Solomonster

I like this: Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week. -Alice Walker

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:02:00 +0000

is taking a slow start to a lot of administrivia, today...

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:02:00 +0000

Hay! It's Friday! That's a good thing, right?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:52:00 +0000

What's the plan for the weekend? Couple of parties or something on Caturday. What else?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 05:02:00 +0000

What? So I wear tie-dye, sometimes!

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:53:00 +0000

Flock Still Kicking Around

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 06:45:00 +0000

I still like the Flock browser. It's going to get Firefox 3's ROCKING performance boost, soon, too. Good for blogging, of course. Or journaling, diarying, recording, shizzling, etc... (Can I still say 'shizzle', or has that train left the station?)

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Firefox 3

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:59:00 +0000

The Good News: This thing flies!

The Bad News: It doesn't like my favorite extension, Swiftabs. For faster switching between tabs, Swiftabs remaps the keys near my left hand. So, I hit F1 to go left, F2 to move on to the next tab to the right, and F3 to close the tab.

Maybe FF3 flies because it doesn't like my SwiftTabs extension...
:(

The Less-Bad News: I found a trick whereby you can edit the minimum version # of Firefox within the extension, itself, and try your luck. It worked well for me, but is a pain in the ass to do for all my extensions. No, there aren't that many, but I don't have time to edit them all.

The Best Soundtrack in Several Years

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Thu, 01 May 2008 03:36:00 +0000

Battlestar Galactica produces a new soundtrack for each season, and I've only just found the soundtrack for Season 3, published back in November 2007, and it is a powerful, mature piece of music that thrills me all the way through. It is vivid. Check it out.

drop.io: simple private sharing

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 06:07:00 +0000

Need a new hobby? Check out Ferret Legging. You might need a pint or two for this, but your friends will surely be impressed.

Trade in Outlook for free eM Client

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:08:00 +0000

Wow, this isn't bad for free! Check out Lifehacker's summary of this email client:

Trade In Outlook for eM Client

Windows only: Freeware email application eM Client is a full-featured
mail application that comes with a calendar, task manager, and contact
manager out of the box. With an easy to navigate graphical user
interface that has the familiar feel of Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla
Thunderbird, eM Client doesn't really require much of a learning curve.
The eM Client team also promises to deliver Google Calendar and Google
Contacts synchronization, ActiveSync mobile phone synchronization, and
full-fledged CalDev support. Later development promises widget support
from Meebo, Facebook, and MySpace. eM Client is a freeware application
for Windows only.

Craigslist: Image Preview Extension for Firefox

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:21:00 +0000

Ooo! Me likey! This extension gives you previews of any images on the following pages, within Craigslist! Okay, it makes their layout look a little sloppy, but I can live with that in exchange for these previews. Very nice. Go git some.

Why We Eat Cows

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 06:52:00 +0000

Son: Daddy, where does beef come from?
Dad: Why, cows of course.
Son: Oh. ... Daddy, why do we eat cows?
Dad: We eat cows because they taste goooood, Son!

I'm a pretty funny character, you know.

Amsterdam: Hot Sex in Parks vs. Pissy Doggies

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 03:47:00 +0000

Dog owners angry at public sex plan

Dog owners in Amsterdam are angry after the city legalised public sex in one of the city's most famous parks.

Councillors agreed that heterosexual and gay couples could have sex in the Vondelpark which has ten million visitors a year.

But they promised to clampdown on dog owners who let their pets walk in the park without a lead.

One dog owner protested: "As long as the park has existed, we've been
allowed to let our dogs run freely. It's outrageous that we will be
punished from now on but public sex won't."

A spokesman for the
council which runs the southern part of Amsterdam said: "When the dogs
are not kept on a leash they pee on whatever they see and they cause a
lot of nuisance for other visitors."

Alderman Paul Van Grieken defended the decision to allow public sex in the park from September.

"Why should we oppose a rule on something you can't oppose a rule on.
Moreover it isn't a nuisance for the other visitors and gives a lot of
pleasure to a certain group of people," he said.

"There still
are rules," he added. "They must take their garbage with them
afterwards and never have intercourse near the playground. The sex must
be limited to the evening hours and night."

Study: Work may be costing people sleep - Portland Business Journal:

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:59:00 +0000

Today's Rocket Science brought to you by the Portland Business Journal:

Study: Work may be costing people sleep - Portland Business Journal:: "The National Sleep Foundation says Americans are not getting enough rest and work may be getting in the way.

In a study released Monday the Washington, D.C.-based organization said average nightly sleep for adults is 6 hours and 40 minutes, below the 7 hours and 18 minutes that most people say they need.

The reason for less sleep may be due to increased workload. The report said workers are spending an average of nearly 4.5 hours each week doing additional work from home on top of a 9.5 hour average workday.

Workdays are getting longer with 25 percent of people spending between 9 and 10 hours on the job and 33 percent saying they work 10 or more hours each day.

Bedtime, on average, is 10:53 p.m., according to the foundation."

RANT: VMWare Vulnerability

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:29:00 +0000

If you don't use a piece of software called VMWare, then you're not going to want to read the rest of this. If you DO use VMWare, then perhaps you've heard about the newly announced vulnerability that's got the technology media all in a tizzy (maybe it just seems that way because I'm concerned about it!) exposing access via VMWare's shared folders.

Wait! Don't go away! This is where it gets ANNOYING! I've read at least half a dozen articles on this hole and only just today did I decide to go and take a look at the vendor's web site for news on how I can protect my servers from this thing. I'd like to paste in a portion of their warning, the part telling us which products are affected:

Vulnerable packages

All versions of VMware's desktop products that include the Shared Folders feature up to:

VMWare Workstation 6.0.2
VMWare Workstation 5.5.4
VMWare Player 2.0.2
VMWare Player 1.0.4
VMWare ACE 2.0.2
VMWare ACE 1.0.2

Non-vulnerable packages

VMWare ESX
VMWare Server

Now, the media articles I've been reading are all, "VMWare-this..." and "VMWare-that...", when the more accurate finger would be pointing at "VMWare Workstation-this..." and "VMWare Player that..."

Enterprises use ESX server. Smaller companies and individuals, for the most part, use the free VMWare Server.

Tech Media: Why are you frightening us with lumping in Server and ESX with the vulnerable products???

Identical Twins Not As Identical As Believed

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:39:00 +0000

For those of you who may be concerned about your discordant monozygotic brethren:

ScienceDaily (2008-02-20) -- Contrary to our previous beliefs, identical twins are not genetically identical. This surprising finding may be of great significance for research on hereditary diseases and for the development of new diagnostic methods. How can it be that one identical twin might develop Parkinson's disease, for instance, but not the other? Until now, the reasons have been sought in environmental factors. The current study complicates the picture.

Everything You Know About Disks Is Wrong

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:50:00 +0000

Storagemojo.com has a very interesting article dating from February 2007 that I've just found, that kinda shakes the foundation of many of my assumptions about hard drives' reliability, RAID reliability, and vendors' MTBF estimates. Robin translates the original study pretty well, so it's a terrible headache to read:

Everything You Know About Disks Is Wrong

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PostSecret

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 06:41:00 +0000

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. I love it.

PostSecret

Blogged with Flock

Find Chuck

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 06:39:00 +0000

go to Google and, after pasting in 'find Chuck Norris’, hit 'I'm Feeling Lucky'.

Blogged with Flock

4th Undersea Internet Cable Damaged in Mideast

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 05:38:00 +0000

WTF? Doesn't this stink of some sort of plan or conspiracy to anybody else?

Another undersea Internet cable damaged in Mideast

AFP - Sunday, February 3
NEW
DELHI (AFP) - - Another Middle East undersea Internet cable has been
damaged, adding to disruption in Indian online services caused when
several lines were cut earlier this week, a cable operating firm said
Saturday.
The
Falcon cable was cut 56 kilometres (35 miles) from Dubai, between Oman
and the United Arab Emirates, according to its owner FLAG Telecom, part
of India's Reliance Communications.
The company said on its
website that a repair ship had been notified and was expected to arrive
at the site in the next few days.
The cause of the latest cable damage was not immediately known.
Flag
Telecom owns another undersea cable which was damaged off Egypt on
Wednesday in the Mediterranean. Indian media reports have attributed
that damage to a ship's anchor which dropped on the cable.
On the same day in Kuwait, the government reported two cables damaged by "weather conditions and maritime traffic."
The
cable damage has left India's vital outsourcing industry grappling with
major communications disruptions and businesses saying they could take
up to two weeks to return to normal.
It has also disrupted Internet service across the Middle East and other parts of South Asia.
A
repair ship was expected to arrive by next Tuesday to restore the FLAG
Telecom cable that was damaged off Egypt, the company said.
Smaller
Indian firms will be harder hit as they depend on a single service
provider, said R.S Perhar, secretary of the Internet Service Providers'
Association of India (ISPAI).
"But traffic has already started moving after being re-routed," Perhar said.
Around 90 percent of the services were expected to be restored by Sunday, the ISPAI said.
India's
11-billion-dollar outsourcing industry is made up of 1,250 firms that
deliver services ranging from answering customer queries to processing
credit card and mortgage applications.
The industry employs
700,000 people, serving clients mainly in the United States and Europe
that sought to cut costs by farming out work to the country.

UPDATE: Funny thing seems to have happened after all these cable cuts: Iran has no more terrestrial Internet service. Pretty much entirely isolated, now. Odd coincidence, eh?

4th Undersea Internet Cable Damaged in Mideast

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 05:30:00 +0000

WTF? Doesn't this stink of some sort of plan or conspiracy to anybody else?

Another undersea Internet cable damaged in Mideast

AFP - Sunday, February 3
NEW
DELHI (AFP) - - Another Middle East undersea Internet cable has been
damaged, adding to disruption in Indian online services caused when
several lines were cut earlier this week, a cable operating firm said
Saturday.
The
Falcon cable was cut 56 kilometres (35 miles) from Dubai, between Oman
and the United Arab Emirates, according to its owner FLAG Telecom, part
of India's Reliance Communications.
The company said on its
website that a repair ship had been notified and was expected to arrive
at the site in the next few days.
The cause of the latest cable damage was not immediately known.
Flag
Telecom owns another undersea cable which was damaged off Egypt on
Wednesday in the Mediterranean. Indian media reports have attributed
that damage to a ship's anchor which dropped on the cable.
On the same day in Kuwait, the government reported two cables damaged by "weather conditions and maritime traffic."
The
cable damage has left India's vital outsourcing industry grappling with
major communications disruptions and businesses saying they could take
up to two weeks to return to normal.
It has also disrupted Internet service across the Middle East and other parts of South Asia.
A
repair ship was expected to arrive by next Tuesday to restore the FLAG
Telecom cable that was damaged off Egypt, the company said.
Smaller
Indian firms will be harder hit as they depend on a single service
provider, said R.S Perhar, secretary of the Internet Service Providers'
Association of India (ISPAI).
"But traffic has already started moving after being re-routed," Perhar said.
Around 90 percent of the services were expected to be restored by Sunday, the ISPAI said.
India's
11-billion-dollar outsourcing industry is made up of 1,250 firms that
deliver services ranging from answering customer queries to processing
credit card and mortgage applications.
The industry employs
700,000 people, serving clients mainly in the United States and Europe
that sought to cut costs by farming out work to the country.

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YAY! Another Photo Gets Published!

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 19:58:00 +0000

Portland - Hotels - Southwest

That's the good news! The Bad News is in this riddle:
What's missing from this picture? [ Hint: Compare the description with my photo. ]

Unexpected on Craigslist:Free

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 03:33:00 +0000

How strange…

Pirate ship / boat

Reply to: sale-452162576@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-10-17, 6:19PM PDT

Does anyone want a free pirate boat? It will be available after Halloween. I will give you the cannons and the treasure chest that go with it. It has no trailer, so I don't have a way to haul it.

Go(?) through(?)test....

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:41:00 +0000

Testing Jott. Jott rocks. Check it out.

Call and leave a 30-second message for yourself or someone else in your address book, and Jott translates it from your spoken message to a text email, and the quality is remarkably good! (Not perfect, as you may have originally seen in this space, but pretty good for the price!)

(Jott from Charlie Solomon) This is a test of jott, I wonder if it'll actuall hit my blog. Jott is a really ...

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:40:00 +0000

"This is a test of jott, I wonder if it'll actuall hit my blog. Jott is a really cool service,[...] I'm gonna use jott, it translates your spoken word to written and you got a 30 second chance to do it. I guess you'll get more later."

Listen to Charlie's message

Charlie Solomon - -Charlie

Brought to you by Jott.com - 1-866-JOTT-123
300 East Pike Street, Suite 2000
Seattle, WA 98122
Click here to stop all Jott email notifications to this address.

Interested in joining Jott?

Jott is a free service that turns your voice into tasks, e-mail and text messages.

Go to www.jott.com or just call
(866) JOTT 123