Everyday Stupidities

Greetings, people. I'm amused by the Conficker worm panic that is brewing because all the reports say, straight up, that despite the fact the virus keeps have known about this beast since last November they don't know what it does. And fear that today it will morph into some other form and/or be launched into action, whatever that is. Not to be a total cybercynic (oh wait, I am) but really, anyone remember Comet Kohoutek or the Y2K scare? I was thinking just the other day that no one talks about April Fools' Day anymore, but whatever media coverage that worm is getting might just make up for it. Anyhow. Pictured here is something more real, the first LED-based spotlight that screws into an average indoor light socket that I've held in my hands (after years of hearing about their development). While most reports about this type of lighting say that they have a life of 100,000 hours thus last 10 years, ergo why the outlets offering them charge so much, this one is a 45 watt equivalent that only uses 3.5 watts and cost $9. Stronger exist. Candelabra-style LED lights are also available at the same discounter I got this at.

I haven't taken the time to confirm this as a user error or an actual stupidity (it could be either, I was monkeying around inside my computer installing RAM afterall and could have knocked a cable loose) but at this moment my CD burner is listed in My Computer and reacts when the icon is clicked, but isn't actually reading disks. If it's a connection error, fine, I fix in seconds. If the drive actually has bit the electronic dust, which wouldn't be the first time (this Hi-Val internal was the replacement for a Phillips that died a poorly-timed death in front of company), I might have a spare sitting behind me but not as fast as this one. Grr. [later that same day...] Not the connections. Yes, I have three drives behind me -- one I know is broken because I replaced it for someone, two work but they are 2x CD-RWs made in 1999 -- so I hopped off to everyone's favorite store and bought a 22x dual layer DVD burner. All is well now.

A confession to make... For a long while I've sneered at sites like LiveJournal, MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook. I've even bragged about my sneering at those sites, because I like to be far too l33t about technology. Well, three out of four remain the same -- LiveJournal is way too emo, MySpace has too many vain kids, Twitter has a name that speaks for itself (lots of twits with only about 160 characters' worth of things to say), but... *sigh* I did join Facebook a couple weeks ago. Primarily to keep in touch with friends "back home" (or originally from there) who can't seem to write the same things in a direct email, share photos from a concert I went to beside those old friends with the folks in the bands as well as those 20 year high school reunion pictures only one other classmate had ever seen before, and chat with a couple people that can't seem to install a dedicated instant messenger program. Five people begged me to join, I did, and after their initial "we have converted j00!" messages haven't been on much themselves... figures. So beside the benefit of obtaining the phone numbers of a couple people I lost track of about twenty years ago, I say it's "just there." A nice tool for some purposes but not all that and a bag of coleslaw as some people act like it is, and (sorry, little brother) I wouldn't consider blogging or sharing anything personal there since the only people who would see stuff are people I've dubbed friends. That leaves out so many! The 80's trivia games are kinda cool but whomever wrote that "What flavor of lip gloss are you?" quiz needs to sprout some pubes. Oh, and whoever created that IQ Test bullshit, which has a game-looking ad on every Facebook game page and the tip-off that it's a scam is where it asks for your cell phone carrier and phone number, needs to die in a fire. So I bring up my Facebook presence, with a bit of sneer intact, not to invite anyone to look me up [don't] but because by now a number of the people who I told "I will never join!" for ages are aware that I have indeed joined and I don't want to be a total hypocrite. (Part-time, perhaps.) Just rolling with the new, since the previous edition of this exact same concept (realtime chat, message boards, special interest groups, email, door games) is something I subscribed to heavily in the late 1980's and through the 1990's, dial-up bulletin board systems... this is just on a more nationwide/global basis than Backwaters Of The Mind BBS ever was, and having broadband it doesn't tie up my phone line. :)