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I don’t work for Comcast.

12-Mar-07

I find this very odd. Two of my friends today asked me “How’s working for Comcast?” or something like that. (Granted, one was a postcard dated March 2… but I GOT it today).

I don’t work for Comcast… Never have. Probably never will. It’s just a very odd coincidence that a friend asked me over IM “how’s your new Comcast job?” while an unread postcard asking roughly the same thing was sitting on my desk.

Odd. haha. :)

Comcast was giving us trouble with our internet… which was PREVENTING me from working for a while. That’s really the only connection.

Filed in work, wtf | | Comments (2) »

Jazz me up… Guitar++

04-Mar-07

So, in the first serious attempt I’ve made to keep myself from playing WoW for a day, I dusted off my guitar and tried to see how much I remember.

My fingers hurt like hell, but it’s a good hurt. :) I stumbled through a few of the Pumpkins songs I know, some Third Eye Blind, and the few original songs I wrote back in High School (still no lyrics for any of those).

Then I remembered I had a folder of songs and tablature somewhere. Dug it out. Unfortunately, it was full of base tabs from when I was in a band (for what, a month? haha). Most of the tabs were for songs I had wanted to play (Like Naveed), but never got brave enough to actually suggest them.

Anyway, in the back of the folder, I’d stuck a 3-ring notebook with half the pages already torn out. What was left was a bunch of poetry, maybe attempts at song lyrics actually–I barely remember writing any of it.

I found this little snippet though, and I think it’s brilliant. I have a sneaky suspicion that I stole it from someone:

Jazz me up,
I’m like a bad mood soda
Feel your fizz carress my sky.
Do I?

It’s sitting all by itself above some really crappy verse in a different colored pen as if I’d thrown it in there really rushed and then didn’t know what to do with it.

Anyway, I like it. I’m not sure if it’s mine. At the edge of my brain, I think I remember trying to come up with music for it. But of course failing miserably. I’ve been told that my “original” music sounds like Christian pop-rock (no offense… but happy bouncy “rock” music is not my cup of jasmine tea.)

More quotes may follow. Wish me luck with taking a break from WoW. The rest of my life is calling. :)

Filed in I made this, writing | | Comments (3) »

Comcast re-issues old email addresses == big security hole

07-Dec-06

So, my roommate and I recently switched to Comcast, and he was issued an email address @comcast consisting of the first letter of his first name and his entire last name.

He logged in today and discovered the inbox already contains email (and spam) from the previous owner (whose name was Carol. His name is Chris). Some of this email is from places she apparently shopped at, and if Chris was a Bad Person, it wouldn’t take much effort to go to those shopping websites, claim that “she” lost “her” password, and BINGO! He can go on a shopping spree on her dime. (Fortunately for her, he’s not a Bad Person, and would never do this.)

Does this seem wrong to you?

Someone needs to inform Comcast, and/or people who use Comcast, of the potential security holes inherent in re-issuing their customers’ email addresses.

So…

Dear Comcast:

Please stop re-issuing your customers’ usernames. It results in irresponsible mis-use of personal information. You are effectively giving someone’s old email address (and all correspondences going to it) to someone else, which could result in the misuse of their credit cards or other personal information.

Next:

Dear Comcast subscribers:

Don’t ever use your Comcast-issued email address. Ever. It is not secure, and any correspondences to or from this email address can be read by whoever Comcast decides to give that email address to next.

Luckily, I’ve never used my Comcast email address back when I subscribed.

So, come on kids. Who’s at fault here? and what steps do you think should be made to protect people from fraud in this kind of situation?

My thoughts:

It’s very easy to blame the subscriber for being ignorant of email’s insecurity. However, I don’t think this is fair because the average internet and computer user has great Big Misconceptions about How Stuff Works (it’s a series of tubes?), and there simply isn’t an effective way to educate them all.

So until everyone magically learns how to be more responsible, I think big, well-funded corporations like Comcast should take it upon themselves to make sure their customers are informed of the risks associated with using their services.

(Dude, someone digg this or something. Jeebus. People need to know about this.)

Filed in wtf | | Comments (7) »

Salaries of Govt. Officials and Standing with Minimum Wage Earners

05-Dec-06

Part I

Did you know that the Federal Govt. spends about $91,687,500.00 (that’s nearly $92 million, for those of us who don’t often see numbers bigger than 4 or 5 digits) a year on the salaries of 551 people?

Did you know that our president makes $400,000 a year? (sources: 1, 2) The average US salary in 2002 was $36,764 (ask.yahoo).

Let’s compare that to the Presidents and Prime Ministers of other nations (in US dollars):

  • Mexico: was $245,000 (new President’s salary not announced yet). Mexican minimum wage salary (couldn’t find annual average salaries): about $8/day, or $3,000 a year.
  • Canada: PM was $123,500 (USD) in 2004. Avg. Canadian salary: $40,000 (USD) (source).
  • I’m trying to get Japan’s numbers too.

Anyway, my numbers are not going to be exact because I’m taking info from places that seem reputable after really quick google searches. I’m not trying to be totally scientifically accurate. I just want to show the trends.

This means that our President officially makes 11 times what the average American makes. The Mexican president made much more: 81 times more than their minimum wage earners during a good year, granted my data is probably pretty off. The Canadian Prime Minister makes only 3 times that of the average Canadian.

The moral of this story? I don’t know. Maybe “I’m glad we’re not Mexico and I wish we were more like Canada” ?

Part II

Did you know that US Govt. salaries increase every year (in 2001, it increased by about $4,000) unless they vote to block it?

I didn’t either (2001 about.com article explaining how it happens).

Now, on the one hand, I understand that US congresspersons must maintain homes in more than one location, and they have all kinds of work-related and personal stresses that come with a job that literally doesn’t end at 5pm each day like our jobs do. However, i can’t help but wonder if it would be cheaper if the government paid for Washington-area homes for our representatives and gave a lower salary.

Lastly, did you know that Hillary Clinton proposed a bill to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to tie the national minimum wage increase to the percentage increase that congress receives every year? It’s called the Standing with Minimum Wage Earners Act of 2006 and I kind of like it. While it doesn’t address the fact that congress makes a ton of money each year, it would guarantee that next time congress fails to stop itself from getting a pay increase this year, we’ll get a minimum wage increase by the same percentage.

The pessimistic side of me wouldn’t be surprised if congress finally starts voting to stop their (and our) wage increase if this bill passes.

Anyway, this is just stuff I ran across and started to investigate for kicks. Really. I enjoy this kind of stuff.

Filed in politics | | Comments (5) »

Space walking for change

01-Dec-06

So… I used to live with Cody Sheehy, who runs Autonomy Productions and makes amazing documentaries and other creative video things (on top of being in grad school studying rangeland sciences! heh.)

He made a documentary about my/our other roomie Marci a while back and her nuclear reactor design that could take people to Mars. (linky to the teaser page)

Anyway, he recently got contracted to do some video clips to be shown at the 2006 2nd Space Exploration Conference and he just finished them.

Watch them here.

They’re only a few minutes long each and they’re really powerful and insightful. It’s a dude (named Chad) in a space suit interviewing real people on campus and in Portland (I assume) about their knowledge, interests, and perspective on NASA, space exploration, and where we’re at.

So, I’m a little sensitive of course, so duh I started crying a bit at the end, but really the tone and style of the project is very light-hearted and fun, but the impact of the whole film is amazingly powerful, especially if you were ever inspired by the idea of exploring space as a kid (or now).

WATCH THEM. I have to admit that I only knew a few of the questions they asked people, so it made me realize a lot about my own knowledge of where we are and what my priorities are too.

Filed in friends, science | | Comments (0) »

Firefox crop circle on google maps and google earth FINALLY !!

29-Nov-06

At last at last at last!

We’re finally imortalized on Google Maps and Google Earth!

Here’s the Digg story, a direct link to the google map (I’m the little dot on the far right in the picture of us near the trucks), and a article about the crop circle being in Google Earth!

I’m so stoked. I’m risking persecution by blogging at work while my bosses are down here because this is just THAT exciting!

btw, here’s the article that talks about the circle project and the the documentary that documented it all!

Filed in firefox, geek | | Comments (1) »

less than 1/3 of 1% difference.

09-Nov-06

On the Virginia race:

An Associated Press count Wednesday night showed Webb with 1,172,538 votes and Allen with 1,165,302, a difference of 7,236, or less than one-third of 1 percent.

Wow. There are more people enrolled in some high schools than that. My high school was something like 6,000 people when I was enrolled. Nevermind! I just checked. it was more like 2.5k. I was thinking of my graduating class of 600 people.

Anyway, I guess this means is that Allen can request a re-count on the state’s dime since it’s fewer than half a percentage point difference (if these numbers are the final count).

Filed in news, politics | | Comments (6) »

Voter turnout

08-Nov-06

Cassady just told me that voter turnout exceeded 40% for yesterday’s midterms (preliminary analysis). I know that I was one of those people who decided to stop feeling apathetic and start actually trying to understand what’s going on and get people to vote. Seems I wasn’t the only one.

Other news is saying they projected 45% turnout, and some states (like Michigan) are breaking major voter turnout records.

Not to mention the youth voter turnout record, as well as women turnouts increasing since 2000 in general!

Check out Oregon:

Democrat turnout outpaces Republicans’ and we’re likely to set a 16 year record for voter turnout in a non-presidential election (Nov. 7th story). I’m searching to find out what the end numbers were. That story implies that we could have hit 70%? that sounds very very high to me, but maybe it’s right? someone correct me.

Filed in news, politics | | Comments (0) »

An Oregon reaction to Election Day!

08-Nov-06

Oregon:
Did you see the OregonLive results yet??

I’m pretty happy about pretty much everything there. :) Except, uh… laughably 47 is passing without 46. Considering that 46 ALLOWS laws regulating campaign funds in the first place, you can’t pass a MEASURE THAT WOULD REGULATE FUNDS (measure 47) without it. And thus… right now, measure 47 is passing…but meaningless if 46 fails. (ORmeasures.org).

(12:09:14 AM) Xander: obviously, someone didn’t read the ballot measures.

Understatement FTW!

Edit: Isaac Laquedem and his readers have much more intelligent things to say about this.

Nation:

I’ve had this insane I-cant-turn-off-the-news night. I’m sure I’m not the only one. I’m ending the night with the Daily Show / Cobert Report mash-up. Cobert paraphrase of the day:

Democrats are going to use our tax dollars to buy electric cars for NPR and teach evolution to illegal immigrants!

Go Cobert go! (someone correct me on the exact text of that quote please?)

In my head:

Another thing that’s spiffy is how all of this led to me having really great conversations with people I don’t get to talk to very often. Like Maiki and Xander to name just two. I suppose it’s not BAD that politics brings people into productive, unexpected, heated, and awesome conversations with each other. That’s what it’s supposed to do.

Anyway. It seems that only three of the friends I talked to didn’t vote, so I think that’s a good sign. People my age … CARE! I feel less disenfranchised!

Filed in news, politics | | Comments (8) »

Reading Wil Shipley instead of working…

16-Oct-06

Reading digg and jumping to Wil Shipley’s blog post slamming Larry Bodine’s essay on why he hates Macs… is hazardous to my attention span.

Yes, if you insist on running a ten-year-old browser on your Mac instead of any of the five or so alternatives, some web sites may not work. In other news, if you spread rotten shit on a hot dog, it doesn’t taste as good.

Can’t… stop… laughing.

Basically, it’s a case of Bodine being both totally incompetent and a crappy writer. None of his claims are substantial or substantiated, it’s obvious to anyone who knows ANYTHING about technology that his few “real” complaints are actually Microsoft’s fault, and not Apple’s, and he implies that the things people claim are great about Macs (like the whole “less viruses” and stuff) are not true, but doesn’t address one way or another if he had a problem with it.

Anyway, i’ll let you read the article yourself. It links to Bodine’s essay.

I’m just… very disappointed that someone like this is a member of any kind of Law Technology News Editorial Advisory Board, although his other title is “Law Firm Marketing Consultant”…(oh and he can be reached at Lbodine@LawMarketing.com btw.)

Filed in geek, links, os-x | | Comments (1) »