Video Game Voters Network

I have recently joined my first politically motivated group. I feel it is the first group that I agree with all of their views. Everyone should go and check it out at The Video Game Voters Network. If you are a gamer, you should join, and let your politicians know how you feel.

In other news, my claim with Paypal progresses slowly. I now need to get a document from a repair shop stating that my power supply does not work with the company's letterhead and contact information. So now I need to see if I can get a computer shop to write one up for free.

Xbox 360 and Ebay Fraud

Everyone should get an Xbox 360. Such a nice gaming experience. Now I just need an HD TV. It is even better in HD. Call od Duty 2 looks amazing in HD, pretty good on a regular TV. For some real entertainment, you need to get Perfect Dark Zero and play multiplayer games.

On another note, I was recently screwed by a Chinese seller on eBay. I'm currently in the process of resolving it so I can get my money back. The seller acted like he was in the United States, but when the package arrived, it was obviously sent from the People's Republic of China. I'll update as information comes in.

Dog Treats

A common ingredient in many dog treats is propylene glycol, which is used as a preservative. It is also used in antifreeze and deicing solutions. It is consider safe for consumption by the FDA, however in large quantities it is believe to cause similar problems as the other more dangerous ingredient used in antifreeze, ethylene glycol. Since continued exposure to significant quantities might pose a health risk, owners should attempt to limit the number of treats they feed their dogs containing propylene glycol.

NEWS
I am back at work now. This should mean more frequent updates. Maybe even daily updates. I also noticed my web traffic has increased heavily so I am going to look into a way to put that traffic to good use and make some money. I think this is most likely because if you search for "Random Information" on google, my blog is the second one in the list. Check it out, I'm really proud of it.

Google Search

Harmful Dog Food Additives

Many dog food companies will add chemicals to dog food for various reasons. Some are added as preservatives. Ethoxyquin, BHA and BHT are commonly used synthetic preservatives. Ethoxyquin is a pesticide, and yet some companies use it to preserve dog food so that their product will have a longer shelf life. Ethoxyquin, BHA, and BHT are all potentially cancer causing ingredients, and yet they are allowed to be used in dog food. Various natural preservatives, such as Vitamin C and Vitamin E can be used instead and do not create the health issues of the synthetic ingredients.


I let Yoda run free on a 20 foot lead on Sunday. He loved it, and he also wore himself out, which was nice. A tired dog is a much better behaved dog. I will probably let him go for a run tonight as well if it isn't dark when I get home. If not, then I will probably take him for a jog on a heel. That way he will be able to burn off some of his excess energy. I have tomorrow off work, so that I can take Beth to have a test run at the hospital. It will be nice to not work until 6 one night of the week. I will be back at school in a week, and then I will home early a lot more often. It will be good for Yoda because I will be able to spend more time with him.

Distributed Computing

Distributed computing is a great thing. It is the process of sharing computation over several processors. This is the concept behind the linux farm, which is a group of Linux computers which share their computing power, in essence you have one very powerful server. This is great because not only can you have a server capable of computing faster than existing servers, but as a home user you can take several old computers and use them together to get a high speed server, for whatever you might need a high speed server for.


So today was clean out the back room at work day. This meant free computers to anyone who wanted one. It also meant, since I was doing the cleaning, I got first pick on all the reject computers. So I picked up a nice, very small 600 Mhz PIII that is going to replace my existing 450 Mhz firewall/router. It is even smaller than the current one I am using, and much faster as well. It should work out nicely. I also got two 500 Mhz PIIIs that I am going to use for who knows what. But when I come up with an idea, it will be great. I will probably just use them to fool around with different linux based servers at my house, but I might go all out and use them with the 450 Mhz I have freed up from the router in a little distributed computing setup. It would be a neat thing to play around with. Maybe I'll set it up to try and calculate the next digit of Pi or something. Not that it will be fast enough to compete with the current distributed network that is calculating digits of Pi, but I am sure there is some other obscure digit out there that no one really cares about that I could try and calculate. Let me know if you come up with one.

Voltage, Current and Resistance

Voltage is the potential energy between two points for a flow of electrons to occur. This flow of electrons is called a current. The material over which the electrons flow(conductor) will have a certain resistance to the flow of electrons. Typically, a material's resistance to the flow of electrons will be constant, and so you have a direct relationship where when you increase the voltage, the current will increase. The mathematical representation for this relationship is known as Ohms Law.
Ohms Law
V=IR
You can also increase the resistance across a circiut by adding resistors. If you maintain a constant voltage across the circuit, as you increase the resistance the current will decrease. In this case the resistance and current have an indirect relationship.


News for today:
Yoda continues to do well in his training. He really doesn't like the pinch collar I got for him. When you put it on him he acts real sad. But when he has it on he behaves perfectly, so I know he knows exactly what he needs to do. Hopefully if we continue training him with the pinch we can get him to a point where he does everything perfectly without the pinch collar on. When we took him to the pet store over the weekend we realized that he needed a pinch collar because he got way to excited and wasn't able to focus on his training. Maybe next weekend he will be better. Although I think I will take him PetSmart this time, because I didn't like most of the bones they had at Pet Supplies Plus.
A week from Friday is my last day at work before I go back to school. It will be nice to be back in classes, plus I will have more time off. I will still be just as busy because of studying, but at least I will have some time throughout the day available to get things done in, so I don't have to do everything at night. Most importantly, I will be getting home earlier than 7:30PM each night, which will make training Yoda before dark much easier, especially as it gets closer to winter

More Yoda Pics

Altolamprologous Compressiceps

Altolamprologous Compressiceps is a Cichlid from the African lake, Lake Tanganyika. It is a thin cichlid with a compressed appearance, making it more difficult for other fish to spot as it swims around cracks in the rocky areas of Lake Tanganyika. It is a predator that feeds on small fish and crustaceans. When hunting food, it will slowly swim towards it prey until it gets within striking range. When it strikes it will lunge forward quickly and grab its prey. Adult specimen are typically around 5 inches in length, but they mature very slowly and can take several years to reach adult size.


One of my prized Altolamprologous Compressiceps has died. He had an injury to his mouth the other night, and when I woke up in the morning he was dead. Now I am down to 3. He was probably worth about $50 when he died, luckily I had him since he was a juvenille, and they are much cheaper when they are young. The most expensive part of getting him and his other companions was the gas it took to drive across the state to the breeder that had them.
I took more pictures of Yoda last night, but I was tired and didn't get around to editing them and posting them. Hopefully tonight I will get them edited and put them up. I have to reinstall Windows on a computer tonight though, so I might not get around to working on the pictures. If I do, they will be up tonight. If not, then look for them tomorrow night.


AOL and Windows are two things I don't understand why consumers put up with. Windows is horrible, it doesn't just get screwed up because of all the viruses and spyware that is targetted towards it. It is so bad that it is self destructive. It is true, turn on Windows and leave it running, a fresh install with no software added and not connected to the internet. Come back every day and see if it is still running. Eventually it will have crashed, and that is just wrong. Why do people allow companies to provide them with horrible products and not go elsewhere. There are options out there. Then you look at AOL. They are so horrible they have the nerve to charge people for a service, only to make further money off of them by flashing ads in front of them. If you pay for internet service you shouldn't have to see ads. All the other ISPs are able to survive without the extra ad revenue, why can't the largest of all the dial-ups do it.

Linux Commands: ls -l

In Linux, the command ls is used to list the contents of a directory or to obtain information about files. When you just run ls, it will output a list of all files in the target directory, or all files that match the filename you passed. When you pass the -l flag, it will list information about each file.
the first thing the ls command lists about a file is a string of 10 characters. The first character is the file type(eg. d for directory, - for regular file, l for symbolic link). The next ten characters are the permission bits for that file. They are in groups of three, owner permissions, group permissions, and everyone else's permissions. Each one consists of three characters. A - is displayed if the permission bit is not set. The permissions are read(r) write(w) and execute(x). It is also worth noting that certain special bits may also be displayed in place of the permission bits(eg. sticky bit). The next thing displayed is the link count for the file/directory. The link count is the number of inodes that point to the data blocks of that file.
After the link count, the user and the group that own the file are displayed. The next thing that is displayed is the size of the file in bytes. The second to last thing displayed for the file is the date it was last modified. And finally, the last thing displayed is the filename itself.


It is official... Windows is the worst operating system ever made(every single version is tied for the worst). I just reinstalled windows on one of my church's computers, and after installing all the drivers I immediately went to download the anti-virus definitions. But that wasn't soon enough. I hadn't been on the internet for 5 minutes by the time I had contracted one of those newer viruses. You know, the ones that make your computer restart. At that point there wasn't much I could do because the virus made the computer restart about a minute after you start it, and it was gonna take 2 minutes to download the virus definitions needed to clean it. So I reinstalled.
In better news, Yoda is still being a good dog. Although Ethel is being a royal pain in the butt. She keeps attacking him because she wants his bone. When she does, Yoda tries to play with her, but she just keeps attacking him. Although, last night, Yoda did growl at her, hopefully he won't get sick of her attacking him before she get's bored of it. If he does, I have a feeling she will be in a world of trouble. He only weighs about 3 times more than she does. Hopefully, she will get used to him and leave him alone before that happens though.

Pictures of Yoda

Here are two pictures of Yoda I took real quick. Next time I think I will wait until it is light outside and take the pictures outside without the flash so you can see what he looks like when he doesn't look possessed. As you can see from the pictures, he has mastered the command 'sit'. I'll probably get more pictures up Wednesday night.