Smashed

A friend at work got rear-ended on the way home last night. I was driving home and was coming up on what appeared to be someone waiving over traffic because a car was getting a tire changed, but when I passed I saw it was my friend that had been hit by another guy at work. that makes for a real awkward situation. everyone was ok, and the saturn is stil drivable, but the ford ranger that did the hitting seemed almost perfect. a little tweek on the front bumper resulted in a completly caved in trunk on the saturn. So... those of you with saturns (*caugh* DAN/Sarah) when a ford ranger is coming up quick in the rear view, move over.

Internet Score Card

I guess the 'net had some troubles yesterday/today? with help from the internet score card we can see who's stock not to buy.

OOO 2.0

for the tech impaired, it looks like today marks the release of openoffice 2.0 its actually very useful even if you use it for nothing else than its single 'print to pdf' feature. I remember way back when, when I started with the predecessor to office 95 and it sucked. to bad this wasn't as advanaced way back then and none of us would be in the proprietary microsoft bed with a very useful, but very pricey office suite.

225 all of america

loisontheloose.com is about a chick from the BBC that rode the 225 from alaska to the tip (or as close as you can get) of south america. pretty cool.

Gypsies

in todays staff meeting I announced that this years halloween thing is Gypsies. I let them know that I never participate in things like this and that there would be no cash awards this year but they were free to participate. I made the mistake of showing them in the staff meeting where a picture of me was and they mutilated it. I love the people that work for me!

flexible paper

I'm glad they are still working on the flexible paper I'd use this.

color lasers watermark pages

I was reading some news articles about how some color laser printers actually watermark the pages they print with information. some CIA conspiracy for anti money making or something. this guy modded his scanner with a whole bus of blue LEDS so his scanner could see the watermarks. pretty cool!

'da throne

something tells me it may look better with the throne attached. and yes, the new house is wired with cat5. they used it to also run the phone circuits. so I bet I could terminate with an RJ11 AND a cat5 end. I betcha I could even fit two phone lines AND a computer connection in there but whats the point. we'll be on voip in a few years anyway. dan, you need to let me know how VGA over cat5 cabeling works and how long your run was.

hire / fire

at times, I think I have the worst possible job in the world. I have to hire people. which seems like a pretty straightforward task. find someone qualified, and give them a job. well our temp service, and yes I will say their name so you can all AVOID them, ADECCO SUX. they do not screen for valid candidates. I will not go into specifics lest someone does not agree with what I consider the BASICS of a qualified candidate, but they are not doing their job. they are not screening for what we ask. they are not administering the health and safety tests that we request. they suck. the contact person they gave me at adecco is someone that thinks she is to high and mighty to talk to me so I never get a straight answer when I talk with her. she ingores my requeests, and ignores the requests of my other co-managers that talk with her. they are idiots.

so.. the hiring sux, but today I found the firing sux as well. its not really firing when you just ask for a replacement temp, and for them to take back one that they sent you but it still makes you feel all icky inside for telling someone they wern't worthy, as if a $9 job doesn't have 99.9% of the population qualififed right off the bat. the upper ups expect WAY TO MUCH from this level of employee, and these poor guys give way more than they should for what they are compensated for. I don't let that out due mostly in part that I don't want a severe mutiny on my hands but its the truth. the person I let go actually called me after she was let go (the firing was done through proxy) and I was honest and told her areas to improve upon. I was actually glad I got to talk with her. hopefully I'll help her in the long run to be a more productive person. yeah.. thats a bunch of crap. is what it really comes down to is she was a 9$ person. no more than we were offering, and the company wants a $20 person. how do you tell someone its not their fault? it really isn't. its the crushing power of the big machine.

end of rant.

new description

I had to change the description of the blog. it now more accuratly reflects my limbo-ness in society.

fraps

fraps seems to be a halfway decent screen (movie) capture utility. it appears to be targeted at gaiming but I was able to successfully use it to capture some flying around I did in world wind 1.3 and then try to convert to xvid to play on a xvid compatible dvd player. it almost worked but I screwed the codec up on the final conversion but the idea is sound. now I gotta find some way to free up my 150gig. I really am trying to figure out why theres only 500meg on this machine. maybe it IS time to reformat. with limited space the capture time is severly limited. ohh.. if you do use fraps, get it registered (i'll leave the method to you) as the record time is unlimited then. I was really hoping that dvd shrink would do the conversion for me, but that seems to only work on dvd's (very well too). so I moved on to virtual dub which seems it needs more than 30 seconds to perfect and learn. powerful, but not a simple sit down thing, as proof by the fact that my final result looked awesome in media player classic but like CRAP on the philips DVP642. at least it played. its not the 642's fault. I screwed the conversion up. of that I'm sure.

suprnova?

any remember suprnova? seems somone is capitalizing on the name.

free codecs

free-codecs.com has a plugin to play real media wihtout realmedia player.....

Bittorrents Bram Cohen

Fortune did an article on Bram Cohen. It looks like he somehow started a company with 8.75 million in startup. I use to think thats alot, and it is, but its not as much as I use to think it was. I'm really glad someone is giving him a chance to capitalize on his success. The bittorrent technology has definatly changed the face of the 'net and Cohen should be duely rewarded.

I LOVE the ending to the article. 'always more puzzles'

3d engines

some more 3d engines
irrlicht
a little link page on irrlicht
free programmingresources.com
doom remake
Jdoom

30 gigs

so, if your one of the few who thinks Gmails 2.5gig isn't enough, maybe you should hop on over to 30gigs.com and fatten yourself up.