Random Thoughts

I occasionally collect funny cartoons and pictures. Here are a few of mu favorites. Please don't sue me for not giving the rightful creators credit. For now, I hope the mere disclosure that I have no artistic or comic abilities and that I couldn't come up with anything this funny in a lifetime is going to have to suffice. This is what comes to mind when I hear the many job titles I see people have. Is so much overhead and organization needed for the world to function? Apparently it is. Part of me still thinks a lot of those middlemen could be weeded out to create a more efficient system. But then, what do I know about the real world? Not much. Classic. Not much more to say. While I am from the blogging generation, I never had a penchant for online warfare. Unfortunately, here are lots of people who love online flame wars. Anyway, it could be worse. Harmless online warfare pales in comparison to real life warfare. Trust me, compiler. SEGFAULTs are not go...

PROBLEM: Audacious on K/Ubuntu Doesn't play my mp3s:: On my kubuntu 8.04.1 audacious is not playing any audiofile. I've tried to run my mp3s with amarok and it works. Also audacity is playing mp3s. SOLUTION: Click on Preferences in Audacious; Select Audio Tab; Set the 'cCurrent output plugin' to 'aRts output plugin'. __________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: File associations in Firefox 3.0 disappear in Kubuntu SOLUTION: Install firefox-3.0-gnome-support . . . more to come

The state of IT business/jobs in the US is quite confusing. You have got two points of view and it is becoming very hard to either reconcile them or choose the more realistic view. The Optimist's View On one side, you have those who claim that it is an information age and will remain so for the foreseeable future. So, the demand for IT workers would grow along with their wages. BusinessWeek says technology (including IT) is where the jobs are . It says that the number of tech grad is declining while the economy keeps creating more and more tech jobs. The result would be a rich IT job market for new grads and veterans alike. What does all this mean? There's still a labor shortage in tech. And if you took Economics 101, you know that's good news for paychecks. Already, tech wages are 87% higher, on average, than in the rest of the private-sector job market. Tech wages are also growing faster, by an average of 4% a year—double the 2% reported for private industry as a whol...

NBC and Microsoft have formed an intricate partnership in which Microsoft serves to expand and maintain NBC's presence in the online news and entertainment market while promoting its products. NBC online integrates many of Microsoft's products. MSNBC is co-owned by GE's NBC universal and Microsoft. I have no problem with the partnership, except for the way Microsoft pushes people to use Microsoft products while other alternatives do just as well or better. Let me provide some examples. You can't access NBC online videos unless you have a Windows media plugin. What about using Flash like everybody else. If you want to access Olympics games online at NBC Olympics, you better be using a Windows or a Mac because Microsoft does not have a Linux version of the Silverlight plugin that it is pushing hard in competition with Adobe Flash, the industry standard. Suppose you are using Windows, you pay a huge penalty for not using Internet Explorer!! Try watching videos with In...

According to Political Calculations , one of my favorite blogs, the likelihood of you earning the federal minimum wage or less decrease consistently with your age. While 21.6% of 16-19 year olds make below the federal minimum wage, that number declines to 1.4% for those who are older than 65. On top of that, you could be cashing in Social Security checks while having most of your medical expenses covered by MediCare. Your 401(k) and IRA could also be yielding a nice supplemental income too. While you are at it, you can use reverse mortgage to generate extra income on your home. Boy, getting old doesn't sound so bad afterall.