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Technology

Broadly defined "technology" e.g. software, water pumps

Our new car

After 6 years in our posession and 18 years on the road, we're nearing the end of life for Nikki's Saab 900 and are looking for something new(er).

The qualities that matter to us:

  1. Mr. Greg has to fit in it comfortably.
  2. Good gas mileage
  3. Good repair rating (above average rating from Consumer Reports)
  4. Crash safety
  5. Low price

This has led us to the Scions:
1. I know I fit in the XB fine, we'll see about the XA.
2. XB is rated at 31/35 (though I've seen tests from Money magazine and Edmunds that showed 37) and the XA is rated at 32/37 at EPA fuel efficiency ratings.

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The best antivirus program

Clamwin is the best antivirus program - if you are at least somewhat technically savvy.

Version to use: .88

I have used all the most popular commercial anti-virus program and they are almost all resource intensive applications. They will all slow your computer and give you weird popups about stuff you don't care about.

The basic problem with current versions of clamwin is that they won't do "realtime" scanning. So, this is a problem for people who 1) open files/downloads/attachments without first scanning them to see if they are safe 2) use virus rich technologies like ActiveX, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, and Outlook Express.

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Help Cure Cancer

I'm a big fan of distributed computing projects. I think it's my Wyoming/Midwestern background of "Use it up, make it do, wear it out or do without" that makes me like the concept of using every last cycle of my CPUs. That, and the desire to help in finding a cure for Cancer/Alzheimers/Mad Cow, etc.

I use Folding@home on pretty much any machine I get my grubby little hands on. So far the team I created and which consists mostly of my machines has done enough folding to reach the "top 1000" contributors to folding. At that point, the folding@home website gives you a special "fast page" though I'm not really sure what value that provides. It's worthwhile to note that I created the team back when Nikki and I still didn't know what last name we were going to use, so it is "Addison" when it should probably be Knaddison. I'm working on getting it fixed...it's not easy.

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What kind of burrito am I going to have today - Burrito Randomizer to the Rescue

I really like burritos from Chipotle Mexican Grill.
One day I noticed their sign that said "Two things, thousands of ways"
which referred to "tacos and burritos" as the two things, but pointed
out that with their ingredients, the number of combinations is limited
mostly by your imagination. Thinking more on this and needing something
to do with PHP, I worked out this page with a lot of help from the PHP Cookbook (buy at Amazon).

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Stupid Spam

Trying to sell me viagra, I can understand. This...

I just got this spam email. It is weird to me because it doesn't have a website, it has a phone number. So I called it. Just to see what would happen. A guy picked up pretty quickly and I said "Extension 57 please." And he said "who is that?" I was kind of caught off guard, I don't know who that is, you are supposed to know. So I looked at the from address and said "Leanna Mcclendon" and he said "Are you calling for information?" I said, "I got this number in an email and it said to call it so I did." He repeated "Either you're calling for information or you're not, what is it." I was a little spooked about by the exact phrase so I said, "no, I guess not." And hung up.

I can't figure out why the hell someone would send this email, and not have a purpose in the number that's being called. I'm familiar with dictionary attacks and sending emails to an address just to see if you get a bounce, but sbgreg is an address I use on a mailing list that is published online in the archives so they should know it's a real address. It's just bizarre to me what his goal could be.

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Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 02:52:21 +0500
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Subject: Break the work habit

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Shipping software

So this guy Mark Lucovsky wrote an article about delivering software. It's interesting to me since I've recently moved in the role of QA/CM - and it's an area where I'm learning a lot. I'm not sure about his points as it relates to enterprise level server software - but it's definitely reasonable to point out and complain about fixed code sitting in a code repository system for years before it gets deployed to a customer who can actually benefit from it. And that's a shame. Sometimes we fix things and deploy them immediately. Somtimes they sit around for a long time.

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