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A flight to Vegas

Jacob — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:55:07 +0000

The Fort Collins Loveland Airport has one flight, to Vegas. A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to take this flight to visit some family members. The experience of flying out of a small airport is unique. Here is a picture of the front doors to the terminal:

Shortly after landing at LAS, our plane taxied pretty close to Air Force One. Apparently, President Obama was in town apologizing for some ill-words-said against Vegas. The view of Air Force One was so close that photos that I took though the plane window were not zoomed out enough to show the plane. However, I was able to take this photo just after stepping off the plane:

The best thing about going to Las Vegas in February is that the weather is considerably warmer than the snowy weather in Fort Collins. Unfortunately, our flight back was delayed because of poor weather conditions in Colorado. When we did land, they let us exit through the rear of the airplane:

And that is a few things about flying to Vegas.

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Review of Oreo Cakesters

Jacob — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:29:58 +0000

Kraft recently sent me a coupon to try out Double Stuff Oreo Cakesters, and so I would like to tell you what I think about them.

First off, I found it hard to find a place to use my coupon. Target didn’t stock Double Stuff Cakesters, and King Soopers didn’t sell any at a price that the $3.39 max value coupon would cover. Finally I found a box selling at Walmart for $2.99.

There are five packages in the box, each package with two Cakesters. That puts eat package at almost vending machine prices.

These things aren’t healthy! Each Cakester will cost your diet 175 calories, or 150 calories for the package of two. Half of the calories come straight from sugar.

As far as the taste, these things are good, but not great. The chocolate cake tastes like it is full of preservatives, and the frosting has the same flavor as traditional Oreo filling, but with a creamier texture.

Overall, these things get a mediocre score from me. Definitely not my new favorite treat, but I’ll eat them if they are left in the cupboard.

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Basketball game

Jacob — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:58:37 +0000

Tonight Sandy and I went to the BYU verses Colorado State basketball game. My favorite team (blue) won, 92-70. It was my first basketball game that I’ve attended in nearly a year, and I really enjoyed it.

After the game, Sandy and I went by Wendy’s on the way home for some Frosties, at which point, the engineer in me discovered that the 99-cent small Frosty is the most economical. If you wanted a large Frosty, you would find that you could get more Frosty for less money by buying two small Frosties than one large Frosty.

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A few thoughts on Google Buzz

Jacob — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 01:32:59 +0000

Google Buzz is a new offering from Google comparable to Twitter or the Facebook Wall feature. People can share a short thought or message with those people on their contacts list in Google Gmail. Here are a few thoughts I have on Google Buzz:

Integration with Gmail is both very great and very bad. I like only having to stop at once place to check both my email and read through some recent buzzes. On a larger scale, however, this restricts buzzing to only those who have Gmail accounts. Most people who don’t currently use Gmail won’t want to sign up for a Gmail account just so they can buzz.
Location resolution in the mobile buzz app quite accurately describes where you are. That may be fine if you are buzzing about your experience at a particular store or business, but sometimes I would like to share my location more generally so that I can communicate to people that I’m in Fort Collins, but without telling them my exact location.
Commenting and liking are great features that allow my buzzes to be more social and invites more discussion.
Better APIs need to be shared so that developers can allow third-party applications to help a user buzz. I hear this is coming, but it should have been available from day one.

It will be interesting to see Buzz evolve over time, but hopefully we won’t ever see any “Which movie character are you?” or “Be my Farmville Friend” buzzes that have plagued Facebook.

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The iPad is an enemy to openness

Jacob — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:33:44 +0000

A friend of mine who is an Apple employee, Quinn Taylor, tweeted, on the day of the iPad launch, about the use of Flash by Hulu and other online video providers. Presumably, he is responding to criticisms that the new iPad, as well as older iPhones, do not support flash and won’t play videos from Hulu. This is what he said:

When is Hulu going to get with the times and support H.264 and HTML 5 like YouTube & HD content? Flash is an enemy to openness & innovation.

So apparently, a system which requires a proprietary SDK to create videos, which then need a proprietary (free) player in order to view videos, is an “enemy to openness.”

Of course, the iPad isn’t exactly the perfect friend to openness. I mean, to develop anything for the iPad, you have to download the proprietary SDK, use it only on a newer Mac, pay to join Apple’s iPhone developer program, submit any developed application to Apple, hope that Apple approves your app, wait for people to find your app in Apple’s App Store, and then if it gets that far, users can download and use the app on the proprietary iPad device.

I just want to point out that on the conversation of enemies to openness, we could use the new iPad as a perfect example, as everything is locked down and closed from beginning to end.

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Deficit verses Debt

Jacob — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:21:20 +0000

Some people confuse the terms Deficit and Debt when talking about our nation’s finances. I thought I would spend a second to describe the difference.

National Debt Clockgreat free widgetsWidgetboxMore info

When we talk about the National Debt, we are talking about the amount of money that our government owes people, companies, and even foreign nations. This is comparable to a person having a home loan, several car loans, lots of credit card debt, and IOU notes written out to everyone in the neighborhood.

The National Budget Deficit is the amount of money the government spends more than the amount of money the government collects. A person having a budget deficit would likely be putting more debt onto a credit card than payments to pay it off. Every year the government works out the budget, that is, they decide how much money they are going to throw at what. When they’ve spent more money than is collected through taxes, they say, “Oh well, we’ll just take out more loans.” The National budget deficit is the amount by which our National debt increases.

When there is talk about “reducing the deficit,” they aren’t talking about reducing the national debt. They are just reducing the rate at which the government takes out new loans. “Cutting the deficit in half” is saying, “We are only going to take out half as many new loans this year.”

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Who can get a handicap parking permit?

Jacob — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:25:57 +0000

I saw this recent police beat:

Jan. 12: The driver of a white pick-up truck reportedly whipped into a handicap stall, parked and ran to class. Officers confirmed that the running person indeed had a handicap permit.

Perhaps they need, “Sort of handicap” parking spaces and “I’m in a wheelchair” handicap spaces.

My favorite though are the “Expectant Mother” parking spaces out the front of Baby’s ‘R Us.

(Image Source)

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Doorbell fix

Jacob — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:05:27 +0000

Sandy isn’t the only one around here that can do some home improving. Today I replaced our door bell with one that doesn’t look 20 years old. Here is a picture, the old switch is on the left:

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I knew Jay Leno wouldn’t last in primetime

Jacob — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:19:48 +0000

Last September as the fall TV season was starting to roll, I made this prediction: Jay Leno’s new TV show wouldn’t be successful in a primetime slot. My reasoning for my prediction is this, and I’m sticking to it:

In the Tonight Show time slot just after the late-night news, the competition is this: David Letterman (CBS) and Nightline (ABC). All the shows at that hour are basically budget shows airing 5 nights a week.

Shifting to the primetime slot, 5 nights a week, just before the late-night news, and the competition is: CSI Miami, Castle, The Good Wife, The Forgotten, CSI: NY, Ugly Betty, The Mentalist, Private Practice, NUMB3RS, and 20/20.

Basically, by airing Jay Leno 5 nights a week at primetime, NBC mistakenly thought that they could create a low budget show every day that could compete with higher budget shows which longer production cycles.

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Books on my work bookshelf

Jacob — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:04:36 +0000

Here are some of the books on my bookshelf at work:

I also have various Circuit Cellar and Linux Journal magazines.

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