The Pale Blue Spot

I heard a report on the radio this morning which said that there are 26% more Americans who will be more than 30 days late on credit card payments during Christmas this year than the same time last year. Christmas is becoming more and more difficult to afford as the cost of living in this country continues to soar, while at the same time, big business is doing everything it can to instill the belief that it is customary to spend thousands of your hard-earned dollars on gifts during this season. I mean, pay attention to the commercials... you'll see companies advertising a Plasma screen TV (that costs $2000 or more) as being "The perfect Christmas gift"... either that or a "Suzuki ATV or Dirt Bike", a diamond ring, a Mercedes Benz, etc. I remember when an elaborate Christmas gift was something that cost $75. It's just really sad when we need to bleed the common man dry in order to "stimulate the economy". It was estimated that the average family sp

Alright, I know I'm a huge nerd for even noticing this stuff, but whenever I watch Star Trek: TNG I like to pay attention to the technical terminology that they use. I was just thinking about one of those things today and would like to put it into context for everyone (all two of you who might read this). Data says something like: "The neutron radiation must be interfering with my positronic net..." First of all, if Data is being exposed to neutron radiation, that probably means that everyone else is too, which would be incredibly bad. After all of the times where the Enterprise crew is exposed to one type of radiation or another, they should all be covered in tumors. If Data has a positronic brain, that suggests that his brain is at least partially composed of positrons , which are the antimatter counterparts of electrons. In case you didn't know it, antimatter is the same stuff that they use on the Enterprise in their photon torpedos. Whenever antimatter comes i

Occasionally, in my line of work, I wind up working on the weekend or at night. Yesterday, I had to go in to the office to do some work on our web servers. Usually, there are other people at the office on Saturdays, but my car was the only one in the parking lot this time (it hasn't been this clean in a long time, so I took a picture to savor the moment). The yard outside the office makes it difficult to go inside and work. The part of the building where I spend most of my time, when I'm not running back and forth to the printer on the other side of the office. The server room is on the right, with my office down the hall. The server room... My desk... Today, I was tasked with converting the two web servers and their domain controller into virtual machines. This can be a difficult and time consuming process, but I've done it many times now and have it nailed down pretty well. In this case, I prepared a dedicated server which will run (free licensing) VMWare Server and h

Since I've been sick and have stayed home from work yesterday and today, I'm proud to say that I've accomplished more than in a couple of hours than I could have ever dreamed of doing at work. Besides napping, eating chimichangas, and consuming enough Echinacea to kill a 5-pound tumor, I've already aptly defeated two classic Nintendo games. First, I thoroughly vanquished Count Dracula in "Castlevania". As you can see in the picture above, I even rubbed it in a little by demolishing a good portion of his castle on my way out after stomping a hole in Dracula's head. I would have finished the whole thing off, but I ran out of dynamite. Next, I decided to go after an evil wizard in "Wizards and Warriors". This game also provides for about an hour-and-a-half of raging 8-bit entertainment. I only have one qualm with it though, and that's the 'Cloak of Invisibility' that you pick up in one of the underground levels. Sounds like a cool i

I've been really sick and decided to stay home today, and in my boredom I remembered this site. I usually have been posting blogs on Myspace, but I think that Myspace is a different crowd of people (or they're at least on there for different reasons) and I like the idea of blogging here where it's a bit more serious and intellectual. I changed my blog title to "The Pale Blue Spot", which is in reference to Carl Sagan's book, "Pale Blue Dot". It reflects many of my feelings of the true place for our planet and our species in this universe, and of the big picture that so many of us never stop to think about as we rush through our busy lives.