December 2009 Archives

The Last Blog Entry of the Decade

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Well from a certain point of view anyway, the decade officially ends next year, but I think only mathematicians and nitpickers count it that way. So for me this is the last entry of the "aughts" or the "2000's" or whatever name this decade finally ends up with. Was it ever decided? Also what's the next decade called? The teens? That sounds bad.

I did get around to updating Channel Zero earlier this month. Which, of course, f'd up the whole site. You probably didn't notice, it was mostly on the back-end. I may have to try different blog software at some point. Moveable type is just so arcane anymore.

December, of course, has been a whirlwind, we left for Oklahoma to spend time with our families on the 18th. The plan was to stay all the way through till the 26th, but the weather had other plans. It hit the afternoon of the 24th while we were at my Mom's. Took us nearly 2 hours to drive back to Grady's house from there. We had plans to spend time with family on the 25th as well but since it took about 2 hours of work to get my car unstuck, we decided just to go ahead and head home.

We used the extra day at home to go car shopping. I have been wanting to replace the pathfinder with something a little smaller and nicer. After driving quite a few vehicles, we decided on the Nission Murano. I ended up getting on Monday night. It's even AWD so we shouldn't have any problems should another blizzard strike.

Tonight we are off to hang out with the Dallas crew at a hotel party.


Happy New Year Everyone!

So I was listening to Think on NPR last week and they had a story about the book Start Up Nation. The book is about Tech innovations coming out of Israel. The part I found most interesting was about a company called Fraud Sciences. The company was started by ex-Israeli military who used to track down terrorists. The software system they created is used to combat fraud on the internet. Here's the basic idea. If you run an internet website like say Ebay and someone registers on your site you'd really like to know if that person is "real" or if they are using a made up identity. If they are using a made up identity then most likely they are going to try and use your site to commit fraud. The Fraud Sciences software scours the internet and looks for any and all available public information on the person who has registered. If it finds lots of info, you are probably a real person, if it doesn't, hmm maybe you aren't a real person and Ebay should ask for a more in-depth identity check. In other words, "Bad guys don't post pictures of their kids on facebook." Here's an article from Business week that probably explains it better than I do. Sound like a good idea? Ebay thought so, they bought the company for $169 million. I just wonder what kind of software these guys made for the Israel to track down terrorists.

Oh also I'm going to upgrade Channel Zero this week to some new software so if it craps out for a day or so that's why.

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Reading

I just finshed Codelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold which is the first book of the Vorkosigan Saga.
Very good book, but the Sci-Fi bits are really secondary to the story.

Right now I'm reading The Lost Fleet Series by John Hemry/Jack Campbell It's sorta Honor Harrington but not really, though Honor Harrington even goes downhill in the later novels.