Wii Remote Internals

SparkFun Electronics has an article up documenting the Wii Remote internals. I love these internal/undocumented type articles, which is probably why I always liked to read John Carmack's agony-inducing .plan updates.

Study Shows Why the Flu Likes Winter - New York Times

Study Shows Why the Flu Likes Winter - New York Times covers a recent study on the transmissability of flue -- it's the cold, dry days. This is fascinating, because for years the fears were about being in crowded spaces or something to do with schools. It turns out flu survives much better in cool (41°) dry air. Flu doesn't live well at room temperatures or high humidity. Good to know.

Christmas Cookies

In our family, I'm the Christmas cookie baker. This is a tradition from when I was young, when my mom didn't have time to do the cookies, but we kids wanted them so badly. I started doing the cutting and decorating, because it was the tedious, time eater. Nowdays, I do the making and baking, and watch my wife, kids and friends DESTROY our kitchen throwing frosting and sugared decorations all over the place. Ah, progress.

This year, I vowed to make less cookie recipies than last year's record of 11. Somehow, I'm scheduled to do 10. Thankfully, I am going with simpler recipies, but still. How did I get into this boat AGAIN?!?

X Chromosome: The Evolutionary Smoking Gun

X Chromosome: The Evolutionary Smoking Gun made me laugh today. I especially like this part:

Conventional wisdom suggests the large X-effect comes about because the X chromosome is "exposed," meaning its complement, the Y chromosome, doesn't have the information needed to mask the effects of changes on the X. We inherit a set of chromosomes from each parent with each chromosome acting as a sort of backup for its complement. "It's a bit like cross-referencing two encyclopedias for errors," said Presgraves. In the case of X and Y, however, it's like trying to cross-reference an encyclopedia with a pamphlet.

Being fairly familiar with genetic-oriented recessive traits, this is just hilarious to me. When you look at images of chromosomes taken under a microscope, the Y is such a runty little bugger. It always amuses me how much of the war and violence in this world are related to that tiny bugger.

Baby Thrown From Car During Car Robbery

Read this: Baby Thrown From Car During Car Robbery - News Story - KETV Omaha

THORWING AN INFANT FROM A CAR?!? I'm sure the system will put these people in prison for some useless amount of time, say 90 days, and then they'll be back on the streets. I say, put them down like rabid dogs. They're sick, and I'm not sure I'd want to take a chance they might do this or worse again.

Vista Makes Attempt on my Sanity

At work we've been cursed with Microsoft's Windows Vista. While I do like the visual appearance of Vista, there's times when the whole thing feels half done. Today is a great example.

When I fired up my PC this morning, the taskbar (which I always set to auto-hide) would flicker up and down randomly but regularly. I did some searching around, and it turns out that turning OFF the system network icon in the Notification Area causes the flicker. Turning it off. Damn that's stupid.

Microsoft: The New Mafia

I wonder just how much Microsoft likes coming off as the new mafia. The coverage of the games their playing to get OOXML approved as a standard comes off perfectly as a mafia operation. Or maybe as a straight up corporate buy of a vote.

Maybe FASA wasn't far wrong with their concept for Shadowrun. Microsoft is certainly starting to look like an almighty corporation trying to run the world.

Social Skills of a Themonuclear Device?

While reading today's posts to the The Old New Thing, I followed his links for his tag "Social Skills of a Nuclear Device", and had a good laugh. I've been accused of this (in different terms) for a very long time. I am of two minds on this. Personally, I don't like being feared, but on the other hand, I don't want to deal with every single bullshit issue because I'm easy to deal with. We've already got a programmer who holds the "nice person" title, and she's buried every single day in calls she shouldn't have to handle. No thanks -- I get more programming done being a bomb :-)

Is Microsoft Copying Linux?

I've been sitting here today working away on my new Vista desktop at work. While plodding through the new Windows Explorer, I noticed something: is Microsoft copying their visual look from XWindows/Linux?

I say this because from my (admittedly small) time with graphical Linux desktops, the icons are much more colorful, the windows have larger margins for stretching, etc etc.

With all the changes in the interface, I think the next M$ press release on cost of switching to Linux because of retraining and interface differences should be printed on steel plates and shoved right up the PR flacks hind end.

Switching to Vista

We've started the process of rolling out Windows Vista at work. The IT department is getting the first machines, so we can figure out what's going to work or not work when we deploy new computers to the rest of the company.

While I have enjoyed the visual appearance of Vista, there's some things that truly suck:

• Line in is crippled on the SoundMax audio card. Not sure why, but everyone seems to think it's supposed to be broken. Yeah, sure. Then why did you waste a buck putting it on the damn card? I really miss being able to listen to my iPod through the line in while I work. What sucks is I'm going to need to find a HARDWARE solution for this. What BS.
• Software compatibility is going to suck. I've got one app (Alertbear) that is written in .NET, and IT'S BROKEN under Vista. WTF?!? Most of our other apps work, but installing them can be an entertaining experience.
• Navigating folders and doing file copies is outrageously slow. This is due to the indexing utility being a total hog. At day three things are finally starting to get better. At least exploder doesn't lock up every time you change folders now.
• Vista is SLOW. This new PC should be at least 3 times faster than my old one running XP. It isn't. I wonder why.
• The new Office is weird. I like it, but it's so completely different from what came before that it's a fairly high learning curve. Microsoft should shut up about learning curves on Linux if this is the kind of crap they're going to do with their Office applications. They lost their rights to that line of argument.

Back to the migration. THUD! THUD! THUD!

Michael Griffin

Just finished watching today's NASA post-launch management meeting Michael Griffin, NASA Administrator, just tore into a reporter over the recent reports on drunkeness and complaints of professional opinions being ignored. If I get a link, I'll add it.

I hope Michael Griffin has a long tenure as NASA Admin. It's nice to watch a man who knows what NASA was meant to do try to get it done.