I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks this is just ridiculous…

Its the “consumerism”!

Two of three grads return home today. Skip the you-got-it-good jokes and get set for a new stage of parenting.

Your adult kids are back. Now what?

Want do download and keep a local copy of a video you saw online? Now you can do it without installing a funky plugin:

Download videos DIRECT from most video sites

KeepVid

An interesting discussion about keeping things messy…

IT is a truism of American life that we’re too darn messy, or we think we are, and we feel really bad about it. Our desks and dining room tables are awash with paper; our closets are bursting with clothes and sports equipment and old files; our laundry areas boil; our basements and garages seethe. And so do our partners — or our parents, if we happen to be teenagers.

This is why sales of home-organizing products, like accordion files and labelmakers and plastic tubs, keep going up and up, from $5.9 billion last year to a projected $7.6 billion by 2009, as do the revenues of companies that make closet organizing systems, an industry that is pulling in $3 billion a year, according to Closets magazine.

Saying Yes to Mess

A live shot from the camera on my phone.

A live shot from the camera on my phone.

This is totally awesome! I HATE having to call in to check my voicemail.

Simulscribe is a new service that will transcribe your voicemails and email them to you so you don’t have to go through the torturous hassle of pressing 1 on your cell phone, punching in your password, and then listening to your messages.

Simulscribe: Check Voicemail Without Your Phone

A live shot from the camera on my phone.

A live shot from the camera on my phone.

A live shot from the camera on my phone.

When I was a kid, I loved LEGOs…. well, I suppose I STILL love LEGOs… and this is totally cool! 😀

A live shot from the camera on my phone.

Whats your New Year’s resolution? Perhaps you should reconsider that gym membership…

10 Things Your Fitness Club Won’t Tell You‘

Here are some other secrets:

• 10 Things Your Hospital Won’t Tell You
• What Gas Stations Won’t Tell You
• 10 Things Your 401(k) Provider Won’t Tell You
• 10 Credit Card Secrets
• 10 Things Your Dentist Won’t Tell You
• 10 Things Your Veterinarian Won’t Tell You
• 10 Things Your Plumber Won’t Tell You
• 10 Things Your iPod Won’t Tell You
• 10 Things Your Rental Car Company Won’t Tell You
• 10 Things Your Plumber Won’t Tell You
• 10 Things Your Local News Won’t Tell You

This will save a lot of time for those who need it…

Looking for manageable Windows updates even without an internet connection? Our offline update 3.0 script collection downloads the entire body of updates for Windows 2000, XP or Server 2003 from Microsoft’s servers in one fell swoop and then uses them to create patch packages on CD, DVD or USB stick. Those in turn allow you to update as many PCs as desired.

DIY Service Pack

I missed on the the clearance sales for LED lights last year so I made a point to pick them up in time this year… I got sixty 50-LED strings at about $3 each at Walmart. So in 2007 I’ll be all lit-up and environmentally conscious as well! 😀

The automatic reboots after an overnight Windows update are pretty annoying. After some search, I found the comments in this blog post to be most helpful in changing the behaviour…

Now – I still get the nag screens reminding me to reboot, but it doesn’t do it automatically.

Sweet! 😀

For those of you using Gmail:

Just a week after I wrote “Uh Oh, Gmail Just Got Perfect” a number of users started screaming that all of their emails and contacts were auto deleted.

Gmail Disaster: Reports Of Mass Email Deletions

Update: Fixed the link

Its good to see that we’re making progress!

You know how it is.

You go through life thinking you’ve got your head wrapped around the world and all of its knowable information.

Then one day you read that since 2005, scientists have discovered more than 50 new species of animals and plants on the Southeast Asian island of Borneo. These new members of the List of Animals We Previously Didn’t Have a Clue About include a catfish with protruding teeth and suction cups on its belly that help it stick to rocks.

50 Things We Know Now (That We Didn’t Know This Time Last Year) 2006 Edition

Here’s the original ad for the first generation iPod…

All passports issued by the US State Department after January 1 will have always-on radio frequency identification chips, making it easy for officials – and hackers – to grab your personal stats. Getting paranoid about strangers slurping up your identity? Here’s what you can do about it.

How To: Disable Your Passport’s RFID Chip

I’ve always wondered if working when you’re young was a good or bad thing…

Teenagers are working their tails off in school and at everything from violin lessons to swim team, but fewer are working for the money these days, and that means they’re missing out on a key rite of passage.

If teens don’t work, they’ll pay in the long run

Maybe its finally time for me to get my license!

The FCC has dropped the Morse Testing requirement for amateur radio certifications. The public announcement was made on Friday. Ham radio operators will no longer have to study Morse, in a move patterned after other western nations

FCC Drops Morse Code Requirement

I haven’t decided to make the jump to Vista quite yet, but for those of you who have – this may be useful:

Early adopters of Microsoft’s new Vista operating system may notice that it will not connect to Samba share folders out of the box. This will be a bit of a pain for many enterprise customers. The technical reason is because Microsoft Vista’s default security policy is to only use NTLMv2 authentication. According to a Google search Samba doesn’t support this yet.

To get Vista to work with Samba follow the simple instructions below

Get Vista and Samba to work

A live shot from the camera on my phone.

Personally, I have no idea what a finite simple group of order two is, but I bet its safe to assume that these guys do…

Here are the words if you’d like to follow along… 🙂