What is your sex drive / Color
OK, since all tests web sites use random bullshit information, might as well just use your Gender, Age, and Screen name to determine your sex drive. 😛 Ok, and your color, maybe i'll find inner rock star... or other stupid online tests.
You made it this far...
Congratulations!
Your Hotlanta Kink Test score was 430!
Here is the chart so that you can see how you are rated:
Under 100 You need to lighten up and live a little!
100 to 200 You have an average sex drive in need of kink.
201 to 300 You have sweet hints of a kinky nature.
300 to 400 You are definitely a kinky player.
400 to 500 You are a major league kinkster!
500 or more Wow! You're too kinky for most!!!
600 or more SUPER FREAK ALERT! You da BOMB!
The maximum score for this test is 700. If you're looking for interesting
people who score well on tests like this, check out Club Hotlanta.
DVD Burner Showdown
From another site:
Seems like when we weren't looking DVD burners went from being a luxury peripheral to a commodity. And hey, that's great, but if your machine isn't one of the (relatively) newer ones that came with burner installed, which one should you get? TrustedReviews invokes that hardware review stalwart, the shootout (always disappointingly bereft of any gunplay) to determine the best white-box DVD burner out there. It's telling, too, that every single DVD writer tested burns all three major DVD formats. Technology has finally done an end run around the stupid competing standards that made owning a DVD drive so troublesome in the beginning.
Remote Console for servers
One problem you have with remote servers in a datacenter, is that you can't get to the BIOS prompt to manage them. Press
Dungeons and Dragons D&D turns 30
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3655627.stm
Dungeons and Dragons turns 30 this year. I started when I was in 5th grade when I would ride 45 minutes on the bus to and from school. It was a great way to pass the time. And when I took the class over the summer... and learned about "monty hall" rules, and the ring of detect the undetectable... oh I digress.
Maybe what I want is a sandwich…
A friend passed this onto me from an advice column...
Dear Cary,
I'm a 35-year-old professional type, smart and fairly witty I'm told, apparently not bad looking, and so very lonely. I'm told it's easy for men in my demographic to meet women, but nobody ever talks about the flip side of that coin -- it's not any easier to meet the right person.
I'm starting to realize that the problem lies within. This whole self-awareness project is a relatively new one. I'm still sorting it all out. Here's what I've figured out so far.
I got married too young. I was 23 years old when I got married. I hadn't dated a lot. I just met someone who felt right and didn't want to look any further. I truly did think I'd found the person who was right for me.
Eight years later we'd both changed so much we could barely recognize each other. The cool hippie girl I'd married had become an accountant. I'd morphed into what I now am from the dope-smoking skater kid I once was. We barely spoke, never had sex, and drifted further and further apart until it was over and I left. In a lot of ways this was a relatively easy split -- we just had nothing to fight over. No kids, mortgages, nothing -- but in so many ways it has extracted a huge toll.
How can I find a woman for a real relationship?
Now I find myself paralyzed by the prospect of relationships and dating. Not by the terrifying prospect of approaching people. I honestly don't find that terrifying. It's approaching honestly and openly I'm not so good at.
I'm an astute guy. It doesn't take me long to figure out what people want. Put me in a bar feeling desperately lonely and I can reproduce a reasonable hand-drawn facsimile of exactly what a woman's looking for -- at least for the first few hours. So the pattern I've fallen into is basically whoredom.
A female friend of mine put it best. She claims I'm acting like a teenage girl, trading sex for acceptance. I have to agree with her. What I do is trade in whatever fragile bits of self-esteem I've built up since the last time it happened for that close feeling of human contact. For someone who will touch me.
This pattern has varied a couple of times over the past few years, but the results weren't good either time. On both occasions I met what I can only describe as "complicated" women who turned around and delivered me the karmic shit-kicking I probably deserved. I seem to have an inability to let something grow organically between me and another person. If I feel something, it's all or nothing, and I drove both of them away.
Lately I've been trying to fill up what feels like a big empty hole in my life with positive things. I spend time with my friends. I bought a house I'm renovating. I'm learning to play the guitar. All this is good. I have some of the best friends anyone could want. My home is becoming exactly that -- a home. Music is opening up a whole new world for me.
But sooner or later it's 2 a.m. and my married friends are heading home. This is generally when the real loneliness hits -- and when I wind up the next morning wondering what her name is and how I get her out of my house. And when I do meet someone that offers some possibilities, my heart seems to short-circuit and I mess it up. I'm really starting to wonder why I'm sabotaging myself.
-- Paralyzed
Dear Paralyzed,
One thing that happens with men, I think, is that we pretend to ourselves that we're just looking for sex, in order to keep things simple and not be overwhelmed by all our multifarious and complex needs and desires. But we pretend to women that we're not just looking for sex, which is true, except not exactly the way we portray it. We come on a little more heroic and in control than we really are. We're really pretty much a raging ball of confusion, but we don't let on. So we get a little song and dance together that gets us in the door and then once we get in the door, and we can let our guard down, we'd like to be our true selves but we can't because we've already done this other act. So we're trapped in a character we've created.
But if you really laid it all out ahead of time, you figure you'd never get laid, right? Imagine what would happen if you said, Here are my fears, here's my history of being an asshole, here's my meager salary and my secret ambitions to be a rock star, here's my actual opinion of women and love and social bullshit, here's my desire to not ever get married and end up like the guys I went to high school with, here's my possible drinking problem, here's my limited emotional vocabulary, here's my idea of a good-looking jacket, here's my underwear and yes I like it with the holes in it.
I mean, you can't do that, right? So you're trapped.
But you're not entirely trapped. You have to set yourself up with some wiggle room. Picture a scale of 1 to 10. What would be on the scale? Take loneliness and sexual desire, for instance: Need for closeness. Need for sex. Need for quiet talk. Need for sleep. Need for food. Need for exercise. Need for alone time. Need for music and friends. Need for trust. Need to know what's going to happen tomorrow. Just a whole list of things.
Then subdivide them. This loneliness, for instance. There is loneliness that is an aching for someone in particular. And there is loneliness for just people in general, like the need to just walk downtown. That is, there is loneliness that is a longing for intimacy, and there is loneliness that is a longing for just anonymous human contact. Other feelings you think are loneliness might not be loneliness at all, but restlessness, or irritability, or even hunger. You might think you need a woman but you just need a sandwich.
You never know until you start rating these cravings on a scale of 1 to 10, by their intensity and their duration. Likewise, with the need for sex, that could be broken down. What kind of sex do you need? Do you need the kind of sex that involves intimacy with a woman? Or do you need the kind of sex that is more like walking down a street full of strangers, a kind of sex that is more a distraction from yourself than an encounter? You can define all these things for yourself.
What appears to have been happening is that you're feeling various powerful wants but acting on them each time in the exact same way -- by seducing a woman. And you're finding that each time you do it the same way, of course it turns out pretty much the same. And so I'd suggest that you start paying attention to the variations in what you feel, and trying to come up with actions more appropriate to what you're actually feeling. Because you're not in it just for the sex. You're in it for a variety of things.
That's why it sounds like a very positive thing that you're playing music, and working on the house, and you have this web of friends.
But you're probably still uncomfortable enough in your own skin that you need these periods of, like, emotional blackout, where you just go on autopilot. You're going to have to try to stay awake at those moments where you feel so uncomfortable. Go for that middle zone, where you're a little lonely but also a little tired, or a little attracted but also a little put off. Try to carburet your emotions, get some good healthy mixtures. You've been running too rich, and then flooding and stalling out.
You need to consciously try to change the course of habitual interactions with women. For instance, next time you're with a woman and you can see where it's leading, stop. Say to her that you like her and you sense where things are going but you're trying to change your habits with women. And just see if you can't feel your way along with her in a slightly different way than before. Maybe work her into your life a bit -- your life with the house and the music and the friends. Take the time to find out if you really like her or you just want to gobble her like a sandwich. If you just want to gobble her like a sandwich, maybe it's not her, but the sandwich you want to gobble. Maybe then you two could go into the kitchen and put something between two slices of bread.
Can you tell me why you use Outlook?
From a friend of mine.
OK - here's an attempt...it's long, but I've tried to be thorough.
Most of this has been communicated to the Eudora folks on an ongoing
basis in an effort to try and get them to steal some stuff back feature-wise.
I'd love to see Eudora get an overhaul but I think they're plain and
simply shy on resources.
** Note that I use Outlook2003 at work and that I and my family all use
Eudora 6.1 at home (see below the Outlook piece for info on why I use
Eudora at home.) I think each is better based on the needs I have in
both scenarios.
Why I use Outlook at work (version is Outlook2003)
The short version
-----------------
1. Consistency and availability between devices
2. Functionality
(Tasks, layout, offline performance, foreign language support and
in-line translation, search folders, server side filters,
archiving)
3. Resiliency
The long version
----------------
Why I use Outlook at work (version is Outlook2003)
1. Consistency and availability between devices: - I don't just access
my email from one computer anymore and don't enjoy having to wrestle
with VNC or Windows Remote Desktop to get to it. The fact that I can
login on any NA domain machine and get access to my email without
leaving any residue on the host machine (and still further, login via
any web browser to MyApps inside or outside the company to get to it,
no VPN required, is a huge convenience win for me.) I also use
server-side filtering so that my email looks the same everywhere, I
don't have to mess with IMAP limitations, PINE is too little for my
needs. When I don't have a computer with me, I can easily keep in
touch with email on my BREW phone (though this is notably less frequent
since I usually have a laptop at my side at the very least.) I don't
use a Pocket PC/Palm device, so I'm not concerned with this functionality.
I've worked to try and get procedures in place with IT as much as
possible to make Eudora more available..but you still end up having to
sync different clients (having multiple set to LMOS), wrestle with IMAP
(which is getting better with the latest release but is still a pain),
or deal with crazy ways to get to my email (ie, MyApps+/SecurID->Remote
Desktop->work laptop at my desk->Eudora)
2. Functionality:
** Tasks - I gave up just using my inbox as my task list because I was
missing actions. I actively use the
tasking/flagging/follow-up/reminder
features in Outlook to keep up-to-speed on what I need to be focused on.
Eudora has nothing even remotely available feature-wise in this
category.
** Layout - I very much prefer the new default layout in Outlook2003
(over both Eudora and prior version of Outlook.) It's a smart way to
do things and saves me from having to scroll down in most messages to
read stuff. I also simply resize the middle Inbox column and it
auto-switches between single and double line layout at the width of my
choosing (because sometimes, I still prefer single-line mode.) Overall,
I find it much more efficient.
** Offline Performance - Old versions of Outlook plain stunk in the
offline space..but the new version blows Eudora out of the water, IMO.
Outlook has always had an advantage in 'timeliness of when it checks
mail' space albeit with a large impact on network
utilization/performance as it was designed for LANs, nothing else. The
new version eats a heck of a lot less bandwith on average and has its
true strength when you're in 'cached mode'. I view cached mode as a
hybrid 'what I want it to be' mode. For a 20 second delay in mail
delivery time, Outlook seamlessly switches between
connected/non-connected mode across my various connection mediums:
Wired, 802.11b, EV-DO. When it has a connection to the server, it
auto-refreshes my mail. I still have to manage VPN sessions (wish I
had a true way to do this automatically... IBM's 'Access Connections'
comes close, but not quite.) I also have the ability to literally
change between MAPI and an IMAP-like mode on the fly as I see fit. I
can tell it to download everything, just headers, or even better,
headers and then full items once all the headers are complete. It can
even auto-detect 'slow' connections and auto-switch to IMAP-like mode
without intervention.
** Foreign language support and in-line translation - again, Eudora
doesn't support any of this. These days, I'm regularly seeing emails
come through in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. I can't
read/write/understand but a few works in either of those languages, but
I can now get the native characters in Outlook and translate them
real-time through 3rd party functionality in Outlook. While I have to
be very careful to only translate threads that are non-proprietary
(because it's getting translated by a third party), this feature has
really helped out more than once. If Microsoft bundles the ability to
do this internally without 3rd party involvement (so that security is
no longer an issue), it could be a huge win for how we do business.
** Search Folders - having to always 'file' away the mail in my inbox
is starting to get old. I like the concept of being able to create
folders that are dynamic/virtual and based on pre-defined search
criteria. It allows me to create folders to easily find and work with
my mail without having to constantly file everything in different
folders. I still do this (see server side filtering below) but it's
mostly automated and the amount of manual filing I do has been greatly
reduced. Still better, I have one folder that shows me all of my
unread mail no matter what folder it exists in which I find to be tremendously seful.
** Server Side Filters - I mentioned this above, but this is a true win
for me. I refuse to configure client-side Outlook filters choosing
instead to only configure server-side filters. The end result is more
consistency as I mentioned before...no matter what device I'm looking
at my mail on, it looks the same. I filter all my mailing lists to
individual folders in individual sub-headings and use the 'unread mail'
search folder to access it. Stuff I need to follow-up on is tagged
appropriately (see tasks feature) and when I'm done with it, the mail
is already filed away where I want it without having to touch it again.
** Archiving - while server side mail spools can get quite big, I've
found it very easy to configure auto-archiving such that once per week,
mail is archived chronologically to a local mail store on my drive from
the server. By tuning the 'window' of what mail gets archived, I've
been able to minimize my need to go back into these archives (on
average, once every 2 weeks.) While I do need to be on my local system
to access these files, the frequency of which I need to access them
makes it only a minor inconvenience. The end game is that my
auto-archive only happens once per week (Friday morning, early) and not
only does it keep my mail spool size on the server automatically in
check, but it routinely keeps the amount of memory utilized by Outlook
at a consistent size. I also archive my archives once per year for a
'year end copy' which facilitates keeping searching times to a minimum
when I need to go back and look for something once every few weeks (as
I generally know what year it was sent in.)
3. Resiliency - This is key to me. I think the mails that read "my
hard drive crashed and I've lost all my mail from 2 weeks ago until
today - if there's anything important for me to attend to, please
resend your mail" could go away to a great extent...I certainly won't
be sending one if my drive fails. All of my current mail is on the server.
Mail older than ~3 months (on average - this varies by folder) is
auto-archived each Friday morning at 6:05am to a .pst file on my local
laptop drive. I make sure my Netbackup backup runs every Friday
morning at 6:30am which immediately backs up that local email data so
that I have no fear of loss (short of Netbackup not cutting it for a
data
restore.) In the event of system failure, not only do I not need to
wait 4 hours for them to show up at my desk before I can get access to
email again, (I just use another system to access my mail that I need
on the server), once my system is fixed, I'm restored back to my
original state with little to no effort and no mail loss.
Why I use Eudora (at home/personal use) and why the rest of my family
uses Eudora as well)
--------------------------
Simply put, I think Eudora is an outstanding email client...Outlook is
just better for me at work because I want (need?) more than just email
out of my client. Using Outlook at home wouldn't be good because I'm
not running my own exchange server...and Outlook Express simply can't
cut it, IMO, against Eudora. I've long said, if you're going to POP,
you belong on Eudora - period. POPing in Outlook/Outlook Express
negates any reasoning in my mind to use Outlook...so POP users should
use Eudora. (Note: none of the rest of my family works)
1. Ease of use: Eudora is very intuitive and very easy for my family
to use for their personal email needs. My family is young so my wife
and I share a primary computer...no need for mail to be available on
multiple systems (and I don't suspect that family members other than
myself will ever need more than one system they want to read email on
short of syncs to PDAs and such.)
2. Solid management of multiple accounts - I love to filter by
personality and with the ton of email accounts I have, Eudora makes it
very easy for me (and my family) to manage all of our email accounts
(which by the way, are all POP accounts.) Sending with different from
addresses is also done with ease in Eudora.
3. Web2Pop - I use an application from a French Developer called
web2pop at home. (http://www.jmasoftware.com/english/) It's installed
as a service on the machines that I use and while a bit buggy still, it
allows me to pull all of my email (via POP) into Eudora regardless of
location. This includes my free Yahoo and Hotmail accounts and negates
one of the benefits of Outlook Express (ability to directly POP from
hotmail). Basically, web2pop runs a local pop server on 127.0.0.1 and
then logs in via the web to my various web-mail-based accounts and
scrapes the email off the web and turns it into locally POPable mail.
I direct my Eudora at localhost and pull my mail through. This works
well with Eudora and I don't think I could live without it.
4. SPAM management - I don't get SPAM at work. This is because I take
good care of my email address not because of any client or server side
filtering being done. Unfortunately, I have to use my personal
addresses for online orders, subscriptions, and such, which net SPAM no
matter what I do. Eudora does an OK job at detecting SPAM but has too
many false positives for my taste. Regardless, it probably has about
an 70% accuracy rate on my home mail...and is a useful feature. I save
much more time not reading SPAM then I do un-junking valid mail.
Here's a breakdown:
70% filtered to junk
- 80% is actually SPAM -good catch!
- 20% is stuff I need and I have to mark as 'not junk' (usually, new
items, sales order confirmations, etc.)
30% not filtered to junk
- 50% of this is mail I want
- 50% of this is mail that should have been caught by the SPAM filter
5. Calendaring - a final note on Eudora on this space. If there's one
thing that's going to stop my wife from using Eudora at home, it's
support for calendaring. She uses her Palm to run 'the family
schedule.' Social engagements, shopping lists, plans, appointments,
etc. Currently, she uses the calendar in Palm desktop and it suits her
needs just fine...but she knows that Outlook Express supports
calendaring and if there's anything that will ever force her to move
from Eudora, it'll be due to the calendaring features in Outlook
Express (and some corresponding frustration with Palm Desktop
calendaring) - for now, all is well.
--
I think that's about all that comes to mind. My apologies if this was
more than you were looking for but I thought you might enjoy a little
history on what I've found to be useful/not useful in how I manage my
email overall. Let me know if you want any additional details on any
of the items I discuss above...I'd be interested in your opinions on
the above items as well if you ever find time.
-Mike
Are people really pigs?
This is just wierd and freaky enough that I had to post it on my site as well as gabes.
According to the article below, Humans evolved from pigs!
Charles Darwin was wrong -- humans evolved from pigs, not apes. And that explains the Biblical prohibition against consuming the flesh of our oinking relatives, according to a startling new theory.
http://entertainment.tv.yahoo.com/entnews/wwn/20040419/108238680004.html
Remote Desktop to your Home computer
Alot of people I know ask me how to connect to their home system from remote locations (work, friends house, on travel). Here are a couple useful links to get started. You only need to open port 3389 over TCP.
How to install Remote Desktop sharing in XP
Forum article on Remote Desktops
Windows Client - search Microsofts site for RDP Client if the link is broken
Macintosh Client - Macintosh OS X
Linux Client - best to get through YaST (rdesktop and tsclient).
Web Client - Must be setup on your web server.
By default you can only access one machine behind a Linksys firewall this way. Since all the machines share a single address externally. To get around this you need to setup one of the XP machines to run on a different port. This can be done by following the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 306759 which details How to Change the Listening Port for Remote Desktop. You can also do this on the server version with Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 187623. Looks like its the same registry key for XP and Server.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControlTerminalServerWinStationsRDP-TcpPortNumber
NOTE: When you try to connect to this computer by using the Remote Desktop connection, you must type the new port. So say you change it to 3390 (3389 + 1), you just forward that port to the 2nd box. Then when you connect you add 3390 to the end. Not sure if you use a space, or a myhost.mydomain.com:3390
UPDATE: Windows XP SP2 Built-in firewall automatically opens up port 3389 when you enable remote desktop, but if you go and change the port, this new port will be blocked. Be sure to add a rule to allow your machine to receive connections on what ever port you change this to.
Malware: Fighting Malicious Code
This is a good review of a new book that talks about how people compromise computer systems, good to know when trying to figure out how your system go owned, and how to detect it.
The phrase... "After reading this book, no sysadmin will sleep well at night"... is a bit of a modivation to read it.
http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/14/0141204&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=156&tid=172&tid=185
Anime Computer Case
Well this is an old link to every anime boy's dreams... a nubile anime girl computer case. This is along the lines of every other person making highly custom cases for the mini motherboards that are shipping. They look cool, but who gives up this much space on their desk for the computer... I want it small, quiet and out of my way!