While most people whine and complain about the cold weather, I look forward to it for many reasons. I don’t dig the heat, or the humidity at all, which is really funny because have opted to live in the South!
What’s to look forward to? Snow, ice, seeing your breath, doing donuts in your car in the snow (uhmmm or so I’ve heard), etc. Of course there are the negative sides, such as scraping ice if you don’t have a garage, and worrying about your teenage children driving in the slick stuff.
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the ability to use the cold in the car to instantly turn a liquid into a solid. In this case, a bottle of water I leave in my car for entertainment purposes. Every cold morning when I get in the car, I perform the following, all in the name of science:
I know, your 5th grader does this too, but hey, at least I am never bored!
Have fun with this, and I will get back to doing that thing we do – computer, server and network service, support and sales here in chilly Greenville, SC…
In case you ever wondered – here’s how that copier works in your office… I’m taking our’s apart tomorrow to make sure this is factual…. =)
This is just too slick…. This weekend brings IPSC 2010, the Internet Problem Solving Contest 2010. What is it? Teams of up to 3 people will compete on the 6th of June to win cash prizes by working together to solve a series of problems. Go here for the information http://ipsc.ksp.sk/
If you are competing, let me know how you do!
The FCC wants you to signup to shape the future of broadband in America
The FCC is looking for about 10,000 good men and women to help test their broadband connections in certain markets and from certain providers by installing a piece of equipment to meter the throughput at their home.
If you are interested in participating, you can go to https://www.testmyisp.com/ and fill out the application. You must meet certain requirements, such as having a high speed / broadband connection like cable or DSL from prividers such as Charter, AT&T, Cable One, Cablevision, CenturyLink, Cincinnati Bell, Clearwire, Comcast, Cox, Fairpoint, Frontier, Hughes, Insight, Mediacom, Qwest, RCN, Time Warner Cable (Roadrunner), Verizon, WildBlue/ViaSat, Windstream, or “other”, which will allow you to write in your broadband provider.
Apparently, they will place a simple device onto your LAN, and you must agree to the terms of usage, such as leaving it on 24/7, not trying to reverse engineer the device, etc.
Conspiracy theories are already out there that this device will be doing more than watching your throughput, such as watching your browsing habits. Possible, but unlikely. The company that has partnered with the FCC would probably not want to get that kind of bad press if this were found to be true.
I signed up our home and will let you know if we are selected…
I haven’t been well due to that car accident on the 7th, in fact, today is the first day I could really do much in the way of work, so I am pretty happy. This trend should continue until I am hopefully back to normal (some of you will not believe it, but I am kinda normal)…
Brett has a high school project that is due soon which must incorperate several things such as levers, incline, etc, in a silly manner and the end result is to knock over a marker. Of course, this has my little mind going 90 to nothing due to the fact that I kind of think in abstract ways anyway.
This has nothing to do with Homeland Secure IT, computer service, computer repair or anything at all to do with computers, or business, but I do think that is a neat thing to do in school. I will post more information as it the project nears completion.
Until then, thank you for your patience while I recover, and to those who sent cards, emails, direct messages, facebook messages, and phone calls… Thank you very much!
I’m still feeling horrible after the accident on Friday so I am at home. Better to hurt at home than to go in to work and not get anything done, be more uncomfortable, feel more depressed and make everyone at the office as sick of hearing me whine about it as my family and even myself… It hurts to type, so you get an embedded video today for your visit. Stay tuned because I am going to be listing the rules of our free camera give away as soon as I feel better, we have the new Flip Mino HD in our posession and we are ready to give it to some lucky person!
Greenville is Feeling Lucky for Google Fiber
You would have to be living under a rock to still be in the dark about Google On Main / LuckyGVL (Just Google for #GoogleOnMain, #LuckyGVL, We Are Feeling Lucky, Greenville Google Fiber, etc). You probably already know that a couple thousand people in Greenville SC heard from various means, such as Twitter, Facebook, email, txt message or analog social networking like a phone call or a face-to-face meeting (people still do that?) that Greenvillians were being organized to meet at Falls Park on a beautiful Saturday night, wearing dark clothing, and that they would be taking part in something historic.
And historic it was! It has made local, regional, national and international news! Aaron Von Frank should be quite proud of himself and his band of merry men who orchestrated the endevour which involved so many people pouring into the downtown area, spelling out “Google” and having a great time!
Time Magazine has an article about Greenville’s GoogleOnMain this week, which has gotten even more people excited. Earlier in the week (over a week after the big event), people were meeting at another “Celebration” where the volunteers, sponsors and organizers were thanked and they discused how to harness this energy and take it to the next level.
There’s no end in site for Greenville’s Google On Main! I believe we are just getting started! Check out www.wearefeelinglucky.com for more information!
Here’s my daughter Megan in a video clip from the other day… She believes Google Fiber would help the education system in Greenville!
If you are from the Greenville / Upstate area you would have to be living as a Quaker to not know about all that is going on with the effort to bring Google Fiber here. Heck, even Quakers probably are aware of the community effort to catch the eye of Google. It is not just localized either. Greenville is showing up in discussions on blogs all over the world, and in online and print publications you will find mentions of this grass roots effort. Just a few moments ago, we received word that a Time Magazine writer confirmed there will be an article published about Google On Main.
To give you an idea how things happen here… It was mentioned to Fairway Outdoor Advertising that another city had put up some billboards… Within minutes, Fairway Outdoor (@FairwayOutdoor on Twitter) had programmed two of their digital billboards on two very major streets to support the Google On Main / We Are Feeling Lucky movement! People are meeting with the Mayor and City officials, the news media like Amy Wood (@TVAmy) are in touch with what is happening. And those who were involved in last Saturday’s Google On Main event are getting recognition by the community as well. My wife @PamelaHoyt and I have received phone calls, text messages, emails, tweets and facebook messages saying “HEY! I saw you on TV”.
And in some of the most surprising events, those who are active on social networking sites are being contacted by supporters of other city’s initiatives and told how we don’t stand a chance, etc! hahah All I can say to them is, Greenville wishes you the best of luck! This is all in fun, though we are serious about wanting it for our area. We want to keep it positive!
If you want to get involved, please sign our petition at www.wearefeelinglucky.comand join the various social networking discussions taking place on Facebook, Twitter, and an interesting one, the Google Wave forum that has been setup… A link to that can be found at the www.wearefeelinglucky.com website. If you would like an invite to Google Wave, please contact me and I will invite you.
I’m a little too old to play with dolls (as far as you know), however, I think I would buy a “Computer Engineer Barbie” to use as our mascot at http://www.HomelandSecureIT.com mainly because it is geek-gone-mainstream if nothing else. Additionally, think of the inspiration it could be to a young child who may actually be influenced to become an IT professional, instead of a model or actress. God knows we already have enough stick-figure females, with unrealistic goals of becoming ever thinner through bad diet and bad habits.
Thank you Mattel for listening to what people had to say! Visit the vote site at: http://www.barbie.com/vote/
A friend posted this YouTube video on a County Hunter forum. I found it very well done and thought I would share. This is a demonstration of a Yagi beam antenna and shows how adding a reflector and directors to a driven element increases the signal strength in front of the antenna by focusing the power bounced off the reflector and through the “director” element/s.
