| Cornelius J. 的个人资料Brain Dump - Thoughts, m...照片日志列表 |  工具  帮助 |
|
|
2006/11/3 Gooooooooood Morning America!!!Gooooooooood Morning America!!!
It's a GREAT day!
I am 90 minutes away from being an American CITIZEN!!!
 I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indifisible, with liberty and justice for all.
2006/8/29 My wouldn't they?A company called Steorn is making claims that run counter to current established physics laws. They claim that they have invented a new energy generation method that results in more energy being produced than was applied i.e. producing energy out of nothing... This has been an ever elusive "holy grail" for the scientific community.
Given the current high cost of energy, and considering the rise in deman in China and the very real possibility that the price of oil will probably never come back down from it's stratospheric orbit, you would think any possibile new source of clean, renewable energy would be welcomed...
You'd think most people would be more than eager to have such energy sources validated given the $3/gal pump rates...
You'd think so...
but you'd be wrong!
On the Steorn site(http://www.steorn.com) they have a poll. See, Steorn challenged the scientific community to validate their findings. Anyway, the poll asks if visitors think that the scientific community should accept the challenge or not. So how is it that out of the over 100,000 people who voted, 61% do NOT think scientists should accept the challenge?! It makes no sense to me.
This negativity sure seems a lot like the reaction Galileo got when he first claimed that the world was round instead of flat. The way I see it, we should be investigating ANY possible clean, renewable energy sources we can.
Later
C 2006/7/24 Mike's rantOur beloved Newsgroup custodian, Mike Walsh, on the proper use of SharePoint product names.  2006/6/26 Charity to the lext level...As much flack as Bill Gates always gets from the Microsoft hater camp, such as depicting him as the devil etc. it can not be denied that Bill has donated more money to charity than ANYBODY in history! The glowing example of course is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which is currently about $30,000,000,000.00 strong... that's right... THIRTY BILLION DOLLARS! Show me ANY of the other CEO's that compete with Microsoft that has donated even 1/10th of that... there aren't any!
Now, investment mogul Warren Buffet has added his weight behind the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well. This article has more:
The point being that Buffet's donation will, over 20 years, double the foundation's funds. Of course, at the current rate of donation Bill is going to double it over that period as well so we may be looking at a 90 Billion dollar charitable foundation by then.
Say what you will, there is simply no denying Bill Gates' philanthropy...
Later
C 2006/6/1 JPEG wants to be free... well now it is!The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last week rejected a patent from Forgent Networks who was attempting to lay claim to the JPEG image standard. Read the full story here:
Later C 2006/5/15 Chrysler PT CruiserSo I got a Chrysler PT Cruiser as my rental car this week.
I wanted to reserve judgement until the end of the week, but I don't think my opinion will change much by then.
The good:
The bad:
The verdict: I won't be renting one of these again. Friendly driversOK, so I definitely think that Seattle has some of the more friendly drivers I've seen.
At least when you let someone in during rush hour, they acknowledge it and give you a wave!
 Later
C 2006/5/7 Making your donations countI discovered a little software package called It's Deductible some years back.
I was instantly sold on its ability to save me money on my taxes as far as my donations go.
I've been using it religiously every year since then.
Unfortunately, as things go in the technology world, there has been consolidation into two camps.
I always use TaxCut for my taxes... always have... always will (I guess).
So when I was buying the latest copy of TaxCut to do taxes with, I found that TaxCut now also offered a donations deduction package called Deduction Pro.
Well, the prospect of not having to pay $19.95 for the software and having it already included in the cost of my tax software package, made me happy, so I went ahead and decided to give it a try.
I'm sorry to say that I found the Deduction Pro package way, way, way inferior to It's Deductible.
The software didn't have nearly as many classifications and items as the original and I found it down right frustrating to try and classify many items.
As a result, several items ended up being classified as "custom" which defeats the purpose of buying the software in the first place... well I guess it was free... just as well because I'd be asking for my money back if I'd have paid for it...
 Anyway, It's Deductible is hands down the best and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who makes any, that's right, ANY donations to charity or Goodwil etc.
Later C 2006/5/4 My babies turn 21!Well, my babies finally turned 21 yesterday... OK, so they're only 3 in human years, but they've now reached adulthood as dogs! We celebrated with some Ritters vanilla ice cream and a couple of new raw hide chew bones!
How the time flies...
Later C Justice is served...I blogged briefly about the break in we had at our house last year. Well, in subsequent months, we were able to get a small amount of our stuff back, mostly Amy's sentimental jewelery. Though we didn't get anything else recovered, the police did apprehend one of the culprits who were responsible for our break in as well as another break in in the area.
Anyway, the prosecutor notified us that defendant (who I shall not name here) was scheduled to have pre-trial conference in Superior Court 9 yesterday. Having never seen the great American justice system in action personally, I wanted to be there and witness it first hand.
The hearing was scheduled for 10h00 and I got there at about 09h50. I sat and waited for a while, reading through some work papers to keep busy. They seemed to breeze through the cases pretty quickly, so I began to wonder if they had already herd the case. Now given ignorance, I assumed that the prosecutor's desk would be the one to the right of the judge, if you were standing in front and facing the judge... at least that's the way it's always portrayed in movies etc.
I got up and moved to the row of seats right behind that table and getting the attention of one of the attorneys sitting there I enquired, in hushed tones so as to not be in contempt of court, if the case had been heard. The attorney told me that I should ask the prosecutor who is at the other desk on the left... so I did.
She told me that the case has not come up yet, but that a plea bargain agreement was reached and that I was welcome to sit and wait for the case to come up. I stayed and the case finally came up about 1/2 hour later around 10h40. Nothing really exciting had happened until then with the exception of the judge throwing someone out of his court because he was talking during proceedings.
Finally they called her name and brought the defendent into the courtroom. As I had expected, she had reached a plea bargain agreement with the state. The agreement had her pleading guilty on two fellony counts of theft.
She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 2 years in prison but, because she was already on parole from a 2004 fellony burglary confiction, she had violated her parole and would have to serve out that term of 6 years followed by the 2 years from the theft charges resulting effectively in an 8 year sentence.
I am glad to live in a country where the wheels of justice still turns... they may turn slowly, but they do turn... unlike other countries where justice is just a word...
I am at piece now and I feel that justice was served...
Later
C 2006/4/13 IE 6 Address bar spoofing bug is cause for concern!This one seriously scares me.
I'm hoping Microsoft has a patch REAL soon for this.
Hai Nam Luke discovered the bug and Secunia has a page where you can test your browser to see if it is vulnerable.
Check it out here:
It will scare you... I guarantee it!
Later C 2006/4/9 Back where I want to be...Well, as you may have deduced from my BizTalk/Great Plains/eConnect posts lately, I have been involved in technology other than SharePoint. SharePoint is my passion so I'm happy to say that I'm going to have the opportunity to focus most of my time on SharePoint going forward.
I should have the opportunity to really dive into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in much more detail and now that the NDA has been lifted, look for much more on the topic right here!
Later C 2006/4/2 Best omelets anywhere!I had the best darn omelet I've every had in my ENTIRE life today...
Not since my days in the Air Force where the chefs in the Officer's Mess would whip up a delicious ham & cheese omelet have I had anything even remotely close to this.
I'm so happy to have found this new little gem!
The place...
Yum!
 Later
C 2006/3/25 Canon beats HP hands downI blogged a while back about why everyone should own a color laser printer. Of course it's easy when you're the only one who uses it, but in my case, my wife probably does more printing than I do by a long shot. She's a very visual person whereas I try and keep things electronic as far as possible.
Needless to say, it wouldn't make sense for our laser to be on my desk in the basement when I don't do most of the printing. As a result, the laser is on her desk in her office upstairs.
When I really need good quality printing, I will print to the laser, but sometimes you just have something small you need to print. You don't want to waste the laser's toner printing it and you definately don't want to wander all the way upstairs to get the printout either. For these times, you need just a small (and cheap) inkjet.
Now I mentioned my bias towards HP printers, so when it became time to replace my HP Deksjet 810C, I natuarlly looked at HP again. I found the HP Deskjet 3930 at buy.com for $42.99. It was cheaper than any other model and it seemed to be what I needed... besides, it's an HP!
I got my new printer and started using it right away.
Over time (given I don't print that much) I noticed the angle at which the paper is bent when printing from the feeder to the output. It was a little dissappointing, but hey, it's a cheapy printer right. What do you expect for $42.99!
 Then I reached the fateful day where the printer software started warning me that the color ink was low. So what? So it's low. The printing still seems fine, besides, who cares? If I want quality I'll print on the laser. So I simply kept on printing. Eventually the software warned me that the print cartridge was empty... really???
If it's empty, why are these color printouts still coming out of the printer?
 OK, so finally the ink did run out and I had to replace the cartridge. I replaced the cartridge and reset the printer... nothing... the printer still seemed to think that it's cartridge was empty.
I tried everything I could think of. I uninstalled the printer, the driver and the software. I disconnected the printer and let it sit for 2 days and then tried reinstalling again. No matter what I did, it simply refused to accept the fact that it had a new cartridge!
 After a week of messing around with it and countless hours wasted, I got mad and vowed never to buy HP printers again!
I had replaced my HP scanner (which didn't last as long as I had hoped either) about two years ago with a Canon scanner and the Canon has been humming away like a dream ever since. No problems at all... NOT EVEN ONE!!!
So I thought I'd look at the Canon line of printers. I found the Canon Pixma iP1600 at buy.com for $46.99. So I tried the printer that was only $4 more.
I WAS AMAZED!!!
The first thing I noticed was that the paper being printed on was not being bent as far because of the top feeder the printer had.
The second thing I noticed right away was that the printing quality of the Canon, on the second highest quality setting was better than the HP on it's highest setting.
Lastly of course was the fire test when the ink ran out... no problems changing cartridges whatsoever! I'm sold... I'll stick with Canon printers in the future!
Later
C 2006/3/10 Office 2007 UI Screen ShotsIf you want a sneak peak at the Office 2007 UI, there's a series of screen shots available here:
Enjoy...
Later C 2006/2/25 Name changeI guess my name must have changed from Cornelius J. van Dyk to Braian Dump.
My blog is listed on Romeo Pruno's site.
See for yourself... http://blog.shareoffice.it/romeopruno/archive/2005/12/13/3230.aspx
Alas, I like my name so I don't think I'll be calling myself Braian any time soon... and what's with Dump as a last name anyway!
 Later C Holiday Inn messSo my wife and I decided to have a little "get away" this weekend.
We decided to check into the Holiday Inn Select Indianapolis North @ The Pyramids.
The goal was to go playing in their new addition waterpark.
I went onto the Priority Club site a couple of weeks ago to reserve the room, but the waterpark access wasn't listed at all, so I just reserved a King Bed Non Smoking for $75.05.
We got to the hotel and we told the lady at checkin that we wanted to have access to the water park.
"No problem" she said... yeah right!
We enjoyed the water part immensely, but this morning when the bill came, our rate was listed as $249.00!!!
 Say what? You're kidding right?
Apparently not... apparently, they felt justified to charge two people, that's right TWO PEOPLE, the total sum of $173.95 JUST TO ACCESS THE WATERPARK!
That's almost $87 PER PERSON!!!
 I don't even think Disney is that expense... no wait...
I just checked an I KNOW Disney is not that expensive.
Heck, we could have had a full day's access to the Magic Kingdom ($30) AND ANOTHER full day's access to the Disney Water Park ($35) AND STILL have $22 each left over for dinner or something!
Though Holiday Inn was fully within their "legal" right to GOUGE, I mean charge me this totally ludecrous rate, the fact that I was not quoted the rate up front combined with the insane amount of money we're talking about here just for the waterpark (it's nice, but believe me, it's NOT $87 per person nice) leaves me stunned...
I feel TAKEN!!!
OK, I'm getting off my soap box now...
Later C |
|
|
