www.itowler.com - Ian's Home on the web

I was just checking in on Facebook this morning and saw that A friend has posted a link to a Huffington Post Article that Puts Miami 3rd in their list of the preppiest Schools in the Country.  The article states:

Once upon a time, the prep was a variation of a traditionalist, East Coast-born, equestrian-riding, upper class WASP that attended a northeastern private university and boarding school before that. But the elusive noun is ever-changing, and nowadays members of this subculture are more defined by their attitudes than their creeds: If they play lacrosse, wear boat shoes, and bring a date to a football game, they're preppy. The attachment to traditional "old school" beliefs and attitudes isn't necessarily there, just an outfit that makes 'em look like their parents own several yachts and a place on the Vineyard. We're ringing in an age of the "New Prep."

Despite this distinction (One that I am not necessarily proud of) Miami University was and continues to be a great University.  The Article did enlighten me about the fact that Miami is the 10th oldest Public school in the United States, and the 2nd Oldest in Ohio.  

While Miami University may be labeled as one of the preppiest schools in the country, at least its not being labeled as one of the best schools to party at.

The last two evenings I have been watching Jeopardy in particular to see IBM's new supercomputer dubbed Watson.  The 3 night event pitted 2 of the all time greatest human Jeopardy players against IBM's new supercomputer, Watson.  The 3 night event, that honestly looked kind of like a paid advertising event for IBM, was interesting to watch.  As you might expect Watson beat both human players with ease.  While watching I found it interesting to see which questions Watson answered incorrectly, and which ones he missed altogether.

The other day I found another feature of Google Maps.  You can Use Google Maps to find Latitude and Longitude (Lat / Long) of a point, and its pretty easy.  This is a great feature that can be used to add Lat / Long information to your gedcom file.  The software that I use (PGV) has a Google Maps module built into it, so this feature is not as important to me, but other may find it interesting.

About 18 months ago I got a great little laptop that has seen pretty heavy use.  Its an Acer Aspire 3680.  The laptop is small, and light, and goes on the road with me all the time.  I take it to genealogy research libraries, SAR meetings, when I travel for work, vacation, etc.  The laptop "roams" the house as well, and can be found in any room depending on the day.  Because the laptop gets lots of action, it was bound for an accident.  Well the first big accident happened and almost sent the laptop to the graveyard (or recycling stack). 

The computer was on the coffee table, with the power cord plugged into, and hanging down.  Someone (not sure who) stepped on the power cord,j erking it down, and breaking the power jack (DC Jack) on the inside of the laptop (see the picture to the left).  The broken power jack caused the laptop to not work.  The laptop is out of warranty, and Acer wanted $3.00 a min to talk to me on the phone.  So I searched the internet and found the service manual and figured out that I needed to replace the DC power board.

For the first time in 6 years we have a Christmas tree, and it's a real one at that.  The last 2 years or so we have done a small fake tree that was only 3 feet high or so, and it usually got relegated to a corner in section of the house not really used.  This year we decided to actually get a real tree, and it is actually located in a prominent place, the living room. 

Since this is our first real tree that we have had to acquire a few things such as a tree stand and lights.  Instead of the normal lights we choose to purchase some LED lights.  I think that they look great, and they use less energy than the mini-lights, and even less energy than the standard bulbs of old.  LED stands for Light emitting diode. 

A standard light bulb produces light by passing a current through a filament, the filament gets excited and heats up and glows, producing heat and light.  LED's produce light in a different manner, electroluminescence. The process that LED's use to generate light uses far less energy, and they should last at least 5 times longer than a standard bulb.

We are using 4 strands of LED lights and all four strands should use less energy together than a single strand of mini-lights, which is cool.  I did some looking around on the internet, and it seems that the LED light strands are pretty expensive.  We found a great deal on the light strands at Sam's Club and Wal-mart.  

When I was younger I remember learning a poem that talked about the Evils of “Good Enough”. I had not seen the poem in a long time, and I am not even sure what made me think about it, but it got stuck in my head so I had to find it. With a little searching on Google, (you have to love google, you can find anything with google.) I came across the poem. It was shorter than I remembered, but it still carries the same message. I am posting it in hopes that other will find it useful.