Jeffry Houser's Blog - Misc

Lucky Number 23

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 20:31:00 -0400

Directions from New York to Paris, France http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=New+York,+NY+to+Paris,+France&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=62.61328,110.390625&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=4&ll=45.39845,-35.859375&spn=56.320464,110.390625&om=1 Pay special attention to 'item' number 23.

Next season on...SURVIVOR (Inner City School Edition)

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:48:00 -0400

Go read this now! Funny stuff. I'd watch it.

The Bots are Getting Better

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 12:29:00 -0400

The bots are getting better: [10:22] id_kissluv:
[10:22] Reboog711: Do I know you?
[10:23] id_kissluv: am debbie here
[10:23] Reboog711: Hi Debbie, do I know you?
[10:24] id_kissluv: nope
[10:24] id_kissluv: just intrested in chatting
[10:24] Reboog711: About what?
[10:24] id_kissluv: any thing
[10:25] Reboog711: How did you find me?
[10:25] id_kissluv: from directory
[10:26] Reboog711: Okay, what my profile made you want to talk to me?
[10:26] id_kissluv: fe
[10:26] id_kissluv: 29
[10:26] id_kissluv: uk
[10:26] id_kissluv: single
[10:26] Reboog711: The bots are really improving

Reading back, Debbie Bot's response was obviously triggered by the world profile. I didn't catch it at the time despite my response

[10:27] id_kissluv: what u do 4 living
[10:28] Reboog711: What do you do?
[10:28] id_kissluv: i work for ice company in uk
[10:28] id_kissluv: and u
[10:28] Reboog711: Web consulting
[10:28] Reboog711: What do you do at ice company?
[10:28] id_kissluv: sell fish
[10:28] id_kissluv: crab
[10:28] id_kissluv: chicken
[10:29] Reboog711: interesting
[10:30] id_kissluv: can i ask you qestion
[10:30] Reboog711: Yes
[10:30] id_kissluv: are you honest
[10:30] Reboog711: Yes
[10:30] id_kissluv: you intrested in making extra income
[10:30] id_kissluv: easy job
[10:30] id_kissluv: stay at home job
[10:31] id_kissluv: wont affect present income
[10:31] id_kissluv: stay at home job
[10:31] id_kissluv: legal job
[10:31] Reboog711: No

And I never heard from Debbie Bot again.

The call for shorter podcasts

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 11:11:00 -0400

I once heard that people commute for a max of 40 minutes to get to work. The number of people who commute longer than 40 minutes, is significantly lower than the number who commute 40 minutes or below. I don't know where I heard this, but I think it was in college somewhere. I wonder if its true, so I thought I'd try to verify some of this information. Here is a census press release that discusses commute times. The national average is 24.4 minutes ( Or 25.1 minutes if you believe this more recent source ) New Yorkers spend an average of 38.4 minutes commuting one way and have the longest commutes in the country. This all supports my belief that very few people commute longer than 40 minutes. Most of the podcasts I listen to need to shorten up their length so that they can be listened to in a single commute. The 1 hour plus podcasts can just get a little disjointed when you listen over the course of 3 different commutes. I'm planning to move to Polk County, Iowa the shortest commute in the country at 16.9 minutes (Ha, Ha J/K).

Join the Upward Spiral

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 01:18:00 -0400

Everyone talks about the downward spiral. Why not try to take it the other way?

Is Hef really having a better time at the Playboy Mansion than you are at home?

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 11:30:00 -0400

Cool post: Read it This was my favorite quote: "More often than not, money will make you fat and lazy and uninteresting. It's no fun starving to death, either, but for many the risk of losing your essence increases with every buck you pack away." Sometimes I feel like the more financially secure I am, the less motivated I am. So, from one perspective this happened to me. The fear of starvation is a big motivator, but I haven't been afraid of that for a long time. I think the "out of site / out of mind" approach works well for me. So, I should probably move some of my 'emergency funds' into accounts that don't show up in my quickbooks total worth. Either that, or add my mortgage to Quickbooks.

How Many People does it take to Post on the Dilbert Blog?

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 01:30:00 -0400

Question: How Many People does it take to Post on the Dilbert Blog? Answer: 235 1 to post
5 to say "First" in a comment
19 to write the "You must be slipping, no one has commented yet." comment
27 to remind the "first" people that all comments are moderated and therefore there is a delay between the initial post and the first comments appearing.
13 to apologize for the duplicate post reminding the 'first' people that the blog was moderated and there would be a delay in comments appearing.
57 to call Scott Adams an offensive idiot and declare a boycott of his blog, books, and writings.
57 to return from a previously declared boycout
20 to actually be offended
35 to question whether Mr Adam's truely meant what he just wrote
1 to read the post

a test

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 16:37:00 -0400

For some reason comments don't seem to be t posting on this blog. So, this is a random test post to see if I can figure out what's going on.

Pengiun Caffinated Peppermints

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 01:26:00 -0400

I found a box of pengiun caffinated peppermints today. They are ~~probably~~ a thinkgeek item. I think they were given to me by Luke last time I was in Kansas. That's a long time ago. They still pack a punch apparently, since I had a half dozen today and am wide awake despite the late hour. It almost feels like I'm catching up work and may even get to install Al Emmo 'morrow. Vintage adventure gaming at its best. Or newest, depending on your perspective. The demo had great "old-school style puzzles" but the voice acting was awful. I read subtitles faster than voice actors can speak, so generally I'll click through the voice acting. This house is creeking tonight (it always does) and it has kind of put me on a slight edge, jumping at shadows that aren't even there. I bet there are enough nuts like me to make Himalayan Studios a tidy profit which can fund "game 2." I think I read that 10,000 units would be a roaring success. 1,000 units is around the break even point. I'm estimating they probably spent around $30,000 to build the game based on those numbers, probably most of it on living expenses for the developers, who I suspect are bored dotcom millionaires who got out at the right time. I want to do that. The King's Quest 3 remake comnpletely rocked. I haven't played King's Quest 9, yet (but I do have the RC1 candidate installed)

Does Trillian Opens off-screen? Here is now to move it back

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:18:00 -0400

I use Trillian at home w/ a multiple monitor system. But, when I'm on the road I only travel with a laptop and rarely have a second monitor hooked up to the machine. For most programs this poses no problem. But, the trillian window will often not show up when I'm on the road. I can still sign in and get IMed by people, but cannot view my contact list or initiate IMs with people. Usually when this happens with other software, I just right click on the window in the task bar, click 'move' and move it back onto the screen w/ the keyboard. Unfortunately the Trillian buddy list does not display on the task bar. First I tried Shove It. This is a cool program that I used a long time ago when I used to keep the windows status bar at the top of the screen. It will move "off-screen" windows back onto the screen. It had no affect, it must not know the Trillian window exists because it isn't on the task bar. Web searching came up with a lot of people who had these problems (with different software), but no concrete solutions to solve them. I finally ended up in the Cerulean Studio's Forms. ( If you didn't know, they make Trillian). AFter some searching, I found a post where someone mentions a buddy.ini file. So, I go find that file (C:\Program Files\Trillian\users\default\buddy.ini) and the first few lines are something like this:


[Window Status]
Visible=false
LocationX=1400
LocationY=800
Width=213
Height=615

I shut down trillian, changed locationx and locationy both to 0, and relaunched. Bingo it showed up. I imagine there must be an easier way, though. I figured out how to address that

Need a place to live in Funky Funky Milford (area)?

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 14:47:00 -0400

A friend of mine (with baby number one due any day now) is looking to rent out half of their duplex (that's a fancy name for a two family house). The place was updated during August. The family slated to move in for September 1st backed out. With a baby on the way, they have other things on their mind than finding a new renter under such a short time frame. Anyone looking or know of anyone looking? View the craig list listing E-mail them ( Tell them Jeff sent you )

Brookers

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 01:48:00 -0400

It's so stupid I can't look away. Carson Daly hired her based on the her YouTube videos. that is a first. She mentions Mohegan Sun, so is probably in CT or RI somewhere. She is either a very disturbed person or a genius. Freakin' weird.

An Interesting Take on Intelligent Design

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Thu, 04 May 2006 09:28:00 -0400

This is an interesting take on intelligent design: http://www.jci.org/content/vol116/issue5/images/large/JCI0628449.f1.jpeg

Dilbert Blog

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Tue, 02 May 2006 09:40:00 -0400

I've been reading the Dilbert Blog. Scott Adams has an interesting way of putting things. check out a few of these posts: motivated By Money: This Post was fired by talks that the Iraq war was for money / oil. A few good quotes:


When you don't have money, you might well be willing to kill a few innocent people to make a million dollars... But once you have your riches, you somewhat automatically start thinking about the bigger picture.

That post alone, I thought offered some interesting pictures. In a follow-up to the general thread, he talks about the Income Gap. He talks about the gap between rich and poor people, noting that there are plenty more poor people than rich people.


In theory... poor people could vote to tax the living piss out of the super rich ....   if you're looking to place the blame [on why this doesn't happen] it has to be on the low income people who don't vote.

I'm not sure if he is saying things just to evoke a reaction or he actually believes everything he posts. I never compared Dilbert to Arthur Dent, but if Douglas Adams were alive today, I imagine he'd be writing a blog similar to "Mr Adams.