I've been working rotating 12 hour shifts for the past 7 months now, and I always dread the days at the end of each two week set of day or night shifts where I have to shift my circadian rythm around to get ready for the opposite shift in only 48 hours. Obviousely people all around me do it, but unlike me, they use as much coffee as it takes to keep themselves awake every day when they don't get adequate sleep. I don't know if a better strategy would help things or just make it worse in the long run (ie. you would be more naturally prone to rotating your schedule), but I have already written about one of the dangers of continental shift work.
ASUS P4B Chassis Intrusion Error
I just spent at least two hours wrestling with this problem, so I want to put something online to help other people discover what I eventually did.
I was installing and uninstalling hard drives in my ASUS P4B motherboard, when I got the following BIOS error after turning it on:
system intruded, chassis opened or tempered before. Please check the system.
( categories: maintenance )
Scaring Japanese Girls for Fun and Profit
I saw the polar bear video below on one of my favourite shows, The Hour. Then when I poked around for a good link to it I found a second video. Click on the images to see the videos.
The first is a girl dressed like a baby seal peeking through the glass windows of a polar bear tank.
Server Migration Log
This is a copy of the update posts I made while trying to migrate this site over to my new server. I copied all of this over from the temporary site I had setup on the new server before I knew I would be able to migrate the old content over. If you're reading this, then I eventually pulled it off by setting up the new version of Drupal on my old server, updating the database there, and then moving it over to the new server.
Video Game Toys
I found the miniature Mario Kart RC toys on another website about a week ago, but this site has tons of Mario Kart toys (including the game), and lots of video game toys in general.
I hear this stuff is everywhere in Japan, but over here in North America you don't often see video game characters in real space. I like the idea of pulling Mario Kart out of the TV and onto my coffee table, livingroom floor or backyard.
Working on my Design Portfolio
I decided to finally get back on track and get my design portfolio online. I have two target jobs that I'm going to apply for. The first is a graphic designer job at Manulife Financial. This a temporary contract to fill in for somebody who's going on parental leave. It would still be good work and great to have on the resume though. The next job is a website designer / developer job. This one seems more targeted to my current career goals, but I'm going to apply to both and see what happens. Either one would be fine at this point, and the job at Manulife financial has a cutoff for applications.
Enhancing Edwin's MSN Image
I noticed my brother Edwin's MSN profile picture, and after I got over how big he is now (I haven't seen him in a few years), I realized that the image was way too dark and a little too red. These are very common errors for both digital and film cameras, I've corrected them before. I decided to fix this image as best I could. It was a little too compressed to get a perfect result. JPEG compression really shows up when you brighten compressed areas, but the last enhancement I did hides a lot of that, and overall the image is much better off.
Tire company argues insomnia not a workplace injury
I found a news story about a sleepless shift worker that hits home in two ways. First of all, I used to work in a small office unit right across the street from the Michelin plant that guy worked at. Even more importantly, I am currently working in a rotating 12-hour shift environment. I'm hoping to be on to a better job in far less than 14 years, but I really feel for this guy. If he doesn't keep his compensation, I hope the price of this kind of labour at least goes up.
Ontario mom faces $2M libel suit for website about problems in neighbourhood
You can read a full article on the story, but the actual website in question has been taken down. Fortunately, there is a Google cache of the site, and a Google image cache that will show you thumbnails of the pictures the lady took.
( categories: law )
Big Cheques!
Lady with Big Cheque
Megaprint Inc. is a company that offers big cheque printing. I don't know why, but that picture is just very funny to me.
Macdonald's Coffee Lawsuit Not so Frivolous
The Macdonald's Coffee Case
The lawsuit in complaint of Macdonald's serving overly hot coffee was not as frivolous as commonly believed. From the article:
McDonalds knew of the risk and knew scores of injured customers, but did nothing to mitigate the chance of injury.
Evidence showed that McDonalds served their coffee so hot to save money. This let them get away with a cheaper grade of coffee and cut down on the number of free refills they had to give away. McDonalds executives testified that they thought it would be cheaper to pay claims and worker's compensation benefits to people burned by their coffee versus making any of these changes.
Penguin Sweaters
penguin in sweater
Apparently it's not all that hard to rally volunteers at a moment's notice when the task involves dressing up cute little animals. You have to see this to believe it.
Or have a look at these guys:
Quantum Theory
I happened to stumble across the homepage of Waterloo Ontario's Perimiter Institue. I was curious about them because currently I pass by their building several times a day when I go running in Waterloo park. You have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the front page to find it, but they have a link to some articles on their major research areas. So far I've read Foundations of Quantum Theory. Rather than just give a few details about the theory, this brief (four page) article gives a pretty good quick explanation of the major areas of it.
The Distant Future of Artificial Intelligence
I was reading a site promoting plausible science fiction versus fantastic science fiction when I was reminded of a Wired article on the distant future of artficial intelligence. This article is full of interesting ideas, partly because they're strange and partly because they may very well come true.
Kittenwar.com
One of the "winningest" Kittens
( categories: amusement )
Personal Webspace Underway
After trying out several content management systems I finally settled on Drupal. The threaded comment style drew me to it, and the well thought-out content setup made it a winner. With some personal tweaks and additions to the built-in Taxonomy system I think I'll eventually have an ideal way to store and present information online.
I've just moved things around to let me run both a sample community site and this basic blog / personal info site from the same Drupal codebase. I may setup a few other sample sites just to try some things out, but for now I'm focused on creating my own Drupal theme for this site and beginning a personal library and knowledge base.
( categories: maintenance | site )
Drupal Installed
I've installed yet another content management system. This one spits out valid XHTML code and the built-in forums display comments nested. I have to check the downloadable modules for a calendar and image gallery, and I need to test it's built-in content management for use as a knowledge base.
( categories: site )