11.10.2008

Another Monday Morning

Good Monday Morning! It was a little frosty out in St. Charles this morning. Wasn't thick enough that I had to scrape it off, but did definitely have to let the car defrost for a few minutes. At least yesterday was the low point of the week, as far as temperatures are concerned. Unfortunately, they are calling for a chance of rain most of this week, but it will be into the upper 50's/lower 60's by the end of the week.

Yes, I have to admit to being a bit of a slacker this weekend. I didn't get the beer brewed for a couple of reasons. I didn't get home until after 11pm on Saturday and just couldn't get going early enough on Sunday morning. On a positive note, we decided to head out for breakfast at the local Waffle House, so Mo and the munchkin could run over to The Mills for some sort of sale at Archivers (scrapbooking stuff) and Children's Place. And then, just to top things off, I was experiencing a migraine by mid-morning and I really, really didn't want to head into my part-time job. But my migraine meds prevailed and I was able to get into work and stay for my shift.

Mo was sweet enough to get the pumpkins baked for me Sunday evening, but didn't get it started early enough for me to really get the beer going last night (even if I had felt up to it). She did complain that it was a lot harder to work with pie pumpkins than it was to work with the pumpkins for Jack-O-Lanterns, in that they were very hard to cut through and slice into wedges. She also was not expecting the quantity of seeds that were in those little pumpkins. Definitely a lot more pumpkin meat inside pie pumpkins. But the hard part is done, the pumpkins are resting in the fridge waiting for Tuesday, since I'm off from work because of Veteran's Day.

Tomorrow is also lodge night at Polar Star Rose Hill. Dinner is at 6pm and lodge follows at 7pm. I think we are having BBQ for dinner. Mmmmmmm. And one thing I can say about Freemasonry is that we love to eat. **chuckle** Feel free to stop by.

By the way, I wanted to bring to your attention another wonderful organization. It's the Walker Scottish Rite Clinic for Childhood Language Disorders. The clinic helps to teach two through six year-old kids with speech and language disorders the communication skills that they are going to need to succeed in school and their lives. All services are provided FREE. Their website is at http://www.srclinic.org/.

And I found these online coupons, so I'm posting them here.

Update: Hackers launch PDF attacks, exploit just-patched Reader bug

Attackers are exploiting one of the vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader that was patched earlier this week, security researchers warned today.

Adobe confirmed the attacks, and urged users to update the software to version 9 immediately, or if that's not possible, to deploy the patched version of Reader 8.



How to Secure Laptops from U.S. Government's Prying Eyes

The U.S. Government has recently been given full permission to check the contents of laptops and mobile devices belonging to travelers passing into the United States at border control checkpoints.



Malware Detection Goes Hybrid

Wouldn't it be great if we could have a simple solution to the malware problem? It's easier, for now, to implement complicated ones. Symantec shows the way.



H-1B Visa Reform Takes Shape to Address Fraud, Procedural Nightmares

In the wake of a report claiming up to 20 percent of H-1B applicants may be fraudulent, the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services will look more closely at H-1B visa applications.



Top Candidates for Barack Obama's White House CIO Square Off

Who's in the running to be Barack Obama's chief technology officer? Who isn't?



10 Geeky Digital Watches

For years the wristwatch has served many functions other than simply telling the time. Why, just last year we looked at various timepieces with random features like built-in tape measures, sleep-tracking capabilities, and onboard data storage.



Ancient galaxies pose for the camera

The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (aka ESO, or European Southern Observatory) has released a rather fetching snap of distant galaxies posing in the U-band - the boundary between visible light and ultraviolet - which shows some clusters of stars so old that they're seen "as they were when the universe was only two billion years old".



Of Dell's self-encrypting laptop

Never lose notebook data again. Not if you have a Dell notebook: the company is producing self-encrypting laptops with Seagate encrypting drives and McAfee security software.



Pioneer DVR-116D multi-format DVD rewriter

The current maximum write speed on a DVD±R is 16x, so Pioneer’s 20x drive has to be doing something special. Using 16x media, you should be able to see up to 25 per cent extra read and write speed.



Nokia 7310 Supernova candybar phone

Nokia is re-introducing the once-popular exchangeable Xpress-On cover concept to a new generation of impressionable mobile buyer with its Supernova range of budget mobiles.



Study: iPhones Twice As Reliable As BlackBerries

The iPhone is twice as reliable as the Blackberry after one year of ownership, a new study by SquareTrade finds. SquareTrade, which sells extra warranties for cell phones and other devices, looked at the failure rates of 15,000 phones covered under its plans. The malfunction rate for iPhones after one year is 5.6 percent, compared to 11.2 percent for the Blackberry and 16.2 percent for the Treo.



First Images of Asteroid 2008 TC3 Impact Aftermath

A month after asteroid 2008 TC3 hit the Earth's atmosphere, the first ground-based image of the event has surfaced on the Internet. Admittedly, it's not the fireball everyone has been waiting to see, but it is visual evidence that something hit us above Sudan on October 7th.



Chandrayaan-1 Now Successfully in Lunar Orbit

Chandrayaan-1, India’s first unmanned spacecraft mission to moon, successfully entered lunar orbit on November 8. The spacecraft fired its engines to reduce velocity and enable the Moon's gravity to capture it; engines were fired for 817 seconds when Chandrayaan-1 was about 500 km away from the moon.



Tag The World—One Tweet, Yelp, and Flickr At A Time

We all know how tagging makes the Web a richer place (by tapping into people’s desire to categorize things and share those categories, ad-hoc though they may be, with the everyone else). Tagging brings a bottoms-up order to the Web by making information more searchable and thus easier to find. Now it is time to start tagging the world. The real world.



"360" Music Deals Become Mandatory As Labels Prepare For Free Music

360 Music deals give labels their standard cut of CD and digital download sales, but also give them a percentage of event ticket profits, merchandise sales, endorsement deals and anything else that uses the artist’s brand or music.



Twitter Tools To Turbo Charge Your Microblogging

Move from Twitter beginner to Twitter ninja with free tools from TweetDeck, Twitbin, Twitterfox, Facebook, Twitterfeed, Qwitter, and others.



Game Developers' Top Tools And Resources

Newbie game developers are finding invaluable tips and tools on Kongregate, Addicting Games, Flash Games License, Gamasutra and other Web sites.



Mini Nuclear Power Plants For Your Neighborhood In Five Years

Scientists at the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb say nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power about 20,000 homes will be available within the next five years. The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, absent of any weapon-grade materials, and also have no moving parts.



Pimped up T-cells seek out and destroy HIV

Researchers have harnessed evolution to create souped-up immune cells able to recognise HIV far better than the regular "killer" T-cells our body produces.



Incredibly Dangerous Android Bug Executes Every Keystroke as Root User

Warning: This is not a joke. If you are one of the lucky few with the Android G1 Googlephone, try typing the word "reboot". Sorry. I take it you managed to find your way back here after your phone restarted



Make a Giant Poster of Anything in Three Minutes or Less

A simple and free online application can turn your favorite pictures into printable PDF files that you can cull into a huge wall-sized poster.



Schmidt not interested in tech czar job

Google's CEO takes himself out of the running to be the United States' first chief technology officer.



MP3 player headphones may hinder pacemakers

Headphones used with MP3 digital music players like the iPod may interfere with heart pacemakers and implantable defibrillators, U.S. researchers said Sunday.



Data losses hit 280 million people

Sixty million are the victim of hacking while the rest are accidental, says KPMG study



Could Apple Acquire Yahoo?

The business world is still buzzing about Microsoft’s $44.6 billion dollar offer to buy Yahoo, and rightly so. That’s a significant deal with significant implications for the Internet that we all know and love. We still haven’t heard the final word from Yahoo about whether or not they’ll proceed to talk with Microsoft, but it’s pretty clear that they have to do something soon.



Government Provides More Aid to A.I.G.

The federal government on Monday announced an overhaul of its rescue of American International Group, saying it would purchase of $40 billion of the company’s stock, after signs that the initial bailout was putting too much strain on the ailing insurer.



China’s Stimulus Plan Buoys Markets in Asia and Europe

Stocks gained in Europe and Asia on Monday, a day after the Chinese government announced an extensive economic stimulus plan.



Seagate Barracuda 500GB Serial ATA 3.0Gbs Internal HDD

Buy.com offers the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive, model no. ST3500320AS, for $60.99 with free shipping ($0.12/GB). That's $4 less than our mention three days ago and the lowest total price we've seen. This 7200 rpm hard drive features a 32MB cache, 43% power savings over its predecessor, and RoHS compliance.



Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB Barracuda SATA 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 8.5MS Hard Drive

Amazon.com offers the Seagate Barracuda SATA 1.5TB for $150 with Free Super Saver Shipping.


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