Michael P. O'Connor

My Life

Peta against eating fish??

Categories: Aquarium, Hay it is funny, Politics

Comments: 1 Comment

Published on: April 14, 2005

I think that peta has lost it, they claim fish are smarter the dogs. Well I might give them that when I look into the eyes of my Bettas they do seam to have some intelligence to them. But that is just antidotal evidence and no way to form a campaign. Even if fish are smarter then dogs, there that does not change anything, if fish is caught as food it is food. Well I bet Peta would hate me since I keep about 20 of them as pets, in glass tanks never the less 😀. I bet the animal right activates would be fuming over this one.

A few more things they misquote Dr. Sylvia Earle she was asked on CBS news about the statment, and she was talking about the disappearing of the fish in the wild by being over fished. When the reporter, for CBS news, asked if he should cancel his salmon dinner she said go catch it yourself, that does not sound like some one that is against eating fish, just against over fishing.

A site for blogs that are in Pittsburgh

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Misc (no other place to put this stuff), Pittsburgh stuff

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Published on: April 13, 2005

This is cool I just found a web site that lists blog of people that are in the Pittsburgh area. The only problem when they list places people might live they did not list the neighborhood of Pittsburgh, so I just filled in the “other field” and put in Oakland. Well technically I should have put Shadyside since I live on the dividing line of Oakland and Shadyside and I live on the Shadyside side of it. But I still see my self as in Oakland oh well. If my site gets listed it will probably be the only site that has a conservative point of view on it.

Liberal stupidity, Bush’s iPod

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Politics, Technology

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Published on: April 12, 2005

Well it came out in some newspaper that Bush uses an iPod. In my option a non-story, who cares what music play the President uses. Yet I seen a lot of liberals on-line today say that 1) the iPod is not cool anymore 2) they will not use an iPod since Bush uses one. Come on you idiots those are stupid, for the following reason. 1) when does 1 person decide what is cool and what is not cool 2) are you going to base what you want on your hate for one person 3) Steve Jobs is an ultra-liberal, it does not mater what some one is, if a product is good it is good, you don’t see me saying I don’t want an iPod since I don’t like Steve Jobs political option? 4) A music play is not a political issue.

Yes I think it cool to see what Bush listens to music on, and what music it is, so I am glad that it the info is out there, it is also cool to see that he is a biker too, I just can hear the liberals scream about that one ;-).

Also I find it funny that the liberals are looking for political messages in the songs on Bush’s play list, I am glad they do not look at my play list, they would see contradictions all over the place, one song contradicting another song. Come people it is just music, when biking some times you just want the beat to bike to, some times you pick a song for the words.

Biking down Sycamore St.

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Biking

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Published on: April 11, 2005

Today on my biking trip, I went up onto to Mt. Washington. I took the incline up, there is no way any one could really get up to the top of Mt. Washington without either a motorized auto or the incline, it is just to steep to get up. Came down I Sycomore St. It is an interesting street to come down. It is a steep and curvy road. I was riding the breaks all the way down, and still was going the speed limit of 25mph. It was a blast to come down. I also got some good Photos today.

Found a good replacement for slashdot

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Misc (no other place to put this stuff)

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Published on: April 11, 2005

Jon Fortt’s Technofile has some very good stuff on it, I stopped reading slashdot back at the beginning of the year, but been looking for a good site to get some tech news from for a while, and I think I found it. Jon Fortt’s site is interesting, it focuses mainly on Apple related stuff but it is interesting.

Old pictures

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: News

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Published on: April 9, 2005

Last year I picked up one of those disposable cameras. It was a waterproof one. I picked it up to take some pictures while kayaking. The problem was I only used 17 of the 27 pictures while out on the water. So I had left the camera in my bike back all the time since then. Once in a while I would pull it out and take a picture or two with it. Well today I finally finished up the 27 pictures in the camera. I also dropped it off at CVS to get it developed. I also ordered to have the pictures put on CD. I should have them back my Wednesday, I hope that I got some good pictures with that camera. I will have to post the pictures when I get them back to my Photo section of my site.

Spring is finally here, biking, iPod shuffle

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Biking, Geekdom, Technology

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Published on: April 9, 2005

It is nice that the weather is starting to get warmer now. I have had about a week of great weather here in Pittsburgh. I been getting out on the bike more, for the last 4 days, I have gotten at lest 3 hours of biking in a day. When I was younger I did not understand or like day light savings but now I really like it, now that it is light out till about 8pm, and the light of the sun will last us longer as we get closer to summer.
Also since I have been doing a lot of biking and the roads have not been the best (pot holes). I have been afraid that I might damage my iPod. So I went out and got myself an iPod shuffle, I only got the 512Mb one. I did want the 1Gb one, but the reason I got the shuffle was because I wanted to use it on the bike and did not want to risk my 40Gb iPod, and $100 now is cheaper then $250 later (the estimated cost of replacing the hard drive in the 40Gb iPod)
Since I got the Shuffle, I have combined all my biking play lists (all 7 of them, I had to remove a lot of duplicate entries) into one play list, and let iTunes fill the shuffle up randomly with what is in that new list.
I have a few thoughts on the shuffle and I will list them here. It is a nice device for a few songs; I see it mainly as a device for mp3s while working out. If you are looking for a good mp3 play, and not going to use it for a work out, I would say get an iPod, just an ordinary iPod (or the iPod photo) It will hold most (or in many cases [like for me] all) of your mp3s. But if you are looking for a mp3 play to use when you are working out, be it biking, running, etc. Then the iPod shuffle is a great device. The 512Mb one will hold 8 hours of music and the battery is billed to last 12 hours that should be more then enough music to get most people though any amount of exercise, well maybe not professional athletes. The shuffle has a few quarks, to turn on hold you have to press and hold the play button for 3 seconds. And the only indication of what is going on inside the device is 1 LED, which will blink green or orange, to indicate what is going on inside the device. Apple is usually so good at UI’s that I am suppressed at this system, I don’t think the feed back that the device gives is adequate. But to control the device is easy. There is a small area you have to deal with, and I can use it with out looking at the device, very easy to control. But I think it is a good device for a small subset of ones mp3 collection to take with one while working out. I know I will probably use it more on the bike trails around Pittsburgh.

My body is sour today

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Biking

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Published on: April 8, 2005

The last 2 days I did a total of 6 hours of bike riding. 3 hours each day. Yesterday 2 of the hours on the bike were trying for the first time some mountain biking. 2 lessons learned about mountain biking yesterday. Your breaks are very important while mountain biking and my bike is not a good mountain bike. I was labeled a hybrid, but I guess that means a street bike that can go on grass, what I did yesterday was way out of the range of my bike, but I made it without getting myself killed.

A forest in a tank

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Aquarium

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Published on: April 7, 2005

My aquarium is starting to get over grown with the plants that I have put in there. I am very pleased with how it is going. I wanted plenty of places for the fish to hid, and the free O2 that the plants would make for the tank. Some of the plants that I put in there before are now just lost in the tank. I was able to find them but they were covered over with other plants. The only plant I can not get to grow the way I would like it to grow is the java moss, it just does not want to do well in the tank, but all the other plants are doing very well.

Feeding my fish

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Aquarium

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Published on: April 7, 2005

Last night while I was feeding my fish in my 20 Gal tank I decided to see what would happen if I just held the food in the tank. Well most of the fish were (naturally) still afraid of me so they did not come for the food, but 3 of my fish swam right up and ate the food out of my hand. It was an odd feeling to have the fish eat out of my hand. It was also fun in its own way.

Biking season is starting to heat up

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Biking

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Published on: April 6, 2005

I got a couple of more rides in today. For about a total of 3 hours of biking in. It feels great to get a few rides in. I am going to see if I can get some rides in this weekend. I have a friend that is into meteorology and he said that this weekend looks good. I probably will take some more pictures this weekend.

Biking season 2005

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Biking

Comments: 1 Comment

Published on: March 31, 2005

Well it seams that the new season of biking is on us again. I went on a nice short trip today, about an hour long. I did a run down the jail trail. The only problem was that the city found it necessary to turn off the drinking founts on both side the trail.
I have added the new pictures from today. Also I made a new album for this year pictures, and renamed the album of last year’s pictures. I only got 5 pictures today, since I was on a bit of a tight schedule for the bike ride (I only had an hour for it) so I could not spend to much time taking pictures. It is going to rain for rest of the week (well according to the weather forecasts) so I will not get another chance for a bit, but once I get a chance I will try to get more pictures for the site.

Backup DNA

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Misc (no other place to put this stuff), Politics, Technology, The odd, the funny, the weird

Comments: 5 Comments

Published on: March 29, 2005

I found this post on Backup DNA on another blog. Would it not be cool if humans did have this same backup DNA built in. If humans did, maybe we could find a way to cause the backup to be brought forth. This probably would have to be done very early in a womans pregnancy.
This probably would kill on of the arguments that abortions use, “what if the child has a genetic defect”, this would kill the argument by making it a moot argument.

Debugging

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Technology

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Published on: March 28, 2005

I am going to say something controversial here. I love debugging; I find it fun and very interesting. It is like a puzzle to solve. When you think you have found the problem, you find that you are only chipping at the tip of the iceberg. And to do debugging on a multi-thread program makes the puzzle all that more interesting to go after. The area I am debugging right now seams to be the semaphores that I am using, I know that for every time I grab for a semaphore I free it when I am finished but it seams that my code is all blocked up in the grabbing for the semaphore, I am starting to wonder if the WIN32 API is not a atomic function, which will make the code all that more harder to deal with.

South Park

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Misc (no other place to put this stuff)

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Published on: March 28, 2005

I love the show South Park; it does things so absorber it is funny. Right now I am watching some DVD that I am borrowing from my dad. I am on season two.

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