The Fix Is In
A service call from Time Warner Cable came out to Soffit House Saturday. The guy was very nice and he took a lot of time to look around and figure out what the problem was. Eventually, he decided to swap… Continue Reading
Technology
Galactically Awful Customer Service
Dear Time Warner Cable: I discovered in the evening hours of Thursday, April 17, 2008 that my high-speed internet connection, for which I pay you a handsome monthly fee, was not working. It did not work on my computer; it… Continue Reading
Voices In Your Head Explained
If you’re on a busy street corner or standing in line at Wal-Mart and you start hearing voices in your head that tell you to do things you wouldn’t otherwise do — you may not be schizophrenic. You may be… Continue Reading
Limited Budget Luxuries
Amba asks: what luxuries would you not give up even if you had to live on a limited budget? Some, who have lived on truly limited budgets, would scoff at such a question – the answer, they would say, is… Continue Reading
The Nuclear Renaissance Will Happen Slowly
While lots of countries, including the United States, are exploring the idea of expanding their nuclear power plant infrastructure, a rather critical problem exists. Part of a nuclear reactor core is a containment vessel, which is the thing that actually… Continue Reading
Surveillance Technology Imitates Nature
Super-villians, beware the unimaginatively-named COM-BAT! Amazing. And kind of scary. The device is being developed for the military with urban combat situations in mind, but there could be other uses of the device too, some of which should be pretty… Continue Reading
What Is The Internet?
No, Senator Stevens, it’s actually a gigantic string of fiber optic and copper-wire cables. And it takes up most of a downtown Los Angeles office tower, with the exception of four floors of an insurance defense law firm, all one… Continue Reading
Looks Like It’ll Be Awesome
When the technical kinks get worked out, it’ll cost you $200,000 for a ride into outer space. You’d get about four and a half minutes of weightlessness and the view would be astonishing. I can only imagine what the stars… Continue Reading
Glide Her In, Or, In Praise Of The Human Mind
A long-haul British Airways flight coming in to land at Heathrow Airport suddenly lost all power while on its final landing approach. Scary. Nearly a disaster. The pilot announced, “I’ll just have to glide her in” and did exactly that.… Continue Reading
Performance Issue
My computer behaved very strangely this morning. The wheel on the mouse didn’t scroll up and down; it made the text on my browser bigger and smaller. When I tried to type things, I got all kinds of bizarre results.… Continue Reading