Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Late start guide to college savings http://ping.fm/6yA3z

Monday, September 29, 2008

Hotwire seems to be unable to provide rental car prices for the last few hours
NDHS has a Wikipedia entry http://ping.fm/b5rkF(Sherman_Oaks)

Old posting on Military "Secrets"

Ran across this.

Newsgroups: sci.military
From: he...@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Date: 26 Mar 92 01:36:36 GMT
Local: Wed, Mar 25 1992 6:36 pm
Subject: Dirty Little Secrets, a mini-review
From he...@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)


"Dirty Little Secrets", subtitled "Military information you're not supposed
to know", by James F. Dunnigan and Albert A. Nofi, William Morrow 1990.


Quick summary: disappointing, don't bother.


There is very little in this book that lives up to either the title or
the subtitle. It would be fine preparation for a military variant of
Trivial Pursuit, but that's about all. There are interesting tidbits
here and there, but it's not worth the price. I expected better from
Dunnigan.

This was all the more disappointing because it *could* have been a
fascinating, if perhaps slightly thinner, book if the authors had really
done some digging. There *are* dirty little secrets that you're not
supposed to know. (Samples... After the first operational Polaris
missiles were already at sea, it was discovered that their nuclear
warheads were defective and would not work. Nobody knows whether
Minuteman missiles could be launched from the operational Minuteman
silos, because every attempt to launch one from an operational-type
silo failed. [The Vandenberg training silos, which have launched many,
are a totally different design.] The great USAF-USN "shootout" between
Falcon and Sidewinder ended in humiliation for the USAF when repeated
attempts failed to so much as *launch* a Falcon. Aluminum armor is so
dangerous to troops behind it that Israeli soldiers will ride on the
*outside* of their aluminum-armored M113 APCs when there is risk of
serious enemy fire... and guess what the M2 Bradley uses for armor.
Flying a jet at 50 feet -- the altitude where most of them would try
to be in a real war against a dangerous opponent -- is so different
from flying at 200 feet that it takes considerable training for pilots
to fly effectively at the lower altitude, yet only two air forces in
the world train for it [the USAF not among them]. And so on.) Don't
expect to find any of them in this book.
--
GCC 2.0 is to C as SVR4 is to Unix. | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
-Dick Dunn | he...@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
Google docs continuing to hide navigation bar when reaccessing site

Saturday, September 27, 2008

GrandCentral required addition of (currently free) minutes for Click2Call, presaging their charging for the function

Friday, September 26, 2008

How much bgp complexity can remote sites handle? Are there operational issues? It's obviously a barrier to conversion from DS3 to EGM + DS3.
Google Map Maker adds edit capability for 17 more countries, including Laos, Cambodia, Sri Lanka http://ping.fm/ODRrp
Blackberry Storm (big touch screen) screenshots. Credible iPhone competition? http://ping.fm/kOTqy
Sandisk 16GB microSD becoming available http://ping.fm/7HNsV
Ping.fm still starving hi5 of content because ping.fm doesn't post microblogs to hi5, just status and blogs

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Goodreads needs an easy way to import from Google Books > My Library
Wall Street Journal: Safe Investments to Buy Now http://ping.fm/M3C8i
Google (Apps only?) Docs navigation bar can collapse. Drag right to make it reappear

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Wall Street Journal: "Neiman Marcus offered a bleak outlook for the holidays and said its quarterly loss more than doubled"
Hot/cold aisle containment may be in conflict with fire codes http://ping.fm/49rqn
Corning says InfiniCor SX+ optical fiber 100-Gigabit Ethernet ready http://ping.fm/ab9pH
Google uses > 160 country code top level domains including Cuba http://ping.fm/1d8qh
IBM: 1 person=1TB in 2008; 16TB in 2020. flash/dedup/virtualization/dense tape http://ping.fm/tHQYh
IBM will have 13 global cloud computing centers, u=incoluding South Korea, Vietnam, India and Brazil http://ping.fm/Yrf7W
Wall Street Journal tests hotel loyalty plans, including Hilton and Hyatt http://ping.fm/bScAZ
Bandipedia - wiki for telecomm community http://ping.fm/ud9p4
Google Maps now includes blcok number info
Google Chrome still seems to be constantly refreshing meebo

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Uh oh, GrandCentral seems to be down
Yammer autofills tags allowing more lengthy tags than one might otherwise use. Neat
3% rebate from ebates on Lenovo laptop purchase with no arguing/followup. Great!
Wide variety of IT books from Sun free at http://ping.fm/xfCds
Howto magic videos www.theory11.com

Monday, September 22, 2008

Identifying a co worker in Yammer spawns an unprompted invite to them!
Android phone has brick form factor compared to iPhone. http://ping.fm/lEKxd

Sunday, September 21, 2008

looking at Yammer and Present.ly, touted as twitter for the enterprise
L-o-n-g latency to add alert to tweetbeep. Will have to time the next one. 30 seconds? What's the app infrastructure?
Tweetbeep - Alerts on keyword or domain use in Twitter

Friday, September 19, 2008

Wall Street Journal email notification lagging by 2 days again
TrackThis on Twitter needs direct msg of tracking # first with no spaces or dashes then optional name of item
Lenovo UPS shipment tracking to Bay Area: HKG 9/18 1935-ANC-ONT-OAK 9/19 0605
can't add path to Google Earth as the app reliably dies (after apparently sending a diagnostic report). Vista 32.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Gobal comparison of executive pay by the Economist http://ping.fm/puydg
Wall Street Journal email summary of today's paper lagging by 2 days?
Lenovo Thinkpad W500 4058CTO ordered 12 Sep 08;shipped 18 Sep 08
China visa info http://ping.fm/lzekm
GE & Google want US power grid to accommodate more renewable energy. Does this, by itself, improve grid? http://ping.fm/7j0Jp

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

TripIt now has blog badge. What's the day to day value of TripIt, Dopplr, Loopt?

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Tibetan Travel Agency

Posting seen in:
ORIENTAL-LIST@hmssurprise.org

There was/is 'Tibetan Connections is an international travel agency based
in Xining, Qinghai in the traditional Tibetan province of Amdo."
I talked to them last January and they seemed knowledgable of
Qinghai/Tibet but Google, since 11 Aug 08, only finds a cache of the
website ...which could be for various reasons.

Tibetan Connections
Guo Ji Cun Gong Yu
Building 5
Lete Youth Hostel
18th Floor
Xining, Qinghai China
Email: info@tibetanconnections.com
Tel: 86 971 820 3271

The Lete hostel is handy to the middle of Xining, 15 mins walk from the
main streets. TConnection was on the 16th flr.

When back in Beijing May 2008, I was told I'd need a police permit to bus
from Golmud to Dunhuang but it was issuable within a day.

Dave Nevin, Macau.
Need easier way to toggle between GrandCentral phones to ring. Setting for "location 1", setting for "location 2"?
Returning to Firefox from a few days of Google Chrome until Chrome has better bookmarking, Roboform like function, adblock

Sunday, September 14, 2008

finding it hard to tune Panoramio + Picasa. No watermark and 640 size seems best
May want to backfill previous trips on Travelpod

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Friday, September 12, 2008

why is Lenovo recovery DVD for a new Visa 64 purchase WinXP?
whoops, looks as if radiusIM does signal in the tab. Sorry
radiusIM, unlike meebo, doesn't signal in Firefox tab for new message. Easy to miss IMs unless yu hear the alert
International Dunhuang Project: The Silk Road Online;artifacts from the Eastern Silk Road http://idp.bl.uk/
radiusIM sorts buddies by the way they connect (AOL, GTalk, Yahoo, MSN) and then by groups you set up. Not good
Trying radiusIM instead of meebo. Works with Google translate bots (so far) [sent using www.radiusIM.com]
Hilton 1M point giveaway servers basically unavailable http://ping.fm/3T1nP
Thrilllist SF shills for a restaurant with a "Napa/Euro wine list features 150 bottles under $60"... Is this supposed to be affordable? http://ping.fm/cJ1ZG
An old article on UAL's 2002 bankruptcy filing resurfaced Monday as an apparently fresh report on Google's News. Stock in UA cratered http://ping.fm/7lxmH

Dash Express size

The Dash site FAQ has a Q/A about the Dash Express size.

Q: Why so big?
A: "Dash Express has a large battery to support up to 2 hours of use without a power supply. Dash Express also has three antennas - GPS, GPRS and WiFi which makes the device a larger size."

The simplistic comparison is with iPhone Gen2, though.
Google Chrome is fast without Web Accelerator but without cloud bookmarks/delicious/roboform too much trouble

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Lenovo site expires sessions prematurely. No contact info t report this sort of problem, of course
Delivered 1 of 2 new, diverse Oc3 for client, replacing DS3, for remote data center. Need to rate limit since firewall is overwhelmed.
www.seatexpert.com appears better than www.seatguru.com for UA 747 new config business seat selection
Ping.fm needs at least minimal help on site instead of turfing everything to Get.Satisfaction. Ex: difference between micro and reg blog
Lenovo nav bar at left doesn't show 17" laptops, such as W700. W700 page doesn't show current discounts http://ping.fm/YR58h
Verizon wants 48 hours notice to turn up Verizon Business circuits (OC3 in this case) including a conference bridge.
wish we'd switch from Meeting Maker 7.5 (so old that it's outside the current numbering system). Preferably to GCal.
Oops, meant to say that ping.fm apparently doesn't support microblogging for hi5, though it does support status updates and blogging
Lenovo notebook coupon USP2DAYSONLY good 11-12 Sep 08
Concerns that iTunes 8 causes Blue Screen of Death in some cases http://ping.fm/fqfH8

Yahoo oneConnect for iPhone

Can't find Yahoo oneConnect for iPhone by App search on the phone, but iTunes shows it.  Pointer from ZDNet.

Monday, September 01, 2008

Yves Klein: Leap Into the Void

It's disillusioning to read that the Yves Klein photo, Into The Void, was contrived

Ho Chi Minh Trail Laos Vietnam Travel Research

This will  be the anchor for trip planning on the Ho Chi Minh Trial in Vietname and Laos.

A good start is this post on a 6 day trip by motor bike starting from Vang Vieng to Thakhek.