Eddie On Everything » life tips

Make Sure the Airlines Don’t Lose Your Bags – Fly With a Gun

eddie — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:34:19 +0000

You read that right – if you want to make sure that an airline doesn’t lose your bags, or that TSA staff doesn’t steal things out of your bag, you should pack a gun in each bag that you check. It doesn’t even have to be a real gun – a simple, totally-legal-in-all-50-states starter pistol will do.

Boing Boing and security expert Bruce Schneier have more:

A “weapons” is defined as a rifle, shotgun, pistol, airgun, and STARTER PISTOL. Yes, starter pistols – those little guns that fire blanks at track and swim meets – are considered weapons…and do NOT have to be registered in any state in the United States.
I have a starter pistol for all my cases. All I have to do upon check-in is tell the airline ticket agent that I have a weapon to declare…I’m given a little card to sign, the card is put in the case, the case is given to a TSA official who takes my key and locks the case, and gives my key back to me.

That’s the procedure. The case is extra-tracked…TSA does not want to lose a weapons case. This reduces the chance of the case being lost to virtually zero.

It’s a great way to travel with camera gear…I’ve been doing this since Dec 2001 and have had no problems whatsoever.

What a great tip! I have personally had my bags lost 6 times, once with no recovery at all. In that case, I had to go through the arduous process of itemizing everything in my bag (from memory!), watching the airline depreciate the value of everything I owned, only to receive a check a full 2 months later that barely covered half of the replacement costs. Not to mention my out of pocket expense for being on a week-long trip with no clothing, no personal items, nada. Or the time and frustration it took me to get the matter sorted out.

I’ve also had a couple of items come up “missing” from my bags on other occasions. I’m not pointing any fingers here, but they were in there when I packed the bag, and they weren’t when I unpacked it. What *was* there in each instance was a little card notifying me that my bag had been searched. (OK, so I guess I am pointing fingers.) Screw you, TSA.

I’ll be sure to pick up a few starter pistols and pack them with each and every bag that I check.

Make Finishing Your Task Your ‘Next Task’

eddie — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:45:38 +0000

Found this little productivity gem, courtesy of Ernest Hemmingway, over at The Second Act:

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.

Ernest Hemingway

Hemmingway used this approach in his writing. Given the source, it should be considered good advice. I take a somewhat similar approach to writing serious pieces, though my version is slightly modified. See, the tricky part for me is the “not thinking about it”; unfinished business tends to hang on my mind, and the very idea of an unfinished task that I know how to complete keeps me up at night.

That’s why I like to finish a draft, then re-work the piece in my head as I go about my daily business. I like to get my main ideas down on paper, a “roadmap,” if you will, and then think through the ways I’d like to revise them or flesh them out. This method affords me a sense of completion, and helps to alleviates some of the stress that comes with “finalizing” something.

I find that I use this approach when doing most anything creative – dreaming up new inventions, ideas, theories, etc. I wonder, is this advice applicable to non-creative disciplines as well?

Throw Your Reader a Rope: Stephen King on the Passive Voice

Cached Page: Intel ialmrnt5 display driver error

eddie — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:06:46 +0000

This is a cached page that goes with this article.

Intel® 82915G/82910GL Express Chipset Family

The Sims* 2 Game Crashes or Freezes During Game Play

Symptom(s):
The Sims* 2 game crashes or freezes (locks up) during game play.

Error: “The ialmrnt5 display driver has stopped working normally. Save your work and reboot the system to restore full display functionality. The next time you reboot the machine a dialog will be displayed giving you a chance to upload data about this failure to Microsoft.”

Error: “The graphics adapter in this system experienced an internal error. Please contact your graphics adapter manufacturer for technical support. The application will now terminate.”

Blue screen appears with STOP error 0×000000EA referencing the ialmrnt5 display driver file.

Solution:
Use the latest Intel® graphics driver to correct this issue. Refer to the driver README file for installation instructions as needed.

Note: If you continue to experience issues running the game with the latest graphics driver, try running the game with the -w switch which forces the game to run in a window.

To add the -w switch, use the following steps:

Right-click on the The Sims 2 game and left-click on Properties. You can do this either on the game’s shortcut on the desktop or on the game’s entry in the Start menu.
Add a space and -w to he end of the Target field, so that it looks like this: The actual path may vary depending on where the game was installed. Make sure that the -w goes outside the quotation marks and that there is a space between the last quotation mark and the -w.
Click OK.

This applies to:

Intel® 82915G/82910GL Express Chipset Family

Solution ID: CS-016497

Date Created: 17-Oct-2004

Last Modified: 27-Jan-2006

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Keeping Your Mind Sharp, Well Into Middle Age

eddie — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 23:53:14 +0000

How to Train the Aging Brain, a very interesting article in today’s New York Times, highlights a new understanding of how the middle-aged brain works. As it turns out, many long-held beliefs have been proven untrue; for instance, our brains do not lose 40% of our brain cells as we grow older. Instead, we retain much of what we have learned, the brain just squirrels it away, where existing neuron pathways make it a bit harder to recall at a moment’s notice. Given the right stimulation, however, that information will pop right back into our conscious minds.

[I]f you are primed with sounds that are close to those you’re trying to remember — say someone talks about cherry pits as you try to recall Brad Pitt’s name — suddenly the lost name will pop into mind. The similarity in sounds can jump-start a limp brain connection. (It also sometimes works to silently run through the alphabet until landing on the first letter of the wayward word.)

Interesting, no? I’ve personally noticed that my mind works more in this way as I get older – specifically, I’ve noticed that I increasingly tend to make associations or see similarities between things that many other people do not. I thought I was just going crazy, perhaps developing late-onset schizophrenia at my advanced age. Turns out I’m OK. (It’s the rest of the world that’s crazy. :)

There’s more good news – as you get older, you get quicker & smarter. The trick is finding ways to keep brain connections in good condition and to grow more of them.

So how do we old folks go about building these new connections? Turns out it’s not that hard. It can be as simple as just mixing up your daily routine by taking a new route to work.

Such stretching is exactly what scientists say best keeps a brain in tune: get out of the comfort zone to push and nourish your brain. Do anything from learning a foreign language to taking a different route to work.

“As adults we have these well-trodden paths in our synapses,” Dr. Taylor says. “We have to crack the cognitive egg and scramble it up. And if you learn something this way, when you think of it again you’ll have an overlay of complexity you didn’t have before — and help your brain keep developing as well.”

But don’t stop there – you should also continue (or start) to challenge your own existing belief system. Examine the basis for your closely held beliefs, and think critically about how new or differing ideas mesh or clash. In other words, you need to challenge your perception of the world.

Educators say that, for adults, one way to nudge neurons in the right direction is to challenge the very assumptions they have worked so hard to accumulate while young. With a brain already full of well-connected pathways, adult learners should “jiggle their synapses a bit” by confronting thoughts that are contrary to their own, says Dr. Taylor, who is 66.

Teaching new facts should not be the focus of adult education, she says. Instead, continued brain development and a richer form of learning may require that you “bump up against people and ideas” that are different. In a history class, that might mean reading multiple viewpoints, and then prying open brain networks by reflecting on how what was learned has changed your view of the world.

“There’s a place for information,” Dr. Taylor says. “We need to know stuff. But we need to move beyond that and challenge our perception of the world. If you always hang around with those you agree with and read things that agree with what you already know, you’re not going to wrestle with your established brain connections.

…

Jack Mezirow, a professor emeritus at Columbia Teachers College, has proposed that adults learn best if presented with what he calls a “disorienting dilemma,” or something that “helps you critically reflect on the assumptions you’ve acquired.”

Dr. Mezirow developed this concept 30 years ago after he studied women who had gone back to school. The women took this bold step only after having many conversations that helped them “challenge their own ingrained perceptions of that time when women could not do what men could do.”

Such new discovery, Dr. Mezirow says, is the “essential thing in adult learning.”

“As adults we have all those brain pathways built up, and we need to look at our insights critically,” he says. “This is the best way for adults to learn. And if we do it, we can remain sharp.”

Hear that? It bears repeating. And bolding: Teaching new facts should not be the focus of adult education. Instead, you should focus on challenging the very basis for your closely-held ideals and preconceptions. Doing so will make you smarter in two ways – of course, you learn the new idea, the new viewpoint, the new theory. But more importantly, when you critically consider how new ideas mesh or conflict with your own, your brain physically changes – it builds new pathways, easing access to your squirreled-away information.

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The More You Know, Unicode Style

eddie — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 06:32:12 +0000

The More You Know♒★

In search of a Personal Wiki

eddie — Tue, 05 May 2009 04:49:25 +0000

I’ve recently started using MediaWiki in my business. At this point, my exposure has been fairly limited. Still, I see great potential in using a Wiki as a personal information management (PIM) tool.

However, I’m not sure that Media Wiki is the right tool for a PIM. It lacks a few features that I would love to see (e.g. a WYSIWYG editor), and its expansive feature set, while impressive, is perhaps overkill for a PIM, which often leads to a more cumbersome user experience.

Does anyone out there use a Wiki as a PIM, and if so, can you make any recommendations?

I plan to evaluate Wiki software and would welcome any input. I’ll probably write about my research process, so check back if you’d like to see my reviews.

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Getting Married? A Last Name Change Checklist

eddie — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 04:46:41 +0000

I have had a lot of friends get married lately.

Some of them have asked me how to go about changing their last name – what needs to be done? Who do I have to tell about my name change? What is the procedure for changing my name after getting married?

I’ve pieced together the emails that people have sent to me and through me and I have compiled the following list.

I hope it helps you.

1. Social Security
2. Driver’s License / Voter Registration
3. Passport
4. Employer – W2’s, e-mail, business cards, etc.
5. Insurance – Medical, Dental, Life, Auto, Homeowners, etc.
6. 401K / IRA / Investment Accounts
7. Update bank accounts / order new checks
8. Credit Cards / Loans
9. Utilities – Electric, Gas, Cable, Water, Trash, Cell, etc.
10. Mortgage
11. Auto Registration
12. Memberships – Alumni Association, Sorority, etc.
13. Internet – eBay, Evite, Facebook, Gmail, LinkedIn, OpenTable, Paypal, etc.
14. Clubs – Auto Rental, Hotel Rewards, Airlines, etc.
15. County Treasurer (Taxes)
16. Update Beneficiary Info (401k, Insurance, etc)

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Bananagrams Variations

eddie — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:42:51 +0000

One of the nice things about the game Bananagrams is that the game lends itself to rule modifications.

For instance, when my family plays, we don’t use the “Dump” option – in my opinion, allowing “dumping” of tiles encourages intellectual laziness, and more often than not it benefits the person dumping the tiles. Instead, we always try to play every tile drawn. This forces us to learn new words, and encourages new ways of thinking about the words already formed.

Here is a list of variations that I’ve used in varying combinations to spice up the game / make it more enjoyable.

Don’t allow the dumping of tiles. Instead, agree that each player will attempt to play all tiles played.
When dumping tiles, always do so face-up. This way the other players in the game are aware of the value of the tile and may choose to avoid it if necessary OR pick it up if so desired. This eliminates some of the advantage that the dumping player often gains.
Choose a theme for each game, and require that each player create at least one word related to that theme. For instance, if declare that the theme is “colors,” each player would have to form at least one color word. (ex: red, blue, yellow, green, puce.) When choosing a theme, it is important to declare a category broad enough that each person can create a related word regardless of tiles chosen, yet narrow enough that a creative mind cannot explain that nearly any word is related. For example, a theme of “names of family members” is likely too narrow, as most people have only a small handful of family members and may not choose the letters required to spell a single acceptable term. On the flip side, a category like “Terms related to the passing of the seasons” may be too broad, as a almost any word can be cast as being related. (Examples of stretched relationships: “red” is the color that leaves turn, “car” is related because many people drive their car when Spring comes around, “sign” is related because the passing of the seasons always involve various signs, etc.) Examples of good categories that I’ve used: colors, parts of an automobile, beverages, food items.)
Put restrictions of the length of words that can be formed. For instance, say “no words fewer than 4 letters,” or “no words greater than 6 letters.” This rule can be used to “even the playing field” in games between newer and veteran players – try applying various restrictions to all players, or to only veteran players.
Restrict the size of the playing grid. Bananagrams is a game played without a board. An interesting twist on the game is to use a board to limit the “sprawl” of the tiles. Try using a 10×10 grid, or even just a sheet of notepaper on which all words must be played. This forces a more “dense” playing area.
Make it into a crossword game. Play a normal game, but let everyone finish their board. Then have each player create clues for each of his words. When complete, have everyone pass the clue sheet and their (mixed up) tiles to the player on their right. The receiving player must then re-create the board using only the tiles he is given and the clue sheet.

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How To Make a Homemade Heating Pad

eddie — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 02:21:42 +0000

Ow, my neck!

I don’t know how, but I’ve managed to pull something in my neck.

I’m finding that it’s a big pain to keep a standard heating pad on it, owe to both the unruly size and unrly (and confining) cord.

So I created a home-made heating pad using rice and a sock. Heres how it’s done.

Recipe: portable heating pad

Get a sock. Preferrably a clean one.
Pour some dry uncooked rice into it. I used roughly one pound. Don’t use instant rice.
If you have any available, drizzle some peppermint oil onto the rice. Not only does this have an aromatheraputic effect, but it makes the sock smell less like rice and more like candy canes.
Tie the sock shut.
Heat in the microwave for about 2 minutes. You may want to stop after one minute and shake the rice around.
Voila, you now have a cordless heatpad. Apply directly where it hurts.

Eddie On Everything » life tips

Make Sure the Airlines Don’t Lose Your Bags – Fly With a Gun

Related Posts

Make Finishing Your Task Your ‘Next Task’

Related Posts

Cached Page: Intel ialmrnt5 display driver error

Random Posts

Keeping Your Mind Sharp, Well Into Middle Age

Random Posts

The More You Know, Unicode Style

Related Posts

In search of a Personal Wiki

Random Posts

Getting Married? A Last Name Change Checklist

Random Posts

Bananagrams Variations

Random Posts

How To Make a Homemade Heating Pad

Random Posts