The Price Family Home Companion

Fried Bird Anyone?

This article on newscientist.com talks about a new sculpture in Nottingham, UK that consists of a 6 ft. concave mirror.

Apprently, there is concern that the sculpture will cause physical harm and must be shielded to prevent it focusing the Sun's rays and baking passing birds.

Security Alert!

From the Microsoft Security Bulletin:

VeriSign, Inc., recently advised Microsoft that on January 30 and 31, 2001, it issued two VeriSign Class 3 code-signing digital certificates to an individual who fraudulently claimed to be a Microsoft employee. The common name assigned to both certificates is "Microsoft Corporation".

The bulletin page claims it will have a software patch out shortly.

MIR and there

The MIR space station splashed down early this morning, ending it's 15 year term of service.

Scavengers were waiting on the scene to salvage this piece of history for their own financial gain (this used to be a link to an auction on eBay for a piece of recovered MIR).

I, personally, don't have a problem with that... except that I wish I thought of it!

Just Plane Dumb

The NY Times has a story about Angel Technologies, a St. Louis company that plans to provide high- speed Internet access in an unusual way: using solar-powered, high-altitude manned aircraft built to cruise at 51,000 feet...

In addition to the expense of building or acquiring three planes for each metropolitan area, Angel's complicated plan involves using huge quantities of jet fuel, hiring two pilots for each plane and making three takeoffs and landings every day for each city where its service is available..."

This gives a whole new meaning to My ISP crashed!

You Go Girls!

The Lady Raiders have done it again. A third straight appearance in the Sweet Sixteen.

Congratulations to Marsha Sharp's club for their continued success in women's athletics.

It's nice to know there's at least one thing we can be proud of about Texas Tech.

What's in a name?

Chantell and I trekked to Fort Worth last summer for a friend's wedding. On our way home (which was then in Lubbock), we stopped at the Smokestack Restaurant west of Fort Worth on I-20. It was there we choose our first child's name.

The restaurant was great!! If you're ever driving though about lunch or dinner time, make it a point to stop there... trust me on this one... it'll be worth it.

Anyway, there was a young girl there who's name was Salem. We've liked the name ever since.

Others, yes even our own family members, have scoffed at the name Salem for a little girl. Yet, we remain undaunted. Should our first child be a girl (and if you've read Supernatural Childbirth, you'd have no reason to doubt it'll be true), we will name her Salem.

So, doing some more research, I came across Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary.

Salem is Hebrew and is another name for Jerusalem meaning complete or perfect peace. You can't beat that for a child's name.

There is scripture reference to Psalms 76, which is a great song and our new prayer over our, as yet, unborn child.

What Dreams May Come?

Occasionally, I will have or do funny stuff myself. This just happens to be one of those occasions. I'm sure that I dream a lot, but not too often do I remember those dreams.

I had a dream, that I met two of our neighbors. They were cute young girls. It seemed, in my dream, they were entirely too young to be living by themselves. They were perhaps 13 and 16.

The oldest introduced herself as something incoherent. I asked her to repeat her name, and she said Just call me F.

I never did understand her real name. So, I asked the little red-headed girl what her name was (sorry Brody, not only is she fictional... she's too young for you). The young girl's response was even more amusing than the first. Her name is Chintzy

Anyway, I thought everyone would enjoy some laughs at me expense... Especially since it doesn't happen often. ahem... alas, I digress.

Dumb, Dumb, Dumb...

Texas tech announced the dismissal of James Dickey as the head basketball coach... to make room for none other than, wait... get this... Bobby Knight.

This is the type of ludicrous, stupid, things I've come to expect from Texas Tech!

Let's go after a drunken, bitter, disturbed, unbalanced, tantrum (and chair) throwing, has-been coach and put him in a position of leadership in our dead athletic program... so that he can warp, destroy, and mold the mushy, impressionable, likewise-drunken, zero-GPA-lovin' minds of our otherwise-stellar (cough) student athletes and inspire them to new lows.

I haven't taken my diploma off of my office wall (yet), but this is the type of thing that really shames me about my alma mater.

It's a lame publicity stunt. That's why I hate even talking about it because that's exactly what they want. Anyway, I hope it fails miserably. It's not everyday the Texas Tech athletic office is cleaning egg off their face... oh wait, yeah I guess it is just about every day. Oh well.

One Atom Transistors

Researchers in Japan are months away from creating the first transistor from a single atom!! The article on EETimes claims that the technology will likely not be used in semiconductors for another decade. Just think of it, a 10cm square cpu that has a terabit of transistors!

Electronic Pricetag Alteration

Online retailers are experiencing yet another e-rip-off: electronic price tag alteration.

This gives a whole new meaning to name your own price.