The carpenter with the nail in his brain

Monday, May 22, 2006

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/book_week.shtml

Monday  22 – Friday 26 May 2006
Brain Matters
By Katrina Firlik, abridged by Doreen Estall, read by Vicki Simon
***Begin Quote***

Katrina Firlik, a young American neurosurgeon, is one of the scarce females from a rare species in medicine. She describes her fascination for the brain and its workings and malfunctions, and tells of the chief moments of her long training as a neurosurgeon. Through cases she has encountered: the carpenter with the nail in his brain, the schoolboy who is thrown out of his car and has a blood clot on the brain which grows before her eyes, the child with raging bacterial meningitis, the teenage girl with severe epilepsy, she reveals the astonishing achievements and the limitations of neurosurgery.
***End Quote***

An absolutely "neat" listen.  

 

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Posted by reinkefj

Personal Branding for Technology Professionals

Sunday, May 21, 2006

http://tutorials.lockergnome.com/library/20060521_personal_branding_for_technology_professionals.phtml 

Click to access PBTP.pdf

***Begin Quote***

Author Rajesh Setty examines the idea of building a peronal brand through his latest ebook, Personal Branding for Technology Professionals, including strategies for making yourself an invaluable part of the workplace no matter what high tech field has your focus. 
***End Quote***

He has some interesting ideas.

Isn't "branding" for cerial, muscle cars, and soap?

How can I brand a human being? I like Heinlein's quote:

 “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, pitch manure, solve equations, analyze a new problem, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

I think that branding works to imply value among alternatives. It's good when the choice has to be made without in-depth knowledge. I pick a Ford over a Chevy because I'm convinced that Fords are better than Chevys. I'm not sure that this is the case in "personal branding". There aren't the Big Turkeys, the Old Turkeys, and Svelete Turkeys for a hiring manager to choose from. 

I'd be interested in others' thinking. 

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Posted by reinkefj

I can break anything. Just give me time! In this case, Google Notebook.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

In this case, I was playing with GNBK doing some alumni research. (Sweet) And then I decided to do some networking (turkey) work. I decided that GNBK would be useful there as well. But, I want to keep the two well separate. SO I created a GMail account for the purpose. THEN when I tried to use it. GBNK reported that the "internet was unreachable". I don't think so. So I went and signed out from GMail and everything works fine. Guess there not prepared for the multiple gmail id situations. BUT, it should give a wrong error message.

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Posted by reinkefj

Are you sick of filling out web registration forms and remembering a mountain of passwords?

Sunday, May 21, 2006

http://videntity.org/

***Begin Quote***

Are you sick of filling out web registration forms and remembering a mountain of passwords?

Me too! I must have filled out hundreds of web forms in my lifetime, each asking for pretty much the same information. And usually these websites don't even really *need* any personal information, they just require a unique identification for a person, and a way to prove that the person controls that identity. At their core, that is what all those registration and login forms and verification emails boil down to. I started Videntity.org as a way to avoid all this hassle.
***End Quote***

Yup.

I'll try anything and everything.

So I took out an identity http://reinkefj.videntity.org/ and then went for a spin at Live Journal.

Appears to work.

Now if it was "accepted" everywhere, it's would be useful.

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Posted by reinkefj

Make a rule. Go ahead I dare you. Now if these guys would apply it to the IRS!

Sunday, May 21, 2006

http://www.start.com.my/blog/maximizing-your-roi-at-pizza-hut/

***Begin Quote***

Interesting story on how a group of Taiwanese students got together and circumvented the "One salad" rule at pizza hut.
***End Quote***

The pizza at Pizza Hut ain't bad but the universally bad service means it is low on the list. I haven't been there in eons and never heard of the one trip rule. 

These fellows should show us how to do it to the IRS!

The casinos in Vegas and AC better hope that this doens't become popular with the Senior Citizen circuit. While not as good as this, they can do a fair imitation of it. It looks like their last meal or that the food was gonna run out.

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Posted by reinkefj

Arghh another strange failure

Sunday, May 21, 2006

This morning at 0830 21MAY06, I took up luggable to find it a mess. Nothing that a reboot wouldn't cure, but investigation and restart took 30 minutes of my life thatI'll never get back and have nothing to show for it. I wish I'd have jotted my findings as I found them. But here's what remember. 

(1) RSSBANDIT was offline. YIM75 was offline and nothing would bring it back. Outlook was apparently OK. IE6 was "not responding". Every keystroke or mouse click took a long time to respond.
(2) Dyndns, MsnMsg, and Syncura were rproting OK.

(3) Google web accelerator was disconnected. (It does that a lot?)

(4) Outlook has a inbound email message at 647

I began killing things and eventually got to where I could restart. 

Hmm?

(A) This was different that when the WAP stop working.

(B) Google Web Accelerator is suspect.

(C) ISP can't be rulled out.

(D) IE6 running OWA to work was in the mix.

Argh squared! 

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Posted by reinkefj

Iran inching closer to genocide.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

http://newsbusters.org/node/5436

***Begin Quote***

A number of Canadian news websites are reporting that the Iranian parliament passed a law this week requiring non-Muslims in the country to wear certain insignia identifying them as such (hat tip to Drudge). As reported by Canada’s National Post: “Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.” The article continued: “‘This is reminiscent of the Holocaust,’ said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. ‘Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis.’" 

***End Quote***

The nut in charge of Iran already denied the Holocaust . Anytime government starts to "identify" its people you have to think GENOCIDE! If one was in Iran, near Iran, or even know an Iranian, then you have to be concerned. I KNEW an elderly Jewish lawyer who escaped Germany when he saw the trend. He was unable to convince his best friends, his family elders, or his friends in his community. They were all wiped out. Some of his friends were Catholic, Christian, Agnostics, or Anything. When the genocide begins, it doesn't matter what you are. You're grist for the mill. Only government can kill in numbers that are worse than a natural disaster. Pop over to http://www.jpfo.org/faq.htm#faq14 and read Paul Harvey's list of atrocities. I'd expect Iran to be next on the list.

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Posted by reinkefj

Google’s Notebook has been running when I had some lockups. Beware?

Saturday, May 20, 2006

When using GNotebook, I have had Internet Explorer 6.0.2900.2180.sp2 go nuts TWICE. It, on its own, spawned a bunch of extra windows. I assume it kept going until it ran out of whatever. Now I have never seen IE6 do that before. I don't know what causd it. I've used without it happening. And, I've never seen that behavior with Firefox1503. So be advise!

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Posted by reinkefj

SPAM seems to be picking up! What to do?

Saturday, May 20, 2006

In my unscientific study of email trends, I am taking more spam on my non-hidden short "human being readable" email addresses. Sigh, we know who controls the inet.

The hidden and random sting ones seem to be pretty immune. The hidden ones are never exposed to any one but me; no significant risk there. The random string ones are the ones where the address portion is just a long random string. And they seem immune; guess no spammer wants to chase them.

I have lot's of dedicated email addresses for lots of different purposes and have also “lost” a lot of addresses to spammers.

In the losing, I discovered "alpha spammers". They use alpha progression to eventually “discover” every address.  I wised up to it when some dumb spammer had “reinke @att.net, reinkea@, reinkez@ reinkeaa@, …” in the To field. They eventualy discovered every one of my @att.net addresses since they all looked like reinke xxxxx @ att.net! So, I have adopted the long random strings as the “user” part.  Also since no one invests any time in the “name”, I can change it when needed (i.e., if it starts to be spammed). 

Since 99% of the use of an email address is to be hit by “reply”, no one cares. AND I have many ways for people to get back in touch, like http://public.2idi.com/=reinkefj, so it seems to work for me. 

I'm going to have to abandon more of my non-hidden short "human being readable" email addresses. Sigh. I'm probably going to have to look into more of the alternatives.

My web-based email web form at http://public.2idi.com/=reinkefj has been very immune to spam. Who knows how long that will last.
Some of the various providers have some interesting features like only accepting email from sources in your address book. I'm going to look into them.

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Posted by reinkefj

Only a old exGI could call the National Guard to the border what it is “political theater”!

Saturday, May 20, 2006

http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese281.html

Guarding the Border
by Charley Reese
***Begin Quote***

Using the National Guard for players in this political theater shows you that the president never thinks a moment about the plight of regular Americans. Young men and women join the National Guard willing to serve their country in an emergency. Our leaky borders are not an emergency. They've been leaking for the past decade. For six years, Bush has ignored this problem. The only emergency is the collapse of Bush's popularity and the Republican Party's fear that it might lose control of Congress this fall. 

*** AND *** 

But overseas personnel are just a drop in the bucket from which the president can draw his 6,000 men for the border. Excluding the National Guard and Reserves, he has 1.4 million full-time active-duty military personnel, and all of them not in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are doing housekeeping chores and running training missions at home and abroad. That's what armies do in peacetime. 

***End Quote***

Only a vet understands how the politicians abuse, overuse, misuse, and turn our military into props. That's on both sides of the duopoly — R and D — D or R — Blue or Red — Red or Blue. There's no difference! Bad polls? Rush the guard to the borders. Impeachment? Bomb an asprin factory. Everytime a Washington president needs to distract, disrupt, or mislead, they use the military to distract us. 

BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW! FROM EVERYWHERE! NO DELAYS! NO EXCUSES!
Everone is on their own.  We're not the world's policemen. We have our own problems.

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Posted by reinkefj

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