Blog Stats

It seems the popularity of this blog is on the rise, I’ve gotten over 4000 hits on the blog this month.  I sincerely hope folks are getting something out of my day in a life of a Presson.   The bulk of the hits were due to the Black-Friday post, but I’ll still count them. lol

Cheers all!

The Secret to Raising Smart Children?

I don’t know if I buy there is some magic secret to raising smart kids, but this article raises some interesting points. From the article: “Our society worships talent, and many people assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability—along with confidence in that ability—is a recipe for success. In fact, however, more than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.”   That makes sense to me.  Focusing on success based on what’s “built in” instead of what’s earned through study would not encourage work needed to master skills beyond what comes naturally.   It’s been my life’s journey to research the unknown, ask colleagues or experts in the the field so that I can understand various perspectives on a problem, then tackle it.  It drives my wife crazy sometimes as she like me to act before I understand, but that’s not my way. 

I digress; read this article – what do you think?  http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-smart-kids&print=true

BTW: I removed the requirement to enter your email address, so it’s easier to comment

Voyager 2 should pass the Termination Shock in the next few months

“Using a computer model simulation, Haruichi Washimi, a physicist at UC Riverside, has predicted when the interplanetary spacecraft Voyager 2 will cross the “termination shock,” the spherical shell around the solar system that marks where the solar wind slows down to subsonic speed….” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071127171052.htm

Encourage sex of your baby through Diet?

I would have passed over this article, but the source is at least credible: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12971-diet-may-influence-your-babys-gender.html 

One Sentence Stories

I realized at that moment what love is. 

edit:
oops: the link was lost http://www.onesentence.org/stories/popular/

Eating Healthy.. Or are you?

Lately I’ve been focusing more on my health than ever before.  I’ve neglected to take care of my body and in the process gained a lot of weight, and had several other unhealthy habits.  I quit smoking, started exercising, and I make better choices when I eat.  I don’t diet, but am “in training” on how to live and eat better.  I do what I always do: I arm myself with information.  It comes down to making better choices.

I may not be able to avoid going to fast food to eat, as my kids love McDonalds.  Apparently with all the advertising McDonalds does anything they put into their bags tastes better.  I choose not to eat the french-fries.  I’ll get a sandwich but I will throw away the bottom bun, cut the sandwich in two, and reassemble it – making a double hamburger out of a single – and using the other half for a bottom bun.  It’s still not a veggie tray, but at least I saved 380 calories from the fries, and maybe another 60-80 from the bun.  I drink tea or “treat” myself to a diet soda, saving another 210 calories.  In total, I saved 650 calories – a whole meals worth!  Do I do this every time? No, but the more I do the better my weight becomes.   Instead of tracking calories or points I measure the result of my previous day’s choices by a morning weight check and I write it down.  It’s a gauge for my choices.  Is this the best way?  Not if you want to diet / lose weight fast, but I think it’s a better long term solution, don’t you?

Along these lines, I ran across an article that describes some common “health” foods, and why they might not be all that healthy.  For example: Granola Bars – although the whole oats are good, they are glued together with ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup, honey, and barley malt.

It’s worth a read: http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealth&channel=nutrition&category=food.for.fitness&conitem=bfa4d9922475e010VgnVCM10000013281eac____&cm_mmc=RSS-_-mhrsssex+&+relationships-_-NA-_-NA

U.S. folks – Happy Thanksgiving!

Enjoy your families and friends for the holidays!

-Presson

Turkey game:
http://www.funny-games.biz/turkeytogo.html

ImageX now has a GUI front-end

From the folks who brought you AUTOIT, a new tool to give administrators a GUI front-end to the new Windows Vista imaging tool Imagex.  I would script the image creation so the command-line tool is a better fit, but if you prefer to manually create the images then this tool might help you avoid some of the gotchas of the command line (did you forget to commit that change?)

http://blogs.technet.com/richardsmith/archive/2007/11/20/gimagex-imagex-gui-updated-version-now-available.aspx

Black Friday Buying Guide for the US

Excel spreadsheet of all the sales this weekend.http://www.hustlermoneyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/bf_buying_guide_2007.xls

Nothing like getting a Digg If I may, please check out the rest of my blog, http://presson.wordpress.com/ I sometimes post deals, but hey there’s some interesting stuff here ;p

EDIT: the document is being updated at this link now: Black Friday

found from FatWallet:http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?catid=18&threadid=781988

Google Phonebook: Lookup your address by phone number

Try it!  Go to www.Google.com type in your home phone number.  It will show your address and a clickable link to show a map of were you live. 

I’d recommend opting out by clicking on the link on the address page…

Asthma Suffers – Some thoughts

Technorati tags: asthma, inhaler, help, medical

Since my early years, I’ve dealt with asthma – sometimes worse than others.  I’m lucky that I’ve never been hospitalized by it, but I’ve experienced a few times where I thought I would cease to be able to breathe. I was eventually able to regain control.    As I’ve aged I’ve had fewer problems, but there are still times when I depend heavily on my rescue inhaler.

I once saw a sign at the airport about a kid describing an asthma attach as being “like a fish out of water.”  It hit home.

The one thing that has helped me during an attack, is to try to regain control.  It’s a mental exercise that requires you to relax.  Stop breathing deeply; try to slow down the pace; and just breathe only as much as is comfortable, and after a short time, you will be able to take deeper and deeper breaths.  I would suggest getting a peak-flow meter to have a way to measure lung capacity.  If you suffer from Asthma, or know someone who does, check out this article: http://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/asthma-sufferers-hold-your-breath.html  There is a link to a You-Tube video that talks about the Buteyko method to help prevent attack.  Leave a comment about your experiences and thoughts.  What works for you?  what are your triggers?  Cold air, dust and a lot of exercise were my main triggers.

In case you missed this "Viral Movie"

George Lucas in Love.. a wonderfully funny spin on how Lucas got his ideas for Star Wars..

 

YouTube – George Lucas in Love

Electrical fires occur 5300 times a year, 2000 happen over the holiday season. How to know when enough is enough.

This is a long post, but it’s worth the read… We moved to a different home last year.  Part of the fun of moving to a new place is redesigning our holiday light show (yes the kid in me loves to light up the house!)  At my old house, I had run two dedicated 20 amp circuits with Ground Fault circuit interrupter (GFCI or GFI) to power the show.  My new house has one outside outlet so I stepped down the light show, but it kept popping the circuit breaker.  I traced the circuit and it had a dedicated 15 amp breaker, which should have been enough, but I wasn’t sure – so I tried several times disconnecting more of the show.

I finally bought a Kill-a-watt* (newegg has them for $16.00) that you can plug in between your load (the lights) and the outlet that shows you how much current is being drawn – among other things.  It was drawing 12.5 amps, which is a lot but still under the limit of the breaker.  I never quite figured out the cause, until about 6 months ago my wife was walking down the property to pick up the kids from the bus stop.  Suddenly She herd a “ZAP!” from under her feet.  She looked down at her now blackened shoe and a puff of smoke.  Apparently the previous owners had run a 120v line using indoor wiring that terminated above ground – just bare to the world just waiting to arc to anything that stepped on it!  I removed this line and I’m thinking I will have better luck with popping circuits this year, and I reviewed the rest of the wiring for any other surprises.

A good read on “how much can I plug in” is here: http://lifehacker.com/software/safety/avoid-overloading-your-electrical-outlets-321652.php

*The Kill-a-watt is a killer (no pun intended) device to measure how much power things take (especially when they are “off”) to see if adding power switches or replacing bulbs with high efficiency CF bulbs will help you electric bill. 

Gmail – IMAP access Outlook

You can configure Outlook to pull your email for a Gmail email address, but I experienced some slowness during the process.  I found a blog that described a few things you can do to speed it up.  http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/solutions-for-slow-gmail-imap-with-microsoft-outlook/1761/

Hilarious video – Low-Tech 24

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1788161

New Admin Tool to get Applications to Work with non-admin Rights

One of the many things Administrators fight is getting applications to work as a non-administrator.  There are a few tools available to assist, such as FileMon, RegMon, the Application Compatibility Toolkit,  etc.  There is a new tool in town, that also helps to get applications working with the new Windows Vista model: LUA Buglight. It’s not a tool for the average user mind you, but it can help narrow down problems with apps.  How it works is it attaches itself to the application to watch what it does, it elevates the rights so the app can do what it needs, but it tracks when it makes use of rights that a normal user would have problems.   Check it out if you need help with an application (note that it’s in public beta) http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/archive/2006/08/07/LuaBuglight.aspx

Canon 40D Raw support for Vista

Finally Canon has support for viewing RAW files in Windows Explorer.  Thread discussing a potential issue: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1019&message=25437250&changemode=1

Download:http://www.majorgeeks.com/Canon_RAW_Codec__d5816.html