Archive for the 'humor' Category


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Windows is good at a lot of things. So is Linux.

On the desktop, Linux has only been getting better. For instance, imagine my surprise when I plugged my old wireless mouse into my Ubuntu box and immediately received a warning about its battery being low. I’d been using this mouse with Windows for years, and it had never once indicated that it knew anything about the mouse’s power status. I’ve always believed Windows to be the current leader in device compatibility (companies will pay to write drivers for what people are using, and most people use Windows), so I found this to be quite humorous.

Poor old Windows, showing its age. I pointed and laughed a little.

Only problem? That same warning has been showing for the last 6 months, and the power estimate has never changed. It didn’t go to zero when the batteries finally gave out and died and it didn’t go away after replacing the batteries.

Well, what’s that they say… Even a broken clock is right two times a day. Although this is only right once a battery set.

So close.

Confused 2

For the past few months, I’ve had the webcam at the Red Rocks Visitor Center as my desktop background with a script that automatically updated it every 5 minutes. It basically gave me a window into Red Rocks on my desk. Every now and then, I’d hit the little ‘Show Desktop’ button and just stare into the beautiful mountains and clouds and wish I was far away from my desk, and definitely not working.

A few days ago, however, the camera was moved — whether it was intentional or just bumped I’ll never know — and now focuses more on the new visitor’s center that’s being constructed than the lovely landscape behind it. Consequently, it lost much of its desktop appeal. So I switched back the desktop I’d had before: a panorama I’d taken in Calico Basin (just outside Red Rocks proper).

Just now, I caught a quick glimpse of my background, my window into Red Rocks.

HOLY CRAP IT’S BEAUTIFUL AT RED ROCKS RIGHT NOW!

For a second I briefly considered standing up and leaving work that instant. And then I remembered. 🙁

Tunnel to the World 0

A lot of people know that OpenSSH’s client supports tunneling out of the box. But some don’t realize that it also supports tunneled SOCKS out of the box. Here’s how to set up a quick SOCKS proxy across an encrypted tunnel:

ssh -NfD 8888 user@host

The proxy will be on port 8888. The other flags just tell ssh to go immediately to the background (after getting your password, if needed) without running a command.

Recycle Bin FTW 2

(The title rhymes, if you didn’t notice, assuming you expand the acronym.)

Last night I decided that I should finally scrape all of my pictures off my two 4GB cards — I still don’t have my final photo storage solution worked out, so in the meantime I’m never really quite sure where I want to put things — since I had some 971 pictures in the mix. I put them on the largest drive I have; the one I record TV to, the one hooked up to my TV, the one low enough to be within arm range of toddlers and cruising infants alike.

As always, I used Ctrl+A to select everything on the card, then dragged it over, repeating for the other card. Then I turned off the TV and walked away. If you aren’t familiar with this process, it’s worth noting that after the copy operating finishes, all the copied files remain selected. That will be vital information.

This morning, Izzie (our youngest) was playing around on the keyboard connected to said machine, and although I heard a few dings and such, I didn’t worry about it.

Just now, I turned on the LCD and immediately noticed a warning about trying to delete a read only file. Sure enough, Izzie had managed to hit the delete button — with an entire card’s worth of copied files still selected — and sent that entire card’s worth of pictures to purgatory.

So, today, I’m thankful for the recycle bin.

How… 1

How do people get talking slots at conferences with a subject “to be determined”? When I submitted my talk, I had to fill out an entire assortion of bios, contact info, and an abstract. What does their abstract say?

I am a l337 PHP h4x0r. Let me talk.

Who wouldn’t give him an hour?

Perhaps I’m just frustrated because it took me like 4 tries to finally get a talk accepted. I’m sure — like just about everything else in the world of business — it’s all politics.

My Laptop Has a Death Wish 1

‘I think my laptop is trying to commit suicide. This is the one — you might remember — that just emerged from a two month coma. We’d all started to lose hope, but it somehow managed to pull through.

Today, however, has been a bit like Final Destination. First, I accidentally left it in a closed car and partially in direct sunlight. Later, while trying to swap it’s memory stick, I accidentally spilled my coffee onto the couch it was lying on. Luckily, it was upside down. That night, Jonathan was walking by the coffee table I’d left it on, and tripped over the cord, pulling it crashing onto the floor. Good thing it was built with a hinge that would allow the screen to open 180 degrees, ’cause that’s how it was sprawled on the tile when I found it.

I guess I’d better enjoy this while I’ve got it; who knows how long it will last.

men != women 1

Every now and then, I run across something that reminds me just how differently men and women tend to think.

Mindy: please can I buy the bomb bath thing????
Mindy: it explodes in the water
Mindy: and releases a bunch of skin softening stuff
Me: How big is the explosion?

Unless You Bite Them 1

I once heard someone say, “Dogs are for wimps too scared to bite people themselves.” I tend to subscribe to that world view, although, deep down, it’s really just that I don’t like dog hair. On the other hand, dogs have nothing to do with my story.

I snack constantly. I cannot survive without snacking. Probably a year and a half ago now, I was sitting at work doing something with an SD card. On my desk I had a bag of Wheat Thins with a little trickle flowing out onto my desk from which I would snag a cracker and pop it into my mouth.

At some point, I put the memory card down.

Later I was blissfully coding away when I felt a hunger pain. I grabbed a cracker, I popped it in my mouth. I bit down. Maybe you can see where I’m going with this — what I’d just thrown to my expectant molars wasn’t a cracker, it was a little blue SD card.

And the moral of the story is simple: flash memory devices are durable… unless you bite them.

When You’re a Geek 2

How to know you’re really a geek, part 1.

You refer to your daughter’s double ear infection as, redundant.

h4x0ring 2

This post tells the humorous story of how a regular consumer hacked his neighbor’s wireless AP, then proceeded to lock his neighbor out of it with a new password, MAC filter, & c. Only to discover that his neighbor had, in fact, retaliated by hacking his wireless AP. Or something like that.

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