ripping the Planet Earth HD-DVDs; that's about 88 GB of data in total. Fun to pick up cheap "obsolete" discs with multiformat drive.

It's going to be a "configure your own barebones servers" Xmas for me. Isn't that the best kind, really? I think it is!

90% of everything is crap, including the advice you're given. But that other 10%, if you can find it, is actually quite good.

Pulling the trigger on two Lenovo ThinkServers (RD120+RS110) for me to build up at home and test out.

wow, Dick Hardt joined Microsoft? I loved his identity 2.0 preso. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000512.html

I’m pretty sure no one else has a table with a billion records in SQL server and is insane enough to have it on 1 Machine http://is.gd/bbY2

we get our Thursdays from a banana. http://tinyurl.com/29f8o7

@ahockley then the problem with WordPress is that they conflate "new version" and "security patch". Very different. http://is.gd/bb7s

Look, I love rapid new software releases, but the frequency of WordPress releases is just ridiculous.

My ultimate chickflick trifecta: Beaches, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Steel Magnolias. I cry every time. Yours? :)

My ultimate dude movie trifecta: Shoot 'Em Up, Crank, and Transporter 1. All verifiably awesome. Yours?

this is a good thing because PowerDVD produces a black screen for me when I try to play the actual Blu-Ray discs :P

(note that you have to root around in the BDMV\STREAM folder to find the file, just look for the giant one, rename it to .mkv or .avi)

AnyDVD HD Blu-Ray rips are pretty amazing; 1 hour and you end up with a single ~20 GB movie file that's playable with ffdshow anywhere.

"the algorithms can't save you when the people are stupid."

swoopo.com is pretty concentrated evil as a biz model, if you're into that sort of thing, you should take a closer look.

for you math/statistics nerds, calculate why swoopo.com is a very, very bad plan for buying crap online

"850 GB free of 1.36 TB" -- enjoying my first > 1 TB hard drive purchase. Yay bits!

server hosting -- rent vs. buy. Your thoughts? http://tinyurl.com/5m9awy

The awesome 23-click payment service of some eBay sellers makes me really appreciate Amazon's one click .. er.. "patent"

Ford Fiesta Top Gear video review! http://tinyurl.com/5gwmw4

@bluej100 that's possibly my favorite @ me twitter message, ever

rockin' the broccoli http://tinyurl.com/27z74s

wow, weird, I just downloaded a file with this ☆ character in the filename. Bizarre. ☆☆☆☆☆☆

how does information this obsessively detailed get compiled? My mind boggles. Just scroll down... http://is.gd/aV0s

"A song designed to make little children feel safe and loved was somehow going to threaten the mental state of adults" http://is.gd/aUu0

replacing the HTPC motherboard fixed my oddball Vista high DPI "won't take" problems. Go figure. Also: Best. Upgrade. Ever.

warning: bizarre and/or offensive. "Thank you for your love and support, a grieving juggalo mother & father" http://is.gd/aUeG

the HTPC motherboard is here: http://is.gd/aqOI runs HDMI / optical out at 1920x1080, p.s. woo pixels!!

podcast FAIL. bah.

You're so beautiful, you could be a part-time model (but you'd probably still have to keep your normal job) http://is.gd/aOGP

YouTube comments are always inane? Think again. http://tinyurl.com/5glgl8

I am so totally getting a pet Hippo. http://tinyurl.com/yup83n ( note, Hippos are quite dangerous http://is.gd/aMgi )

Just because I wash my hands 10 times a day doesn't mean I have OCD. I just like clean hands! BRB. Gotta wash my hands.

describing cosplay as "creepy" -- is there any other kind?

# of songs featuring Banjo in next week's Rock Band DLC: four. http://is.gd/aJhN

It's disturbing how images of cats *without* loltext seem indefinably.. off.. to me now

Google developing OS, shocking news to exactly zero people http://is.gd/aybE

$99 iPhones is a very smart move. 4 GB is fine. http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE4B72IM20081208

the most popular cat on Twitter http://twitter.com/sockington

I know you guys already know this, but for anyone that doesn't, here's why emailing passwords is bad (see 1st comments) http://is.gd/H4S

oh nice, Friendster's "forgot password" link MAILS ME MY ACTUAL PASSWORD. Why am I not surprised? lol

you guys are enablers. seriously. wtf. :)

Acer Aspire One (HDD+XP), $299 today online at Best Buy. $20 shipping + tax. So tempted, but I don't *need* it. http://is.gd/aHnV

"Also, none of the HD Flash embed sites allow blogs to embed the videos in HD, they all for now require users to visit their sites.."

online video sites HD quality comparison http://tinyurl.com/6mkcde

wow, eBay just forced me to do two factor auth by calling me and giving me a 4-digit PIN #. Wasn't able to log in until I did that.

via @betsyphd another reason the iPhone is the best smartphone ever -- the "Be like Lil' Wayne" app http://tinyurl.com/5u6k9h

i-fluid, a game so weird and wonderful, it can only be French http://www.i-fluid.com/

Netflix "watch now" does, amazingly, flirt with DVD quality on a fast connection; lack of dolby digital surround is painful, though

@jkealey for high end, that Intel SSD is hard to beat at $750. http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15931

"As a syntax, Lisp is a fail" http://tinyurl.com/55ntn2

Hello Kitty themed maternity hospital. Still waiting for our Fall Out Boy / Twilight USA version. http://tinyurl.com/5thbeb

This DOS t-shirt is 6.22 kinds of awesome http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/156339.asp

"Da Stanky Legg? Really? REALLY?! This, my Black brothas and sistas, is why we can't have nice things." comment from: http://is.gd/azbz

interior crocodile alligator http://tinyurl.com/39gvh9

pressing the dell M1330 into service as a vista media center pc. I forgot it had HDMI out which comes in very handy now -- audio, too!

ooh, that electronics burning smell is never good. Looks like the heatsink on the HTPC northbridge wasn't quite connected..

all this codec crap is just stupidly complicated. The UI for ffdshow (et al) is a trainwreck of epic proportions, which doesn't help.

Hmm, having trouble getting decent framerates from ffdshow on a 1080p blu-ray rip for some reason. Even with 2.1 -> 2.5 Ghz dual core.

oh god I am watching HD video of Hillary Duff on youtube http://is.gd/anVv (you have to click the "watch in HD" link underneath)

browser Doom (shareware ver). Requires Flash 10. http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/470460

These games are getting.. really.. realistic.. http://tinyurl.com/5m3c76

hey guys, good news! "Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2" is finally available on Blu-Ray!!

ACHTUNG! Stack Overflow featured on heise.de ! http://is.gd/amlc

I'm biting on that $99 blu-ray / HD-DVD / DVD-R drive; time to update my Netflix queue to Blu-Ray. http://is.gd/amkv

Obama's *really* for Change. He wasn't kidding. http://tinyurl.com/5hk48y

ah, insight into my DPI problem on the HTPC: when I remote into the machine, *then* the DPI settings are in effect, but only remotely!

Hopefully, one day we will all look back at this DRM madness and laugh about it the way we laugh about code wheels now.

I'm not a fan of the "change your hosts file to block ads" approach. Too much of a nasty hack.

Paul Rudd shows a little clip from his movie. http://tinyurl.com/68nqeu

I hate browsing with Chrome because so many pages have giant flashing scrolling obnoxious ads

@schwarzwald it's because programmers are awesome. Well, except for that one guy. He sucks.

mutually assured UDP destruction http://tinyurl.com/6hoe9y

It's only money.

@coder32768 duh, you're right! Obviously "Andy" is a reference to Anders! Can you add that to the so thread so I can vote you up?

you are not ready for Crimson Nails, the world's hardest EVER metalcore Christian band. http://tinyurl.com/5e92tz

I never believed the "solve my homework" crowd would actually be a factor on stackoverflow. Now I do.

@drylight LOL, I already found that one too. It's not good. @mikeakers found the real one

There was a official Microsoft C# mascot named "Andy"? does anyone have a picture of this mythical .. er.. thing?

I just noticed our new HDTV has an "about" menu with the GPL and LGPL licenses. Pretty cool!

"have you ever worked with anything.. high tech?"

people use stackoverflow.com in unusual ways I wouldn't ever have predicted http://is.gd/a6RJ

I love that the s-video mod costs almost as much as the Atari 2600 kit http://is.gd/a6rD

"hit tup two dots slashes wuh-wuh-wuh" this part slays me, every time http://tinyurl.com/3zsnk9

proposition 8, the musical http://is.gd/a1YU

I like that Twitter describes itself as "tiny" with 25 employees. Er.. not by my reckoning.

the 81.16% number is based on.. wait for it.. Google Analytics reports for stackoverflow.com

my world is 81.16% Google

cool iPhone app, Amazon using their own M. Turk service -- http://snurl.com/72pqu (via @timoreilly)

simpsons Apple parody is pretty funny, actually http://tinyurl.com/643gwa

It will run on WARP10, albeit very, very slowly. http://tinyurl.com/6487ex

There's a secret geek A-Team? Nobody told me! I get to be Hannibal. http://tinyurl.com/6qbxoo

now here's a real skill: carrying 22 bricks on your head. http://tinyurl.com/5u3ljd

urgh, so I'm stuck running the fancy new 1920x1080 display at 1280x720 because I can't get DPI settings to work in Vista, at all.

video drivers are latest; vista says the dpi is changed in the DPI dialog but nothing is in fact different after rebooting.

I really need an answer on my Vista not respecting the DPI setting at all; this is a showstopper for the HTPC on the new HDTV.

OK, why is Vista completely ignoring my change to the DPI setting? WTF? Has no effect, 120dpi, custom dpi, nothing changes after reboot.

geez, major huge perf optimization on SO question list browsing. I blame my own stupid code.

tracing a performance problem where I wasn't even remotely correct about the culprit. I forgot to MEASURE.