"Murphy was an optimist!"
Don’t Vote! (registration ends Monday) October 2, 2008 2:35 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Activism, Politics, Touchy Subjects, United States(mature language warning)
Leonardo DiCaprio, will i. am, Tobey Maguire, and Forest Whitaker have created public service announcements to encourage American youth to register to vote. The non-partisan PSAs, produced by DiCaprios Appian Way, were created to engage and inspire young people to register and vote and participate in the upcoming election. Celebrities appearing in the PSAs include: Amy Adams, will.i.am, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Bacon, Halle Berry, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Connolly, Courteney Cox, Ellen DeGeneres, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Jonah Hill, Dustin Hoffman, Anthony Kiedis, Ashton Kutcher, Adam Levine, Laura Linney, Eva Longoria, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi, Ethan Suplee, Kyra Sedgwick, Michelle Trachtenberg, Usher, and Forest Whitaker.
Have you reached out to an unregistered voter and encouraged them to participate in the election? Time is running out. Find voter registration information at http://maps.google.com/vote
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Train Operator was Avid Texter October 2, 2008 11:09 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Of InterestABC News reports that Metrolink train engineer Robert Sanchez of the deadly crash in California sent 29 text messages that day. The last message was sent 22 seconds before the crash. Apparently it read: "OMG! Freight train!" NTSB has not released the other 28 messages.
Update: The crux of the problem is that the engineer missed a light warneing of the collision (or that’s the assumption). Our reaction will be to treat the symptom and ban cell phones which in itself may not be bad but the problem is the engineer did not stop the train presumably because he did not see the signal for whatever reason. We should be treating the problem by installing better warning systems and automated controls that could stop the train without human interaction, after all, the engineer could have been reading a book, daydreaming, sleeping, or slumped over the controls in a heart attack. I sure would like to see us become a society that responds to problems rather than reacts to symptoms.
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Copying files should not take forever! October 2, 2008 9:04 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily LifeI am laying in some significant code changes so I am making a backup of my development environment. No, I’m not using SVN or other revision control as I should be. Windows takes forever to make a copy! In Linux this could have been done almost before I finished typing the command. File copies should not be measured in, "sure, go to the store, buy dinner supplies, come home and cook then I’ll be done copying" time!
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Just one more minute October 2, 2008 6:03 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Health, Mental, Sleep"Just one more minute" Those words are like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Oh. I suppose that expression is going to have to go the way of the slide projector. Do they even have chalk boards in the schools anymore? I utter those words almost everyday. Today I did it at 1:54am. I was awake enough to get up and work. But noooo. I was compelled to take just one more minute From 2am-6am I could have made huge coding progress! Of course, the New York Times reported people are 33% more creative after sleep. To prove the point, that problem which had me stumped at midnight has already been solved.
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