Once every few weeks I get a personal request for computer help or troubleshooting. And about 50% of the time, the person starts to show me the issue only to have it not appear. They then exclaim “but it wasn’t working a few minutes ago!” or “Oh wait… that’s the problem!”. I literally don’t say …
Happy 10th Anniversary to JonWestfall.Com
A little over 10 years ago, on March 24, 2004, I posted the first entry on my LiveJournal blog – what would eventually become JonWestfall.com (I actually mentioned in that post that I was trying to figure out how to show the RSS feed from my LiveJournal blog to the relatively static homepage of JonWestfall.Com). …
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Coloring as An Adult
One of my favorite smartphone photo editing effects is selective color removal. I used to love Camera360 for this, however they removed this feature a few years ago. Since then I’ve been looking for an app that will automatically select color, not one where I need to “paint” the area I want. The latest contender …
Nudging
“Nudging” refers to subtly prompting someone toward one choice or course of action. In the Choice Architecture world, it’s seen as a way to help those who need it make better decisions, while not heavy-handed-ly dictating what to do. But when does it go from helpful to annoying? 2 words: Facebook Notifications! Yes, I know …
Blogging: Does frequency count?
Whenever I start a new blog or section of this blog, I tend to post a lot for the first few days and then slowly trail off. From what I’ve seen on the Internet, this is not uncommon. I feel lucky that I haven’t gone a whole year between blog posts (like a few friends …
History
It’s been said that seldom do well behaved women make history. Extending this, rarely do well behaved cats exist in history. In other words, mischievous kitty who innocently sleeps on the bed, I’m keeping my eye on you! [phoneitin]
A New Feature: Phoning It In
Increasingly, the smartphone has become the way that we communicate with each other. And so in that vein, I’ve decided to start a new feature on my blog called phoning it in. All posts here are completely composed via my phone. What will you see here? Short, pithy thoughts, poems, jokes, commentary, and anything else …
Automate a Telnet Session with One Command
The Telnet protocol might not be the newest thing on the block, however there is still some legacy network hardware that will only accept Telnet connections and not newer more secure SSH connections. Recently I bought an APC MasterSwitch unit, that allows me to remotely power on and power off my hardware, and I ran …
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Your Geek Squad Badge Just Isn’t Worth That Much
When will Geek Squad employees (or ex-employees) learn that their badges are not worth > $100, even if… They were a deputy counter intelligence (While Double Agent badges are most common, deputy badges come up about once every 2 months) they have a low number (Unless it’s less than 100, nobody cares) I’ve seen badges …
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Sentiment on Cats Not Influenced by Student Level or Time Of Year
Because I know everyone cares deeply on this issue, I’m happy to report that in a survey of 117 students, slightly less than half (46%) believe that they are “cute and cuddly and I lub them so much” while 53% feel “They’re antisocial and psychotic and I don’t trust them at all”. This difference is …
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