Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

I went to Comdex this year and wandered about for a couple days.  Boy, there is a TON of stuff at Comdex.  I thought I’d write up a list of the things I saw on my trip.  I’m not the head of an IS group, so I didn’t have a  big agenda of must see items.  Here is a list of the things I found interesting.  The list is in no particular order

FICA Aqua web pad – A nice little net connected web pad.  If you have an application where you need to walk around while connected to the web, this would do it.

QBeo image processing software – The Photogenetics software does an ‘instant fix’  on digital photos.  No more need to futz around with Photoshop filters and effects to make the pictures look good.

EUPA
computers & cases – EUPA had a wide assortment of interesting cases in the various shapes.  They also make the U-Stylish,
a compact computer that combines the LCD screen into the CPU case in an upright position. 

Hauppauge
WinTV PVR – This card turns your computer into a Tivo.  Not only does it let you record TV programs, it allows you to burn them as VCDs with your CDR. VCDs can be viewed on almost any DVD player.  If only my Tivo could do this…   Hauppauge also makes a HDTV reciever for your computer.  With the WinTV D, you can watch HDTV for under $300.

PocketPC – I had heard the hype on Microsoft’s PocketPC before I went to Comdex.  The hype was right.  This PDA blows the doors off a Palm.  It has built-in Outlook, Word, and Excel.  You can basically take your desktop
with you in a PDA.  With full Outlook compatibility you can see the same basic info as you see in your office. You can read attachments and edit documents if you really need to.  If you are in the market for a PDA, you need to check out this thing.

Synctalk – Synctalk is an app that runs on your PDA to convert data into XML.  You can then IR beam the XML data to another PDA of a different type, where Synctalk converts the XML into that PDA’s native format.  Simply put, you can beam
your business card from a Palm to PocketPC or a Psion.

Raritan KVM
switches – They make keyboard, video, mouse switches that let you control many computers from one set of monitor/mouse/keyboard.  They make everything from a box that controls 4 PCs to a system that let’s you control
2048 PC’s from 8 different keyboard/video/mice.   Solves a lot of problems for us operations people.

Linksys –
These people seem to make everything you need to get your home or small office up and running smoothly in a data sense.  They have wireless LAN stuff, DSL routers, hubs and every other type of network hardware you might need.

EDP – They make various types of rackmount equipment consoles.  They have some interesting fan units and reconfigurable desks.

PoinTech –
The PoinTech system is a combination of a wipeboard and a
projector.  What ever you right on the wipeboard is reflected on the computer feeding the projector.  Conversely, the projector allows you to display any computer image on the wipeboard.  The coolest thing is that you can bring up an internet browser, and by touching the wipeboard, you can link to other pages simply buy touching the link as it’s displayed.

Qbe Tablet Computer – These people make an actual tablet computer.  With a PCMCIA wireless LAN card, you are ready to walk around the facility.  I’ll probably be picking up one of these for testing.  Seems like they would do will in areas with little available desk space.

Biometric Authentication – When I saw the first fingerprint scanning keyboard, I was blown away. 
Imagine no more passowords.  Just put your dumb on the glowing red spot and you are logged in.  After about the fifth booth of biometric tools, I realized that biometrics was big this year.  I really can’t think of a downside.  A few of the booths with fingerprint scanners were identix,
SecuGen, and ethentica. 
I think we’ll be seeing these in short order.

Cypherus – These people deal in file encryption technology.  These days, it’s not the actual laptop that’s important, it’s the documents and email that are stored on it.  The Cypherus software provides a simple way for documents to be encrypted on a laptop computer.  If the computer is stolen, the thief cannot access the files since they are
encrypted at 4096 bits.  

Comdex was chock full of stuff, but those are the items I felt important enough to drop a brochure into my bag.  I was in quite a daze this year.  Perhaps next year I can write a more cohesive report.

–Michael

Hello Team,
Yes, I know I’ve been slacking.  The good news is, here’s another post. First of all, I rule in Quake 3.  Here’s another sweet victory for your enjoyment.

I dodged the dog owner bullet.  My wife & daughters saw a stray dog in the street and put him in the backyard for ‘safety’ reasons.  I was pressed to go buy dog food, but I refused. The easiest way
to end up with a dog is to feed it.  The girls had already named the dog Daisy.  I was in danger of adopting the stupid little dog if I did nothing.  I made a big ‘We found a dog’ sign for the front yard. 
Early the next morning, a girl stopped by and said it was her friend’s dog, Chu Chu.  In a few short minutes the mother and daughter appeared to claim Chu Chu.  All was right with the world.

Chu Chu the minidog in my backyard

More later.  My arm hurts from too much Quake.

I recieved this email. I quote it completely

From: “Buck O-Nine” <shortyz03@yahoo.com>
To: <cruft@pusateri.org>
Sent: Monday, November 13, 2000 9:16 PM

youre a fuckung idiot man…mr pibb isnt an imposter
of dr shit…its a complete different drink. all dr
pepper is is spiced prune flavored soda, mr pibb is
spiced cherry flavored soda, get your shit right
before you go around saying mr pibb is the closest
thing you fucking bitch. i hate every idot like you
and i hope that satan him self rips your penis off and
shoves id down your throught and drowns you in mr pibb
o you have a painful death, and i am not jealos of
shit and only a stupid ass would be you should all die
and dr pepper is going to fucking go down, ill see to
it
 

I think this person has a few issues. What do you think?

My brother with his new Playstation 2.

On Monday, my right hand guy at work, Joe, told me he was quitting. We’ve worked together for 5 years and done some remarkable things. We started as nobodys in the company and are now viewed as the leaders of change and innovation. He’s taking a great position with better pay, title, and challenges, so I can’t fault him for leaving. But the news left me feeling like I’d been kicked in the stomach. While change is good, change is hard. I’ll someone new and move on, but things will never be the same as before. We still all eat lunch together, but something has changed already.

After about a week, I’m pulling out of my funk, paritally bouyed by my brother’s success in buying a Playstation 2. They are going on ebay for over $700 easy. 10 hours outside to save $400 bucks? I’d do it.

Last night I released something into the Napster world. A favorite band of mine played live on the radio. I recorded it on my computer. I trimmed the WAV into four songs and converted it to MP3. I even added the ID3 tags so it looks nice in WinAmp. I dumped the files into my /Music folder, turned on Napster, and went to bed. This morning, I searched for them myself and found indeed, they had made it out into the world. I don’t think of myself as a pirate. I consider readers here to be my friends and I just wanted to share the music I heard on the radio with you. (Think the RIAA will buy that?)

For your linking pleasure I present The Naked News, Don’t read at work!, a raffle I want to win, my latest victory in UO, and the obligatory link to the disgusting pictures of dioxidized.com.

Have a good Friday.

I am sitting at a terminal in the Cincinnati airport, surfing the web. This completely rules. T1 access. A private room. A phone. I want one of these business in every airport.

OK, back to surfing. Only 40 minutes till my plane. 🙂

I go to Amazon last night to buy the last book in the Neutronium Alchemist series. I do a search and find out that it’s not the last book in the series, there’s a fifth book in the series called Naked God. Hamilton, the author, is a cruel man to drag out this story into five books.

Eight days until the Playstation 2 is released. I do not have one on pre-order. I am so screwed.

I wrote up another adventure in Ultima. I really need to play Diablo 2 and finish it up. One of my buddies at work finished it last night and killed Diablo before me. I’m still fiddling about in Act 3 trying to find Kurast. It looks like SeaDogs and Age of Sail II are both coming out next week. So many games, so little time.

1) What is it with people at the post office? Why can’t they show up prepared? For fucks sake, they wait in line for 15 minutes and then walk up to the counter and start asking about mailing things overnight. They get handed a form to fill out and then waste even more time. Why don’t people have their shit together? Look, I can understand if you are buying a money order and once you get it you put into the preaddressed envelope, lick it shut and mail it right there. But what is up with people showing up with a children’s toy and walking up to the counter looking for a box, tape, and scissors? And then the check writing. Who the hell writes checks at a store these days? Every bank in the country offers debit cards, yet I always see some numbskull writing a check eating up time from my life. Killing me in little bits as Henry Rollins would say.

2) Congress is trying to pass a law to force local libraries to install censorware on all their computers. I thought the uptight Republicans believed in ‘local control’. Shouldn’t it be up to my town to decide how we want to run our library? God damn election year politics is what it is! Fire them all. 435 chipmunks would do a better job than our current contribution sucking congress.

3) Peter Hamilton – This guy writes a good story, but he’s dragging me into the 4th book of the series and still hasn’t resolved anything. I get thought Reality Dysfunction: Emergence and Expansion and Neutronium Alchemist: Consolidation and still clean up to the bazillion plot threads going on. I need to order Conflict and be done with this series. Geez, I can’t imagine what it would have been like to read the first book and then wait a couple years to read the next one. Fucking authors…

I meant to post this few days ago.

I stumbled across a good article on reverse engineering and submitted it. As usual, it was rejected.

But then the next day, some other guy gets the same story posted.

TANJ!

For those out of the know, TANJ = There Ain’t No Justice

The people that host Cruft decided to reconfigure their server to disallow letting a CHMOD 777 cgi execute. I can under stand the security reason for this, but how about a little email stating the policy change.