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Wastin’ the day away in tech

Yesterday I wasted my time trying to move Windows 7 Ultimate from one machine to another. Techies know the chipset/driver problems that come with such an endeavor, but, none the less, we feel we can overcome these challenges. A day later, I feel I am so close yet I still do not have a machine to perform my coding duties upon so I succumb to allowing the new machine to having a fresh Windows 7 Professional installation and prepare myself to spend the day reinstalling software. This is such a waste of time. Operating systems should accommodate moving a hard drive from one machine to another, realizing the chipset and hardware drivers are wrong, and fix itself seamlessly. Ugh!

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Cash is dying – anyone can accept credit cards

Square hit the market with a bang. An innovative small piece of hardware took advantage of the microphone feature of a smartphone’s headphone jack to create a way to read a credit card and interact with software on the smartphone. You can buy a Sqaure at Target for $9.99 and I believe you get a $10 credit from Square. They make their money via a percentage of the transaction but you don’t need a merchant account.

Now Paypal is getting in on the "anyone can accept credit cards" game. Paypal is offering their smartphone card reader for free. Soon, your excuse of "I have no cash" to say no to Girl Scout cookies and Boy Scout popcorn will be gone!

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Air conditioner doubles as fire starter

Our air conditioner has died. Last time it died was in July/August of 2007 and the temperatures were so hot that the insurance company paid to house us in a hotel for the 9 days of the repair. This time the weather is bearable and the repair is quicker. However, this does not come without drama. While the repairman was checking on the outside unit, he asked me to throw the 30 amp breaker at the inside unit. When I did, the breaker box erupted in flame and threw a shower of sparks. This small breaker box (holds a 30 amp dual pole breaker and a 60 amp dual pole breaker) does not currently attach to our wall so I was holding it in my hands at the time. Very exciting!

Apparently the breaker did exactly what it is designed to do. After opening the box, not a wire was burned. No insulation melted. I just received a light show. I can imagine that if I were to dissect the breaker itself that the innards would be melted sludge.

So, the breaker kept the house safe. Now, the big lesson I learned: Don’t ever tell the wife there was a fire inside the house!

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Happy Pi Day!

Apparently WordPress does not appreciate me posting one million digits of pi so here’s 314 digits of pi:
3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097
4944592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282
3066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385
2110555964462294895493038196442881097566593344612847564823
3786783165271201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607
26024914127372458700660

[Source, piday.org, One Million Digits of Pi]