Kikkoman

Mutation Tied to Need for Less Sleep Is Discovered

The scientists were searching the samples for variations in several genes thought to be related to the sleep cycle. In what amounts to finding a needle in a haystack, they spotted two DNA samples with abnormal copies of a gene called DEC2, which is known to affect circadian rhythms. They then worked back to find out who provided the samples and found a mother and daughter who were naturally short sleepers. The women routinely function on about 6 hours of sleep a night; the average person needs 8 to 8.5 hours of sleep.

Even under the reproductive selection pressures brilliantly outlined in the first 10 minutes of Idiocracy, needing less sleep would still be a handy trait.

I can now listen to streaming internet radio (Pandora) in my car when commuting too and from work.

How cool is that? Only way to make that better is to be commuting to the beach.

Having used the original iPhone for 2 years, the new hardware and 3G connection on the new iPhone were big steps up.

Still want my flying car.

Windows – Marginalize : You have to have at least one machine with it on it, cause you have to use it. That said, you don’t have to care about it. The windows install on my Dell desktop has nothing of value on it. Everything of importance is on a Mac backed up via TimeMachine.

Bank of America – Minimize : In this modern world, you need convenient access to an ATM. Bank of America has the most ATMs, but they have just about the worst terms and interest rates. Thus the work around is to, split the direct deposit paycheck between them and an online bank that has a decent return, piping just enough cash to Bank of America to not trigger any fees.

ATT – Minimize : Skype and email

Time Warner – Minimize : Bounce between DSL and EarthLink.

Cable TV – Marginalize: Hulu

Hulu on the PS3 – WorkAround: Squid

Winner : Podcaster.

These days the “reason” I have jailbroke my phone has been the “illegal” Podcaster application.

Especially during the election season as it allowed me to keep on top of all the news. It was however buggy and crashy (version 1.2).

When Apple released the 2.2 firmware the primary feature I was looking forward too was the ability to download podcasts “out of the box” as it were, mainly because of how buggy and crashy Podcaster was.

Well, the 2.2 download feature while nice is still pretty useless, in that

1. You can’t setup a subscription on the phone and have it check for new podcasts. Instead you have to manually check each podcast.
2. You can’t delete a downloaded podcast once you are done with it.

Thankfully, Podcaster released a new version (1.4) that is much more stable. That and with Backgrounder, podcasts can be played and downloaded in the background.

ATT did two things recently that were actually pleasant surprises. To be fair tho, they weren’t really pleasant, just better than the normal douchbaggery.

First off, when you drop to a smaller rate plan, they actually let you keep some of your roll-over minutes from the higher rate plan. We had a family plan with 2,100 minutes, which back when there was lots of drama was necessary. Over the course of year tho, as the drama subsided, we built up over 6000 roll over minutes.
I delayed changing plans because the next step down is 1400 minutes, and we use just about that many, +/- 100 on the prior 4 months. So I decided that after Christmas when holiday calling should have dropped off, I would drop the rate plan, and just not use my phone in an effort to build up a small rollover cushion. On an average month, I use about 300 minutes, Isabeau uses 1000, and the kids use like 100 (they just txt).

Anyways, when I called to make the change, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that when dropping down in rate plan they let you keep as many minutes as your new monthly rate plan, aka 1400.

I also inquired as to another sore spot, turning off data access to phones that don’t have a data plan, aka the kids. They can do that now, and as a “bonus” it disables picture messaging, which teenagers (or anyone for that matter) don’t need / should have / will just cause trouble.

Last year, my nephew, while bored on a long car trip in California, decided he would watch a “free” tv show on his cell phone, which meant a $300+ data charge.

When the bill arrived I called ATT and bitched them out in an effort to get the charged dropped, aka why on earth do you allow phones without data plans to download large quantities of data! GRRRR They eventually ended up cutting the charge in half, but were unable to disable data access to his phone.

Lastly, they can enable and disable txt messaging for a phone now, which is provides a nice motivational level, grades or no txt messaging.

Election night I got home early-ish to watch the returns. While a great night overall, it started out slow. That and I wanted to play Little Big Planet.

So I’ve made the first “productive” use of any of my TV’s Picture-in-Picture capabilities; news talking heads in a small picture and Little Big Planet on the big screen. The trick was that the TV could output the sound from the “smaller” picture.

Watching Obama win stirred a combination of pride, excitement, and historical significance. The nature and strength of the emotions stirred was similar to the feelings I got from the Pathfinder landing and exploring Mars.

It was between my sophomore and junior years and college, and I was back on Guam for the summer. I remember being glued the computer, downloading the “live” images of Mars from NASA’s website over our piddly 56k modem. Truly amazing.

Both of those events made me proud of mankind, excited about the future, and awed at the accomplishment.

Inspired by this article from Lifehacker, I set about suspending the cable modem, router, switch, and printer adapter from the underside of my desk.

This also provides much better wireless coverage / speed for the first floor of the house.

Great quote from Wired about it implying that it would induce “retinal diabetes”.

It arrived out of the blockbuster queue and would have truly been un-watchable without the fast forward button.

Awesome book. Went from good to great to awesome. It’s right up there with “Snowcrash”, but with a better ending.

Has taken on a new meaning for me lately. It has transitioned from the scholastic to the “manual labor” front with two home improvement / repair projects recently.

First the “The Pheonix Shed”

During a “wind storm” one of the trees in my backyard split itself down the middle. It was an odd tree in that it had a single “main” trunk to to about 5 ft, and then split off in to three smaller trunks. One of the “trunks” fell down, and naturally it landed on the shed. The first couple of pictures show the damage.

In a weakened state the shed eventually fell over. Mainly due to the fact that it wasn’t on flat / level ground, as can be seen in the 4th photo. So the project was to build a foundation for it.

This was accomplished with some smal CMUs and backfill (bricks on sale from Lowe’s and bags of pebbles).

Once the foundation was done the Shed went back up without incident. I am actually rather impressed by the design of it, aka interchangability of all the pieces.

The second project is “Finishing the Garage”. We are still in the middle of it so no photos as of yet.

The project is to repair all the holes in the garage’s drywall, and paint it.

Shawna was having a fairly serious talk with the kids in the other room.   I was out messing  with my computer.  Later when it was over.

Shawna : “So did you hear the talk?”

Milo : “Yeah.”

Shawna : “And?”

Milo : “uhmm … It was very talky.”

Going to Guam for the races for two weeks soon. Work has settled down, its now getting house stuff straight so I can leave.

Got Kelly’s mac mini setup; cracked the case open and installed a 1 gig ram chip. Used, a bunch of laminated and plastic cards (library card, old ITunes gift card, etc) to get the lid off.

Finished God of War last week. Fanstastic game. I am hoping to catch 300 while in Guam, but it is probably no longer in theatres.

As part of our new product release celebration, my company took the dev and consulting teams out for some paintball. Very fun.

We played about 10 games of various styles and on various fields, but my favorite games were “Normandy” and “Trenches”, the notable feature of all of those games played on fields that offered lots of sneaking possibilities.

In the “Normandy” game, 6 guys were the Germans and were stationed up on top of the field with good cover. The rest of us, about 15, were the allies, and had to go up the hill.

“Trenches” was on a lovely field with lots of berms, trenches, trees, and undergrowth. That game I took out 3 or 4 players.

Overall tho, I think I only “survived” 2 of the 10 or so games.

We had a good crew this year.

What amused me, was the post Trick or Treating candy bargaining process. The kids dump out their take, do a quality check, and then begin trading. Eg, ‘I’ll trade you my chocolate tootsie rolls for your orange tootsie rolls’.

A css file that blocks adds in Safari

The awesome Firefox Flashblock extension and AdBlock

Normally I love chuckling at the absurdities of daily life, but this one is just stupid.

I switched from cable modem service and the cheap $15 a month Vonage service to DSL and a regular phone line which is $16.
Why? Well at this point I need unlimited local calling more than 500 mins long distance on Vonage, and I want a phone that works regardless of what the network is doing.

Unfortunatly, having been spoiled by Vonage for several years now, I didn’t realize that CallerId isn’t a “standard” feature, and we need CallerId. It is an extra $10 a month.
So at this point, the stupid “regular old phone line” ($16 + $10) now costs me more per month than the DSL ( $20 ). Which is just Absurd.

The net result is I am paying just as much as before but:

1. I get a “stable” phone line with unlimited local calling.
2. Any long distance we need to do will have to go on our cell phones, which most of it was anyways.
3. My downstream bandwith is the same, but I do get another 15 kB/s upstream, which is nice.

Amber (the cat) and I have reached an understanding. Shawna is usually the first one out in the morning and so I am the one that always has to kick the cat outside for the day. Half the time she wants to go out and is waiting by the door. 40% of the time I have to pick her up and take her out to the door, and once there she is happy to go out. 10% of the time tho, I have to chase her down and really boot her out.

Today, she was sitting on my desk when I was ready to go. And rather than pick her up and carry her to the door, I was able to communicate to her that it was time to go. I looked at her, she looked at me, I snapped my fingers loudly and pointed over to the front door, and she got it! She got up, trotted over to the door, and I let her out.

I imagine that there will still be some “bad hair” days where she doesn’t want to go outside, and where I will have to chase her down. But still, what a good cat.

Today I was the last guy on the plane. The absolute last guy on the plane. A first for me.

Btw, our kitty, Amber is wounded. It looks like she got bit by one of the other neighborhood cats (probably Lionel), and one of the bite marks got infected. We took her to the vet yesterday (Dilum’s wife Kristy), and she took care of her.

Amber had actually licked alot of the hair away from the wound site, and it had swollen up to about half the size of a ping pong ball. But because she is long haired and is constantly licking herself anyways, we didn’t notice.

She seems to have her energy back now (antibiotics twice a day), but is not a happy camper given that she has a plastic drainage tube stuck in her and has to wear the kitty cone for the next few days.

Update: 2-22-05 Kitty is fine, and doing well. Thanks to Robert for taking care of her while we were gone.

I should not be given two big shots of espresso at 3 pm ….