A woman was apparently fired from her job for writing sentences in all caps in an e-mail to co-works because her boss deemed them "too confrontational":
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10594014
In a related topic, I read somewhere the other day that we really need a "sarcasm font" :)
Monday, August 31, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
iTunes again
It must be a bad technology weekend for me. As I was trying to fix a myriad of problems Friday night - iTunes freezing, some games I have not running correctly (determined on Vista you have to run them in Administrator mode because when they were made everything was "administrator" mode). As I was trying to determine the problem, I made sure my home network was function correctly, and did some diagnostics on my server machine to make sure it was also working correctly. I somehow accidentally got the server RAID into a mode called "Initialization", and nearly had a heart attack, that it was erasing all 2.5 TB of accumulated server data, stuff that it's taken me years to build. Thankfully, after reading through the documentation, I found out there are two modes of "initialization" - one is the erase kind, and one goes through and re-verifies and re-writes all of the drives' data - and I was in the second one! It seems to me they shouldn't call that one "initialization" so as to keep people like me from freaking out.
I FINALLY did find an obscure post on Apple's forum about anti-virus causing issues with iTunes. The post reply actually said I must have a virus, which I don't, but in trying to verify that I don't have a virus, I force-updated the anti-virus software, and the problem went away. Further searching (once I started including anti-virus in the search criteria) found posts on other forums saying that iTunes uses all sorts of system-level calls that can be very sensitive to what anti-virus software does. Fortunately the problem is fixed now.
I do wonder how "normal" users fix problems like this - I know many people are now tech-savvy enough to do google searches and look at forums, but many are not - I'm sure some people would just give up with something like this! Or worse, take the computer in to some repair place and have them charges hundreds of dollars to "fix" it.
Speaking of bad tech, I also found out that Charter has decided that it's ok to change a fundamental DNS service so that if you try to access an address that doesn't exist, it "helpfully" returns a search page based on the incorrect thing you typed in. OK so maybe for some people that might be helpful, but it ALSO causes things like VPNs to no longer work correctly - I spent a few hours trying to figure out why all of a sudden my VPN that I use to do work remotely was no longer functioning correctly. And the only fix for this is to go in and manually alter DNS settings - now I KNOW most people wouldn't know how to do that!
Sigh.
I FINALLY did find an obscure post on Apple's forum about anti-virus causing issues with iTunes. The post reply actually said I must have a virus, which I don't, but in trying to verify that I don't have a virus, I force-updated the anti-virus software, and the problem went away. Further searching (once I started including anti-virus in the search criteria) found posts on other forums saying that iTunes uses all sorts of system-level calls that can be very sensitive to what anti-virus software does. Fortunately the problem is fixed now.
I do wonder how "normal" users fix problems like this - I know many people are now tech-savvy enough to do google searches and look at forums, but many are not - I'm sure some people would just give up with something like this! Or worse, take the computer in to some repair place and have them charges hundreds of dollars to "fix" it.
Speaking of bad tech, I also found out that Charter has decided that it's ok to change a fundamental DNS service so that if you try to access an address that doesn't exist, it "helpfully" returns a search page based on the incorrect thing you typed in. OK so maybe for some people that might be helpful, but it ALSO causes things like VPNs to no longer work correctly - I spent a few hours trying to figure out why all of a sudden my VPN that I use to do work remotely was no longer functioning correctly. And the only fix for this is to go in and manually alter DNS settings - now I KNOW most people wouldn't know how to do that!
Sigh.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Food and iTunes
I so look forward to the occasional lunches now where I have time to sit and read the latest Time magazine for an hour - I feel like I'm maybe somewhat up-to-date on world affairs now.
Last week's feature was of particular interest to me - it was about the food industry and sustainable food production. I have been reading up on this the past several years, but until recently it has been a topic considered "way out there", "what the hippie tree huggers are doing", etc. but it's becoming more and more serious now that we have economic issues and as the world's food demand continues to grow.
Most people see "organic" food labels now days. Basically, if something is certified organic by the USDA, it means it was made with no chemicals, pesticides, antibiotics, etc. Some organic producers go far beyond that - the winery we saw in California ran "bio-dymaically" meaning the entire production was in harmony with the ecosystem - zero waste, pests were controlled by natural predators, and almost zero outside watering. The interesting thing about all of this is that 70 years ago, anything grown anywhere would have been certified organic - there was no such thing as non-organic food. And now the pendulum is swinging back again - we're finding that all the stuff we've done to try to increase food production, make food "better" (i.e. genetically modifying), etc. has long-term consequences and in reality may not really be helping solve the food shortage problems of the world.
Time points out the common thinking that producing food the "old fashioned way" - sustainably - just can't keep up with the increased demand for food by the growing world population. Strictly speaking, if you look at the amount of calories produced and the cheaper costs of producing these calories, that is probably true. They go on to say that the calories being produced are of lower quality, and that part of the reason we have the obesity problem is because we're eating more of the "cheap" calories - in reality if we had more of the good stuff, we'd not feel the need to eat as much. And of course the environmental impacts are hard to put a price tag on.
It will be interesting to see where all of this goes. Erin and I have been buying nearly all organic foods for the past couple years, and buy as much as we can at the local food co-op "The Good Food Store" here in Rochester, which tries as much as possible to use locally grown and produced food which reduces the amount of shipping that goes on. I think too that a lot of people think that buying food this way is more expensive, and what we've found is that in some cases it is, and in some it's actually quite a bit cheaper - for example, there we can buy things in bulk (we can even bring and weigh our own containers and avoid the packaging). And in a lot of cases the local produce is the same as or cheaper than what's shipped around to the grocery stores. I'm sure on the whole we spend a bit more, but it hasn't broken the bank.
I have to throw in my regular iTunes rant - I upgraded to 8.2.1 and all of a sudden my main system copy started freezing in the middle of songs. I tried re-installing, running hard drive diagnostics, etc. all to finally find that going back to the previous version fixed it. This is the sort of thing that keeps me leary of upgrades - patches should make stuff better not worse!
Last week's feature was of particular interest to me - it was about the food industry and sustainable food production. I have been reading up on this the past several years, but until recently it has been a topic considered "way out there", "what the hippie tree huggers are doing", etc. but it's becoming more and more serious now that we have economic issues and as the world's food demand continues to grow.
Most people see "organic" food labels now days. Basically, if something is certified organic by the USDA, it means it was made with no chemicals, pesticides, antibiotics, etc. Some organic producers go far beyond that - the winery we saw in California ran "bio-dymaically" meaning the entire production was in harmony with the ecosystem - zero waste, pests were controlled by natural predators, and almost zero outside watering. The interesting thing about all of this is that 70 years ago, anything grown anywhere would have been certified organic - there was no such thing as non-organic food. And now the pendulum is swinging back again - we're finding that all the stuff we've done to try to increase food production, make food "better" (i.e. genetically modifying), etc. has long-term consequences and in reality may not really be helping solve the food shortage problems of the world.
Time points out the common thinking that producing food the "old fashioned way" - sustainably - just can't keep up with the increased demand for food by the growing world population. Strictly speaking, if you look at the amount of calories produced and the cheaper costs of producing these calories, that is probably true. They go on to say that the calories being produced are of lower quality, and that part of the reason we have the obesity problem is because we're eating more of the "cheap" calories - in reality if we had more of the good stuff, we'd not feel the need to eat as much. And of course the environmental impacts are hard to put a price tag on.
It will be interesting to see where all of this goes. Erin and I have been buying nearly all organic foods for the past couple years, and buy as much as we can at the local food co-op "The Good Food Store" here in Rochester, which tries as much as possible to use locally grown and produced food which reduces the amount of shipping that goes on. I think too that a lot of people think that buying food this way is more expensive, and what we've found is that in some cases it is, and in some it's actually quite a bit cheaper - for example, there we can buy things in bulk (we can even bring and weigh our own containers and avoid the packaging). And in a lot of cases the local produce is the same as or cheaper than what's shipped around to the grocery stores. I'm sure on the whole we spend a bit more, but it hasn't broken the bank.
I have to throw in my regular iTunes rant - I upgraded to 8.2.1 and all of a sudden my main system copy started freezing in the middle of songs. I tried re-installing, running hard drive diagnostics, etc. all to finally find that going back to the previous version fixed it. This is the sort of thing that keeps me leary of upgrades - patches should make stuff better not worse!
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
McCain
I don't know why John McCain couldn't have been more like this during the presidential campaign:
I may disagree with his beliefs, but this is the kind of leadership we need on BOTH sides of the aisle - people are never all going to agree on anything, but you don't have to use fear and lies to get your beliefs across. I tip my hat to the senator.
I may disagree with his beliefs, but this is the kind of leadership we need on BOTH sides of the aisle - people are never all going to agree on anything, but you don't have to use fear and lies to get your beliefs across. I tip my hat to the senator.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Minnesota Summers
I have to say this has been the longest string of nice weather I can remember in a long time - even with the rain last night. We haven't had to run the air conditioner much, the yard is looking better than it ever has even without watering, and we've been able to enjoy outside almost every day. I do not at all miss Nebraska summers where it was in the 90s (or worse) and humid.
Saturday we enjoyed a wonderful day of boating on the Missisippi river with some friends. We rented a pontoon boat and just leisurely floated up and down the river, with lunch at the Pickle Factory in Pepin, WI. It was an interesting mix at the restaurant, because there were all sorts of boaters there, and also lots of bikers (motorcycle) presumably cycling down the Wisconsin side of the river which is the more scenic side. We were all very worn out and a bit sunburned by the time the day was done!
I have to tip my hat again to Caribou Coffee this morning for just generally being a good business. They may not all be this way, but the one I go to is just a little extra friendly and takes the time to say hi and get to know the regulars.
Saturday we enjoyed a wonderful day of boating on the Missisippi river with some friends. We rented a pontoon boat and just leisurely floated up and down the river, with lunch at the Pickle Factory in Pepin, WI. It was an interesting mix at the restaurant, because there were all sorts of boaters there, and also lots of bikers (motorcycle) presumably cycling down the Wisconsin side of the river which is the more scenic side. We were all very worn out and a bit sunburned by the time the day was done!
I have to tip my hat again to Caribou Coffee this morning for just generally being a good business. They may not all be this way, but the one I go to is just a little extra friendly and takes the time to say hi and get to know the regulars.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Democracy and TV
Democracy certainly does make for interesting TV and media. All today:
and on the other end
I've never been a fan of Rush Limbaugh but definitely not today :(
and on the other end
I've never been a fan of Rush Limbaugh but definitely not today :(
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
The Golden Girls
Came across this one this one this morning in my news feeds - when you consider this show was on in the late 80s/early 90s, some pretty "forward" topics for then:
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