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Yahoo mail account and Windows PC leads to Pwnage

I am getting a lot of spam from the free Yahoo email accounts of friends who are Windows users. I think there is some sort of virus/trojan-horse going around on Windows that hijacks Yahoo accounts and sends out unsolicited commercial email, fraudulently masquerading as my friends (which means it gets through spam filters). If you […]

Crazy Amounts of Snow

We measured 22″ at 8 am this morning, and 27.5″ at 1 pm. It took us three straight hours of shoveling and snow-blowing to clear a path to the hot tub, a fire escape path, and enough driveway for one car to get to the road… which was last plowed about 16″ ago… so we […]

Fed up with Flash crashing my web browsers

I am tired of Flash content crashing my web browsers, so I installed ClickToFlash in my Safari (has to be done in each user account) and FlashBlock plugin in my Firefox (has to be done in Firefox for each user account). Now I can play Flash when I want to, not whenever a website decides […]

Looking for work

The contract I have been working on is drawing to a close with the successful launch of a new corporate website for the client. So I am looking for work and available in February for a new Linux/UNIX Systems Administrator position or contract.

Why are 3D films so jarring?

I normally do not try to see movies in 3D format because they have typically been jarring, annoying, and tacky. Given the opportunity to have the appearance of things jumping out of the screen at you, most directors seem to feel like they have to use that gimmick even when it is not needed. In […]

Harry Reid did not need to apologize

I completely agree with Sandy Banks when she writes “It’s not Harry Reid who should be apologizing“, it’s Michael Steele. There is nothing racist in what Harry Reid said. Perhaps it is a bit cynical of the American public, which is dangerous ground for a publicly elected official, but it’s also an accurate and damning […]

How integrated is the greater Washington area?

One of the things I like best about the greater Washington area is how integrated we are… For years I have been comparing our local stomping grounds favorably to places like Chicago (a lovely city) where the blocks are clearly black or white and even those blocks are clearly one ethnic group or another. Perhaps […]

Are college textbooks reasonably priced?

BoingBoing has a very interesting article: Prescription for consumers challenging academic textbook cartels that begins to address the issues surrounding over-priced college text books that students are being forced to pay for if they adhere to the “required text” portions of their class schedule. I recall from the mid-1980s that many texts were reasonably priced […]

Impressive film for $300 budget!

Ataque de Pánico! (Panic Attack!) 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dadPWhEhVk Fede Alvarez tells a little about how he made the short film: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=154&t=822329&highlight=big+robots They look like Mechforce Marauders to me… but perhaps I played a little too much of Ralph Reed’s excellent Amiga game in the early 1990s…

Before you move that snow…

Take a peek at the weather service forecast for your location over the next several days. If like us, your area is predicted to get daily high temperatures only a few degrees warmer than freezing, you should know that the snow you need to move this morning is going to be sitting wherever you put […]