Lee.org

I’ve never owned a soldering iron with such a complete instruction manual

(local copy of WES51 Operating Instructions)

You’ll be there, won’t you?

Come celebrate NIMBY’s 5 Year Anniversary in our new 64,000 square foot location.
Who can believe we have been doing it wrong for 5 years running?

March 28th
9pm
$10 ‘donation’ to enter

The line-up:
Life Size Mouse Trap
Esmerelda Strange
Rose Harden
Wink and Yoni
Fatwater
Live art by Jordan Fillers
Art by the Museum of Unnatural Selection Brian Kenny Fresno The Therm robots Glen Meadmore Disgusting Spectacle Art by Orion Fredricks DJ Big Daddy DJ Zeljko Matt Wirth’s Popcorn Booth Art by Janine Miller …….and more

8410 Amelia Sreet, E. Oakland
info and directions can be found:
www.nimbyspace.org

Why does windows do this? This is dumb. I want to view folders in the left window and files in the right. A .zip file is a FILE for a reason. I don’t want to see the compressed files inside it unless… unless I want to see them.

Here’s how to disable this “feature” in Windows.  

Go to a command prompt and type:

regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll

You can undo this with the following command
 

regsvr32 zipfldr.dll

More on the subject

I have a DLink DSB-R100 USB Radio. It uses Gemtek drivers and such under the hood.

I’ve been frustrated because it crashes my computer with a blue screen of death (BSOD) whenever I wake the computer from Sleep mode. On another computer I used to have, it Blue-Screened at random times. That’s no good. I solved the problem on that old computer but I didn’t write down how I solved it. :-(   The radio has been sitting in my  pile-o-junk for a long time because of this.

Ed Maher wrote a driver to fix the problem :-))). Here is how to make your radio work!

1. (I’ll assume you already installed the radio) Rename your old  C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\USBRADIO.sys to something like  C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\USBRADIO.sys.original (just in case)
2. Fetch  usbradio.sys and and put it here:  C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers
3. Reboot your computer
4. Enjoy the lack of Blue Screens of Death

Just in case you need it, here are the USBRADIO.Inf and USBRADIO.sys I use.

Here is the original info on Ed Maher’s website

USB Radio Driver
The D-Link DRU-R100 USB Radio is a small USB controlled FM radio, also manufactured by GemTek as ‘Radio 21’. Unfortunately the device is no longer supported by D-Link and the driver causes a system crash (BSOD) under Windows 2000. As the device is fairly straightforward device, I was able re-write the driver using information from Linux drivers, and a Microsoft DDK sample device driver. The driver is not yet packaged, but the  usbradio.sys file is available to manually replace the one in the system32 directory. Please let me know if you are using the driver successfully or having problems.

Oh and you’ll want to get Radiator for the PC to control your radio. It works WONDERFULLY!

I own a few halogen bulb light fixtures. My favorite is this one desk lamp. It casts an excellent light  One is this desk lamp that I’ve had for  

I’ve used it most every day for 8+ hours a day for the last 8 years… something like 15 thousand hours and I’m still using the original halogen light bulb.

I’ve asked myself “Self, how can this be? These bulbs are supposed to be rated for 3,000 hours!”

The lamp has a dual power switch. The low power setting casts a slightly warmer, yellower, dimmer light than the high power setting. I like that setting much more than the high power setting. Ladyada pointed out  page 8 of this GE Lighting Technical Catalog. Simplified, it reads, “If you turn the brightness down a little, the bulb will last a whole lot longer”. So there. :-)

After much looking, I found replacements for my halogen bulbs online but of course there are so many different bulbs it can be hard to find the right replacement. I had initially bought them in a lighting store in a strip mall in Cupertino. They charged $20+ per bulb. I was so angry when I found them online for $3 per bulb that I returned the store bought ones. With shipping, I bought 3 bulbs online for the price of 1 in the store. The shipping cost more than the bulbs.

PS. No, it’s not actually a Babylon 5 lamp. I put that there, off some B5 Action Figures I bought :-)

This is an absolutely true story. This happened to me in February.

With a $20 bill clutched in my hand, I tried to enter the Muni station at Embarcadero. My money was no good.

I asked the station agent behind the glass how I could catch a train. She told me to drop $1.50 in coins into the turnstile. I thought for a moment, searching my mind’s wallet. I dug through my leather wallet and pulled out a crisp ATM yuppie food stamp. A sullen expression fell across her face. She was obviously troubled by her predicament. And I could tell she knew it wouldn’t end well.

She shook her head “No”, pointed and told me through the glass, “Go over there and press ‘H’ and you can change for a ONE dollar bill.” Go where? H? But I don’t have a… her eyes pierced me with sadness. She felt my pain. She knew.

We broke eye contact and I turned to face my task.

Ok let me just cut to the chase here. Muni has no way to make change. The BART machines she was pointing me to don’t let me make change for a $20 without me buying a BART ticket. So I ended up having to buy a $3.00 BART ticket to get change for the other machine, which could give me quarters for change.

That’s dumb.

A wonderful 15 minute movie.

Note: It is vitally important that you continue watching even after you say to yourself, “Oh, I get it. Cute.”

(via BestofYoutube  and  Youtube)

local version:

Last night we had a terrific impromptu dinner party. Corey called in the afternoon sati g he was in San Francisco with nothing going on. He brought his new girlfriend Melissa. Rick Taylor brought a chicken caserole, our neighbor Cindy brought greens from working at the farmers market. And Charlotte brought her signature pink fizzy Slow Gin Fizz.

We had an appetizer of home made lonza with fresh home made bread.

The dinner table had fresh organic greens, home made garlic bread, home made curry chicken casserole, home made lasagna with “happy cow” Marin Sun Farms ground beef, excellent “super decanted” wine, and candles. All in our tiny apartment in the city!

Oh and desert had the most terrific Earthquake Cake from San Francisco Chocolate Factory with real whipped cream, a tangelo slice and salt sprinkles! Woot!

Merriment was had by all!
I was so full I could barely move :-)

Remember Star Trek IV: The Search for Whales? Remember Scotty giving away the secret to transparent aluminum? Here’s who he gave the secret to. Surmet Engineering.

(via)

Yup, it exists.

Who knew there were so many rosary counting patents! Here’s a partial list from 5 minutes perusal…
2781591
2768787
2721398
2992495
3042302
3319599
3374949
3549464
2721398
2768787
2781591

Find them all at the USPTO (make sure to “Select years” “1790 to present”). To view the images, you’ll need to get this plugin (yes, the USPTO uses weird, nonstandard image viewing software)

And those are just the ones filed before 1976 in the class 235:123 “BALL BUTTON OR PUSH BUTTON INDICATOR”

Jeesh. And I thought it was part of your penance to have to do the counting yourself.