Shared a TechCrunch story recently in a G+ group I’m in on {{Volvo}} debuting a new service to upload live traffic data from its vehicles to be sent to other Volvos so they can avoid problem areas. Or…a self-built and -hosted Waze. You may recall that I wrote some about these kinds of things starting back …
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Category:hmmm
splunk oddity #17681 – stats vs table
It’s fairly common to want to table the data you’ve found in a search in {{Splunk}} – heck, if you’re not prettying the data up somewhy, why are you bothering with the tool? But I digress. There are two (at least) ways of making a table – you can use the |table <field(s)> syntax, or …
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the death of the “car analogy”
With the rise of the “sharing economy”, and companies like Lyft proudly declaring 250,000 people ditched cars in favor of ride-sharing, what will be the fate of the venerable “car analogy“? Heck, what was the common analogy before cars? How will language and colloquial usage change with the [eventual] death of the car as the …
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what if
you blogged as often as you tweeted, facebooked, linkedinned, instagrammed, plogged, pinterested, google plussed, mastodonned, etc? For many of us, that would be 4, 10, 20, 100, or even more blog posts per day. Wonder how differently we would view/utilize social media if we took that approach? Just a thought.
you can make anything online – even grave markers
Knock yourself out. http://www.tombstonebuilder.com http://www.customreceipt.com http://www.customweddingsign.com http://www.prescriptionmaker.com http://www.eyechartmaker.com http://www.customroadsign.com http://www.getamedal.com
the jetsons used cash
They had flying cars. That would fold-up into a briefcase. They had magic bubbles that’d pop out from their fingers to shroud themselves on their floaty-seats that delivered them to school or the mall. But they used cash. Really? With all the crazy futuristic stuff they tried to wedge into that program, the creators thought we’d …
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it’s not a better apple tv
But the HomePod is an interesting take on my suggestion of making the Apple TV better.
vampires vs zombies
A few years ago I wrote about why I like good vampire and zombie stories. I had an epiphany this week related to that, that I thought you’d all find interesting. If vampires exist, zombies can not exist [long] in the same universe. Why? Because they’d be eliminating the only source of food for the …
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ssa, meet irs; irs, meet ssa
As you know, we adopted our second son last year (which finalized in Dec – woohoo!). A couple weeks ago, we received Zeb’s birth certificate (which needs to be processed after an adoption), and applied for his SSN. Earlier this week his brand spankin’ new SSN card arrived – so I got down to finishing …
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electric power at every wheel
It seems odd to me that most, if not all, electric vehicles don’t put individual drive motors at each wheel. It’d seem like doing so would be a more efficient transfer of energy from the electrical generation / storage system to propelling the vehicle than having centralized drives like IC-based cars. Or maybe they do, …
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sap bapis and hp oo
Couple quick notes: {{SAP}} is not designed for automated / programmatic access – their “{{BAPI}}”, or binary application programming interface, requires additional licensing beyond just the product to use I made the naive assumption that a “BAPI” was like a {{WSDL}} – and it is, but it’s proprietary, not open (and it’s binary, not plaintext {{XML}}) …
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facebook is aol
Facebook is AOL. Yes, that AOL. America Online. The one that advertised 20 years ago in conjunction with companies things like, “search AOL keyword ‘ford’”. That’s what Facebook is now. It’s AOL – but without the ISP aspect. Check that – Facebook is (or “has”) an ISP: just look at internet.org. So we’ve come full circle. The ISP …
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apps on the network
{This started as a Disqus reply to Eric’s post. Then I realized blog comments shouldn’t be longer than the original post 🙂 } The app-on-network concept is fascinating: and one I think I’ve thought about previously, too. Hypothetically, all “social networks” should have the same connections: yet there’s dozens upon dozens (I use at least …
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check your home, auto, and plp insurance policies
Every few months to year I take a look around to see if anyone can give me a better rate on my auto & renters’ (home) insurance. This month, after 3 years, I found a carrier who could knock about $60 a month off my payment *and* give me more coverage. Interesting things I learned …
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what if human cloning …
… instead of making a unique individual spawned from a synapse record instead created the reverse of a horcrux? For those who haven’t seen the {{Harry Potter}} movies or read {{J K Rowling}}’s books, a horcrux is an object (potentially “alive”) into which a wizard can split his/her soul to make themselves harder to kill. …
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zombies and vampires
Many people recently have asked me why I like [some] zombie and vampire stories (and, more generally, why they’re so popular right now), and after taking the time to think carefully on the topic and explain it to them in person, I thought I’d do my 3 readers a favor and write it out here …
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avnet buying seamless technologies
Avnet (AVT) is acquiring Seamless Technologies (my employer). Full Press Release (well, the important part): (and WSJ reprint) Avnet, Inc. Announces Agreement to Acquire Assets of Seamless Technologies, Inc. Significantly Expands Cloud and Automation Solutions PHOENIX–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Avnet, Inc. (NYSE:AVT) announced today that it has agreed to acquire substantially all of the assets of Seamless Technologies, …
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vet visit
This morning was our dog’s annual vet visit. Though we have not lived in Corbin in a few years, we still take our dog to the vet my inlaws use in Williamsburg. Why, you may ask? Because the whole visit is less than half the cost of going to one in Lexington. That’s crazy. I …
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call
I learned about the call command in Windows recently. Some context – was trying to run a command via HPSA at a customer, but kept getting an error that the program was not a recognized internal or external command. Very frustrating. Then one of the guys I worked with suggested adding a “call” to the …
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digital preservation
I have been an active member on the Stack Exchange family of sites [nearly] since StackOverflow started a few years ago. Recently a new proposal has been made for Digital Preservation. Many of the proposed questions are interesting (including one of mine) – and I would strongly encourage anyone interested in the topic to check …
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the gold standard
This is going to ramble a bit, and I’m not 100% sure my opinions are even remotely reasonable, but I had a great conversation on the Gold Standard recently, and thought sharing that would be fun. The quoted sections are relevant parts of the conversation from my friend*, and the unquoted segments are my responses. …
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professional lying – or is it laziness?
I have noticed an unusual percentage of professional CVs/work histories/resumes on LinkedIn (specifically) that have some fairly blatant errors in them. For example, I have seen people list multiple full-time jobs that they could not have had at the same time (eg, both at one employer and also at the company that acquired their old employer). I’ve …
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why have email confidentiality notices?
Lots of corporations automatically append something like the following to emails sent outside their own servers: CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email communication is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the recipient(s) designated above and may contain information which is subject to Federal and/or State privacy laws. In the event that you are not …
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the two things
I recently came across “The Two Things“, a somewhat old, but possibly still accurate (or at least humorous look) at a variety of topics. You know, the Two Things. For every subject, there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not …
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gaming expense reports? really?
At various stages in my career, I have traveled extensively – yet never even thought of “gaming” the expense reproting system the way it has been recently reported by CNN. Being terminated over charging a movie to your room? Seems harsh (getting the $9.95 back from the employee would seem to be easier) – but breaking the rule …
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