Kristy's Blog

A friend of mine recently had her account and computer hacked through a phishing attack on Facebook. I got a suspicious sounding message from her via facebook and yes, it was asking for username and password. Here’s an article that is recognizing the problem.

http://redtape.msnbc.com/2009/06/my-entry.html

If you don’t understand Twitter, you may not get this right now. One day you will, though. Twitter will be as common as email in the future. From the #Twialogues community.

“That which does not kill us makes us twitter.” Friedrich Wilhelm Twietzsche

“If the tweet fits… follow it.”

“A minute without twitter feels like an hour, but an hour reading some good tweets feels like a minute” – Albert Tweinstein

“Twitter all, follow a few, do wrong to none.” – Twilliam Shakespeare

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we tweet them.” Anaïs Nin

“Tweeting is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t tweet, it doesn’t matter.” – Mark Twain

Concerned a brain drain could hurt its long-term ability to compete, Google Inc. is tackling the problem with its typical tool: an algorithm.

The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.

Google officials are reluctant to share details of the formula, which is still being tested. The inputs include information from surveys and peer reviews, and Google says the algorithm already has identified employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving.

Applying a complex equation to a basic human-resource problem is pure Google, a company that made using heavy data to drive decisions one of its “Ten Golden Rules” outlined in 2005.

Edward Lawler, director of the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California, said Google is one of a few companies that are early in taking a more quantitative approach to personnel decisions.

Read the whole Article Here.

Few Things are More Deceptive Than Memories.

Courtesy of http://hubblesite.org.

Creditinfocenter.com Site Worth $982,912?

http://www.pufip.com/?q=creditinfocenter.com&a=site

Railroad tracks. This is fascinating.

Be sure to read the final paragraph after reading all that comes before; your understanding of the conclusion will depend on the earlier part of the content.

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels… Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder ‘What horse’s ass came up with it?’ you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses (Two horse’s asses). Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRB’s. The SRB’s are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRB’s would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB’s h ad to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRB’s had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s ass. And you thought being a horse’s ass wasn’t important? Ancient horse’s asses control almost everything… and CURRENT Horse’s Asses are controlling everything else…

Love Hurts – Incubus

Go Snowball!