USB Cable Hell

I was visiting my friend and settled down to read the latest news buzz. I find it difficult to use the touchpad of a laptop hence carry a mouse all the time. Digging through my backup I came across my set of usb cables that are tucked away for use. I was stunned at the number of USB cables that I carry.


1. USB cable from Hell aka Apple product
2. USB cable for a camera
3. Common USB cable. (4 of them)
4. USB cable for a music player.

I have 4 products with non-compatible usb interfaces which makes life difficult. I wonder how I landed with the 4 of the common usb cables. I carry one and backup one in case I loose the first one. Come on, who hasn't forgotten their cellphone charger or didn't need to connect mulitple devices with varying length at the same time to the laptop.

God booms: People who don't carry so many devices and people who charge all their devices during the night, don't carry so many usb cables, retard!

But, but if you are on the move all the time it is easier to use the laptop as the charging source! :D I know, lame excuse. I shall vow to clean up my backpack of all the unnecessary USB cables.

Child Safety : ISTTF report

Its funny how many links one has to jump to get to the original report. A link from Slashdot to Nytimes to search on google lands one on Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies. It is an interesting report that shed's light on real problems than the hysteria that "Internet is dangerous" and one has to protect the children.

I ain't saying that there aren't any dangers. The dangers are real and the victims are real. The dangers being any of the following

1) Stolen identities.
2) Personal pics leaked on the web and morphed.
3) Cyber Stalking/Bulling
4) Fake personalities.
5) Harassment.
6) Sexual solicitation/harassment.
7) Gossip.
8) Fraud (419 scams)

In the case of minors, the bogey man is the pic of some creepy sick old "man" trying to get to children and is the predator. The media presents the same picture as well. According to the report, while this threat exists there are other threats that are more important and profound.

The findings of the report are contrary to the public perception of problems of the internet. Minors face the same kind of problems that face in real life in the cyberspace. A large number of sexual abuse comes from someone in the family or someone known to the minor in real life (stats from different reports) and cyberworld doesn't really exacerbate it. A significant contributors to the problem are minors themselves. That is, minors bulling, soliciting sex, spreading gossip, they being victims and the perpetrator themselves.

An easy example is say 2 15 yr olds, who are bf and gf exchanged naked/sexual pics of each other. According to laws in some states they are both victims and both perpetrators. Perpetrators since they are distributing child pornography. Well that is what prosecuting attorney is going consider as the basis of filing a case if these pics were found. The supreme court of US has ruled that teenagers can be tried as sex offenders.

The registration of a teenager as a sex offender has life long impact on the teenagers. The only group that makes me sad is the group of teenagers who do dumb stuff not realizing the future consequences and end up getting charged in court and convicted and registered as sex offenders. I can't help but wonder if the society is punishing them way too hard, punishing them for life. I wonder what is adequate punishment for stupidity, actions becoz of lack of proper guidance, I don't have an answer.

One should read "Future of Online Reputation" to get an idea of the scope of audience and how reputation gets tarnished or built.

Laundry basket stolen

The past long weekend will go down as the most weird, surreal, ironic and irritating one. I had to travel on Sat and Monday, so went to do my laundry Friday night than leave the chore for Sunday.

I put the laundry for wash at the laundermat nearby go back after 30mins. My empty laundry bag/basket (call it what u want) was stolen from the laundermat. ! Whaat? Yeah it was stolen. Who steals an empty laundry bag/basket from a laundermat in a tad upscale town in the night? I laughed my head off and then I became irritated. I had to lug my clothes to the car, arrgggh, it is not fun when the wind chill is around 0 F or lesser.

WTF! Seriously WTF!

There are other things that happened. I will share them someday.

Laptop batt status cmd line

I was looking at /usr/bin and looking at binaries that I don't recognize to see what they do. A while ago I was thinking of writing a script to poll info out of /sys for power information but this command does it all!

halflife@darklord:~$ acpi -V
Battery 0: Discharging, 99%, 03:34:12 remaining, design capacity 7800 mAh
AC Adapter 0: off-line
Thermal 0: ok, 39.5 degrees C
Cooling 0: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 1: Processor 0 of 10
halflife@darklord:~$

Wanted: Movie

The movie was, eh. Angelina Jolie was sexy, Morgan freeman's role non-existent, some flashy action scenes and a story that kept me yawning all the while. Save your money and don't rent it or buy it.

Knife & Port Epic Fail

Being a recent fan of Port, I bought myself a bottle of port. Got myself a sumptuous dinner and rubbed my hands in glee about to open the bottle of port. What ensued had me laughing at my stupidity for days. Oh well life is boring without such moments.

The cork, yes the stupid cork was not firm enough. The cork screw miserably failed to pull out the cork. I tried to gently coax it out, but alas it refused to budge. I tried 2 different corkscrews. Arrgggh! Plan B. I started to chip away at the cork with a knife hopping to get to the bottom of the cork and out of the bottle. All is good until I reach to less than quarter inch of the cork. I am stuck! I can neither reach with the knife any more nor can I reach with the cork screw or anything that is long enough to get to the cork.

%#@^&*

What do I do now, What would you do? I did what an annonyed person would do and here is the result.


If you are scratching ur head as to what I did I figured my knife was strong enough to break the top of the bottle and I ended up with a broken knife! Epic Fail! ROTFL! I never imagined that the bottle was so freaking hard that it succeeded in breaking my knife! Put it the other way I never imagined I could break a knife in perfect slice by hitting it againt the bottle. Daaaamnnnnnn!

Duddeee! Yeah I broke the top of the bottle by smashing against the kitchen sink without spilling port. Yummy!

Been a while

I managed to disappear from the digital world before christmas and make a grand appearance now! :D The twists and turns can only be matched by the impromptu stream that is formed when it rains. Not knowing where it is formed and not knowing where it ends. I wonder what the year ahead is like?

Prisoner of Birth

Jeffery Archer rulez. I have been a big fan of his writings. "As the Crow flies" was the first book that I read of his and I was hooked. I have read most of his books. I was thrilled when I found his book Prisoner of Birth in B&N. So here is the plot,

Danny Cartwright, your regular bloke, proposes to his fiancé at a bar and she says yes! Her brother joins them and enjoy the evening until four drunk guys ruin their evening and Danny ends in jail after being convicted for his fiancé's brother's murder.

Danny while in jail starts educating himself with the help of his cellmate. and shuts himself off from outside world when his appeal fails. He urges his fiancé to move on. In a twist of fate he escapes from prison impersonating his cell-mate and then plots his revenge against the four people who were responsible for sending him to jail and killing his fiance's brother.

It is a fast paced thriller and well written. It is worth the money