Seth.Larson

Apparently google making me hate google today was a test to see how much users liked or disliked having background images.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?tid=52d49a85dcfbdb9f&hl=en

No surprise that everyone hated it(at least hated it being the default).

Alright so this morning when I went to google I sat and stared at it for two minutes confused about what was going on.

It was like my best friend showed up at the door as an alien, or like the new mortal kombat trailer added 5 minutes of everyone peacefully resolving their differences.

So the last 5 minutes of my time has been spent fixing google.  I invite you to use my creation to fix your own google.

Download this file

Open a new browser and go to google

Click the “Change Background Image” text

Click “Choose File” and choose the file you downloaded above.

Now pretend none of this ever happened.

There is a good chance this doesn’t work without being logged in to a google service, but I’m never logged out of gmail.

So…. I’ve been using Windows 7 for awhile now and had been using the backup feature for my C:\ drive in case Windows decided to poop itself.  This was worked fine and well until I had a second disk drive that I wanted to make sure I had backed up.  Something in adding that second disk made the entire thing take 5x the amount of time when barely 2x more space was being backed up.

The solution I found was using the command line to do the backup(which you can also set to do on a schedule if you’d like).

To do a single backup the command (from a command prompt ran as Administrator):

wbadmin START Backup -backuptTarget:<destination> -include:<source>

In my specific case this results in:

wbadmin START Backup -backupTarget:i: -include:C:,F:

If you wanted to do this as a scheduled task the command (again as Administrator) would be:

SCHTASKS /Create WEEKLY /D FRI /TN WeeklyBackupTask /RL HIGHEST /ST 19:00 /TR "WBADMIN START Backup -backupTarget:I: -include:C:,F: -quiet"

A scheduled task that runs at 7 on a Friday.  Odds are by 7 I’m home and hopefully on a Friday I’m doing something on not my computer.  If you’re doing this for a work only PC I’d set it up for 5:00 on Friday or your home pc I’d just be using windows home server(if you don’t have one of those talk to your most liked nerd friend.  If that friend is me please choose to bother Mike instead though)

So… I have a few posts to backdate here and cover the holidays.  A lot has changed as I no longer schill icecream for a living.  I’m now a software developer working out of Sioux Falls.

Anyway a lot has happened but I’m not taking the time to talk about that at the moment, instead I leave this awesome version of Beyonce’s Ring On It

If only kits were this easy.

The gauntlet of weird shit I’ve seen marketed has been thrown down.  Let the next challenger compete with PLACENTA BEAR!!!!!

Seriously, no joke.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/placenta-teddy-bear-turns-heads/story?id=9043347

“After the baby is born and the cooing in the delivery room begins, parents may do a variety of things with the placenta — maybe take a picture, poke it a bit, or just divert their eyes and let the nurse take it away.
Whatever parents do, it probably wouldn’t match London-based designer Alex Green’s idea of turning the baby’s placenta into a teddy bear.”

So… headed to Hawaii over Christmas vacation and it has me thinking I’d like to finally do something I’ve “considered” doing for a decade now.  Start the diving certification track.

The two major options in the U.S. are PADI and SSI.  I’ve been talking to some people I know who have done one or the other and comparing their requirements/offerings.  Many will say SSI is better because it requires you to be affiliated with a dive supply shop that is affiliated with SSI which seems somewhat fallacious to me.  Many other places say the PADI/SSI are really about the same “requirements” wise and that really who cares because what really matters is how good of an instructor you get.  Those outside the U.S. are often of the opinion that it doesn’t matter at all, some of the more localized options in Europe are the only real “step above” due to their knowledge requirements.

PADI

SSI

PADI E-Learning for Open Water Diver

Any input from people I haven’t talked to here, or anyone interested in also pursuing this?

I’m currently thinking the online PADI online knowledge course followed by  pool diving time.  Not sure

Or, maybe other countries just lack good programming.  Most of our TV viewing these days is probably crap reality TV, but there are also at least 4-6 shows any given person I know probably watches.  Other countries seem to average 3-4 and lets face it, when the only good shows are Top Gear, Doctor Who, and the news, that is likely to be the case.

So for those who didn’t hear about this on the news back when swine flu was first thought to be this Destroyer of Worlds™, Egypt decided to kill all their pigs.

I’m not sure why they did it, most of the world realized that much like shaving won’t get rid of crabs, killing all the pigs won’t get rid of H1N1.  Anywho in the end Egypt went on a bacon creating spree in the name of science.

Nowhere along this process did someone stand up and say “hey but we keep pigs randomly all over and they actually are a major part of our organic waste disposal”.  As a result egypt is swimming in its own waste.  Maybe now they’ll import some pigs and help the price out a bit for the farmers in the process.  Sadly there is no chance of that happening.  The Egyptian government claims that getting rid of the pigs was “change we need”.  Everything is much better without them.  Look at how clean those streets are without the pigs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/world/africa/20cairo.html?_r=4&partner=rss&emc=rss&topic=swineflu

And by pretty solid I mean fracking awesome…