Owen's Blog

iPhone

Owen — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 06:13:21 +0000

You know you have an iPhone when people thank you for letting them take your photo using your iPhone.

Subtle Motivation?

Owen — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 03:41:13 +0000

I was at the gym today and I used the elliptical trainer for 30 minutes. (Yay!) I noticed something unusual about these machines: when one increases the resistance, the machine made a quiet low-pitched beep. But when one decreases the resistance, the machine makes a very LOUD high-pitched beep that can be heard across the room. It’s like they’re trying to embarrass you to prevent you from giving up and reducing the difficulty. When you make the resistance 100 to what it’s like and change your mind and go back to 40, well, that’s a lot of loud beeps.

Sea World

Owen — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 20:47:43 +0000

I went to Sea World recently (OK, not so recently) and I really like these photos.

Back from Vail

Owen — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 21:18:30 +0000

I just got back from a fantastic ski trip to Vail, Colorado. For my birthday, I got a nifty Ski GPS unit, so being the nerd that I am, I recorded some interesting stats from the trip. It was a 4 day trip, but I forgot to bring the GPS on the first day so the stats are only for 3 days.

Distance skied (in 3 of 4 days): 61.6 miles
Average speed: 14.5 MPH
Cruising speed: 25-30 MPH
Max speed: 41 MPH (I think I could reach 50 MPH with faster snow conditions)
Vertical feet descended: 55,240 feet or 1.9 times from the top of Mount Everest to sea level
Number of runs: 52
Longest run: 4 miles (from the Mountain Top lift to the base of the gondola)
Number of Ermines spotted: 1
Number of times my skis fell off while riding a lift: 0

Blue Angels

Owen — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 21:11:30 +0000

The blue angels are driving me crazy. Every 10 minutes on of the damn planes flies overhead practicing for Fleet Week and since I’m at the top of the hill, they fly very very close. They’re sometimes even flying at eye level in the next valley over. These things make a noise like what I imagine the apocalypse would sound like. If the sky is going to tear open, it would be like this. They might be fun to watch, and prove America’s superiority in useless aerial acrobatics, but do they really have to repeatedly fly low over my house all day while it’s raining and foggy?

Death by Chocolate

Owen — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 05:20:54 +0000

My phone is dead. Cause of death: being dropped into a bowl of chocolate ice cream. I guess it’s literally “death by chocolate.”

Apple Style

Owen — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 06:08:02 +0000

When a Windows PC dies what do you see? The Blue Screen of Death. Ugly. Boring. Utilitarian. Blue.

What do you see when a Mac dies? The Multi-colored Vertical Stripped Screen of Death. Fun. Vibrant. Useless. Pretty.

I think the (very helpful) guy from Apple’s tech support summed it up pretty well: it’s a screen so pretty that you want to see it everyday. Uh-huh. Sure I do.

Comeuppance

Owen — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 22:00:54 +0000

So here I was today eating a tuna-fish sandwich on the steps near the Ferry Building. I was sitting at a funny angle trying to simultaneously read the newspaper, eat my sandwich, keep the wrapper from blowing away and waving my arms to prevent the pigeons from stealing a bite of my sandwich. I went for a bite and, of course, the entire contents of the sandwich fall on my lap. No problem at least no one but the pigeons saw me. Well I look up and what do I see? A Channel 7 cameraman filming me. All I can say is that I sure hope that this footage doesn’t make it onto the news tonight.

OpenDNS

Owen — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 07:36:34 +0000

My good friend from junior high school, David Ulevitch, has just launched his new business venture, OpenDNS. OpenDNS is a service that corrects typos and disables phishing sites when you type in a domain name. So if you typed, www.iconator.comm by accident, it would automatically correct the spelling of .com. It’s easy to install and works perfectly. I think this will add a good safety net for internet beginners and help people who make lotts of typoz. He’s a good guy, so there’s no worry about a repeat of Verisign’s Sitefinder and there’s absolutely no privacy implications.

I changed my DNS and it works perfectly. I can’t wait to see what new additions are in the pipeline!

Cross-Cultural Exchange

Owen — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 22:59:21 +0000

I’ve been trying to sell my old PowerBook on Craigslist. It turns out they really keep their value. I received this email from a prospective buyer yesterday:

Hello,
How are you doing?i was came across your advert today concerning the item you posted for sale. am really intresting and this item is perfectly specification requested by me. i like to know if the item is still available and the details of the present condition and the last price you are willing to sell it to me.looking forward to hear from you …….. thanks stay bless.
Regards

Ok, no problem. It’s a little suspicious, but maybe he (or she) doesn’t speak ~~good~~ English well. I wrote back with the requested details and get this response:

Thanks for you quick responce i will be buying,i will like to tell you that i will be paying with a cashier check in us dollars and as for the shippinpment my shipper will come for the pick up at your location upon your confirmation of receiving the payment and i dont want you to look for anyother buyer.i would have love to come down for the pick up.but am not chance to do that now but am satisfy with yourh your discription of the item i will like you to give me the following so that your payment can be send……………..
1….your full name to be on the check
2..your full contact address to send the payment to
3..your zip code
4.your mobile nad land nunmber to reach you.i will expect your
mail.asap

Ok, now I’m fully suspicious. Cashiers check, shippinpment, US dollars. This is starting to sound like a real scam. I look at the email headers and find the IP address of the sender. What do you know? The email was sent from Lagos, Nigeria. (For those who don’t know about Nigerian scams, take a look at Wikipedia.)