Commercials without a product

I'm reading over UNI's web policy, as I format the machine I'm going to use as a web server for now. I just noticed a particularly restrictive bit:

University trademarks, symbols, and wordmarks (e.g. "University of Northern Iowa", "UNI", or "Panthers"), may not be used as html page, site descriptors, or titles without permission of the Office of Public Relations.

So, if I'm a student with a web page, I can't put a meta-tag in my page that says "Web page of Seth H. Bokelman, a student at the University of Northern Iowa"?!?!

Need more RAM? It's a good time to buy, JNCS has 128MB of PC133 RAM going for $99! RAM prices fluctuate a great deal, up to $50 for 128MB chip, maybe I should buy another one now while they're cheap...

Iomega released a new version of their IomegaWare software for Windows, bringing it up to 2.7. If you've got a Zip drive, update your software. 2.5 and above were major rewrites, prior to 2.5, the Iomega sofware would often crash on my machines. I reccomend downloading it here, for everyone who has a Zip drive.

As I sat watching the Vikings beat the Bears last night, I was puzzled by two of the commercials that played repeatedly. One was a commercial for BASF, the message was, "We don't make the products you buy, we make the products you buy better". Okay, so if you don't make anything that I do or can buy, why are you advertising to me?

The second one was for Texas Instruments, it was an advertisement for their DSP's. Do you know what a DSP is? I do, but it was never explained in that commercial. Are you in the market for DSP's? I'm not, nor is anyone I know, but the ad ran three times during the game. What percentage of the population really decide what DSP they need to buy? And what percentage of those were watching Sunday Night Football? Oh, and DSP stands for Digital Signal Processor, it's a component used in electronics, especially things like cell phones, PDA's, etc. You've probably got a few in your house. But did you know or care who made them? Probably not...

Ames

I'm sitting in the Parks Library as I write this. So what am I doing in Ames? My girlfriend suggested that we come down and do some shopping today, and I quickly agreed, as I do miss Ames from time to time. So far, it's been a busy day, as soon as she gets the information from some books here, we're going to head back to Cedar Falls. First on the agenda was a trip to the University Bookstore, and then the Campus Bookstore, to get some Iowa State clothes. Then we headed over to Hickory Park for lunch, where I saw four people that I knew from when I went to school here.

After lunch, we drove up to Main Street, so that Holly could go to the Fairlight Quilting store. I stood around for a while smelling the candles, while she picked out fabric. We then headed over to the Mall, where she bought some more clothes, and I looked at computer games.

On the way out of the mall, I ran into Dr. Joel Coats, from the Entomology Department at ISU. He and some of the Entomology students had some cockroaches they were letting people hold. Holly chose to pet the rabbits at a competing booth instead.

Next, we headed over to the Brunnier Art Gallery, to check out the Christian Petersen exhibit. We had about 40 minutes until they closed, and we thought (foolishly) that this would be plenty of time to view the exhibit. If you go, and I highly recommend that you do, budget at least an hour to see everything in this show, it was excellent, lots of beautiful artwork. If you're anywhere near Ames, make the trip to check this show out.

We journeyed on to Hastings, where I found a Heinlein book that I didn't have, and Holly sat in a chair waiting for the aspirin to take away her headache. I found her a book on headaches, while rummaging in a bargain bin, but that didn't seem to help.

That brings you, the loyal reader, up to speed! I've done ISU some good while writing this, the mouse on this computer was full of goo, so I took the time to clean it out. That, and the thousands of dollars I've paid ISU, entitles me to sending a few bytes over their Internet connection, at least in my book. I was unable, however, to correct the broken delete key, which I don't feel too badly about, as Gateway offers a lifetime warranty on these keyboards anyhow...

Update: We're home now, we grabbed a quick bite to eat at Jimmy John's on our way out of town, and I listened to the first half of the Iowa State - Oklahoma State football game on the road. ISU needs to get a kicker...

The Sims

Looking for something funny to see this weekend? Check out Meet The Parents. This was one of the funniest comedies I've seen in a while, and it's not nearly as raunchy as There's Something About Mary. The on-screen chemistry and comedic timing between Robert DeNiro and Ben Stiller is great, there are a few scenes where I simply couldn't stop laughing, the first night at the dinner table is a classic... My copy of The Sims came last night. I got it for free from the PepsiStuff promotion. What an original and addictive game! It's like nothing I've ever played before, I wasted two and half hours last night, just teaching my Sims some skills, so they could get better jobs, and buy more furniture. I get the impression that I haven't even scratched the surface of this game, much less all of the content that comes in the add-on pack. My only gripe is that the game isn't really set up for multiple players without that add-on pack. Otherwise, if you want to let a friend play, they wind up messing up your characters that you've worked on. Time to go to Software, Etc...

Duron Mini-Review

I watched the debate last night, and while I enjoyed most of it, George W. Bush said one sentence which really pissed me off. Here it is, the emphasis is mine:

"Columbine spoke to a larger issue, and it's really a matter of culture. It's a culture that somewhere along the line we begun to disrespect life, where a child can walk in and have their heart turned dark as a result of being on the Internet, and walk in and decide to take somebody else's life."

So being on the Internet is going to turn someone's heart dark? "Slashdot" picked up on it too, and they're running a story claiming that murders committed by those under the age of 18 have decreased since the rise of the Internet. I'm not really concerned about the statistics, I just think it shows that George W. Bush doesn't really understand the Internet, if he thinks that exposure to it will somehow turn a child into a mass-murderer.

I compare the Internet to a library, full of information, but not some place you necessarily want to let a child roam unchecked. Just think about that for a minute, realize that there are thousands of books and magazines in a well-stocked library that aren't suitable for children to read, they're filled with materials deemed "obscene", hate, violence, and mis-information. Yet we don't see our politicians decrying libraries on TV...

That said, I thought the debate was reasonable, and almost too polite. The first 30 minutes yielded no significant differences between the candidates. I agreed with Bush on the hate-crimes laws, we don't need laws which prosecute someone differently for the crime of murder if the person they murdered was of a minority group. However, I thought that Bush looked like a ghoul when he sat there gloating (incorrectly) that the three men involved in the killing of Byrd in Texas would be put to death.

Update: Brent weighed in with some comments (Welcome!) and I posted a response.

I've had my AMD Duron 600 system for a couple of weeks now, and I've played with it quite a bit. I like it, and it's a fast CPU for the price. Last night, I finally got around to trying to overclock it as fast as I could. I got it to boot and run at 678 mhz, but it locked up after it got into Windows. I could probably run it higher if I used a better fan and heat sink, but I'm not going to that much effort. I can stably run it at 660 mhz for days, and a 10% speed boost is nothing to sneeze at, especially from a CPU that sells for $64 over at JNCS. I did have some strange problems trying to play Unreal Tournament the other night. If I tried to use the onboard sound, the game locked up. If I used an Aureal Vortex2, the game played, but the sound didn't work. I finally wound up putting my Sound Blaster Live! in the machine, which worked fine, and I just put my Vortex2 back in the Dell. Other than that, which may be due to shoddy Aureal Win2000 drivers, I've had no problems. In fact, the Gigabyte Motherboard I used was extremely easy to install, despite the fact that it came with the incorrect manual. Thank god I could download the .pdf version from the web...

Gore

A Colorado man has confessed to killing a few of his wives, as well as some of his children. The catch? He's about to die of natural causes. He's been arrested, and is being held without bail. Yeah, that'll teach him... My second issue of Yahoo! Internet Life came yesterday. It contains a great interview with Al Gore, in which it becomes very clear that he understands technology issues. It's refreshing to see a politician who uses technology terms correctly, and who really understands how things work. I'm so used to pointy-haired bosses who need help formatting disks, I'll vote for him based on his technical knowledge alone! Here's an excerpt:

Y-Life: Let's begin with a geek equipment check. Are you a PC or a Mac guy?

Gore: [Resignedly] Aw, PC. I was a long-time holdout for the Mac. I wish sometimes I hadn't given in, but so much software was available earlier for the PC, I finally switched over. But I still feel badly about it. [Laughs] I'm so happy the Mac's making a comeback. That's really cool. And [Apple CEO] Steve Jobs - well, I'm rooting for Steve.

Y-Life: You figure you have the Mac vote anyway?

Gore: Listen, it wasn't a political choice. Sheer necessity!

Y-Life: So you work in Windows. And your computer is...?

Gore: An IBM ThinkPad. I carry it everywhere with me, pull it out of the trunk every night when I'm traveling.

Y-Life: So the Vice President of the United States jacks in his laptop in a hotel room every night, just like the rest of us?

Gore: [Smiling] No, I have a secure connection. I'm on the National Security Agency, and I communicate regularly on national security matters. But now I long on - hey, I dial up from a hotel room, too, if that's all there is.

Y-Life: Surely you have good wireless from Air Force Two.

Gore: It's tough on Air Force Two. Military technology is behind the curve. I got 'em to put commercial in there, but it's still primitive. Everyone's still primitive communicating up in the air.

You know, I'm really a device guy. I'm hungry for the transition from the PC to devices to happen.

Y-Life: You mean like the Palm. Which we suspect you have.

Gore: Hey, I was a beta tester for the Palm VII! Tipper helped arrange it for me as a birthday present two years ago. it's fun, but suddently I realized that I was using most to show people I had it! [Laughs]

Actually, I just bought a couple of [Handspring] Visors for the kids. They love them. And hey, that digicam you slide onto the Visor - really cool! Of course, Palm is coming back at them with a $149 model. So we'll see.