Sigh.... Someone Get Me a Taser

Drunk Zapped Repeatedly
Only a small part of the story of a drunk who is crying "foul" over getting zapped several times by a cops Tazer really pisses me off.

The subject of cops abusing the use of "non-lethal" enforcement weapons is an entirely different subject and is some pissed off I'm saving for later.

Actually the part that ticks me off isn't even part of the story. It's actually one of the little "facts" that cnn has labeled as Taser facts on the left hand side. Follow the link above and read them if you would like.

Well, the once I'm concentrating on is the one that reads "An average Taser device can emit a 50,000-volt electric shock. In comparison, a device in emergency rooms to shock hearts back to life starts at around 300 volts."

Sounds factual right?

Well, that's because it is.

So whats wrong here? Why am I cheesed off?

Because it makes the Taser sound thousands of times more dangerous and painful than a defibrillator. That's why I'm ticked.

Knowing what I do about the importance of current when electricity travels through the human body, I'd rather get hit with the Taser.

"Volts" means SQUAT in the case of these two totally dissimilar devices.

Quick lesson in electricity.

The Taser may produce very high voltage, but does so at MICROamps of current, the result, tons of pain, very little danger.

A defibrillator produces much less voltage but at astronomically higher current levels, sometimes as much as 40AMPS!! A defibrillator is easily LETHAL if used incorrectly.

Why do you think that use that conductive cream on the paddles? To prevent electrodes from BURNING the patient!

Volts with almost no current only hurts like hell, that's why a Taser can't start/stop your heart and a defibrillator can, it uses CURRENT instead of a lot of volts.

So in closing, I'd MUCH rather get hit with the Taser. CNN is just stupid and feeding misinformation in order to make a fairly safe (even if overused for no good reason) device look bad when it should be the cop who should be getting the brunt of it.

Besides, I have my doubts as to if a taser would be worse than the 10KV+ at who knows how many milliamps I came into contact with when I accidentally touched a live TV fly-back transformer and got lit up like a Christmas tree at college. Still don't remember hitting the floor...

Printer Woes

Argh! My printer is sick! Possibly very sick! Bad printhead error!! NOOOOOOOO!!!!

Good thing I'm a Xerox certified technician so no labor costs for any repairs! Too bad parts cost $$$ I don't have...

What printer you say? Why, "The Beast" of course! I have the Phaser 850DX and it's completely LOADED, there literally are no more options that you can add.

See? Printer when it's happy and working!

This is a really nice professional solid ink printer that is designed from fairly heavy use and I love it, well worth the tiny fraction of the original price I paid (hint: your little inkjet on your desk probably cost more).

It had been serving me very well until a couple weeks ago, I shut it down and moved it when I had family visiting. It's since been off for 2 weeks since I have been too busy to do anything that required printing.

Last night, however, I had to print a couple addresses on a handful of envelopes and I had a small queue of documents and projects that I had been putting off printing. I turned it on, waited the 10 minutes or so for the warm up cycle to complete and the inital test page to print, no problem! I sent my first envelope to it, and it shot right though, second envelope resulted in a jam. *Sigh* quick tug and one front panel shut later it tried to put it's normal cleaning page through and....

wtf? Another jam?

Odd...

I cleared out the new jam and it did the same thing and I noticed there wasn't one of it's usual sounds being made at the pre-heater... crap.

Upon further inspection it appeared that a clutch wasn't engaging and allowing the page to be pulled through.

Cool. Easy and cheap to fix. Lets run a few diagnostics to be sure.

Reboot the printer into diagnostic mode and BAM!

ERROR: Contact Service
04,021.42:496587

.............

....I AM "SERVICE" BLAST IT!

I look up the error code (not a good thing when it's one I haven't seen before) and sure enough it's expensive part related.

Could be wiring, could be re-programming... or could be a 500 dollar part replacement.... my cost. (I get things cheaper because I'm a tech, it'd cost anyone else $800)

Ouchie...

More news will follow after I take the thing further apart and get to the culprit.

I'm hoping it's just a loose wire from moving it across the room *crosses fingers*

UPDATE 9/8/07: It looks like I was reading the error code chart wrong, it's actually claiming that the drum is dirty, which was why it was trying to put a cleaning page through before I rebooted it.

This is not a major problem but it still doesn't explain the constant paper jams, which may be back down to the clutch.... I'm gonna clean the drum and see what happens. Here's hoping to no further repairs needed!!

Update 9/9/07: Ok, drum is clean, unfortunately I'm tired and I don't want to clean up the pre-heater feed rollers atm, which is just a pre-caution and as I said before, I think it's the clutch not working instead of the rollers slipping.

Update 9/10/07: I hate technology.

Update 9/26/07: Started working on it again... No luck so far, definitely not a solenoid... That leaves circuit boards.... *cries silently*

Update 9/26/07 #2: Found out what was causing the error, the printer NEEDS to put a cleaning page through and I was trying to bypass it. Clutch is fine, appears to be the right I/O board... I hope. I also tore it completely apart and cleaned then reseated everything, inspected all the cables, etc... Still no go, but I'm gonna order the I/O board for it and hope all these dark clouds go away.

Update 12/14/07: Turns out there are a broken off paper registration flag in the preheater section all long.... SO it's fixed with uber-juryrigging (aka it's stronger than factory now) and I have $80 bucks in spare parts laying around for future breakdowns.... Oh well, if I need the cash back, there is always ebay.

Bill of Lights

The article is under here

I know there are an ever increasing number of LED's and other lights popping up on an ever increasing number of products *cough*HP LAPTOPS*cough* but there are also an EQUAL number of products out there with very few or even NO lights of any kind, such as many Apple products.

Of course, there are also every combination of lighting options in between.

I, however, do not think "We the people" truly and for honestly care very much either way.

Though on some subconscious level, LED encrusted products that can be seen from space seem to induce an automatic "wooooow.." and all the subsequent drooling and twitching of fingers toward the wallet that causes fad products to sell well before word gets out how bad they suck.

On a personal note, I LOVE shiney things. LED lit or just plain beautifully designed, both are "shiny" in my eyes and I will admit to salavating. Though it only very rarely influences my purchasing decisions. I am too broke to just go "SHINY!" *SPEND!*

I am going to place the way I feel about those complaining of too many bright LEDs in the form of a question.

What is better than one LED bright enough to light up a whole room?

50 of them! That BLINK!!!

The more status information in the form of bright blinky things you can throw at me the better. I like bright things people! Yes, not everyone does and if not choose a different product! You have CHOICE in todays flooded market.

However, If you get the option to have my products light up like fireworks taken away from me, I'm gonna find you and brighten your day up with 360 volts of 3-phase! Nothing brings me closer to nirvana than when I walk into a server room and there are hundreds of thousands of brightly glowing and blinking LEDs of all colors. Turn off the main lights if you want to make me happier! All that whirring and blinking and brightness in the still of darkness....... all indicating that there is mammoth processing power residing there.... mmmmmm.....

Now THAT'S some fine shiny!!

Work time workaround...

There is an old saying "Make do with what you have".

At work I have a craptastic old D(H)ell Dimension 2350 with a 2.8Ghz Celeron (Celery) a 160GB hd and 512mb of RAM running Win XP Pro.

Overall, it would be a fairly good system for a typical user.

I am not a typical user.

As many of you may (or may not) know, I am a heavy duty power user and I typically place a demanding load on my home system.

Work isn't too much different, I have numerous programs open all the time in order to do my job including, but NOT limited to, Outlook, Firefox, IE (Don't ask), an Access Database, Gaim, a music player, Acronis (drive imaging software), an interoffice chat client, SMART reporting software and numerous others including Virtual PC, Partition Magic, Excel and Word (ick)

512mb of ram is WOEFULLY insufficient for running this many ram hogging applications and while I will close down most of them when I can, I hate waiting forever for them to relaunch when I need them a few minutes later. It doesn't help that several of these application also intensely access the hard drive as part of their function.

Combine those two factors and you get one dragging system as the hard drive thrashes itself to pieces trying to swap and read and write data at the same time.

Worst part is this system is just a junker and my manage doesn't want to bother doing anything to upgrade it and I can't blame him.

So, in permanent lack of any official upgrades, I have been scrounging bits and pieces off of disposed systems and the junk bin to upgrade it a tad, including a DVD-RW drive, up from a 24x cd-rom, a 2.8ghz Celeron, up from 1.8ghz.

Since no 512mb ram modules were making themselves available, I decided I had to take another action to eek more speed out of my crappy work box.

*Ping!* Idea!!!

When you have lots of mediocre parts to work with, sometimes quantity can be better than quality.

I grabbed one of the 60gb scratch drives out of my pile of extra HD's and stuffed it in. I then wiped it clean and scanned for bad sectors (these things are pulls from systems in various conditions so it is wise to inspect them).

I don't have RAID capabilities on this old Dell board so I left it as a single drive instead of striping it into a RAID for speed.

I then off loaded some of my most often thrashed files to it including my windows swap file, virtual pc hd image, and some of the Acronis disk image files.

The speed difference is excellent! Granted, it's not QUITE as good as having 1 (or 2!)GB of RAM and a high powered Pentium or Core Duo as well, but it's better than nothing!!

It's much more usable than it used to be, especially when I'm torturing the system... I don't care how fast they are, single processor systems are so wimpy when it comes to multitasking.

Must.... Kill..... Everything......

Apparently it's been found that being fat is "contagious" accord to a recent study....

in short, they have found that obesity is not so much a disease, as a "socially contagious phenomenon" and affects friends and family even if separated by great distances. They found that you have as much as a 57 percent chance of gaining weight yourself if your friend or partner does.

........
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THIS IS THE BIGGEST LOAD OF CRAP I HAVE EVER HEARD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!!!!!

Maybe, just maybe, YOU get fat if your friend gets fat BECAUSE ALMOST HALF OF AMERICA IS FAT AND GETTING FATTER BY THE MINUTE?!?!?!?

Yes, it MIGHT be possible for a direct psychological connection to influence weight gain, but STILL this "study" is CRAP!

I wouldn't buy this cruft if you PAID me!

One more thing!

I am so SICK and tired of hearing or America's "obesity epidemic". The next person who uses those words in a conversation with me is going to be savoring the taste of their own TEETH.

Picture of the Unspecified Time Period

Been a while since I've done one of these, SO.... Picture for you all! All together now! AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!

I think they microwaved my face with all that cute....

Fatigue.... Bad!/Good!

I shouldn't think about forming a reply to ANYTHING when I'm tired and sick and cannot sleep. I was given one of those lil' "friend survey" thingies that circulate around email and blogs and the such. I was answering with one/two word answers until I got to this one particular question. I took my answer and just RAN with it....

15. RED OR PINK? Now that's not really a fair question to impose upon someone. The whole debate on Red vs. Pink (aka. Dark Pink vs. Light Red) is something that cannot be summed up in but a single word answer! Both of these highly dynamic and creativity inducing colors have a vast quantity of advantages and disadvantages to being chosen as an answer for this all important inquiry! I say it is not fair in forcing one to choose between either of these indispensable tones of reflective or emitted light and instead focus on acceptance of ALL colors of the visible light spectrum! Reflected or emitted! Reflected or Diffused! All colors are equally important in order to create the beauty that makes this world special! I say nay to answering such a question and instead offer open arms to ALL colors as equals!

To Do List:

I wanna do this!

Heck, I have enough parts and scrap, I probably COULD do this at little, to no cost!

Just need magnets....

I Have An Opinion...

Ok, first off, I'm going to start by letting you all in on one personal view that I have.

I don't like Sony.

Granted, I used to think they we one of the finest electronics manufactures on the planet, but with their ever-degrading quality, questionable business practices, poor treatment of customers through the RIAA/MPAA, and many, many other not-so-little problems and bad moves/tactics that they have undertaken in the last 10 years I can no longer respect Sony as a company and they have forced me to no longer support them with my business for very good reason.

Yet, as per this article here, regarding Sony being 'irresponsible' for using a digital representation of this PUBLIC BUILDING in a 'sick' video game that contains violence and is seeking a "monetary donation" along with removal of said aspect of the already published game as retribution.

I have Sony's back on this one when I say, cry me a river and then go get STUFFED you big whiners! Someone call the 'waaambulance' because I'm gonna kick the crap out of these people until the can't stand so they have something REAL to whine about!

This cheeses me off on so many levels! First, using 3d models of public buildings in video games of ALL sorts, violent or otherwise, is nothing new. This has been going on for many years now, in fact the controversial Grand Theft Auto game series from Rockstar modeled much of their map after down own NYC you don't hear Proctor & Gamble griping about the building that looks like theirs! For that matter, the Spiderman series of games based on the movies flaunted the fact that you could web-swing and fight crime in extravagantly detailed NYC! These games were both "violent".

While you could argue that in GTA you were CAUSING disruptive violence while in Spiderman you were using violence to stop crime (a counter-productive idea if there ever was one, but that's another post all together). Well, even using this argument you have even less of a leg to stand on because the game in question, Resistance: Fall of Man, was about SAVING the world from an invasion. Whoops.

The people complaining about this should get hit by a truck and go directly to hell (Do not pass "Go". Do not collect $200.) The ONLY way I could support a cry like this is if the building in question was a private residence used without permission, THEN you have a reason to complain and I'd be behind you 150%

This churches complaint is not valid, it is stupid. Until a game maker does something with the content of it's games that TRULY does something to break a law or infringe on an individuals right to privacy I do NOT want to hear another complaint out of ANYONE, so everyone just STFU.

HOLY *car horn!*

While This is the SINGLE coolest piece of computer hardware I have ever seen to date...

It's also one of the most over priced!

1 Soda and *Bzzrt!* $1,500 bucks gone!


Moral of the story: If you are a geek and your keyboard costs more than half as much as your computer... seek professional psychological help!

Balls!

This guy probably has the most amazing control over his balls of anyone I have ever seen! (Video! Modems beware!)

Open Letter To The USA

Dear America,

Stop Sucking

Your Pal,
The Voters

SMOKIN'!

Ok, first, a bit of background to help paint the scenario.

I am now a computer technician by profession and I see all manor of abused/misused/neglected hardware (to say nothing of software) and most of it doesn't work in some manor or another.

Now after 3 months of repairing the endless flow of hardware through the door I have noticed something that I would like to share with the world... or at least the percentage of it that happens to be reading this.

I have started to notice a pattern emerging from machines that have failed due to the environment they were used in, such as extreme amounts of dust/heat/moisture/etc..., the cause of the most catastrophic (i.e.-expensive) problems needing repairs is computers that come from an environment where people smoke.

The smoke and tar particles sticks to the normal dust found in a home and then the dust sticks to EVERYTHING in the computer when it's sucked into the case by the numerous fans used to keep it cool. This causes major problems with overheating as case vents plug up, heat-sinks become clogged, and fans grind to a halt.

It also wreaks havoc with other components such as CD/DVD drives will simply stop working as they have their sensitive lenses coated with a layer of grime. Things also get fun as smoke manages to sneak past the filter in the vent of your hard drive, can we spell "Data is Gone City"?

Now for the REAL kicker, this sticky dust is partially conductive (as per me playing around with an ohmmeter) which would explain the numerous power supply failures that I have had to deal with where the whole system reeks of cigarette smoke and is clogged with this gunk.

Not to mention that the entire case turns brown....

What I'm trying to say is that for your own sanity, and your tech's, please avoid smoking around computers!

*End of Public Service Announcement*

Posters...

Rock.

Flashy

These are my feelings exactly on the relationship I have with Adobe Flash (Formally Macromedia). Image behind link

Edit:

---------------------*Cut Here*--------------------------
Ok, I've received about a handful of complaints about the accuracy of my last post, particularly one section of it.

The section in question is about where I stated that the nutcase had a GF and he found she was cheating, so he plugs them and 30 others before capping himself.

It turns out, as I have been so kindly informed over and over and over by people who do, obviously, care, that he was just a stark-raving lunatic who got all trigger happy because someone else wasn't happy with what he/she had already.

MY BAD! However, I STILL stand by my choice to call it psycho-drama because it WAS!

But guess what?!

C'mon! Guess!

I STILL don't care.


Further complaints or notifications of inaccuracy regarding my previous posting will be graciously received and then subsequently ignored.

End of posts that relate to the VA shooting, PERIOD!

OMFG!! OHNOES!!!

Well dip me in butter and call me "Slick", more f*cking school shootings.....

Now I'm probably a horrible, HORRIBLE person for thinking like this, but I'm going to say it anyhow.

*Ahem*

I. Don't. CARE.

I DON'T! I heard the "Tragic News©®™" and I did not even blink. That's right, I had about as much of a reaction to the "news" as inhaling another breath of air. In fact now that I have had time to sit and ponder the enormity of the loss.... I STILL don't care!

In fact I'm only writing anything about it at all is because of the the UTTER media blitz on dragging this "story" to new levels of grotesquely blown out proportions!

Par for course, the media is having an utter FIELD DAY with this juicy little piece of tragedy and it's pissing me off! Yeah, yeah, what's new, right?

The part that's getting under my skin, other than the fact that NOBODY seems to remember anymore that EVERY DAY more than 30 people die in Bush's little "War on the verb Terror", is that there seems to be a SLIGHT inconsistency with the number of dead! I have heard from various news "sources" a number of people killed ranging from 3 to more than 40, that is NOT an exaggeration.

When did it become so damn difficult to count the number of people NOT BREATHING with BIG GAPING WOUNDS in the face?! Do not report "critically injured" as dead to increase the death toll to try and increase your ratings, do NOT report injured people as dead to try and increase your ratings, and do NOT guess randomly at the number of dead people and report it as FACT you brain-dead government controlled zombie bastards!!!!

Here, HERE'S how you can do it, GET the current number of dead, slap on your fake little smile or fake expression of distress (whichever suites you), stare blankly forward like a good puppet and state into the little camera lens "AS OF [DATE & TIME] THE CONFIRMED NUMBER OF CASUALTIES IS TOTALING [NUMBER OF DEAD], WE'LL KEEP YOU UPDATED AS MORE INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE. NOW BACK TO SPORTS BROUGHT TO YOU BY PEPSI!"

Now, was that so hard?

Granted, the numbers have finally stabilized now that some time has passed and they have had a chance to get the few facts they choose to report straight(ish).

Worst part was that the whole mess turned out to be typical stupid psycho-drama.

[Edit:] PARTS OF THIS ARE NOT RIGHT AND I DON'T CARE!!
Joe E. Random, Jr. goes to his girlfriends dorm, find's she's got another guy, Joe flips out and blows them both away with the pistol he always carries because he's nuts, instead of just realizing that's he's a crappy partner, feeling rejected and wandering off to try again to find another to spawn with.... or at the very least just shoot only himself in the face. Nothing beats a permanent solution to a temporary problem!

But, kill the both of them THEN goes off to plug half the innocent engineering department?!? What The EF?! Was she messing around with the whole damn department? Come on you (now former) brainless twit! If you're going to go kill innocent people at least go kill some stupid people who do nothing but breed and make more stupid! You don't shoot up a college full of semi-intelligent to intelligent individuals who just might be the ones to pull the planet out of the cesspool that we're quickly throwing it into!
[/Edit]

GRAAAAAGH!

Ok, calm down.... deeeep breath... bunnies and ponies and rainbows and grassy meadows and happy place... happy place...

.....

Much better....

Now for the sad part, I USED to care! I faintly remember a time long ago when I used to give half a crap about all the random people on this dirt ball, but no longer. Yes, I care for this planet, I care for all the natural world it harbors, the plants, the animals, the lands, the seas and sky's and I DO care very much about all the individuals I know and love. When I do care, I make Greenpeace look like ENRON.

But, if I don't know you, in my eyes, you're cannon fodder.

Guess, what? The worst part is I'm still not caring!!! I'm just this pissed off today and the radio just made the mistake of reminding me YET AGAIN for the 30 BILLIONTH time that some poor saps sucked some lead at a university (Instead of in Iraq).

I MIGHT care if this happened to involve someone I know and care about, but it didn't, so I don't.

They say "apathy is lethal"... then why aren't more random people DYING when they get close next to me?!?!

Blue Man Group, How To Be A Megastar Tour 2.0....

F-ing WHOA!!!!

It was one of the most incredible, energetic and amazing shows I have ever seen. Completely fantastic! Stunning to watch and fun to listen to and the music was instantly likable! They also REALLY kept the audience involved. I was unlike any show I'd ever seen before. Their music is meant to be seen AND heard.

If you have the Blue Man Group coming to you your area, stop reading this and go buy some tickets! Everything good you may have possibly heard about them is true, and if anyone said they weren't worth seeing, bludgeon them! If you haven't heard anything about them, consider this opportunity knocking at your chance to see a show you'll never forget!

I saw some amazing things last night, things words couldn't begin to describe, but insanely cool will suffice for now.

There is more talent in any single one of the people I saw on stage last night than in all of Pop and Rap put together.

I saw and I was amazed, I saw and I was speechless, I saw and I would gladly see again.

I have learned this, PVC makes one COOL SOUNDING instrument!

Now,if you'll excuse me I have a Blue Man Group DVD to hunt down...

Attention World...

WOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have DSL!! HIGH SPEED INET!!! It's MINE! ALL MINE!!!!! WAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!


That is all.

My Own First Dwelling!

I just signed the lease for my first apartment!

Job: Check!
Dwelling: Check!

I'm good to go world!

It's not very big, but as I am by myself and the lease period is only 4 months it'll make a good starter apartment if I decide not to stay, more news later!

Now I must prepare to move....