Akar is Awesome

by   •   Daily Post, What I'm Reading
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Remember how I said yesterday that Windows Update occasionally forcibly restarted my laptop when I was doing something important and didn’t notice the countdown timer?

A helpful reader named Akar let me know that I can stop this from happening by opening gpedit.msc and going to Local Computer Policy → Computer Configuration → Admininstrative Templates → Windows Components → Windows Update and disabling Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations.

The best part? It actually works.

Thanks Akar.

*high-five*

 

What I’m Reading

After a handful of days being too busy to read, I finally managed to finish Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, the sequel to Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.

Like Freakonomics, Superfreakonomics presents some interesting questions that only a truly curious economist would ask, and keeps the underlying theme of how people react to incentives.

My favorite selections from Superfreakonomics included the results of a variation of the economics game where you have $10 and you can elect to give none, some, or all of it to another person; how effective cheap and simple solutions can be compared to expensive solutions, and how a cheap and simple solution could effectively reverse global warming; what effect the choice of a doctor’s tie has on patients’ death rates; and how monkeys, if given the chance, will turn to prostitution to satisfy their desires.

If you read and enjoyed Freakonomics, you should definitely read Superfreakonomics. If you recall from a while back, one of the very few complaints I had about Freakonomics was that it went into a little bit too much detail about some of the topics. Superfreakonomics completely avoids that and has just the right amount of data and elaboration on each of the topics it discusses. It also discusses topics that incite more curiosity and have more relevance to things we might experience today.

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #177: What does freedom mean? People talk about freedom all the time, but what does it mean in real life? Is a person who has a job truly free? What about the responsibilities of having a family or a friend? It’s one thing to be free to make a choice, but after a choice is made, are we truly free anymore?

In response to the question “What does freedom mean?”: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=define+freedom

I think anyone who is not strictly controlled by another individual is considered free. An easy way to determine if someone is strictly controlled or not is if they have a free choice to do something. Of course, as the prompt mentioned, someone with a job or a family or a friend might be considered controlled by their responsibilities, but they still have the choice to quit the job, divorce and separate from the family, and split away from the friend. Obviously, doing so might not be the best decision one could make, but it can still be done.

Someone without freedom is under such close supervision and ownership of another individual that he or she is unable to choose to do something. The easiest example of someone without freedom is a slave. Their life consists of serving their master. They could choose to run away and end their life as it exists now and start a new one, but escape would be extremely difficult, and if found, they would most likely be recaptured or killed, effectively making their choice useless even if they wanted to choose.

 

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Microsoft Update Timer in Windows 7

by   •   Daily Post
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Is it just me, or did Microsoft Update on Windows 7 randomly start forcing you to restart your computer if you don’t click the “Postpone” button for 15 minutes?

Before, if you didn’t notice the alert that told you to restart your computer, it would just stay open in the background until you tended to it. But now, whenever Microsoft Update wants you to restart your computer, it shows a little timer for 15 minutes; if you don’t click Postpone within the time limit, it automatically restarts.

That’s fine when I see the alert, because I usually click the Postpone button in time. But when I’m busily doing something else, sometimes the notice appears in the background because I’m typing, and I don’t see it. Then the timer counts down and it reaches 0, then it randomly restarts my laptop. And the worst part is that it only happens when I’m busy doing something, which also happens to be the worst time for my laptop to restart.

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #176: Find the nearest window. Look outside. What is the most interesting thing you see? What is the least interesting thing? If you don’t have a window, close your eyes and imagine one: what do you see when you look through it?

Seeing as it’s night right now and it’s dark outside, I can’t really see anything out my window, so the most interesting thing I see (and one of the only things I see) is a street lamp. The least interesting thing is the darkness that’s everywhere else.

When I close my eyes and imagine a window, I see grassy hills and a bright blue sky with clouds through the window. I guess I’m not very imaginative, so all my windows lead to a stereotypical child’s coloring book representation of what is outside every window.

 

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Blank Advertisements: Fail or Win?

by   •   General
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Have you guys noticed the weird ads that are showing up on my website that are templates of generic ads that aren’t filled in? A common one I see all the time has a sheet of notebook paper as a background and an apple in the foreground. It says stuff like “header goes here” and “text goes here and more text goes here.”

It seems like it was an obvious mistake on the advertisement maker’s part, but it sort of got me thinking that it might have been done intentionally. If you’re not aware of Google Adsense’s terms of service, you’re strictly prohibited from clicking on your own advertisements on your own websites. There have been a handful of interesting advertisements that have shown up on my website that I’ve seen in the past that I’ve wanted to click on (but I had to find via the generic Google search engine instead), but those blank and unfilled advertisements make me want to click on them more than any other advertisement I’ve seen before.

If I happen to come across any of those advertisements on other people’s websites, I would definitely click on them to see what company owns the ad, which makes me think that these companies made this apparent “mistake” intentionally to make people want to click on their ad.

I dunno, just a random thought.

 

Picture of the Day

Too Lazy to Write a Phone Number?

Someone posted this notice at our business on the bulletin board.

Apparently someone else who wanted this service was too lazy to write down the phone number, and ripped it off and took it with them instead.

#BeingConsiderateOfOthersFail

(Taken with an Apple iPod Touch 4th Generation)

 

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Google+

by   •   Daily Post
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #174: Google recently released Google+, a new social network. Do you think you need another social network? Do you prefer real social networks (people you actually see regularly), or are you happy with the digital social networks you use? Or do you avoid them all on principle?

Even though I use (and like to use) the Internet frequently and take advantage of it to reach out to many people at once, I’m not a huge fan of interactive social networking. I used to be a heavy user of Facebook about four years ago, but I eventually got tired and annoyed of it; sure, you can use it to keep in touch with all your friends, but you also inevitably have to deal with the idiots that are on that website as well.

Then, a few years later, I switched over to Twitter and stopped using Facebook completely. Twitter allowed me to social network without worrying about other people annoying me. Sure, people could send me @replies, but none of those showed up in my timeline. When someone visited my profile page, they would only see stuff posted by me, not by anyone else (unlike my Facebook wall, which was filled with random stuff posted by my “friends”). This helped a lot with my obsessive-compulsive tendencies to keep everything formatted and organized perfectly.

A lot of people say that Facebook is a great way to share stuff you write and make (like blogs, photos, and videos), but I think it’s pointless to put them on Facebook when I have a website. My website is much easier to navigate than Facebook (at least I think so), the URLs are much simpler (they consist of words and numbers that make sense rather than randomly generated ID numbers), and it’s not shrouded in tons of other people’s content. Best of all, I get ad revenue for stuff I put on my website while I don’t get a single penny for anything I put on Facebook.

So now that we have the fact that I don’t like interactive social networking out of the way, am I excited for Google+? I’m definitely going to try it out like I did with Google Buzz and Google Wave, but I’m not sure if it’s going to catch on. It’s helpful that it’s made by Google and will most likely be integrated with the stuff I use everyday – if it’s right there, there’s a higher chance that I’ll use it than if I have to go to a different website. Another huge factor is how many people will end up using it – if not enough of my friends and followers get on it within the first handful of months that it’s open to the public, I’ll most likely get bored of it.

So back to the question – do we need another social network? No, I don’t think so, but if it’s able to bring something completely new and revolutionary into social networking (which I’m pretty sure Google will eventually be able to do), then yes, I think it’s worth creating. Similar to how MySpace is dying off, if Google manages to make a social network as revolutionary as Facebook was compared to MySpace, it’s very possible that Facebook could face the fate MySpace is facing now.

I’m fine with both real and digital social networks, but interacting via digital social networks tends to save more time and require less effort. I email and instant message a lot, and the number of people I’m able to communicate with is much greater than what is realistically possible in real life.

 

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Where Did Mad Disease Cow From

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This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

 

Quote of the Day

Ed Lam wanted to know where bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad-cow disease) came from, so he asked:

“Where did mad disease cow from?”

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #173: Do you prefer the aisle or window when traveling? Why?

When I’m on an airplane, I prefer sitting next to the aisle rather than the window.

I’m not really a fan of sunlight, so if I were to sit next to the window, I would have the cover closed any­way.

I also tend to get airsick quickly and frequently, so sitting in the aisle would help me reach the bathroom in time to vomit in the toilet and not make a mess all over the airplane. Yes, I realize that there are disposable vomit bags available to use, but I don’t really like the idea of throwing up in one and holding onto a bag containing my vomit until I get an opportunity to dispose of it.

It also lets me go to the bathroom for non-vomiting purposes, both to use the toilet and to give myself something to do to pass the time. Yes, I randomly walk up and down the aisle when I’m bored on an airplane.

 

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What I’ve Been Up To

by   •   General
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

The popular complaint these days (among the like 1% of you who actually send me emails about my website) has been that I haven’t really been blogging too much about stuff I’ve actually been doing. I already put a section up on the home page that describes what I have been and will be keeping myself busy with this summer, but I decided to go into a bit more detail today.

Yesterday, I took my first exam at my community college for my psychology class. It was probably one of the easiest psychology exams I’ve ever taken. I’m used to taking impossibly hard psychology exams at my regular university, then getting satisfactory scores only after all the scores are put on a curve. The exam I took yesterday was easy enough that I’m pretty confident I got a decent score without any curves or score adjustments (but then again, I don’t think there are going to be any curves anyway).

Martial arts hasn’t been too eventful since the last promotion ceremony that I already blogged about. Most classes are basically composed of me exercising and kicking until exhaustion, then repeating the next day. I’m able to kick high enough to reach everyone’s head, but that’s giving me the false illusion that I’m flexible, which I’m not – I’m only able to do that because I’m tall. I’m trying to get back to reality and work on improving my flexibility.

I still go to the family business every night (which is a laundromat, for those who don’t know already). My trips are usually composed of sitting in the office and tapping away at my laptop, getting random work done and sometimes doing my homework if I have any. Then I walk around for a bit, clean for a little while, then come home.

I haven’t been keeping up with my reading lately, but hopefully I’ll finish another book within a few days and have another “What I’m Reading” section up. I haven’t had a paralleling “What I’m Watching” section for a while now, but I generally don’t have time to sit and watch a movie for an hour or two at a time.

And finally, no, I will not reveal which standardized exam I’m studying for. If I were to reveal it, you would find out what I’m planning to do in the near future, which I don’t want because I like being shrouded in a mist of mystery.

 

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