Carbonated soft drinks found to be leading cause of global warming.

Carbonated soft drinks found to be leading cause of global warming. 

The Farmington Institute of Global Studies found in a six-year study that the CO2 found in soft drinks and carbonated beverages were the leading cause of carbon dioxide that has been leading to global warming. The study in part funded by the UN Counsel for Climate Studies and the NOAA, found that the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere every year by soda dispensing machines and opening carbonated beverages such as cans and bottles led to a dramatic increase in CO2 put into the environment. Dr. Richard Kopft, the head researcher of the study, said the findings were “dramatic.” “This entire time we thought the primary contributor to CO2 and so-called “greenhouse gases” was the burning of fossil fuels,” he stated at a press conference held late Friday afternoon, “when actually a good part of the global climate warming is caused by the CO2 emitted by sodapop.”

Janis Ritoff, NOAA researcher, added “The automobile isn’t killing us,” she stated “it the soda fountain at McDonald's, Burger King, and  Kentucky Fried Chicken this whole time!  We thought they were just bad for our waistline.  We didn’t know that they were also causing the polar bears to die.” 

Dr. Sanji Krupra, renowned physician, commented on this newly discovered phenomena. “As it gets hotter,” he said “people drink more soda, causing it to get hot, causing them to drink more soda. It’s a vicious cycle.  I don't think that the soda pop industry can be held innocent in this case.  They’ve known what's occurring for years but have ignored that CO2 is causing the warming and now we are all paying for it.”

A Starbucks representative was giddy at the news, simply saying “Drink more coffee!!!”

Comcast Business loves to host spammers!!!

Yes folks, that's right...go right on over to comcast business with all your spamming needs!  You got spam you want to shovel out?  Well Comcast business network is the place for you!  Not only will they provide multiple venues  for your to shovel your crap out, they will help you change your domain and IP address when people start to block your ip address / domain.

Here's and example:  after Ed sucessfully blocked a bunch of IP addresses that Comcast was allowing spammers to use, they allowed the spammer to change the domain and IP address they were using to shovel out the same old crap!  Now they are using the 50.195.29.0/24 subnet.

Look, I know spam filtering is like playing whack-a-mole, but I expect better from a "good corporate netizen" like Comcast.  Especially one so concerned with waste of bandwidth that they throttle their own customers...

Meeting with NetApp

So during my little blow-up a few weeks back, I spoke with our representative within NetApp about the issues we were having with NetApp support.  Once all the dust had settled and we got the answers we needed and our issues resolved, he called and suggested a meeting between his team and my team so we could work some of these things out and discuss our pinch points and frustrations.

So we had the meeting at the beginning of this week and it went pretty well.  We touched on the major points of the nasty-gram CDW penned and we dismissed the points as a combination of straw-man and ad hominem attacks with no real basis or pertinance to the issues at hand.  We also discussed that the major issues we had were not design issues but issues with the 2040 and the latest round of patches they were rolling out (8.1.1+.)  They also begrudgingly conceded, in our discussion, that FlexClone was pretty much needed for any DR solution that you wanted to test (and as anyone in IT knows a DR solution that isn't tested is NOT a DR solution at all.) One of the things that surprised me was that they actually have a document detailing how to go about opening a trouble ticket. 

Another source of trouble which bothered me but there is no real good solution for is that the timing of opening a case is very important.  From what I gathered from our discussion, their data center where they handle trouble tickets for the U.S. is on the East coast.  They change shifts at 4 PM.  They start turning over current cases for second shift at 3 PM and will not take any new cases after 2 PM.  So for a guy like me in the Midwest that means that I best open a case before 1 PM Central time, or it isn't going to be handled until the next day (or second shift if we indicate we will be available to work on it at that time .)  Only ifwe open the case on line can we indicate that we will be able to work on the case into second (or third) shift as necessary.

I don't know how much this meeting really accomplished, but it was nice to know that at least they were concerned enough to want to meet face-to-face.  And if nothing else we got a document stating the official "right way" to open a case with NetApp support.  We are still wainitng for the long-awaited white paper on how to perform DR testing.  If we can get that, then I will consider this meeting a success.

(UPDATE 9-26-2012): Got word back from NetApp...they really don't have any information or papers on how to do DR testing or any best practices.  Their advise: hire CDW to do it for you.

Arrrrgggghhhhtttttt!!!!!!!

(Update 10-15-2012)

Me, Chantix, and quitting smoking.

I started smoking when I was sixteen.  Not really sure why I did as I was kind of health conscious (or at least I thought I was) and I was on the swim team.  So smoking was never really something I saw myself doing.    And I hated the smell of tobacco too.  Despite these facts, however, somehow I did end up smoking for 24 years.

And then fifty-nine months ago I had my last cigarette.  And when I did, I did not honestly think it would be my last.  In fact I was certain of it.  I had tried to quit numerous times before only to fail miserably.  I tried Wellbutrin,  the patch, nicotine gum, and cold turkey, but nothing seemed to stick.  Oh, I would do fine for a couple of weeks, maybe even a month or two.  Bet inevitably I would smoke again.  It was almost a running gag in my office that every week I would try to quit.

So when Chantix came out I was hesitant to try it.  More than that, I was ready to quit trying to quit.  I was addicted and always would be addicted.  My wife was tired of the mood swings and crabbiness associated with me trying to quit.  I was tired of wasting the money on products to help me quit smoking.  I had resigned myself to the fact that I would never be able to quit smoking.

So perhaps it was out of that desperate place that I decided to give Chantix a shot.  I started taking it on a Monday.  For those not familiar, Chantix is taken for a full week before the actual quit date to allow the chemical to build up in the body.  During that week the smoker continues to smoke. 

The following Monday came…my quit day!  The only problem was I didn’t quit.  There was no way I could as this stupid Chantix wasn’t doing anything.  I had the same desire to smoke as I always did.  I ended up smoking like I did on any other day.  I was ready to chuck the rest of the medicine and forget about it.

I woke up the next morning and decided I would give it one more chance.  “Let’s see if I can make it to work before having a smoke,” I remember thinking as I got out of bed.  I took my shower, got dressed, went downstairs and had breakfast and drove to work.  Then when I got there, my boss was waiting for me with an issue on the mail server.  So I started looking into that.  I got that issue resolved and there was another problem that one of the users off-site was having getting connected remotely.  So I worked on that for a while.

Before I knew it, it was time for lunch.  And I hadn’t had a cigarette yet.

But this time something was different.  This time I didn’t want one.

I was thunderstruck.  I had gone almost six hours not only not craving a cigarette the whole time, I hadn’t really even though about it.

In that instant I knew that if I gave it half a chance the Chantix would work and I would be able to quit smoking.

So here I am fifty-nine months later and I still haven’t had a cigarette.  I can only remember one time during the quit process that I was even close to smoking.  I went in to the convenience store, bought a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, walked outside, opened the pack, looked at them, and threw the cigarettes and the lighter away.  I hopped back in my car and swore all the way home.

But Chantix wasn’t without its issues.  Personally I experienced very, shall we say, vivid dreams, some pretty scary dreams, lightheadedness, and a little paranoia.  Knowing these were common side-effects helped greatly in dealing with them. 

The worst for me came when it was time to quit taking the Chantix, however.  Those scary nightmares I had while taking the Chantix became some pretty scary thoughts during my waking hours when I stopped taking it.  I read up on it (on the internet) and some people recommended stepping down the dosage over a week or two.  I consulted with my doctor and he concurred.  Stepping down the dosage helped significantly.

I’m still not certain if it was the desperation of a perceived last chance to quit or the effectiveness of the Chantix medication or a combination of both, but I am pleased to say that today I have been smoke free for 1796 days and look to continue that trend.  Chantix may not be for everyone, and I have heard a lot of complains about it, but the outcome for me was a positive experience.

5 Cool Things To Do in (and with) Evernote

Simply put, Evernote is the bomb!  There seems to be no end to what a person can do with it.  Here are the five latest things I have discovered to do with and in Evernote

 1.   Create a Journal – By creating a new note and inserting the date (as the Subject on a Mac using Shift+Command+D or Shift+Alt+D on a PC in the first line of the note) a person can quickly convert Evernote into a daily journal.

2.    Encrypt your Secrets.  In my previous post, I mentioned an issue with security and the risk involved with posting items of a confidential nature to Evernote.  Little did I know there was another level of security that I didn’t even know about.  By highlighting text in a note and right clicking the highlighted text, it allows you to encrypt the text with a password.  The password is the encryption key, so the longer and more complex it is, the better the encryption.

3.    You can add a note to Evernote via email.  Each account has an email address associated with it.  This can be found under “account info” and should end in something like @m.evernote.com.  You can use that email to send a note, picture, etc. right to Evernote.  The subject will the title of the note.  Additionally you can direct it to a pre-existing notebook by putting @notebookname in the subject line too.  And, so we don’t neglect the tags, it can also be tagged by #tagname in the subject line.  So if I wanted to put a note with the name of Macbook in my Apple notebook with a tag of Wishlist I would put the subject line as: Macbook @Apple #Wishlist

4.    Autosynch Dropbox and Evernote. If you use Dropbox as well as Evernote, you can use the folder Synch to auto-import Dropbox items into Evernote.  (Please note that currently there is no native way to do this on the Mac as the Mac Evernote client does not have a “Import Folder” command.) Here’s how I do it:

a.   In Evernote I created a notebook called “DropboxSynch”

b.   In Dropbox I created a folder called “EvernoteSynch”

c.   From within Evernote, I used the “Import Folder” and point it to the “Dropbox\EvernoteSynch” folder on the PC and direct it to import into the “DropboxSynch” notebook

Please note that deleting a note from the DropboxSych notebook in Evernote will delete the item from Dropbox as well.

5.    Send an RSS feed, Email,Tweet, etc. to Evernote.  This one requires the use of another service, ifft.com.  If you aren’t familiar with ifft.com it is a service that takes various things and does other things with them.  Sound confusing?  Well it is a bit.  But pretty simple too when you think about it.  It takes a trigger and does an action.  For example it can take a calendar event from Google Calendar and send it to Twitter.  In my case, I took an RSS feed (lets say CNN’s top stories) and send it to a note in Evernote.  The trigger is a new RSS entry on CNNs RSS feed and the action is append a note in Evernote.    The “recipe” for this can be found here https://ifttt.com/recipes/55670.  This is just an idea of what you can do with iftt.com and Evernote.  But it doesn’t stop there…you can send emails, web pages, tweets…just about anything to Evernote through iftt.com.  Give it a try.  It’s kind of fun.