Sunday, January 10, 2010

Biggest Looser fourth weigh in - plus other stuff


Cardinals vs. Packers VS riding desert Classic

rode the dc then saw the 4th quarter and o.t. . . .  Wow. Cards win 51 to 45. The roaster in the toaster!


Anyway, I don't regret riding. Even though it was one of the greatest playoff games ever. Feels like a luxury to ride a 27 speed bike after i've been riding the single speed so much. Miss my big 29 inch rims, but the smaller ones are good for tight spots. Everything is a tradeoff.


Biggest Looser fourth Weigh in

Missed a week due to the holidays. Apparently, I also missed the bike in to work as I gained 0.2 lbs. Current weight is 216.4 lbs. Total weight loss 5.8 lbs since the contest began. I am currently in third place.

Seti@home, folding@home, distributed computing and Gilbert police urge charges against ex-Higley IT director

Every time I've heard mention of the story of former Higley Unified IT director Bradley Niesluchowski,the media has portrayed the guy as a nut. They also mentioned that his installation of seti at home  is costing the school district millions of dollars to remove. Really??! Millions, really??!! I would like to see a break down of their budget. What does it cost them for normal maintenance, removal of viruses and spyware? No wonder they are over budget.

You get the feeling that The superintendent, Denise Birdwell may be hiding some other expenditures with this indecent? The thing runs as a screen saver. It doesn't prevent you from shutting it or the computer off. There seems like there is padding of the numbers somewhere. Sure, if the guy installed Seti@home or any other software on their network without permission he should be held accountable. However, he was their IT director. Technically, he had the authority. Seti@home is an academic endeavor, they are an academic entity. It seems like the guy thought he was doing some good and now the Gilbert police want to file felony charges (see azcentral story)?

Do you think that the media would have presented the story the same way if he had installed folding at home on the network instead of seti at home? Punishing a guy for trying to find a cure for cancer may have been less popular than punishing him for searching for aliens. It certainly wouldn't have been as funny.


A crazy dream

I saw an ad in the paper about acres of land for sale. 36 acres for $19,900; 94 acres for $29,900; 120 acres for $39,900 and 227 acres for $59,900. I don't know exactly how many mountain bikers exist in Arizona, but I know we have a lot. Wouldn't it be great if we could all just pitch in a dollar, have partial ownership and save the land for mountain biking, camping and hiking? Guess that's kind of what we do with our taxes. This would be voluntary though. I don't have the time to organize something like this nor would I even know how. Anybody want to run with this idea, feel free and let me know.

8 comments:

  1. I worked with Brad at the district for 4 years. The program was not even installed as a screen saver, but as a back ground service. It never caused any problems in the years I work for the district. The administration NEVER gave the IT department the respect we deserved. (3 of us for 2,700 PCs at the time!) I think the superintendent, only being there for 6 months, did not like the way the IT department was being run and used this seti issue to hang Brad out to dry. Totally undeserved.

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  2. thanks for the comment!

    What about the other charges? The ones mentioned in the azcentral story? They seem a lot more serious, but no one has gone into any detail about them. Media focuses on the aliens angle. Just like your input.

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  3. For losing weight, you could try not eating anything after 7:00PM. I had a friend you lost a lot of weight doing that. I know that if I gain weight it is from snacking in the evening watching TV. And after you lost the weight you wanted, you could maintain that regime so you would not have to participate in the annual weight loss contest. Dad

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  4. We don't finish cooking until after 7:00 pm. Venu keeps an eye out on my snaking for me.

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  5. Well then it would really work.

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  6. If I am not a bicycle rider, is there any benefit for me to become a member of Fat-tire.net?

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  7. No, not presently as all the pages a non cyclist would want are already available without a login.

    However, if I had you wanted other activities available such as hiking, kayaking, rowing, running etc it would not be THAT difficult for me to modify the application to include them.

    What fat tire.net does for cyclist is allows them to keep a log of their rides, keep a tally of the calories burned, store information on their bike, and report stolen cycles on the site. The other features, such as finding the weather of a trail, finding a trail, reading news articles etc are available to anyone.

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  8. Worst case scenario, you would think that they could build an image without seti. That's the way it worked over a decade ago when I maintained computers. Sounds like somebody is milking it.

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