Viruses are often spread by something inserted into the orifices of unprotected hosts, although some are virulent / evolved enough to get around basic protection as well. In Thailand, USB drives spread nasties faster than digital treatment can be applied, so after several years of taking care of many computers, I've decided that vaccination is the best option*.

This consists of planting a hidden and practically undeletable AUTORUN.INF file in the root of a removable drive.

I use Panda USB to vaccinate. Why? Because pandas are gay, and so are viruses.

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*Like all vacs, you run a chance of getting sick if you have a reaction. Specifically, you could lose all the data on your NTSF-formatted drive in a worst case scenario (most "handy" drives are formatted FAT32). My advice is not to use this feature until it comes out of beta.

• DIY Dutch Wife (thx sushiK)
• Commodore Perry's PowerPoint Proposal (via Adamu on Buzz)

The entire N.W.A. album edited down into just the explicit content: LINK.

Damn, that shit was dope.

The boy likes drawing and has talent (that's from Nam; I suck at it.)

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Previous colors of Max:
sepia Max appreciates your devotion
yellow max
purple max
green max
monokuro max
red red max
orange max
sepia max
coppermine max
blue max

Please ignore this Google test.

Meaningless link to Buzz here: http://www.google.com/buzz/113489996327075874661/CBY8Midpoy2/Please-ignore-Google-test-mike-siwek-lawyer-mi

mike siwek lawyer mi x 1,000,000

It's not rainy season, the big monkey in the sky has no reason to piss on us, and it's doubtful that I triggered the clouds with Yo Gabba Gabba dancing earlier today.

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*It rained last week, too, and it even got cool for a few days, which was really nice, but also weird for this time of year. Weird is good sometimes.

(via)

This is how many we go through in one day.

Here's a couple of outstanding photo links from this week:

Worker Safety In Chinese Factories (lost-wax casting photo series)
This is just awesome photography.
(via Mark on Buzz)

Photographer Dale Kobetich survives a dramatic shark encounter
(via Jason K on FB)
This is the shark that the Old Man calls Dentuso. I hate sharks. I don't wish them all dead; I just wish they didn't have teeth (so we could have headlines like, "Surfer Furiously Gummed in GW Attack"). Seriously, this is the most chilling photo series I've seen in a long time.

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A great passage from OMATS:

The shark was not an accident. He had come up from deep down in the water as the dark cloud of blood had settled and dispersed in the mile deep sea He had come up so fast and absolutely without caution that he broke the surface of the blue water and was in the sun. Then he fell back into the sea and picked up the scent and started swimming on the course the skiff and the fish had taken.
Sometimes he lost the scent. But he would pick it up again, or have just a trace of it, and he swam fast and hard on the course. He was a very big Mako shark, built to swim as fast as the fastest fish in the sea and everything about him was beautiful except his jaws. His back was as blue as a sword fish's and his belly was silver and his hide was smooth and handsome. He was built as a swordfish except for his huge jaws Which were tight shut now as he swam fast, just under the surface with his high dorsal fin knifing through the water without wavering. Inside the closed double lip of his jaws all of his eight rows of teeth were slanted inwards. They were not the ordinary pyramid-shaped teeth of most sharks. They were shaped like a man's fingers when they are crisped like claws. They were nearly as long as the fingers of the old man and they had razor-sharp cutting edges on both sides. This was a fish built to feed on all the fishes in the sea, that were so fast and strong and well armed that they had no other enemy. Now he speeded up as he smelled the fresher scent and his blue dorsal fin cut the water.
When the old man saw him coming be knew that this was a shark that had no fear at all and would do exactly what he wished. He prepared the harpoon and made the rope fast while he watched the shark come on. The rope was short as it lacked what he had cut away to lash the fish.
The old man's head was clear and good now and he was full of resolution, but he had little hope. It was too good to last, he thought. He took one look at the great fish as he watched the shark close in. It might as well have been a dream, he thought. I cannot keep him from hitting me but maybe I can get him. Dentuso, he thought. Bad luck to your mother.

Damn, Papa sure could write when he wasn't being an asshole..

(except for a few stragglers who will come begging for forgiveness sometime)

HELL YEAH!

Now, on to marking and grading!

It never lies flat.

...so here's a nice acoustic arrangement of Sweet Child o' Mine done by a droopy Russian:

This Starbuck side story is just killing it for me; Jack needs to bust a cap in all their asses. Other than that, I'm so happy Jack hasn't cried even once this season.

His own invention:

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This photo shows a bit more about what's going on:

Enclose in asterisks for bold: *sample text* --> sample text
Enclose in hyphens for strikethrough: -sample text- --> sample text
Enclose in underscores for italics: _sample text_ --> sample text

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Previous entries on Google Buzz:
Predictions about Google Buzz
Google Acquires Aardvark - Will it Be Integrated into Buzz?

The artist's explanation:

"This is the final piece for my AS art course, a flipbook made entirely out of biro pens. It's something like 2100 pages long, and about 50 jotter books. I'd say I worked on and off it for roughly 3 weeks.

Song is French Cancan by Jaques Offenbach."

Giant Robot Magazine Needs You (like Mars Needs Women)

Aardvark is a free service I've been using for a while now that lets you ask questions and finds people who can answer them... I've used it to ask questions about food, cars, soldering, and baby issues. It's integrated into Google Chat and Gmail, so I'm used to using it with Google products... and they've been in the spotlight at recent tech conferences, so it only make sense that Google has acquired them.

I will update my prior post regarding Buzz predictions, as I believe Aardvark functionality will be merged with Buzz eventually.

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UPDATE: Aardvark is listed as an application in Google Labs but is currently only a static page with a link to the Aardvark website.

(most of these have already been posted in my Buzz feed)

• Google Buzz will directly or indirectly help cause the downfall of Facebook and maybe Twitter as well
• Google Wave functionality will be integrated into Buzz; Wave may eventually cease to exist
• Those worried about the privacy issues regarding people being able to see who you communicate with the most will finally realize that e-mail and chat perhaps aren't the best way to go about having an affair anyway - just ask any senator

UPDATES:

• Aardvark functionality will be merged with Buzz eventually, even if only as a default category,filter in Gmail at first (with a cute little aardvark icon located under the ambiguous one for Buzz).


• Buzz needs permalinks for entries and comments, especially for shared ones Update: Done.


• Come to think of it, Google Chat needs to be integrated into this big mess as well. Update: There is now a Reply by Chat link under every Buzz post and comment made by a user with whom you're allowed to chat... Was it always there? I thought I looked for one.


• Depending on how well this integration is carried out, Google will either have created an indispensable all-powerful app, or a huge mess (that will probably still be indispensable, just more of a pain in the ass). It's kind of like an MS Office moment for Google.


• In addition to the permalinks for every post/comment updated above, you can perform a Buzz search with the following string, by adding your search terms at the end (join multiple search terms with a plus symbol in between): https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#buzz/search/


• Anybody can comment on any Buzz marked as Public

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Related: Stop Google Buzz From Showing the World Your Contacts

Having to set buried privacy settings that should have been activated by default? This is sounding more like Facebook every day. Now all we need is mindless games in the vein of virtual crime syndicates and point & click agriculture!

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My latest Buzz:
"I'm not worried about Buzz privacy concerns because Google already pwns all of my e-mail, scheduling, and contact info anyway. I just assume that they will one day do something stupid/evil with it so I won't be as disappointed when that time comes."

Actually, they love each other - they just can't stand each other a lot of the time.

These photos are nearly a month old, but I wanted some more photos of Mina in her cute pink onesies since she's already grown out of most of them.

"8 people with 5 instruments originally from 4 Continents speaking 3 languages for 1 song."

ztrip sent me this vid and I was hooked from the first few bars of the Moloko sample. This Dumbfoundead guy has some pretty funny vids up on YouTube.

If you use last.fm, you might want to try these:

HacKey looks for patterns in the keys of your favourite songs. Apparently I like G major (18% overall).

I linked to this site once already but it's good enough to get another: Normalisr ranks your favorite artists and albums by an estimation of how long you have spent listening to them.

I only mention this because there are still a few people with blogs publishable to cosmicbuddha.com via Blogger (even though they are no longer really updated), including T, G-man, and my mom. Google is cutting you off because it costs them too much money. If you want a blog here, I'll set something else up, so let me know.

Really, that's all I have today.

I'm writing this while taking turns recording dialog for textbooks with Kylie, a recent graduate from Indiana State University currently teaching at our Language Center. I'm still pretty wasted from the past couple of days, helping with our faculty's annual International Fair.

I know I'm really behind posting new photos of the babies, but truth be told, I haven't really been taking any, either... Sometimes raising babies feels like combat, with violent spurts of intense action and getting in small batches of sleep when you can in between.

Like I said, I was pretty tired and went to sleep earlier than usual next to Max, but he woke up and threw a fit at four in the morning and woke up his sister, too, so Nam and I had to hold one each, One or both of them always need to be carried at times like this, so we both ended up shuffling around like undead in clumsy figure eights, in separate rooms so that when one went to sleep, they wouldn't be woken by the other again. Max's tantrum was around an hour long, so we ended up waking up partially and from there it always feels like you have to climb a hill all day long; sometimes a quick nap in the afternoon is a necessity, be it in the parking lot or in the office when nobody's around for a couple minutes.

On the brighter side of things, Max likes going to school now. Until ten or so days ago, parting at the nursery school gate was a big ordeal; crying baby and guilt-ridden parent. Now, however, his face lights up when he sees the school coming up, and last week he even slammed the gate shut on Nam - it's nice picking him up now as well, since he smiles after not seeing you all day and doesn't cry anymore. It's kind of a highlight of the day, now. It's easy to forget that we were contemplating pulling him from school altogether and waiting until he was older just a couple weeks ago... Your child's tears make you act drastically at times.

Mina is almost 2 months old (born Dec. 6) drinking milk at an incredible rate, weighs over 5 kilos (born at 3.5), and has GROWN OUT OF HER ONESIES. She is now wearing the biggest size onesies that Max was wearing at 6-8 months. She punched me square in the eye this morning and it hurt.

OK, it's my turn on the mic again, gotta go.