Welcome

I don't know if anyone's noticed, but I've been adding a lot to my greeting line thing on the top of the page. Right now, there are 41 random greetings you can get. Seen them all yet? Of course not, because odds are you're Jordan and you like to disable javascript with browser add-ons, you friggin' spoil-sport you.

By the way, I'm working on an idea I had for an online browser-based game. The main obstacle right now is that I don't have a dedicated web server to use. At least, not one with enough bandwidth and whatnot. If anyone can suggest a good solution for this problem, I'm all ears.

More on this story as it develops, or fails to do so.

P.S. Random post tags are random.

The Imponderable Equation

Maybe I'm just crazy, seeing patterns where there are none but random coincidence, but I feel like there's something strange hidden in the music of George Michael that has some kind of connection to modern hard rock.

Okay, so here's how it starts: Seether recently did a remake of Careless Whisper, originally by George Michael (and/or WHAM). Okay, so that's one song. If it stopped there, I wouldn't give it a second though.

But there's more. While looking up the lyrics to the song, I found the original George Michael song listed under an album by George Michael called Ladies and Gentlemen. Wait... Ladies and Gentlemen? That's the title of a hit single Saliva released a year or so ago.

What's going on here? Do the connections run even deeper than this? Am I just completely out of my mind?!
(Likely answers to the above questions, in order: Probably; No; Yes)

Whatever. If you see any other obvious connections, let me know. I'm done trying to research this craziness.

Re: A little higher...

EDIT: I realized a day after posting that I had linked to the wrong video. The first link now goes to the video I had meant to put here in the first place. The one I did link to yesterday is still here, now labelled 'Review'.

Just an update on this post. (You can follow the link, or just scroll down) There are a couple things on YouTube that seem to work as well. Two that work very well are:

• The Surefire Pen Demo - I kind of wonder why this needed to be made. It's not really a product that needs to be demonstrated. Are we all that simple that we can't figure out how to operate a pen on our own? I'm not mad, though. Instead, I've got this weird kind of feeling again...


• The Surefire Pen Review - A much longer video, but at least it's somewhat more informative. Still seems to give me that weird feeling...


• SureFire Flashlight Demo - About the same feeling as before. It's a video that never needed to be made, yet watching it brings me joy. Inexplicable, but the serenity is undeniable.

Again, if anyone knows what the hell I'm talking about and can clue me in to what's happening, please let me know.

I have no idea what's going on

I think my brain esploded.



Seriously, I'll have a good update for this thing soon. Assuming I've recovered from this... logical anomaly.

Re: Email from Ronald Sarner

This day just keeps getting better and better...

"...We have several personnel changes in the department.

Professor Rosemary Mullick returns to full-time teaching after a four-year stint as Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs. We welcome her back, and are pleased that she has agreed to develop a new course in Computer-Human Interaction for this semester.

Professor Geethapriya Thamilarasu joins us as an assistant professor, having just completed a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering at SUNY-Buffalo. She previously interned at Deutsche Telekom Laboratories in Berlin, developing an intrusion detection system for wireless sensor networks. Her particular area of interest is wireless network security, and she will be developing a wireless sensor lab and using it for courses in both computer science and in telecommunications. For the fall semester she will be teaching both disciplines and her computer science course will be Software Engineering.

Professor Henry Wu also joins us as an assistant professor coming from the CIS department at Cal State Polytech in Pomona, California. He has more than a decade of experience as a telecommunications engineer and holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Oklahoma State. His teaching assignments this semester will be in telecommunications.

Professor Michael deMare has left SUNYIT and we extend our best wishes to him in his future endeavors....,"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!



Oh, god. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. I mean, come on, this is DeMare we're talking about! I told everyone in the class that I would get him fired if it was the last thing I ever do. How can I not gloat? :D

:O

I know it's very crazy for me to be making 3 posts in one day, but...

Holy crap!

Blog-to-Blog: Fundulus schmundulus

I just found this post from Kelly Weinersmith enlightening, and thought I'd pass it on to you. Of course, if you're one of my regular readers, you probably already read SMBC, and by extension have been linked to Kelly's blog. But, just in case you're the other reader, here's a link for you:

Fundulus schmundulus: My Beef With Bottled Water

A little higher... Yeah, right there...

Okay, this is likely going to seem like it's coming from out of the clear blue sky, but it's not. This has been going on for as long as I can remember; I'm just now finally writing about it. In my life, I've never heard of this kind of thing happening to anyone else, so if it sounds familiar to you, tell me what you know.

There is something happening to me that has been bugging me for some time now. Once in a while, I get this strange sensation that I can't explain. It's a little like a cold shiver on the back of my head and neck, but it's not really cold. In fact, it's kind of pleasant; like being petted by some invisible hand with chilly fingers. It's very relaxing, but usually quite fleeting since I have no idea where it comes from or how to get it to stay longer. On occasion I've gotten goosebumps on my skin as if I really were cold, but otherwise there is no obvious physical effect.

So, I've been trying like hell to figure out what this sensation is for years, but have come up with very little. The trouble is I don't know exactly what triggers it. I have noticed that a few specific things tend to trigger the sensation, but not always. The most common ones are:

• Going to the chiropractor (the sensation comes on immediately afterward)


• Goofy porno dialogue


• Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive" and "Blaze of Glory"


• This (although not always)


• Some children's tv shows

There may be others, but I can't think of them at the moment. If any readers know what the hell I'm talking about, please fill me in. Until then, I'll keep up my own 'research.'

Peace and love, y'all.

Re:Re: Chrome

Update on my experience with the new browser. Aside from the lack of customization and zero support for third-party extensions, it's been pretty good to me so far. There seem to be some little bugs cropping up, though. Among them:

• The 'find in page' box will randomly disappear when you switch tabs


• Radio buttons for polls sometimes won't load properly. This just started today, and I really don't get it. The radio buttons are still there and can be clicked on, but they're invisible. Wtf?


• Similarly, the arrow on drop-down boxes sometimes doesn't appear. Weird.


• Some pages designed by marketing idiots still don't recognize Chrome. They'll give you a "This page isn't compatible with Netscape" message or something. Granted, that's mostly the page designers' fault, but still...

More on this story and others as they develop.

Hey

This is Dan.

...I got nothing.

Happy 4th of July

Just a preemptive Happy F@#k-The-British Day. If I had my way, that name would always be used in place of Independence Day. I have nothing in particular against England. I just like offensive holiday names.

Anyway, I'm writing this on Friday since I'm guessing I won't get around to it tomorrow. As you read this, I'm likely still absorbed in the Twilight Zone marathon. So, I'll just direct you to a special little 4th of July present I got from Tosh.0


EMBED-Hot Girl Pulls Off Insane Golf Trick Shot - Watch more free videos

Re: Chrome - Ooh, shiny...

So, as some of you know, I'm a long-time user and lover of Firefox. It's not perfect, and the memory leaks have wreaked hell on my laptop, but I've just always loved the sheer range of customization it allows. From simple themes to all manner of add-ons, it's always been good to me.

However, after a while tinkering with it, I think I finally managed to break my Firefox installation. Aside from the increasingly frequent crashes, I somehow broke FF's ability to save cookies after closing. So, while I still love my Firefox and will probably keep using it if only for the downloader/converter app, I decided it's finally time to look into getting a new full-time browser.

I've heard enough by now about this Google Chrome thing. I've enjoyed Google's various sites and services for sometime now. I know a lot of people were freaked when Google bought out YouTube, but to me all it means is I get to log in to both at the same time. And while AdSense hasn't exactly made me rich, it's comforting to have around just in case I achieve Internet notoriety someday.

So, I finally broke down and installed Chrome. I'm typing up this post now, after having had it on my computer for less than 12 hours. I'll probably have a fuller review later, but right now I already have a few first-impressions to talk about.

For starters, I think it's safe to say that any long-time Windows users will be thrown for a loop by Chrome's layout. The interface is very minimalist; the main menu bar I'm used to seeing at the top of every window outright doesn't exist. But still, Chrome provides just about all the tools I could want in a browser, just not in the places I remember them.

There are a number of cool features, some of which I haven't even had a chance to use yet. For one, there is tabbed browsing, which is pretty much a browser must-have these days. Hell, even IE has tabs now. But Chrome has a new way of doing tabs. Instead of just a blank page, it loads up a shortlist of pages you've visited before as suggestions. If you ever forget the URL of a page you were at recently and neglected to bookmark it, this can be quite handy.

Speaking of bookmarks, Chrome boasts that it can not only bookmark your pages, but save pages into apps for you so you can access them again quickly and easily. I haven't tried this one yet, but I'll let you know what I think.

Of course, being a product of Google, Chrome has integrated Google search functionality and navigation error suggestions right into the address bar. And on the off chance you somehow dislike Google's search capabilities, you can choose a different default search engine as well.

Chrome also has a lot of nice behind-the-scenes stuff built in. It uses this DNS pre-fetching thing to help pages load and reload faster, comes with its won pop-up blocking app, and has numerous other security features to protect against known threatss. Today, for instance, I was visiting a site which used automated ads (as many do), and when an ad from a suspicious domain name appeared, before I even saw it on the screen, Chrome immediately stopped loading the page and warned me about the ad before continuing. Pretty sweet, Chrome.

And, if you're really feeling rowdy, you can also play IT-guru and do some amateur debugging with Chrome's built-in task manager application. I can't vouch for how well it works, though. I haven't really had cause to use it yet. According to my system, Chrome runs on around an average of 30 MB of memory, which is less than half what my broken Firefox did on good days. For my little-laptop-that-could, this is a very welcome upgrade.

Now, for downsides: as I said, it takes a bit to get used to the layout, and if you're not very technically inclined, you might be pretty lost the first time you start up. Also, I'm not digging the default blue and white color scheme. There's probably a way to customize the skin/colors, but as I said these options are not immediately obvious or simple to access. At least, not to a new user.

Similarly, while Chrome was very helpful in letting me carry over all my Firefox settings, saved pages and passwords, and even my Realplayer plugin, it doesn't have all the custom add-ons I know and love from my Firefox. I don't know yet if Chrome has an equivalent add-ons and widgets network, but I'm still looking into it.

So, I'm liking Google Chrome thus far. It took a few minutes to get used to the UI, but it's serving me quite well so far. It seems to be somewhat lacking in customization options, but that may yet change. At the least, this seems like a nice stable browser for everyday use, which is just what I needed. I'm not ready to call it love at first sight, but I'll keep updating on it as I go. Check back for more later.

Peace and love, you techy nerds. And ff you love/hate Google Chrome, don't hesitate to sound off in the comments.