I'm just drinking...

Smoke Gets In Your Imac: Smoking Near Apple Computers Creates Biohazard, Voids Warranty

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:22:31 -0700

@PsiCop: Enough to make me sick. I react badly to nicotine, and the tar/nicotine film that heavy smoking deposits on surfaces will make my skin turn red and, in bad cases, cause nausea.

Yes, the hazard to the tech could be avoided with a set of nitrile gloves and a respirator. The hazard to the computer, on the other hand, isn’t so easy. Plating every surface inside a computer with goo (which may be conductive) and the dust that sticks to the goo (which causes overheating) is not a good thing. I’d certainly list that under “abuse and neglect”. The big problem, from Apple’s point of view is that cleaning that computer, before they can even start diagnosing and repairing it, is a multi-hour job. You need to tear everything down (that stuff gets in EVERYWHERE) and go at it with swabs and solvents. So a job … say, a keyboard swap … that might take 15 minutes in normal circumstances suddenly becomes a four hour job. Apple prices their warranties on the assumption that they will do, on average, X amount of work per buyer. Abused computers — whether the contaminant is smoke residue or Pepsi residue — throw that estimate way off. People who take proper care of their computers would resent having to pay for those who dump Pepsi all over them … or coat them in smoke goo.

A few other odds and ends:

Hard drive platters are usually sealed, yes, but their electronics aren’t. That goo can short, corrode, or otherwise mess up those circuits and cause failure. (so can Pepsi and other things that should never be introduced into computers)

OSHA has standards for all sorts of things.

Peroxide, for instance: The diluted form you buy in the drugstore can be used as an antiseptic. The concentrated form you buy from chemical supply companies can be used as rocket fuel. As a monopropellant. Peroxide torpedo propellant is believed to be the cause of the explosion that sank the Soviet nuclear submarine Kursk. It’s also one hell of an oxidizer.

Isopropyl alcohol is another good example. It’s toxic if you drink it. It’s highly flammable. It can react with other chemicals. The fumes are a nasty irritant. I’d have to check with a CIH, but I’m fairly sure that breathing them for more than a brief period goes beyond ‘irritant’. Just because you can buy some in little bottles at Wal-Mart doesn’t mean it isn’t a hazard when you have 55-gallon drums of the pure version stacked up in your factory.

Chlorine. Read the warnings on a box of chlorine pool shock some time. Don’t touch it, breathe it, be in the same ecosystem with it, etc. Chlorine gas is lethal. Chlorine is another strong oxidizer, and reacts with just about everything. Damn straight OSHA lists it as a hazardous substance, because it most emphatically is.

In a lot of cases, it’s all about concentration and explosure. Sound isn’t a bad thing, right? We hear stuff all the time. But when you’re listening to a jackhammer you’re using, and you’re listening to it for 8 hours a day, you can go deaf. So there are exposure limits for sound, based on decibel level and exposure time, and standards for protective equipment (read: earplugs) to mitigate the hazard.

Or oxygen. You need it to live, but too much of it will kill you. Liquid oxygen can be fun to play with if you want to not just light your BBQ grill but remove it from this plane of existence (google for remarkable pics).

There’s also the question of whether what Ruth looked up was in fact a list of available MSDS sheets (yes, I know that’s redundant, like PIN number). There’s a MSDS for basically everything. Water, for example. Why would you need an MSDS for water? Because it lists things it shouldn’t be stored with or exposed to. Alkali metals, for instance. Water + Sodium is all sorts of fun, if you like that kind of thing.

As for nicotine … the lethal dose in humans is approximately 0.5-1.0 mg/kg, and it is readily absorbed through the skin. So going with the high end of that, a 150-pound tech could be killed by 68 mg of the stuff. Possibly as little as half of that. For those of you uncomfortable with the metric system, there are 28,000 milligrams to an ounce; you do the math. Is someone going to absorb enough nicotine from working on a goo-coated computer to kill them? Doubtful. Absorbing enough to make them sick, on the other hand, is very possible. Google “green tobacco sickness”.

So yeah, there could be an impressive layer of crud (I once had to wait for someone to, among other things, scrape the crud off apartment windows with a razor blade before I could move in). It could make the tech sick. Probably more important to Apple, it could make a repair time go way over its time budget. The fact that it’s a foreign substance and a contaminant inside the computer (just like a can of Pepsi) almost certainly brings it under the “abuse and neglect” part of the service plan.

So, in short, Apple doesn’t have to fix it, just like they wouldn’t fix a computer that got flooded with soda.

via consumerist.com

Apple, you sometimes drive me crazy

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BBC News - Rare Darwin book kept in toilet

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:14:20 -0700

via news.bbc.co.uk

That’s better than what I keep by my toilet!

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He Writes the Worst English...

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:19:28 -0700

“He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.” H.L Menken on Warren Harding

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Hop Trip from Deschutes Brewery

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:03:16 -0700

Hop Trip is a seasonal ale from Deschutes that’s claim to fame is a four hour trip from hop field to the brewery’s kettles. The result is a wonderfully balanced, fresh hop tasting beer that is extremely drinkable and thirst quenching. The beer pours a lovely honey in the glass with an ample, creamy, lingering head. It’s nose is tangerine and piney. In the mouth it is mildly carbonated, sweet with a medium hoppy finish — it felt very balanced. I tasted apricots and pine in mine. Medium alcohol in this made it easy to drink the entire 1 pt 6 oz quicker than I would have thought. I could have gone for another.

Dean and I both loved this beer and welcome getting some more before the end of the season.

We toasted, in arrears, Ali Akhbar Kahn, the famous sarod player from India who passed away last June (I didn’t realize this until the day before our Beer Club).

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Me and Maddie

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:39:53 -0700

Babysitting

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project mayhem: Glenn Beck slams Mormon Prophet for asking us to serve and volunteer

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:14:59 -0600

via loydo38.blogspot.com

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Tavy Wavy

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:52:20 -0600

Wavy curls on the back of my grandson’s sweet head.

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On the road

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:38:36 -0600

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Just chop it off

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:04:17 -0600

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Medical Morning

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:50:03 -0600

I’m at the doctor’s office this morning for an extended checkup. It looks like I’m going to have to get that knee replacement surgery after all. Not something I’m excited about, but you have to do what you have to do.

Last night we got a call about D’s dad in the hospital, so we’re headed down there today.

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Drinking Morning Coffee and Thinking About The Weekend

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 07:27:46 -0600

It’s a warm morning, I can hear thunder sporadically across the valley. Last nights dinner was delicious, I enjoyed both the Tilapia and the sirloin that Stephen brought. The mango salsa worked nicely and everyone seemed to be satisfied except for poor Maddie, who continues to have tummy trouble.

All in all, a great end to a wonderful weekend filled with grand children and Dorise and I hanging together.

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Something to relax my worried mind

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:16:49 -0600

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Babysitting Our Maddie

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 12:56:14 -0600

We spent a wonderful afternoon with our angel Maddie.

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Best version hands down that I've heard

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:12:38 -0600

Willin’ by Little Feat
Download now or listen on posterous

03 Willin’.mp3 (7417 KB)

if you give me weed, whites and wine

and you show me a sign, I’ll be willin’

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Why Everything Sucks

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:31:57 -0600

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Something to go with your coffee

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:30:16 -0600

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Coffee before I go to work

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:47:32 -0600

Should I ride the Harley?

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JK Wedding Entrance Dance

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 22:46:09 -0600

via youtube.com

Ok. Everyone has seen this. And the Office, a show which I’ve never watched, has parodied it.

Easy enough to do. Bunch of white people dancing to black music — how funny.

But what strikes me about this is the authenticity of the act, the celebration of joy. I just love that shit.

My favorite parts are when the groom comes out, and straightens his tie, and then when the bride comes out dancing.

People, we all need to dance our way through our lives! Don’t let the parodies put you down. Dance! Love! Live! Life!

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T-Mobile: All Your Sidekick Data Has Been Lost Forever

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 22:04:11 -0600

There’s bad news for Sidekick users today: T-Mobile has announced that it was unable to recover Sidekick data after a server failure at Microsoft subsidiary Danger. This means any data not stored on your Sidekick but residing in the “cloud” has been lost.

Sidekick users are advised to keep their devices powered up and not conduct a reset or remove the battery: a power-down would mean any data still on the phone is lost. T-Mobile will provide an update on the situation on Monday, but things are looking very bleak indeed.

In T-Mobile’s words: “based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger.”

The story is a jarring one for those storing increasing amounts of data in the “cloud”: as we become more reliant on servers to house our data, such losses can be catastrophic.

The full press release is below (via Engadget).

T-Mobile Press Release on Sidekick Data Loss

T-MOBILE AND MICROSOFT/DANGER STATUS UPDATE ON SIDEKICK DATA DISRUPTION

Dear valued T-Mobile Sidekick customers:

T-Mobile and the Sidekick data services provider, Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, are reaching out to express our apologies regarding the recent Sidekick data service disruption.

We appreciate your patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on maintaining platform stability, and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers.

Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low. As such, we wanted to share this news with you and offer some tips and suggestions to help you rebuild your personal content. You can find these tips in our Sidekick Contacts FAQ. We encourage you to visit the Forums on a regular basis to access the latest updates as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption.

In addition, we plan to communicate with you on Monday (Oct. 12) the status of the remaining issues caused by the service disruption, including the data recovery efforts and the Download Catalog restoration which we are continuing to resolve. We also will communicate any additional tips or suggestions that may help in restoring your content.

We recognize the magnitude of this inconvenience. Our primary efforts have been focused on restoring our customers’ personal content. We also are considering additional measures for those of you who have lost your content to help reinforce how valuable you are as a T-Mobile customer.

We continue to advise customers to NOT reset their device by removing the battery or letting their battery drain completely, as any personal content that currently resides on your device will be lost.

Once again, T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger regret any and all inconvenience this matter has caused.

via mashable.com

The danger of the cloud…

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There is a goddess

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:06:38 -0600

This time with photos
Worship at day’s end.

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