David J. Sokol

Jan 23

Science is a verb now!

Science is a verb now!

Dec 30

Year End Statistics Roundup

This year was pretty awesome. It was my first full year as a real employee, I started contributing to my 401k, and for a brief period, I had my credit cards entirely paid off. I had a girlfriend, I started taking better care of myself, and I now have a semi-decorated apartment. Downsides: my car drastically declined in value, pushing my net worth down 15% of year end of 2008. Lets take a look at the numbers:

2009 (Numerically)

Overall, I think I did pretty well. For this year, I would give myself an awesomeness of:

73.0551458% Average (C)

This is score is composed of:

Plans for 2010

These statistics, of course, only serve as a baseline. For the next year, I have different goals and different aspirations, and my awesomeness will be computed based on the following factors:

Using these weight factors, I hope to bring my awesomeness to around 80-85%. I’m not going to aim for the top just yet, I just want to be better than average.

Happy New Year.

Dec 11

I Crack Me Up

Try
  frm.Tag = lt
  frm.RefreshCharts(lt)
Catch
  ' do nothing; this operation was just a gesture of kindness anyways.
End Try

Nov 11

Concerning the Lexus LTA

Nov 02

“I Drive a Dodge Stratus!”

I love my car. The engine warning labels are written in Japanese. It is incredibly well engineered. It gets good miles per gallon. It has a keyless RFID system. It can determine its own location globally to within ten feet. It has power windows and can get radio signals from fucking space.

Daylight savings time, however, escapes its grasp.

Oct 29

Twitter Lists: Ready for Abuse

Oct 27

Cooking

Upsides of Cooking Sausage & Maceroni and Cheese with Same Lid:

Downsides:

Oct 26

This Showcases My Conversation Skills

Oct 16

An Excellent Rebuttal of Paul Graham

I saw this a few years ago, but I’m re-reading it because it’s good. Also Paul Graham is kinda meh. It was written in response to Hackers and Painters, which was decent at best. A sample, from dabblers and blowhards:

The whole genre reminds me of the the wooly business books one comes across at airports (“Management secrets of Gengis Khan”, the “Lexus and the Olive Tree”) that milk a bad analogy for two hundred pages to arrive at the conclusion that people just like the author are pretty great.
Lines like that make a great post.

Oct 11

Fixing Rocketfish Bluetooth Keyboard on Vista/Win7 x64

When I originally upgraded to Vista and Windows 7, I could not get my Rocketfish Bluetooth keyboard to connect. This was incredibly annoying as the keyboard decently expensive (~$100) and pretty nice. I ended up reverting back to the crummiest cheapest $3 keyboard I could buy at Microcenter, and it sucked. Eventually, I grew sick of it and spent today figuring out how to make my Rocketfish keyboard work. After going through the usual bluetooth device connection wizard and making it hang, I ran across this thread on technet. Buried past all of the double-posts from MSFT employees was this gem, by KAMOTEQ:

When you go to add a device, right click on the keyboard icon and click on properties. in the services tab check the box that says Drivers for keyboard, mice, etc (HID). The keyboard will install automatically.
This fixed up my keyboard super-fast and everything is wonderful. I just wanted to repost it because it’s hard to find (buried in a Technet thread) and I know other people will be looking for the fix.