They really do. Computers fear me. For example: this weekend, I had a friend whose computer couldn't get online for the last month. I went over there and looked at it. Since it was the only computer that was connecting wirelessly, I decided to bring my own machine over real quick to check and make sure that the wireless network actually worked. I boot up my own machine, and see that it can connect to the network. So, I turn to start debugging the problem on my friend's machine - and I see AIM's welcome page. Another couple of seconds, the buddy list comes up. Now, I haven't done anything yet to the machine. It's been offline for over a month, and now, all of a sudden, just as I'm about to start debugging it, it starts working again.
This is just the most recent notable example of this. I've also had machines suddenly behave themselves over a thousand miles away, as I start to talk someone through some checks to see what's wrong with their machine. Before I can actually get them started on finding the info I need, all of a sudden, the machine starts working properly again.
It's kind of cool though. It's like I've got this mystic power that my mere presence is enough to cause broken machines to suddenly heal themselves. Kinda makes me feel like the kid, Micah Sanders, on Heros (Great show - you should watch it). Hmm, I wonder if I should go find a genetic scientist, and have my genome tested...
Posted by: Eric Bliss on Mar 19, 2007 at 9:38:37 am
So, I was working on cleaning up my place the other day, and I was noticing yet again that I really need more room for all of my books, when I suddenly realized that wasn't what I actually need. What we need is a book that works like a hard drive.
Imagine a new kind of printer for a moment. This printer doesn't just print out pages. You can also feed pages into it, which it will then make blank by pulling the "ink" off of them. Once it has blanked the pages, it will then print on them again using this same "ink". Obviously, this wouldn't be old fashioned ink - may not even be old fashioned paper either. High end versions of the printer would be able to create a re-usable binding of some sort for the pages. This way, instead of having shelves and shelves of books (which take up an awful lot of room in an apartment), you could just have say, 4 or 5 "books", with all of the rest of your collection as PDFs or something on your hard drive. Obviously, you would want a couple of different standard sizes of paper in it - paperback, textbook, magazine.
The reasons we need this should be obvious - how much material do we have that we need to read, and how much of the time we're going to be reading it do we really want to be staring at a computer screen? Paper is a much more comfortable medium for the human eye to read, as opposed to CRTs, Plasma, LCD, etc. But really, if we were printing out everything we need to read all the time, we'd be shreding forests even faster than we already are. Anybody who has a large book collection will also recognize that it would be a lot easier if they didn't have to find room for this massive collection somewhere in their house - or worse, apartment.
Somebody is going to make a million bucks off of this idea one of these days. Too bad it isn't going to be me...
Posted by: Eric Bliss on Mar 9, 2007 at 9:55:54 am
Okay, so this is a blog, huh? I suppose that I'm supposed to put all my assorted ramblings on display for all the world, yes? Okay, here goes...
The ultimate answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is 42.
The ultimate question is "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"
This actually works in base 13.
Scary, huh?
Yes, I am a nerd, despite that picture of me out in the sun.
I say I'm "reclusive".
Other people say I'm "anti-social".
But at least Cowdog sticks up for me. Most of the time anyway...
Posted by: Eric Bliss on Feb 28, 2007 at 9:11:42 am
