Joy Unbound

Source: http://whizzpopping.tumblr.com/post/8208421103/religion

Kudos to Oleg for sharing this with me.

religion.

Source: http://michaelhyatt.com/5-reasons-why-you-need-to-get-better-at-saying-no.html

[quote]I have a hard time saying “no.” Perhaps you do, too. I think it is more common than we think, especially for those who are empathetic or nurturing. We just hate the thought of hurting someone else’s feelings.

I didn’t really notice this problem in myself, because for most of my career I have had an assistant who said “no” for me. If someone had a request, they had to get through her first.

This gave me the buffer I needed to consider the request more carefully. I then let her say “no” on my behalf. The fact that I didn’t have to deliver the bad news myself kept me focused and productive.

Now that I have left the corporate world, everything has changed. I don’t currently have an assistant (a problem I am working to remedy). That means the requests are all coming straight to me.

For example, a few weeks ago, an acquaintance—someone I met briefly at a conference—sent me an email. These aren’t the exact words, but this is typically of the kinds of requests I now get:

I read your blog daily and follow you on Twitter. We met briefly after your speech in Dallas. I am going to be in Nashville next week and would really like to meet with you.

I am in the middle of a personal crisis and could use your counsel. I know you are busy, but this is really important. It would mean the world if you could make time for me. Could I buy you breakfast, lunch—or just coffee—to pick your brain?”

I ended up saying “yes”—and was kicking myself almost immediately. The lunch meeting ended up being a total waste of time. He didn’t come prepared. In fact, when it was all said and done, I had no idea what he really wanted.

The problem is that I am now getting several of these requests a day. It could be a full-time job if I let it.

But that’s not going to happen, thanks to the encouragement of my family and close friends. There is too much at stake. They are holding me accountable.

I have now resolved to say “no” to everything unless there is a really, really compelling reason to say “yes.” In other words, I have switched my default response from “yes” to “no.”

Sure enough, I have getting plenty of opportunities to practice!

As I was thinking about this today, I was reminded again of why it is so important—not only for me, but probably for you as well. I wrote down five reasons.

If we don’t get better at saying “no,”

1. Other peoples’ priorities will take precedence over ours.
2. Mere acquaintances—people we barely know!—will crowd out time with family and close friends.
3. We will not have the time we need for rest and recovery.
4. We will end up frustrated and stressed.
5. We won’t be able to say “yes” to the really important things.

This last one was the clincher for me. Every time I say “no” to something that is not important, I am saying “yes” to something that is.

Note: if you think this is somehow unspiritual, think how many times Jesus said “no” either explicitly or implicitly, so that He could stay focused on His Father’s business (see John 11:5-6 for one example).[/quote]

Source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/07/25/1941229/Is-the-Masters-Degree-the-New-Bachelors

[quote]Jobs have changed because there aren’t as many of them. Machines do a lot of the tasks that used to be done half a decade ago. As a result, more higher education jobs are in demand and fewer menial tasks are required. These are the first steps towards pushing the entire monetary system to total collapse.

Mechanization displaces menial jobs, and as mechanization becomes more advanced, so too will more jobs become displaced for two reasons: 1) machines perform most specialized tasks far better than a human and 2) machines are far cheaper, don’t form unions, and can work every day of the year.

For example, take the taxi driver. He must perform a difficult task of driving and navigation. However, recent advances in artificial intelligence have allowed Google to create an entire fleet of cars that more or less drive themselves. While only experimental, these will become more and more integrated into society. Taxi companies may eye it suspiciously at first, but it will eventually overtake the industry.

Taxi drivers do not need degrees. So you can see how the demand for jobs that use our more basic skills are being phased out and replaced. Jobs that require creative thinking, complex problem solving, and complex pattern recognition are in demand, because machines cannot do them.[/quote]
[quote]The unstated value of college degrees, in my estimation, is that they provide the corporate world a politically-correct avenue for helping them select candidates that are ‘the right kind of people’.

In fact, joke liberal arts majors serve this function very well, because the knowledge itself is useless, thereby providing even stronger evidence that the degree holder comes from a well-off background.[/quote]
[quote]Pure screening system. The whole idea isn’t that you learn anything particularly useful in college, it’s that it makes it easy to reject enough candidates to keep the applicant list manageable.

Well, now more people have BS degrees and they need to screen more people out. It’s just that simple.[/quote]

Lately I have sort of noticed that I have not posted as intimately as I used to here on Joy Unbound. I think what I will try to do is to post more of what I am thinking, the problems I am having, etcetera. After all, this is my personal blog; I do not expect anyone to read the things I post here, nor am I trying to get attention. To put simply, I suppose, this would be a gateway to relieve myself from some of life’s burdens.

Last weekend I went on a 3-day youth camp. That is all. I have essentially filed the event in the black hole section of my mind. I wish it didn’t have to be this way, and I know I could have allowed things to be different but lo, I have stumbled and fallen short at my own hand. It really all started somewhere at the beginning: first, I did not bring a tent and should have thought about doing so. Second, I was alone; I did not trust my environment because I was unfamiliar with it, but still — I COULD have let this go. Third, I locked up to the the gender-based dressing of the youth; all or most males shirtless (and hairless), and females.. well, I don’t need to elaborate. It is summer, it is hot outside, there is a lake nearby — how do you expect females to dress?

Before I write further, the first two points I soo easily could have let go but I didn’t. Now what if I had let go of these? Hmm, say I had a tent — I would trust the interior of my tent and thus feel safe to change clothes (privacy is a good word to apply here). I came to the camp a bit exciting and looking forward to things. I would have setup my tent somewhere, brought my stuff into my tent, and changed to a clothing profile that would have been good for both general day use and aquatics (was originally planning on swimming in regular clothing) — basically 2 shirt layers instead of 3, short pants instead of long pants, no socks, and water shoes. Then I would have hung around at the tables waiting for group activities… though now this part gets more into the unknown because I am not sure how I would react or feel amongst a group of stronger, hairless, mostly buff people.

Maybe I would have gone off myself to go exploring the campgrounds. Perhaps I would have gone separate from the group and go swimming alone or something. What would I have done in the water anyway? I mean, just get in, go swim a few meters out, swim back, and then what? ?_? Maybe I might just hang out around the docks dangling my feet into the water and watching the jetskiers and what other people do. And then when people would play volleyball I know I would have joined in (and periodically go take a dip to refresh myself). Perhaps I would have had an opportunity to go jetskiing or tubing. Both of those would have been fun, occupy and pass a good part of the day. There were public restrooms down at the docks too, so that means other places to change (so even if I didn’t bring a tent…) and better-than-port-a-potty restrooms to use for defication.

As far as being amongst youth in the lake (and even whether it would be with mostly girls or mostly boys or a balance of both girls and boys) I am not sure about. Not sure what would be done or what would happen (or what did). Not really seeing a lot of activity in this part. But then we would go back up to the camp and eat and stuff (good food was cooked by the way). In this theoretical what-would-and-could-have-happened thought, I think I would have enjoyed being with the youth, myself, and the experience. I probably wouldn’t have talked or said anything much and would probably mostly have just ‘been’ there and present.

But, unfortunately, that is not the way it went. Going back several paragraphs, it was all because I allowed myself to lockup. Had the first two points not occurred I think the third wouldn’t have been a major issue and easily negligible. True, I probably would have spent a lot of my time in places here and there throughout the experience looking down at the ground and keeping myself from meditating (and quick-lusting) on beauty (oh how embarassing that could be would someone notice me doing that), but that would have been fine.

Instead, though being fully conscious of the situation and scenario I was presented unto myself, I allowed it to develop and within no time became locked for the rest (actually, the WHOLE) camping trip. First it started out as I should have brought a tent (would have been a plus but my car was fine; next time I will just bring a tent — lesson learned! I did not feel safe, secure, or comfortable sleeping in potentially intimate proximity with a male let alone one that was hairless, buff, and a personality like that most men who fit the first two descriptions would be) and worries of where I can change securely and confidently (but was too afraid and embarrassed to ask for advice, if there were any public restrooms around, if I could borrow someone’s tent without fear that someone might just so happen to hop in while changing, or something).

With worries upon worries, it crutched me but I still had so many conscious opportunities to BE STRONGER and made better by experiencing more, experiencing the unknown, getting out of my comfort zone, and simply — in relationship to God spiritually, and just as a person — be made a better and stronger person. It’s like one of those moments where there is a lot of resentment, but you know that smarter and intelligent, more mature people push aside resentment, take responsibility, and thus claim and attain greater honor to themselves and in my case, also for the glory of God and His works.

After the camping thing, we stopped as this gas station outside the campgrounds in the small nearby town that sold icecream in cones with toppings up to a foot long from the rim of the cones. I didn’t eat. Then a few pictures were taken outside next to someone’s RV. I didn’t join. Terminate it like the boss, yeah! I had an extra passenger with me in my car (so I had 3 passengers this time instead of 2) on the way back to the River of Life church just right outside Springfield and had a relatively decent ‘socializing’ *awkward the way I am writing this here) and relationship-building through the trip. I didn’t feel locked and shutdown in my car on the way home.

But.. I failed, miserably. I don’t get too many opportunities like this and I wish I did. When I passed so many opportunities I knew I could have just snapped back and resolved the situation and enjoy the camping trip, I realized that I had passed the point of no return and felt heart broken. Enough time had passed that what’s the point? I would look weird, nobody would understand so I would be even more weird and strangely looked upon and misunderstood, and to change/fix the situation now is just… unthinkable. My heart was broken. I felt very distant from God. My heart hurt more.. I was lonely, hurt, and cold. My inner machine and a part of my rootkit had activated and gone into full motion; I became locked up and displaced from reality. I stopped eating (only ate when it was forced upon me — which happened only 2 times I think for small things) and almost essentially ‘fasted’ (k not really, I never consider myself to fast because I never know the true intentions, true motives, true reasons for why I stop/am not eating) the whole time. I know that I went around 40 hours without eating in the second half of the trip and when I finally got back to my apartment I ate something.

I’m still feeling the hurt even now. I just feel lonely and hurt. Last Tuesday not many youth had shown up to the youth meeting at church, and it seems like over the next month many of the youth will be gone to other states and things. I remember someone at the camp ground had said, while things were getting packed (or maybe after), that now summer is over and school begins. More hurt, more loneliness, more cold. more.. more.. more . . . but hey, I brought it upon myself so I’ll just shutup and get with the program

Last year I inherited a handful of 3com enterprise-level switches that had become discontinued models for service and support. The first thing to do of course is to tap into their administrative functions! Unfortunately, I have to begin from scratch and figure out how to reset them to factory defaults.

Resources and things to have available:

• Manual to the 3com SuperStack3 Switch 4400 SE (3C17206)
• Serial cable
• May need a serial female-to-female adapter
• May need a serial USB adapter
• PuTTY
• Ethernet cable
• Internet browser

By default, the switch will configure itself to an IP address of 169.254.100.100. The default value for both username and password is admin.

According to the manual there are three possible ways to get into the switch (starting page 35):

• Serial port (COM)
1. Set the COM port you will be using for your serial cable to use the following settings
• 19200 baud
• 8 data bits
• No parity
• 1 stop bit
• No hardware flow control
2. Start the session
3. You may need to hit enter a few times if nothing happens, otherwise you should be prompted with a login
• Telnet
1. Make sure your computer is plugged into the switch via ethernet; any port should be fine, otherwise use first uppermost top-left port
2. Set your computer’s IP to 169.254.100.99 using a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0
3. Using PuTTY, start a Telnet session  to 169.254.100.100 and login
   
• You may also do Start->Run and type in Telnet 169.254.100.100
• HTTP Web-interface
1. Make sure your computer is plugged into the switch via ethernet; any port should be fine, otherwise use first uppermost top-left port
2. Set your computer’s IP to 169.254.100.99 using a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0
3. Go to 169.254.100.100 in your internet browser and login

That information is just good to know. How about resetting the switch? Nowhere in the manual is that specified. On HP’s website, they will list this switch under the following names and model numbers (jerks for changing the model number):

• HP SuperStack 3 4400 SE 24-port Switch (JE878A)
• HP SuperStack 3 4400 24-port Switch (JE034A)
• HP SuperStick 3 4400 48-port Switch (JE035A)

I went through the downloads page for the JE34A and checked out all the different types of manuals and only found that on page 49 of the Management Interface Reference Guide it states that you can do a hard reset by disconnecting the switch from power while it is in password recovery mode (after you have logged in with username and password recover).

According to posters here, here, here, and here one of these advices might work:

• Serial port (COM)

• Login with both the username and password of recover
• Login with a username of 3comcso and password of RIP000 (or RIP0000 or RIP 000 or RIP 0000)
• Login with a username of admin but a blank password
• Login with both the username and password of manager
• Open up a session to the switch while the switch is off. Turn it on, and if anything comes up, interrupt the boot sequence of the switch with CTRL+B to access a start menu that should have an option to resetting the switch
• Telnet

• Issue the command reset system and respond with y for yes
• Ethernet

• Connect the switch to a router with DHCP enabled to find out the IP address assigned to the switch through the router’s web-interface

I hope article helps someone. I meant to write it as an all-in-one, end-all article to the 4400 SE. Unfortunately, none of the information here helped to solve my scenario; I get a blank screen in PuTTY/HyperTerminal and cannot get its IP address when placing it under DHCP through a consumer router / mid-business Firebox.

Not that my laptop would need one, but I want to find a way to make my laptop even cooler and improve airflow through its chambers. Since this is the objective in mind, the primary factor for this would be the amount of air a fan in a laptop cooling pad could move in a minute, represented as cubic feet per minute (CFM). The problem is that when you start your research to find a laptop cooling pad that is actually geared toward performance, you will never actually find it. Instead what you will find are products tagged with the word “performance”, and that the way they are marketed is whether if they have blinking blue LED lights in the fan, how quiet the fan is, and if the fan can spin fast enough to slice your fingers off. None of these factors have anything to do with performance and are in fact realistically the opposite. There is a fundamental trade off between quietness and performance (aka by how much air it can feed to your laptop). Sometimes they even leave out the CFM from the details page of laptop cooling pad products. So much for being for “performance”.

Now I am writing this with my laptop in mind. My laptop sucks cold air in from the bottom and pushes hot air out the sides. Many laptops out there have this the other way where they suck cold air in from the sides and push hot air out the bottom. Personally, I think this is illogical. The advantage of my laptop is that it pushes rising hot air out the sides, but the disadvantage is that it breaths from the bottom. So when you cover up the bottom of my laptop that could pose some issues. The advantage of having it the other way around is that usually nothing covers the sides of your laptop so at least it can breath, even if it is just a little bit because the bottom might be covered up.

Yeah, I understand laptops aren’t really for hardcore stuff, but at the moment I cannot afford a decent video card with a full desktop setup (monitor and keyboard — not going to settle with an anchorboat CRT or a cheap keyboard) for my workstation. On top of that, my workstation actually needs more RAM too. All this would end up costing me several hundred dollars up to around $800. If I get a monitor, it might as well be something that I will want to live with and tolerate in the long-term, such as a 22″-24″ LCD. Video card? Please make it worthwhile so that I could at least play all the current latest games at medium quality — that will be more than enough for me. I actually need RAM because 4GB is proving to be not enough for my workstation with the things I do on it. I could also use another 2TB harddrive, and in fact might as well replace the 500GB and 1TB drives I have both with 2TB drives and look into getting one or two 60GB+ SSDs.

Now if your laptop pushes hot air out the bottom, it probably won’t make a significant difference which laptop cooling pad you get. After all, the fan in your laptop can only push out so much air. I mean, I am sure it will do a little bit to use a laptop cooling pad, but it probably will not be significant enough to make it worthwhile. This is another advantage of pushing hot air out the sides instead of through the bottom.

Would I design my own laptop cooling pad, it would consist of this:

1. Walls with rubber at the edges of the surface protruding — you would fit your laptop onto the surface into this “seal tight” enclosure that prevents air from escaping around the sides of the laptop
2. Higher performance fans ranging from 50CFM to 250CFM models to forcibly push air through the laptop and wherever there be holes and air spaces; the seat tight enclosure will increase the pressure of air through the laptop — sure maybe not astronomically — but to whatever the strength of the fan is. This will improve temperatures at least moderately
3. Air suction from the sides

The pros of both without the cons. I would love to see a product like this, and would go for one with a 120mm Delta fan that pushes around 250CFM. Indeed it would be quite loud at around 60-75dbA, but I don’t care about “loud” — I want performance.

Source: http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/06/28/us-govt-plant-usb-sticks-in-security-study-60-of-subjects-take-the-bait/

Scanners are very nice. However, the problem with ordinary scanners is that they have zero-focus; in other words, if you scan a 3D object the parts of that object that are farthest away from the glass surface will be blurry (and very easily). The cameras are specially fine-tuned to the distance of the glass and are meant to scan flat things such as documents — a single sheet of paper facing the camera on the flat glass surface. Or maybe photographs.

But the point is that these scanners do not focus. And this is where my idea sprouts. Imagine some sort of device that is like one of those arcade claw things (remember Toy Story? ooooh, THE CLAW). Instead of the claw, you could place a photo-camera through from the top. There would be some sort of balance mechanism or grip to make sure that the lens are ground level. There could be different fittings pieces for putting the lens through as many cameras will have lens that come in many different sizes. There could also be some sort of height adjustment for those lens that are long (or perhaps so that you could adjust the distance that you want without zooming in). Additionally, there could be like a ring of white LEDs around the where the lens fit in so that it would illuminate everything in front of the camera lens.

On the x- and y-axis there could be a ruler measurements (preferably in SI units). Furthermore, on the two or four rails that contain this ruler (and that you slide the camera cranes along) there could be these holes at increments of 1cm; these holes could be used to lock an axis into place.

The photographer — you, or the user — could place a motherboard on the flat table surface that this device sits on, and then decide to maybe snap a photograph every 2cm on both axis. In the end, you would have probably almost 100 photographs. You would then feed this into the program that would come with this device. This program would take the photographs and stitch them into a high-resolution panorama. Depending at what increment you went by could also determine the quality of this panorama. If you took a photograph at every 1cm you could easily end up with a gigantic handful of photographs, but the program could use this to try and attain the flattest yet highest quality panorama (though at the edges of this panorama lens warping would occur as usual).

This could come in three packages:

1. Everything but the table surface — you plan on using your own table or own surface to assemble this device over.
2. You get the table with everything else. The surface of this table would be a white plastic. Beneath it would be a large series of white fluorescent glass tubes arranged at just the right distance from one another to evenly illuminate the white plastic. This is kind of like the thing that they put your x-rays on when they want to look at it. You would have to buy your own tubes though (for the sake of safer and cheaper delivery).
3. Specially designed version of the second package where you could take a Rebel XT (or some common high-end photography camera), plug it into the device, and have the program automate the entire photographing and panorama for you. Just put the object you want to “scan” under the device, click Start, and wait for the process to complete.

What you could do with this device:

• Produce simple yet highly accurate 3D models of small and medium sized objects (like motherboards and computer chassis)
• Produce a super-ridiculously-high-quality “2D scan” of an object (like a PCB, circuit board, motherboard, or the circuit-board to your MP3 player :\ )
  • So that you don’t have to post an awful OH I CANT HOLD THIS CAMERA STILL AND MY LIGHTING SUCKS blurry picture of your project online
  • So that you can make textures for a computer game, which you could also use perhaps as a reference for a map or model
• Produce bitmaps and models for bump- and parallax-mapped textures
• Produce proper scans of objects with 3D elements that would otherwise turn out blurry to unreadable by an ordinary scanner
• Oh the possibility! Do I have to list everything for you? o_o

That is the general outline of my idea. There could maybe be three different sizes for this — small, medium, large — based on how big of a working surface area you need. But it would be really cool to have a device like this around. There just isn’t any decent or proper device out there for doing this.