April 2005 Archives

• Torrent Typhoon - Search All Major BitTorrent Sites In One Place

I give up.

I've had it with exploding hard drives.

Either I got a bum replacement for my laptop drive, or the problem is worse--my laptop is hungry and likes platters of magnetic particles.

Yup, that's right. It looks like something is hosed. I'm hoping that it's just a few corrupted files, so I'll be upgrading the linux install over the next day or two, but I am fearing the worst.

Wish me luck.

In other news, looks like May 16th will be made through putty instead of linux ssh. Here goes nothing.

• The Darth Side - Memoirs of a Monster
• D.R.A.F.T. - Bush be trippin'
• Cell Phone Finder - Pretty sweet app

I've been watching my < href="http://marcolson.net/blog/archives/000142.php">new teevee quite a bit lately and I really like the HD content that is available over the air. Thankfully I live in the Chicago area and get quite a good number of digital stations (check this and search for zip 60056), many of which broadcast in HD (although some stretch their normal broadcasts [boo]). I do miss tivo (or tivo like functionality) on the HD stations, and I also would like to have some of the non-OTA statiions in HD (ESPN, HDNet, etc.).

• Airbus - Introduction A380 Family - first flight was today
• HOWTO Cancel someone else's Citibank credit-card - Citibank didn't phone me to find out whether the card was in my possession

• Why Geeks and Nerds Are Worth It... - heh...
• SportsStuff Sumo Tube - you may look rediculous, but at least you don't sink
• Steve's Home Theater - pretty cool setup
• Sushi-making robot - I need one of these...
• Security Configuration Guides - too bad all the linux guidelines are deprecated.
• Fire - Can of Coke and a chocolate bar - heh. heh. he said fire.

• I Rode On The Goodyear Blimp - not too many people can say that...
• Ask the pilot - what happens when dry ice is mixed with blue toilet acid at 33,000 feet.
• SR-71 Flight Manual - Complete with blacked out text
• Penguins in an airport - were you expecting something different?
• Customizing the splash image in GRUB - need to try this sometime..

• ShaBot 6000: Seda' Club - so funny it hurts...

• Just Letters - "Someone keeps stealing my letters..."
• Great John Toilet - Our toilets are tested to 2000 lb... Wow.
• Flying Dog - He's soo cute...

• Google Launches Personal History Feature - Not sure what I think...
• TiVo Wishlist Roulette - Gotta love The Onion
• Why Google Is Like Wal-Mart - A system administrator earns around $35,000... Ouch!

I guess I have bad luck with hard drives. I got a notice on bootup yesterday that SMRT--oops, SMART--detected an error on my laptop drive. This morning, I had to boot twice. The first time, I got a seek error on the drive, the second time was fine.

Let's just hope that the new drive gets here before this one decides to go tango uniform.

• GMail as the Notepad of the Web - I didn't even think of it...
• The entire lighting system for the Vertigo Tour is controlled via a Playstation controller - We Wonder If It Has Force Feedback?
• Wooden cell phones - direct from russia
• Chicago Transit Authority map on Google Maps - nice use of greasemonkey
• Moving from Palm to Pocket PC - interesting...
• Scoop! Is this a sighting of the Google browser? - None
• Data Protection Error Wha...? - To help protect your computer, Windows has killed itself.

• The Clicker: CableCARD and OpenCable - Greed makes the world go round...
• RC Chopper aerobatics - he's really 9????

• NCAA eliminates computer science? - Apparently if you're good at computers, you can't play ball...

I think today is the first time that I have ever seen a FedEx driver pull into a driveway--let alone back in. Of course, that's discounting my parent's old house and their 800 foot long driveway...

The stand for my new TV came today, now I am anxiously awaiting the business end of this whole thing--the TV itself. It's pretty funny that the stand weighs a whole lot more than the set itself, but I guess that's what it takes to support a beeg teevee.

• Flickr, without the Flash - looks pretty neat
• Wis. Considers Legalizing Cat Hunting - when does open season start?
• Bloglines adds package tracking - How did I miss this?
• Kitten Cannon! - click "Play this game!"

What a waste of a day. I finally got everything loaded back on. I was able to recover *most* of my data by throwing the drive in the freezer for about an hour and then copying it onto the new drive.

I think including office, but discounting the reboots for connecting and disconnecting the drive, my final post install reboot count is at 8. That's pretty rediculous if you ask me.

Now I have to figure out how I'm going to makeup the lost day. Who needs sleep?

I get into work this morning to a dead computer. I turned it on and the hard drive started clunking. Nice way to start a week...

I dig up a new to me hard drive and begin the windows installation process. At which point my laptop decides to hang. This will be a fun morning, won't it?

Anyway, working on getting windows back up, and maybe I'll be able to get some of my data off.

Post-install Windows XP Reboot Count: 5 (ah ah ah)

• Texas Cars with RFIDs? - he couldn't make this up if he tried
• Robo Urinal - In case you're too lazy to hold it yourself?

• Yuri's Night Boston 2005 - $10 to fly Zero-G
• Disneyland with Lego's - part of a bigger train layout
• Ride along with a Verizon Wireless test man - Can you hear me now?
• TiVo adds ads with DirecTV and Comcast - DirecTV is upgrading their boxes with a feature to ram commercials down their ad holes.
• Nelson clock - made with household items

• Finding Nuclear Power Plants - Heh. I thought the same thing when this first happened...

• THIRST AND THE DRINKING PILOT - how to avoid dehydration
• Water on Mars - proof!
• Bumper Stickers - funny!
• Ripley's IQ Game - this is tough...
• huh? wheres the rake? - charades

• Sony to create "iTunes for movies" - finally, a media conglomerate embracing the digital world

I was driving into work this morning, and one radio show was reporting that Illinois was disqualified from the tourney for accepting gifts (t-shirts, etc.) from non-allowed sources.

Another radio station was reporting that Dee Brown and Luther Head were sick with a fever.

I was trying to figure out what was going on when a third radio station wasn't reporting any problems with the team.

Then it hit me.

Stupid April Fool's Day.