How to Spend a Sunday

Wolfram|Alpha

Wolfram|Alpha

Freakin' cool website to allow you to ask questions that can be answered mathematically.  Has a huge database of information and will attempt to cross-reference data to create new views of information.

World of Warcraft Update

I walked Duff through the Stockades today. To commemorate the occasion, I took a photo of the two of us.  (I'm the cute one in the middle.)  He dinged early on, to 28.  It was fun helping him!

See our Photo

Latest Speed Test from SpeedTest.net

James Gosling: on the Java Road

James Gosling: on the Java Road: "Java for FIRST Robotics Competition"

James Gosling came to town and all I got was this lousy blog post.

More American Workers Outsourcing Own Jobs Overseas | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

More American Workers Outsourcing Own Jobs Overseas | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Hilarious... but are they on to something?

What if Oracle bought Sun Microsystems? | Developer World - InfoWorld:

"So let's recap. In this final scenario, we have enterprise customers running applications written for an Oracle-managed language platform, running on an Oracle-branded application server, which communicates with an Oracle database on Oracle-branded servers that talk to Oracle-branded storage hardware running an Oracle filesystem on an Oracle OS.

Oh yeah, and Oracle would own MySQL."

A couple of weeks old, but a very good analysis of the Oracle-Sun merger.

We started our number port to ooma today. Despite the big outage Monday (which we didn't even notice) and the smaller outage on Tuesday, I still feel it is going to be a wise move going Internet-only. We'll still have our cellphones as backup, but ooma's call quality and premier services convinced me it was time to try something different. By my calculation, it'll take nine months of "no AT&T" to make up for ooma ($199), a UPS ($34.97 after tax) and the first year of premier services ($99.99), but after that, we'll be spending about $100 a year for a service that was costing more than $400. Sweet!

Celebrity Endorsements: Does Anyone Really Care? - HUMAN EVENTS

Celebrity Endorsements: Does Anyone Really Care? - HUMAN EVENTS: "Trust me, one’s view of the world isn’t any clearer from the back seat of a limo." - Pat Sajak

Montevallo, Alabama, native Robert Lightfoot Jr. becomes acting director at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center - al.com

Montevallo, Alabama, native Robert Lightfoot Jr. becomes acting director at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center - al.com

Amanda's cousin has been named Director!  Congratulations to him!

CADIE: Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity

CADIE: Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity

Google's annual roll-out.  This is the best one yet - better than Pidgeon Rank!

We hooked up Ooma this weekend.  It works great!  There is no loss of quality in our phone calls, I was able to easily do a three-way conference, the voicemail works, and you can listen to the messages via the Ooma Lounge, which will be handy when we are traveling.  I even inadvertently enabled the DND (Do Not Disturb) feature and the next call went straight to voicemail.  XD

If we continue to be happy with it, we'll be dumping AT&T in favor of a lifetime of free (or cheap, if we continue with the Premier Services) phone service.  We currently spend $36.95 per month for a single phone line + Caller ID and Call Waiting.  All that comes free with Ooma for the initial outlay of $200.  In other words, it pays for itself in less than six months.  Six months!  If we stick with Premier, it means we save $343 per year (assuming rates change on neither side).

The only other equipment I'm going to add to the mix is an uninterruptible power supply to insure we have phone service when the power goes out.

Obama wants high-paying, high-skill jobs in future (AP)

I understand what he means. "President of the United States" just isn't a good job anymore. (LOL)

ooma: Free home phone service. Unlimited US calling with no monthly fees.

ooma: Free home phone service.

We're going to give ooma a try, to see if it lives up to the hype.  Since they are scheduled to release new hardware later this year, it's a good time for cheapskates like me to join - I'm sure they'll be here till at least the end of this year, so I am very likely to at least recoup my investment.

And the 30-day free trial helps me make sure my wife is satisfied. :)

Energy Information

Google Power Meter - Google.org

This is just the kind of thing that can transform the world.  Schoolhouse Rocky says, "Knowledge is Power!" (pun intended).

Converting an application from Ruby on Rails to Java and other misguided decisions

Inauguration Will Set A Port-A-Potty Record

The new Fisker Karma

Who says Hybrids can't move?

Barack Obama's family gets a Wii video game system

Quote:

"It gives me an amazing amount of warm fuzzies knowing there's going to be a game console in the White House," wrote Mike Fahey, a blogger for Kotaku.com, which tracks gaming. And the GameCulture.com blog crowed, "Remember that… your chief executive, and the leader of the Free World, now wears a wrist strap."

Solve the Credit Crisis from the Bottom up - Change. org

Social Lending (something I'm a part of via The Lending Club)  is a great way to make a little money off of savings, and help others at the same time.  Interest rates are typically lower than what a bank would charge, but higher than you could get somewhere else.

Vote for this idea to be presented to President-Elect Obama at the link above, and while you're there, browse for other ideas that resonate with you.