G'evening all!

    My friend's son wants to build a Tesla coil for his 7th grade science fair project. I'm perfectly capable of helping him accomplish this, but I've run into a pretty major snag. There has to be a hypothesis, and the coil would need to prove or disprove that hypothesis.

    I have no idea what we could use it to test.

    Can anyone make any suggestions?

    Thanks!

So I've had the long standing joke about fishing with C4.. It usually starts with someone saying they enjoy fishing. Then I say I like fishing too. As long as I have enough C4. I don't have the patients to spend the whole day with a string in the water not catching anything.

    Years after I started joking about it, there was a Stargate::SG1 episode where one of the guys (the annoying good/bad guy) gets stuck on a planet. He would take a ball of C4, about the size of a baseball (if I remember right), put a remote detonator in it, and throw it in the water. He'd push a button on the remote, you'd here a "beep beep" {BOOM}. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen.

    So, out of curiosity, I went looking for "Fishing with C4" on Google. Funny thing, nothing came up. Not a single page about fishing with C4. I'm so upset.

    When I was a kid, I was talking with a state fish & game officer, who was telling us a story. He heard a loud explosion in the distance, so he went to investigate. He came up to a lake, and there was a little old man in a boat who seemed perfectly content fishing. Then he watched him light a stick of dynamite, and toss it over the side of the boat. {BOOM} He then rowed around, and picked up several floating fish.

    After the officer's ears stopped ringing, he yelled and waved at the old man. The old man rowed over to the shore.

    "What were you doing?" asked the officer.

    "Fishing", replied the old man.

    "You can't fish with explosives! That's illegal!"

    "But, " said the old man, "I learned this from my pappy, who learned it from his pappy. We've fished like this for a long time. This is the way it's done. I don't know how you kids do it, you barely ever catch anything."

    Realizing he wasn't going to get anywhere, and respecting the old man, he simply told him, "Really, it's illegal. You could go to jail for this. I'm going to turn around, get in my truck and leave. Be careful, and don't get caught."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blast_fishing

    It may be illegal, but if I'm hungry, and I have C4 in my pocket, I'm going to have a feast. :)

A friend wrote me from her hotmail account today, to my gmail account. I replied, and a couple minutes later, I got a reply.. Oddly enough, it was this.. I guess the Hotmail/Gmail war is on. :)

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

        _____@hotmail.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: Gmail tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 DY-002 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. The likely cause is a compromised or virus infected server/personal computer. If you are not an email/network admin please contact your E-mail/Internet Service Provider for help. Email/network admins, please visit http://postmaster.live.com for email delivery information and support (state 13).

    I always have grand plans when I'm broke, but there's no harm in documenting my plans, should I accidentally get some money. I could have (theoretically) done this with my tax return and economic stimulus check, but those disappeared before they ever got to me. The evil ex-wife had them sucked away straight from the Fed. If she was computer literate enough to read this, then I could add a few more phrases to say how I feel about her sucking every penny I have away, but I'll save that for later.

    Anyways, on to the car.

    I've wanted to do an electric car conversion for a while. I've been trying to figure out the best way to do it. I've read countless pages where other people have built theirs. Most of the problems they run into are finding places to put batteries, or other idiosyncrasies with the particular vehicle. I want to avoid those. :)

    Right now, I drive 30 miles daily. 15 miles to work, 15 miles home. Other than that 30 to 60 minutes driving (depending on traffic) it is parked. Half of the drive is stop&go at up to 45mph (speed limit & lots of cops). The other half is one long stretch where I just have to get up to speed, and then coast. Sometimes in my regular car, I do exactly that. I get up to speed (about 80mph), for about 1/3 of the run, put it in neutral, and coast the rest of the way. It saves me a lot of gas.

    My concept is to make a "sand rail" EV. Most cars weigh 3,000 pounds or so. My TransAm weighs in at 3,400 pounds dry (no gas, no driver). Even something tiny like a Miata weighs 2,100 pounds. Looking around, a good ballpark for a sand rail, with engine, is about 1,000 pounds.

    I'd want a 4 seat version, just for the extra space. I'll explain space in a minute. I looked around online, and there are a bunch of different manufacturers, making almost identical frames. Not hard, since anyone who can weld can make a frame. It's the same technique as making a roll cage for a race car, which every town has a shop that can do.

    I'd like to find a semi-complete project. That would be frame, transmission, wheels, seats, brakes, and most of the lights.

    I found batteries for my bus. 1200A group 8d batteries, for $85/ea. They're "used", which appears to mean remanufactured, not taken out of a crashed truck. They're roughly 250Ah each. They each weigh 120 pounds too. They're not a lot of fun to move by yourself, I assure you. :) My bus takes 2 just to start (wired serial for 24vdc)

    It would require an electric motor (obviously), which would attach to the original transmission. A lot of them use VW bug parts, which is cool (cheap and readily available). The batteries would be mounted everywhere I could. Most of them have a long nose, which could hold 8. Around the motor could hold at least 2, and the remainder would be put under, beside or between the seats. I'd like to have at least 10 of these group 8D batteries, which would give me 2,500Ah.

    Then it would be a matter of skinning it. That is fiberglass or sheet metal to make it somewhat aerodynamic. A little Heat & A/C unit would be nice too. That should run on a power inverter happily, and there *should* be plenty of power to run it with for 15 minutes. Here in Florida, it's hot 13 months of the year, but on occasion, we get a cold day, cold enough to justify having heat, and not just a jacket.

    For recharging, since there is a minimum of 6 hours of daylight here (Florida), I'd cover the roof area with solar panels. That's part of why I'd want the 4 seat version, so it would have extra surface area.

    Worst case, I have to plug it in at home too, but at least it would get some charge while I'm at work.

    Now, all I need is money. I'm working extra now, which may pay the bills, but not pay for projects. I thought about bank robbery, but the profit vs risk isn't worth it. Banks don't keep enough cash on hand, and I'm not a good criminal, so I'd get caught. :) With my luck, I'd get $2,000, and end up in prison for 40 years. Prison definitely keeps me from doing cool projects. I've been thinking about prostitution, but as an average skinny white guy, the most I'm going to get from wearing a G-string on the corner is people begging me to put clothes on. :)

What is the densest CPU configuration motherboard available?

    I know in the Linux kernel, it handles SMP from 2 to 255 CPU's.

    I was talking to a friend, and we were considering what the most CPU's we could stick into a server is. Anyone can buy older CPU's at budget pricing. From what I understand, most of the older Opteron's were limited by design to 1, 2, 4, or 8 CPUs in one machine. I don't know the limit on P4's, nor the newer Opteron's.

    Where could I find a motherboard a huge density of CPU's?

    Wouldn't a 128 CPU 1.5Ghz machine be just a little faster than a dual core 4Ghz, assuming multi-threaded processes?

    Besides the cool factor of having 128 CPU's running at once, this could make one hell of a server or virtualization environment.

    So I had this wacky idea. I figured the folks who read my journal are probably the right audience for input on this.

    Let me explain the problem first. My day job has servers in quite a few cities. Sometimes connectivity is slow or even non-existant between the cities. Most of the cities are with the same provider, but transit different major providers.

    For example, say we have cities A, B, C and D. Between cities A and B, the connection may be >300ms. Between A and C it's only 45ms, and between C and B it's only 30ms. so, that could accumulate to be 75ms. That's much better than >300ms.

    The easy solution for day to day work is to SSH from A to C to B, which is a very manual process.

    Now for the idea.

    I've played with PPP over SSH a lot in the past. It's a lot of fun, and very reliable if you do it right. From home, I used to keep up a PPP over SSH link to my office, and use that as my default gateway, to get around pesky firewall rules. :)

  Oddly enough, the encryption overhead is more than mitigated by the data compression, despite what I've read on the subject.

    Huh?

    I have an PPP over SSH tunnel going from my desktop machine to one server. It's faster over the PPP link than directly, even though they'd both be taking the exact same route (the PPP link is initiated by my desktop. It's not a great example, but at 33ms for the ping, there's a 0.8ms deviation, in favor of the PPP link.

    With the PPP over SSH method, I've actually had much faster speeds than just the compression offers, because some home providers reduce the quality of service for particular protocols. I'm sure you've all noticed the recent bittorrent stories.

    So, what if I were to pick a machine in each facility, and set it up with PPP links to all other cities, and have those machines be routers for a private network? If we had say 10 networks, that would give 18 PPP connections per machine, or 9 unique routes that we could use, assuming we didn't do anything to keep a redundant link from being set up.

    I'm good with setting up the links. I could actually accomplish it in a very short amount of time. Of course, this is a production network, so I have to go through all kinds of hoops to do it. I'm trying to prove it between:

    My workstation
    My home machine
    My web server
    Another web server I control

    What I'm stuck on is the appropriate routing protocol. I was looking at OLSR or HSLS. These are designed for wireless networks.

    OLSR doesn't seem to like to play because these aren't wireless devices, they're established PPP connections.

    HSLS seems very primitive, and as far as I can tell, it will take a LOT of work to implement.

    OSPF/BGP looked like a decent option, but they are based on link state, not link quality. This is probably why I see this occasionally, because (almost?) all providers use BGP, which just gives us a route that's up, not a route that's best.

    The fastest way between sites is a good start, for our internal traffic. It would help out a lot with some aspects of the network.

    Ideally, I'd like to use it to pass traffic to the gateway. Expanding on the previous example, if reaching site D (a foreign network from this one), which is close to site C, and barely reachable by A, when I attempt to go to site D, it would actually route through A to C to D automatically. For internal use, this would just be cool. For the end users, routing their traffic through the best gateway would could make a world of difference to them.

    Obviously, the network would need very fast convergence, to be sure that if there is a route change, it wouldn't effect the outside users.

    Any ideas?

So I've come farther with the server room designs. We're also in talks with another provider in the colo we're in. It's good to keep a fallback plan. :)

    The new design is an 8'x16' room. We'll be using 2x6 joists (boards in the floor), and we're ditching the cement blocks to raise the room any farther. 6" up is still more than we require for running water. If we have 6" of standing water, we have bigger problems. :) We can still sandbag and sump pump it, so nothing's changed there.

    The new room allows for 4 racks comfortably, plus room to move.

    I found a good source for cooling information. It basically said we'd need about 24k BTU's. Home Depot sells window units that size for $399. Two of those would give extra cooling, plus enough redundancy should one fail.

    So, I'm sitting on the plans right now, to see if we're going to start building next weekend or not. :)

I want to talk about this, but my regular news site isn't exactly appropriate.

    When Nathan passed away (see Bad, Bad, Worse, previously posted), the medical examiner didn't decide immediately to what the cause of death was. They issued a death certificate that simply said "Pending". My wife (his mother) called to see if they knew the cause yet.

    It was clear to me what happened. His body was frozen in the position he was in during his seizures.

    damn, I'm thinking about what happened. That's when I start losing it. Excuse me if I ramble.

    Anyways, he was in the bathtub, frozen in his seizure position. When I pulled him out and started CPR, he was still frozen in that position. During his seizures, he'd get stiff, but would still be moving (aka convulsive seizures). I had tried to make him more comfortable once, at least in my mind, by moving his arm and head to a more comfortable position. This was impossible, so I just did what I could to make things soft. The one time he was in a "good" place (in the house, under normal house lighting), we held him until he just went limp (coming out of the seizure), and then I carried him to our bedroom. He slept in a bunk bed, so our grown-up bed was bigger and softer, and we could sit on both sides of him, without hitting our heads on the top bunk. :)

    The medical examiner's office said the report wasn't done yet, so I left for work. They called the house about an hour after I left, and said his cause of death was due to his epilepsy. In other words, the toxicology and tissue tests came back negative for anything else. The full report isn't complete, but will be soon.

    I want to read the full report. Well, I don't. I know that he died, and he isn't coming back, even though I'm finding myself in full blown denial fairly frequently. I want to know more about him though.

    We went through his computer, looking at where he went, and what he was doing. We already knew most of it, so there wasn't much surprising. I'm pretty good at computer forensics (oddly enough), so it was pretty easy to make a trail of everything he did.

    He didn't keep a diary, and looking around his room, it was like a young teenage boy's room.

    I guess we want to know more about him, because we don't want to lose him, even though he's already gone.

    I guess there isn't much more to say right now. The medical examiner confirmed what we already knew, and the details will be coming in a week or ten. They said "it takes 6 to 8 weeks for the report". Monday will be 8 weeks since they examined him. I know these aren't priorities for the labs, since there are live patients who need the work done immediately. It just sucks having to wait. But, what happens afterwards? We're sad for a long time, no matter what.

    I've always been the type person that likes to know how things work and why. I have a clue on how the human body works, but it's hard to accept "it just stopped", I have to know more.

    Think of it like a car breaking down. If my car just stops running, I don't say "oh well", and have it towed to get it fixed, I open it up, dig through parts, do an analysis, and then decide for myself if it's fixable or not.

    That day, that's what I did too. I did the basic checks (since I don't have an EEG or EKG). No pulse, no breathing, fix it. I tried, and tried, but in the end, I couldn't get him to start back up. I wanted desperately for him to gasp for air, or even his eyelids to flicker, but I had already made the diagnosis. I just wasn't willing to accept it. I'm still not.

    Every time I think about that day, it's like the outcome will be different. I re-live those minutes in my head over and over, just like it's happening.. well.. right now. I'm expecting to see him move, to breath, to live again. Sometimes in my head, he does. In reality, he died on Feb 10th, and has been buried for almost 2 months. I just don't want to accept it.

So I started back at one of my previous employers, I am once again employed. :)

    But, I'm waiting to get my access again to all the servers, so I'm gainfully trying to keep myself occupied, without thinking about recent life events.

    So, I come to you, to share the magic of the Rubik's cube.

    Back in the 80's, when it was popular, I was annoyed by the whole thing. Twist, turn, damn. Twist, turn, turn, damn. Ya, that's how I want to spend my day. So, I considered the other options to solve the puzzle. It's kinda like anything else, you have to be smarter than the device you're using.

    So, when I was a kid, I figured out how to take Rubik's cube apart. The next day I figured out how to put it together.

    After the early 90's, I thought I'd never use this fine skill again, until a few days ago. A friend has a couple boys, aged 10-ish and 13-ish. :) Ya, I'm still great at remembering ages and birthdays. The younger one says "Have you ever solved a Rubik's cube?" Ahhhh, he asked the right question. Sure, I've "solved" a cube.

    He tosses me the cube. This one is a 2x2x2 (4 tiles on each face). I've never seen one of these, mostly because I never cared to. I gave it a quick look, and gave a little tug to the blocks. "Sure, I can solve it, but you won't like how I do it." He asked how, and I explained that "This is an engineering puzzle, not a logical one."

    We went back and forth on that for about 10 minutes, so finally, I took it, twisted one side 45 degrees, and popped a block off.

    There's something you should know about the 2x2x2 Rubik's cubes. They're not like the 3x3x3 cubes. Besides having 8 blocks, there are also about a dozen sliders, 6 rotators, and a center hub. All this very carefully assembled by some of the highest paid workers in China, who I'm sure can build 10 a minute. :)

    With the one block off, it's now lost the integrity to stay as a single unit, and the whole thing crumbles in my hands, a couple dozen little tiny plastic parts, that I've never in my life seen before.. Ahh! A new puzzle. I like these. I spent about 10 more minutes standing at a kitchen counter, trying to put it back together. It seems easy enough, but I ended up with 2 extra pieces, and it wouldn't hold itself together.

    Ahh! an impossible puzzle, I like these even more!

    I took a baggie full of Rubik's parts home with me that night, and in the middle of yet another sleepless night, I sat at my desk solving the ENGINEERING challenge of the 2x2x2 Rubik's cube. (Actually called the Rubik's Jr., I believe).

    I won't give the secret away, but look at YouTube. :) It's not the perfect solution, but it got me close enough, after I was really really close.

    I sent it back home to the kids, in perfect condition. "Solved!" I even spent part of the day just spinning sides to see that everything moved ok.

    It came back to me the next day, as a bag full of pieces. Ahhh, the mighty children have learned the magic of an Engineering Challenge. They just haven't found how to solve it. They insisted that it just "came apart". I've seen some of their other fine works, that just "happened" and they claim to have had absolutely no influence on.

    I put it back together in perfect condition again, and my wife grabs it from me. "How hard could this be?" She's been playing with it for a week, without solving the logical puzzle. I'm tempted to take it as an engineering puzzle again one night, so she can think I solved the logical problem too. :)

    When I was job hunting, I found a position for someone working large fireworks for large presentations.. If there's something I like more than taking stuff apart and putting it back together, it's blowing stuff up. I'm like a kid at Christmas, on New Years and the 4th of July. I come home with my presents all wrapped in clear plastic, just ready to set up the mortar tubes, and start launching lovely packages of explosive goodness high into the sky. Wheeeee!

    I didn't even get a call on that job though. Oh well.

    {sigh} I have to wait 3 more months before I can blow up more stuff. I'm not enough of a pyro to do it any other time. Well, I'm usually not rich enough either. :) In good years, I'll spend about $300 to blow up in a night. Ahhhh.. Big Bada Boom

So I had an idea....

    That's usually the first line I say, when my friends roll their eyes, start throwing weird comments out, or get ready to walk out of the room. :)

    This one isn't bad though.

    We were looking at the prospect of building our own server room. Leasing space in a facility and paying for bandwidth is expensive. Really expensive.

    I know of two providers locally, one is Verizon FiOS business. Their cost for 20Mb/20Mb, with a whole bunch of IP's is about $200/mo. The other would be something closer to $1000/mo. Still, it's cheaper than the facilities, usually at $85 to $200 per Mb/s at 95th percentile, plus floor space, cabinet, power, port charges, etc.

    I'm putting together numbers right now on how to do it. Getting the bandwidth in is the easy part. Putting the room together is the hard part.

    My "office" at home usually has at least 3 machines and two monitors running in it. With the normal air conditioning, even if I tweak the A/C vents throughout the house, gets to 90 degrees or so pretty easily. Fans blowing the hot air into the rest of the house can usually bring it down to about 85 degrees. So, I have to cool it with an extra air conditioner. I bought a nice portable air conditioner from Home Depot a few years ago, and it's really helped through the summers. In the winter, leaving the window cracked is all I need to keep the room comfortable.

    That's just 5 pieces of equipment though. What happens when you want to move a couple dozen machines into a space like that? Either you live with the overheating, and babysit crashing machines all the time, or you cool it.

    So this idea will reside in a garage. I'm considering building a cube, 8'x8'x8', raised off the floor 1' to 2' (I have to measure the ceiling height). Two decent window air conditioners will be overkill, but that's (one of) my middle names.

    In time, it will have a couple (or few) Xantrax power inverter/chargers, a bank of batteries, automatic gas powered generator, solar panels to charge during the day, etc. We'll even consider putting in badge access for the door, and a halon fire suppression system. :)

    Really, if the cost goes down to 10% of the original cost, that leaves a good profit margin in a "facility" where everyone lives literally in the facility or a few blocks away. It's one thing to have "someone" on call or on staff, but having the best and most familiar people there is a very good thing.

    An 8x8 room should give us plenty of room to grow, and since we'd be building it as a free standing room inside the garage, it would be available for expansion as needed. If it got to the point where it was too big for the space, then it would be cost effective to redo it in a commercial space near by. Pretty much, if we stuffed it with servers, we'd already be making good money, or at least so I'd hope :)

    I'm still working on the idea.

I'm cross posting this from my news site. Sorry, I didn't want to write it twice.

    I've been a little slack on posting thank you's for donations, and I apologize.

    The following folks have donated to Free Internet Press, either through a straight donation or subscription since our hardships started. You've all been so much help. You've kept food on the table. I'd say a roof over my head, but we've run enough news about the mortgage crisis that so many people are going through.

    Our economy is really rough. I've been trying to find work, and compared to late 2006, I'm finding 1/10 the available jobs in my field (Information Technology). I know almost everyone is feeling the same thing, with gas and food prices going up, but we aren't making more money. We really appreciate your help and caring!

Juan A $150
Blanche V hundreds
Larry M $6
Chris S $6
Lizabeth R $30
Kim D $20
Melode Q $20
Deborah M $103
Sherry S $3
Patrick M $3
Jagatguru K $50

    I don't like asking for help. My close friends know, I'm the guy who takes care of others. I'm always on top of everything, and I'm the go-to guy. Some friends know I'll loan them money and make my own bills a little late. If a car breaks down, a computer (or server) is acting quirky, a faucet is leaking, I'm there for them. Personally, I'm not comfortable being the one asking for help, but our close friends have been helping so much too.

    For all of our readers, we're striving to continue doing what we do best here. We're finding the news, and making it available as quickly and accurately as possible.

    I do have a grand plan for making Free Internet Press better. If we can get enough regular subscribers, we'll be able to grow our staff, with Intellpuke driving our journalists, and be able to bring even more news to you daily.

    Thank you all again.

JW Smythe
Editor
Free Internet Press

I haven't written a journal entry in a while. Lots of things have happened, and I can't say many of them are good.

    In July 2006, based on what my job had told me (move if you expect to stay with us), we found a house in Florida, bought it, and moved. It was the beginning

    In November 2006, I got laid off from a job I had for many years.

    On February 1, 2007, our daughter was born. This is the brightest point in the last two years.

    In February 2007, I finally found a job that paid less than 50% of what I was making. Well, it's something, right. Maybe they'll be impressed, and give me more.

    I wasn't offered more until I took another job.

    Over the next few months, bills started piling up. The mortgage payments were being made with favors to friends. Huge favors. Anything that I could do, I did.

    In September 2007, things started looking up. I took on a job with a plumbing company, who had great expectations of what the company was going to do. They needed a CIO, and I knew I could do everything they wanted and then some. My friend had just been brought on as the CFO, and together we'd be able to make it go well.

    The contract read well. I'd be making 50% more than I was already making, with two raises in position (title and income) over the following year. I'd be back on top!

    A couple weeks later, they let my friend go. I knew it wasn't a good sign, but I kept on course. They dragged me every which way, spending time on what should have been essential tasks, doing things that should have been allowed to hire subordinates for.

    Still, I stayed on course, doing my best, spending all my time looking at the goal. I'm going to make my part of this company succeed, and it will reward me. ...then out of nowhere...

    In July 2007, my step son had a seizure. It was his first, but not his last. We got him help, got him medicated, and everything looked like it was ok. From about September 2007 until February 2008, we only know of one seizure that he had, and it was because he missed his medication. It was ok though, what's the worst that'll happen. He'll fall down, have a seizure, and be pissed off that he bruised something.

    On February 10, 2008, he had another seizure. This was his last seizure. He either went into respiratory or cardiac arrest (he stopped breathing, or his heart stopped) during the seizure.

    We found him in his bathtub. Despite CPR, and the paramedics responding very quickly, it was already too late. I'm happy that I knew CPR, so knew what to do. I hate myself because it didn't do a damned bit of good. We were already about an hour too late, so it wasn't technique or even a matter of seconds that made the difference.

    He was 13 years old. Kids don't just drop dead. Apparently they do.

    Things can look bad, bad, or worse, but it all pales in comparison. We (me and his mother) have only been together for about 4 years, and technically he's only been "my" stepson for about a year, but he's still my kid.

    We met in California, but moved to Florida. That means a substantial part of his life was in California. We buried him in Florida, and his friends showed up and gave their support. We then went to California to have a service for those who couldn't come to Florida.

    We all picked up some pretty nasty colds through all this. I blame the fact that folks were traveling from all over, through airports throughout the country, not the stress. We flew to California anyways, it wasn't a vacation, it's a memorial.

    While we were in California, I got a weird email from work. They wanted *ALL* the passwords. Not just some piece of equipment. I was being good through all this. My phone stayed on my hip, and I called in daily. I was handling issues and working on things remotely. For example, I finished the redesign, testing, and implementation of the new web site.

    We couldn't fly home on time. Both my wife and I were very sick. We pushed the tickets out 3 days, so we could recover a little bit. On the Sunday that we were suppose to be arriving back, I got the phone call. "We hate to do this, but the economy sucks. You're laid off."

    I got laid off while away for the memorial service for my stepson? WTF?

    So, we're home now. The basic diagnosis on my illness is walking pneumonia. Pretty much from the bottom of my lungs to the top of my sinuses was infected. If something nasty could come out, it did.

    My wife has pretty much recovered. I'm still a little sick, but almost better. I still can't hear very well, my ears are still blocked up. At least I can talk now.

    A drive died in my server too. In that, it corrupted the filesystem pretty bad. Backups haven't been working quite right, but I haven't had time to work on that. It took 4 days to get it up and running properly, but that's fixed.

    The bills are stacking up. I have no work prospects. All my regular connections are telling me the same thing. "The economy sucks, no one is hiring."

    It takes the bad times to recognize the good times, right? We'll, we're tired of the bad times. Hopefully the good times will start up again soon.

"High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week. Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy."

Read the full story

Usually I wouldn't touch a religious debate, but this has an interesting point of view.

People of many faiths believe that visions from psychedelic drugs are not necessarily in-mind created hallucinations, but open up the mind for awareness that can not normally be reached. For most people it's perfectly acceptable to talk to the deity of their choice, but when the deity talks back they must be crazy.

G'morning all,

    I was hoping one of you would have some advice for me. I have a friend who's looking for a piece of software. I know some of you actually work, :) Any ideas on the dispatch software used to send you out to sites?

    He needs a complete package for a traditional service based business (think handyman, plumber, air conditioning, etc).

    He needs it to handle:

    Grabbing the CallerID string, and opening a record on the customer support rep's PC

    Guiding the CS rep through questions to ask. General category, secondary category, blah, blah.

    Scheduling dispatch of a repair tech to the site

    GPS tracking of the repair tech

    Remote access by the repair tech on a handheld device (PocketPC based cell phone?), tablet PC, or laptop. (open to options right now)

    Scanning credit cards, checks, etc, for verification and processing by the home office.

    Printing invoices from the truck to give the customer.

    Exporting the data to a major accounting software.

    Ideally, it would be able to handle multiple businesses. For example, it may be Bob's handyman service, but they may do the accounting as "Bob's construction", "Bob's plumbing", "Bob's A/C repair", and "Bob's demolition", each with it's own set of books, although many employees probably work for both companies, and most calls may come into the same phone lines.

    They're looking for open source, running on Linux, if possible. Most of the packages they've found are very pricey, very closed source, and all run on Windows. You get exactly the functionality that you were sold, and no more.

    Thanks!