Watch Out, World!

Big Jim's finally got his hands on a digital camera, courtesy of the 'rents for his graduation (kindergarten).

Also. An ANNOUNCEMENT. Due to the tomb-like silence residing in this particular web address, I've decided to change to digs and move to Rico-Land. Who knows the wonders that Rico and Big Jim will come up with as they will now inhabit the same city for the first time since the halcyon days of 2005? One can only hope that their hijinks will be regularly blogged in a style befitting their magnificence.

Right: Big Jim's mug of tea on the dining room table, truly pushing the Sony DSC-W290 to its limits.

Movin' On Up

Just downloaded two programs yesterday that have ended Adobe Reader's tryannical reign over me, i.e. slow load times both off and online, giant size, and slowing down of the computer, all especial issues for those stylish enough to own an HP mini.

First we have FoxIt Reader for all your pdf reading needs. At 7.63 MB, it's less than a 10th the size of Adobe Acrobat.

To expand my pdf capabilities, I also downloaded PDF Fill's trial version, which comes with the tools to split and join pdfs, something I've been wanting to have for a long time. The program's primary purpose is to allow the user to type onto any pdf, useful for forms I guess, but I don't plan on using it thusly, espcially since it leaves its watermark on those documents. No watermark for the splitting and the joining. The whole program's 33.8 MB.

So we have increased capability, faster load times, and the two programs combined are half the size of Adobe Reader. Did I mention that they're both free? Yea, progress.

A short list of awesome things

1. This story about robots evolving and learning how to lie. Awesome and troubling at the same time.

2. The video game Bully. It's a less homicidal version of Grand Theft Auto. It's the first video game I have bought in a while, and it's been a blast.

3. This dream I had last night (or was it two nights ago?) where I was running for president and got into a verbal fight with Mike Huckabee in a parking garage overlooking Notre Dame's spring football game. Awesome because it gives a deep insight into my psyche and the things that occupy my brain power.

4. Antonin Scalia. It's really fun to see ostensibly liberal law students persuaded by sheer force of his reasoning. It's equally fun to see other liberal students trash him because they think they are supposed to, without actually addressing his arguments.

5. Eli Manning and the New York Giants. Simply because I don't think I could have stomached two weeks of Packer hype and Favre news converage without harming myself or others.

I'm back!

So my google account was hacked last Friday. At first, I assumed it was just a problem with gmail or something, but after I couldn't access my account for several hours, I was concerned.

I started searching around online to see if other people's accounts mysteriously stopped working. It had happened to other people, and it usually wasn't the result of hacking. In some cases, access was restored the next day.

I decided to wait and see if my access would come back, but it didn't. I became seriously worried when I was able to get to my security question to retrieve my password, and it was "???????????"

At this point, I began to freak out a bit, knowing everything that I have stored in gmail and do through gmail. Further, since Blogger is a Google product, I wasn't able to blog, leaving Big Jim all alone.

I had to go through Gmail's tedious password retrieval service. They asked for all sorts of ridiculous information I didn't have, such as my verification code when I first signed up. Luckily, my original Gmail invitor still had the original invite e-mail. Through that, I was able to eventually regain access to my account.

But the story doesn't end there! After accessing my e-mail, our mystery hacker also was able to get into my eBay account. Thankfully, his crude attempt to list six expensive digital cameras on eBay within minutes of one another was deemed suspicious by their security team. My account was frozen, and I was able to close it this morning.

Ultimately, it appears that the only consequence of this whole experience was serious aggravation. I'll be keeping a close eye on any internet accounts I have, but I may be in the clear.

The disconcerting thing about all this is that the IT guys here at Marquette don't know how it happened. I can only assume it happened on the wireless network here, but there's no way to know for sure. It's a vulnerable feeling.

Te moral of the story is that you should change all your passwords to "JG8#6r!YfcO*&675M1H"

Magic Cellphones

So. I called friend a couple of nights ago (around 9:00 PM) to talk about the awesomeness that was fast approaching. I was surprised to hear him answering and in a sleepy and disgruntled manner. He had apparently gone to London, where it was 2:00 in the morning. Now that he had had popped off to London (where he's now reading the 7th Harry Potter, curse him) without telling me isn't anything out of the usual. That our cellphones were somehow still able to work is. My next move is to see if I can call dead historical personages. Updates will follow.

I'm Pretty Sure This Qualifies as Awesome

John Derbyshire over at The Corner brought this to my attention:



I'm going to dispute the one scientist's claim that in the near future every surface will be such a device. I may be in the minority, but I actually enjoy the moments when it is impossible to use a computer or the internet.

*Addendum. I'd like to mention that yours truly had to go through a serious of complicated mathematical procedures, i.e. proportions, to make this video the proper size for our humble blog. I'm truly gifted.

Wow

I thinking of having Google build my house. I'm not ready to buy a house yet, but by the time I will, I figure Google can handle it.