Georgia invades Tennessee. About time, too.

Georgia is trying to annex part of Tennessee. Seriously, no joke.

Story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

I'm a bit torn by this as I lived in Georgia for about 3 years, but all of my extended family lives in Tennessee. I'll just wait to see who is winning and then pull for them (i.e. the McCain doctrine).

While Tennessee is under attack from the south, maybe we should fire up the old State of Franklin again on the east.

Real Dumb Crook News

I have always assumed that half of the "Dumb Crook" stories you see are made up, or at least greatly exaggerated. Now I have one of my own, and I believe there probably are that many dumb crooks. This one happened to me personally, so I know that it is true.

My wife and I own a rental condo in the town where we live. Our tenant decided to move out at the end of the month, and had advertised his washer and dryer set for sale. For about a week, the washer and dryer stayed in the empty condo while our former tenant lived in his new apartment.

The condo upstairs (which is NOT owned by us) learned that he had sold the washer and dryer. Their dryer was broken, so they decided to break into our condo and steal the dryer for their own use. I can only assume they thought it was an apartment owned by the same owner, and that the appliances were "communal".

So they climb up to the windows, break the screens, pick the window locks and get into our condo. They take the dryer out and move it upstairs to their condo. And (here's the really dumb part) they bring their OLD dryer back down the stairs and put it in our condo's utility room. In other words, they switched the dryers which were different styles and models and HOPED THAT NO ONE WOULD NOTICE.

Why in the world would you bring the OLD dryer back down? You might as well leave a calling card with your name on it... lol.

Guinness Superbowl ad

I heard today that the Guinness advertisement during the Superbowl was the most expensive ad to create ever. Apparently it topped $20 million to make.

I seem to remember just before I left Diageo that the Guinness team required three meetings and five telephone calls to convince them that a GBP 75 charge (about $165) was legitimate.

I am so glad I am out of there.

Needed: good wireless mic and headphones

As some of you know, one of my side projects is designing a way to get my mother on the Internet in some capacity. Since her stroke in 2003, she is totally blind. Her speech is good, but she sometimes has trouble remembering complex instructions (like dialing the phone for example).

Thus was born Project Victor. Victor was named after the first voice pack I choose for the system and it stuck (plus I just love to name things). I've talked to Mom a lot about what she might want, and the list of features is not simple:

• Online radio (particularly WMIT streaming from Black Mountain, NC)
• A Telephony interface that she could use to call people
• Podcasting streams (set up in advance and downloaded automatically)
  
• Some simple audio games, like guess a number

Additionally, there are other features that she needs to make it work:

• She has limited space and mobility, so I would like to place the "server" in a different room
• The voice interface has to be a simple, command and control voice interface
• Automatic sleep and wake modes. This means that after x minutes of inactivity it goes to "sleep" until it is awakened by calling the programs name ("Hello Victor").

My current problem is the remote server. I need some way to give Mom a headset with a microphone in the next room over (about 15 feet) and have it work. Rechargeable is preferable. I have been unable to find any reasonably priced wireless or bluetooth headsets with microphone that could handle command and control voice recognition. Anyone have suggestions?

Amazon plugs DigitalChalk

DigitalChalk, in Asheville, NC, is the company for which I work. We make online learning systems, focusing on the entire multimedia experience. The classes on DigitalChalk are composed of video, audio, slides, time-controlled outlines, and more.

We recently got a nice plug from Amazon. Check it out.

Five at Random has a new home

Five at Random has a new home here at http://fiveatrandom.blogspot.com

If you want to read the historical posts, they still exist on http://www.fiveatrandom.com.