http://matthewthornton.info Personal Site of Matthew Thornton Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:38:18 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Found another article where the Geek Squad is fleecing the public.  While it is a laptop motherboard, let's put this in perspective.  A new laptop will cost you 600 dollars, so the repair for a laptop should not exceed the cost of replacement.  To give you an idea, the labor ... http://matthewthornton.info/another-good-story-about-geek-squad-fleecing-people/ For those of you who are keeping track of my adventures at work dealing with getting PMS to communicate with TOUCH.  (I swear I'm not making these names up.  There's also components called COORS and BS.)  TOUCH was created around 25 years ago and has stood the test of time ... http://matthewthornton.info/unix-tip-recursively-greping-a-directory-structure/ In an article on TechCrunch today by MG Sigler, the author is, well, griping about the fact that the AT&T network is slow, that the iPhone is slow, etc, etc, etc.  He uses this issue to illustrate the genius of the AT&T contract/Apple release schedule, in that they have suckered ... http://matthewthornton.info/remember-the-big-black-phones-from-att/ I decided to take out an advance on my fun money (for the next 6 months or so + some patio furniture for Jess) and get a computer.  More specifically, the components to build a computer.  I've gotten a BS and MS in computer science and yet the one thing ... http://matthewthornton.info/my-new-computer/ There is a scourge in our society.  Most technology bloggers know about it.  They've been teased, mocked, and (occasionally) exposed for the frauds they are but in this economy I think that the best contribution that I can make is to do what I can to marginalize and eliminate this ... http://matthewthornton.info/my-war-against-the-wrong-kind-of-geeks/ I thought it'd be a good time to check in on my New Year's guidelines.Lose 15-20 pounds:  Well, good news.  I'm down 5 pounds so far.  Got a somewhat late start in changing diet/workout habits but in only about 2 1/2 weeks, I'm down roughly 5 pounds.  Bad news:  I ... http://matthewthornton.info/checking-in-on-my-guidelines/ Well, I finally managed to take some time and do some extra programming on my own time.  The fruits of my labor can be found here.  I wanted to put the Google app engine through its paces and so I played around with creating a form similar to the one ... http://matthewthornton.info/my-web-project-ver-1/ I think most of my close friends would agree that this title is somewhat humorous, since most of the time I do whatever I can do to belittle environmentalists, greens, or whatever you want to call them.  While I was at work today, they were having an Earth Day presentation ... http://matthewthornton.info/happy-earth-day/ Well...sighs...it finally happened.  One of Oprah's researchers told her about Twitter and how it's kind of a neat idea.  The one consolation that I have is that she's actually late on this one in that everyone else is in on this before she was.The second thing is #AmazonFail.  For those ... http://matthewthornton.info/two-big-things-for-twitter-this-week-not-counting-the-virus-last-weekend/ I'm strongly contemplating getting a Kindle.  I have started reading a lot of books online and I have come to really like it.  Even though I enjoy reading a regular book, I always have a psychological block because I always see how much I have left to read.  With an ... http://matthewthornton.info/e-books-vs-p-books/