I Can Jump The Grand Canyon With No Handlebars
Casually sunbathing on a rock column in the Grand Canyon.
The photographer sets up his tripod on a perilous pinnacle of rock.
Time to get back…One, two, three, jump!
Oohh, close! He didn’t grab the rock properly the first time and slipped back about 50cm (20 inches) before clinging onto it. Even then he didn’t look fazed.
Read the whole story over here.
Attack Of The Stingrays
Okay, I think its time we took the stingrays out of the petting tanks. This is getting a little crazy.
Judy Kay Zagorski, 57, died while boating on the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida. A stingray jumped out of the water, and struck her in the head. Both she and the stingray died as a result.
It leaped out of the water! I didn’t even know they could jump out of the water.
I’m pretty sure he took her out for the hat… thats a sweet looking hat.
April Fools!
Chuck Norris’ calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd; no one fools Chuck Norris.
Can’t find Chuck Norris? Try to search for him on Google. Type “Find Chuck Norris” and click the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.
Try not to get fooled this year. I know some of the 2007 pranks got me. I couldn’t wait for Google TiSP.
In my defense I was hyped up over Save The Internet and Net Neutrality.
Happy Easter!
Air Force Emails Sensitive Information
BBC News has an article about how the US Air Force (USAF) sent sensitive mass e-mails to wrong address. The e-mails were meant to go to the US Airbase at FAF Mildenhall, but instead they went to a tourism website for the town of Mildenhall.
Gary Sinnott, of Mildenhall, set up the website “mildenhall.com” in the late 1990s to promote the town.
But by 2001 he was starting to get hundreds of e-mails meant for people at the airbase.
Sensitive information and e-mail should never go together. Some of the e-mails contained data about the flight plan of Air Force One!
My job has had issues with sensitive data going out over e-mail. Its impossible to contain. Is encrypting data (TrueCrypt.org) that hard? Not really… Our 1980’s IT department has updated Lotus Notes (rungeek.com) to add the super secure “Label”.
Now I feel safe that Lotus Notes inserts text into the subject and body of the e-mail. If your going to go through all that work, why didn’t you just add some sort of e-mail encryption (wikipedia.org)like GNU PGP (gnupg.org)?
The open source community has provided great tools like True Crypt (TrueCrypt.org), Password Safe (sourceforge.net), and GNU PGP/OpenPGP (gnupg.org/openpgp.org). Only good things can come with government use of these tools. Government and military organizations would be more secure. Also the community benefits by the Big G paying people to make sure these programs are secure and close any security holes they might find.
TSA Gangstaz
TSA (Taken Suckers Assets) Security at air ports is getting pretty ridiculous. I can’t wait for Americans to get brave again and stop waiting for someone else to protect them. Those weak rules about 4oz of fluid don’t make anyone feel safe. Laptop batteries (youtube.com) are so much more dangerous, but those are fine to take aboard.
TSA Gangstaz
..
P.S. - I LOL @ “You better lose your pre-9/11 mentality.”
How NOT To Release a Bear Into the Wild
Found this on the picture section on Digg (digg.com)
The original (anotherdotcom.com) site is really slow so I am just going to mirror the pictures.
These Fish and Game people didn’t secure the bear trap to the back of the truck. If they got video of this I swear it would be on “When good animals go bad!”
And of course you gotta love the digg comments.
Airport Security ftw!
Your Country May Be At Risk
Click Here To View Options Then Ignore Them
(Flickr)
You can disable Balloon Tip Pop Ups by running RegEdit (MSDN)
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\
Software\
Microsoft\
Windows\
CurrentVersion\
Explorer\
Advanced\
Edit (or Create if needed) the REG_DWORD.
EnableBalloonTips 0
(Thats the number zero)
Also if you have a thing of BSOD like me… then checkout Blue Screen of Death.
Sleep at Work if Your Coworkers are Blind Idiots
From Gizmodo
So you want to sleep at work. I can’t say that’s the brightest idea in the world, but who am I to judge? Let me help you out: if you want to sleep at your desk and also look really, really creepy while awake, all you need to do is buy some of these eye stickers. Slap ‘em on your closed eyelids, learn to sleep sitting up, and you’ll be sure to fool everyone who walks by your desk. There is absolutely no way for this plan to fail… trust me.
You could also use them to win a staring contest. Just don’t wake up. 
I really hope this catches on! I always wanted to date a girl with Anime Eyes.
But Calvin & Hobbes did it first.
Lotus Notes Sucks
One of my favorite sites to read is /. (Slashdot) and they recently posted a store on The Life of a Software Engineer. On of my favorite quotes from the article they linked to was about the IT Department.
In fact most employers I’ve worked for actually have rules in place to suggest that I not try to fix my own computer. There’s these organizations, some (not all) still stuck in the 70s and 80s, called “I.T. Departments” who’s official purpose is to fix computers — but who’s actual purpose is to attempt to prevent their users from doing anything dangerous (read: useful.)
This reminds me of my current companies I.T. department. Where they love to prevent anything dangerous (useful) from happening by doing there best to prevent users from doing work. No work = no danger. I’m sure the I.T. department would work great if the company was filled with users like my grandmother… but its not. One example is that they love lotus notes. Its the de facto e-mail program and they are adding this useful feature (bug) that allows single sign on. This feature now has some user creating two different passwords for the same e-mail account if they use more the one computer or version of Notes. Because every I.T. department knows that no one uses more then one computer right?
I recently found other people also think Lotus Notes Sucks (http://lotusnotessucks.4t.com/index.html) with plenty of examples. Here are some of my favorites
- The login windows
- The Property Sheet (and poorly designed icons)
- Stupid Error Messages (These are terrible when its an important e-mail)
- Entering a Hyperlink (WTF is a Hotspot?)
- You’ve Got Mail! (Couldn’t you just update my inbox without making me refresh it?)
- Least Favorite Favorites
- Meeting Invitations (Invite me to a meeting on LN and I wont show up… I might even block you)
For some reason my inbox always says I have 5 unread messages. I have looked everywhere. I have searched and sorted by unread. I have gone through every option… they are no where to be found. I get nightmares sometimes about the 5 unread messages. One might be a memo about the TPS report cover sheet update.
