You are standing in an open field west of a white house.

The roses have lost their luster,
And I have lost my love.
The heavens have lost their moonlight,
And all the stars above.

The sky is plagued with darkness,
The orchids rot with rue.
The world is dark and meaningless,
I've been eaten by a grue.

from http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/NZT/Nztspr85.html


more graph humor and song chart memes

I Beat the Internet Last Night. The End Guy Is Hard.

Death Star Lego Set

If ever there were a Star Wars toy that I wish I had had when I was a kid, it's the Death Star Lego Set . It's pricey, at $399, but it looks like hours of entertainment. It even has the trash compactor monster. Just think what you could do with 3800 pieces of of lockable plastic. Stick an M-80 in there and recreate the final scene from Episode 4!

Twitter and Twhirl

It took me a long time to find a stand-alone app for Twitter that I liked. I tried Twitteroo and a couple of others, but they just didn't do what I wanted. I'm using Twhirl now, and I like it. It has a clear button to clear old Tweets, and it has a shorten URL button, which is a lot handier than going to tinyurl.com everytime I want to post a link. I also like how it sits in the system tray and flashes new Tweets for just the right amount of time. It's pretty slick-looking too. But there are a couple of things I wish it did. I use TweetThis a lot to easily Tweet pages I'm reading, and I wish that was integrated into Twhirl. Also, I haven't yet figured out how to add new friends without having to go to the Twitter site. I'm sure these things will come along though. They're just minor annoyances more than anything. Maybe the developer of Twhirl will take those features into consideration with any updates.

Wiki for My MBA Program

Today I created a wiki for my MBA program. I've been thinking that there are so few people in the MBA program, that it's foolish for us not to work together. We have study groups and team projects, but all that knowledge is lost after class is over. Why not preserve some of it? The wiki format seems ideal.

Also, I'm tired of bookstores getting rich off of college kids with federally-backed loan money to burn. Instead of selling your books back to Follet at the end of the semester for $8 and then having some poor schmuck buy it at the beginning of next semester for $80, why not trade them at the end of the semester? Swap them or sell them for a decent price. Even if you sell it for $20, you made $12 more than what you would've with the bookstore, and the other guy saved $60. Seller win. Buyer win. Bookstore lose.

These things are easily done with a wiki, and there's not much maintenance involved. Everything is organic. Editing, revising, appending. I chose Wikispaces because it's free and fast, but I know that there are shareware wiki packages out there, like TikiWiki. I've played with them too, but they're more for if you want to take ownership of what you're doing. For a hobby wiki like this one, Wikispaces should work great.

You Can't Bring a Brick Back to Life

Thunderstorms rolled through the area last night. The power went out and rendered Linksys WRTG54 v.5 router a brick. The power LED was flashing rapidly, and I tried several things, including holding in the reset button for 5 seconds, then 30 seconds, then as I powered it off. I held that button in when I powered it back on. No change. This is apparently an indication of the firmware being corrupted, so I downloaded the latest firmware for the router from Linksys and tried to force it by using TFTP. No luck. The PC was not getting any response from the router. Power LED still blinking. I read something about a JTAG cable, and maybe I'll try that sometime on it, because apparently it's a pretty powerful router that with the right firmware can do a lot more than manage my home network.

So I went to Office Depot today to buy another, and I thought I had. I wasn't paying much attention, and I ended up with a Linksys wireless access point instead of a router. The picture on the box looked the same. Guess I should've read the big letters on the box that said "Wireless Access Point." I wondered at the checkout why it cost $30 more than what it should have. Anyhow, I got it home, realized my mistake and took it back, swapping it for the a router. Beware this mistake. It's an easy one.

I haven't figured out what good a wireless access point is to a home user yet, but I'm sure it's something I'll end up needing in the next couple of years. When is it going to end?

Indiana Jones Chokes

With the release of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skulls, the entire Indiana Jones team choked, from Lucas to Spielberg to Ford to Allen. And I'm a fan. The CGI was bad, the green screen was awful, and the ending was hokey. The crystal skulls were better left buried.