Archive for February, 2007

If you are wondering what your passwords are that are hidden behind ****** , I suggest you have a look at “Revalation“. It will reveal the password hidden behind. Take note that your antivirus program may throw a fit on you, but if you can manually manage the detection, you will be fine.

If you ever wanted to have a free software that would be able to handle all the different zip formats then you might want to take a look at the open source program called Universal Extractor. Universal Extractor can only be used to extract archives handling this task excellently. It supports a multitude of zip formats including the following popular ones: 7-zip archive, ace archive, arj, gzip, rar, tar and zip archives.

Next to that it can also unpack files from installation packages, it would be no problem for instance to unpack Windows Installer Package files (msi) or unpack the latest Firefox release with the Universal Extractor. It does not make that much sense to use a program like Winrar if you never pack files yourself, a tool that would extract all the archives would be more than enough.

Universal Extractor adds menu entries to the right-click men. You can choose to extract files, extract the archive in the same directory and extract the archive into a sub-directory.

• nuclear NIGHTMARES
  Twenty years after Chernobyl, the affect on its citizens is as apparent as ever.
• Dark Roasted Blend: The Glamour of Flight
  There was something in the air in the early years of commercial aviation. Perhaps more excitement, perhaps more glamorous stewardesses… in any case, it’s worth savoring once again.

Oil, no matter what the price, we use it. It is our means of going to work and back. It is our means of going to the strore, and our means of heating our homes. With crude prices (and gas prices) on the rise again, I feel the need to rant a little bit. The prices go up in the blink of an eye, and come back down a penny per day.

For example, since around sept. or oct., gas prices in my neck of the woods have been gradually coming down at a rate of a penny per day, maybe even one penny every two days. Very slow, but steady. Crude prices seemed to be dropping at a much faster rate. The lowering of prices seemed to stop at $2.19 per gallon of gas (in my area). Crude prices were still declining, but gas prices stopped….. doesn’t seem right to me. Then, in one day when the US announces that their crude supplies where lower than they thought, BAM! gas prices are back up to $2.39 per gallon. $2.39!! What the hell happened? Why did the price of gasoline jump up so quickly?

I always here news reporters say “Even though crude prices are coming down, it will be a while before you see any change at the pump”. True enough, it takes a long time for gas prices to fall back to where they should be when the price of crude is down. But man, crude takes a one day jump and IMMEDIATELY gas prices are up to match. Why is this? What happened to “it will be a while before we see a change at the pump”. Anyone have any answers / comments?

One more thing, for those of you that live outside the US and start yapping about how we have the cheapest gasoline in the world, let me remind you of something. A lot of countries now have national public healthcare…the reason your gas prices are so high is because of the large tax burden on it to fund your health care plans. Here in the US we have no such plan. Our health insurance prices are through the roof also. So, you may have a to pay a little more for gasoline to drive you to the emergency room when you have a heart attack and need surgery, but once you are there, your hospital costs will be very small (if anything at all). In the US, as soon as you walk in the hospital, the bill starts climbing….and it is hard to tell how much money you are going to owe by the time you get out of there.

Just a quick for instance, my wife had to have her gall bladder removed about 2 years ago. It was outpatient surgery. We went in at 8am, and were back home by 6pm that evening. That surgery racked up an enormous bill over $8,000. Thank goodness that surgery had no complications, or the bill would have been even worse!

So think next time you are saying that anyone here in the US should be thankful for our low gas prices, just remember that the next time you have a cold, your treatment is “free”…..but that is a rant for another day.

• FanTent » Calvin and Hobbes Snowmen in Real Life
  The Calvin and Hobbes snowmen comics were often my favorite, it’s nice to see people attempt to implement them in real life.