The New York Times > Business > Hybrid-Car Tinkerers Scoff at No-Plug-In Rule: " If you were able to plug a hybrid in overnight, you could potentially use a lot less gas by cruising for long stretches on battery power only. But unlike purely electric cars, which take hours to charge and need frequent recharging, you would not have to plug in if you did not want to.
'I've gotten anywhere from 65 to over 100 miles per gallon,' said Mr. Gremban, an engineer at CalCars, a small nonprofit group based in Palo Alto, Calif. He gets 40 to 45 miles per gallon driving his normal Prius. And EnergyCS, a small company that has collaborated with CalCars, has modified another Prius with more sophisticated batteries; they claim their Prius gets up to 180 m.p.g. and can travel more than 30 miles on battery power. "

Is this cheaper than gas!!! hmm... I guess my electric bill would go down, but I can just turn off my computer at night. That would keep my electric bill at the same rate.

Boredom to boom for India's software-testing market | CNET News.com: "Sohrab Azad, an executive at head-hunting company eQURA Consulting, told Reuters that industry estimates say Bangalore alone would need 10,000 testing engineers in the next six months.
The city is pulling talent from northern cities such as Delhi and Pune by doubling annual salaries to $18,265-$22,831 (800,000-1,000,000 rupees) for those with six to eight years' experience, he said. This is still only a fraction of what U.S. counterparts earn.
Russia, China and Ireland are among potential competitors, but India is seen as being ahead in the race.
'Once China crosses the language barrier, it is likely to pose a threat due to cost advantage,' said Pradeep Waychal, head of quality at Patni Computer Systems. "

testing is pretty boring... but pretty essential in order to maintain quality. Maintaining tests and keeping everything running in will take at least 1/2 of the development effort... but ensure a higher level of quality....

Yahoo! News - Too Sleepy for Sex?: "Most people -- 77 percent -- complained that their partner has a sleep-related problem, usually snoring.
'In my practice, I've found when couples are forced to sleep apart because of one partner's sleep problems, it often has a terrible effect on the relationship,' said Dr. Meir Kryger, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at St. Boniface Hospital Research Center at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg and a director of the Foundation. "


oh no!!! snoring!!!!

Chihuahua Terrorizes Ind. Postal Workers: "have nonetheless ticketed the dog's owner, Vicki Seber, twice in recent weeks for violating a city ordinance requiring pet owners to keep their animals restrained.
Hobart police officer Ron Schalk said he had no option but to cite Seber for allowing the dog to run loose.
'The biggest thing I was concerned with is there were a lot of residents that week who couldn't get their mail,' he said. 'The little Chihuahua was running around being aggressive and trying to bite people's ankles.'"

these small dogs are pretty agressive. I've actually been bitten a few times!

The Home School Conundrum / Parents' real estate decisions often based on kids' education needs: "So, what's the real value of buying in a good school system? My teacher friends assure me that test scores are a poor way of assessing a school's quality, but that doesn't eliminate the influence of such numbers. It is now a real estate reality that houses located near a school with high test scores get a substantial price bump. In the Cupertino Union School District, where one school scored a nearly perfect 993 out of 1,000 and virtually all the elementary schools scored above 900 (by comparison, not a single elementary school in San Francisco scores that high), the price of a generic ranch-style home can be several hundreds of thousands of dollars higher than those in nearby cities.
According to one East Bay real estate agent, a home in Oakland identical to one across the street in Piedmont might cost $150,000 less. Now, with our education system forced to use testing as a measure of success -- fallaciously marking some schools as failures and other as models -- it's not so hard to imagine that such price margins will only swell, making the real estate market a glaring mirror of our social inequities and our individual hopes to escape them. "

so sad.... this is why i went to private school.

Yahoo! News - Octopuses Seen Walking From Predators: "Two individuals of O. marginatus from Indonesia wrapped six arms around themselves, looking like a coconut on the sea floor. They then used the two rear arms to move backward.
In Australia, O. aculeatus was seen raising two arms above its head before lifting four more and moving backward on the two remaining arms. The researchers described it as looking like 'a clump of algae tiptoeing away.' "

I wonder if this will work on mags.

Trading places: Real estate instead of dot-coms | CNET News.com: "In Naples, Fla., some houses have been bought twice in a single day, an early 21st century version of day trading. Buying stocks on margin has morphed into buying homes with no money down. The over-the-top parties of Internet start-ups have been replaced by flashy gatherings, in which developers pitch condos to eager buyers. "

scary!

Trading places: Real estate instead of dot-coms | CNET News.com: "In Naples, Fla., some houses have been bought twice in a single day, an early 21st century version of day trading. Buying stocks on margin has morphed into buying homes with no money down. The over-the-top parties of Internet start-ups have been replaced by flashy gatherings, in which developers pitch condos to eager buyers. "

scary! i should buy a house someday!

THE TERRI SCHIAVO CASE / Her condition: Doctor explains the 'persistent vegetative state': "A person in a vegetative state is defined as one who is arousable -- which means merely a reflexive response to a stimulus -- but unaware. It is not necessary to wake up to be aroused. If a vegetative state exists for six weeks to three months, it is deemed a 'persistent' vegetative state.
A person in a persistent vegetative state is not in a coma. A person in a coma is unconscious, and unable to be aroused.
There is a similar distinction defining stupor. A person in a stupor shows some response to stimulation but will easily slip back into a state where he or she cannot be aroused.
Sleep, strictly defined, is a state of unconsciousness from which a person can be aroused. But there is another halfway state -- somnolence -- where a person can wake up enough to carry a brief conversation before falling back into sleep.
The strange limbo of people in vegetative states poses "

whew.. confusing stuff....

sometimes people i know are in these type of states when i see them in front of computers....

Parker Bowles Doesn't Want to Be Queen: "Several newspapers in Britain, where the public is warming to the royal wedding but still oppose the idea of Queen Camilla, on Tuesday carried headlines reading 'Camilla will be Queen if Charles is King,' and 'Camilla will be Queen.'"

All hail king squid!

Yahoo! News - France Dismantles Its 35-Hour Workweek: "
According to a 2003 OECD survey of 25 industrialized countries, only Norwegian and Dutch employees worked less time each year than the French, who worked an average 1,431 hours. German workers put in 1,446 hours, British 1,673 hours, Americans 1,792 hours and Koreans 2,390 hours.
Last year, a parliamentary committee reported that the 35-hour week cost France more than $13 billion a year, casting doubt on a labor ministry study that suggested it had created 350,000 jobs between 1998 and 2002.
Still, many French workers are loath to give up their shorter hours, even for more cash. Some 56 percent of salaried employees oppose the government's plan, according to the CSA survey, while 36 percent approve. "

those koreans work crazy hours!!!

35 hours a week... gosh... imagine having every wednesday off!

Yahoo! News - Calif. University Says 59,000 Affected by Hackers: "California State University, Chico in northern California is alerting students, former students, prospective students and faculty that their personal information, including Social Security (news - web sites) numbers, may have been compromised in the attack three weeks ago, said spokesman Joe Wills.
'It looked like it was illegal access to do some, perhaps, some downloading of files,' Wills said. 'In investigating it we realized the hackers had some access to a great deal of personal information.' "

oh no! this is a bit scary... they'll probably hit ucla and csus soon....

MP3 Insider: The iPod phone is here - CNET reviews: "I had an MP3-playing phone back in 2001: the Samsung Uproar. It was available before the iPod was, and it didn't rule out the iPod's success, obviously. Likewise, the Motorola E399/ROKR and the Sony Ericsson Walkman will not eclipse the MP3 player category because people need two portable devices: one for fun (music, movies, and games) and the other for responsibility-related activities (keeping in touch, making appointments, and storing contacts). The reason for this is battery; people don't want to entertain themselves to the point of losing their cell phone. Think about it: Would you listen to music if you knew that meant you'd lose all cell phone functionality after a few hours?"

Interesting... battery life... maybe I should upgrade my phone to a 5 megapixel one instead, this battery problem is a big deal!

Study: Internet use in U.S. homes dips | CNET News.com: "time, on average, people spend online at home. Average usage time for U.S. citizens dipped by 2 percent from a year ago, to 13 hours and 44 minutes a month, the study showed. Hong Kong, conversely, topped the list with its per-person average almost reaching 22 hours a month. The year-over-year growth for Hong Kong was 25 percent."

gosh. Shoudn't people be running aroudn instead of being in front of their computer?

need more sleep. i was dreaming of the odr pricing last night... yawn.

Survey: Techies stressed over job insecurity | CNET News.com: "But there's also been evidence that techies have reason to fear for their jobs. Technology companies sent out 23 percent fewer pink slips in 2004 than they did in 2003, but they still laid off more than 175,000 workers last year, according to a report from employment services firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas"

oh no! no job security any where!

The Buzz Report: Good-bye, computer; hello, world! - CNET.com: "OK, next question: bandwidth. Yes, it'll be a problem, for a little while. But the pipes are getting fatter. Just last month, Cisco announced that it will deliver gigabit broadband service to houses in Hong Kong--over existing copper wiring. A California group is working to ensure gigabit broadband to all Californians by 2010. Fiber optics are snaking across the world. We've all been talking about Web 2.0--well, this is it. We all know it needs to be faster, and it will be. Google can only help drive the rollout. Truth be told, the biggest challenge will be supporting the graphics you'll need to deliver a truly dynamic desktop environment in what was formerly known as a Web browser--but that's for another column."

geez... gigabit ethernet... i really need more broadband access! my bit torrent clients suck up all my bandwith right now. my laptop and desktop only hold about 80 hours of videos, which isn't enough. I manage to max it out every time I get a show off my replay.

My visit to china.... watch out! Yu Gardens! 

Real estate investors cast watchful eye on Las Vegas' high stakes housing game: "Doncov, a 57-year-old engineer who was a victim of the technology flame- out, was one of thousands of investors who hoped to turn a quick profit by buying and selling Las Vegas property within a few months. Early last year he bought two new houses from Pulte Homes for $515,000 each.
By the end of the summer, he said, the houses were worth well over $600, 000, based on Pulte's prices for the same models. Then Pulte cut the price by about $180,000.
Doncov sold the two properties in December and January for $480,000 and $490,000; after closing costs and sales fees, he estimates he lost $100,000. He is working with a lawyer to try to recoup the losses from Pulte, on the grounds Pulte misled investors by systematically raising new home prices, then abruptly lowering them. Many people in Las Vegas shrug at tales like Doncov's, saying any plan to get rich quick is fraught with risk. "


oh no! don't let this be you!

Jeff Yang's Asian Pop Diary: Live in Tokyo: "Indeed, some of the coolest devices aren't particularly futuristic at all. In Japan's elaborate coin-op culture, everything from underwear to pornography to ramen noodles is available for purchase through largely unsupervised public vending machines. The only reason coin-ops survive in the United States is that the items being sold -- candy, cigarettes, soda -- are so cheap that the reward for breaking into them isn't worth the effort it requires. "

hmm... wacky stuff!

Amazon.com: Cell Phones: Motorola A630 Phone (T-Mobile): "When coupled with the built-in keyboard, you've got a mobile communication powerhouse. The phone features support for AOL Instant Messenger (T-Mobile messaging charges apply) and there's a built-in web browser for t-zones downloads and mobile web browsing. T-Mobile's t-zones service lets you receive and send emails, read news headlines, get weather updates, download games and ringtones, and more.
With the A630's built-in keyboard, you've got a mobile communication powerhouse.
Traditional text messaging, as well as picture, sound and video messaging, are also supported by the phone. When used in combination with the phone's built-in camera, MMS opens up a whole new world of messaging fun. iTap text entry, which is a technology that makes it easier for people to enter words and text on handsets, is supported if you want to use the outer keypad for text entry."


My one year contract is over! anyone have a recommendation for a new phone?
Needs a keyboard and integration with outlook.

spicysquid pet of the week! it's like a little dog or cat! 

killer tofu dish of the week. please.... only one shrimp..... one honey walnut shrimp please...... 

This is the spicysquid people photo of the week. Congrats Waync and Becky! Best wishes!!!

What an exhausting night... mad props to snooks for running around and figuring out where all the extra layers of cake should go.

Turkey mating games challenge theory of 'survival of the fittest' / UC biologist finds young males help top tom get sex: "The male, approaching a female in a courtship ritual with two or more of his brothers, will blush brilliantly red and blue about his face and throat, fan his broad brown and white tail, lower his outspread wings and emit loud thrumming noises through his air sacks as he prances in a shuffling strut.
And while he engages in his display, his brothers do so, too -- but silently and without the strut, in a kind of cooperative semi-courtship -- and they also turn to ward off any hostile interlopers seeking to court the same female. "

I need some turkey wingman!

gooble gooble!

Slashdot | QA != Testing: "Having worked in a CMM 3 company for a couple years, my opinions of the thing are quite different: CMM, and processes in general, are a tool that managers use to offload their work on the engineers.

We used to spend vast amounts of time peer reviewing all sorts of useless documents, making estimates for project planning, and so on, additionally to the architecture and coding work.

This didn't do anything at all for quality. Deadlines slipped like always (often more, because of the time lost to irrelevant stuff). Spec documents were just as Ground-Control-To-Major-Tom-like as usual.

It did, however, give the managers the warm fuzzy feeling that overcomes control freaks everywhere when they're sure they can track, number, file and index everything that goes on around them. Without having to do any actual work. Without even knowing the first thing about the product we were making (without CMM, a prerequisite for anyone attempting to write any sort of project plan).

One of our line managers admitted all of this quite openly, one of his favourite sayings was 'Since we have processes, I can go home at four every day'. We didn't. We got to stay till 8."

someday i'll be manager and with cmm level 5 and make all my engineers stay until midnight!

TechDeals.net - Your Guide to Technology Bargains - Updated Daily: "And line up for the Canon Powershot SD500 7MP Digital Elph Camera with 3x Optical Zoom for just $499.99 shipped. Release date 3/25."

release date of 3/25.... hmmm 7 megapixels.. my casio ex-55 is already outdated!

No Butter for Bubba, the 22-Pound Lobster: "He could be older than Warner Bros. studio, General Motors, the Boy Scouts and the states of Arizona and New Mexico. He could have survived two world wars and Prohibition. He could have been dinner.
He's Bubba, a 22-pound leviathan of a lobster pulled from the waters off Nantucket, Mass., and shipped to a Pittsburgh fish market. The lobster has been kept in a tank near a fish counter in Wholey's Market since Thursday while owner Bob Wholey tried to figure out what to do with it."

hmmmm 22 pounds! anyone down for some lobster!

Amazon.com: Camera & Photo: Canon Powershot SD500 7MP Digital Elph Camera with 3x Optical Zoom: "With a host of new features and a unique 'perpetual curve' contoured design, the brushed stainless steel titanium grey 7.1-megapixel PowerShot SD500 continues the PowerShot tradition of pushing compact camera design into new territories.
Driven by the same DIGIC II image processing architecture that propels Canon's EOS-1 pro-series digital SLR cameras, the camera features a 3.0x optical zoom, large 2.0-inch LCD, high-quality VGA video clips at 30 frames per second up to the capacity of the memory card, high-speed USB 2.0 connection, 'My Color' in-camera color editing, and a Print/Share button for easy PictBridge direct printing and fast file uploads. Its 7.1-megapixel sensor allows detailed enlargements up to 15 x 20 inches."

wow! 7 megapixels!!! gosh. my pictures with my 5 megapixel camera are 2 MB each already... gosh.

amigos at my place! 

USATODAY.com - Former tech executive segues to trucker: "CHICAGO � As Tim Krauskopf steers his 33-ton rig and its load of frozen bagels down an Illinois highway, he is indistinguishable from other truckers hauling loads across the nation. But the 41-year-old in his blue jeans and baseball cap isn't your average trucker. He owns his own small trucking firm, for starters. He's also a millionaire several times over.

Tim Krauskopf, once in the Spyglass, now in the looking-glass.
By Nam Y. Huh, AP

What really singles out the bespectacled man from suburban Chicago is what he did before he became a trucker: At the dawn of the Internet Age in the 1990s, he was one of the 20- and 30-something whiz kids who helped make the Internet what it is today.
His status as an Internet pioneer derived partly from Spyglass, a company he co-founded in 1990. It developed a groundbreaking browser software called Mosaic that Microsoft soon leased and then spun into its Internet Explorer � now the world's most widely used browser.
Later, Krauskopf founded or worked for a handful of other IT companies, some of which were more successful than others. He worked briefly for Divine Inc., a software firm that spent nearly $1 billion in under four years, never turned a profit and then went bankrupt in 2003.
Krauskopf's unlikely career change began as career changes often do: He lost his job."




hmmm... what would you be? I would sell pictures of cats online!

The New York Times > Fashion & Style > Six Figures? Not Enough!: "'It's the new black,' said Bill Coleman, senior vice president in charge of compensation at Salary.com, an online career service based in Needham, Mass., that tracks executive pay. 'There's a lot of bunching between $100,000 and $150,000. That's the vast majority of the people who used to aspire to $100,000. Now they are aspiring to $200,000 or $250,000.'
'It's the players,' he added, echoing a common sentiment, 'who make $200,000.'"

nice link from mr. dtc. who is used to the new york lifestyle of 300k.

Opinion Column by PC Magazine: How to Kill Linux: "The long-term implications of such a scenario, I believe, would be essentially to kill Linux. Microsoft's MS-Linux would quickly become the dominant Linux and the company would begin to profit from all the open-source development work that would go into Linux. Once the developers saw that happen they'd stop working on Linux and it would die. After all, who wants to do free work that benefits Microsoft? At some point in the future Microsoft will make its move on Linux, you can be certain. I've always been convinced that Microsoft's long-term Linux strategy was why the company sued, then bought off, the Lindows folks, although I doubt that it would now use the Lindows name."

hmm what about word for linux!!! office for linux.... argh. i hate how cut and paste is completely broken in linux...

Designs By June :: About June: "I had always loved wearing unique jewelry creations and found that I now had the time to experiment with my creative side by making my own designs. I was quickly inspired to turn my hobby into a business when I had received so many compliments on my designs from friends and strangers everywhere who wanted to buy the jewelry I was wearing. The pivotal turning point was presented to me when I met a successful business woman in Fort Lauderdale, Florida who really saw talent in my handcrafted designs and complimented me on the necklace that I was wearing in the elevator that we were both on at the hotel. As the elevator opened to let us off, she took me aside and as fate would have it shared a story with me about her success as a jewelry designer in the early 1980s. She encouraged me to pursue my dream and after that I knew I had found my new purpose in life. I was so excited; I spent the next few hours in the hotel business center typing out my business plan so when I got home from my trip, I could hit the ground running! It�s been an awesome journey ever since. "

Wow! this is pretty inspirational! One of my old coworkers!

Tom

StatCVS offers a view into CVS repository activity: " been running for a few years. How do you get an understanding of the project's development history? The best way is probably to just talk to the programmers involved, but that's easier said than done. They've often moved on to other projects and can be hard to track down. You can look at the release frequency, although that may be governed by a nontechnical mandate (something along the lines of, 'We'll do a release only after the end of the fiscal year'). You can poke around the bug and feature-request trackers, dredging up discussions on bugs opened and closed. Or you can go right to the source code history and use a utility like StatCVS to see what changes have been made and who made them. I've used StatCVS for several years on various large projects, and the reports it generates have always been well received. In this article, "


aaah metrics... how to get good metrics... this is a good way to get a lines of code count. but you need to add in complexity counts... since a few lines of sql is far more complex then some java code.

Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters: "'Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications (from Adaptive Path and via Jeffery Veen) introduces their experiences with what they are calling 'Ajax' as in 'Asynchronous JavaScript + XML' aka the XmlHttpRequest Object. It is used by Google (Google Maps, Google Suggest, Gmail), in Amazon's A9, and a few others "

hmm... interesting... so that's how they do all that fancy javascript stuff....

Smartmoney.com: Broker Survey: Full-Service Broker Rankings: "White-glove service, but be ready for champagne-and-caviar prices."

oh no! I'm going to be paying champagne and caviar prices! I better get those crazy returns!

Shorter hours in software | CNET News.com: "Developers are sometimes just as much to blame for submitting themselves to extreme working conditions, adopting a macho bravado in hopes of 'proving' themselves worthy for the industry,' the professional group's board said in a statement"




wusses!

PMA 2005: CNET covers the show - CNET reviews: "Armed with Canon's Digic II processing system, the PowerShot SD400 can take VGA (640x480) movies at an impressive 60fps and shoot in full-resolution burst mode at 2.1fps."








5 megapixel and 30 frames a second!!!!! gosh my new digital camera is already outdated!

we've both been terminated once.... (blogging dude that got fired!) best of luck to him!  

Gadget or plaything? Let the kids decide - page 3 | CNET News.com: "The Fly, billed by its maker, LeapFrog, as a computer in a pen, has attracted a lot of interest in the toy industry since it was introduced early last month. The gray-and-white pen, priced at $100 and scheduled for release in the fall, manages a variety of tasks, including games, music and foreign-language translation, by reading words and symbols its users write on special paper. It speaks rather than displays its data. "





Woah! what is this thing? i feel like i can use it in china!

some amigos from work!  

my setup at home... with a hotpocket! 

Back-breaking bills / Uncovered medical expenses are leading to bankruptcies: "The study looked at 1,771 bankruptcies filed in 2001 in five states, including California. Almost half of those filers -- 46.2 percent -- cited illness and medical bills as a major cause of bankruptcy. More than three- quarters had insurance at the onset of illness.
The problem seems to be largely a middle-class phenomenon. Typical medical bankruptcy filers are in their early 40s and have children. Most have at least some college education and own their homes.
Even if people have health insurance to begin with, many lose coverage because they are unable to keep their jobs because of medical problems. "





this is a huge problem for the united states... it's going to be a major factor in the economy and probably is a major factor right now.

Yahoo! News - Three laid-off Americans struggle to find work: "Feb. 15
McElwee has decided to put off the surgery. He can't help thinking about the financial toll job loss has taken. 'My father, when he died, left me some rings, jewelry, watches, bracelets. I pawned every single one of them. I can't reclaim them,' he says. 'I have no tangible memory of my father anymore, not even the cross he wore around his neck.'"



someday.... i might have to sell guilt dog

Yahoo! News - Three laid-off Americans struggle to find work: "Jan. 15
Rathbone has insisted that she will work only eight hours a day, but she feels her managers want more hours than she can put in. She says that, while she's thankful for work, she is still in the market for a permanent job. 'Always keep your r�sum� updated,' she says. 'You need to be ready at any moment. Nothing is for certain.'"






ack!!!! how scary!

Amazon.com: Electronics: Creative Webcam Live! Pro USB 2.0 WebCam (73VF008000000): "Want it delivered Tomorrow? Order it in the next 5 hours and 37 minutes, and choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. See details."




Wow!!! i should just go buckwild and order everythign online!!!!

www.killertofu.com

best urban clothing store in the web!!!

please help me advertise!

Yahoo! News - Nice view: Cities of all sizes embracing high-rise living: " A major demographic shift. Baby boomers are inheriting wealth at the same time that they're becoming empty nesters. 'We're retiring earlier, and we want to be able to lock and leave,' Bottfeld says. 'For people in their 50s to their 70s, their most precious commodity is time.'
People don't want to spend time mowing lawns, sitting in rush-hour traffic or getting in their cars to pick up the dry-cleaning. If they live in a downtown high-rise, there's no grass to cut, they often can walk to work and cultural events, and many high-rises have on-site concierge service to take care of life's every little need."



this sounds like my life!

DHL - Tracking Number Detail: "2/14/057:19 amArrived at DHL facility. San Francisco, CA



2/12/058:20 pmDeparting origin. Fresno, CA



2/9/055:20 pmPicked Up by DHL.Shipper's Door"






Dood it's almost here!!! i'm so excited... hopefully they'll deliver it today!!!!

stylish thread in the last two weeks. notice the orange stripe on the side 

SourceForge.net: jTDS JDBC Driver 1.0.1 released: "The jTDS Project has released version 1.0.1 of the jTDS JDBC driver for SQL Server and Sybase. jTDS 1.0.1 is a minor release, containing fixes to all the bugs reported aginst release 1.0.
"

phew... so it looks like i can connect and get sql data from my microsoft sql server from java. the driver is finally past 1.0!

Electronic Arts endows a faculty chair at USC - Feb. 8, 2005: "Bing Gordon, Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of Electronic Arts (Research), was named the first holder of the Electronic Arts endowed faculty chair at the USC School of Cinema-Television, according to a statement from the company, the biggest video game publisher. "





hmm... drats i studied the wrong stuff at school. circuit design... bah... video games! well i did spend more time playing video games.

The Mercedes Wrangler is riding the eco-range: "Straight veggie oil, or SVO, as it is known in the biz, needs to be heated before it will run with any kind of predictability, so all conversions involve some device to heat the oil before it hits the injectors. But once you've licked that problem, you can back up to the oil Dumpster at any restaurant and fill up your tank with free fuel. (OK, it's more complicated than that. You've got to pour the stuff through filters to reduce the amount of french fry debris, water and drowned rodents that get sucked through your fuel system. And you've got to get the permission of the restaurant owner and avoid the renderer. But you won't have to lay out any hard currency for a tankful.) "



I wish my scoobie ran on ice cream. then i could get a snack while I drive.

Real cash for virtual goods - page 3 | CNET News.com: "He's now one of the game's leading sellers of 'skins,' files that allow players to customize the basic appearance of their character. He makes up to $2,000 a month selling skins. "


geez. I should employ some people off craiglist to staff my sims house.

Real cash for virtual goods | CNET News.com: "'EverQuest' publisher Sony Online Entertainment has sued sites specializing in the barter of in-game goods and convinced auction giant eBay to reject auctions of 'EverQuest' items. Yet game trade remains a brisk underground business, giving 'EverQuest' a more vigorous economy than several European nations, according to one economic study. "




My new goods to sell on eBay!

Made in lower-cost America - page 3 | CNET News.com: "Carter, Marshall and others in smaller-town America may be benefiting from newfound opportunities in technology, but clients might wonder if their tech tasks can safely go there. Rural Sourcing, for example, is drawing on talent from little-known regional universities rather than working closely with prestigious universities like Harvard, Stanford or Carnegie Mellon. "



Carnegie mellon grads are expensive!

Sourcing in China not a sure bet | CNET News.com: "Enticed by attractive price quotes, the manufacturer failed to make completely sure that its Chinese partners could live up to its technical and logistical requirements. When the Chinese suppliers struggled to meet production schedules, the manufacturer was forced to use expensive airfreight. Quality issues also surfaced; the suppliers lacked the skills to maintain process control and implement engineering changes. The combination of problems eroded the expected cost savings. Ultimately, the automotive supplier reduced its Chinese procurement effort. "


import export woes!

Someone have some goods for me to sell on eBay.



Tom

Kids' SOS falls on deaf parental ears: "Bug-eyed from lack of sleep and stressed as they wait to hear if they've been accepted into a top college, many Bay Area high school seniors are trudging into semester finals this week."

Dood this is so sad. I don't remember hs been so stressful. but then i went to private school, where the competition wasn't as fierce.

Deals, Coupon codes and Discount prices - GotApex?: "# Canon PowerShot SD300 4MP Digital Camera for $399 $309.10 shipped! CANON POWERSHOT SD300 DEAL
# Sony DSC-T1 Cyber-shot 5.1MP Digital Camera for $499 $394.10 shipped! SONY DSC-T1 CYBERSHOT DEAL
# Casio Exilim EX-Z55 5MP Digital Camera for $399 $309.10 shipped!"

On the first pass... of the casio exolim deal i'm going to pick it up.
the sd300 looks like a pretty good camera as well.

I'm shying away from the sony one since it doesnt have mounting holes for my daily picture.

let me know if you see a good deal!

The Parrot In The Bathroom / Our dog-loving columnist finds the bird life surreal indeed. And you thought your cat was strange: "You see this one-foot-tall gray parrot, actually, tiny and delicate and uncommonly dwarfed by the high, arched 14-foot ceiling, just calmly walking down the hall and seeking you out and you just stand there and smile and watch as you get this strange and slightly unnerving sensation that says, whoa, wait wait wait, that's a bird. In my house. Walking toward me. On purpose."

if snooks doesn't allow me to get a cat, then we're going to have birds and snakes.

Design guidance hot off the Web | CNET News.com: "Sara Antunovich, 24, said she turned to blogs for furnishing ideas when she moved from Chicago to Brooklyn last summer. 'I trust bloggers,' she said. 'They're just normal people walking around saying, 'This is cool.''"

please trust me. i'm a good person.

my girlfriends says if i lose my belly, then i'll look like a hip hop dancer

worse work outfit of the week!  

best outfit of the week!  

What You'll Wish You'd Known: "One of the most dangerous illusions you get from school is the idea that doing great things requires a lot of discipline. Most subjects are taught in such a boring way that it's only by discipline that you can flog yourself through them. So I was surprised when, early in college, I read a quote by Wittgenstein saying that he had no self-discipline and had never been able to deny himself anything, not even a cup of coffee."

don't tell maggie!

What You'll Wish You'd Known: "I'll start by telling you something you don't have to know in high school: what you want to do with your life. People are always asking you this, so you think you're supposed to have an answer. But adults ask this mainly as a conversation starter. They want to know what sort of person you are, and this question is just to get you talking. They ask it the way you might poke a hermit crab in a tide pool, to see what it does."



gosh. I don't even know what I want to do now.... except for shoyruken!

http://www.fossil.com/jump.jsp?itemID=1005&itemType=CATEGORY&iMainCat=963&iSubCat=1005&viewall=1&level=4

urban clothing sale at fossil!. In my quest to look more fashionable, I need to lose a bit more weight so i can wear small sized t shirts.

I think i'll spend some time reskinning this website to use the old spicysquid.com look.

best outfit of the week.... i'm taking pictures of myself every week... gotta be snazzier! 

ok test picture there.... more to come! 

Wired News: Real World Doesn't Use a Joystick: "Kozy Kitchens' experience with having a difficult time separating her real-life consciousness from that of her game playing is all too common among hard-core gamers. It's so common, in fact, that game publishers might want to consider warning their customers that they may soon be unable to tell the difference between the game and reality.

"

sometimes, i get upset at people and I crouch and get ready to shoryuken!

"A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not reaction." -Rita Mae Brown

Often times, I like the excitement of emergency, of being pulled in different directions. Hopefully with plan plus software, thanks dj babylon, I can live a life of action. Just even tracking things helps a lot more.

Wired News: Vaporware Phantom Haunts Us All: "Take 3D Realms, the (so-called) publisher of the long-awaited Duke Nukem Forever. After years of waiting, in 2003 we gave the company our Lifetime Achievement Award just to get it off the list.

"

vaporware. like a skin on this website that looks nice.

Joel on Software - Advice for Computer Science College Students: " 1. Learn how to write before graduating.
2. Learn C before graduating.
3. Learn microeconomics before graduating.
4. Don't blow off non-CS classes just because they're boring.
5. Take programming-intensive courses.
6. Stop worrying about all the jobs going to India.
7. No matter what you do, get a good summer internship.
"

Some good advice for new college grads.

So far, i'm not meeting one of my new years resolutions. i need more sleep! yawn.

Happy new year all!!


Slashdot | Vonage to Produce a WiFi Phone

this is nuts. something pretty disruptive especially to all the cell phone companies.

174.8 pounds... at #1

let's see if i can hit 160 this year!

of course I'll have to switch to medium sized shirts

CNN.com - Report:�Kournikova, Iglesias married - Dec 15, 2004: "LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Russian tennis star Anna Kournikova, whose good looks have long eclipsed her court skills, has secretly married her singer boyfriend Enrique Iglesias, Us Weekly magazine reported Tuesday."

Dood... i'm so sad

John Reynolds's Blog: Too old to program?: "E-Surfer's 'friends' warn him that:'when getting older I would "

when my hands turn into claws from playing too much xbox... and my eyes dry out from watching too many dvds... it's over!

CNN.com - Tom Wolfe wins bad sex award - Dec 13, 2004: "(It was) like a large exotic mushroom in the fork of a tree, a little pleasure dome if ever I've seen one, where Alph the sacred river ran down to a tideless sea. No, not tideless. Her tides were convulsive, an ebb and flow that could take you very far, far back, before hurling you out, wildly and triumphantly, on a ribbed and windswept beach without end"

SF Gate: News and Information for the San Francisco Bay Area: "After a huge collapse typical of their entire season, the 49ers rallied for a Todd Peterson field goal in OT to beat the Arizona Cardinals 31-28 yesterday. Meanwhile in the locker room, John York admits he's erred."

Wow.... straight from the front page.... 49ers finally win. sniff... i was tearing up when i read this.

Talking House / New radio service adds to real estate saturation in our lives: "I noticed my first Talking House last month at 473 Andover St., in Bernal Heights, when I spotted a rather goofy-looking sign reading 'Talking House: Tune into 1670 AM.' Outside, the dwelling looked like a plain-Jane Marina-style, two-bedroom home over a one-car garage. But the Talking House set me straight: Encompassing 2,300 square feet on a double lot, the house boasts two more bedrooms and a bathroom downstairs behind the garage and a giant rumpus room that opens out onto a deck and the L-shaped yard. 'If you like country living, then this home's for you,' said the recording by listing agent Monique Wong-Lee. 'It's a dog lover's dream.'

"

talking house... if i get one for my apartment... then maybe i can lease out my living room.

Photo: 'Katty ko' wins digital pageant | CNET News.com: "Katty ko, designed by Flavio Parra, resembles real-life Chilean soap star Katty Kowaleczko."

Sorry snookie. found a new lubber

Yahoo! News - Teenagers, Young Men Warned of Laptop Health Risk: "Teenagers and young men should keep their laptops off their laps because they could damage fertility, an expert said Thursday."

good thing i keep mine on my desk. Mr. dtc uses a plastic tray for his.

Beckham-and-Wife Nativity Scene Draws Flak: "LONDON -- Christian leaders on Wednesday denounced a Nativity scene at a London wax museum featuring soccer star David Beckham and his wife Victoria, a former Spice Girl, as the parents of Jesus.

The waxwork tableau at Madame Tussauds museum included President George W. Bush as one of the three Wise Men, actors Hugh Grant and Samuel L. Jackson as shepherds and Australian disco diva Kylie Minogue as an angel.

'There is a well-understood tradition that each generation interprets and reinterprets the Nativity ... but, oh dear!' said the Rev. Jonathan Jenkins, spokesman for the archbishop of Canterbury, who leads the world's 77 million Anglicans.

At the Vatican, a spokesman said it was unacceptable to have celebrities representing Jesus, Joseph or Mary.

The spokesman mentioned the tradition in Naples of using celebrities such as Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona, but never as one of the principal figures. 'This means that the crib can be lived as something that's contemporary. But the central mystery must be respected,' said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Madame Tussauds said it had respected this tradition, using a plastic doll in the manger. The other characters, it said, had been chosen in a public vote that drew 300 ballots.

'We're sorry if we have offended people,' said Diane Moon, a spokeswoman for the museum, who said it was intended in a spirit of fun.

The scene also features British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prince Philip as Wise Men, and flamboyant talkshow host Graham Norton as a shepherd.

Arum Kataria, a spokesman for the Church of England, was unimpressed by Madame Tussauds' exhibit.

'The eternal story of Jesus will last a lot longer than these waxworks or the celebrities in it,' he said."

------

The silly british. hehehe

What corporate America can't build: a sentence | CNET News.com: "Millions of inscrutable e-mail messages are clogging corporate computers by setting off requests for clarification, and many of the requests, in turn, are also chaotically written, resulting in whole cycles of confusion.

Here is one from a systems analyst to her supervisor at a high-tech corporation based in Palo Alto, Calif.: 'I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information ... However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'.'"


Gosh... Sounds like my work.... I gave a status report on the generic string fields that indentified the feedback comment left by commmenting user two. blah!

Banking's soldiers of fortune / Foreign exchange traders on front line of currency war: "Banking's soldiers of fortune
Foreign exchange traders on front line of currency war"


This stuff is exciting. if I ever get away from software/web dev, I'll do this stuff full time. This stuff gives me a carzy rush... maybe it's the gambling blood i inherited from my grand father.

CNN.com - Studies: Lost sleep equals gained weight - Dec 6, 2004: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- People who put on a few extra pounds may be able to blame a lack of sleep for the added weight, according to two separate studies published Monday."

oh no!!! No wonder.... i ened to sleep earlier.. it'll keep me from eating my custard pie.

HBS Working Knowledge: Technology: The New Competencies in IT


the new skills to learn!

only 6 hits a day...

According to Adsense by Google.

 

 I only have 6 vistors a day.  Someday… I’ll have 10 hits a day!

 

 

Tom

 

 

Slashdot | EA Reconsiders Overtime Position


I don't support mistreating workers, but that doesn't mean I'm opposed to companies having positions where you work 80-hr week jobs.

Therefore you support mistreating workers. You can't have it both ways.

My grandfather worked in the textile mills in Lawrence, MA, circa 1905. You worked every day for 12 hours including Saturday, and you worked hard, and if you were sick and didn't show up or you didn't work as hard as you were supposed to, then they fired you, and there were a zillion immigrants standing outside shivering waiting to take your job.

You got paid by how much cloth you wove. If your loom broke, you sat there idle, thinking about how you were going to put food on the table that evening if the loom fixer didn't come by in time.

The foreman would actually walk up and down the line of weavers and put his hand on their backs to see who was sweating and who wasn't, and God forbid you weren't a sweaty bastard like the rest of the slaves, because you were gone instantly.

I have a problem with this. So should you. There is nothing conceptually different between the Lawrence mills and the environment people are describing at EA. Just wait for EA to open its "Bangalore technology center," if it hasn't done so already and I missed it.

That's why there are labor laws. That's why unions were formed. If you let businesses make people work like slaves, pretty soon everyone will be working like slaves, and then we'll all be slaves.

So it has to be stopped, and this HR asshole can whine all he wants about EA "discovering" that it is understaffing its projects and overworking its employees (after developing how many games, now? Come on. What a crock of shit). Anyone who didn't know whose side HR is on should read this guy's memo carefully. He promises nothing. He pretends surprise. He cajoles. He soothes. He's worried about the process. He's got great ideas for the future. The labor laws on the books are obsolete, and just don't apply to EA or other high tech jobs. Because high tech "creative" people are special. They need to work 80 hours a week. California should recognize this. It's a good thing, not a bad thing.

Yeah right. The guy makes me puke, as does every other HR asshole I've ever worked with, both in senior management and as a programming grunt.



Oh the horror!

Tom

Fewer can afford a house / Gap between price, income gets wider, two studies show

wow!

Yahoo! News - Microsoft Debuts MSN Spaces for Bloggers

Microsoft is now offering blogging.

Geez.

Everyone is now doing some sort of blogging software with some revenue tied in.

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/

Idea 4.5.3 is now out. A few more bug fixes to make it even faster.

I think i need eitehr more juice, or memory. That's what i get for running tomcat4, weblogic, firefox, and thunderbird all on my linux box.

Tom

Deals, Coupon codes and Discount prices - GotApex?

dood... these laptops are cheap again. only 1100 for a dell 600m with 256 megs of ram. kinda low... but still prety good.

this is a test blog....

jstl expression language verses java scriplets

So tonight after eating a live turkey…

<br><br>

I decided to read my online book on my safari subscription about jstl. <br>

<br>

JSTL is pretty interesting… how often do we actually have a conflict between the html heads and the java heads?  I tend to think that most web programmers are pretty familiar with html,css, and can usually write up something that works in that medium.  I suppose for the artists and html folks they probably hate dealing with scriplets, or weird.<br><BR>

<pre>

<%

 For (in i = 0; i < countOfAllMyBigToes; i++) {

            myFavoriteCat.giveAwayMouseAtIndex(i);

}

%>

</pre>

I think this code drives the html folks crazy… It drives me coworkers crazy too.

<br>

 

Side note…

<br>

Reasons for spicysquid.com

<br>

Tracking what I eat --- failed south beach diet

Improving my writing skills

Place to experiment with new technologies… the other spicysquid.com used an oracle database, with wl8.1 with entity beans for everything… too much for one person.

Selling spicysquid.com for a million dollars

So tonight after eating a live turkey…

I decided to read my online book on my safari subscription about jstl.

JSTL is pretty interesting… how often do we actually have a conflict between the html heads and the java heads? I tend to think that most web programmers are pretty familiar with html,css, and can usually write up something that works in that medium. I suppose for the artists and html folks they probably hate dealing with scriplets, or weird.

 
<%
 
 For (in i = 0; i <>
 
             myFavoriteCat.giveAwayMouseAtIndex(i);
 
}
 
%>
 

I think this code drives the html folks crazy… It drives me coworkers crazy too.

Side note…

Reasons for spicysquid.com

Tracking what I eat --- failed south beach diet

Improving my writing skills

Place to experiment with new technologies… the other spicysquid.com used an oracle database, with wl8.1 with entity beans for everything… too much for one person.

Selling spicysquid.com for a million dollars

what i ate today

dinner

¼ of a Turkey

2 leaves of Cabbage

10 pieces Sliced pork

1 slice of Tirumisu

 

lunch

Chicken feet

Black bean spareribs – best at mayflower

BBQ bun

Fried taro cake

 

2 bottles of water

happy turkey day!

Hey Folks,

 

Happy tday!

 

Tom

 

inspiration story of monster cables owner

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/08/BUGO09LRUV1.DTL

what i ate today

breakfast

salad
sugar free jello 2 cubes
soy mocha
whole bottle of water

burger american cheese

dinner to come....