Author: Sammy G

Here’s my idea. Instead of making this election one big divisive nonsense, especially since prior to the runup McCain and Obama were pretty much aligned on many issues, and especially since Pallin is a complete joke of a candidate, and especially since the negative ads are not at all helpful to our democracy, my idea is just to have Mccain and Obama on the ballot. Whoever loses gets VP.

Doesn’t an Obama-McCain or McCain-Obama ticket seem so much more appealing?

Moved from http://barnson.org/node/884#comment-32901 -ed

NEW YORK (AP) — The National Debt Clock in New York City has run out of digits to record the growing figure. As a short-term fix, the digital dollar sign on the billboard-style clock near Times Square has been switched to a figure — the “1” in $10 trillion. It’s marking the federal government’s current debt at about $10.2 trillion.

According to the debt clock today, your family’s share is now $86,017.

I’d like to think that this one blog thread alone has done a decent job of showing just how fast and disastrous the U.S. economic picture has grown bleak. I attribute this to one thing – the Bush administration. For years now the state of economic and budget management affairs have grown weak and I feel like the Republican party in the White House has perpetrated one big avoidance tactic, focusing everyone’s attention on anything but the disaster-in-waiting.

Searching through the history of barnson.org it doesn’t seem we’ve ever written about online web conferencing. I’m currently looking for a good solution to do some online meetings because I’m sick of wasting all my time driving around town from meeting to meeting. Also, a lot of people I work with are out of town, and airfare is making travel prohibitive.

After searching through what seem to be the top solutions available for general small business use, I’m concluding that the technology hasn’t gotten to the plug-and-play functionality. If I want to talk to somebody I pick up a phone and punch some numbers. If I want to go online and hold a meeting, with audio, visual and shared desktop, then it gets complicated.

I’ve got Adobe Connect and Yugma as my top two contenders. Yugma looks cool because they’ve lowered the cost and are hosting the connection by eliminating audio and video. Have Skype running in tandem and yugma can work fine. Adobe Connect looks like it has everything on the screen but the cost is more. Anyway, these are my top 2 contenders right now.

What do you guys think about web conferencing and providers?

No way!

http://www.evildeadthemusical.com/

Wow. I totally need to get to Toronto before September rolls around!

I’m sure you all have heard that Google unleashed the Beta version of Knol. Knol is Google’s response to Wikipedia. Google is going to try and compete with Wikipedia by paying subject matter experts to post encyclopedia-like reports. Payment will come from % share of ad clicks. Google is attempting to validate the credibility through payment and having others both rate, review and comment on the submissions.

I think I know why this is happening.

Tell me if you think I’m wrong, but it’s almost as though entering a Google search has gotten to the point at which a searcher is expecting one of the top 5 return hits to include a wikipedia link. Meaning, when you enter a search term, such as “labia”, you are inherently expecting a number of returns to pop, with a wikipedia link to be a grounding return. This way, amongst the 12B+ searchable web pages, the wikipedia return link operates as the normal, routine, trusted response amongst those other awkward links…(libiaplasty?). I have become conditioned to expect this, to see Wikipedia in the top searches.

Google pulling or diminishing the ranking of return would be obvious. And what’s happened is that Google has become almost a linked gateway to the true information beyond. It’s getting that way for YouTube as well. Put in any search term on Google and I’m waiting for wikipedia and YouTube within the top 5.

Thus, Google, as well as the other 2 search providers become weakened as the gateway to information. They become the gateway to Wikipedia and YouTube.

Wife Unit and I just got back from our annual vacation during which, this year, we biked through two Southern Utah national parks on a guided active tour. If you haven’t visited Bryce or Zion National Park then I would immediately put them on your family’s ‘desirable’ vacation list. Zion alone does two things. First, it reaffirms the jaw-dropping power of nature’s beauty. It also reaffirms that the United States has this beauty. You don’t need to travel to other parts of the world to get hit with it.

There were some strange moments on the trip, though. I had to deal with the weird stuff. Without boring you with long traveler tales, let me just write that I never again want to accidentally open the door on an obese, middle-aged woman trying to get her naked body comfortable in the airplane bathroom (hint: it’s called ‘locking the door, people’). Also, I don’t ever want to be awoken during a 2-hour, cramped shuttle ride by some crazed old guy shoving a jar of bugs in my face and asking in whispered, maniacal glee, ‘ever seen these before?’. Finally, I’m not interested in ever again having to ransack the St. George’s Kmart with the local pharmacist swearing that he’s never heard of Sudafed. People in Southern Utah are messed. What did Warren Jeffs do to you guys?

In the first attached pic, we stayed in a cabin at the top of the cliff. This is looking up from the hike down. The second is after we had pedaled 80 miles in one day’s ride to Zion.

Glad to be back in MPLS, though. Back to the work life…and planning the next vacation…

http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-4-26jun08-en.htm

ICANN yesterday agreed to start in 2009 with letting any word replace the ubiquitous ‘.com’ tag in internet addresses. Some articles stated that it will start a scramble for top-level domains with a preexisting high-attraction factor, ultimately causing businesses to buy thousands of domains to protect their internet turf.

What do you guys think? Do you really think a whole new frenzy will result?

The general public currently recognizes domain names around entity status (for profit, non-profit) and geography (country of origin). This is obviously shattered as now a host of new categorical structures will be applied with the new domain pairings. For example, www.hotsex.barnson is a sure winner in the new open domain name age.

Without putting too much thought into this, my feeling is that most people with a personal website won’t move to change or protect their internet position. I’m sure that some businesses will want to expand their digital territory to protect their https. New ventures will certainly want to take up interesting pairings to enhance notoriety.

Thoughts?

My sump pump has been crazy overactive since the ground unfroze this spring (spring technically begins in late March, but it almost snowed last weekend). Every 45 minutes, the sump pump is going off and spewing out approximately 5 gallons of water into the backyard through the exhaust tubing. Normally, this would make me feel secure, especially after a rainstorm. However, regardless of the weather, the sump pump has been going off, like clockwork every 45 minutes. That doesn’t make me feel secure.

Anyone have any experience they could share? Like before my basement floods?

Can anyone help with this?

Recently, MS decided to run its automatic update for several service packs:

–Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 (KB110806) –Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1 (KB929300) –Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework, Version 1.1 Service Pack 1 (KB928366)

These updates have failed several times. no amount of re-downloading and running the install works. The result is that certain mission-critical software applications won’t open (e.g., QuickBooks). I’m stuck in a cycle of turning off the computer, rebooting, waiting for updates to install…and then no avail. Repairing the software doesn’t work.

Ideas?

Thanks to the latest round of GPS products, I think I finally understand why so many people have a fear of technology.

For years, I was always amazed when folks always mentioned how much they hate computers because they don’t understand how to use them. What’s so hard to understand? You power on, log on, mess around with some software, figure out how to manipulate all the variables offered, and ultimately work the system. Sure, there’s a range of veritable jargon to master, but it’s all shop speak that can easily be conquered with some familiarity.

Then I got a GPS system for my birthday. Here’s what happened. I opened up the box. I took the unit into my car. I plugged the unit into the car battery. I turned on the unit. Everything was up and running without flaw within 30 seconds. The only thing I had to do was plug in an address which the GPS unit (Garmin 360i) recognized before I even finished. There was a voice that spoke to me about directions. The whole thing “just worked”. It was perfect.

That’s when I realized how complicated most consumer electronics are for people. There are many people who don’t care and don’t want variables, tweaks, hacks, configurations, add-ons, plugins, upgrades, versions, betas, optimizations, and driver modifications. They want their microwaves, refrigerators and TV sets. I open the box, plug in, hit some buttons and my food is warm. For me the “it just works” mentality has always meant, “I don’t have to download several extra .dlls and reboot four times to get the thing to sync remotely with work.” For everyone else “it just works” means “the only effort I need to put in is driving to the store and buying it.”

I realize this isn’t anything new, but until you’ve witnessed the magic of a GPS solution working without flaw, you haven’t seen the world from the eyes of people who just want to buy goods and services and never want to understand or manipulate them. I got my laptop and have already put in over 12 hours of work loading in software, taking off the pre-load crap, rebooting, defragging, cleaning the registry, etc. And I’m still not done. This is why Apple products are so appealing to the hoi polloi — they just work and everything is contained without extra effort.