A fun bathroom game

I'm pretty tall (6'6"). This has led to an interesting bathroom game for me. In the bathroom at work, there is a stall and right next to it a urinal. When I finish using the stall, there is occasionally someone using the urinal. When I stand up I can just see the top 2/3 or so of the back of their head unless I move over close to the stall wall in which case I can see all of them. The game is to try to identify the person just based on the small portion of their head that I can see. Obviously there are times that are not so challenging (that bald guy with the birthmark on his head). The fun comes in identifying people that work all the way on the other side of the floor whose name you don't even know.

There is a corresponding game that everyone can play regardless of their height. Anyone can look at the shoes and pants of the person under the wall and try to identify them. For an even harder version don't look at all. Use your other senses to attempt the identification (I suggest sticking just to sounds, but be as brave as you want). The way a person walks, unconcious sounds (throat clearing, humming, etc.), even their breathing if the bathroom is quiet or their breathing is loud. The harder you make it to make the ID, the happier you will be when you get it right.

Maybe I should just start bringing something to read.

20 freakin' years?? Huh?

Apparently two students are facing 20 years in jail for fixing grades.

News Article

First I think they need to be reprimanded for what they did. It is wrong and they should face some sort of punishment. With that said, 20 freakin' years?? Huh? How does this even begin to be an appropriate sentence. I understand that the 20 years is a maximum sentence for all 11 items in the indictment. I also realize that it is unlikely that they will be given the maximum sentence. I still think it shows something of an inflexibility in our legal system that this sentence is even on the table. I am not a lawyer. I don't even play one on television. It is entirely possible that there is some subtlty that I am completely missing, but I reiterate. 20 freakin' years?? Huh?

I did an admittedly brief google search and I could not find any record of someone being prosecuted to this extent for changing grades in the past. I don't doubt that it has happened. For all I know someone even got 20 years or more for it. Even if I had found some previous example of such a sentence, all I would have said is: 20 freakin' years?? Huh?

Cool Knoppix based distro

I am not really a Linux user. I find it interesting so I will occasionally dual boot my machine or live boot a CD distro. I have used CD distros at work to recover data from unbootable hard drives. In the past I used a distro called Penguin Sleuth (I'm too lazy to look it up and link it - Google is your friend) but I've recently found one that I may like even better. It is called Helix. I like it for a couple of reasons. First it has all the data recovery and system information tools that you would probably ever need. Second if you put it in a running windows box it has a buttload of windows tools to do the same thing.

0x539 Haxxorz

I am not a hacker and the title is probably thus misleading. One of the things that I may do with this blog is to document my discoveries in Powershell. If you do not know what Powershell is then you can look here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx

Basically it is the new scripting language from MS. I happen to think it is very good but I have no desire to engage in a scripting language religious war here.

In Powershell, it is a "promiscuously" typed language. That is not my term it comes from an excellent book "Windows PowerShell In Action by Bruce Payette". It is typed but it does an admirable job of handling the typing for you. I was reading the book and I came across this:

12:44:31 ( 44 ) C:\Temp PS>0xDeadBeef
-559038737

So Powershell automatically converts the Hex value of DeadBeef to an int of -559038737. For some reason this peeked my interest. I was curious about what the Hex value was of some decimal numbers. Unfortunately it is a little harder to get hex from dec. To find out that the hex for 15 is F, this is what you need to do:

12:40:55 ( 41 ) C:\Temp PS>"0x{0:x}" -f 15
0xf

Which lead me to:

12:43:49 ( 43 ) C:\Temp PS>"0x{0:x}" -f 1337
0x539

Kalel Cometh

I'm sure it is probably total coincidence, but in the past week or two, a potentially habitable planet was found orbiting a red giant star:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=450467&in_page_id=1965

and Kryptonite was discovered in Serbia:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/24/kryptonite_found/

Really Cool Site

This site is a really good application of Flash (a technology that I am generally not very fond of). It basically has a distance scale along the bottom and when you click on it you see items that are in the range of size. For instance clicking on 10E-5 m shows Mitochondria, a single electron transister, and colibacillus among others. Try it out at:
http://www.nikon.co.jp/main/eng/feelnikon/discovery/universcale/index_f.htm

iPods can change your life

So my wife got me an iPod for christmas. It has significantly changed the way I interact with my world. I used to listen to the radio whenever I was in the car. Usually I was listening to talk shows. Now I listen to my iPod in the car and I listen to several different podcasts. I enjoy the experience immensely, but now I don't know what is going on in the world nearly as thoroughly as I used to. For instance I didn't even know that President Ford died until I noticed that flags were flying at half staff and I went to google to find out why. Overall it is a great experience and I'm happy to have it I just need some more interaction with the rest of the world.