Sneaky Bastard » Uncategorized

The Last Time

joseph — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 06:44:34 +0000

Sure I’ll Buy Your Supplements

joseph — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:45:23 +0000

It seems somewhat odd, even for a snake oil saleswoman, to self-title a Meetup group. It might have been more effective to use “EXXXTREME Health!!” I didn’t look into it very far, but I’m willing to bet a buck that she is looking for people to joint her Network Marketing scheme to sell supplements.

More Meetup Hilarity

joseph — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:32:09 +0000

I don’t know this cracks me up so much. Normal e-mail spam just makes my stabbing arm quiver, but when a spammer/shyster/con artist puts in the effort to create a group on Meetup.com, I laugh out loud. Then again, I think scam baiting is funny too, so I may be a poor judge.

Granted, that second one seems more like a mis-tagged group than a scam. However, the fact that a drinking group is associated with a hiking group is, well, funny.

An Otherwise Good Truck

joseph — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 22:00:52 +0000

I bought a Ford F-150 4×2 Super Cab XLT Sport 4.6L new in 2002. It’s got 78,000 miles on it now. Until last week, it had been trouble-free. However, when I attempted to drive home from work a while ago, I couldn’t shift the transmission out of park. The problem was that fuse number 15 had blown. That circuit powers the brake-shift interlock solenoid, among many other things. After fumbling around in the dark with a flashlight, I pulled a 5 amp fuse that I wouldn’t need and replaced the bad one. On my drive home, I picked up some extra fuses. In the parking lot of the parts store, I pushed a new fuse into place. That fix worked for a couple days.

The second time the fuse blew, it was in the driveway. I was able to do a bit of research online to see if there were similar reports. There were many. It seems that this is all related to the voluntary recall related to the speed control deactivation switch shorting out and starting fires. I took my truck to the Ford dealer when received the letter about the recall several years ago. Their solution was to disconnect the switch until parts were available to address the problem. I never went back, and my cruise control has been disabled since.

I believe that at one of the service visits to Jiffy Lube, someone must have seen that the switch was unplugged, and helpfully reconnected it. It seems like a reasonable thing to do, so I don’t blame them. However, the end result was that the condition leading to engine files was restored. I pulled the connector off the switch to see brake fluid accumulated around the conductors. That seems like the most likely reason for the short causing the fuse to blow.

While I was under the hood doing a visual inspection, I noticed that the wires leading to the air temperature sensor had been crushed, leaving bare wire exposed. Fantastic. I’ll have to repair that at some point. Here are some pictures showing the part locations:

Ben Stein: Ass Clown

joseph — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:30:53 +0000

Facebook just presented this ad to me. I can’t recall the other content on the page in which it appeared, however Facebook made a giant blunder in profiling if it thought I would be receptive to an ad in which Ben Stein shills for a slimy credit report company. The thing that struck me as hilarious was that the ad listed his credentials. I imagined “Columnist” and being hastily crossed out and “Crackpot” written in by hand. I would buy (almost) ANYTHING from a company that used Ben Stein as a tool (explicitly).

Coincidentally, there was an article on Pharyngula today showing the depths to which Ben Stein has sunk. It must be quite murky down there.

SHENANIGANS!

joseph — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 04:14:37 +0000

I just spoke with Heather about my rant at the misuse of an American flag on product packaging. She claims that the A 100% American-owned Company text is perfectly legible, and that it was not a deceptive marketing tactic. To that, I say SHENANIGANS!

Awesome Error Message

joseph — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:54:27 +0000

I happened to catch blip.fm doing maintenance to their site before they replaced the normal error message with a more boring version. The text in the following screenshot appears in sequence, much like a POST and boot. I tried to record a video screen capture, but I didn’t catch it in time — when I reloaded, I got the proper home page. Boo.

Why does this site look like shit?

joseph — Tue, 19 May 2009 06:20:42 +0000

Thanks for asking.

I migrated from an old server running MachBlog to a new machine running WordPress. I haven’t had time to fix the stylesheet and images yet. I’ll work on it when I finish a couple of overdue jobs.

New Mic and Screencast

joseph — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:02:05 +0000

I bought a Snowball by Blue Microphones recently. I used it for the first time to create a screencast last night. Using the little tri-pod that they provide (which is a very nicely designed, chrome part) it was too far away from my face when placed on the desk. I picked up a larger microphone stand with a telescoping boom, and that is perfect.

The screencast I created is on a pager solution that I use, and wanted to share with others, and hopefully, get some feedback. Here’s the process I used to create the screencast.

Using Keynote, I created a series of slides in with static information. I exported the slides from Keynote to video using a Quicktime conversion to HD 720p with fixed timing for each slide — about one second per slide.
I imported the video into a Final Cut Express video project. Using the Freeze Frame tool on each slide (a frame showing each slide), I created a clip about two minutes in length. Then I added the freeze frame clip to the timeline and used the Voiceover tool. After several takes doing the voiceovers, I trimmed the video down to match.
For the demo of the of Firefox and Eclipse, I used iShowU with live audio. I made several short captures, then added them each to the project in Final Cut. The screen capture was at 1280×720 using the Apple Intermediate Codec. The file sizes are huge, but the quality is pixel perfect.
I exported the sequence from Final Cut to MPEG-4 (H.264/AAC) using the settings that Vimeo recommends, and then uploaded it their site for conversion to Flash Video.

It’s a bit of work, but it’s good practice for presenting and training.

A Wikipedia Gem

joseph — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:02:16 +0000

I saw a twitter today using the phrase “cognitive dissonance” in a way that didn’t fit my understanding. So I Googled it and went to the Wikipedia page for cognitive dissonance. I was amused to find some vandalism in the content, and that they misspelled Smurfs.