I’m going back to school in August and I need to start creating a more flexible line of work for myself, something that I can mold  and make work around my 16-hour academic calendar. I’ve got 10 years experience fixing computers for people, and I’m not being a braggart when I say: I’m good. I enjoy making computers work better, and I explain what I’m doing in friendly terms.  I usually work in your home, but if I can do a better job by taking your computer back to my workbench, I’ll offer that. I’m good at discerning whether the computer is the problem — or whether you’re trying to do something you shouldn’t (Doh!). If you want my advice while  buying a computer you can bring me to the store. I may be able to save you money even after my fee, and you’ll get the right computer for your needs.

Also, I design business cards and flyers and such, like the ones you see here.

You can even call me and leave a message from right here, with this widget. Try it!

14%? REALLY? More than one out of eight people?

If there really is a moon landing conspiracy and thousands of people are in on it as well as some of our nations most bloated bureaucracies, you really believe that Buzz Aldrin punched that guy in the face (see CNN clip below at the 2:45 mark) for nothing then by the transitive property one must also believe that NASA is could be so very clever that they actually flew a couple guys up there to plant some evidence and brought them home.

Ever wondered what would have happened if they didn’t make it home? The Smoking Gun is there.

Snopes has the skinny on this footage, but I added it for good measure.

http://www.makeownringtone.com/

Ok, I know the website is really cheesy and there are lots of ads, but the interface works very well and even though they directly e-mailed the mp3 to my phone, they haven’t spammed me. Here’s my new ringtone:

So get rid of that stupid “Verizon Moods” factory ringtone and get a one that won’t embarass you. It’s free.

GOOG 411

Impress your friends! neighbors! colleagues! strangers!

1–800-GOOG-411 is my favorite Google product you’ve never heard of. It’s awesome… instead of shelling out $1 to Verizon or AT&T to get 411 information, Google provides it for free, and connects you. It will even send you a text message with the address and phone number of the business you’re calling about, also for free. I’ve probably used it a dozen times, and it’s been accurate every time.

Being good at Google has turned into a marketable skill for me. I’m working on something big right now, so stay tuned…

“Undocumented feature”, or bug?

It’s interesting to think about what ‘Open Source Society’ means. I wonder what else an Open Source Society could mean, if applied to political, sociological and behavioral models. I’m glad he’s helping to define it. Go check him out! www.opensourcesocity.org

Also, on the sidebar notice the new AVL Weather module. Thanks to Josh!

Ok so let’s imagine your computer is a restaurant. This gets better, I promise.

Any restaurant has a kitchen. The kitchen is your CPU.

Restaurants have patrons, too. And they alllll want something from the kitchen, that’s why they’re there.

But how do you get the instructions to the kitchen and the food to the patrons?

Waiters.

Wait. What?

Waiters! And this is a fancy restaurant, every table has its own waiter. The waiters are your processes, that list of things that comes up when Outlook crashes and you CTRL+ALT+DEL. And waiters are constantly are talking to the patrons and the kitchen. And a good waiter ends up talking more often to each side than a bad waiter.

So, exactly where does this get interesting?

First, the competition. Browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox use more and more of your computer’s resources as websites get more complicated and do more; think of all of that Web 2.0 content out there that we love. Now think of your family reunion.

A browser in this tory is really a big table of all your relatives. Lots of hungry people, and they all clamor for food, now. Oy. And of course you all sit at the same table. But the problem is, a table only has one waiter. So for everyone to eat quickly, the waiter has to be really really good, and everybody has to order at the same time for everyone to get fed expediently. If your fat Uncle Ricky takes a while to figure out whether to order the ranch or the bacon vinaigrette on his side salad, you know it’s going to take longer for the waiter to get around to you, and longer for everyone to eat. So everything on both sides has to work just right, or the service is bad. So maybe you don’t come back to this restaurant.

Google Chrome avoids this problem.

Chrome takes your big family the next time they go out and says, uh-uh, you can’t sit together this time, because anyway, not all of you need to sit together. You’re not all REALLY friends, you just share some DNA. You people should sit apart, at lots of different tables, with… lots of different waiters. Besides, your fat Uncle Ricky, he’s only a half Uncle because of your Grandad’s second marriage, so you don’t need to sit with him. You don’t need to wait for him to figure out his dressing choice. It won’t make your food late. You’re cool. You’re food arrived right when you expected it, and you really feel like you had the benefit of having one waiter to yourself. Much better than that last place you went to, right?

So that’s the beauty of Google Chrome. Download a beta of the future and take it for a spin. There are some kinks, but it’s an extremely usable beta. Besides, Gmail is still in beta after 3+ years, so no reason to wait.

Let me take the minority view on this one.  So… what if we do actually destroy the earth by building a machine of this power? Perhaps every intelligent species has had the technology to build such a thing without the corresponding ability to accurately model what it will do when they turn it on. Maybe we’re about there’s a cosmic corner that you just can’t peek around without taking a leap of ill-founded faith. There could be a point that all civilizations reach where they self-destruct because the laws of physics are bent too far by inexperienced hands, turning curious societies into a tragic stream of dead worlds. Maybe that’s why we’re “alone;” it’s because everyone else committed technocide.

I can’t wait for them to turn it on! I’ll throw a party!

Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this? DO YOU???

They’re going to put these poor industrious folks out of business.