ThansCorner

13October2008

How you know when you’ve borrowed too much

Posted by Nathaniel Meierpolys under: Finance; News; Politics.

Including the recent $700 billion bailout of the financial industry and $100 billion dollors for Fannie and Freddie, the US has now dug deep enough into the hole to necessitate an extra digit on Times Square’s National Debt Clock.  Rolling over to above 10,000,000,000 dollars, over the weekend, the first digit previously used for the $ sign had to be changed to a 1 to mark the 10 trillion dollar threshold. (WKYC)

Now, maybe it’s just me, but how far into debt can we go before people start wondering whether we’re worth the investment.  Just for the sake of context, in 2006 back when the debt was around $8.5 trillion, the US paid $406 Billion in interest on the debt.  Compare that to the roughly $95 billion we spent on education or the $60 billion we spent on transportation in the same year.  What will it take to turn this around?  How long can the country go before we realize the danger we’re in.

Courtesy of http://www.federalbudget.com/

13October2008

RMW Consulting

Posted by Nathaniel Meierpolys under: Uncategorized.

This is just a quick plug for Reed Wahlberg’s RMW Consulting page.  

…Providing a full range of services with Design of Experiment, including

• Six Sigma DMAIC Methodology
• Continuous Quality Improvement Team Facilitation
• Statistical Tools and Measurement
• Data Acquisition and Presentation 

28September2008

GMail Search Wildcards and Keywords

Posted by Nathaniel Meierpolys under: Google; Websites.

This comes from Techflock.  There are a bunch of tricks available in gmail for finding certain types of messages such as unread, those from a specific user, date, label, or those accompanied by attachments.

Enjoy!
There are a few keywords that you can use in the search box at the top of the page

from:
to:
subject:
label:
after:
before:
in:
is:
has:

For the above, you could provide the following options as below

from:

from: {email address}
from: {name}

to:

to : {email address}
to : {name}

subject:

subject: {subject}

after:

after: {date in any known format} - For example : March 25, 10/10/2006, etc

before:

before: {date in any known format} - For example : March 25, 10/10/2006, etc

in:

in: inbox (Searches Inbox)
in: chat (Searches Chat)
in: drafts (Searches Drafts)
in: spam (Searches spam)
in: trash (Searches Trash)
in: anywhere (Searches All the Mail including Trash & Spam)
is:

is: starred (Searches Starred Mail)
is: sent (Searches Sent Mail)
is:read (Searches Read Mail)
is:unread (Searches Unread Mail)

has:

has:attachment (Checks for mail with Attachment)

label:

label: {label_name} (Checks in mail with Label name)

Other general options include

{search_keyword} and - {search_keyword} which means search for {search_keyword} or doesn’t have {search_keyword} in your mail
Example:

Find all mail which was addressed to techflock before 19th Dec 2006 and After 1st November 2006 and has networking but not basic in the mail with IMP as label

Your search query would be

before:2006/12/19 after:2006/11/01 to:techflock label:IMP in:anywhere networking -basic

28August2008

High gas prices are good for the US

Posted by Nathaniel Meierpolys under: Life; Politics.

Okay, before taking this the wrong way, hear me out.

For so long, gas prices in the US have been exceptionally low, kept down by government subsidies and protection of oil interests.  Check out this table comparing prices around the world.  We’ve been lucky to get along with such cheap fuel costs but when things get easy, people get lazy.  If it’s cheap to drive an hour to work every day, people have no reason to live closer, or invest in a bus or train route to fit the bill.  If it’s glamorous and profitable to push huge vehicles to consumers, there’s no incentive to develop efficient and sensible alternatives.

When times are easy, individuals and companies have no reason to invent and innovate and lead the world in developing new technologies.  We slip behind other countries because we’ve collectively forgotten what it means to strive desperately for the best.

High gas prices have forced us economically to do what we should have been doing on our own.  We’re facing the short-term shock that comes with a forced change in perspective.  Soon, though, the country will shift into gear and do what we do best.  The country should embrace this opportunity step it up and rediscover its place as a center of innovation and discovery.  I just hope we don’t forget the lesson when prices drop again.  SUV sales should never recover.

25August2008

Make the Send To menu your own

Posted by Nathaniel Meierpolys under: Systems Administration; Software.

This is nothing new I’ll admit, but it’s a quick and easy way to get around windows a little bit quicker.  Customize the ‘Send To’ section of the right-click menu for files.

Check that hidden files are visible:

• In any folder, go to Tools -> Folder Options -> View tab
• ‘Show Hidden Files and Folders’ should be checked

Add shortcuts to the C:/Documents and Settings/<profile_name>/Send To folder.

24August2008

Selective backups made easy

Posted by Nathaniel Meierpolys under: Organization; Software; Politics; Uncategorized.

I reformat occasionally to clean out all the built up junk and speed things up. The process of backing things up and getting them all set up again takes awhile. Every time I find myself worried that I will forgot something important and discover it only after I’ve hit the “Format Disk” button and blown past the warnings about deleted information.

Backup Magic automates and simplifies the process by allowing you to select certain folders to mirror on an external drive somewhere. I can set things up once and then periodically (or automatically on a cron job) run these backups. Just as easily, I can create another job to restore the backed up files/directories to their original location after a format (dead hard drive, sibling abuse, virus infestation, etc.).

Free to use. Pay if you really like it. Backup Magic

22July2008

Let Curiosity Off the Leash

Posted by Nathaniel Meierpolys under: Organization; Psychology; Philosophy.

Though generally serving as a waste of time and not-so-clever procrastination device, there are a few occasions when lists step in to keep me sane.  I’ve recently begun a list of things - random things - I’d like to know more about.

For example:

• how to make pad thai
• weather prediction
• barbeque
• the workings of nuclear power
• how plumbing works
• the art of the symphony
• early modes of transportation
• venture capital
• transatlantic ocean currents
• national parks of the us
• carrier-pidgeons

Often when I’m biking home from work, or falling asleep, or making dinner, etc. I think of things that would be worth knowing.  Sadly most of these thoughts are discarded and lost in the depths of my terrible terrible memory.

Try keeping a list - a leftover envelope, a notepad file, whatever - and take note of these things to look up later.  There’s the kind of knowledge we learn in classes where we memorize the names of elements in the periodic table, physics equations, dates of important events or classic novels.  Then there’s the kind of knowledge that really enriches the mind.

To fully digest something, it needs to be interesting enough to drive you to dig in and do move beyond memorization.  This list is my way of setting aside some time to set aside the stresses of life and immerse myself in things, random things, that enrich my view of the world.

22July2008

The Paradoxical Outdoors Geek

Posted by Nathaniel Meierpolys under: Psychology; Nature; Philosophy; Technology.

I am a geek. I read technology blogs, carry an iPod, work for a tech company, receive regular tech support calls from family and friends and am never too far from internet access.

Lately, though, I’ve discovered a rather unexpected trend in my habits. Nearly all of the things I truly love to do for fun are conspicuously devoid of any technological component. It’s almost as if such routine exposure to technology drives me to places where I won’t be reminded of it at all. Strange, huh.

When I was younger, I was the kid who brought his laptop to the campfire circle while camping on the family trip in Canada. These days the thought of sitting in serene silence without any hint of developed civilization have replaced the need for constant connectivity to the outside world.

Contented shivers make their way up my spine at the thought of a week in the woods. I sit and wonder whether the constant drive to develop new more powerful forms of technology is the only way to improve civilization. After all, the capacity for happiness has existed way longer than the knowledge of electricity or industrialization.

20July2008

Bungee Connect - Platform as a Service

Posted by Nathaniel Meierpolys under: Web Design; Websites; Uncategorized.

The age of Web 2.0 has been dominating more clearly with every successfully integrated web app out there. Facebook apps dominate hours of time in the lives of people from all walks of life. The iPhone’s webapp integration is familiar to way more people than it should be, and high-speed internet has steadily grown in accessibility allowing more and more powerful web projects that are more application than web site.

Bungee Connect aims to provide a powerful portal to the design of highly integrated and exciting applications on the web. Now, I’ve just recently started an internship with the company Bungee Lab so I’m somewhat biased. That bias comes, however, in the form only of one who has had the opportunity to really see what this is all about.

The builder requires no downloaded software, relying on a browser-based interface. Developers can build AJAX-driven applications without the complicated and unpleasant detail management of the low-level message-passing involved.

In my opinion, however, the biggest feature offered by this development environment is its focus on integration with existing web services. Bungee Connect provides interfaces for handling the low-level communication between a Bungee app and other information sources on the web. This allows developers to automate the integrate of information like Google Calendar events, local weather details, RSS feeds or Facebook friend details without sorting through the nasty details of coding these connections by hand.

This is an entirely new way of approaching web design that opens doors to powerful applications. The novelty comes with a relatively steep learning curve, but the Bungee Connect team is committed to helping developers overcome difficulties along the way. Anyone is welcome to register and try out the service and I highly recommend taking advantage of this opportunity. The internet is an exciting place to be these days.

Bungee Connect

13June2008

IEs4Linux - Internet Explorer for Linux

Posted by Nathaniel Meierpolys under: Software; Web Design.

IEs4Linux Main Site

Why would you want to run IE when you don’t have to?  Some websites require particular browsers and web developers need to test for browser compatibility.   This link is for you.

IEs4Linux simplifies the process of installing several versions of Internet Explorer for linux distributions using Wine.  Download and run the script and it takes care of all the details