I-pass being used to catch speeders?

When my home state of Illinois originally rolled out its electronic tolling program, I-PASS, the toll authority, said that the transponders in the vehicles would never be used to track your location, only to collect tolls as you pass through the tolling gateways…

“All your base are belong to us”

“All your base” is now on one of my server’s POST screens. The classic geek joke. I did this while working on an old HP server. What else would I type int he BIOS field ‘Other text to show at boot’? My own little private joke when I have to reboot it…

My crazy hybrid car project

I like the idea of a hybrid vehicle, but financially, they don’t make sense for me. If I could retro-fit a used, efficient internal-combustion vehicle, however, it may end up being not only well-performing, but financially sensible!

How to increase your computer’s speed (part 1)

The thing people notice most when they have a slow machine is a slow internet connection. This article will show you how to increase your speed 5x, on average.

Why it’s a good idea to double-check the graphic designer

So I’m looking at the breakfast menu of a restaurant near my house. The newspaper on the breakfast table on the cover reads “…oll might hit 2,000” and below it reads “…dreds of Nicuraguans buried alive in landslide” Nice.

Avoid disappointment trading up to an HDTV

I don’t like marketing departments. It seems like they never stop trying to make their product better than what it really is, while staying technically accurate. What ever happened to having a great product, and just saying ‘we have the best product out…

Why fingerprinting at the market is a bad idea

The local market has a fingerprint scanner on the right of a supermarket checkout panel. How long until someone lifts the print with some tape and puts it on something else?

How not to get ripped off on a laser printer

Laser printers are tricky, but you can simplify things by breaking down the cost of a laser printer over time into three categories:

• The printer itself
• toner

What would you do with 30+ computers?

I have about 30+ identical computers that have been retired from service. They’re no good to run Windows XP in the production environment, so they’re just sitting here, begging to be part of a project. They’re 300mhz, 256MB RAM machines with 3–6 GB hard drives. In…

Mexican Postcards

This one falls under the ‘Otherwise’ category.

I made dinner the other night, and I had a taste for Mexican food. I threw together some stuff we had laying around, and the end result looked like an envelope, and was very good.

Contest: Who has the oldest computer in their production environment

I’ll go first. I have a machine still being used in one of the classrooms I take care of. It’s an original Apple IIc that is used at least twice per week to play math games in elementary school.

What books could be (starring Google)

You may have heard of Google’s attempts to digitize every book ever written, and offer it for free. They’ve recently run into a bit of trouble, because the publishing houses feel they might lose some money from this. This issue is ongoing, and reeks of politics…

Right of way

Can we all just agree on something? Roads are for cars, not people. People are supposed to cross at the crosswalk, if one exists. And if one doesn’t exist, the idea is that you wait until there are no cars coming, then cross the street.

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How cold weather shorts out your laptop

Well, it’s winter time here in Chicago, so I figured I’d post this little reminder:

Keep your electronics out of the cold.

When you leave your electronics in your car overnight, or anywhere else cold for that…

Combining Riya with other web services

I already wrote about this new facial-recognition technology on the web called Riya. I started getting into a bit of a discussion on the Riya blog about possible uses for Riya beyond just photo albums, such as combining it with other web services like Mechanical…

Merry Christmas?

People are strange. Every year, you hear about the people who are offended when a Walmart greeter says ‘Merry Christmas’ to them. They don’t believe in the reason for Christmas, so they prefer ‘Happy Holidays’.