Ramblings

Final Option

2007-04-14T01:06:00.000-07:00

My friend D____ is about to get laid off from CompUSA as they close down a huge number of their stores and he will be doing a good deal of freelance work now. He is an excellent tech and is familiar with both PC and Mac hardware as well as a number of printers. If you need help with your PC and you are located in the Saddleback Valley, he is your man.

Click the title for his website and contact information.

The Memory Hacker - Popular Science

2007-04-05T07:10:00.000-07:00

One step closer to my Google brain implant. I can't wait.

Technology monitor | Flying wind farms | Economist.com

2007-04-05T07:03:00.000-07:00

This is a great idea. I think that the future of it will be in helium filled devices that either themselves turn or have some kind of external rotors. Kudos to the people working on this.

Cool Speedtest Website

2007-02-22T12:44:00.000-08:00

I'm an Oregonian!

2007-01-30T12:53:00.000-08:00

It's official, yesterday I got my Oregon license and they took away my California one.

Popup Blocker Tester

2006-07-24T14:41:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled across this today. It's a website that allows you to test your pop-up blocker. I use Firefox and got only one of the popups form the whole list. Go Mozilla!

Electric Cars

2006-07-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

Tesla motors recently demonstrated it's new electric sportscar for enthusiasts in Santa Monica. This thing proves that there can be a future for pure electric cars in the future.

I applaud the people of Tesla motors for engaging in business that will drive the next generation of of vastly reduced pollution automobiles.

High elevations, clean air, beautiful vistas...

2006-07-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

This post has been moved here.

isChecked Function

2006-07-06T15:22:00.000-07:00

This is a function that I wrote to check whether a value is true in order to determine if a checkbox or a radio button is checked.

Use would be something likethe line below but with the {} replaced by <> if the value passed were true the box would be checked when the page loads.

{checkbox name="cbxOne" value="1"<%=isChecked(value)%>}

Click here to view the function.

Electric Cars

2006-06-30T09:24:00.000-07:00

I just found this site promoting a new documentary on EV's called Who Killed the Electric Car. The website has a lot of good info on the history of the electic car. I truely believe that electric cars are a crucial element to reducing the US dependence on foreign oil. I can't wait to see this documentary.

The Future of Power

2006-06-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

Finally, some good news!
Nanosolar is a company that is using Nano-Technology to create a new kind of solar cell that, if their claims are accurate, could create an entirely new, distributed, energy infrastructure in this country and beyond. Their solar cells are about 10% the cost of traditional solar. Traditional solar costs can't compete with fossil fuel and hydro energy sources but Nanosolar's cells hold the promise of slashing those costs but 90%. I haven't been able to locate any information on the effeciency of these cells but, even at half the efficiency of traditional silicon cells you would be talking about a major decrease in cost/kilowatt.

One day, perhaps, we will all produce solar energy on our rooftops and feed the grid in a distributed fasion. If this were realized then fossil fuel electricity production would be needed only as a supplemental energy source and the sun would be the primary energy producer.

Arctic Sea Level Dropping: My Theory

2006-06-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

An increase in the amount of sea water represents and increase in the mass of the oceans.
The moon's gravitational pull on the ocean would then increase proportionally so even though there is more overall water in the seas there is a greater pull from the moon so the earth becomes less round and more eccentrically shaped.

My Tic-Tac-Toe

2006-06-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a little tic-tac-toe game I wrote this morning... Enjoy.
And a link to the code: Click Here

HP Printer Support Can't Identify PCL

2006-06-14T13:56:00.000-07:00

Maverick: Welcome to HP Total Care for All-in-One products. My name is Maverick. How may I assist you today?
Will Perry: I hava one, hopefully simple, question... Which OfficeJet printers support PCL5
Maverick: Could you please elaborate the issue, which would allow me to understand the issue better?
Will Perry: I am looking to purchase 5 or more OfficeJet Printers but the software I am printing with requires PCL5 compatibility. Which OfficeJet models support PCL5?
Maverick: Could you please let me know in brief what is PCL5?
Will Perry: It is a printer language written by HP
Will Perry: You can get a more information here: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/PCL.html
Will Perry: Is there someone there that is familiar with HP Printers?
Will Perry: Are you still there?

UPDATE: 2006-06-14 02:33 PM PDT
I contacted HP support again and this time spoke with Rebecca who was quite helpful and came back with a list of printer models that met my specifications.

UPDATE: 2006-06-15 09:46 AM PDT
I received this e-mail from HP today apologizing for the chat session that apparently got disconnected by accident and informing me that Officejets don't support PLC's

Dear Will,

This email is a follow-up to our recent Chat interaction. We regret the inconvenience caused due to incomplete chat session.

I would like to provide a resolution to the issue which we were troubleshooting in the chat session.

Will , I am sorry to inform you that our Officejet 's are not compatable with the PLC's and only few laserjets support them.

If the issue persists, please contact us by visiting the following Web site. We will be glad to assist you further.

http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/contact/chat_1.html

We are available 24hrs a day, 7 days a week to serve you.

Note: Please do not reply to this message. If you need further assistance, please return to our chat website for further support.

Regards,
Maverick
HP Total Care.

Our advice is strictly limited to the question(s) asked and is based on the information provided to us. HP does not assume any responsibility or liability for the advice given and shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages in connection with the use of this information. Always back up your data. For more information, including technical information updates, please visit our Web site at http://www.hp.com/support.

A Bad Idea

2006-06-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

This is far and away the worst idea I have heard from an administration that has come up with some whoppers. Someone actually sat down and said "We need a new generation of nuclear (or nucular in the words of our president) weapons" or maybe it was something like "How about we start a new nuclear arms race". Here we find ourselves, involved in a war in Iraq that was apparently started to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction and we are now pursuing more modern weapons of mass destruction for ourselves. We are telling other nations like Iran and North Korea, "You can't have nuclear weapons" while building more ourselves. No wonder the world looks at the US as though we are a bunch of hypocrites and there is widespread distrust of our motives.
Write your Senators and Representatives and tell them to oppose new nuclear testing.
US Senate
US House of Representatives

Kennedy Pays His Due

2006-06-13T13:55:00.000-07:00

So what I'd like to know is: where are all the republicans screaming about preferential treatment now? Patrick Kennedy went to court plead guilty and is now facing the consequences for his actions. The same cannot be said for Dick Cheney who had a few drinks at lunch, shot a man in the face and then refused to talk to police for 14 hours while evidence of his blood alcohol level at the time of the incident drained down the toilet.

Save Public Broadcasting

2006-06-12T13:59:00.000-07:00

House Republicans have been trying for years to elimitnate funding for the corporation for public broadcasting which in turn funds PBS and NPR. These are the least biased of any nationwide broadcasters and provide an important service to our children in the form of educational programming like Sesame Street. There are also may areas where we could raise much more money to help balance the budget.

I regularly listen to NPR and find the format of their shows to be much more academic and even-handed than those elsewhere on the radio. Aside from NPR your choices are pretty much Air America for a liberal slant or just about any other AM radio show for a conservative slant on the news, both claim to be unbiased news shows but are basically comparable to the opinion page in the newspaper. Listening to any of these you will hear a host ranting about their side of the issue, papering the guest they agree with, or attacking a guest they don't. The same goes for television but without the liberal slanted outlet. You have a number of networks all more concerned with ratings than portraying an accurate picture of the news. On top of that many of these networks accept pre-recorded press releases from corporations and even our own government and send them out as though they are real news! (See 1, 2, 3) Public Broadcasting has a long history of integrity and un-biased reporting that no other network can hold a candle to.

Then there are the educational progams: Sesame Street and others. These provide a valuable educations resource for children whose parents can't afford to put them in preschool or even afford cable. These parents can all afford PBS because it is free to them. I know that while I didn't learn my ABCs and 123s from Sesame Street it was certainly instrumental in reinforcing these fundamentals. Sesame street is also not the only educational progam on PBS there are educational programs for both children and adults on subjects ranging from math and science to the arts and history.

We should not balance the budget by taking services from the most poor and needy in our society. The 23% cut will leave the CPB with a budget of around $380 million meaning that they actually cut about $114 million. Compared to the $9 Billion that went missing in Iraq in the hands of contractors hand picked by the Bush administration from a pool of their buddies that's nothing. Or how about cutting the $250 Million bridge in Alaska that will server all of about 50 people.

The problem is that the right sees true unbiased reporting and education of the poor as a threat and they feel that with control of the White House and Congress they feel that they can squash one more program that benefits the poor or educates the masses.

Hiking O'Neill Regional Park

2006-05-27T21:41:00.000-07:00

This post has been moved here.

Black Frog hops into spam battle

2006-05-26T13:08:00.000-07:00

This is great! Ever since BlueFrog went down I have been waiting for someone else to take up the gauntlet and here it is.

http://wiki.okopipi.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.okopipi.org/

I'll be watching closely for them to come up and I hope to be one of the first on the list. If you want to be notified as they release their public beta you will want to subscribe to their group on Google at...
http://groups.google.com/group/okopipi-announce

Also check out the following group to see/hear discussion about Okopipi.

http://groups.google.com/group/okopipi-discuss/

Anyway, I'll be keeping my eye on this one!

Gas Prices

2006-05-24T08:37:00.000-07:00

Who hates high gas prices? Not me. I have hard time not laughing at the pump. I pull in after some hulking SUV, slide my card, pump my gas and I'm gone while he continues to fill his behemoth and drain his wallet. I drive a 1997 Honda Civic and get about 30mpg during my normal driving. Even with today's gas prices my fill-ups rarely go over $30 and I'd be willing to pay much more.

I strongly feel that we should be paying much higher taxes at the pump than we do now. On the order of $2/gallon with half to be spent on renewable energy research and subsidies and the other half to be used for mass transit and highway development. People would finally think twice about buying that 14mpg SUV with the 40 gallon tank if it was going to cost them $200 to fill it up.

Some people would say that a tax like this unfairly weighs on the poor and the middle class but I disagree. I think that this would create an incentive for more people to save money by using an improved mass transit system. I have considered taking the train to work but it would cost me considerably more than it now costs me to drive. If gas were to hit $5/gallon and/or the price of taking the train were to go down I would eagerly take the train. This would reduce traffic, cut pollution, and save the average lower or middle income family money.

Links:
The SUV Info Link
The Detroit Project
Hybrid Technologies (Building Electric Vehicles)
NRDC

Client Side Key Generator

2006-05-22T14:18:00.000-07:00

Client side key generator. Allows the user to select whether all ascii characters are allowed(many are not acceptible for passwords in most systems), only common characters (these will usually be accepted for passwords), or no symbols (uses upper and lower case letters and numbers only)
Display Script
Execute Script

My Family

2006-04-06T21:33:00.000-07:00

This post has been moved here.

Halogen Lamp Upgrade

2006-03-31T21:28:00.000-08:00

I was changing light bulbs on my halogen lamps a couple fo times a month and they had a tendency to act like heaters so I converted them to run off of compact flourescent bulbs.
Click to see how I did it

First Blog

2006-02-08T13:24:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if I'm into this whole blogging thing. I like doing things from scratch. Check out my website at http://www.wperry.net