I posted earlier this month about the problems of having too much data going at me at once, and literally thought “I feel like I’m drinking kool-aid” from a fire hose.

There are a lot of information sources on the web. I’m sure you’ve figured that part out by now. Blogs like Lifehacker and BoingBoing are extremely prolific, to the tune of about 20 articles daily. However, there are less prolific blogs, like Self-Made Minds, that put out rather useful content that I’d really regret missing.

Unfortunately, value in content is extremely subjective. Literally, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Some blogs are going to put out posts that you’d hate yourself, in hindsight, for missing; yet there are blogs out there that you could really care less if you missed a week of articles.

Efficient & Lazy Strategy:

The best way I found to do this is to use two major categories for every single blog I read: Junk and Value. I ended up re-categorizing all 86 (and growing) of my RSS feeds into the two categories. Interestingly enough, the Value category only has 24 feeds in it, and they are definitely not the prolific ones. Since I use Google Reader, I set it up to load the Value category by default when I open my RSS reader.

Result:

When I open my RSS reader for my fix of feeds now, I usually look at the text of the 10 or so truly valuable posts. If I have another fifteen minutes to kill, I might occasionally open the Junk folder and scroll through the titles of the 100+ articles, open one or two, and star the ones I want to read later when I’ve got the time to dive into a pile of articles.

In a nutshell, I get the maximum return on my time after the 30 minute investment in categorizing my feeds in a way that is extremely functional.

So after watching the latest TiVo-ing of The Daily Show, I’m both surprised and annoyed to find that Jon Stewart, while still being current, doesn’t have anything new at all, and really hasn’t had anything particularly groundbreaking since, oh… seven years ago when we didn’t elect Bush. Remember the Bush vs Gore debates, the “fuzzy arithmetic” retort to practically every statement Gore issued involving numbers, the fact that we didn’t elect Bush in the first place? I do, and I was 14 at the time. New year, different bullshit.

Yes, it is really sad that it would have been better off taking a public speaking class than 99% of what he actually did, but it is worth that people have this annoying tendency to forget Bush’s greater offense–being a slimy bastard.

Our Viacom-owned news organizations are stuck with mocking Bush’s inability to use his native language while we have a president who is guilty of at least:

• Authorization of a war of aggression without any real premise
• Authorization of the use of torture and abuse in violation of the international humanitarian and human rights law and domestic constitutional and statuary laws.
• Authorization of the transfer of persons held in U.S. custody to foreign countries where torture is known to be practiced.
• Knowing failure to adequately maintain and upgrade the levees directly contributed to the foreseeable loss of life and suffering of many people when Hurricane Katrina struck.
• Distortion of sound science and attempts to suppress medical research studies in HIV prevention when it conflicts with the ideology of the Christian Right.
• Re-instation of the “gag-rule” policy which restricts foreign organizations that receive US funds from using their own, non-U.S., funds to provide legal abortion services or even provide accurate medical counseling or referrals regarding abortion.
• Imposition of Abstinence-Only HIV Prevention Programs: The Bush administration is using its political influence, aid, and funding in the sphere of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment to advance policies and programs that worsen the AIDS pandemic.
• Use of military forces to seize and detain indefinitely without charges U.S. citizens, denying them the right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts.
• Insertion of secret clause in Terrorist Tribunal Act to pardon himself from war crimes

…and many more!

This, perhaps, is why my boyfriend is catching the next plane to Germany right after he wins the lottery.

No, I will probably never buy a Sony Bravia, but their commercials still rock the house.

This is the new one:

Wait… didn’t Apple use that song when they were introducing the tie-dyed CRT iMac?

So after uploading a bunch of files as an automated offsite backup in SyncBack from my pc, I exceeded the storage quota of the account this blog sits on by about 483%, causing the WP-Cache to crash whenever anybody tried to load a page.

Anyway, it’s fixed now. Sorry!

Hah! So it seems that the “shove all your clothes in at once and pray for the best” method really isn’t the way to go. In fact, it’s better to follow the directions at Finance Is Personal.

Here’s one for you college kids:

The Right Temperature for the Right Clothes – Many people just throw all of their laundry in and set it to warm. This will cause your whites to not get as clean as they could and your colors to fade. Sort your clothes out into whites and darks; wash the darker clothes on cold, and your lighter clothes on warm.

Have a great Labor Daybor Weekend!

I tend to move around a lot, and one of my essential software picks is LogMeIn’s Hamachi.

What It Does It Do?

Hamachi works to provide you a virtual private network. You can have   an unlimited number of computers on it, and you can allow each pc on the network to connect via encryption, so it’s great to use if you’re on your laptop at a wireless hotspot. You can share any files over windows filesharing, access shared music via iTunes, collaborate with MS OneNote 2007, send encrypted messages with Hamachi’s built-in messaging protocol, access web servers on connected machines, and more!

In a nutshell, Hamachi allows you to do remotely anything you could do with a PC or server you might otherwise be sitting next to.

Precaution: Hamachi runs as an executable under Windows, and not as a service. Hamachi will only run if the user on any machine you are attempting to access is logged on.

How Much Does It Cost?

Hamachi is Free for a base user license, which works fine for me, and will likely work for you.

Does It Work On Anything Other Than Windows?

Yes! Console versions are available for both Mac OS X and Linux.

So I spent most of today trying to sort out Windows File Sharing over a  cluster of Vista and XP machines using Hamachi. I could access all files and folders, except I had no access to any computer from the Laptop. The weird part to that is that I could access the laptop’s files from all other machines.

After playing with my firewall, flushing my DNS settings and re-registering them, and tweaking my registry, I came to a great and simple (not to mention the first working) solution.

1. Go to Start Menu >> Control Panel >> Network & Sharing Center >> Manage Network Connections
2. Right-click and select “Properties” for your network connection du jour.
3. Select “Internet Protocol Version 4″ and press the “Properties” button.
4. Press the “Advanced” button in the box that appears.
5. Click the WINS tab and select the radio button marked “Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP”
6. Press “Ok”, “Ok”, and “Close”
7. Repeat steps 2-6 for your virtual Hamachi adapter, in the event you have one.
8. Stop swearing already. Jeesh!

Technorati Tags: windows file sharing, file sharing, troubleshooting, vista, NetBIOS, Hamachi

So Apple’s new keyboards are rather nice.  I have a few requests before I go and buy one, though.

1. Make a wireless version that has the arrow, delete, page up & down keys in full size
2. Make it work with my Vista box
3. Package a more-ergonomic version of the mighty mouse with it.

Interact at UStream.tv.

As you can see, I’m surviving. I’ve got a cup of tea, somem M&Ms, and the latest episode of The Honorable Ninja Farm. I’m good for… the next five minutes.