Yahoo experienced downtime this afternoon with reports that the outage affected Yahoo services including Messenger and Yahoo.com. The Yahoo outage occurred at around 12:30pm PST Tuesday for at least 30 minutes possibly longer. Reports were mixed on location, so it may have been localized as opposed to universal. An unconfirmed report has Yahoo experiencing a DNS outage due to their “anycast configuration failing after a router blew up.” More if we hear anything, although it appears to be up for me at the moment. If Yahoo is still down for you, leave a comment below with details. Related PostsInternet...
Researchers have published findings from a recent drug trial that point to a new pill that is successfully able to reset the body’s natural sleep rhythms. Tasimelteon works on the same receptors as melatonin - the body’s natural sleep hormone - and may actually improve a patient’s alertness and performance the next day without any carryover sedative effects. Colloquially, this breakthrough is being referred to as the “jet lag drug,” but its applications extend to anyone suffering from body clock related sleep disorders. The BBC reports: In trials on 450 people who went to bed five hours earlier than normal...
Dorothea Brande was an American writer and editor, well known for her books Wake Up and Live and Becoming a Writer (a useful resource for writers, by the way). In Wake Up and Live, she suggests twelve mental exercises to make your mind keener and more flexible. These exercises are meant to pull you out of your usual habits and to put you in situations that will demand resourcefulness and creative problem-solving. Brande argues that only by testing and stretching yourself can you develop mental strength. Even apart from the goals of creativity and mental flexibility, Brande's exercises make sense...
How do you interview for job openings on your team? Do you let people show their strengths during their interview, or do you make sure they fit into what you expect someone who is already successful at the job do? I try to ask questions that get people talking about themselves, and why they are uniquely qualified to do the job. Here are a few questions I ask to get at the heart of this: What are you passionate about? What’s the last book you read? If money were no object, and failure were not an option, what would...
Search on blogs is a relatively simple concept. You type in a few keywords related to a post and results are presented to you that are local to that blog. However, what if you could extend the functionality of the search function to go beyond your blog to cover the videos you have published on YouTube, your Twitter account, bookmarks, network of friends, and the blogs you read in your RSS reader? That’s exactly what Lijit enables you to do. Company Info: Lijit is based out of Boulder, CO which is a surprise to many considering silicon valley is...
Forgive the marketing speak, but I’ve decided to do something that really is a special deal. I get inquiries everyday asking me questions about WordPress from “How to setup a category based structure for my blog?” to “What are the most essential plugins I need for my blog?” If I could cut and paste answers and spend no time, I would, but really every situation is different. Most times I can’t answer these questions because of limits on my time, but I’ve decided to create a day-event where people could book my time for a bit and get any or...
Photo Credit gmeurope Download audio file (chevy_volt_podcast.mp3) Episode 8 of the GreenMonk Podcasts - 37 mins 32 secs My guest on this podcast is Greg Cesiel. Greg is the Program Director for the Chevrolet Volt. The Chevrolet Volt is an electric vehicle from General Motors, expected to begin hitting showrooms in the US in 2010. From the Wikipedia entry: The company has avoided the use of the term “hybrid,” preferring to call it an electric vehicle with a “range extender” (”extended range electric vehicle” or EREV), due to its design. The vehicle is designed to run purely on electricity...
The Mandatory Three (from Jim) After the dot com bust, I spent a lot of time interviewing. It was mostly dead ends or companies that were only willing to hire one person to do the job of four (specifically, the four that they had just laid off). A friend of mine who worked at a school, told me about an IT position there. Being out of work for so long, I was very eager to get in for an interview, and figured I might have an "in" since he was working there already. When I arrived at the interview, there...
It’s purely coincidental that today is my 42nd birthday, right? Eh. Maybe. Still, seems like as good a day as any to tell you what I’ve been thinking about, so, here’s a little present to myself. My uncommonly smart psychiatrist (hereafter, “The Shrink”) informs me that, in addition to suffering from a modest and manageable case of ADD (ICD-9-CM Diagnosis 314.00), I also have a less well-defined condition that he has called, “an artistic temperament.” I wanted him to laugh along when I said that sounded like some serious Theodoric of York shit — possibly involving humors and stomach...
Mikey's HOW TO - iRobot dead cell battery fix... I have three iRobots which help clean our house. I bought them about two years ago. As the one year warranty was coming up I called iRobot and asked them to help with various issues. They basically replaced all three of them. Now that I am at the one year point with the replacements I'm running out of options as things break. I can either fix it myself, or buy more shit. Obviously, I don't want to pay for anything. This morning I took apart the battery pack in the...
If you’re having a hard time sleeping then likely you’ve explored a lot of the options out there to help you get a better nights sleep. One option is always medication, but that is always a troubling choice to make. Sleeping pills still have that addictive tendency and they have strange side effects to go with the night of blissful sleep. Well now you can try out the Sleep Partner, it’s a bracelet that claims to help you sleep better. They mention it will help out not only those that have chronic sleep issues, but those with jet lag...
Oh yes! COME ON! You know what a big fan I was of the Sonim XP1? Back in the day? They’re still superb indestructible phones. There are two XP3 “Xtreme Performance” handsets on their way to MIR Towers and I can’t wait to see them. There is something ever-so-satisfying about being in possession of a handset that can handle it. It’s the same feeling walking about the Earth with a SatPhone. Although your average common-or-garden SatPhone can’t handle water. The Xp3 can. It can handle 1 metre’s worth of water for 30 minutes before it breaks a sweat. Or...
As far as we can tell, this watch doesn't actually stab your wrist at all, which is a shame, because anything that advertises itself as an acupuncture bracelet had better be breaking some skin. Which it doesn't, but there's a healthy amount of BS being tossed your way should you put it on and try to use it to get better sleep. Touted as a "drug free" way to get some Z's, the Sleep Partner supposedly uses varying degrees of pressure to stimulate acupuncture points on the wrist. Other magical properties include the ability to make $40 disappear from your...
Somehow, the remote control devices for my TV and digital box disappeared. The silver lining was it gave me an excuse to test the Harmony One universal remote, which lets you control a wide variety of devices using a single remote control. Harmony, which was started in Canada before it was acquired by Logitech, has a reputation for being a top-notch device. Certainly, the Harmony One remote has not disappointed so far. The installation process, which takes about 30 minutes, is fairly intuitive, although you need to provide detailed information about the devices you want to control. You program...
From Serious Eats We're all thinking about two things this time of year: turkey and eating turkey. To make both of these easier for serious eaters, we've compiled everything you need to know about turkey in one handy guide. Have a question we haven't answered? Leave a comment—serious eaters are always happy to help. ©iStockPhoto/MentalArt What Kind of Turkey to Buy Last Thanksgiving, Ed grappled with all the popular turkey buzz adjectives: organic, heritage, kosher, and basted, for example. According to our research, these terms still mean the exact same thing. We make it easy for you to understand with...
