Thu 18 Aug 2011 • 13:47 EDT 0
Has a USB Mini-B female socket on one end, and a USB Micro-B male plug on the other. Plus a little tether so you can connect it to a cable. With my mix of devices that have mini (battery charger, camera) and micro sockets (phone, nook), I’d have to carry around twice the number of cables. Now I carry two cables, each with one of these adapters on it. I also keep one on the car charger.
Filed under: Computers and Internet, Gear, Travel
Wed 17 Aug 2011 • 16:39 EDT 1
Goal0 Guide 10 4AA Battery Recharger
I saw this on the shelf at Target one day and thought it might be a good contender for a travel battery charger. I’d been using some crappy ones, and couldn’t find an all in one device. Basically, I wanted something that would store two or four AA batteries, provide 5 VCD out, optionally have a flashlight, and preferably charge them from a 5 VCD standard USB port.
This one does all of the above. And does it well.
The construction is rock solid. The door doesn’t come open without some effort, and the body is sturdy. After a month of heavy travel,mine has some scratches, but no cracks or damage.
It stores four AA batteries, and has a removable tray that lets it hold AAA batteries instead. One gripe is that the tray comes out – I’d prefer they have some sort of flip-down spacer that changes the fit. If it can be removed, it will get lost. I’ve standardized on AA batteries, so that’s not a huge deal for me, but it’s still annoying.
The front face has a switch, a status indicator, a bright white LED light, a USB A Female port, what appears to be an EIAJ-01 coaxial power plug, and a USB Mini-B Female port.
It’s a trickle charger, made to work on 2.5 watts input. It will take several hours to charge batteries. That’s inherent to working with low power levels like this. If you want something faster, get a high current quick charger. The auto-off works fine, so you can leave it connected to a charging source.
Oh and it has a neat hook on the back… I have no idea what that’s for.
This meets my criteria for a travel device: compact, uses standard batteries, accepts standard power in, provides standard power out. It’s not fancy, not expensive, and does its thing reliably. If you need power or recharging in a portable platform, this might just be the best option out there.
Filed under: Computers and Internet, Gear, Travel, batteries, Battery Recharger, charger, device, Gear, goal zero, Guide, Nomad, Panel, Solar, Target
Wed 08 Dec 2010 • 16:38 EDT 0
Cancel your MasterCard accounts immediately! Your personal information and accounts are at risk!
Harrison, NY – After initial denials, it has been confirmed that thousands of MasterCard accounts may have been compromised.
http://mastercardisnotsafe.blogspot.com/2010/12/mastercard-deemed-unsafe.html
Filed under: Computers and Internet
Thu 14 Oct 2010 • 20:08 EDT 0
Alright boys. The other night I took some flu tablets which kept me awake all night, and as a result I had a moment of insomniac genius and invented a game that I call “The Phone Moan”.
These are the rules: “The Phone Moan.” While with a partner, one person goes down on the other. The person getting head now has to make a phone call to a friend of theirs and attempt to hold a regular conversation for as long as they can manage. While on the phone, you aren‘t allowed to lie. The game ends when the person on the other line figures out they’re being phone moaned, and only then is the person who made the call allowed to hang up. When found out, you should note the length of the call. The person giving head should be trying to inflict the quickest Phone Moan time on their partner, while the person getting head should try to get the longest time that he or she can go for. lt’s a battle of wits, self-control and physical stamina. The ultimate sport, The Phone Moan.
Filed under: Writing
Sat 11 Sep 2010 • 20:37 EDT 0
I woke up late, hopped on IRC, joined my paintball channel, and everyone said “GLASS GO TURN ON A TV NOW!”
I got it on just in time to see the towers fall.
The rest of the morning was spent reading and relaying the CNN closed captioning channel. Web sites wouldn’t work, lots of information was missing.
Two days later, I was on my way to a client’s site to work. There was practically nobody out there. I went minutes without seeing another car. I was going down 45 between Houston and Galveston on the salt flats, took my foot off the accelerator, and coasted until stopped, probably over a mile. Then I got out and walked down the freeway, car off and door open. The world felt completely empty. No cars were on the road. No planes were in the sky, that was the real creepy part. The skies felt dead. The only sounds were the wind in the salt grass and my shoes slapping the pavement that’s never touched by anything but tires.
I walked a hundred feet down the freeway, turned around, got back in, and left. I’ll never forget that feeling.
Filed under: News and politics
Sat 11 Sep 2010 • 09:53 EDT 0
“This pilot hit the nail on the head in his open letter. He needs to be awarded a Medal for having the TESTICULAR FORTITUDE to say all this in a very profound way!
The newspaper stated today that some Muslim doctor is saying we are profiling him because he has been checked three times while getting on an airplane.
The following is a letter from a pilot. This well spoken man, who is a pilot with American Airlines, says what is in his heart, beautifully…. Read, absorb and pass this on.
“YOU WORRY ME!” By American Airlines Pilot – Captain John Maniscalco
I’ve been trying to say this since 9-11, but you worry me. I wish you didn’t. I wish when I walked down the streets of this country that I love, that your color and culture still blended with the beautiful human landscape we enjoy in this country.
But you don’t blend in anymore. I notice you, and it worries me. I notice you because I can’t help it anymore. People from your homelands, professing to be Muslims, have been attacking and killing my fellow citizens and our friends for more than 20 years now. I don’t fully understand their grievances and hate, but I know that nothing can justify the inhumanity of their attacks.
On September 11, nineteen ARAB-MUSLIMS hijacked four jetliners in my country. They cut the throats of women in front of children and brutally stabbed to death others. They took control of those planes and crashed them into buildings killing thousands of proud fathers, loving sons, wise grandparents, elegant daughters, best friends, favorite coaches, fearless public servants, and children’s mothers.
The Palestinians Celebrated, the Iraqis were overjoyed as was most of the Arab world. So, I notice you now. I don’t want to be worried. I don’t want to be consumed by the same rage and hate and prejudice that have destroyed the soul of these terrorists. But I need your help. As a rational American, trying to protect my country and family in an irrational and unsafe world, I must know how to tell the difference between you, and the Arab/Muslim terrorist.
How do I differentiate between the true Arab / Muslim-Americans and the Arab Muslim terrorists in our communities who are attending our schools, enjoying our parks, and living in OUR communities under the protection of OUR constitution, while they plot the next attack that will slaughter these same good neighbors and children?
The events of September 11th changed the answer. It is not my responsibility to determine which of you embraces our great country, with ALL of its religions, with ALL of its different citizens, with all of its faults. It is time for every Arab/Muslim in this country to determine it for me.
I want to know, I demand to know, and I have a right to know, whether or not you love America? Do you pledge allegiance to its flag? Do you proudly display it in front of your house, or on your car? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation, that He will protect and prosper it? Or do you pray that Allah will destroy it in one of your Jihads? Are you thankful for the freedom that only this nation affords? A freedom that was paid for by the blood of hundreds of thousands of patriots who gave their lives for this country? Are you willing to preserve this freedom by also paying the ultimate sacrifice? Do you love America?
If this is your commitment, then I need YOU to start letting ME know about it. Your Muslim leaders in this nation should be flooding the media at this time with hard facts on your faith, and what hard actions you are taking as a community and as a religion to protect the United States of America.
Please, no more benign overtures of regret for the death of the innocent because I worry about who you regard as innocent. No more benign overtures of condemnation for the unprovoked attacks because I worry about what is unprovoked to you. I am not interested in any more sympathy. I am only interested in action.
What will you do for America – our great country – at this time of crisis, at this time of war?
I want to see Arab-Muslims waving the AMERICAN flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting “Allah Bless America ” I want to see young Arab/Muslim men enlisting in the military. I want to see a commitment of money, time, and emotion to the victims of this butchering and to this nation as a whole.
The FBI has a list of over 400 people they want to talk to regarding the WTC attack. Many of these people live and socialize right now in Muslim communities. You know them. You know where they are. Hand them over to us, now! But I have seen little even approaching this sort of action. Instead I have seen an already closed and secretive community close even tighter. You have disappeared from the streets. You have posted armed security guards at your facilities. You have threatened lawsuits. You have screamed for protection from reprisals. The very few Arab/Muslim representatives that HAVE appeared in the media were defensive and equivocating.
They seemed more concerned with making sure that the United States proves who was responsible before taking action. They seemed more concerned with protecting their fellow Muslims from violence directed towards them in the United States and abroad than they did with supporting our country and denouncing “leaders” like Khadafi, Hussein, Farrakhan, and Arafat.
If the true teachings of Islam proclaim tolerance and peace and love for all people, then I want chapter and verse from the Koran and statements from popular Muslim leaders to back it up. What good is it if the teachings in the Koran are good, and pure, and true, when your “leaders” are teaching fanatical interpretations, terrorism, and intolerance?
It matters little how good Islam SHOULD BE if huge numbers of the world’s Muslims interpret the teachings of Mohammed incorrectly and adhere to a degenerative form of the religion. A form that has been demonstrated to us over and over again. A form whose structure is built upon a foundation of violence, death, and suicide. A form whose members are recruited from the prisons around the world. A form whose members (some as young as five years old) are seen day after day, week in and week out, year after a year, marching in the streets around the world, burning effigies of our presidents, burning the American flag, shooting weapons into the air. A form whose members convert from a peaceful religion, only to take up arms against the great United States of America, the country of their birth. A form whose rules are so twisted, that their traveling members refuse to show their faces at airport security checkpoints, in the name of Islam.
We will NEVER allow the attacks of September 11, or any others for that matter, to take away that which is so precious to us: Our rights under the greatest constitution in the world.
I want to know where every Arab Muslim in this country stands and I think it is my right and the right of every true citizen of this country to demand it. A right paid for by the blood of thousands of my brothers and sisters who died protecting the very constitution that is protecting you and your family. I am pleading with you to let me know.
I want you here as my brother, my neighbor, my friend, as a fellow American.
But there can be no gray areas or ambivalence regarding your allegiance and it is up to YOU, to show ME, where YOU stand. Until then. “YOU WORRY ME!”
Filed under: News and politics
Wed 11 Aug 2010 • 13:52 EDT 0
Originally Posted by jrpaguia 
WN is actually quite cute. She’s no foxy vixen like Cathay but still, there are thousands of guys literally standing in line to get a ride.
WN is (was?) like the low maintenance cool chick who would watch football and talk cars with you. The problem is, as of late, it’s like she’s been hanging around with the Gucci and Prada crowd…as if all of a sudden the Coach stuff isn’t good enough for her anymore.
She’s starting to be a bit more demanding and many fear that RR 2.0 are like the set of implants that will turn our sweet and wholesome Reese Witherspoon into a skanky Lindsey Lohan.
Filed under: Travel
Wed 14 Jul 2010 • 09:12 EDT 0
I was dating a girl named Laura when I was eighteen. She was sixteen, and we were young and stupid and madly in a form of love that you’d never understand (/sarcasm /self-mockery). We were playing at an arcade in the mall one afternoon, and I played this game where you have to make a ball climb up a hill without letting the ball fall off the hill. I let the ball fall off the hill, but it still gave a pity prize of this little plastic ring. I put the ring on her pinky. She laughed and kissed me on the cheek. We broke up about six months later.
Five years later, I am twenty-three, and I see her for the first time since we broke up at a concert. She is with her boyfriend, a guy who is much taller and has evenly distributed facial hair and large gauges in his earlobes. She says his name is Gary and that my name is Spencer and that I look good and that she is doing good and hopes that I am doing good, too. I say she looks good and that it’s nice to meet you Gary and I am doing good, too. Good, she says. We’re going to go over there now, she says, holding out her hand for me to shake it. Weird, I think, and then I shake it. And then I feel the thin ring of plastic around her pinky against my pinky. And then she makes eye contact with me. Her eyes say she isn’t doing as good. My eyes ask her about her mom. About those perennials in the backyard that never grew. Her eyes blink slowly, and then she and Gary go over there.
Filed under: Writing
Sun 04 Jul 2010 • 23:25 EDT 0
Like I was telling some of you yesterday, there were a couple spots I was looking at. One was already an AOI, and it got upgraded from 10% to 50% (#2) and another was declared at 20% (#4). We’ll be in for an interesting two weeks.
Filed under: Weather
Mon 31 May 2010 • 21:52 EDT 1
Libertarianism is built around a single idea: "The government which governs best governs least." Essentially because more power = more corruption. While this is technically true, it is an idea fragment, not a political platform. (One could accuse it of being anarchism for adults.) In recent years, that ideological vacuum has been filled by a mashup of hardline conservatism, reactionary conspiracy theories and (oddly enough) disenfranchised liberals seeking greater personal freedoms. While its dedication to civil liberty is admirable, beware of the bedfellows it attracts: rhetoric calls for the dissolution of such essential public services as the public school system, medicare, even road maintenance. Taxation of any kind, for any reason, is anathema, and Ron Paul has professed that he does not believe in evolution. (Think about that for a minute. He’s a medical professional, and he doesn’t believe in the scientific foundation of modern biology.) When recently interviewed about the party’s stance on protection against racism in public places, Rand Paul (Ron Paul’s son and successor) chose to condone racism by refusing to answer the question. No other party member has stepped forward to say otherwise.
Libertarianism gained huge popularity during the decline of the Bush years thanks to the Internet’s support, it being the only party that publicly condemned copyright enforcement and supported greater personal freedom. Unfortunately, many supporters (such as myself) failed to investigate the fine print of Libertarianism’s platform, and didn’t realize until it was too late that we were in bed with conspiracy nuts, creationists, anarchists and bigots.
Filed under: News and politics
