Director of Digital Technology @TrekBikes, Father, Musician, Cyclist, Homebrewer
Yahoo news is reporting that Bebe Neuwirth (from Cheers and Fraiser) is joining the 4th installment of Law and Order – Trial By Jury. I don’t know, I have never liked her. I think it has something to do with her voice – to snotty. At least Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) will be there too.
Another song — Check it out – kinda hip, hoppy . I think it is in Madden 2005 too.
Ozomatli – Saturday Night
I bought the whole Planet of the Apes series on DVD – and one Saturday, I watched them all the way through (6 DVD’s!) Anyways – the story gets goofed up if you really thing about it:
The story starts with astronauts in a spaceship, showing earth time as 1973, and ship time as 3955, because of time warps, and speed of light travel, etc (physics, worm holes).
When Taylor (Charlton Heston) crashed in 3955 (The Planet of the Apes), he was first introduced to the apes, and humans were dumb. He meets Zira and Cornelius, and they befriend him. Taylor realizes that the planet he is actually on is Earth, in the future.
Then, in “Beneath the Planet of the Apes”, Brent came looking for Taylor, still 3955
They were both there and saw the war happen, and they end up blowing up the Earth totally.
In “Escape from Planet of the Apes”, Zira, Cornelius, and Dr. Milo, come back to 1973 time on earth, following the trajectory Taylor took the first time.(First off, would it be like the year 5955 and there would be no Earth left because Taylor blew it up?) but anyways, the kicker is that only way Zira and Cornelius could EVER come back to 1973 earth was because Taylor and Brent came to 3955 earth (and crashed their ride, giving Zira and friends a way back)
OK, in the first movies, they talk about a lawgiver that told them of an ape that knew how to talk and rose up to be king of the apes. This is even more wierd because in the 4th movie, the apes are pets/slaves of humans because of a virus that killed all the cats and dogs (they tell us in the movie that Zira and the other apes brought the virus from 3955 back to 1973).
Zira has a son, Milo (Ceaser), and 20 years later Milo revolts, leading the pet/slave apes.
In “Battle for the Planet of the Apes”, Ceaser and some humans defeat all the bad humans; the year is now around 2003. The lawgiver is present in the beginning as a storyteller so the year there is probably around 2050 or 2060, but this really doesn’t matter.
The main point is,
If Taylor would have never went to 3955 earth, Zira would have never brought a virus to kill all the cats and dogs, making apes pets, later to revolt, and she would have never been able to give birth in 1973 earth time. Therefore Milo (Ceaser) could never revolt and then apes would have never taken over the earth.
But say if Taylor would have landed 20 years later, after Milo was already born in 3955 time, which would have been around 3975, then Milo couldn’t revolt in 1991, because he would never have been there.
ItÂ’s all an infinite loop, with each event dependent on the other with a lot of unanswered questions. I watched them all in series, all in a row, so it was easier to understand.
It sort of reminded me of 12 monkeys in a way, but ill let you think about it…
Here is something I came up with in 2002 – I think IBM started doing something similar to this, but I am not sure. I would just love if someone would implement this. If I had the money I would. If you live in an apt – you know how I feel. Doing laundry sucks!!
Background:
Almost all apartment buildings and dormitories have laundry facilities. These facilities are usually located in a central location or at least one facility per floor. The problem with this is that because the majority of the apartment/dorm rooms are a fair distance away from the main laundry facility, people do not know when their laundry is done. Also, people waiting to do laundry do not know if any machines are open, and they would either have to go check (with their laundry or without) to see if there are any open machines. More often than not, this ends up with the person making a trip to only to find that all machines are in use, or if they went to check without their laundry, by the time they get back, the machine they were going to use is already taken. Another thing that can happen is that a person actually does their laundry, but instead of knowing when the loads are done, they forget and leave their laundry in the facility. Other residents that come in to do laundry have to move the wet or dried clothes out so that they can do their own laundry. A final problem is that the laundry machines take quarters. Most residents have dollar bills, etc. Thy complex usually provides change machines to cash out dollars into quarters.
Objective:
Using X10 technology, and a client/server model, a system can be put in place to solve all of the problems discussed in the background section of this document. A computer would have to be set up in each laundry facility room. This computer would talk to the laundry machines using X10 technology. Each apartment room would have to have an touch screen interface to the computer in the laundry room via an Ethernet network. Each resident would have an account that they could deposit money into, and the machines would recognize this account and automatically deduct when the person did laundry. The resident would be able to see the status of all machines, and they would be able to “check out� a machine, which would hold the machine till they got down to the facility. After getting their laundry started, they would be back in their apartment, and when their laundry was done, it would notify them by and alarm, or it could maybe even be set up to email them or call a telephone with a pre recorded message. It would give them a time to get back, for example 10 minutes. If they did not get back within 10 minutes money could be deducted from their account, or a person who had the machine checked out would get credit for waiting. The main office of the complex would also have an interface to the system. The office might be able to purchase premium support, which could allow the status of the facility to be broadcast securely over the Internet for 24/7 support if need be.
Well, tonight is the start of the new Law and Order season. Detective Lenny Briscoe called it quits last season, and now there is a new face, actor Dennis Farina. We will see how he fills the shoes of Briscoe. It is a 2 hour long episode (starting at 8). Hopefully it is a good one.
Yep folks, another online music store. This one features MP3’s, unlimited plays, unlimited burns, unlimited transfers to devices. You buy it, you own it (Unlike Napster, MSN Music, etc). You can sign up for a free trial, 50 free downloads. If you do, turn off using their player thing, and just download the Mp3 and listen to them in Windows Media. Once the free trial is over, it looks kind of expensive, so I probably won’t do it after mine expires. It also touts itself as having more “independent” artists, which is cool. No Beatles or 311 though 😦
Check it out
Tonight I went to the SQL Server User’s group at the Microsoft Office in the Twin Cities. As always they had the pizza and beer (hmmmmmmm beeer).
Anyways, there were two presentations. One on NAnt for automating SQL Server deployment, and then one given by Itzik Ben-Gan on analytical functions in SQL Server 2005 (Yukon) and comparing the results to SQL Server 2000.
The NAnt presentation was ok, but not really anything I would use. I really don’t understand scripting out script. Why not just write the script out in the first place?
The Analytical functions presentation was more interesting. It went over ROW_NUMBER, RANK, DENSE_RANK, and NTILE(x) functions in SQL Server 2005 and how you can use them to speed up some things that you might be doing in SQL Sever 2000, etc. One thing I can see is automatically ranking team wins and losses by sorting by the wins and losses and adding a RANK column. Pretty sweet.
Finally, we stopped at the Granite City Food and Brewery in Maple Grove for a beer to see how it compares to the one in Saint Cloud. Pretty nice, but kinda crowded.
More like, the price of milk in St. Cloud. WTF happened to the price of milk? I went to the grocery store, and woah, $4.49 for a gallon of chocolate milk. Are you kidding me? If you go through a gallon a week, that like $235 dollars a year just for milk. I am pretty sure you could probably go buy a Chocolate Cow for that much money. Got Milk? Got Money? Milk does a body good? But you have to sell your left arm just to buy a gallon.
I suppose it has something to do with gas price hikes, but that is another rant 😉
Well, It looks like President Bush is going to visit St. Cloud tomorrow. A lot of people from work are going, and there are supposed to be like 10,000 people there. They will have to be there at like 5:30 AM to be frisked, etc. Not my idea of fun. Im sure the Bush war machine will trample through St. Cloud and people who sit day in and day out and complain about him will be there all starry eyed, like 12 year olds at a N Sync concert. It really doesn’t matter who we vote in for President, because the same things happen whether it is republican or democrat, every 4 years.
Steve Novoselac's Blog 