Mom Lets Me Carry A Blaster!
Posted 11:03 AM

Out of 10 5-year-olds I asked, 3 of them believed that the Death star was real, and 5 of them believed that if you concentrated hard enough you could move something with your mind. Kind of a weird world to live in as your brain is developing.

Labels: costumes, humour

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Hanukkah 101
Posted 2:34 PM

# How to Light on the First Night
On the first night, place one candle in the Menorah's far right (as you face the Menorah) candle holder. Another candle is placed for the Shamash (helper candle). Say the below blessings and then light the candle using the Shamash candle.

# First Blessing to Recite
Borukh Ato Adoynoy Eloyheynu Melekh Ho-oylom Asher Kiddeshonu Be-mitsvoysov Ve-tsivonu Lehadlik Neyr Shel khanuko.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us by His commandments, and has commanded us to kindle the lights of Hanukkah.

# Second Blessing to Recite
Borukh Ato Adoynoy Eloyheynu Melekh Ho-oylom She-oso Nissim La-avoseynu Ba-yyomim Ho-heym Ba-zzman Ha-zze.

Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who wrought miracles for our fathers in days of old, at this season.

# Third Blessing to Recite (only on the first night of Hanukkah!)
Borukh Ato Adoynoy Eloyheynu Melekh Ho-oylom She-hekheyonu Ve-kiymonu Ve-higgi'onu La-zzman Ha-zze.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has kept us alive, and has preserved us, and enabled us to reach this time.

# How to Light on the Second through Eighth Night
The second night, place two candles in the Menorah's far right (as you face the Menorah) candle holders. Another candle is placed for the Shamash (helper candle). Say the first two blessings above and then light the candles using the Shamash candle. Light the left-most candle first and then light in order, from left to right. Follow this procedure for each night of Hanukkah.
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VI Command Reference
Posted 7:31 AM

VI commands. Undo/Redo, mark, indent, repeat commands, moving words forward, and all the things I forget.
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Tarp Repayment and Investment Monitor
Posted 10:17 AM

Click on the Tarp Repayment and Investment Monitor. It's updated daily. You can use changedetection.com to email you when it changes ... for a daily TARP feed.
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Verizon Issued Patent For Google Voice
Posted 5:43 AM

Verizon has managed to obtain a patent which provides "one number" to access multiple calling services. Nevermind that this is what OneBox.com has offered for 10 years or so, and what hundreds of other companies offer to various degrees. The timing of the patent "August, 2009" coincides too neatly with the attack, by AT&T on Google Voice.

Conspiracy? Hardly. Verizon is deliberately putting some cards into play to make it more expensive for competitors. I thought Verizon would keep itself above the fray. Droid is going to be a big hit. Why bother with frivolous patents? What reviewer approved this and why is he still being paid?

Now it seems like a two pronged assault. Verizon's patent is strikingly similar to Amazon's "One Click" - a service possibly worthy of a trademark. It is a broadly worded document that covers the "idea" of combining multiple telephone services. Specifically it mentions "generating textual information based on the received voicemail message"... a service provided by PhoneTag and Simulscribe for many years.

In other words, the patent should not have qualified... at all, because everything in the document was already publicly available at the time of the patent. It's all open source too... ala Asterisk and Freeswitch. It flouts the purpose of patent law... to protect inventors, and rather seeks to punish true, prior, inventors with corporate fueled legalese.

This is another sign of weakness and fear in the big telcos. The fear is of internet calling and the weakness is that the only person that can protect them is the government. If they had any ability, they would use it to out-feature, out-price and/or acquire these upstarts.

Is there something we don't know about? AT&T is doing very well with iPhone subscriptions, right? Why are they begging the FCC to regulate Google? Verizon boasts the hottest mobile network... and at the same time is filing for junk patents like a litigious California tech startup?
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Kermit Karzai
Posted 6:36 AM

Labels: humour, politics

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