Apple just released their super slim MacBook Air. I got to thinking, this is perfect, it’s super portable, you can carry it around easily and keep in touch wirelessly from your couch, coffee shop, et c. It doesn’t have the real power of a full-blown computer, so you probably would be able to do all your work on it. Instead, it is perfect to read email, browse the web, look at pictures, maybe some other stuff.

I use a Mac at home and want to have the ability to run PC software. I wish I could use only a Mac, but I still do some development on Windows and I have some weird legacy hardware that can’t be put on/into the Mac but works fine on the ol’ PC. Boot Camp is too disruptive and Parallels or VMWare don’t let me use those strange hardware devices and they are slower than real hardware (which I already have).

The media needs to stop covering school shootings (and mall shootings like the recent one in Omaha) where someone goes and shoots a bunch of people and then commits suicide. If there was no chance to become famous by doing such a crazy thing, maybe it’d make it less glamorous.

What I find the most annoying at the pump is fluctuations from day to day. This morning one station was $0.20 higher across the street from another on my way to work. What I think we need is a statewide gas price to reduce the volatility at the pumps. It is ridiculous to have the prices go up or down $0.20 in one day or if you drive 5 miles down the road. [ Read More… ]

Every major sporting event like the Olympics is full of scandal around participants’ performance-enhancing drug usage. We should stop this paranoia surrounding using these drugs and rather embrace it. There should be a second version of the Olympics that allows performance-enhancing drugs, body augmentation, cybernetic implants, et c.

All the tech gadgets people have these days all have their unique adapter that plug into the wall and then have a big wall-wart and then some DC power that goes into your gadget. Instead of this myriad of AC->DC converters, houses should have a central DC converter, and then along the normal AC outlets, there should be a common style 12VDC connector that devices can all accept and, if necessary, convert to a different DC voltage.

A significant amount of traffic on the roads is due to people going somewhere to get something (as opposed to someone or to get somewhere). The internet has lead to the ability to shop at home, and simply wait for the things to be delivered - even groceries. However, there is still someone who drives out to deliver the items, and thus using the roads, and increasing traffic.

In our wonderful world of technology, free software or open source software have pervaded our computers, whether you have linux running as your OS or Firefox as your web browser (which you definitely should have, btw). It seems that this abundance of free software has lead to a strange phenomenon where all consumer of software no longer consider any software to be of any value.

With the profusion of the wonderfully unstable technology of cell phones, it is all too frequent to have the other party in a phone conversation disappear. This event is promptly followed by a series of reconnect attempts by both parties that continue to both get busy signals, until one gets lucky, or the other gives up. I hereby propose that the standard protocol for this event is for the party who originated the initial call is the one to redial, and the other party should just wait for several minutes before attempting to call so that the line is left open. [ Read More… ]

How come every time I search on google to find the answer to a question that obviously has been asked before the only matches I get are in forums that have someone asking the same question, and never are there any answers posted? Either there are no answers, or some overzealous moderator has come in and removed the answer saying that it belongs in another area on the forum, with no link to help find it. [ Read More… ]