Les Misérables first thought: The suffering that could have ended with one swipe of Wolverine’s claws…
Second thought: Best musical movie in the “looks like it was filmed entirely with GoPro cameras” category that I’ve ever seen.
And again Comcast high speed internet service and cable is out in parts of Santa Clara. How are we supposed to know when the zombie apocalypse starts with no connectivity?
Update: As of 0100 December 20, 2012, Comcast internet and TV is still out in Silicon Valley. Hard to believe that the home of tech has such bad internet service but it does.
Verizon 4G seems to be still working.
Anyone still keep DSL as a backup internet connection?
Update: San Jose and Santa Clara Comcast networks are out of service as of 0230 December 20, 2012.
Usually an internet network outage isn’t too much of a problem, but I just happened to be in the middle of signing important documents through the Authentisign.com service when the plug was pulled on the interwebs. But as with many things in the tech world, there are many different ways to keep things running. In this case the Android smart phone comes to the rescue again.
The Red Cross, though they do good things, has a problem. Their computerized phone system has a glitch and continues to call my cell phone multiple times a day at all times of the day. Always from the same phone number, 800-733-2767, which is the main number for the Red Cross. When I try to answer these random calls there is just dead space. No messages have ever been left from 800-733-2767. When I tried to call the number back, it just goes to the main menu system for the Red Cross which I didn’t have time to deal with.
Finally, I got tired of the incessant calling and called the main Red Cross number, 800-733-2767, and waited through the menu options. I pressed ‘2’ for blood donations because I assume that is how they got my number. Waited on hold briefly and a nice female voice answered. I explained the problem with the relentless calling. She had heard this before and explained that the call system is glitchy and they are in the process of fixing it. She verified my information and flagged my phone number so the system would stop robo calling me. So far I haven’t received any more calls from them. Time will tell…
For those of you that remember the campy British science fiction comedy from the 90’s that has been rumored to return to production again for over a decade, it’s back! Currently airing on the Dave and Dave HD channels in the UK for the first returning season. The series is planned to be released on DVD in November 2012. No word yet on if Red Dwarf Series 10 will air on BBC America.
Our friends at ThinkGeek are continuing their weekend tradition of limited edition T-shirts featuring something techno-geeky. You can now wear your own Gangnam Style Mobile Suit Gundam Style T-shirt with the giant Gundam robot in sunglasses doing the iconic Gangnam Style horse dance.
Hey sexy lady… Think Geek’s Gundam Style T-shirt is only available this weekend at ThinkGeek.com. So put down your Gundam Hammer and get ordering!
Google celebrates it’s 14th birthday today with a new google doodle. Make a wish and blow out the candles!
Arrghh! I nearly forgot this year!
Another useful tool for Solaris Unix system administrators was crushed under the weight of Oracle. This tool was highly useful for digging through all of the read me files to determine which patch might solve your problem and finding patch dependencies.
The site, wesunsolve.net, was regularly updated and linked to Oracles support page for the actual download of patches.
Yes, the site did copy Sun/Oracle read me files and patch information and put it in a more navigable format, but did not distribute any Sun/Oracle binaries. You still had to have an active support account with Oracle to download Solaris patches. But the company should have recognized that this was a tool that supported the Solaris community and made managing some aging Solaris machines a little easier. But moves like this are part of the reason those Solaris machines are aging and will be replaced by Linux machines.
Legal note: Sun, Oracle and Solaris are registered trademarks of Oracle.
Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Apple released it’s much anticipated iPhone 5 today. Will it be worth the cash?
We’ll soon see. Long lines have already formed outside f Apple stores in anticipation of the iPhone 5. Good luck findng your way home if you use the new iPhone 5 map feature.