After getting great feedback on my previous article on Steam powered robots, I thought nothing goes better with robots than ray guns.  While scouring the internet I found this web page dedicated to the sale of Ray Guns.  Why would you want a ray gun?  Imagine you are out on a date with your significant other slowing enjoying a quite evening drinking in the presence of each other while dining on of perfectly seared scallops or a hearty prime rib when mushroom men from Mercury pop in to ruin the date?  What well thanks to Dr. Grordbort you can be prepared for just that occassion.

Looking through the site there are beautifully crafted guns ranging from the Mongoose Concealable Ray Pistol to the Blunderbus Unnatural Selector I am amazed at the creativity and ingenuity of Greg Broadmore. Read the rest of this entry »

Parents,

You get your child’s credit card bill to find that he is over his limit.  When I say over the limit I don’t mean by $10 or $100 I mean to the tune that the GDP of the entire US would not pay the interest.  Take a look at the notice this guy got on his son’s card:

Dear William,

This e-mail is being sent to notify you that the balance on Daniel XXXX’s card is $-23,148,855,308,184,400.00.

That’s right that is a credit card bill for over 2000 times the national debt.  So how did he run up such a large bill?  It was a pizza and a coke.  A pizza…and…a…coke?  I guess he should have skipped on the extra cheese.

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So around mid-June I was at Baltimore Airport waiting working my way through the throng of people trying to find a seat.  As I settled in I, like those around me, was busy with the normal time killers of checking email, making phone calls, eating, etc. while waiting for our plane to arrive.  As I had  finally settled into my rhythm I hear someone shouting “Excuse me I need everyone’s attention” over the microphone at the gate next to me.  Slowly the din subsided and he makes an surprising announcement.

On the flight about to land from Ohio there were about 20 WW2 Veterans who were part of a Tour of Honor sponsored by the Honor Flight network.  He went on to explain that the Honor Flight provides to WW2 Veterans a cost free trip to Washington DC to see the World War 2 Memorial.  He asked that as they exited the airplane that we show them the honor they deserve by giving them a round of applause.  Then slowly they came out one by one and I was pleased to see that as far as I could see people had stopped what they were doing and were applauding.  Some walked out on their own, others with help, and some in wheel chairs.  The veterans showed their appreciation of the greeting with warm smiles, waves, and a general sense of pride that beamed clearly on their faces.  The crowd, in turn, never stopped applauding and in fact grew even stronger towards the end.

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Is money tight? Do you feel you practically live at the mall (or wish you did)? A group of inventive artist decided that they would do just that. In Providence, RI this group of artists went to the parking garage of a local mall and created a false cinder block wall to create a 750 sq foot space.

Secret mall apartment

They added a very plain looking utility door some furniture, a tv, a waffle iron, and even a PS2 to pass the time and they had their own little island in the local mall. All in all they secretly brought in over 2 tons of materials to build this secret hide away. There they lived for about 4 years. Life in the mall

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After letting this site go dormant for a while I am ready to get back to it.  So what have I been up to lately?  Job wise I am still working with SAVVIS doing Business Analytics and Sales Efficiency.  What is really exciting is the work that is going on at Woopra.  I have been working with John and Elie and crew to help make Woopra one the best analytics software available.  We are very close to moving out of beta and release the commercial version.

So what is Woopra?  To put it simply, if you have a web site or a blog, Woopra connects you to your viewers in real time.  You can see what is driving people to your site and what people are reading while on your site.  The best part is this all takes place in real time.  You can see what is happening when it happens and make changes if you are not seeing the results you would like.  As one of our users shows, this give you very actionable information to improve the effectiveness of how you do business on the internet.  To top it off, all this information would be useless for most users if it were hard to use.  As you can see, every care was given to make sure you can easily view and understand what is happening on your site.

Crisp clean interface to easily show you what is going on

Beyond Woopra, I have been taking time to hike through out the Northern Virginia area.  I will post pictures and a brief write up for each location.  For those that want to follow me on Twitter my handle is zehn10.

For the grizzled internet veterans out there, details on the seedy underworld of cyber-crime is nothing new. For the rest of us, let me present some of the sordid details. Have you wondered why you get so much spam and who is responsible for it? Surely it is just the equivalent of junk mail in our home mail box right?

Understanding there are Risks

Sadly enough, in many cases no. Spam, phishing emails, and spyware are just the tip of the iceberg for the many tools that cyber-criminals use these days to steal millions of dollars every year from every day people like us. How real is this threat? Consider this account and the level of detail that the criminal had to have to pull this off

It was July 2004 and Brian Campbell had been on Isla Mujeres off the coast of Cancun for three days for a relative’s wedding when he discovered he’d been scammed.

An American MBA student studying in Australia at the time, Campbell (not his real name) was accustomed to checking his investment portfolio daily over the internet. But the wedding distracted him a couple of days, and when he finally got online, he found he was locked out of his Schwab trading account.

He called Schwab and discovered that his user name and password had been changed. What’s more, $106,000 had recently been wired from his account to a Fortis bank account in Belgium. Campbell hadn’t requested the transfer.

Unknown to Campbell, a cyber thief who went by the nick “desertmack” had gained access to his e-mail account and had been watching him for weeks. The Mexico wedding was the break desertmack needed. He’d been hoping a little tequila and sunshine would distract Campbell from obsessively checking his brokerage account long enough to steal the money and send it to Brussels, where an accomplice would withdraw it.

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Imagine that you were in an accident and left paralyzed. Your first thought is likely similar to mine, that is, the impact of not being able to walk on your life style and being able to get around and interact as easily with friends and family. I would have to relearn how to interact with major portions of my life. People that can overcome tragedies like these have my respect for having the persistence to move past these

However, what if you were left a quadriplegic? How would you life change then? I would have to relearn how to interact with even the most basic of elements in my life. Eating, working on the computer, calling people are all things I would have to relearn how to do. I would could it a success if I could get my life as close to its previous state as possible. Taking up new endeavors would seem forever out of reach.
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So how often do you buy a new car? Every 3 years? 4 years? 5 years? So how much does it cost you to buy that car new car in the long run and are you really saving money by having a car in warranty and not having to worry about repairs? A recent Consumer Reports Article tackles this question and provides some great insight into the costs paid for people that keep their car for 200K+ miles (15 years) vs. those that buy a new car in 5 years.
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I have been in more than a few meetings where I seriously questioned the wisdom of the decisions being made. However, nothing compares to this humorous list of pictures found from the outer recesses of the internet by OneMansBlog.