Posts in the “news” category

How to lose 40 pounds in eight weeks

I've created a new diet that helps you lose 40 pounds in eight weeks. It's very simple, only two steps. Step 1: Get gallstones to develop in your gallbladder. They help create a lot of pain and problems in your digestive system, including liver, pancreas, and more. Step 2: Quit eating. Not eating gets rid of most of the pain, and amazingly, is preferable to eating.

2006 Toyota RAV4 throttle lag, hesitation, stalls, acceleration problem

Like a lot of other people, I've had a problem with my 2006 Toyota RAV4 which can best be described as a throttle lag, hesitation, low power, acceleration, or stalling problem. In short, you press on the gas, and nothing happens, and in fact, the car seems to lose power or "bog down."

A second problem that may be related is that when I turn left or right through a large intersection, the RAV4 has the same lag/hesitation/stall/low-power problem.

Cato - A database CRUD assistant

I'm getting closer to releasing my "programming language independent" CRUD generator application. I'm now calling it Cato. My previous code names for it were Db2App and SideKick, but when I thought about the name SideKick, I couldn't help but think about Inspector Clousseau's trusty sidekick Cato Fong, and thus the application name was born. :)

1964 Alaska earthquake facts

Yikes, with all the earthquakes we've had in Alaska this year I thought I'd start doing some research on the big one -- the 1964 Alaska earthquake. Here's a link to 1964 Alaska earthquake facts I've uncovered on my One Man's Alaska website.

2011 Update: Late February, 2011, and the earthquakes have started again in this part of Alaska. Yesterday there was a small earthquake near Wasilla and Palmer, and this morning there was an earthquake in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Terrific 'Freemium' business model stats from MailChimp.com

As I was working with MailChimp this weekend, I stumbled across a blog article they shared about the success of their new Freemium business model approach. They took the "freemium" route a little more than a year ago, and their numbers look like this:

The story of how I sold my business

I want to apologize to a few people who have written lately that I haven't been able to take the time to help. I'm trying to get my new book/website online, and it's taking a lot of time. The website is a story I've titled "How I Sold My Business", and I was fortunate to be able to get the domain name HowISoldMyBusiness.com.

A Google News funny

Every once in a while technology leads to something pretty funny. For me today it was the Google News page, showing a story about a California mayor being arrested after a "wild-ride purse snatching." The funny thing was that Google News had the story under the category "Data Storage", which I can only assume was a reference to the storage capabilities of the woman's purse. Here's a partial snapshot of the Google News page:

The Murkowski write-in campaign

In my other life (living in Alaska), I'm wondering if 84% of Alaska write-in voters can spell "Murkowski" right? In my Alaska Murkowski write-in story, I calculate that with the current vote totals, Lisa Murkowski will need a little less than 84% of voters to spell her name correctly to avoid any sort of legal challenge by Joe Miller.

CodeMee.com - A socially-tagged source code search engine

This announcement is a little premature, but ... for at least ten years I've thought about creating a search engine to make it easier to find source code examples, and while Google and thousands of writers have pretty much eliminated the need for such a search engine, I decided to create one anyway. The approach I'm working on is to create a source code search engine that is driven by "tags", in much the same way that del.icio.us and other tag concepts work.

The network is the computer - The Chrome OS mantra?

After I posted on Twitter that the Google Chrome OS reminded me of the Tektronix X-Terminals we used at NASA around 1990, a friend tweeted the reply, "The network is the computer."

If you know anything about Unix history, you know "The network is the computer" was the slogan of Sun (nee Sun Microsystems) for many years. I remember reading an article one time where Sun executive said something like, "We don't really know what it means, but we like it", in regards to this slogan.

Wasilla, Alaska web design, website hosting, and computer programming

With 2011 barreling around the corner, I've been busy putting things together to start a new web design, web hosting, and computer programming consulting business here in Alaska.

While my current website is as ugly as it gets, here's a link to my "coming soon" Mat-Su Valley Programming website. As you can tell, I've been giving myself a few minutes every night to get the website set up, as I have plenty more important things to do at the moment.

Free Rubik's Mirror Block Cube w/ some ThinkGeek orders

A brief commercial interruption that you might actually like: ThinkGeek is having a clearance sale, including giving away a free Rubik's Mirror Block Cube with a $40 purchase. Here's a collection of clearance sale ads they just sent me. Happy geeky shopping.

Alaska lunar eclipse photos

Just a quick note that if you're interested in seeing photos of last night's lunar eclipse from Wasilla, Alaska, I just posted these Alaska lunar eclipse photos. My camera gear isn't great yet (a very good Pentax K-x, but no good lenses) but the large 4.4 MB image shows how clear the sky was here last night, as you can clearly see not only the orange-red moon, but many stars in the background as well.

Seward, Alaska lodging information

Summary: A quick look at Seward, Alaska lodging information, including resources on my One Man's Alaska website, and other Seward, Alaska lodging resources.

Geek Valentine's Day gifts

Geek Valentine's Day Gifts: I just received an email from Think Geek regarding their geek Valentine's Day gifts for 2011, and I have to say, some of them are really excellent. I've picked out just a handful of them (plus one from a French chocolate supplier), and I'll share them in order from my least-favorite to most-favorite. Click on any picture to see the full page at the Think Geek website.

Geek Valentine's Day gift: LED Flashing Heart

While I won't be giving this first product away as a Valentine's Day geek gift idea, it looks pretty clever:

Valentines Day geek gifts ideas - LED heart

The old directory has been removed

Sorry for the inconvenience, but the old devdaily.com "directory", formerly available as URLs like these:

/Dir/...

has been removed. With terrific search engines like Google, there wasn't much need for the directory any more.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience. If I can help you find what you're looking for, just send me an email.

Thanks,
Alvin Alexander
devdaily.com