10/30/2010 07:18 PM -
so what does my new 50 megabit connection feel like? it feels awesome, that's how. this is what $116 a month buys you. without tv or phone, just the internet part. even had to get a fancier modem because mine wouldn't go fast enough (docsis 3 - apparently docsis 1 is limited to 22 megabits).
when you upgrade your connection, the first thing you do is clock it. so let's download some large, free files from large, fast servers and find out how comcast's top offering fares, shall we?
2 mb/s (that's megabytes) on one file. pfft, that's nothing. this is a mere 15.68 mbps.
but what if i download a downloader and get a bunch of files all at once? 7195 kb/s = 7.03 mb/s = 56.2 mbps. and 4.2 mb/s of that is a single file. in the words of the kool-aid man, "oh yeah!"
here's my resource monitor proving a throughput of over 51 mbps at roughly that time (6712047 / 1024 / 1024 * 8 = 51.26).
so i'm paying twice as much for 4.17 times the speed of my former 12 megabit package, and apparently i'm getting it. though my cable tv was about to go up, so by dropping that, i'm actually paying the same that i would have been if i hadn't turned in the cable tv receiver and cut that service. after all, who watches tv on a tv anymore?
now my biggest problem is finding sources that can upload to me this fast.
oh, and if someone knows how to disable ie9's download manager, let me know. i hate not knowing my download speed. had to take the first screenshot on the laptop, which still runs old ie8.
Post.aspx?Title=So+what+does+50+Megabit+Cable+feel+like%3f
10/30/2010 04:11 PM -
turned in my cable box today. no sense in having tv service as i never use it. while i was there, i learned that the 12 mbit package i had was no longer their fastest offering. so i upgraded to the 50 mbit package. i think the results speak for themselves.
Post.aspx?Title=62+%2f+11+Mbps%2c+Baby
10/22/2010 01:08 PM -
remember when we shot a missile into the moon? it found water and a mess of other goodies. read the story here.
Post.aspx?Title=Water+on+the+Moon!
10/17/2010 04:40 PM -
as i do on occasion, i've been reviewing patterns in the federal budget. the us has been around for 234 years (legally), and yet shows an increasingly alarming misprioritization of its monetary expenses. i've compiled some relevant data and extrapolated some patterns. yeah, i know, i'm no photoshop artist. graph links to an excel spreadsheet with the data.
i hate politics, and i hate politicians. the greatest presidents in our history haven't been politicians; they've been generals who saw real combat. go figure. even lincoln served, and at his first speech he grabbed an antagonist by his "neck and the seat of his trousers" and threw him. not bad for a lawyer.
i'm no democrat, i'll tell you that. i suppose i'm much closer to republican, but i don't really agree with the republican agenda all that much either. observing this graph, it becomes obvious that most of the american deficit goes toward fighting wars. expenses rise sharply and decline slowly. of course there's nothing wrong with fighting wars -- what's wrong is when you go to war for a stupid reason, or execute it poorly.
the only three valid reasons ever to go to war are self defense, territorial expansion, and to help an ally in their defense or expansion. it's stupid to go to war based on unconfirmed intel, or because you don't like the politics going on within another country. therefore, since nobody is trying to invade us, and we have plenty of space for 300 million people, we have no valid reasons to be engaged in a war right now - let alone three.
if we weren't proactively attacking other countries without provocation, the rest of the world wouldn't be angry with us, and thus we would be free from muslim attacks. have you ever heard of a terrorist attack in canada? ever wonder why not? read the qu'ran some time; the western infidels are supposed to be israel.
the united states has lost its way. we used to go to war to expand our territory and to guarantee our sovereignty; now we go to war because we don't like someone. we used to understand and embrace the underlying reasons for war; now we cave into politics and give it all back. what's worse, we'll spend more rebuilding a country in our own image than we did destroying it. one prime example is the rebranding of the war department to the department of defense. when was the last time we engaged in a defensive war in which we were the ones being invaded?
to make matters worse, even with politics being the root cause underlying our recent offenses against mankind, we've been doing it wrong. the whole world was against us in 2003. even our closest allies hated us for what we did, and to some extent, they probably still do.
policing the world is not our job. making the whole world think and behave the way we want them to is not our job. not until we have a single world government, which is at least a few hundred years away. if you want to go to war with the whole middle east and southwest asia, fine; be my guest - but keep the land. the united states is the most powerful military force in the history of the known universe, and yet we're spending our entire budget a third over on wars with no tangible spoils.
you want a quick, cheap way to solve every problem in the middle east? here you go:
problem solved. nobody will mess with us for another century. i think mccain actually would have given this option serious consideration.
without question, war is the catalyst to the second great depression. a graph of joblessness in the us quickly confirms this. go ahead and compare it with the graph above. current joblessness is nearly three times what it was a decade ago.
now, think of what life would be like in america if these trillions of dollars were being spent on domestic healthcare, education, infrastructure development, and space exploration. of course, the federal budget only seems to be available online since 1997, so let's look at this relativistically by the 2010 budget.$1,420,000,000,000: deficit (just the increase in money we owe)$664,000,000,000: defense (offense -
Post.aspx?Title=US+Budget+Deficit%2c+1940+-+2010
10/16/2010 01:35 AM -
as you already know, the windows 7 magnifier excels over older windows magnifiers by zooming in the entire desktop area instead of putting a zoomed-in copy of the area near the mouse into a docked window. this is better in terms of both user experience (ux) and system performance (reduced choppiness). an example is provided in the video herein.
as you already know, input director allows you to share a keyboard and mouse among multiple computers and specifically designed for multiple-monitor configurations such as mine. an example is provided in the video herein.
the catch is that not many people use both of them. windows magnifier is an accessibility tool ("ease of access" for you marketing droids), and thus is generally only used by people with vision problems. however, when combined with a multimon configuration, windows magnifier becomes an incredible tool. an example is provided in the video herein.
you see, when you use both magnify.exe and inputdirector in concert, there arises an issue with the priority queuing of input hooks. that is, windows doesn't know whether to pass your inputs to magnify and thus to the os, or to input director. in this case, input director intercepts the inputs through its low-level hook and thusly they don't get passed into windows to execute magnify.
i believe the reason for this is because when you move the mouse to another computer, input director wants to be able to pass system hotkeys over to the slave system, such as the win-plus hotkey for windows magnifier.
the solution for this is simple and easily formatted for inbound googlers:
run magnify.exe as an administrator
i will warn you: when your mouse is on a slave system, the magnifier hotkeys will execute on the slave system. when you're zoomed in on both systems, the results become... interesting... :)
Post.aspx?Title=Input+Director+and+Windows+Magnifier
10/15/2010 10:29 PM -
dear microsoft,
i file bug report after bug report with every beta. i participate in the newsgroups, forums, and feedbacks. on occasion, i send an empathetic email to key people within your megacomplex. yet for some reason, you just don't get it. so let me spell it out for you.
what you providewhat we want
if it only takes this much space to show all the items, it doesn't need to take up half a monitor. it shouldn't be the size of the "last explorer window" i had open, it should be the size it needs to be to fit the items contained therein (up to and including a pre-defined user-configurable limit, and maximized if that's what it takes). explorer windows should not be the same size, because folders are not the same size. some have two items, and some have 10,000 items. scale up to the challenge.
i know how performance information works. i know my hardware, and i'm going to open a game regardless of whether you think i should. let me turn this shit off.
does anybody even use game providers? perusing the feedback on microsoft connect, the verdict says no. why then does it waste a third of the window?
it's not hard to do. in fact, it's significantly easier than what you have done. at the very least, give us options to configure it this way. i swear, if ubuntu could smoothly support half the programs i use on a daily basis, i'd switch in an instant.
Post.aspx?Title=Windows+Exporer+is+Horribly+Broken
10/11/2010 10:24 PM -
i've had some people googling for the construction project at woodmen and academy, and i was planning to start a series on poorly done construction projects, so i figured i may as well go ahead and post this.
woodmen road corridor improvement project resources:
[ official project site 1 | official project site 2 | 7 day outlook (updated less than weekly) ]
when it's done, woodmen will pass over academy. academy through traffic may pass under the woodmen bridge uninterrupted, but there will be a light on the bridge, interrupting woodmen traffic with mergers and exiters to and from academy. traffic problems on woodmen will be furthered by the existing two lights a few hundred feet east and west of the new intersection.
if you're southbound on academy and plan to turn right to go westbound on woodmen and make a left into the king soopers parking area, you'll have about 50 feet to cross four lanes of heavy traffic. same if you're northbound and plan to turn right to make a left into the sam's warehouse parking complex.
and much like the newly remodeled garden of the gods & i-25 series of intersections when you exit southbound i-25 and turn right onto westbound gog, there will be two different ways to make a right turn: a gradual right in the far right lane and a hard right in the middle. wtf?
also notice that nearby parking areas have been reduced in capacity. i hope they considered the number of shoppers they expect in the year 2020 when they were considering the traffic in the year 2020.
oh, and it won't be done until september 2011. they did a better and faster job at union & austin bluffs. this is supposed to manage the traffic that the city will see in the year 2020, so they should really use a full interchange. furthermore:
a great deal of traffic turns right from westbound woodmen onto northbound academy. they could easily fit four right turn only lanes in there and still have space for all their equipment and personal vehicles (as this is where the construction workers park, despite taking up giant chunks of multiple nearby parking lots). why then do they feel it necessary to exclude a right turn lane at all? further, why would they make it a no right on red intersection? it's been like this for months!
i swear that sometimes the dot and construction companies are in cahoots to prevent the free flow of traffic; because that's exactly what they're doing.
Post.aspx?Title=Woodmen+Road+%26+Academy+Blvd%2c+Colorado+Springs
10/10/2010 07:29 PM -
source
did you know?after a machine tears the meat off a chicken's bones, there is plenty of legally "edible" material remaining: meat and other edible tissue (i.e. tendons). mechanical separation involves running the bones through a sieve to separate these materials from the inedible bones, eyeballs, etc.obviously these "materials" are rarely on the tasty side, so flavor is added (normal chicken meat and i'm guessing sugar).mechanically separated chicken is used for generic nuggets and patties. mcdonald's does not use it.
Post.aspx?Title=Mechanically+Separated+Chicken
10/10/2010 05:53 PM -
meet my new dog, russell.
russell is a 10-month-old jack russell terrier whom i "rescued" from the local shelter today. russell is quiet and keeps to himself most of the time, but seems eager for playtime and training. he's lived in two shelters and his records seem to have gotten lost in transit, but it's unlikely he's had a previous owner.
i'm given to understand that jack russell terriers like routine and monotony despite their generally active lifestyle. i figure that won't be an issue, as routine and monotony fit right into my normal schedule: wake up, type, sleep, repeat. the active lifestyle can be handled through training and playing at a dog-friendly park i found five minutes away. with plenty of free time and a flexible schedule (as i work from home), i think i'll be able to do well with russell, the first dog of "my own".
my research indicates this is about the biggest russell will get, which is exactly what i was looking for. this way he's only big enough to destroy small things; but given that he seems to spend most of his time lying down comfortably and he hasn't tried to chew anything except his food, so i don't think that'll be a huge problem. additionally, i've started to move things away from his reach.
nonetheless, because of the myriad electronics, cables, and parts i have lying around, i'll be moving this bed into the recently-tidied-up bedroom. he'll stay there any time i can't keep an eye on him. so far, his "active" tendencies seem to be limited to begging for attention and reaching an occasional light jog while being walked.
perhaps living in shelters his whole life has broken his spirit. perhaps he just doesn't get his hopes up because of all the people who have refused to take him home. i don't know, so i'll just have to play it by ear.
russell doesn't like climbing or descending staircases and occasionally refuses to be led along certain pathways. one of many reasons i selected a small breed; i just pick him up and all is well.
this week: immunizations, neutering, checkup, and picking a vet. kinda funny to pick a regular vet when i don't even have a regular doctor, but i digress. looks like it's finally time to buy a vacuum cleaner. and don't worry, i have plenty of carpet chemicals.
Post.aspx?Title=Russell
10/08/2010 08:34 PM -
boil 1 pkg manicotti for a few minutes too longsimultaneously, cook your favorite sausage in a skillet. move to a plate.cook ~ 2-7 tbsp vegetable oil, 1 can chopped mushrooms, and a couple globs of minced garlic in the skillet. replace sausage back into skillet and cook a little longer.simultaneously, mix two beat eggs, 15 oz ricotta cheese, and salt. when the skillet mixture looks done, mix into the egg/cheese stuff.simultaneously, cook, drain, and add a can or two of spinach into the mixture.carefully spread about 3/4 to 1 cup of your favorite tomato sauce (, marinara sauce, baking sauce, etc etc) onto the bottom of a 9x14" baking dishtry to stuff the manicotti shells with the mixture, only to realize they're too fragile and fall apart when you pick them up.angrily thrash the whole mixture together and stuff evenly into the baking dish. cover with another 3/4 to 1 cup of sauce.realize your parmesan cheese expired two months ago, so use mozzarella instead.bake for 30 minutes at 350, covered with foil. remove foil and bake another 5-10 minutes.
Post.aspx?Title=Spinach+%26+Mushroom+Manicotti+Paste
10/08/2010 08:28 PM -
Post.aspx?Title=Dual+Layer+Turkey+and+Gravy+Sandwich
10/06/2010 03:11 PM -
i seriously just got a youtube commercial about an ice pack that goes in your drink. the idea is that ice can water down or even poison you, whereas their product cannot (despite being comprised of potentially the same poisonous chemicals as found in ice packs). just like ice packs for your cooler, but on a smaller scale and inside your drink.
am i the only one who thinks this is a bad idea?
Post.aspx?Title=ICS+Beverage+Chiller+(Fill+%26+Freeze)
10/04/2010 09:42 AM -
the internet attributes this quote to sheldon cooper on the tv show the big bang theory, but it appeared earlier on home improvement, episode 8x12, at 16:00.
ok, internet, i'm glad we got that straight.
Post.aspx?Title=If+you+have+time+to+lean%2c+you+have+time+to+clean
10/03/2010 01:25 AM -
if you ever lose your mouse cursor within a full screen game, especially if on a multi-monitor system, close windows magnifier. i've seen this effect on need for speed games such as nfs carbon and nfs most wanted, as well as civ5.
magnify.exe has effects on other programs as well. for example, visual studio 2010 won't auto-select-close the document selector window when you ctrl-tab through the child windows if magnify is open.
so just close windows magnifier when you're not using it.
Post.aspx?Title=Win7%3a+Mouse+Cursor+Lost+in+Full+Screen+Games