T I B

If you are so jaded that you are jaded by jadedness, do you level up to being emeralded? Turquoised? → April 1, 2013

Loyalty isn’t bought, it’s earned — and when it’s earned, we buy.

CJ Carter

→ March 30, 2013

For many weeks I’ve been having tons of problems with my mouse pointer skipping across the screen seemingly without rhyme or reason. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth (I won’t admit to the renting of raiment…or the refusing to paint of raiment) I think I found the reason: the color in parts of my mouse pad rendered the laser in the mouse ineffective to the cause. Since changing out that mouse pad for a different one which lacked the offensive color zones, no noticeable problems (so far).

Sometimes it’s the simple things that trip us up the most easily in our complex technological world.

Thoughts on the WNBA / ESPN Announcement

The ESPN networks and the WNBA made a joint announcement concerning ESPN’s extending their contract and underscoring their commitment to women’s sports. …

S&L Sad News, But Maybe Not Forever

I”m sad that Sword & Laser is ending its run on Geek & Sundry. That and Table Top are the only G&S …

Busy Little Beaver

It’s been surprisingly busy around here. Enough so that I really haven’t been very mindful of the blog posts. Novel, art, theme design, life — all have been a part of this conspiracy.

I read the headline: “Cardinals prepare to elect a new pope”. I couldn’t help but wonder if the Reds might steal the series or that maybe the Padres might manage to sneak win in a back-to-back double-header.

Since the only actual qualifications for being named pope are being a baptized Catholic and having a Y chrome, I sit here worried of what might happen since the church never had the foresight to excommunicate me. I don’t much want to have to live in Rome. I have nothing personally against it, but you know the saying “When in Rome…”?, I hate being told what to do. However, if I should win, after I thank the academy, I think my first order of business would have to be to exchange the miter for a definiter, as I don’t want to seem wishy-washy. Second: name David Bowie as a cardinal so we could put on our red shoes and dance the blues. (Yeah, I bet they’re really sorry they didn’t have the foresight to excommunicate me :-)

As the ACC women’s basketball tournament gets underway, I find it bittersweet as this will be Maryland’s penultimate appearance…for no really good reason that I can fathom. Certainly not geography. Certainly not tradition. In 2014, poof, that disappears and Maryland becomes one of the outlier newcomers of the Big 10 conference who will be tolerated more than welcome. No string of tournament appearances. No history of wins. Reduced access for fans and family (road trips are no longer just a trip up/down I-95). Tougher recruiting because the rivalries are gone.

Normally I’d say something half-jokingly like, “But I’m not bitter,” but frankly, I’m bitter as all-get-out. No offense to the Big 10, they are a great and storied conference, but it’s not the right fit for Maryland (or Penn St or Rutgers, either, for that matter). sigh Guess I should enjoy the ACC run for as long as it lasts. Who knows…maybe they’ll change their mind and decide to stay.

UMD Among Top 100 in World Reputation Rankings

UMD Among Top 100 in World Reputation Rankings | UMD Right Now :: University of Maryland. To be fair, Maryland just squeaked …

As you can see, I’m in the process of updating the site. Why? To make it natively more phone/tablet friendly. To have … → March 6, 2013

I dug into the archives and started reading the ads from a 1981 issue of Byte Magazine. My gosh, how in the world did we ever find the money to buy any of this marginally useful stuff? At this point in time I was on my second computer and about to do my first build from scratch using chips, wires, wirewrap boards, and discreet components — releasing much magic blue smoke during that learning curve.

You could buy one of them there new-fangled 5MB (yes, megabyte) hard drives for just $2995! For those who wanted so much storage that no one could possibly fill it, you could get up to 100MB of HD storage for only $19,980. These come with data transfer rate of between 590 kB/s and 900 kB/s. By comparison, you can now get a Seagate 4TB hard drive (that’s ~4,000,000 MB) with 146 MB/s (~146,000 kB/s) average throughput, for $209.

If you didn’t have that kind of cash, you could snag an 8″ double-density floppy drive (about 500 kB formatted) for just $425 – box of 10 disks only $24. A bargain!

Microsoft Wireless Comfort 5000 Desktop (Keyboard and Mouse)

When I was forced to finally upgrade my computer, I found myself also having to upgrade my PS2-connector-ed keyboard of many years. The keyboard I received with the system left much to be desired. It was definitely not designed with a writer in mind. I went shopping and found what is perhaps the most comfortable keyboard I have ever used for writing: the featured player in the Microsoft Wireless Comfort 5000 Desktop.

Is Lew’s Signature Fit For U.S. Money?

President Obama’s second-term nominee for Secretary of the Treasury, Jack Lew, has a famously loopy signature. The question is: is it too illegible for the signature printed on U.S. paper currency?

Heart outlines, one red one pink, intertwined

What to Call Unmarried Couples?

There was a recent article in the New York Times that asks the question: “What to call two people who act as if they are married but are not?” While some of the conventions of our society have changed, our language has been a little slow keeping up. Since I’m hardly shy about my willingness to try out new word usages (witness my never-ending push for a genderless pronoun class), I thought I’d have a bash.