Isotropic is …
... my personal blog.
Unless otherwise indicated, anything I write here is simply my personal, probably ill-formed, opinion and does not represent the views, beliefs, positions, or opinions of any other person or entity.
Author Archives: hornlo
06 Feb 2010
I’m a PC, and ruining your battery was my idea.
It is ironic that Microsoft’s claim that Windows 7 will improve battery life is being countered by some users threatening class action lawsuits due to W7 ruining laptop batteries. At least since June 2009 (Windows 7 and the battery error “consider replacing your battery” –Microsoft Technet) testers were reporting this problem. Yet it continues, with [...]
28 Jan 2010
Doldrums
Other than work related stuff, I’ve pretty much been offline for the last few weeks. That is to say, I’ve let a lot of messages scroll below the fold and have not kept up with my news feeds. Nor have I spent much time on my personal projects, such as Japanese, or configuring my new [...]
14 Jan 2010
Under Pressure
Finally I have water pressure again, seems like more than before the crisis. At last I can shower and wash clothes again. Wheee! Before we decry the timeliness of Jackson’s response to a few leaks, just image this 20 million gallon a day leak in NYC’s water supply that has been known about for 20 [...]
13 Jan 2010
Trickle trickle little star
That is, the stars on this map indicate where the 120+ 140+ water main breaks are. There’s no legend, but I’m assuming that the many red stars represent unrepaired breaks while the green ones represent completed repairs. At the moment (a little after 11pm), I still have only a trickle of water — enough, with [...]
12 Jan 2010
Water water … nowhere
With over a hundred breaks in the water mains, Jackson is running kinda dry right now. Federal, state, and local governments have closed offices, school have closed, a number of local businesses have locked their doors. Some neighborhoods (mine, for example) have no water, while others have barely a trickle. Boil-water alerts aren’t useful when [...]
10 Jan 2010
Water problems
Nothing like three days below freezing to mess up your pipes. Although city crews have been rushing around all over fixing broken mains, I thought I had avoided any problems. However, I just noticed that my water is turning brown, but pressure is fine. I checked under the house and out in the yard where [...]
09 Jan 2010
Fire Safe Cigarettes
I first noticed “fire safe” cigarettes (FSC) a couple months ago. At first I thought I’d bought a contaminated pack. In a sense, that’s true — FSCs have bands of ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) spaced along the cigarette to make them go out if not continually inhaled. Although FSCs aren’t required in Mississippi until July [...]
08 Jan 2010
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
One weekend home from college, I told my mother I had become a Satanist. That was so outside the scope of what she could accept that it really didn’t faze her. “Just kidding”, I said, “actually, I’ve converted to Catholicism.” That’s when she got upset. I’m sure you’d appreciate that a lot more if you [...]
07 Jan 2010
Top N Effect
“Unfortunately, our cognition is not perfect, and there are certain judgment errors that we are prone to making, known in the field of psychology as cognitive biases.” –Nikki, Top 10 Common Faults In Human Thought, Listverse Nikki left off #11: Top N Effect – the tendency to believe that items are more important, profound, or [...]
06 Jan 2010
Shed free
Today, as Brian and I were discussing a problem with a DAT-72 tape drive, I happened to glance at a cleaning tape lying on the table. Whenever a tape drive turns on its “I’m feelin’ dirty!” light, you pop in a cleaning tape to take care of it, but otherwise you don’t really pay much [...]
