Red Five's Profile

I agree with the Evernote comments. Something that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that you can encrypt portions of the text of a note in EN, which will help protect things like SSNs and PINs. I also use KeePassDroid on my phone and tablet, and KeePassX on my desktop. KP is able to store and encrypt lots of text-type data, though it's primarily for usernames and passwords; but you could put SSNs or PINs into the comments of a KeePass entry, perhaps with the web URL and login info for the site which provides the card or whatever.

I put my encrypted KeePass DB into my Dropbox and mark it as a favorite file in the DB app on tab/phone, so it always keeps the current version available on my devices (any changes I make to the file on any device are updated automatically to the rest). KP can use 2-factor logins, so I have a password and a keyfile. I store the keyfile on the phone and tablet in a hidden folder (not in Dropbox) in order to be able to unlock the KP database. If I lose either mobile device, I can simply generate a new password and keyfile for the database, rendering it useless on the device even when DB syncs the file.

Obviously he's misbehaving.

It also doesn't seem to factor in wind chill or direct solar thermal radiation effects. After all, 65deg feels different indoors vs outdoors on a sunny day or on a cloudy day.

And yet, given the current prices of SSDs, and the fact that they have a limit (though a high limit) to the number of write cycles per memory cell, it's useful to know how to protect and extend your multi-hundred-dollar investment.

Of course, CO detectors are sort of unnecessary if your residence has no gas service...

Merciful heavens! 6 iPads between them? I know in Star Trek, everybody could get multiple PADDs for reference and research, but aren't iPads a bit $$ for that right now?

I sure hope it doesn't fall, cuz someone will need one hell of a hazmat team to clean it up.

Sorry. Ditching the A/C for a fan won't cut it in the South. At least half the benefit of using the A/C is reduction of humidity, and a fan can't possibly perform that function.

In some regions, it's not just about keeping cool, it's also about controlling humidity. Here in the South, and especially in the Deep South, it's just as humid in the spring and early summer as it is in the late summer. Fans are just going to blow around that hot moist air, and that isn't going to help because your body's evaporative cooling (i.e. sweat) doesn't work when the humidity is too high. A/C takes the humidity out of the air, and allows your body's natural evaporative cooling system to work.

That's also why swamp coolers are badly named; swamps tend to be humid, and evaporative cooling just won't work in high humidity.

One might say, "well, just run a dehumidifier instead of that high-powered A/C." Dehumidifiers are simply air conditioners without fans or blowers. They use the refrigeration system to condense the moisture in the air, but don't have the fans to circulate the air. So you don't save much in the way of power usage. Then you add fans all over the house to circulate the air, so you might as well use the A/C.

Oh, and here's a dirty little secret: that Dyson Air Multiplier? It has a normal bladed fan in the base.

Part of the problem with the Pentium 4 architecture was that it had the longest data pipeline of any CPU at the time. Intel's development of hyperthreading split that long pipeline in half, giving the P4 the ability to run 2 separate threads per clock cycle. For all intents and purposes, this doubled the effective number of CPUs available.

This is why, when you look at Task Manager on your new 6-core i7 CPU, you see 12 "processors". The absolute pipeline in each core probably isn't any shorter than what the P4 had, but again because of hyperthreading technology, each core runs like 2.

Possibly interesting side note: a 1.8 GHz Pentium M processor in a laptop would run just as well as a P4 in the 3.2-3.4GHz range. This was because the P-M was based on the P3 CPU, which had a much shorter pipeline than the P4, and that allowed a much slower CPU to keep pace very well against the numerically-faster desktop CPU. Add in some of the multimedia enhancements first developed for the P4, and it's no wonder the P-M was still good even through the P4's last gasp, the true dual-core Pentium D.