I know, you’ve seen the ads – make $6000 a week in your spare time!! Make money doing the things you do ANYWAY, like reading email, browsing the web. The last week or so as things have been slow (and technically I was still “on vacation” until the 3rd of January). I had plenty of time to test out a few of these ideas. It seems that entrepreneurial-ism is a progressive disease – you find yourself many times thinking, hmmmm…. it seems like there should be a way to make a small profit by….. Anyway, many of these ideas are MORE trouble than they’re worth. REALLY. But one, that I signed up for just last night is actually looking very promising…. bux.to….
Tag: time
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Meniere’s Disease – diagnosed yesterday
Update – you can follow more about my experiences with Meniere’s Disease at my Meniere’s diagnosis blog.
Well… after several doctors visits, I have been diagnosed with Meniere’s Disease. Let me back up a bit…. several years ago I started getting a stuffy feeling in my right ear on occasion. I had allergies and it reminded me of an ear infection years ago, but I didn’t have a fever. It would come for a few days and go. Of course, it was always the right ear and I would always have a hard time hearing out of that ear. Occasionally, it would be accompanied by a roaring sound like a fan…. sometimes loud, sometimes soft. Sometimes it would feel like the ear drum was “tight as a drum” as you could actually FEEL sounds as well as hearing them slightly. Eventually I just got used to it coming and going. I’ve chalked it up to allergies…. over the years I’ve been prescribed and taken most every allergy medication I can think of and the next step was allergy shots…. well, it was a nuisance not a MAJOR problem, just a nuisance. Then… I would start feeling dizzy if my ear had been stopped up for 3-5 days running or more. That was still inconvenient, but I knew when to expect it and could manage…. Then the vertigo hit…. April 2006…
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X-Plane and linux
I’ve mentioned X-Plane before – it’s a flight simulator that strives to be as accurate flight modeling -wise as possible. Realism is one of their goals and it’s also unique in that it’s available for Mac/Windows and Linux (version 8 that is). (There is flightgear also, but X-Plane has still felt like better competition for Microsoft’s Flight Simulator line.) Anyway… Version 8 had linux support. Version 9 has beta’s out now for Windows and Mac, but there are rumors in the forums that version 9 may not see linux support. (Apparently the person in charge of the linux port has been hired by Google and was working on the linux port in his free time gratis…) I hope we’ll see a version 9 of X-Plane for linux. I wish I could lend help, but bash scripting is pretty much the zenith of my coding skills. (BTW – version 9 LOOKS nice from the screenshots I’ve seen. Here come a few more x-plane related thoughts….
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Wiring
I’ve got a home project to run more network cable here lately and found techtoolsupply to be an interesting resource for network and other cabling supplies. I don’t recall who I ordered from last time, it’s been several years (and those big spools of cable last for years unless you do a LOT of cabling.) On other notes…. There are many very good do it yourself wiring resources from electrical like this link to network wiring. Many people think that wireless means that it’s just backwards to install network cabling. (I don’t know how many people told me “why don’t you just use wireless” when I mentioned that when we built I wanted to get cat5 cable installed.) Well – here goes – wired is 1)faster and 2) more secure – yes I’ve heard of WPA for wireless, but my wired lan is between 10 and 100 times faster than my current wireless (yes, I’m running 802.11b still and an upgrade to the wireless wouldn’t get it up to the same speed yet either. then my wired network would be 2-20 times faster. (Of course that’s best case – clear line of sight to the wireless access point.)
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Comment Spam
Deleting TONS of comment spam that had slipped in unnoticed in the last couple months. I may have to generically disable pingbacks as well as comments. (Sad…) I hope I haven’t dumped legit comments in the purge, but…. really life is to short to spend too much time filtering it manually.
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Stopping email hoaxes and chain emails…
How many times have I seen the same chain email about who knows what… it always ends in something along the lines of “I don’t know if this is true, but I figure I don’t have anything to lose, so pass it along and let’s see what happens.” Computers were supposed to improve productivity, sometimes I think they’ve fueled other things though…. breakthechain.org is a good site to refer people to that forward messages to you that may be hoaxes or chains… some of them are real, some are hoaxes, some are absurd but why do we keep emailing them back and forth? Try to get some of your time back by sending folks to breakthechain.org
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Offline wikipedia revisited – fast offline wikipedia reader
I’ve mentioned offline wikipedia access before mainly because for all it’s flaws, wikipedia is probably the single largest, most comprehensive and best information resource out there. There may be other encyclopedias that are more accurate, but require subscription access… anyway for all the warts it’s a great resource. To many people though it comes as a great shock that we’re not plugged into the internet all the time.. (so many people say “why offline, that’s what makes wikipedia so good is that it’s current and if it’s not current it’s worthless.” When I was growing up we had an encyclopedia set from 1965, I grow up through the 70’s and 80’s and it was still VERY useful and there was very good information, now it may not have been “up to date” in many areas, but it was still informative and was right on a GREAT many things. I think if I manage to download wikipedia once a year I’ll get by on the “currency” of the information. Anyway… the main point is that many times internet access is 1)not reliable 2)not practical 3)not there….. For instance I do have wireless for the laptop, but don’t always hook up to wireless networks there are places here and there “bubbles” of access around town, but many of the places I go there just isn’t wireless internet available. Now I guess if I wanted to pay verizon another $60 a month that would increase I would have MORE pervasive access, but frankly…..
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High powered laser from a dvd burner
I really don’t know if I want to do this or not… but I found several sites talking about how to salvage the laser from a dvd burner and use it as a VERY high powered handheld laser. (i.e. “light that candle” kind of power….) Don’t get me wrong, I would like to be able to start the campfire from 10 paces just like anybody else would… in fact that would be VERY cool…. but the whole “instant blindness” thing kind of slows my eagerness down a bit. (Plus maybe the “is that skin burning?” thought that comes along there too…) You see I’ve got a 6 year old in the house (and another due in February… well – he won’t be six but… ) I know how much my 6 year old likes to get his hands my combo flashlight/laserpointer that I carry with me all the time and in fact when it was first given to me at Christmas (my brothers got identical ones), he was very quick to scarf one up that was within reach and start playing with it. Now we’ve had talks about being careful, not pointint it at someone else’s eyes, not looking into it, etc… but he’s not at an age where that really clicks… so if I build one of these I’ll need to lock it away in a gun cabinet…. And really ANYBODY that makes one of these OUGHT to treat it with the same respect as a loaded weapon. (No you’re not going to kill anyone, but blinded for life would not be fun….) Treat them responsibly. Links below the fold.
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HP Vista CLFS.SYS error
I’ve had a fun time this week dealing with a STRANGE Vista problem on an HP computer (I doubt it’s HP specific, but don’t know for certain.) The error goes like this… “A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.” “CLFS.sys” “Page_Fault_in_nonpaged_area” “If this is the first time you’ve seen this stop error screen….” And the stop error code looks like this “stop 0x00000050” The real problem is everything tried leads to the same place.
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Funny – list of reasons it doesn’t pay to be “the computer guy”…
I found this not too long ago at a techamok forum… copied here for convenience – not intended to slight the original author….