dannyman.toldme.com

Car Insurance: The General Squishes Gecko

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/10/09/car-insurance-general-vs-geico/

Well, I was earlier excited about Geico giving me a deal on auto insurance, and pretty quick they sent me a letter saying my policy was revoked because Daniel Howard had his license suspended for two months back in 2003. (“Kid, have you ever been . . . arrested?”)

So . . . back to Google, ask for car insurance, click two of the top banner ads. One for Progressive, one for The General, and skip Geico, for being policy-cancelling bastards. (more…)

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The little things . . .

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/10/10/carp-goldfish-lunch/

It is the little things . . . like goldfish!

So, that is a good checkpoint for my morning’s work. Time to eat . . .

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Slashdot: DARPA “Grand Challenge” a Kick in the Pants?

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/10/10/darpa-ulterior-motives/

For those less dorky than I, the DARPA Grand Challenge was a held last Saturday to see which autonomous vehicle could drive itself on a challenging 125-mile obstacle course through the desert first. Stanford’s Touareg, named “Stanley” came in first, just ahead of a Hummer and a Humvee from CMU, followed by a Ford Escape hybrid, and five hours later, Frankenstein.

I had of course, been rooting for Team Underdawg, but after some accidents and bugs, they did not make it through the Qualifier. So, I rooted for Cajunbot, a cute little six-wheel ORV from Louisiana, but that vehicle did not get so far either . . . in the end, at least, the Hummer didn’t win, so there’s one less reason for assh!les with small penises to buy ginormous SUVs. Yay Stanley! (more…)

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WEAK

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/10/11/weak/

My thought process this morning:

“Hrmmm, this coffee . . . not so great . . . hrmm, this coffee, tastes weak. I made the coffee, did I put enough grounds in . . ? Funny, I don’t remember scooping the grounds this morning. I didn’t scoop grounds this morning? I didn’t scoop grounds this morning! Oh . . . *check the trash* nope, no used filter from yesterday . . . hey, that looks like tan-tinted water!! Ewwwwwwwww!!”

Washed out my cup, re-started the process.

My mental effort has been on . . . well, work, I guess, except for this little diverting update to entertain the masses.

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Mmmmm, Green!

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/10/11/pretty-tree/

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Notes on Medieval Agriculture

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/10/12/notes-on-medieval-agriculture/

Okay . . . so, a long-term maybe-goal of mine would be to build and enjoy playing a massively-multiplayer online “God Game” . . . somewhere, I think, between SimCity and Civilization, with a bit of Trade Wars / Railroad Tycoon thrown in. I have been thinking that if I ever were to pull this off, it would need to be focused, quite a bit, on something simpler than modern times . . . and I’ve been thinking a good place to go would be the medieval period. Feudalism especially could be an important part of the game play . . . you develop small regions, that trade together, you can build a modest army and send them off to attack things, and a lot of the time you’d probably be swearing allegiance to the greater lord / king, sending in, or receiving tributes to keep the peace. Feudalism had its run from 1066, with the Norman Conquest of England, until 1789, when it was formally abolished. The stretch in there was fairly static, up until about the enlightenment, which followed the printing press about halfway through. Figure about 500 years of fairly “stable” technology, a great place to have a long-running, persistent, online god game!

Anyway, what interests me is, collaborative / combative politics, supply-chain and market aspects of economy, trade, and, well, the whole enchantment of maps, and moving things around . . . assigning lands to vassals, I suppose, sinking wells, founding / razing towns . . . feedback loops . . . noticing patterns and anticipating changes, and dealing with disasters like bad harvests, invasion, and plague. (more…)

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Intelligently Designing Teeth

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/10/12/intelligently-designing-teeth/

<dogmeat-> i think if intelligent design were true, we’d have self-cleaning teeth
<saul> we do =)
<saul> it’s just not perfect
<saul> also, some people claim that our dental problems are made much worse by consuming simple sugars and processed foods
<SmooveB> plus, most long term dental problems occur after what would have been a normal lifespan.
<saul> concur
<dannyman> AND (more…)

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Workin Hard?

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/10/13/workin-hard/

Hardly workin.

Well, this guy . . . different story: (more…)

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Martin Luther King Quotes

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/10/19/martin-luther-king-quotes/

We happened by the Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco this weekend, visited the Zeum, which was cool, and caught the Wallace and Gromit movie, which rocked, and also checked out this cool monument to Martin Luther King, and brought back some good words that seem to apply to the present day: (more…)

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SysAdmin Solves Perl Mystery

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/10/20/sysadmin-solves-perl-mystery/

The developers came. “We have a mystery wrapped inside an enigma?”

I told them if it was further wrapped in bacon, they had my interest.

Perl:

  my $foo = sprintf("sseq_%012d_%012d",2153059002,2153059068);
  print STDERR "$foo\n";

(more…)

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Resize NTFS: Knoppix!

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/10/20/shrink-ntfs-knoppix/

It took a few days of struggle, but ultimately I found a great way to shrink an NTFS partition on a notebook computer to make room for a Linux-Windows dual-boot.

Although I am trying out Fedora Core 4 . . . just to, you know, learn Red Hat? Well, if you download the Knoppix CD, you can boot into a KDE environment which makes available a vaguely intuitive point-and-click interface to ntfsresize called QTParted. (more…)

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smashmyipod.com

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/10/21/smashmyipodcom/

A couple weeks back I was walking behind some grammar school kids, and as we passed the Apple Store, one of them started going on at length about how much various iPods cost for various features, and which, in his opinion, was the best buy, and the girl he was talking to pointed out that they were somewhat cheaper at Target.

And I had this cranky old man moment.

Like . . . grammar school kids should not be expert consumers.

http://smashmyipod.com/

God Bless Canadians.

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Fear

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/11/01/fear/

So, I spent last week in a hotel near Dulles Airport in Virginia setting up a new network. Most things went great, but we had a vendor, whom we are paying a lot of money, crash and burn on a support call. In a fantastical way. I mean, it was like dealing with a telco. We managed to complete everything on time, I even got to visit the Air and Space Museum before my flight back. But the bad experience shook our confidence in the vendor. Badly.

I spent a lot of time upset over this . . . actually lost sleep in my disillusionment. I wrote up a list of stuff I was upset about, and on Monday I took some time at my own office to re-write a more professional list of things that I want addressed. I sent this off to the responsible parties, and immediately got calls back, which I did not want to take. We have established that they have until Wednesday to answer my concerns and restore confidence.

But the thing that sticks in my mind was when I checked my voicemail last night, was that shortly after I had sent my list of concerns off, was that the guy who called back, his voice had fear in it. Like I’d caught him in the cross-hairs. Granted, he probably has the most riding on this . . . but I want him to succeed, and this is something I tried to convey in my message, though I made it clear that we were entirely prepared to cut our ties with the vendor if I were not impressed . . .

There is a little gratification to be had in the knowledge that you have scared someone, because fear is a powerful motivator. But, things happen . . . support and communications screw up from time to time . . . I don’t want to hear from someone who is working from a place of fear, I want people who have the confidence that they can see a way out of the problem . . . fear has its place, I suppose.

Well, I hope things work out. While giving the vendor time to get their story straight, I have also lined up some alternatives.

Fear?

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Civilization IV

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/11/01/civ4/

As posted on Skirv’s blog:

Overall, I think it is an excellent game.

I tried one game on easy level … quit after an hour or so … too easy.
In my second game I’m in 1902 on the almost-balanced level, but still feeling a little too easy to be interesting. But I want to use my panzers . . . and I just trained a spy, which sounds a lot more useful and intresting than in the older games. (more…)

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Comptroller?

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/11/02/comptroller/

So, I’m not looking at the blogs so much lately, but sometimes after I sublimate the animosity I’m feeling at a vendor into a very polite “but I need you guys to stop screwing me or else” missive I need a little chill.

The Banterist delivered giggles. You don’t have to live in New York City, I certainly don’t, to deeply appreciate and giggle heartily at this:

Superficial Voter’s Guide – NYC 2005

It’s fricking hilarious because . . . well, at least my mind works that way, especially when you ask yourself “Comptroller? What’s that? I have to pick one?”

Frazz induced a grin a well.

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