TheGeekSite

I have some geekish and non-geekish items to clear out (to make room for more of course), so I’ve added an auction section to The Geek Site.  I’ll post again once I have items listed.  In the meantime, check out http://thegeeksite.com/buyme and feel free to sell your own items if you so desire.  I don’t charge listing fees or make money off of other peoples’ sales.  What you sell your item for is what you get paid, no hidden fees or charges.  Try to get a deal like that on eBay.

• When it is a monumental/historical achievement, a la lunar landing.
• When you are a company releasing a new/improved product.
• In sports stats/records.
• If your life depends on it, such as escaping a structure fire.
• In sex. (just use your imagination with this one).

When is it not good to be the first?  In almost every other scenario.  Particularly as a consumer.  You don’t want to be the first to buy something.  Whether is it a rocking chair or a computer, there are a few things you can always count on by being the first, you’ll pay more for it and you’ll get to discover its limitations, shortcomings, bugs, etc.

All I can do is chuckle at the millions of people who were so damn pleased with themselves for camping out to get the new iPhone or rushing to Apple’s website to upgrade their existing iPhone only to end up with a brick.  Seems that being the first didn’t turn out to be the best plan there either.  On behalf of those of us who have common sense (or business sense) I’d like to sincerely thank all of you “bleeding edgers” for finding the bugs in the OS upgrade and the shortcomings of Apple’s servers.  Mr. Barnum said it best, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the birth of the “modern computer.”

The room sized Small Scale Experimental Machine, or “Baby” as it was affectionately called, went online on June 21, 1948 at Manchester University, England. The significance of “Baby” was that it was the first computer that could be repurposed for performing different tasks without being physically rebuilt. It also had a whopping 128 bytes (1024 bits) of memory in which to store programs and the data for use by the programs. For comparison purposes, 1 GB of RAM, the amount available in most off the shelf consumer personal computers and laptops today, can store about 8 billion bits and that’s not including the 160+ GB hard drives most of today’s computers come with.

While other, somewhat better known computers, such as ENIAC and Colossus preceded “Baby,” they all had to be completely rebuilt to change the function they were performing, which often took weeks. This is why “Baby” is considered by most computer aficionados to be the first “modern computer.”

Click here to view the original 1948 news report of Baby

I had to be at work at 7:00am this morning.  Waking up at 5:15am was brutal.

As if getting up that early wasn’t bad enough, I then spent the first three and a half hours of my work day on my knees on a concrete floor covered by what barely qualifies as carpet   My knees are both bruised and rug burnt.

After eight hours of sucking face with and crushing the chest of Little Anne, followed by tying my desk partner’s extremities in various positions, I was released from the torture chamber and headed to my office to actually get some work done.  Having scored 100% on all exams, however, I earned Red Cross certifications for CPR, AED, and first aid.  I suppose the long day, sore knees, and aching muscles are all worth it if I’m ever in the position to use my new skills to save someone’s life.  I’m going to have nightmares about that freaky CPR mannequin Little Anne, though, particularly pealing away of the latex face to reveal the alien like skull structure beneath.

When I got home today our digital cable and Internet (also through the cable company) were out. I know they’re doing upgrades in the area, but I don’t know how that would’ve knocked us offline.

Customer Service is being less than useful with their script read, “power off your cable box,” “unplug the cable and plug it back in,” etc. troubleshooting steps. Dutifully, I am following them, but explain to me how powering off my cable box will fix my Internet connection. Or, for that matter, how anything to do with our cable box impacts anything to do with our Internet connection, other than they connect to the same main cable junction.

I’ll call back tomorrow when I can talk to someone who doesn’t just read a script. In the meantime, we have analog cable (so I can at least watch the Stanley Cup Finals) and I’ve found a spot in the corner of the dining room where I can get a stable, albeit sssllllooooooowww, connection to a neighbor’s unsecured wireless access point. They must have DSL or a satellite hookup.

This puts me in a moral dilemma. I know I am breaking the law by “stealing” my neighbor’s bandwidth, however, I need an Internet connection tonight to get work done. While I’m trying to get my work done as quickly as possible (he says as he updates his blog) so I can relinquish my leeched connection, I still feel somewhat guilty about the whole thing.

My guilt has little to nothing to do with breaking the law. Rather, it’s the knowledge that if my Internet connection was being slowed down by a neighbor leeching my bandwidth I would be upset. Then again, they would have to know a decent amount about WiFi hacking to get to my network and I would kick them off almost immediately. So maybe it’s my neighbor’s own fault for leaving the door open. Yeah, that’s it. It’s the neighbor’s fault I’m a thief.

What do you think? If a person literally broadcasts an open, unsecured Internet connection, is it wrong for other people to use that connection? Does it make a difference if the person “illegally” using the unsecured connection isn’t breaking any other laws, such as sharing copywritten material, viewing illegal pornography (whatever constitutes illegal in the area), opening the other person’s files, etc?

I receive a rather large volume of trade magazines, mostly free with a couple paid subscriptions. Due to the sheer number I receive I never have time to wade through them all and they consume a large amount of space. Eventually the pile grows high enough that I pull out a couple with interesting looking covers and toss the rest in the recycle bin.

Clearly, this is a waste of resources, so I need to cut down on the number I receive, yet continue to receive those containing the most useful information.

Below is a list of the magazines and weekly perdiodicals I currently receive (in no particular order). What are your thoughts on which I should cut? Are there others you would recommend? The first thing I noticed was the lack of Mac specific magazines. Thoughts?

• eWeek
• InformationWeek
• ComputerWorld
• NetworkWorld
• PC Magazine
• Fast Company
• CIO
• re: ID
• Access Control and Security Systems
• Integrated Solutions for Wireless Mobility and RFID
• Information Security
• Computer Shopper
• Messaging News