Hi humans and surge protector experts.

I address surge protector experts specifically because I need your help.

I’ve had the surge protector pictured above for almost a year now. I bought it in Madison primarily to get more outlets than to actually use it as a surge protector.

I’ve noticed lately that the light on the switch is flickering and looks really weak. I searched on Google for possible explanations and apparently a flickering, blinking, or weak light on your surge protector means that it already protected your electronics from a surge and is no longer at full power.

This question might be silly to someone who actually knows how surge protectors work, but can I still use it to get more outlets without any problems and without worrying about protecting from surges? I never even needed protection against surges anyway because I unplug electronics when I’m not using them and turn off the switch on my surge protector when I’m away from my office or room.

So I guess the main question is, is my surge protector damaged electricity-conducting-wise and I should replace it, or can I still keep using it if I’m not worried about surges and just want the extra outlets?

Response: Justin White’s “Facebook Dislike Button” (July 14, 2011)

Yesterday, a buddy of mine named Justin White wrote a blog post about the Facebook dislike button (more specifically, the lack of a dislike button). You should probably go read that now so my response is in context and you know what I’m talking about.

http://jtwhite.net/2011/07/14/facebook-dislike-button/

To begin my response, I want to state that looking at the main idea of the post, the post itself is misnamed. The main focus of the blog post is not about the dislike button, but about things that Facebook users request in general. In the conclusion, Justin explains how Facebook’s users could go about bringing about change on Facebook.com. He uses the dislike button as merely an example, not as the main focus of the article.

Ignoring the title, Justin’s proposed solution to getting a dislike button is for many people to start using advertisement blockers: “They would need to have a good percentage of Facebook’s users to protest by installing … advertisement blocking software and refusing to disable it on Facebook … until a dislike button is created. By doing this, you are … boycotting Facebook and therefore hindering the income of the company.”

We first have to take a look at the types of people who use advertisement blockers in the first place. The reason they want to get rid of advertisements is because they’re bothersome and they don’t want to deal with them. These are generally the types of people who would never click on an advertisement in the first place, or if the advertisement is interesting enough, might click on one or two once in a while, but at significantly lower rates than other people. These are also the people that advertising companies don’t even target because it’s a waste of their resources. Facebook would probably save more money by saving bandwidth not showing advertisements to these people than they would earn from the miniscule number of potential clicks they could get.

Next, how many people actually use an advertisement blocker? The most famous one is Adblock Plus, an add-on for Firefox. According to Add-ons Product Manager Justin Scott from Mozilla, on May 17, 2010, there were 131.9 million active Firefox users and 10.7 million people with Adblock Plus installed. That calculates to about 8% of Firefox users using Adblock Plus. As of today, according to Net Applications, 21.67% of Internet users use Firefox. Eight percent of 21.67% equals about 1.73% of all Internet users using Adblock Plus. Not a lot, if you ask me. At this rate, I’m pretty sure getting enough advertisement blocker users to leave a dent in Facebook and make the concerned is going to take a long time.

But what if we were to suddenly somehow get over half the population to use advertisement blockers? Justin points out that Facebook might implement a script that detects advertisement blockers and prevents you from using their website if you don’t whitelist it. But that’s way too much work. There’s an easier solution.

Advertisement blocking software works on the concept of keywords. It identifies domains and URL paths that are common to advertisements, and prevents them from showing up. For example, if the ad blocker were to block Google Adsense advertisements, they might block all URLs that follow the format of http(s)://adsense.google.com/*. But what if the advertisements didn’t fit a specific pattern?

For example, what if Facebook started randomizing the URLs of their advertisements? What if an image displayed as an advertisement had the URL of:

https://facebook.com/.jpg

(If that URL isn’t random enough for you, refresh the page to get a new randomized URL.)

Sure, the ad blocker could block everything that matches http(s)://facebook.com/*.jpg, but then it would be blocking all the images on the entire website. By doing that, Facebook can essentially force you to disable your ad blocker to use their website without actually forcing you to do anything at all.

So what’s my point? The best (and I think the only effective) way to really boycott Facebook is to literally boycott it and not visit the website. Unfortunately, seeing how addicted people are to Facebook, I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. Installing an advertisement blocker, creating groups and events, and doing other protest-like things will most likely get you nowhere to your quest to get a dislike button. And even the concept of a dislike button is dumb. Disliking a status (or anything, for that matter) is spreading negativity and will only cause arguments. Facebook wants their users to enjoy their time on Facebook.com, not spend hours arguing with other users.

While Ed and I went to get lunch today during our break from class, we saw a car with a vanity license plate.

(The image is horrible quality because I forgot that the camera on my iPod Touch has digital zoom and not optical zoom.)

If you can’t read the vanity license plate, it says I LVE GOD.

I decided that the missing vowel in LVE was A, so she was actually trying to say that she was laving god. (For those of you who don’t know, laving is the equivalent of washing.) It must be really difficult washing an abstract concept that you can’t even touch.

After we got back on campus after lunch, the electricity went out again. Ed got really excited because there was an exam scheduled for his next class and he might not have to take it.

The the power came back on.

On our way back home, we saw this massive truck parked in a lot.

Ed insisted that I take a picture of it and upload it to my blog, so there it is.

I’m not sure if you’re aware of what Causes is or not, but regardless, never sign up for it.

A long time ago (maybe about 3-4 years ago), I used to accept all application requests on Facebook because I thought that if I accept them, I can’t be invited to them anymore. Unfortunately, that wasn’t exactly the case because once I started using the application, I got even more notifications and invitations to do more stuff with the app.

One of the apps that I randomly signed up for a long time ago without thinking was Causes.

Since then, they’ve been sending me emails about once every few weeks, even though I unsubscribed from them a long time ago. I click on the Unsubscribe link whenever I get one of those emails and it says that I’m already unsubscribed.

So whatever you do, don’t join their website.

They’re just trying to fool you into thinking that you’re supporting good causes when all you’re actually doing is signing up to be spammed for the rest of your life.

(Maybe that’s an overstatement, but still, save your own sanity and don’t do it.)

As a result of a ridiculous storm from this morning, I am sitting in the dark with my laptop because my entire town has no electricity. I’m probably not going to end up posting this until sometime tomorrow because my router at home has no power to send out an Internet signal, and I have nothing else to do in the dark until then, so I’ll make this blog post nice and long.

Fortunately, I have a 9-cell battery, I closed all unnecessary applications, I turned down the screen brightness all the way, I set my background as a solid black screen, and I turned off the wireless function so my battery has over 6 hours’ worth of power left.

I woke up a little bit before 8:00 AM this morning to get ready to go to class. At that time, it was storming worse than I think I’ve ever seen it storm before. The house was shaking enough that it felt like an earthquake, and a house nearby had all their roof shingles blown off. While I was getting ready, the power went out. I finished getting ready and left to go pick up my buddy and go to class.

When I got to my buddy’s house, I saw that portions of the edges on his siding was bent and blown off. I picked up my buddy and started driving to the local community college where we’re taking classes for the summer.

The drive there was ridiculous and it felt like I was driving in an obstacle course of fallen tree branches and downed wires. There were tons of police cars everywhere redirecting traffic, some in areas where the road were perfectly fine.

When we were almost there, there was a random police officer who was stopping people from taking the road that would have led me straight to my destination. As some of you might know, I have a horrible sense of direction and can’t find my way to any place without the use of a map. I didn’t want to risk getting lost, so I turned into a parking lot from one end and exited the parking lot from the opposite end, effectively placing me past the police vehicle and on the road he was blocking. The road was perfectly fine.

We kept going and finally made it to the community college just in time for our 9 AM classes. I parked in my normal parking spot and opened the door to go inside when a woman told us that the college was closed until 1 PM due to a power failure. Unfortunately, my buddy and I were unable to go straight back home because we had a class at 1 PM. We decided to just wait out the three hours, go get some lunch like normal for another hour afterwards, and resume our day as if nothing had happened.

After about an hour or so of waiting, a college police officer came up to us and told us that the college was closed for the remainder of the day (which meant that we had effectively wasted an hour of our lives for nothing). My buddy and I drove back home.

When we got back to our home town, I stayed for a while at his house and helped his dad fix the broken shingles on the side of the house. I was there until about 4 PM and had nothing to do except put my buddy in leg locks, arm bars, and choke holds.

After I got back home, I took my dog out for a short while and went to the family business. At first I was under the impression that the power was out there as well, but when I called my mom before I left the house a little after 5 PM, she said that the power was fine there now, and it was only out during the morning. I quickly grabbed all my electronics and chargers and headed out to the family business to charge up and check my email.

After tending to almost 50 emails that I got throughout the day, I went to do normal martial arts training at 6:45 PM, ate dinner, and came back home at about 9 PM.

And now I’m sitting here blogging in the dark while my dog is laying down next to me snoring because there’s nothing else that I can do.

I tried calling our electricity provider, ComEd, to find out how much longer it would take for our power to come back on. The response I got was along the lines of “Our crew is currently out working to repair the damages and restore the service. The recovery process may take several days. We appreciate your patience.”

It’s funny how they’re appreciating my patience when I never said that I was being patient.

I’m lucky that my family owns a business over 10 miles away from my house so I don’t have to suffer from not being able to use electronics or checking the Internet for several days.

So what have I learned from this?

If you’re in a storm-prone area, try to keep a hand electricity generator handy (one of those little machines where you crank up the knob and it generates electricity, then you can plug stuff into it). I’m not sure how much those cost, but if they’re reasonably affordable and you rely heavily on electronics and the Internet, it’s probably worth having one of those lying around for instances like this. I’ve never actually experienced a power outage like this one before where it lasted all day and it’s expected to last for another several days, and I sure hope that I don’t have to experience another one in the future.

Also, dial-up Internet isn’t all that bad. I’m not able to use the Internet right now because I have DSL and the only way I can connect to the Internet is through a router, which requires electricity to operate. I’m not sure if you can just plug your computer directly into the phone jack and have it somehow work, but unfortunately, I was unable to test it out because my laptop only has a port for a LAN cable and not a regular phone jack. And yes, I tried plugging the phone jack into the LAN cable spot already, and no, it didn’t work.

Nine-cell batteries are definitely worth it. I’ve been blogging for quite a while already, and I’m still at about 6 hours of battery power remaining. Sure, 9-cell batteries are bigger and heavier, but I usually don’t carry my laptop around very much, and the extra weight is definitely worth the extra power it provides, even outside of severe storm and power outage conditions.

Always know where your flashlights are, and if you don’t have one, go buy one, even if you’re not in storm-prone areas. My mom told me to look for a flashlight next to my dad’s side of the master bed, and I found a massive yellow lantern that can pretty much act as a main light source. I’m not using it now because I don’t need light to use a laptop, but it’s useful for trying to navigate through the house in pitch black darkness.

I’m rapidly running out of things to blog about, and it’s still only almost 10 PM. I’m probably just going to go to sleep soon and wake up early tomorrow so I can actually see what I’m doing. Also, I happen to have a handful of books I got from the library that I can read all day tomorrow (and the days after, if needed).

Back on the first of this month, I mentioned that I’ve seen some advertisements that are unfilled templates. A few people had difficulty understanding what I was talking about, and I said that I would take a screenshot the next time I saw one.

While I was working on a project today for the Badger Herald, I saw a generic unfilled template ad­vertisement on our home page in an ad zone served by Google AdSense. I took a screenshot; this is what it looks like.

As you can see, it might be a failure in that the advertisement doesn’t say anything about the company, but it might also be a win because you (or at least I) want to click on the advertisement just to see what company would use an unfilled template advertisement, thus bringing more traffic to their website.

In other news, I’ve been doing way too much Shakespeare homework and reading lately.