Free “Desiring God” audiobook this NOVEMBER only

This is a little late, but for a few remaining days you can download John Piper’s classic, “Desiring God”, free as an audiobook download from christianaudio.com.

All you need to do is go to http://christianaudio.com/desiringgod and select Download ($7.49), and then click on Add to Cart.  Then proceed to Checkout, create an account, and then put in DG2009 as your coupon code and it will be FREE (if for some reason it doesn’t work, try NOV2009)!

Remember, this deal is only for the month of November, so you have about 4 days left!

Oh, wow, and I just realized that they have a bunch of other John Piper items available for free right now (click here).  I think those might not be time sensitive, though.

For those who enjoy audiobooks in general, you may want to check out this free trial from Audible.com that you have the option of canceling but still receive two free audiobooks from.

Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople…

New World’s Fastest Supercomputer Named : Discovery News

I posted this awhile ago on my Facebook profile as a link.  In the latest version of a semiannual “Top 500″ list of supercomputers, a new machine has been crowned with the top honor… and it’s built on some interesting technology, very similar to what many are running in their own desktop computers these days.

The Cray supercomputer, Jaguar, is built off of 6-core AMD Opteron processors (very similar to the AMD “Phenom II” branded processors you can buy for your desktop), codenamed “Istanbul”.

Jaguar took the top spot away from IBM’s “Roadrunner” supercomputer, which is now at #2.  [EDIT] Hmm, the IBM Roadrunner supercomputer is a hybrid system built off of IBM PowerXCell 8i processors (like in the Sony Playstation 3) AND AMD Opteron 2-core processors.

For AMD’s own blog write-up of the story (click here)

It’s been only a few hours…

But I’m starting to get a feeling for how the “younger” generation must feel.  You know, the generation that relies on their cell phones and texts their friends all the time and will know of nothing else from middle school/high school onwards?

It’s been only a few hours, and now I suspect that pretty easily, I might feel like I’m logged in to multiple instant messaging clients and can’t appear offline.  Whoa.

Maybe that was the idea, though…  lol.

Rogers is charging for incoming text messages

[Semi-important note to all my friends: please read the very LAST (tiny) paragraph if this post is too long.  I have a question to ask of you.]

Who knew?  I didn’t, until today when I took a closer look at my Rogers wireless billing charges.  They’re charging 15 cents for every incoming text message, which is the same as it costs to send a text message!  Which also means that if a person or company spams with you with text messages, you could easily be paying a whole lot at an uncontrollable rate*.  Anyways, it turns out that they started charging for incoming texts in August 2009, I believe.  Apparently they were notifying customers in their bills as of June & July, but I don’t receive paper bills and I never noticed anything showing up via e-mail or online (even though my Customer Service Representative was trying to convince me that it must have notified me, somewhere… [he didn't know exactly how]).  I have a hunch it was in the PDF invoice/bill that I am able to download if I click in the right place.

Ok, so apparently you are only notified in your June bill.  I downloaded the PDF invoice and it notifies you of the changes on Page 4 of 7.  Thanks for not telling me anywhere else on my online billing page, or e-mailing me or contacting me by phone.  Maybe a text message to my Rogers phone would be the best (or most straightforwardly logical) way to notify me.  This is probably grounds for some better legislation that helps protect customers.

Anyways, the bottom line is that I talked to Customer Relations (the special department that got me my current iPhone monthly plan), and I got put on a $5/month messaging plan.  This is the first time I’ve ever paid a monthly fee for text messages, of all things.  For that fee, I get unlimited incoming and 250 outgoing text, picture, or video messages.  Too bad my iPhone 3G can’t record video.

*Although now that I’ve discovered in that PDF invoice that you can be protected against SPAM messages, I’ll probably downgrade to the $3/month, 100 outgoing text, unlimited incoming messages Customer Relations add-on.

Anyways, I’m going to try out the $5/month plan for a bit and see if I can actually get any use out of picture messaging.  I’ll probably switch to the $3/month plan, since I don’t text people very much at all.  But I figure if I receive or send more than 20 text messages (combined) a month, then it’s worth going to the $3/month plan.  That’s a lot better than the cheapest $10/month plan that the regular Customer Service rep (not Customer Relations) was offering me (I think it was for like… well, I can’t remember.  A lot of outgoing texts, and unlimited incoming).

The real reason I wanted to write this post was to figure out who of my friends can receive text messages for free, and who can receive picture messages for free.  I want to know, so that I can feel free to text/message you without feeling like I’m costing you money.  And that is all, thanks for reading.

Random thoughts

Over the last few weeks or so, I’ve been at quite a few campus events with university students.  I had this thought recently while at one of those events – they are the future of our nation.

Now, that thought wasn’t too surprising to me.  After all, I’ve spent a lot of time as a student (and then as a campus intern) working with university students, trying to cast to them the vision that they are the future leaders of our nation and our world by virtue of the fact that they comprise the “elite” segment of our society that will benefit from a university education.  But what stunned me was the thought that followed.  Really, it should have been obvious to me, since it wasn’t too long ago that I was one of those “young people” on campus.

I am the future of our nation.

Oh no.  What a scary thought.

STEAM (PC) hardware survey

Very cool. A STEAM survey of what CPU’s, GPU’s, and other components their customers are using to play PC games.  It’s fascinating to me, because it provides a glimpse into what the average consumer is running in their PC and gives an idea of what can be considered the “mid-range” or median hardware out there (and perhaps how long it takes PC technology to be adopted).

Steam Hardware Survey – October 2009

Just watched Blood Diamond

Finally watched it…  And now I’m slightly depressed.  It puts job seeking/selection and cover letter writing in a new light.  Because I know I’m in a position to make a difference.  Everyone in North America is.  But me, in a slightly unique way, I think.

I’m basically thinking of the general principle behind Uncle Ben’s old wisdom to Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility.”  But that’s too cliché.  Take that idea, and blend it more with, “We talk of the second coming [of Jesus Christ]; most of the world has never heard of the first” (Oswald J. Smith), and you’ve got a little bit more of what I’m feeling.

In town for Nicky’s wedding

I *just* remembered that, because I canceled my first flight out of Ontario, that means I’m going to be in town for Nicky’s wedding this Saturday.  Wow!

Who else from Halifax Project 2007 is going?

On ‘Value’

This blog site is called “Total Rip-Off” for a couple of reasons – one of those is that I like piggybacking off of other people’s ideas. So I’m going to paste in an excerpt from a field report from Uganda, from charity: water.

This is when I met Helen Apio. While most women hung back politely, Helen jumped toward me and screamed two inches from my face. Technically, it was singing. But the high-pitched shrieking was so loud and reverberated with such energy and emotion, I knew I had to talk with her.

She told me about the new freshwater well in her village.

“I am happy now,” Helen beamed. “I have time to eat, my children can go to school. And I can even work in my garden, take a shower and then come back for more water if I want! I am bathing so well.”

A few of the men chuckled to hear a woman talk about bathing. But all I noticed was Helen’s glowing face, the fresh flowers in her hair, and the lovely green dress she wore for special occasions. Touching her forearm, I replied, “Well, you look great.”

“Yes,” she paused. Placing both hands on my shoulders and smiling, she said, “Now, I am beautiful.”

- Will the beautiful women of the world please stand up. (Uganda, August, 2009)
http://www.charitywater.org/projects/fromthefield/uganda.php

Two things I would like to point out. The first is one of the reasons that I really like supporting developing parts of the world by helping to provide clean water sources, versus other kinds of aid. This is because it is strategic. “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, and his daughters (and their children, one day) get an education.” (Another reason I like helping provide clean water is that it’s quite possibly the most cost-effective kind of aid I’ve heard of. An estimated $1 will provide a person with clean drinking water for a year. That’s a huge life change for $1)

The second thing I would like to point out is less about water aid, and more about humans – women, specifically. Now, I am by far not an expert on femininity (though I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night [ha ha, that's a TV commercial joke, sorry]), but I have listened to wise people who are women share on the subject, and one thing I’ve learned is that a woman’s perception of her pulchritide* (physical beauty) seems to be a lot more significant than guys think.

I think guys typically think of their looks as an attribute of who they are. It seems to me that girls feel that how they look defines, in part, who they are.  So, if you make a guy feel ugly, he is insulted. If you make a girl feel ugly, I think innately she feels less valuable as a person (even though that is not true).

Hmmm, so maybe that’s why my vocational search can cause me such trepidation.  As a guy, it taps into feelings of competency (or lack, thereof) and accomplishment. I think that men typically view performance or “power” (i.e. the ability to achieve desired outcomes) as giving self worth.  (I will go out on a limb and venture that that’s how women feel about beauty)

And no, I don’t think those are what ultimately makes us valuable. But I’m not one to overspiritualize and deny that those aren’t a legitimate part of what makes us special, either. And specialness and valuable-ness are related, I do believe. (I really do hate overspiritualizing)

* I learned the word “pulchritude” from a Starbucks leaflet. It was part of an Akeelah and the Bee themed promotion, I think.

Windows 7 – better battery life compared to RC (and Vista)

Note: RC stands for “Release Candidate”

Taken from page 3 of Anandtech.com’s article, “Windows 7 Performance Guide”:

Finally, battery life, one of the sore spots with the RC, has finally gotten the kick in the pants we were expecting to see. We’ll get deeper in to this later when we look at benchmarks, but for the time being we’ll note that while the RC offered a battery life similar to Vista, the release version of Windows 7 offers battery life well ahead of Vista in all cases, and depending on the exact hardware used similar to if not better than battery life as compared to XP. It looks like Microsoft and driver authors have finally come through on significantly improving Vista’s lackluster mobile performance.

Yes, yes!  Not that I’m planning on getting a Windows 7 equipped laptop or desktop anytime soon, but one thing that irked me from benchmarks was seeing that battery life under Windows 7 looked pretty much the same as Vista.  Which, in most cases, was significantly lower than XP and Mac OS X.  And this was in the Release Candidate (RC) version of Windows 7, which was supposed to be pretty much… a “finished” version of Windows 7.  So I’m glad to see that they’ve made such a fundamental improvement since the RC.  Anyways, the above excerpt was taken out of page 3 in the 18 page article, so I’m going to have to read on to see how big of an improvement over Vista they’ve made (in terms of battery life).

UPDATE: Well, I finally got to the battery benchmarks and they referred to an older article (benchmarking the RTM or Release to Manufacturing version) that I remember reading before, which when I read it at the time, I didn’t think showed much of an improvement over Vista.  I guess things must have been really bad a couple of months before that when the RC was released.