{"id":1433,"date":"2010-08-30T09:06:57","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T15:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1433"},"modified":"2010-08-30T09:08:11","modified_gmt":"2010-08-30T15:08:11","slug":"odd-lots-124","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1433","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>Well, I got the Mallo-Ware bowls I bought from eBay, and they were in better shape than they looked in the listing, and Dash has clearly busted his last bowl. Which leads to a thought: I used to prowl garage sales for entertainment, halfheartedly hoping to find something useful. (I once got a completely functional early-50s tube tester for <em>fifty cents<\/em>.) Now I just decide what I consider useful and go to eBay or Craigslist.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/linux.slashdot.org\/story\/10\/08\/28\/2112208\/Some-Windows-Apps-Make-GRUB-2-Unbootable\">Adobe&#8217;s Flexnet copy protection system evidently writes to the MBR<\/a>, and thus can make a system unbootable if it gets in a wrestling match with something else that also wants to be there. Flexnet, in fact, looks disturbingly like a rootkit from here. If I wasn&#8217;t sanguine about moving up to Adobe CS before, I sure as hell don&#8217;t intend to now.<\/li>\n<li>Courtesy of Esther Schindler (who apparently was the editor who commissioned it) I give you <a href=\"http:\/\/itexpertvoice.com\/home\/painless-pivottables-a-primer-for-managers-on-how-to-make-sense-of-complex-data\/\">a crackerjack tutorial by Tom Bunzel on how to do pivot tables in Excel<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>From the Words-I-Didn&#8217;t-Know-Until-Yesterday Department: A <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Luthier\"><em>luthier<\/em><\/a><\/em> is one who makes or repairs stringed instruments. From &#8220;lute,&#8221; which is one of the most ancient instruments in its class.<\/li>\n<li>Now that Apple has anointed the slate category, the usual suspects are coming up with their own surprisingly interesting takes on the concept. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/gadgetlab\/2010\/08\/250-korean-android-tablet-looks-strangely-familiar\/\">This is my favorite so far<\/a>, and brings up the interesting question: Why not include both FM radio and TV tuners? If these things are to be travel toys, that&#8217;s a must-have. (I also want real GPS, not just cell-tower interpolation.)<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/marvin.cs.uidaho.edu\/~heckendo\/overlord.html\">a list of 100 resolutions (102, actually) that anyone aspiring to be an Evil Comic Book Overlord should make<\/a>. Resolution #2 is particularly important: &#8220;My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>My daily spam count felll significantly (about 30%) a few days ago, and <a href=\"http:\/\/krebsonsecurity.com\/2010\/08\/researchers-kneecap-pushdo-spam-botnet\/\">I wonder if this had anything to do with it<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thrillist.com\/nation\/padlock-hack\">Somebody told me about this years ago<\/a> and I didn&#8217;t pay attention. I have one of these in a drawer. Will attempt when time allows.<\/li>\n<li>I used to call Hoag&#8217;s Object the &#8220;Here&#8217;s Looking At You, Kid&#8221; galaxy. I&#8217;m amazed that so few people have ever heard of it, or seen photos. <a href=\"http:\/\/antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap100822.html\">You no longer have an excuse<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>If the chemical elements played rock music (or if rock bands were set up like <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Metal_Men\">the Metal Men<\/a>) <a href=\"http:\/\/roadsidejesus.com\/periodic\/ptableHola.html\">this would be their periodic table<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I got the Mallo-Ware bowls I bought from eBay, and they were in better shape than they looked in the listing, and Dash has clearly busted his last bowl. Which leads to a thought: I used to prowl garage sales for entertainment, halfheartedly hoping to find something useful. (I once got a completely functional [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[41,15,43,14],"class_list":["post-1433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-astronomy","tag-hardware","tag-humor","tag-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1434,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433\/revisions\/1434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}