BigCat’s Blog of DOOM

Last year I did one of these posts about technology questions. It was fun, and I think there were some great questions asked. Check it out to see what we already covered.

http://bigcat2k.livejournal.com/41271.html

I put it to all of you to ask me the technical questions on your mind during the tail end of this holiday shopping season.

This year, I’m asking you again. What are you technical questions, about computers, TV’s, video games, etc?

No question too silly or too ignorant, no will be mocked except rschmit. Again, I’ll be enlisting the aid of my wife as a ‘tech speak’ buffer to help me prevent any further confusion being added to your understanding.

And please, critique my answers on a “read-ability” and “understandability” basis. I really want feedback so I can explain things better to people.

This morning I was sitting in my bathroom, and a mouse popped out from behind our towel drawers. It runs around all crazy like trying to get out the bathroom door, and can’t cuz it is closed.

So, after I finish my business, I try to trap the thing (we’ve been trying to catch this mouse for a couple of weeks), and dispose of it outside. But, it runs to the vent, and climbs down into the ventilation.

I watch this thing and think WTF? How can I trap these damned things if I can’t nail down where they are going cuz they are traveling through the duct-work?

Well, now I just have an uphill battle ahead of me I think, cuz I was going to double-check every part of the house that has some exposure to the inside of the walls or the exterior of the house, and fill them…but now I have to find a way to block the vents with some wire mesh or something.

At any rate, I thought it was wierd that they climbed through the ducts, cuz it has to be pretty hot in there when the air is blowing through the heater.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=smith_michael&id=2692150&campaign=rss&source=ESPNHeadlines

I think ESPN gets a duck-point when talking about Rex Grossman in this article. I specifically found this part interesting.

Chicago’s defense and special teams make this team different than most. The Bears earned their last win with Grossman posting a 1.3 passer rating, and as noted by colleague Len Pasquarelli last week, Chicago is 2-2 in games in which his quarterback rating is below 40.0. The rest of the league is 1-26 when their QBs perform that poorly. The defense limits opponents to a league-low 12.5 points per game, and the Bears’ league-leading 39 takeaways lead to 44 percent of their scoring. They also have weapons on special teams in kicker Robbie Gould (one missed field goal this season) and rookie returner Devin Hester (a league-leading nine punt returns of 20 yards or longer and three touchdowns).

But, even though they have an excellent point, what they miss is that if Rex keeps sucking and they don’t give Griese snaps w/ on gameday the Bears are going to be 15 (or is it 14…I forget) years without a playoff win. This is because everyone, and I mean everyone except the Bears for the last 14 years, steps it up a notch for the playoffs. Sadly, the last two outings in the playoffs has looked like the Bears stepped it down a notch for the playoffs. As a former Cubs fan, I can say with confidence; I’m hoping this year is different.

Well, anyway, love him or hate him, Rex is starting tonight in the Dome in St. Louis (does anyone besides me wonder why St. Louis needs a dome), and we will see how this pans out.

Current Mood:  impressed

http://biz.yahoo.com/special/allbiz120606_article1.html

Best Buy has a terrible stigma in my mind. Mostly of jerk-off employees (floor sales, as well as geek squade) who know little to nothing about computers or electronics, but are completely willing to vomit this wealth of nothing into your lap as if they had just coughed up little nuggets of gold. Then they ask you to exchange this vomit for the heaping pile of shit in the corner that that matches their vomit and has nothing to do with what you asked for. (yeah, I got a chip on my shoulder about this one…but what good tech-nerd who fixes families and friends computers bought at best buy doesn’t)

Anyway, besides that, they are also known as being a crappy employer, especially in the retail stores. My brother was super happy when he quit from working there, where they had told him he wasn’t doing a good job despite having one of the highest, if not the highest, merchandise sales rates in the store. (this was because he wasn’t unnecessarily pushing the stupid ‘extended’ warranties or the MSN subscription they offered at the time.)

But apparently they are doing something to change their status as a bad employer (maily in the corporate office, but they are going to try it in stores soon) and it sounds interesting.

Oddly though, I don’t think an engineer can go completely paperless/wireless/clockless, like the article describes. It is hard to get my job done with collaborating with people for a lot of things. Also, I need access to materials to make prototypes and such. But if I had a long stretch of paperwork, or simple CAD design it would be nice to have a laptop connected to a VPN so I could work at home. Unfortunately, Veeco corporate locks down VPN access pretty tight to mostly just really important people.

I’m really interested in the newest version of MythTV. It is a Windows Media Center type of program that runs on any variant of Linux, BSD, or OSX.

I’m actually not interested in this just because it is both Open-Source and Linux-based, but because of the approach it takes to handling the TV recording, storage, and playback.
( What is MythTV and why does it interest me? )