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Today's Spam of the day from teacher@bahn.de

Dimensional Warp Generator Needed rvrmpokfref
Hello,

I'm a time traveler stuck here in 2003. Upon arriving here my dimensional warp generator stopped working. I trusted a company here by the name of LLC Lasers to repair my Generation 3 52 4350A watch unit, and they fled on me. I am going to need a new DWG unit, prefereably the rechargeable AMD wrist watch model with the GRC79 induction motor, four I80200 warp stabilizers, 512GB of SRAM and the menu driven GUI with front panel XID display.

I will take whatever model you have in stock, as long as its received certification for being safe on carbon based life forms.

In terms of payment:
I dont have any Galactic Credits left. Payment can be made in platinum gold or 2003 currency upon safe delivery of unit.

Please transport unit in either a large brown paper bag or box to below coordinates on Monday July 28th at (exactly 3:00pm) Eastern Standard Time on the dot. A few minutes prior will be ok, but it cannot be after. If you miss this timeframe please email me.

Twenty-three inches in from the outside edge of the corner at the South West
Corner of Cummings Ave. & Village Street in Woburn, Mass. is at Latitude
42.4845467 & Longitude -71.1576157 and the ground is 101.3' above sea level.
WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO TRANSPORT ITEM BY REGULAR MEANS OF TELEPORTATION. THEY ARE MONITORING AND WILL REDIRECT THE SIGNAL!!
(NOBODY HAS BEEN ABLE TO TRANSPORT ANYTHING SO FAR WITHOUT THE TRANSFER BEING DEFLECTED). I DO NOT CARE HOW YOU HAVE TO GET IT HERE, JUST DO IT IN A WAY THAT NO SPYING EYES WILL POSSIBLY BE ABLE TO REDIRECT THE TRANSFERENCE. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU BE ABLE TO MONITOR THE TRANSFER.

Although those coordinates are a secure guarded area, these channels through email are never secure. Unfortunately it is the only form of communication I have right now.

After unit has been sent please email me at: info@federalfundingprogram.com
with payment instructions. Do not reply directly back to this email.

Thank You


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Interesting Day. Apparently the Eiffel Tower Caught Fire somehow, and the UAE is building an island. Look at some of the photos in status/satellite. Quite amazing.

Why nerds are unpopular: The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about.

Thanks to Doc for the link.

And the chair holds. Unbelievable.

You know that when the package says, "This chemical is recognized in the state of california to cause cancer" you shouldn't be near it. I threw the package away, but it also had warnings about breathing the fumes, touching the stuff, or even using it within 10 miles of a pregnant woman. Oh, and i witnessed it melting plastic. Nonethless, it says that it sticks plastic to plastic at 3,500 pounds per square inch, which is more than enough to fix my office chair that had a leg break off (i really shouldnt lean back in these things). Given the warnings though, I dare not bring it inside the apartment until the 24 hour hardening phase is over. Dan noted that i was literally shaking while using this stuff. I didn't think plastic gloves were enough protection, since it does eat through plastic.

You really have to take a peak at this. Hopefully, you've got a real internet connection:
World's Tallest House

I just finished some code that tries to extract heirarchical data structure from a given web page, without knowing anything about the page. It is supposed to detect repeating data structures and try to figure out what the data is that goes into a dynamic web page. Works great on news articles, lists of people, or anything with a general tree like record structure. Here is the result for www.dmoz.org:

add URL
help
link
editor login

Arts
---Movies
---Television
---Music
------...
Business
---Jobs
---Real Estate
---Investing
------...
Computers
---Internet
---Software
---Hardware
------...
Games
---Video Games
---RPGs
---Gambling
------...
Health
---Fitness
---Medicine
---Alternative
------...
Home
---Family
---Consumers
---Cooking
------...
and Teens
---Arts
---School Time
---Teen Life
------...
News
---Media
---Newspapers
---Weather
------...
Recreation
---Travel
---Food
---Outdoors
---Humor
------...
Reference
---Maps
---Education
---Libraries
------...
Regional
---Canada
---Europe
------...
Science
---Biology
---Psychology
---Physics
------...
Shopping
---Autos
---Clothing
---Gifts
------...
Society
---People
---Religion
---Issues
------...
Sports
---Baseball
---Soccer
---Basketball
------...
World
---Deutsch
---Espa?ol
---Français
---Italiano
---Japanese
---Nederlands
---Polska
---Svenska
------...

And then he tried to kill me with a pocketknife. Yep, thats me.

Sorry for my recent absence. Looks like I am back to the podium and blogging again. Also looks like I will be keeping this up for another year, I just renewed the domain. Maybe I'll get a different layout sometime - ;)

Looks like I will be in greenville until Wednesday morning.

One of the best and most respected documents ever written, still holds true even today:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

Ok, I'll start from the beginning - I'm building my sister a computer. Now I'll jump ahead a little.

All the parts had arrived, including an AMD Motherboard/processor. Worked fine. Was installing windows, and it would give me a blue screen/stop error every time it got to partitioning or formatting the Hard drive. Now, this is a brand new 180gb drive, so I assume its the drive's fault. I spend 3 hours on the phone with western digital (awesome support btw) and we finally conclude that it isn't the hard drive, but some other hardware component. I tested this by formatting the drive just fine in my own computer.

So, I go through all the components - video, cables, power, ram, etc. I switch it all out, and that leaves me with the processor or the motherboard (or both). I decide its probably an undocumented compatibility issue with AMD. So, I ship back the combo and order an intel version of the same thing.

Now, the intel stuff comes, and I realize I got the right processor speed, but designed for a 800mhz Front Side Bus, but my mobo is 533 FSB. AKA: It wont work. I spend two days trying different hardware things. The second day, I get a new processor(the right one). It doesn't work, and neither does the processor from my working computer (so I think it would be the mobo). Then I realize (after putting the good processor back in my original machine), that intel motherboards have 2 power cables - one just for the processor. I plug that in, with the new processor, and it still doesnt work. I talk on the phone with intel for about 30 mins and we conclude that the motherboard is bad. So, I go get another motherboard. Try the same new processor in that, and still nothing. Things are starting to drive me batty. I thought that I had figured out that it wasnt the processor since my old processor didnt work in the system either.

Eventually, I tried swapping processors again and it worked! But I can't return the new processor, and its $200. I try it in my old computer - no good. Then i realize it is rocking slightly in the cradle. I look closely at the underbelly and realize that two pins are horribly bent and 2 more are slightly bent. There are 478 pins on this chip the size of a stamp, each made of gold - a very very soft metal. I can barely see these pins let alone touch them. So, I get a tweezers from the grocery store. I fix the slightly bent ones easily, and while fixing the really bent ones, one of them breaks off. Now, I am 100% sure at this point that I am out $200. No question in my mind.

However, I try it out in my old computer - minus one of the 478 pins, and it works just fine! I'm blogging on a 477 pin processor right now. Apparently intel processors have a bunch of power and ground pins that are redundant - they are all connected to each other anyway, so the power can come in the other pins without problem. I just got friggin lucky. After 2 weeks of putting this computer together, I really needed some luck - so thank you whomever up there who is looking out for me.

"Ink in a typical replacement cartridge costs about £1.70 per millilitre, compared with 1985 Dom Perignon at 23p per millilitre."
link

I'm in the wrong business.

Now here is a news title that you dont see every day:
Giant blob baffles marine scientists

Marine Biologist: Its a washed up whale
Taxonomist: Its a new species of animal
Me: God sneezed.

Cute

Well, greg is going home this weekend to give his sis a lovely computer shaped like a cat. Its her graduation gift, should be fun. The last parts came in on a UPS truck today and hopefully everything will work. I'm gonna go put it together in just a minute here.