Month: February 2007

To do.

I couldn’t get to sleep last night because I started thinking about all of the things I have to do (and have been putting off). For the first time in a long while I stayed home on Friday night to try to get some stuff done. I was rather productive! Woke up early on Saturday to continue being productive and called it quits at 6pm. I do have the looming task of extracting my car (see above) from the snow that dumped on us last week. But today’s temps might help me out a bit.

I did manage to get laundry done last week in the midst of the sub-zero weather. But unfortunately for me, the drain pipe on the washer froze and I had to wring out my towels – my hands were numb for 5 minutes! Luckily my constant phone calls to the place that services the machines has resulted in a request for brand new machines! I guess the squeaky wheel does get the most oil…
(credit to Beau for the pic – sorry Mom!)

When I got to work this morning, that feeling continued. My desk was buried under papers, all of which are extremely important and which need to be done by the week’s end. I also had to give a video training to some of our staff – and of course, the projector and the laptop we use to show DVDs had been checked out. I had 20 min to come up with another solution. I ended up finding a cable to hook up an older laptop to our, even older, TV. It looked like crap, but at least it worked! So before hunkering down and writing a prioritized list of what I need to do to clear off my desk, I decided to sneak a post in.

Is it Friday yet?!

Love is like cocaine


As Valentine’s Day is upon us, I saw this article on CNN.com and just had to post it!

When you fall in love, “exactly the same system becomes active as when you take cocaine. You can feel intense elation when you’re in love. You can feel intense elation when you’re high on cocaine.”…
…The scientists found that women in love had more activity than men in the areas of the brain that govern memories. Dr. Fisher theorizes that this is a “female mechanism for mate choice.” There are no visual clues for whether a man is fertile, but if a woman really studies a man and remembers things about his behavior, she can try to determine whether he’d make a reliable mate and father.

Thus, if it sometimes seems like a woman remembers everything — good and bad — about a man, “it’s not just her being picky. It’s an old Darwinian evolutionary strategy.” CNN.com

Damn you Evolution! 😉

Happy Valentine’s day to all!

Change

I plan on making a few changes to the blog in the coming days/weeks. One of the first, is to parse my links as it seems many of our fellow bloggers have fallen off of the face of the blogosphere. That being said, I have unceremoniously removed them from my roster until such date that they post again. I am happy to say that Dave has returned armed with his “War On Logic”. Welcome back!

Speaking of change… the picture above is the Excel spreadsheet that I created to analyze the information that Dave provided in his “guess the value of the change I have been keeping under my bed for 6 years” contest. We actually had a bit of a mathematical jam session one night while having drinks at Dave and TK’s apartment and used the same method to come up with an answer. Also discovering that dimes and quarters are worth the exact same amount per weight. Fascinating, I know! I’m not certain that posting my methodology will give anything away to others who might want to participate, but I promised Dave I would!

This weekend was the first weekend I have been in Chicago in almost a month! I needed that time to decompress and get some stuff done, and I’ll be needing more of it as the week rolls on. Work was insane last week, mostly due to a misunderstanding on my part on a grant deadline – I ended up working until 2am on Tuesday and Wednesday was probably the most stressful day I’ve had to date! I managed to get everything in on time, but there are still a few loose ends I need to tie up.

Though traveling has been a blast the last few weeks, its good to be home.

Video Removed: Copyright Infringement

I received this e-mail from DMCA Complaints at YouTube

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Schott Music GmbH & Co. KG claiming that this material is infringing:

Carmina Burana: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En0XItmxnEI

Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to avoid future strikes against your account, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube’s copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.

If you elect to send us a counter notice, to be effective it must be a written communication provided to our designated agent that includes substantially the following (please consult your legal counsel or see 17 U.S.C. Section 512(g)(3) to confirm these requirements):

1. A physical or electronic signature of the subscriber.
2. Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled.
3. A statement under penalty of perjury that the subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.
4. The subscriber’s name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that the subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if the subscriberis address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which the service provider may be found, and that the subscriber will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person.

Such written notice should be sent to our designated agent as follows:

DMCA Complaints
YouTube, Inc.
1000 Cherry Ave.
Second Floor
San Bruno, CA 94066
Email: copyright@youtube.com

Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification may be subject to liability.

Sincerely,
YouTube, Inc.

I decided to look up Schott Music and write them to see what exactly violated the copyright in an effort to not repeat this mistake. The video was only about 30 seconds long and recorded at a free outdoor event. I’m assuming that they either own the rights to Carmina Burana or the Grant Park Orchestra – either way, I’m curious to see what kind of response I get.