Dragon's Lair

Funny Shopper

omnidragon — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:14:12 +0000

So, this one time I needed a bicycle to ride the trails around town here. So I went over to Wal-Mart to pick one up. I went back to the bike racks and started looking them over. I was pretty sure that I wanted to get some kind of Mongoose. I knew I definitely wanted a multi-speed bike with thick tires, shocks, and a good seat. I actually wanted one with handlebars that curved up but I didn’t see any there. So I ended up picking out something like this. So I waited until someone could come back to the bike section and assist me with it.

It took forever for someone to come back there and help me. I pointed to the bike and told him that that’s the one that I wanted (it was on the bottom rack). He picked it up and set it on the floor facing the direction that I had to go to get to the checkout counters and said “There you go”. You see, I do most of my shopping at Office Depot and Staples. There’s always a box that the product I want to purchase comes in. So naturally when I went shopping for a bicycle, I was looking for the same thing. Some kind of box that this thing comes in with instructions and a sticker that says something like “some assembly required.”

Little did I know that all I had to do was grab it with both hands, lift it off the rack, and wheel it up to the checkout counter. I felt like an invalid. Like some kind of handicapped moron who doesn’t know how to lift a bike up off a rack and go pay for the dang thing. But still, it’s not like I can go over to Office Depot and pick up a printer that I see sitting on a rack in one of their aisles and take it up to the cash register. That’s a floor model! You can’t do that! You have no idea how long I stood there.

My Thought Process

omnidragon — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 22:51:04 +0000

I was sitting here thinking about how much I like history and things having to do with history, as this is Independence Day. Now that I see that name in “type” I’ll probably watch the movie later today.

Anyway, I got to thinking about how much I like US History literature and how people used to write and talk back then. I got to thinking about that when Nicholas Cage mentioned it in National Treasure, which is full of tons of little history facts and such. And I got to thinking about how I had a conversation once about such things and started talking about what our forefathers were thinking when they sat down to write the Declaration of Independence. Well, it all depends on how you read it I guess. You could read it with a big smile on your face and you’d probably end up feeling like a psycho killer, cause it’s not a very happy letter. Or you could read it with grit teeth, which is what I like to think was going on when it was being written. Because if you think about it, these guys were some pissed off mother*******. They were ready to KILL. They’d put up with all they were going to put up with and… they were ready to KILL!

Saying those words, “ready to kill!!” made me think of Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie. They play that every year on Thanksgiving down here. This year, I decided not to wait until November. Man, I can’t even breathe when listening to this song. Tears flow every time.

LMAO.

Writer’s Block - How to get over it?

omnidragon — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:41:22 +0000

I’m not sure what happens. Everything is going along fine one minute and the next I’ve completely lost the words. I thought that maybe if I read a bunch of interesting articles from other authors that it might bring me to the point where I would want to write my own article about this or that.

Unfortunately, this was not the result. I’m struggling to just get through this post. It’s not just with writing either. I also have “friend” block, “girlfriend” block, “people” block,…”world” block. lol Heck, sometimes I come in the house and just don’t answer the door, don’t pick up the phone, nothing. But that’s another story entirely. Although I’m not really sure what’s up with that either.

I thought about doing some writing exorcises but for some strange reason, my mind has forgotten where to go to do such things. Like I intentionally blocked it out or something.

If anyone else out there has ever experienced writer’s block, I sure would appreciate some help in this area. Any ideas or suggestions that you might have would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

-OmniDragon-

This One’s For You

omnidragon — Wed, 21 May 2008 06:12:20 +0000

I’ve been sitting here thinking about what should be my first blog post here at lockergnome. Have you ever had something that you really wanted to say but you weren’t really quite sure where to post it or how well it would be received when you did post it? Well, I’ve got something to say and I honestly can’t think of a better place to post it than right here at lockergnome.So here goes. I don’t really remember how long ago it was, probably about seven or eight months ago. I was sitting in my apartment on the computer trying to find feedback about Windows Vista. I was so sick of reading reviews by people who were obviously biased and therefore couldn’t give an honest review of the software. All I could ever find were things like “Windows sucks” or “Bill Gates is a moron”. Yeah, thanks. That does me no good whatsoever. So, one day I ventured over to a little site called youtube.com and just entered a very basic search: Windows Vista. The first few videos were of the same nature described above. This is about the extent of the reviews I’d been able to get out of the communities that I’d been apart of up to this point for about the previous six months or so. Very few knew what they were talking about when it came to tech and the ones who did thought they were God. But all that changed when…I got to about the fourth or fifth video down and the video run time was around fifty minutes or so. I clicked it, sat back in my chair and started watching. And some geeky lookin’ guy in a white t-shirt I’d never seen before (in a Windows Vista cap no less) started in on this rant about Windows Vista, HP, Mac, drivers, etc. Apparently he’d been quite the avid Windows user for some time. It was the best fifty minutes of tech I’d been able to feast my eyes and ears on in the passed two years. I guess you’d have to really appreciate just how starving I was for legitimate feedback at that time. It was as if I’d been walking through the desert for the past two years and finally spotted something that wasn’ta mirage. I thought “Who the heck is THIS guy?” So I clicked the link to his channel, followed the instructions of the auto playing vid (Subscribe to our YOUTUBE channel by clicking the orange BUTTON) “OK!”, then I watched another one of his videos. I can’t remember which one it was. But at the end he said something like “live dot pirillo dot com”. So I thought I’d give that a shot.Well, when I got there, there were like hundreds of people in this chat room talking tech! There was tech chat EVERYWHERE!! There was talk of operating systems, web browsers, chat clients, IM clients, new technologies. If it had something to do with tech, these guys were talking about it. My mirage had turned from an authentic puddle of water into a river with a waterfall. I stood directly underneath it and let it wash over me like a fresh spring rain.It’s no lie. I’ve never been a part of a community like this. It is truly one of a kind.So here’s to you Chris, and the whole gang @ lockergnome and @ live.pirillo.com*cracks open an ice cold Mountain Dew*Cheers!

Average User Evolving

omnidragon — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:41:00 +0000

It used to be, that the average user was driven to a computer by the concept of email and chatting to friends and family from around the globe in just one place. No longer was it necessary to write what you wanted to say in a physical letter, put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it, and send it through the mail. All you had to do was get on your home computer and send them an email or chat with them on your favorite instant messenger client. Still, other technologies such as uploading and sharing files on the web were still something of a new technology that most new users were completely unaware of.Now, what drives the average user to a computer in the first place is no longer just email. The new motivator is a WAP and handheld device such as an iPhone or a Zune. The first thing they do with these technologies is find a computer or find a hotspot so that they can download new music and take it with them wherever they go. It’s no longer a matter of being able to get to a home computer to be able to IM your friends, but rather finding the best mobile device in order to do a number of things: instant message, email, check stock quotes, find your chosen destination on an online map application, upload new photos to your flickr account with the camera feature attached to your handheld, or read an article from one of their favorite news sites.Now, we have mashups where we integrate more than one online application in order to get the functionality that we want. An example of a mashup would be Twitter Vsion. Twitter is an online application that allows you to let other people know what you’re doing by online text messaging. TwitterVision allows you to view an active map of people who are twittering, what they’re saying, and where they’re twittering (or tweeting) from. How would a technology like this evolve into something for Web 3.0? Perhaps there could be a way to make twittervision only show you the tweets from people you’re “following” on twitter. Or maybe I could fill out a form of my personal interests and twittervision would show me tweets from people who regularly post things that I’m interested in. Maybe there’s a way that the web could learn from my tweets in order to be able to recommend me to other twitterers that it thinks I would be interested in.Bwana, someone who I’ve had a link of over on the right side of my blog page for quite some times now, has come up with quite an interesting way of how he harnesses information that he’s interested in on his own twitter account. Watch the video here for more information.How I’ve got my own twitter set up is just a little more primitive in that it’s not so much of an “active” gathering of information. If I want to keep up with someone’s tweets, and then later be able to find something that I’m interested in, I’ll subscribe to their twitter rss or their twitter “with others” rss feed that allows me to see what they’re tweeting and also what their friends on twitter on tweeting. Then, using the search feature in Apple’s Mail application, I’ll search for keywords on topics that I’m wanting to hear more about, and Mail will return to me matching results in a ranked order.In the above picture, you’ll see me searching through one person’s twitters “with others” rss feed to find out about google and found one person tweeting “UK Users Report Google AdSense Phone Verification Not Working” and a link to go along with it so that I can quickly read more information about that topic. I’m sure you can see how this could prove quite handy in obtaining information that you yourself are interested in personally.Could it be in the future where the average user is more interested in mashups and research than they are in email and IM? One thing’s for sure, as technology grows into a more vast and complicated world, so the average user becomes more intelligent from the beginning stages. Could the average user be able to read my thoughts using a Web 3.0 enabled handheld device? Are we going to be looking like cyclops in the future with headband shaped personal computers wrapped around our heads? It’s a possibility.

Inquisitor and Web 3.0

omnidragon — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:12:00 +0000

I came across an article today that talked about a new technology by that has to do with bringing a more sophisticated search technology to the internet. Instead of using a keyword as you would with search engines today such as Yahoo! Search and Google, you would ask a search engine a question or give it a sentence and it would actually give you relevant content pertaining to your entire search query rather than giving you a billion results that support every single word you say. For instance, instead of just searching for John Wayne and clicking the first link that comes up, I could type “movies John Wayne starred in”, without the quotes and the engine would return results that were only relevant to John Wayne and the movies that he was in. It would also bring up articles that pertain to my search results right on the page I’m searching within. Such as this plugin that I found for Safari called Inquisitor.Instead of typing in the Google toolbar and having a page from google display 1 of 5 billion results, I am given results from Yahoo!’s search engine and shown relevant articles directly within the search bar in my browser. As you can see from the example above, I started typing Al Pacino’s name and halfway through typing, the Inquisitor plugin auto completed my search query and began displaying relevant search results along with clips from articles directly in the search bar.This is one of many steps being taken in recent months to start bringing richer content to the web. In order to read more about what technologies are expected to come with Web 3.0, read this article on howstuffworks.comI’ve certainly joked around in the past about what types of technologies might be included with the web and hardware in the future and other people across the web have shared their ideas as well. A CD-ROM drive not only being able to hold a cup of coffee (which should never be done) but also being able to dispense coffee directly from the computer, ordering pizza from your computer and having a physical pizza delivered to you directly from your fax machine, and along those lines, this video about ordering a pizza in the future comes to mind.I’ve been skeptical about technology and how rapidly it has been advancing ever since I read in a book that is part of a Shelly Cashman series about three years ago about handicapped computer users being able to have implants in their brain that would allow them to overcome their paralyses and control their computer with their mind.Really not sure where to go from here with this article. I’m somewhat scatter-brained from reading all these rss articles. Any thoughts of your own on where we might end up with Web 3.0? Any cool search plugins you’ve found on the web?

Apology Letter

omnidragon — Mon, 12 May 2008 00:34:00 +0000

-Sent to me in an email-

If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” [Samuel Adams]

Semper Fi!

This ‘Letter of Apology’ was written by Lieutenant General Chuck Pitman, US Marine Corps, Retired:
For good and ill, the Iraqi prisoner abuse mess will remain an issue. On the one hand, right thinking Americans will abhor the stupidity of the actions while, on the other hand, political glee will take control and fashion this minor event into some modern day massacre.
I humbly offer my opinion here:
I am sorry that the last seven times we Americans took up arms and sacrificed the blood of our youth, it was in the defense of Muslims ( Bosnia , Kosovo, Gulf War 1, Kuwait , etc.)
I am sorry that no such call for an apology upon the extremists came after 9/11.
I am sorry that all of the murderers on 9/11 were Islamic Arabs.
I am sorry that most Arabs and Muslims have to live in squalor under savage dictatorships.
I am sorry that their leaders squander their wealth.
I am sorry that their governments breed hate for the US in their religious schools, mosques, and government-controll ed media.
I am sorry that Yassar Arafat was kicked out of every Arab country and high-jacked the Palestinian ’cause.’
I am sorry that no other Arab country will take in or offer more than a token amount of financial help to those same Palestinians.
I am sorry that the U.S.A. has to step in and be the biggest financial supporter of poverty stricken Arabs while the insanely wealthy Arabs blame the USA for all their problems.
I am sorry that our own left wing, our media, and our own brainwashed masses do not understand any of this (from the misleading vocal elements of our society like radical professors, CNN and the NY TIMES).
I am sorry the United Nations scammed the poor people of Iraq out of the ‘food for oil’ money so they could get rich while the common folk suffered.
I am sorry that some Arab governments pay the families of homicide bombers upon their death.
I am sorry that those same bombers are brainwashed thinking they will receive 72 virgins in ‘paradise.’
I am sorry that the homicide bombers think pregnant women, babies, children, the elderly and other non-combatant civilians are legitimate targets.
I am sorry that our troops die to free more Arabs from the gang rape rooms and the filling of mass graves of dissidents of their own making.
I am sorry that Muslim extremists have killed more Arabs than any other group.
I am sorry that foreign trained terrorists are trying to seize control of Iraq and return it to a terrorist state.
I am sorry we don’t drop a few dozen daisy-cutters on Fallujah.
I am sorry every time terrorists hide, they find a convenient ‘Holy Site.’
I am sorry they didn’t apologize for driving a jet into the World Trade Center that collapsed and severely damaged Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church - one of our Holy Sites.
I am sorry they didn’t apologize for flights 93 and 175, the USS Cole, the embassy bombings, the murders and beheadings of Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl, etc, etc!
I am sorry Michael Moore is American; he could feed a medium sized village in Africa.
America will get past this latest absurdity. We will punish those responsible because that is what we do.
We hang out our dirty laundry for the entire world to see. We move on. That’s one of the reasons we are hated so much. We don’t hide this stuff like all those Arab countries that are now demanding an apology.
Deep down inside, when most Americans saw this reported in the news, we were like - so what? We lost hundreds and made fun of a few prisoners. Sure, it was wrong; sure, it dramatically hurts our cause; but, until captured,we were trying to kill these same prisoners. Now we’re supposed to wring our hands because a few were humiliated?
Our compassion is tempered with the vivid memories of our own people killed, mutilated and burned amongst a joyous crowd of celebrating Fallujahans.
If you want an apology from this American, you’re going to have a long wait! You have a better chance of finding those seventy-two virgins.
Chuck Pitman
Lieutenant General, USMC
Pass this on to your friends if you agree.
If not, I am sorry I offended you by passing on the facts.
——————————————————————————
And here I am passing it along…..

Polar Bear: I Come In Peace

omnidragon — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:45:00 +0000

——-Original Message——-If you don’t already think animals are far more spiritually advanced than we humans, think again. Stuart Brown describes Norbert Rosing’s striking images of a wild polar bear coming upon tethered sled dogs in the wilds of Canada ’s Hudson Bay .The photographer was sure that he was going to see the end of his dogs when the polar bear wandered in, but

The Polar Bear returned every night that week to play with the dogs.

Man Asks Court to Change His Name to ‘In God We Trust’

omnidragon — Sun, 04 May 2008 14:24:00 +0000

When I first read this on foxnews, I thought ‘what’s wrong with this guy”. Then, after repeating it to myself, i found it quite funny. Not to take away from someone’s beliefs or how they exorcise their thanks to God, but to actually change your name to “In God we trust”. What would your friends call you for short? God? In? “What’s up, God?” “No, I can’t come over this Saturday. I have a date with ……In God we trust” hah. I got a million of ‘em.

Anyway, when some people read the part about how he not only did it to show thanks to God for His glory and mercy to this man through his hard times, but also because he is afraid that one day those words will be deleted from American currency, they may think this guy is just a little bit crazy. But if you think about it, and actually look at an older U.S. coin, the words “In God We Trust” used to be put in front of the man. Now, take out one of those new State quarters and look at where it is - behind the man. So it’s no surprise to me that someone thinks that there’s a big possibility that some day, the words may not even be there at all.

So, what’re you’re kids going to be named? In God we trust Jr.? E pluribus unum?

Microsoft Withdraws Its Offer

omnidragon — Sun, 04 May 2008 00:53:00 +0000

And after several sites on Saturday reported that Microsoft and Yahoo were rumored to have entered serious negotiations on Friday and Microsoft possibly raising its bid for the company, the news comes across the hotwire the Microsoft has withdrawn its bid for Yahoo!. Its main reason being that a friendly way of combining the companies seemed less than likely.I was so happy when I got the email stating this. My first reaction was thinking maybe Yahoo! would enter more serious business deals with Google or Time Warner. Maybe they’ll stay independent like they want to. Their stock sure did take a nice leap this weekend, while Microsoft’s took a nice decline.”‘Clearly a deal is not meant to be,’ Ballmer wrote in his letter to Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang.” -usatoday.comYeah, I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. But I wonder what’s next for Yahoo! now that they’re clear of an idle threat by Steve Balmer to get into a proxy war if they didn’t comply with Microsoft by a certain date.But I’m wondering why Balmer did this in the first place? Why issue an offer just to walk away because you won’t raise your offer to their desired price? You just walked away from an almost $50 billion dollar deal probably because you just didn’t want to divvy up the doe. What was the real agenda here? What did you really hope to accomplish by bidding on Yahoo!? Then again, what did you hope to accomplish by bidding on Yahoo! and then just walking away?I don’t really know what to think about that. Obviously someone must’ve had some sort of plan in mind. Was it all just hype to get attention? Was it some sort of smokescreen to take people’s eye off the big picture?I just don’t understand how you can make a bid of that magnitude, threaten a hostile takeover, and then just walk away. Is this some new strategy?hmmmm

Steve Balmer’s letter to Yahoo!’s Jerry Yang

How to Handle Remote Tech Support

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:30:00 GMT

Using GoToAssist is the easiest way to view and control another person's computer online. Use it to provide instant technical support to family, friends and customers. Start a session with just one click, and instantly connect with the other party.

Network Tools for Windows

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

You need these network tools, no matter which operating systems and networks you have to support. SolarWinds ipMonitor: Affordable Network Monitoring for SMBs. Get turnkey network, server and application availability monitoring with SolarWinds ipMonitor v9.0. This easy-to-use, reliable solution for SMBs delivers out-of-the-box availability monitoring so you always know exactly what's up with Active Directory, DNS, Exchange, FTP, Web, IMAP, MS SQL Server, and SMTP. Download your free trial today. Or, try their totally free tools! And, through 2/29, save 20% when you purchase ipMonitor 9.0.

Get Your Own Web Site

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

Starting at just $3.99/month, web hosting from GoDaddy includes 99.9% uptime, 24/7 support and free access to GoDaddy Hosting Connection, THE place to install over 30 FREE applications sure to help you get the most from your hosting plan and Web site. Enter code CP2 at checkout, and save an additional 10% on any order.

Plus, as a friend of Chris Pirillo, enter code CHRIS7, that's C-H-R-I-S and the number 7, when you check out, and save an additional 10% on any order. Get your piece of the internet at GoDaddy.com.

VMware and Parallels for Virtual Machines

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

It doesn't matter if you're running on Windows or Mac OS X - every power user needs either Parallels or VMware (or both). There's never been an easier way to test software without destroying your primary operating system's stability. Think of how many times you wish you could press a 'reverse' button on your computer. Plus, there's no easier way to try new Linux distributions - see what all the fuss is about. Run Windows in OS X, run Linux in Windows, but the best way to do either is with VMware and/or Parallels.

Coupons for Online Shopping

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:56:13 GMT

This feed is fueled by Lockergnome Online Shopping and Coupon Codes

Before you shop next time, see if we have a coupon first.