visiomatic’s hardware looks like art, and AMX looks like computers) and judging from their site, it looks like it has more functionality (will automatically turn off the water main if there is a problem, can detect individual people in the house and automatically adjust music and lighting to their tastes, etc.) But the thing I don’t like about visiomatic (besides the fact they are on the other side of the world) is I can’t get any info from these guys. I’ve put in three different requests for info and/or contact, and I’ve gotten nothing so far. Makes me a little nervous with such a huge investment.