It is Christmas Eve and I am in El Paso, TX (the big litter box). I just got finished wrapping Lisa’s last gift of the season and I hope she likes it because odd shapes are a pain to wrap. I would say what it is but she reads this blog too. All the stockings are hung and the house looks like Norman Rockwell painted the plans for it. There are pies and cakes and such strewn about the kitchen and if I could only find some Gingerbread I would make a house.
A sys admin last week pleaded guilty to attempting to disrupt the power grid in California by shutting down a data centre that managed the state’s electrical supply.
Lonnie Charles Denison, 33, of South Natomas in California confessed to breaking a glass cover and pushing an emergency power off button at the Independent System Operator’s (ISO) data centre near Folsom on 15 April. The contract Unix sys admin was upset with his employer and co-workers at the time. Denison reportedly snapped shortly after discovering his computer privileges had been revoked.
Denison’s actions prevented the ISO from communicating with the electricity market for about two hours, leaving California vulnerable to blackout conditions. In the event no blackout occurred because the incident happened late on a Sunday night, when demand was low, so California had no need to buy in excess generating capacity from other states.
Nonetheless, the incident cost the centre $14,000, UPI reports. It took 20 computer specialists about seven hours to restore the system. Folsom data centre blues
Prosecutors allege Denision compounded his offences by sending a threatening email to an unnamed California ISO employee the next day implying he planted a bomb at the facility. The email said: “Hey, at one point I respected you… you have a new kid. So this is only because of him. Get out before the timer expires. Not long now. Take care.”
ISO responded by evacuating 500 workers from the facility and transfered control of the grid to a second control centre.
Denison pleaded guilty to attempted damage of an energy facility, a felony offence punishable with up to five years’ imprisonment and a $250,000 fine, at a hearing in Sacremento on Friday. He faces a sentencing hearing scheduled for 29 February.
There is just not enough Christmas going on right now, so to get me more in the mood I decided to put a nice little Holiday Theming on the Blog. I hope you like it… and if not… oh freakin’ well because I do.
For your enjoyment, here is a little christmas video for you:
Tis the season for shopping and crappy products on store shelves. Here are two products that were recently found while out and about shopping for the holiday season.
First is the “Stay Straight” Doo-Hicky
What is this thing? Is it a hair appliance or maybe a homophobic person’s dream device? From looking at the packaging, there is no indication whatsoever about what in the hell this thing is for or even how it works. The information gleaned from the package is that it is a kitchen product. That is it. It was selling for $1.00 and I was thinking about buying it just to have if I needed to keep things straight.
Second up is the “Peg Legged Kitty” Ornament
This poor item was found tucked away in the holiday section at my local TJ Maxx store. I see the concept but it is a horrible execution. Did anyone step back and look at this poor thing before they sent it in to production? And what blind retail buyer decided to pick this product up?! Honestly people, are you serious?! I don’t know what is worse, the fact that the cat is crippled or the fact that the cat looks like it knows and is sad and confused about it. I almost bought it out of pity because who is honestly going to buy a crippled kitty to hang on their Christmas tree?
Thank you to my lovely Lisa for pointing these things out in the store, making me take the pictures, and suggesting that I post them on my blog.
This phone is horrible! Seriously! This thing shouldn’t be called a smartphone it should fall in to the standard old cellphone category. To try and name all the features it lacks would be ridiculous so I think I will just name the ones that drive me up the wall.
Where to begin is a good question. The fact that the phone is running Windows Mobile 5 is the largest downfall in my opinion but, it seems to run a modified version because software developed for WM5 doesn’t work on the i607. I am a UNIX System Administrator so access to shell sessions via SSH is vital for my job. Pocket Putty is the Windows Mobile solution for that and it doesn’t run on the i607. I know people that have other phones running WM5 that use Pocket Putty just fine so it is a Blacjack issue.
Let’s see, what next, how about the lack of ability to easily share a bluetooth connection for internet browsing on my laptop using my phone as a modem. I know people that have figured out hacks to get it to work but I just managed to lock my phone up and had to reinstall the OS when I tried it.
The next thing that pisses me off is that the phone will not play YouTube videos. It will load the media player and then error out. This is attributed to some authorization flag that AT&T has embedded in the video player. Videos, of the same format, that you stream from AT&T mobile video have an “authorized” flag set in the file. Again, I have seen hacks, tried them, and had to reinstall my OS.
I use Mac’s at work and at home so the fact that I had to pay money for a piece of active sync software to be able to sync my phone and computer kind of ticked me off.
The phone does not have an accessable GPS which I can live with because of Google’s new “My Location” triangulation software for Google Maps but guess what, “My Location” doesn’t work. This is due the lack of Cell ID data in the system registry. Apparently, AT&T decided to leave the ID tags out of the registry for WM5 so “My Location” can’t keep track of the towers that it hears and hence the location is perpetually unavailable.
I could keep going but essentially, it boils down to the fact that the phone is a piece of junk and that is why AT&T payed me $50 to get the phone (free phone with a $50 mail in rebate).
Bottom line, don’t get the hunk of junk and get yourself something more useful like an iPhone, Blackberry, or Treo because the Blackjack is bust.
