Music Finder: Opening Theme from The Shift
Like many viewers of The Shift, I have been looking for the opening theme music from the show.  So far, all of my searches only turned up others who were searching for the same thing. Taking a guess that the music might be a custom composition for the show, I looked up the show on IMDb and discovered that the music for season one was done mostly by someone named Chad Itskowitz. For fans, here’s a link to a video of the

Wired!
Between work, personal commitments, and my own geeky obsessions, I keep getting distracted from updating this blog (I am interrupt driven and I have a limited call stack). Anyhow, for the past few weeks something has been bugging me and I finally did something about it over the weekend.  When we teach CERT there is a section on eliminating hazards in the home and workplace.  One of the things we emphasize is to use electrical outlets and power strips safely and to eliminate the “electrical octopus” which is so familiar to many of us.  Every time I mentioned that I kind of felt bad about it because I knew that I was violating the rule myself. 

A Plea On Naming
Please, people, stop naming your girls Aubrey.  As noted in the above linked Wikipedia entry, it’s a traditionally male name that, unfortunately, is also used for girls in the United States.  Of Teutonic origin, “Aubrey” means “Fair Ruler of the Little People”, or “King of the Elves” [1]. The name Alberich is a more common Germanic variant, with the syllable ‘Alb’ translating as “Elf” and ‘Ric’ representing “power”. In the twelfth century, a Christian saint and abbot named St. Aubrey founded the

Meditations On The Ways In Which XM Radio “Customer Service” Doth Suck
I received an email last night from XM Radio reminding me that the credit card I’m using with them is expiring.  This also reminded me that I needed to cancel the second radio on my account, since I’d taken that radio out of my home entertainment center a while back and had forgotten about it (and with automatic payments every quarter, it was easy for it to get lost in the noise). Since I wanted to do two things, I decided to give their phone service a try, hoping against hope that it would be better than the last time I tried to use it.  When I called I got one of those obnoxious voice systems that expects you to talk to it.  I

Sneaky and Underhanded
I received a replacement for my old, worn-out, Chase debit card in the mail today.  They issue them for three year periods and the old one had been swiped so many times that it was fraying on the edges and the numbers were nearly unreadable. Anyhow, the first thing that annoyed me was when I called the number to activate the card.  Their system took a total of three minutes to “activate” the card, of which 2.5 minutes was devoted to trying to sell me their identity theft protection (and you were not allowed to ignore the offer, as you had to select ‘2’ on the phone to get past it).  But I discovered the really sneaky and underhanded