Driven to the edge

If you drive as much as I do, you run into a lot of maniacs (come to think of it, the same thing applies to the web). The police tend to be less than helpful unless you've got tangible evidence. Actually, even when I've had evidence they have usually been useless.

A long time ago I came up with the idea of a web site where visitors could enter the license plates of dangerous drivers, and tell their stories. Looks like someone else had the same idea, and did a nice job with it: AboveAverageDriver.com. Thanks, Dan, it's a pretty cool link.

Below is my driving encounter of the day.

Black Acura (6880VC) Massachusetts
His sporty black late-model Acura gleamed as it raced up Rt. 1. "Look at me!" he thought, "I'm an important businessman!"

Expertly he changed lanes again and again, weaving in and out past those who dared get in his way. One manicured hand gripped the steering wheel while the other held his gleaming black yet sporty cell phone up next to his stylish gray coif. It was an oh-so-important phone call.

So important, in fact, that only an unreasonable monster could expect him to do something as low-class as signalling any of his lane changes. So he didn't.

Last seen heading north on Rt. 1 at 7:22 AM. Here's hoping he met a fiery and not-too-quick end.

Driven to the edge

If you drive as much as I do, you run into a lot of maniacs (come to think of it, the same thing applies to the web). The police tend to be less than helpful unless you've got tangible evidence. Actually, even when I've had evidence they have usually been useless.

A long time ago I came up with the idea of a web site where visitors could enter the license plates of dangerous drivers, and tell their stories. Looks like someone else had the same idea, and did a nice job with it: AboveAverageDriver.com. Thanks, Dan, it's a pretty cool link.

Below is my driving encounter of the day.

Black Acura (6880VC) Massachusetts
His sporty black late-model Acura gleamed as it raced up Rt. 1. "Look at me!" he thought, "I'm an important businessman!"

Expertly he changed lanes again and again, weaving in and out past those who dared get in his way. One manicured hand gripped the steering wheel while the other held his gleaming black yet sporty cell phone up next to his stylish gray coif. It was an oh-so-important phone call.

So important, in fact, that only an unreasonable monster could expect him to do something as low-class as signalling any of his lane changes. So he didn't.

Last seen heading north on Rt. 1 at 7:22 AM. Here's hoping he met a fiery and not-too-quick end.

Short, not sweet

The virus is back. McAfee sucks. That is all.

Short, not sweet

The virus is back. McAfee sucks. That is all.

File Insecurity

Possibly I'm the only person in the world who will find this amusing, but that's okay.

Part of what I do involves helping people out with all sorts of odd computer issues. There's one issue that has come up a few times; somewhere along the way I came up with a pretty amusing workaround.

It's a matter of file security. At times I need to get a copy of some of the Adobe Acrobat files on our intranet. Problem: the files have been heavily secured. Copying is not allowed, saving is not allowed, so there's no way to get a copy of the file - right? All secure.

Well, of course, not really. One thing that could be done is to view the PDF and take snapshots of each section with PrintScrn, assembling them into a single JPG with a program like Paint Shop Pro; but that's not really efficient. It takes time (quite a bit of time for large documents), and you lose the text search/recognition option of a PDF. You lose the easy scalability, too.

So...I open the PDF in question and print it. To Acrobat Distiller, or the PDFwriter. Result: a perfect PDF copy, missing only the index (if any) and file properties (which are easily replaced, if they're needed at all).

I don't know why that amuses me...I guess because it shows how useless the security settings are. Everyone on the intranet has the full Acrobat installation, so every one of them could do the exact same thing.

File Insecurity

Possibly I'm the only person in the world who will find this amusing, but that's okay.

Part of what I do involves helping people out with all sorts of odd computer issues. There's one issue that has come up a few times; somewhere along the way I came up with a pretty amusing workaround.

It's a matter of file security. At times I need to get a copy of some of the Adobe Acrobat files on our intranet. Problem: the files have been heavily secured. Copying is not allowed, saving is not allowed, so there's no way to get a copy of the file - right? All secure.

Well, of course, not really. One thing that could be done is to view the PDF and take snapshots of each section with PrintScrn, assembling them into a single JPG with a program like Paint Shop Pro; but that's not really efficient. It takes time (quite a bit of time for large documents), and you lose the text search/recognition option of a PDF. You lose the easy scalability, too.

So...I open the PDF in question and print it. To Acrobat Distiller, or the PDFwriter. Result: a perfect PDF copy, missing only the index (if any) and file properties (which are easily replaced, if they're needed at all).

I don't know why that amuses me...I guess because it shows how useless the security settings are. Everyone on the intranet has the full Acrobat installation, so every one of them could do the exact same thing.