to get off my *** ***
http://techmiso.com/114/the-100k-tech-contractor/
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Lenovo
God I hate this company so much. The 4 times I've dealt with them has always been bad. My personal laptop got sent to the wrong address... TWICE. The thing almost got sent back to the manufacturer in China. Had I been a day late in calling and asking why the heck my laptop got delivered in norcal instead of san diego it might have ended up on the ship back to its maker. My work laptop almost had a similar issue... The laptop got delivered to the wrong office and I had to jump through a bunch of different hoops to get it delivered to the right office. Lenovo has a special account with UPS such that only Lenovo can make changes to the delivery system.
Then when I was in Japan... I discovered my warranty didn't cover Japan because Lenovo in Japan (and presumably other parts of the world) are not the same company at all and are not able to share parts or specs. So in order to get my laptop fixed... I'd have to ship it back to someone in the states, have them deal with the warranty, and ship it back to Japan. UGH... So I went 6 weeks without a computer at home.
My latest issue with lenovo is in replacing a battery that suddenly died (it went from being able to charge to about 80% to holding a 25% charge in a week.. its prolly less now and the damn thing isn't much more than a year old). I bought a refurbed battery straight off of Lenovo's outlet only to find out that the battery for the 14" and the 15" inch version of my model are different... WTF. After talking to the Lenovo folks about it they were like... we'll give you a refund. But I'm still left with a dead battery.
I am never buying from this company ever again. ugh... Unfortunately... I really like their laptops... just their customer service and the way their business is structured bear few benefits for their customers.
Then when I was in Japan... I discovered my warranty didn't cover Japan because Lenovo in Japan (and presumably other parts of the world) are not the same company at all and are not able to share parts or specs. So in order to get my laptop fixed... I'd have to ship it back to someone in the states, have them deal with the warranty, and ship it back to Japan. UGH... So I went 6 weeks without a computer at home.
My latest issue with lenovo is in replacing a battery that suddenly died (it went from being able to charge to about 80% to holding a 25% charge in a week.. its prolly less now and the damn thing isn't much more than a year old). I bought a refurbed battery straight off of Lenovo's outlet only to find out that the battery for the 14" and the 15" inch version of my model are different... WTF. After talking to the Lenovo folks about it they were like... we'll give you a refund. But I'm still left with a dead battery.
I am never buying from this company ever again. ugh... Unfortunately... I really like their laptops... just their customer service and the way their business is structured bear few benefits for their customers.
Toothbrush and toothpaste
So I went to the dentist yesterday for my overdue 6 month check up. I had such a great experience with my dentist in Japan that I figured I'd continue the tradition over here. I got more or less the same experience I had 2~3 years ago when I was forced to go in from teething pains (I had a wisdom tooth coming in and coincidentally forced to go again in Japan from gingivival pains most likely associated with said wisdom tooth). The result was basically this "wow... you have no prosthetics in your mouth" and then after looking at the x-rays with scrutiny finding borderline shadows that MIGHT be cavities.
Going to the dentist makes me conscientious about my oral health so getting home I renewed the research on the topic... here are my findings:
The toothbrush has been around for freaking ever so it really doesn't matter what you get on the shelf as long as the bristles are soft and the head is the right size (not ridiculously huge but not so small that you'll forget to cover everything)
http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/090503.html
Sorry, that was just a useless comic illustrating the useless evolution of the toothbrush. Here's something a bit more involved:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/fashion/20SKIN.html?ref=health
Which basically states buying anything more than ol' reliable is an effort in futility (because your brushing technique doesn't require all the bells and whistles) or catering to sloth or ignorance.
Here's a bit of news (well kinda... it IS the onion) that makes me think the toothbrush industry in this country would do well to get their noses out of their own design books and look elsewhere for inspiration...
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/32636
because it was disappointing to come home to america and find that the toothbrush I was quite happy with over in Japan to be non-existent on this side of the Pacific. I suppose it was a pretty rare brush over there because the dentist said you could only get it from a dentist office. The imitations off the shelf (that have also made it here at the asian supermarkets) don't quite have the same zing... the slim brushes are too long. The brush is called Ruscello III, while the stuff you can find here are something along the lines of mooble mooble and Dentek.
Prior to toothbrushes, I was looking at something a bit more involved... toothpaste. Because I don't want the hassle of dealing with fillings and the constant fear that one might fall out. I had one fall out when I was a kid and while picking food out of the hole was fun at first... it became really annoying after awhile... and breaking in a new filling with its sharp edges sucks too not to mention the idea of having mercury stuck in your mouth or having to compromise with with structurally inferior resin composites for those superficially aesthetically appealing pearly whites.
so there are a number of flouride options, which some debate to be bad for your health because of some claim that putting flouride in our water and toothpaste was a good way to get rid of some of our WWII toxic waste.
http://www.aroma-essence.com/research-reports/fluoride.html
And here's a bit of info on flouride pastes... you gotta scroll past all the generic info that you prolly know already to get to the statistics
http://www.dentalgentlecare.com/toothpaste.htm
The basic on flouride... it kills bacteria and prevents the bad stuff from forming for awhile... and it supposedly promotes remineralization, which hopefully means fixing cavities.
Unfortunately the popular belief (or fact depending on who you ask) is that the only way to fix a cavity is to fill it with crap but that's something I want to avoid for as long as possible.
And then there's some cool new crap called Novamin which is some water-activated bio-glass that one dude claims to have cured his cavities. It can be found in toothpaste form through a company called Oravive. Unfortunately a 6 pack costs freaking 40$ T.T
I guess Sensodyne is pretty up there too...
http://www.dentalfearcentral.org/forum/archive/index.php?t-1309.html
Another note: aside from the dietary changes... one useful thing is his take on dry-mouth. I get it from time to time and its gross... so it might be a useful product.
So what's up with all this info about Dental care? Sitting on the bench with my mouth wide open, it always feels like the Dentist is digging around in a treasure box looking for lucrative tidbits to pillage. I figure as long as my teeth work and aren't taking a nosedive in health, I don't need to get any major dental work done. Sure they're a little imperfect, but I kinda hate that unnatural rack of pearly-white look that hollywood tends to shove down our throats. And my family in particular have had a bad run with the dental industry harassing us with phone calls about our need to get our teeth fixed. Yeah... Right...
Oh... and please don't feel offended when I say people that buy into expensive brushes and the like are tools because I'm guilty of doing the same... I have that mace looking 360 brush sitting in my cup right now and don't follow the proper brushing/flossing/rinsing schedule I should half the time. Whatever gets you to brush the amount you need to get the job done and keeps you healthy is the important thing. Although I hear you shouldn't brush more than 2 times a day especially with a hard bristle brush cuz you'll erode the dentin under the gumline... which is essentially the same thing as sawing your tooth off at the neck (enamel stops at the gumline).
Going to the dentist makes me conscientious about my oral health so getting home I renewed the research on the topic... here are my findings:
The toothbrush has been around for freaking ever so it really doesn't matter what you get on the shelf as long as the bristles are soft and the head is the right size (not ridiculously huge but not so small that you'll forget to cover everything)
http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/090503.html
Sorry, that was just a useless comic illustrating the useless evolution of the toothbrush. Here's something a bit more involved:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/fashion/20SKIN.html?ref=health
Which basically states buying anything more than ol' reliable is an effort in futility (because your brushing technique doesn't require all the bells and whistles) or catering to sloth or ignorance.
Here's a bit of news (well kinda... it IS the onion) that makes me think the toothbrush industry in this country would do well to get their noses out of their own design books and look elsewhere for inspiration...
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/32636
because it was disappointing to come home to america and find that the toothbrush I was quite happy with over in Japan to be non-existent on this side of the Pacific. I suppose it was a pretty rare brush over there because the dentist said you could only get it from a dentist office. The imitations off the shelf (that have also made it here at the asian supermarkets) don't quite have the same zing... the slim brushes are too long. The brush is called Ruscello III, while the stuff you can find here are something along the lines of mooble mooble and Dentek.
Prior to toothbrushes, I was looking at something a bit more involved... toothpaste. Because I don't want the hassle of dealing with fillings and the constant fear that one might fall out. I had one fall out when I was a kid and while picking food out of the hole was fun at first... it became really annoying after awhile... and breaking in a new filling with its sharp edges sucks too not to mention the idea of having mercury stuck in your mouth or having to compromise with with structurally inferior resin composites for those superficially aesthetically appealing pearly whites.
so there are a number of flouride options, which some debate to be bad for your health because of some claim that putting flouride in our water and toothpaste was a good way to get rid of some of our WWII toxic waste.
http://www.aroma-essence.com/research-reports/fluoride.html
And here's a bit of info on flouride pastes... you gotta scroll past all the generic info that you prolly know already to get to the statistics
http://www.dentalgentlecare.com/toothpaste.htm
The basic on flouride... it kills bacteria and prevents the bad stuff from forming for awhile... and it supposedly promotes remineralization, which hopefully means fixing cavities.
Unfortunately the popular belief (or fact depending on who you ask) is that the only way to fix a cavity is to fill it with crap but that's something I want to avoid for as long as possible.
And then there's some cool new crap called Novamin which is some water-activated bio-glass that one dude claims to have cured his cavities. It can be found in toothpaste form through a company called Oravive. Unfortunately a 6 pack costs freaking 40$ T.T
I guess Sensodyne is pretty up there too...
http://www.dentalfearcentral.org/forum/archive/index.php?t-1309.html
Another note: aside from the dietary changes... one useful thing is his take on dry-mouth. I get it from time to time and its gross... so it might be a useful product.
So what's up with all this info about Dental care? Sitting on the bench with my mouth wide open, it always feels like the Dentist is digging around in a treasure box looking for lucrative tidbits to pillage. I figure as long as my teeth work and aren't taking a nosedive in health, I don't need to get any major dental work done. Sure they're a little imperfect, but I kinda hate that unnatural rack of pearly-white look that hollywood tends to shove down our throats. And my family in particular have had a bad run with the dental industry harassing us with phone calls about our need to get our teeth fixed. Yeah... Right...
Oh... and please don't feel offended when I say people that buy into expensive brushes and the like are tools because I'm guilty of doing the same... I have that mace looking 360 brush sitting in my cup right now and don't follow the proper brushing/flossing/rinsing schedule I should half the time. Whatever gets you to brush the amount you need to get the job done and keeps you healthy is the important thing. Although I hear you shouldn't brush more than 2 times a day especially with a hard bristle brush cuz you'll erode the dentin under the gumline... which is essentially the same thing as sawing your tooth off at the neck (enamel stops at the gumline).
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Resonance
When I was a kid, I used to sit between two mirrors and revel at how I could project my image a few dozen times. Then I wondered... what would happen if I put light between two perfectly parallel mirrors and just have it bounce back and forth. If I removed a mirror, would there still be light inside? It took me like 15 years slap the label resonance on that thought but now I know. And that one time in when we stood on that grate at the park near the samurai school near Ishinomaki and could hear the echoes of our voices. That was awesome... resonance. I don't think it was a coincidence either.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
H1N1
Does anyone else find it a bit ironic that we spent so much time freaking out about bird flu that we as humans get nailed by swine? A bit of trivia... anyone that has watched Moyashimon should know that birds and swine both have diseases that commute with humans. I guess one of those diseases would be the influenza virus. Go figure. I forget what episode it was, but it was pretty amusing since it reminded me of the time taiko kept getting each other sick to breed a supervirus.
As an aftermath to my previous post... I looked up the Win7 exploit. Apparently you have to be at the computer to do it. I'm sure my workplace would freak out about it, but for most people the exploit is pretty minor. Meanwhile I found some fun sites that I can use to increase the security of my home boxes. I think I was born for this job... ha ha.
Japanese:
Pimsleur 33
I really need to get back on the ball for all my little hobbies... =/ Although I was speaking pretty well last weekend; this weekend I really feel like my Japanese is slipping.
As an aftermath to my previous post... I looked up the Win7 exploit. Apparently you have to be at the computer to do it. I'm sure my workplace would freak out about it, but for most people the exploit is pretty minor. Meanwhile I found some fun sites that I can use to increase the security of my home boxes. I think I was born for this job... ha ha.
Japanese:
Pimsleur 33
I really need to get back on the ball for all my little hobbies... =/ Although I was speaking pretty well last weekend; this weekend I really feel like my Japanese is slipping.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Linux FTW
At long last Ubuntu's 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope was released 2 days ago. For those of you that don't know, Ubuntu is just a flavor or distribution of linux... think Windows XP home vs professional except the lines drawn between the different distributions are more complicated than home users and professionals as it touches on your technical expertise with the OS along with the way you prefer to do things. In recent years as Windows has become more and more unfavorable with masses, linux has become more popular with those that feel no need to buy into the OS X (Apple) brand. This trend has been bolstered by Ubuntu who's mantra for user-friendliness has produced a product that leaves me with fewer headaches than windows (finally!), which, to me, puts a rather large nail on the Windows coffin.
I started using Ubuntu as my sole operating system with Intrepid Ibex 8.10. The number at the end corresponds to the year.month of the release so Ibex was released in October of 2008 while Jaunty was released April of this year (2 days ago to be exact). Ubuntu's company, Canonical, releases a new version every 6 months which usually have some marked improvement over its predecessor but has a more stable long term (LTS) release which goes a year or two before getting upgraded.
Ibex was good but there were a few things I had to sacrifice to use it. I have since gotten use to life with a few peripherals I paid for on my laptop, which now factors into my opinion on which OS is best for use. These peripherals include but are not limited to firewire, built-in flash card reader, scanner, webcam, and while bluetooth works I've never synced it up with anything. Where Jaunty surpasses Ibex and how it compares to Windows at this point lies in starting with reinstalling the OS and boot up time. Jaunty now boots up in less than half a minute compared to the 45sec~1min of Ibex and whatever the heck windows might be at the various stages of its life (think corruption and baggage--neither of which give a pretty picture).
As far as installation goes, my partition table was a mess from searching for the proper partition sizes that fit me on top of migrating from 64bit back to 32bit. Flash and Firefox were not happy in 64bit and that was unacceptable for me. In any event, my hard drive was partitioned in a way where I partitions were scattered across the entire drive and to remedy it without just rebuilding the table from scratch would take days. As my windows installation (I dual boot) had become bloated as well, that also needed a format. I spend substantially less time in the windows environment so the lack of upkeep allowed Windows to get fat and slow.
For those of you that don't know, Windows XP doesn't play very nicely with linux, so I had to install it first. Fortunately Linux will cater to XP's whims. I forget how many steps it takes to install XP other than you have to set it up through an ugly blue screen, step away for a half hour or so, come back and run it through more setup, and then step away for like 45 minutes. Ubuntu will not only run off its own CD, it will install after 7 steps that you do at the beginning; the most complicated task being: setting up your partition table. I don't know how long it takes to install after that as I stepped away only to come back to the slick log-in screen for Jaunty. One of the great things about Ubuntu over Windows is right after installing, all the important stuff works out of the box for my laptop. Stuff like internet, video, sound, usb support, and includes an unbloated software suite like firefox, a multimedia player, instant messenger, a disk burning utility, and open office. If most of you are like me, you're not an avid user of windows messenger or Windows Media Player so you have to go hunt for your own installs. Furthermore, some of the more useful things are lacking altogether, like a userfriendly disk burner, dvd playback support, and an office productivity suite. Things may have changed in vista, but for sure that last part has not.
Also, for those of you that have installed windows before, you gotta have those drivers on hand and install them one by one otherwise you're left with a crippled machine where the video won't even look right. Its here that Linux has won a major point against my Lenovo supported machine. Lenovo had something called ThinkVantage Update Server which would automatically install and keep your software/drivers updated. This was useful in that all the update support was centralized and I could update everything at once. So what I usually did after a fresh install was get internet up and running, download the Update program and let that do all the work for me. For some reason Lenovo discontinued this and the thought of having to hunt down the right drivers for my machine along with individually installing each one, run checks with the device manager to make sure things installed and then testing each component to make sure they worked made me leave windows as it was... crippled... and crawled back into my comfy linux installation which more or less works beautifully out of the box. For Lenovo, this procedure might be new as they recently pulled the plug on that service, but for everyone else its pretty standard procedure. I don't miss it. As much as I harp on this working out of the box issue with Ubuntu, there is one caveat. That is: if it doesn't work, don't try to fix it. Usually when something doesn't work straight out of the install, you may luck out by finding a non-free driver or the hardware just isn't supported yet. I've had this in the past with Hardy Heron (I think) and wifi, where my wifi magically worked after having to find the intel driver for it, but another wifi that supported agn networks was still unsupported. I've found that this latter unsupported issue to be the case more often than not.
So after installing an OS, what do you do? Customize! This ranged from customizing your applications suite to the way the OS looks. Unfortunately for windows you can't do much besides play with your widgets (not even so in XP), change your wallpaper, and choose between a few microsoft built themes unless you use 3rd party hacks. As for software, you have to either go and buy it, usually from brick and mortar, or go find it on the interweb. Most of the software on linux can be found in the updater which handles all your OS updates and keeps all your software updated too. Examples of this would be: Deluge for my BT needs (competes with u-torrent); Exaile for music; Xchat for IRC; Pidgin for AIM,MSN,Yahoo,Gchat; gftp; Mplayer and its front end varients: gnome-mplayer and smplayer (replacement for my beloved zoomplayer which replaced windows media player classic); and TeX (a mark-up language for producing the best-looking documents offered to the home-user). I've been able to live pretty comfortably without the rest of the stuff. If I need, I can always emulate a windows environment either under Wine, VirtualBox, or VMWare. Unfortunately windows emulation doesn't work all that well and getting it to talk to Linux for free is a bit of a hassle. Which reminds me... Everything I've talked about so far is free for the most part. Some things like Wine, VirtualBox, and VMWare have paid versions that offer more support for complicated things like transferring files between linux and windows on the fly. I think this should suffice for most users.
There is one type of user that would suffer under this environment: The PC Gamer. You should be able to get some things running under windows emulation but it might not run at peak performance. Linux itself doesn't have any strong games I think but there are plenty of dinky games out there. Some of them are pretty good.
One great more great thing about linux: Its hard to screw up the system by accident. If it crashes, it can usually be solved with a reboot. One bad thing for most people: there are still a fair number of things that require the ability to use the command-line and modify configuration scripts: such as batch unzipping, autoloading an internal hard drive on boot, and a few other things. Fortunately there's plenty of support online so with a little bit of internet 'elbow grease' these software things can be smoothed over.
On a side note: I hear Windows 7 has a serious exploit produced by a design flaw. From the sound of it, Vista is going to be around for a bit longer.
I started using Ubuntu as my sole operating system with Intrepid Ibex 8.10. The number at the end corresponds to the year.month of the release so Ibex was released in October of 2008 while Jaunty was released April of this year (2 days ago to be exact). Ubuntu's company, Canonical, releases a new version every 6 months which usually have some marked improvement over its predecessor but has a more stable long term (LTS) release which goes a year or two before getting upgraded.
Ibex was good but there were a few things I had to sacrifice to use it. I have since gotten use to life with a few peripherals I paid for on my laptop, which now factors into my opinion on which OS is best for use. These peripherals include but are not limited to firewire, built-in flash card reader, scanner, webcam, and while bluetooth works I've never synced it up with anything. Where Jaunty surpasses Ibex and how it compares to Windows at this point lies in starting with reinstalling the OS and boot up time. Jaunty now boots up in less than half a minute compared to the 45sec~1min of Ibex and whatever the heck windows might be at the various stages of its life (think corruption and baggage--neither of which give a pretty picture).
As far as installation goes, my partition table was a mess from searching for the proper partition sizes that fit me on top of migrating from 64bit back to 32bit. Flash and Firefox were not happy in 64bit and that was unacceptable for me. In any event, my hard drive was partitioned in a way where I partitions were scattered across the entire drive and to remedy it without just rebuilding the table from scratch would take days. As my windows installation (I dual boot) had become bloated as well, that also needed a format. I spend substantially less time in the windows environment so the lack of upkeep allowed Windows to get fat and slow.
For those of you that don't know, Windows XP doesn't play very nicely with linux, so I had to install it first. Fortunately Linux will cater to XP's whims. I forget how many steps it takes to install XP other than you have to set it up through an ugly blue screen, step away for a half hour or so, come back and run it through more setup, and then step away for like 45 minutes. Ubuntu will not only run off its own CD, it will install after 7 steps that you do at the beginning; the most complicated task being: setting up your partition table. I don't know how long it takes to install after that as I stepped away only to come back to the slick log-in screen for Jaunty. One of the great things about Ubuntu over Windows is right after installing, all the important stuff works out of the box for my laptop. Stuff like internet, video, sound, usb support, and includes an unbloated software suite like firefox, a multimedia player, instant messenger, a disk burning utility, and open office. If most of you are like me, you're not an avid user of windows messenger or Windows Media Player so you have to go hunt for your own installs. Furthermore, some of the more useful things are lacking altogether, like a userfriendly disk burner, dvd playback support, and an office productivity suite. Things may have changed in vista, but for sure that last part has not.
Also, for those of you that have installed windows before, you gotta have those drivers on hand and install them one by one otherwise you're left with a crippled machine where the video won't even look right. Its here that Linux has won a major point against my Lenovo supported machine. Lenovo had something called ThinkVantage Update Server which would automatically install and keep your software/drivers updated. This was useful in that all the update support was centralized and I could update everything at once. So what I usually did after a fresh install was get internet up and running, download the Update program and let that do all the work for me. For some reason Lenovo discontinued this and the thought of having to hunt down the right drivers for my machine along with individually installing each one, run checks with the device manager to make sure things installed and then testing each component to make sure they worked made me leave windows as it was... crippled... and crawled back into my comfy linux installation which more or less works beautifully out of the box. For Lenovo, this procedure might be new as they recently pulled the plug on that service, but for everyone else its pretty standard procedure. I don't miss it. As much as I harp on this working out of the box issue with Ubuntu, there is one caveat. That is: if it doesn't work, don't try to fix it. Usually when something doesn't work straight out of the install, you may luck out by finding a non-free driver or the hardware just isn't supported yet. I've had this in the past with Hardy Heron (I think) and wifi, where my wifi magically worked after having to find the intel driver for it, but another wifi that supported agn networks was still unsupported. I've found that this latter unsupported issue to be the case more often than not.
So after installing an OS, what do you do? Customize! This ranged from customizing your applications suite to the way the OS looks. Unfortunately for windows you can't do much besides play with your widgets (not even so in XP), change your wallpaper, and choose between a few microsoft built themes unless you use 3rd party hacks. As for software, you have to either go and buy it, usually from brick and mortar, or go find it on the interweb. Most of the software on linux can be found in the updater which handles all your OS updates and keeps all your software updated too. Examples of this would be: Deluge for my BT needs (competes with u-torrent); Exaile for music; Xchat for IRC; Pidgin for AIM,MSN,Yahoo,Gchat; gftp; Mplayer and its front end varients: gnome-mplayer and smplayer (replacement for my beloved zoomplayer which replaced windows media player classic); and TeX (a mark-up language for producing the best-looking documents offered to the home-user). I've been able to live pretty comfortably without the rest of the stuff. If I need, I can always emulate a windows environment either under Wine, VirtualBox, or VMWare. Unfortunately windows emulation doesn't work all that well and getting it to talk to Linux for free is a bit of a hassle. Which reminds me... Everything I've talked about so far is free for the most part. Some things like Wine, VirtualBox, and VMWare have paid versions that offer more support for complicated things like transferring files between linux and windows on the fly. I think this should suffice for most users.
There is one type of user that would suffer under this environment: The PC Gamer. You should be able to get some things running under windows emulation but it might not run at peak performance. Linux itself doesn't have any strong games I think but there are plenty of dinky games out there. Some of them are pretty good.
One great more great thing about linux: Its hard to screw up the system by accident. If it crashes, it can usually be solved with a reboot. One bad thing for most people: there are still a fair number of things that require the ability to use the command-line and modify configuration scripts: such as batch unzipping, autoloading an internal hard drive on boot, and a few other things. Fortunately there's plenty of support online so with a little bit of internet 'elbow grease' these software things can be smoothed over.
On a side note: I hear Windows 7 has a serious exploit produced by a design flaw. From the sound of it, Vista is going to be around for a bit longer.
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