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Technology’s Infestation of my Life

Examples of how technology has permeated every single bit of my life.

NPR Finally Podcasting…Again

NPR had a podcast back “in the day,” with Audible or someone…I can’t quite remember. In any event, they stopped having a podcast and there was a void. Well, NPR is back! I was poking around the iTunes Podcast and I saw a great big ad for “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!” and I nearly hit the ceiling with exceitment.

iTunes Podcast Link for Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!

Straight up RSS feed for Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!

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StudentTabletPC’s Birthday Comments

Hehe, Tracy put this post on StudentTabletPC:

*psst!* It’s someone’s birthday!

I’ll give you a hint: his first name starts with “Andrew.”

Happy Birthday, Dude!!!

Here are the comments, again, mostly for archival purposes:

Happy B-Day, Andrew!

Posted by:
Warner Crocker |
January 31, 2006 05:56 PM
Read More »StudentTabletPC’s Birthday Comments

The Wall

Here are all the comments left on The Wall at Facebook. Mostly here for archival purposes:

Tyson Muffly wrote
at 12:41am February 1st, 2006
ok ok, as requested by you 🙂

Happy friggin Birthday man!!!
p.s. You are the statics man!

Kelly McConnell (Western Washington) wrote
at 12:16am February 1st, 2006
Happy Birthday Ferg! I hope that it is/has been a fun one

Hannah B (Whitworth) wrote
at 11:34pm January 31st, 2006
hey happy birthday! go play with the camera. and something electronic. 🙂
Read More »The Wall

WaMu Door Access

At the Washington Mutual that I use in Golden, there is an after hours ATM machine secured by a Magstripe reader. I’ve always just slid my Debt/ATM Card through it and it let me in. However, the the process was instantaneous…a little too instantaneous.
Up until now, I had always assumed that when I swiped my card, some information on my card was transfered back to a database somewhere, my access was confirmed, and the door was opened. But that would have taken too long. Perhaps there was some ‘code’ on my card that identified me as a Washington Mutual customer. Perhaps.

So I tried my United Airlines Credit Card (operated by Chase) and the door opened. Curious.
I tried my school ID card: door opened.
I tried my Costco card: door opened.
It tried my Colorado State Drivers License: door opened.

It looks like any card that has a magstripe on it with ‘valid’ data will open the door. Interesting.

[tags]washington mutual, magstripe, card[/tags]

Told You So

From the Inboxen™ of Andrew Ferguson:

A computer, registered to you, with the MAC address referenced on the subject line has a network traffic pattern that most likely indicates that it is either infected with a virus or worm. Regardless of the cause, as part of your agreement with Academic Computing & Networking for network use, you have agreed to insure that your computer does not send disruptive network traffic. This traffic is disruptive, and it is your responsibility to clean, patch, and maintain your computer such that it does not happen. To protect other users and insure the
integrity of the network, we have disabled your network port until your computer has been cleaned and patched. You should not connect your
computer to ANY network port until your computer has been cleaned and patched.

Ugh! Not this again. It’s happened twice before and now it’s happening again. I tell them the same thing every time, “The odds of my computer having a virus are higher then your chances of having the Pneumonic plague.” The result, after two hours running two different scans in Safe Mode, is always the same, “Hmm. That’s weird. We can’t find anything wrong with your computer.”

No shit Sherlock. There was nothing there to begin with! You just wasted both our time on a witch hunt that interestingly enough, didn’t turn up any witches.

I think my new goal in life is to see how many times I can get black listed from the network, only to have nothing on my computer.

Motorola e815 OBEX Bluetooth

First things first, I got a new phone a couple weeks ago. I didn’t blog about it because my computer was down and, well you get the point. In any event, I am now the owner of a very spiffy Motorola e815.

Now, one of the reasons I wanted to get the e815 was that it had Bluetooth. I knew that by default it would only support a Bluetooth headset, but I also knew that I could hack my phone. Well, I finally got around to that tonight. Matt Matteson was kind enough to lend me his Motorola USB connection cable and after about an hour of fussing around, I was able to modify the required seem. Another 30 minutes and I was able to transfer pictures, sounds, and videos.

Computer Down: Part XII – One Week Later

It’s been an entire week since my computer when kaput. What has changed? Not a whole lot. Life still goes on. I don’t blog as much and I don’t upload as many pictures. I’m not also checking my email as much, perhaps only 3 or 4 times a day. I’m also not on IM very often, perhaps once every couple days and only for a few minutes. Programming has been a bit on the slow side, but I got what I needed to get done, mainly thisBoard.

I’m giving up on trying to find a compatible USB DVD Drive and just waiting until I get back home. But I’ll be happy once I get my tablet up and running again.

Computer Down: Part XI – The Search is On

I returned the HP to Costco and went to CompUSA to see what they had. I picked up their in-house brand and brought it home to try it. And it didn’t work, as in the PSU was fried. Ugh. So I trucked all the way back to CompUSA and exchanged it. This time I brought my Tablet and and a car inverter so I could just try it out in the car.

The exchange was simple and I spent 10 minutes in the car trying to make the bloody thing boot from BIOS. Still no luck. So I returned it and picked up a Dynex brand CDRW/DVD-ROM Drive. Still no luck.

At this point, I think it’s just going to be easier to wait until I get back to Colorado unless anyone in the Greater Seattle Area has a drive that knows for a fact will work with a Toshiba M200.