Escape to Canada?

Funnies in case McCain pulls off the hail mary pass


h/t Small Dead Animals

Total Junk Post

How Long Could You Survive Chained to a Bunk Bed with a Velociraptor

I could survive for 1 minute, 13 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

I might have done better if in the later questions I hadn't answered to the question "What would you do when the raptor is chewing off your arm" with "cry like a giant sissy". I gotta be honest I'm pretty sure that would be my reaction. Especially over options such as "chocking him with the chain" or apply a "choke hold with my other arm".

Although since this is a scenario I had never thought about I'm now better prepared!

Frick'n Genius

From the Amazon.com blog comes this little gem Korea: French fry-coated hot dog

What else is there to say except I want one. And maybe for Christmas.

Baby Names

No I'm not soliciting suggestions. Check out the Baby Name Wizard. You can see the popularity of the top 1000 names for the last hundred years. When it's all on the screen it's a little confusing.

So at the top of the chart you can sort by boy or girl. Then you can click in the top left hand side to start entering in the first few letters of a name to see just those.

Note the scale on the right hand side changes with each view. So that big mountain for a name might be 100000 kids per million or it could be 100 kids per million. But the trends are cool to check out.

Homework: Take a look at the traditional names and observe what happens to them by the beginning of the ninties. Then check out some of the recently popular ones.

Subject Lines in Email

I get a fair bit of email without a subject line. So I thought I would pass along

From lifehacker.com comes Yahoo Mail offers Random Subject Line

How do you use it? Using the newer Yahoo Mail interface click the subject button. Normally it looks like its a label on the subject line. But you can click it for a random subject line.

Samples I got were:
"Do me a favor, and don't do me anymore favors"
"Who is Marcello?"
"Workin' like a one-armed paper-hanger with an itch..."

Computer Support

I'd been meaning to check for the best way to do remote support. I've decided to use CoPilot.com.

How does it work?

1. You decide you need help so you call or email me


2. We get online at the same time.


3. I send an email with a link to download a program and a special code


4. We both download and run a tiny and safe program


5. A pop up window asks you if you want to let me connect (You click yes here!)


6. Next thing you know our computers are connected!

There is no permanent software install and no worries about firewalls, home routers or anything like that.

The download is small (500K) but I'm not sure how well this will work over a dialup connection

Stella Awards

A little fun for your daily reading.

StellaAwards.com

The Stella Awards were inspired by Stella Liebeck. In 1992, Stella, then 79, spilled a cup of McDonald's coffee onto her lap, burning herself. A New Mexico jury awarded her $2.9 million in damages, but that's not the whole story. Ever since, the name "Stella Award" has been applied to any wild, outrageous, or ridiculous lawsuits -- including bogus cases!

The 2007 Winners are out. Have a look here

Canadian Tire $10 off $40 is back

Head here to Save $10 at Canadian Tire on any in-store purchase of $40 or more.

Valid from February 22 - March 2 2008

The Tight Computer Desk

One last little non surgery post for the day.

Today I found a link to Ikea Hacker. Interesting stuff done with products from Ikea. (Now that is developing a brand following).

What got my attention was this tight computer desk. I know Nanny Dot would like something like this. Of course she would need an upgrade to a LCD monitor, and a computer with more than 32MB of RAM, and something past Windows '76.

If I could ever get around to getting that LCD I want then this would be very nice. Combine that with a open table space and I'd be set.

Broken IPOD

From NY Times Tech blog comes Turning Nonworking Gizmos Into Money which is a small update on What to do with that old IPOD.

This was about the guy who started BuyMyBrokeniPod.com (and has renamed it http://www.buymytronics.com/)

Computer Cleanup

Over at LifeHacker.com (one of those tips, tricks, life guide type sites) comes A Meaty Thanksgiving Download. While for the American Turkey Day I will definitely be putting that onto my USB key to bring home for Christmas.

It's handful of apps (17MB download in total) with tools to clean up that computer that your less than handy relative has bloated up with virus, IE bho's, or whatever mess.

Of course this is good for any time of the year!

Online Backups - Please Backup your Data!

Mozy is a an Online Backup service. Its quite easy to use. It has free, home, and pro versions. The free version is capped at 2Gig (i.e. 2G Nano, or about 3 CDs, or half a DVD). You don't need a credit card to sign up. Just an email address.

It is really easy to use, pretty much self configures, and except for a few minutes for that first backup is pretty quick.

2 Gig should be enough to back up any documents, QuickTax files or such. But you can forget that music or video collection. For that you'd have to upgrade to the home or pro version. But for free and easy it's hard to beat.

Any kind of high speed should be fine to backup. The lite versions might need to run overnight that first time. After that limit how much you back up to make it faster. Dial up ... forget it. Floppies are faster.

When you sign up click here on my Mozy Referral link before signing up and I'll get a little extra storage for free.

I've been using for a couple of weeks now it's working pretty good. I've done some test restores and it looks good. There are some pretty good tutorials on their website but I'll post a few screen captures in a few days to highlight a few parts.

IPOD Death Clock

An interesting little site IPOD Death Clock that will tell you based on your serial number, usage, and damage how long your IPOD has to last.

Anti-Virus Picks

Consumer Reports Best security software [Subscription Required] comes a ranking of Anti-Virus software.

Cheapest CR Quick pick was ZoneAlarm anti-virus.

Top rated free software was Alwil Avast Home Edition. Very close was AVG Free

Of course Jason Long would tell you to get a Mac.

Got your dot com?

Yahoo News is running this AP piece Tots getting Internet identity at birth. They're noting how people are snatching up the .com web addresses for their kids. It's along the same basic line that parents are Googling possible names for their children.

So it shouldn't be surprising that you can go to BigE's real dot com. It's just a place holder for now. But I do have it registered.

PS BigE.com heads to hollywood.com

Spotting Email SPAM

A continuation of Email spam is a nice little article from Paypal Phishing Guide that has a nice explanation of what to look for in your email.

Don't worry if you don't use or know what Paypal is. The general principles are still the same an apply to any email.

What's Phishing? It's using a fake site that looks like the real thing in order to steal your information.

Another Acanac deal

A small update to Acanc II. If you missed out on the last freebie trial it's back. Until Aug 28th you can try out Acanac for free.

You still have to have a DSL account with somebody (e.g. Bell Sympatico, Teksavvy). If you were thinking of trying Acanac then this is a chance to switch to Acanac without commitments like canceling your existing service.

How do you setup? We'll you pretty much change your PPPoE/DSL login user name and password to be the id given to you by Acanac. IF I can find more specific details I'll post them

More Efficient Google Searches

Normally I try to avoid much linking to other sites. But here is a good article with tips on search. And that is a skill that opens up much of the infromation on the internet. For our complete beginner to newbie audience: Go read this.

From a site Zen Habits.net (a Getting things done, personal producitivity site) comes 20 Tips for More Efficient Google Searches

Some good highlights:

2 Quotes. If you want to search for an exact phrase, use quotes. ["dumb little man"] will only find that exact phrase. [dumb "little man"] will find pages that contain the word dumb and the exact phrase "little man".

4 Similar terms. Use the "~" symbol to return similar terms. [~dumb little man -dumb] will get you pages that contain "funny little man" and "stupid little man" but not "dumb little man".

Update: This can be confusing taken out of context since they've mixed item 3 with 4.

[~dumb little man] will tell google to go look up things that it thinks similar to dumb (stupid, slow, etc.) and to use those in the results as well. That mean's stupid little man would also be returned.

13 Movies. Use the "movie:" operator to search for a movie title along with either a zip code or U.S. city and state to get a list of movie theaters in the area and show times.

You can enter postal codes (no spaces) in place of zip codes. Canadian cities seem to work (e.g. movies:toronto) from google.ca

15 Unit converter. Use Google for a quick conversion, from yards to meters for example, or different currency: [12 meters in yards]

This conversion seems endless.

• For those computer types you can convert between hexidecimal, octal, binary and decimal.


• It will even convert currencies. "88 usd to cad"

Picasa Upload to Flickr

Okay I'm not a hard core graphics guy by any stretch. I think Google's Picasa does a great job of allowing me to simply edit photos. It is even smart on downloading photos from my camera. The gd software that came with the camera couldn't even do that.

Well now there is a plugin, for Picasa, called picasa2flickr that will let you upload directly to Flickr. Which as I keep harping on is where we have over 2300 of our pictures available.

So now I have the best of both worlds.

Get TheBusseyFamily blog in your Inbox

There is now a link on the upper right hand side of the page Get The Bussey Family by Email that will let you get all new posts in a single daily email each morning.

That way you can read all new posts in one email that should be delivered before 9:00 am EST each morning.

Of course you can always read the posts here at TheBusseyFamily