There have been countless times when friends or family have asked me to help them setup their home network. Something that comes in extremely handy is a list of default passwords for a huge selection of routers—hopefully including theirs, without which you might actually have to read an instruction manual.
Jason Scott on Wikipedia Editor Essjay
Jason Scott has written a great article on Wikipedia’s latest controversy.
A popular editor of Wikipedia was hired by the Wikia company and in doing so revealed that he wasn’t a guy with some college degrees but in fact was a 24-year old kid from Kentucky. This made a lot of people unhappy, and in the ensuing discussions, Jimbo Wales and strongly alleganced Wikipedians have tried to downplay it, mostly because that position’s always worked before. It’s not working as well this time.
As an aside, I should mention that Jason’s site, ascii.textfiles.com has become a favorite of mine lately and I enjoy pretty much everything about it.
Update: Jimbo Wales has asked Essjay to step down. Jason Scott has a great follow-up.
Link rot. Here is the post from the Wayback Machine.
The Rebate King
Confessions of a Mail-In Rebate Junkie is a collection of tips and tricks for making sure you collect on mail-in rebates. I liked reading about some of his more difficult rebate collections.
…[T]here is a high degree of universal frustration with the mail-in rebate process.
But that’s exactly what makes the mail-in rebate process so rewarding and exciting! The harder it is, the more discouraging it is for most people, and therefore fewer people wind up filing for or getting the rebates. And if fewer people get them, that means that the companies can afford to be more generous in the rebates that they offer—a bonanza for the true mail-in rebate warriors such as ourselves. So after years of climbing the rebate learning curve, I’ve decided to share my experiences, so that all of my fellow rebate junkies can benefit.
(Thanks Jackie)
Congratulations, You’ve Just Won!
“Congratulations, you’ve just won a trip to the Bahamas, Florida, or Cancun. Please press nine for further details.”
9.
“Hello, is this Jeff I’m speaking with?”
“Yes, this is Jeff”
“Hi Jeff, I’d just like to confirm…”
“oh, just a second, where are you calling from?”
“I’m calling from Orlando, Florida… oh um, mumble mumble travel agency”
“oh, ok…” whatever.
“Can I just confirm your phone number in case we get disconnected?”
“Well actually, your company has called my house before, and I’ve asked very nicely on several occasions to be taken off your list, but everytime I ask, I get hung-up on. Is there anyway you could please take me off your phoning list?”
“Oh, well actually because you’re in Cancun, I mean… um, Canada, the computer just dials the numbers and I have no way of removing them from the computer”.
“I see, well do you think it would be possible for me to talk to your manager and see if he or she could remove me from the list?”
“Actually, if I put my manager on, he won’t remove your number either, I’ll get in trouble and he’ll probably just hang up on you too.”
“Why do you work at a place that hangs up on people?”
“oh, I don’t know, it pays the bills—I guess. Have a good night.”
“Thanks, you too.”
Click.
Something to Stress About
If you’ve ever lost your dog, I’m sure you can totally relate to Heather Armstrong’s latest mishap with Chuck. This is some of her most heartfelt blogging to date.
iPod Listening Native
This google image of a North Americian Indian is not too far from my parents place in Medicine Hat.
He’s listening to an iPod in Australia.
Blogger SAT Thing
I didn’t even remember to spell-check it, but a few minutes ago I entered the Blogger SAT challenge.
We’re especially interested in finding out if bloggers, because of their regular practice in short-form writing, might be able to perform well on the test. On the blogger’s side, they’re used to cranking out pointless rants on a moment’s notice. But highschoolers are well-practiced at responding to their teachers’ inane writing prompts. Bloggers get to choose their topics, so blogging may not transfer well to the SAT’s writing prompt. Who can perform better on the SAT test? There’s only one way to find out.
So, without further ado, we present the Blogger SAT Challenge. We’ve prepared a (relatively) controlled environment where our
victimsvolunteers can respond to a sample SAT question.
I just want to mention that 21 minutes goes REALLY fast when the pressure is on.
Depending on my “grade”, I’ll decide in the future whether this particular essay ever sees the light of day.
Flight Patterns
Flight Patterns by Aaron Koblin is an amazing air travel visualization video.
[The flight pattern visualizations] are the result of experiments leading to the project Celestial Mechanics by Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne. FAA data was parsed and plotted using the Processing programming environment.
(via)
Google Finally Upgrades Blogger
After years of neglect… Finally an upgrade at Blogger worth noting.
Some of the upgrades include:
- a tie-in to your Google Account
- dynamic pages
- separate comment feeds
- new layouts
- an apparent merger with Google’s Page Creator for WYSIWYG editing
- integration of feeds
- public/private access control
- tag-based labels for categories
Take Blogger’s New Features tour. If they would have done this about 6 months sooner, I wouldn’t have switched to WordPress.
And as a special treat for those of you that like to blog (or have friends that do), here is Sprites – I Started A Blog Nobody Read.
Victory declared in Clog Wars
I don’t know why it is, but some people just hate Crocks, those strange looking sandals with the holes in them. I don’t have a pair myself so I don’t really have an opinion, however, my sister and her husband both love them (though she agrees they are not the most attractive shoes in the world).
Heather Armstrong (aka Dooce) and her husband, Jon, each have strong opinions on the subject. Things began to escalate until it looked as though Jon may never see his shoes again. In a stunning turn of events, final victory has been declared in the Clog Wars.