mihai_lado

07:25 pm - Scientific and medical rigor

Cold-fusion researcher Martin Fleischmann was reported today to have died.

Doubt was cast on this report, because no other researchers have been able to replicate this result.

12:36 am - Just another prescient prediction

I've decided that  the computer data "cloud" requires a good acronym.

Continually
Losing
Our
User
Data

I won't go near this flawed fad.

10:48 pm - Yes, I live with cats. Why do you ask?

I just saw that researchers have detected chocolate on a 2500 year old Mexican plate.

Sadly, not much more information will be revealed, as they left it unattended for a moment, and it was licked clean by a 2500 year old Mexican cat.

04:02 pm - Don't throw out those old photos, everyone.

A little while back, I got a new version of iPhoto that had the Faces technology. It was pretty random until it had a larger base of images to work from, then got pretty good at identifying people.

Later I realized that a MUCH larger set of photos is needed. I don't use FaceBook, but I hear you can post and tag photos. Maybe there will be a Google Faces or something, free of the other problems associated with FaceBook. If your old photos had the chance of being tagged, then the snap of your grandfather in the Army might suddenly tell you who those other guys were. Unidentified relations might have been identified by someone in the branch of the family who split off a century ago.

I've already heard of random examples of this - a young woman getting married was going through old photos to post for the guests to see, and one of them was at Disneyworld. And her new husband looked at the random people next to her in the photo and said "That's ME!" - showing that they had crossed paths at least a decade before they knew it.

07:09 pm - Everyone knew it would come to this

In a discussion today, the question came up - what UNUSUAL phrase do you expect to appear in your obituary some day?

I thought that "dangerously overloaded bookshelves" might do the trick for me. And you?

10:08 pm - Born too soon

While browsing for some family obituary data, I found this gem.
If only he had been born in our day and age, he would have had his own television show...
No, I did not make any of this up.

May 22, 1885
Clinton Public

Death of an Eccentric Man.

Samuel NUTT died in Farmer City yesterday afternoon, at two o'clock. Mr. Nutt had been sick for some time but refused to have a physician prescribe for him. Of late years he had been a religious enthusiast and finally he came to the belief that he was a prophet sent from God to reform the world. To show that he was endowed with power from God, he determined to fast for forty days in order to cure himself of his bodily ailments. At the end of thirteen days he died. His family nor his friends could not persuade him to partake of food or have a physician prescribe for him. Samuel Nutt was sixty-three years of age.

He had been a resident of Farmer City for about fifteen years. He was an Englishman by birth. Till some four or five years ago he was a confirmed drunkard, and although he was an expert workman—his trade being that of a plasterer and a designer of plaster decorations—his family had a hard struggle for a livelihood. After his reformation he turned his thoughts to the subject of religion and devoted every spare moment to the study of the scriptures, till he finally became fanatical on the question. During the past three or four years he wrote a great deal for the Farmer City papers over the signature of "Samuel Nutt, the Spirit of Truth," and from the wild character of his writings and conversation one could see that his mind was unbalanced. He was always ready to discuss the scriptures with anybody. For the past year or two he took up the cudgels against ministers and churches on the score that they were leading the people into error and became as rabid in his denunciation of orthodoxy as he was before in favor of it. He was an eccentric man.

He leaves a wife and four children, and his only property is a house in Farmer City, worth about $700, and the printing press and type which he used for the publication of his paper, which he called The Spirit of Truth. Mr. Nutt did all the writing, type setting and press work on his paper during the hours in which he was not employed at his trade, and the paper was sent free to anybody who would read it or take it out of the post-office.

01:14 pm - There goes MY weekend...

I was on YouTube and typed "kitten" into the search and got 132,000 hits. Not long ago, my son suggested that eventually everyone would have continuous digital storage of everything they saw - my reply was that "the number of funny cat videos on YouTube would soar."

04:15 pm - The power of free

I fixed up my old bicycle last fall, and rode it to work for a while. And by old, I mean 1982. But it wasn't a piece of junk, and still worked fine. I however, have degraded some since 1982, and I found that the narrow tires, stiff frame and hard seat were beating me up pretty good. So I went out today a bought a new one -- with wide tires, shock absorbers and a split seat. It certainly feels different, and will allow me to ride to work and get my exercise without bruises. (Just doing my part for the economy...)

So I put the old one on Craigslist for free. Half a dozen contacted me in very short time. I replied to them all, saying first person here gets it.
When the price is right...  I'm just happy that a working bike will go to someone who can use it, instead of into the trash.

03:38 pm - What do you mean, "have I had a hearing test recently?"

()
/ *
+-
&
^
|
&&
||


Well, how else would YOU celebrate Precedence Day?

11:42 pm - Yes, I actually said this...

What does the school board say when they turn down a petition to eliminate religious music from the Christmas program?

“Yes, we ban no hosannas. We ban no hosannas today.”