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I got this calculator in high school back in 19something… a long time ago. I used it in calculus, college physics, statistics, last semester’s chemistry class… it was the calculator I grew up on.

A few weeks ago, some of the buttons on the fold-out section stopped working. It’s very sad but calculator microsurgery isn’t a priority.

(UPDATE 7-1-23: Find nostalgic conversations and the manual in the comments below!)

I just “upgraded” my laptop’s Synaptic trackpad with the latest drivers so I can do 2-finger scrolling like on a Mac. It sucks. It doesn’t react properly.

But I found a donation-ware program called two-finger-scroll that does the job nicely. I disabled the 2-finger scrolling in the factory drivers and installed this and I’m good to go. Hurray!

There’s like a gazillion classes going on at this mega-learning/hacking/building event!

Join me at Workshop Weekend!

I’m teaching “BeetleBots Zooming Everywhere!” on  Sunday, July 1st at 10:00am.

Workshop Weekend is a weekend-long event of short, 1 to 3 hour long workshops in subjects from exploring 3D modeling and printing, building a mini robot, and creating your own jewelry to making ricotta cheese and discovering DNA modeling! It’s a festival of learning with more than 40 hands-on workshops to choose from, all taking place June 30 and July 1 in downtown Oakland — pay $30 and take as many workshops as you like! The weekend is a family-friendly gathering for kids and adults alike, bringing together arts, crafts and engineering workshops, all taught by the bay area’s best makers.

Aaaand, use my coupon code to get 10% off admission:  BEETLEBOTS2012

Here’s a partial list of the workshops being offered:

• Cheesemaking: Ricotta
• Creating 3D Models
• Sewing by Machine
• Royal Icing Flowers
• Arduino Programming
• Rainbow LEDs
• T-shirt Silkscreening
• …and like 30 more

Check out them all at  http://workshopweekend.net/catalog

See you there!

I’ve seen comments online and and did a little research on laser nail fungus treatments. I think a reasonable assessment would be:

* expensive ($1-2k+) (though a friend told me their friend had both feet done for $275)
* safe
* 25% success rate, a bit lower success rate than prescription oral drugs. Many report a clearing in the first year and then a return after 2 years or so.
* easy treatment. visit the foot doctor 1-4 times for short treatments over the course of a few months.

Does that sound correct? Please write in the comments below!

Some comments on my blog from folks suggest what I say is about right.

This is a followup to all the fungus talk on my blog.

I met Matt in Oakland last year. We danced with the entire world. It was magic.

Go see!

local version:

You can’t see me in it but Oakland’s 3 seconds of fame is at 4:20. (dude!)

A photo from the original shoot. Matt is in blue behind the camera. He showed up alone with his trusty camera.

I’ve been fiddling with my Google Chrome startup screen. The Speed Dial extension for Chrome is good. It looks similar to the standard Google New Tab screen but it lets you customize it. (It drives me crazy that you don’t know with certainty what links will be on the New Tab page).

But I got the sense that Speed Dial was slowing my computer down just a tiny bit. So I switched to a more streamlined startup screen.

I open 4 tabs:
Blank Chrome page
Gmail
Gmail Calendar
Gmail Contacts

There are 3 ways I know of to create a blank tab in Chrome.  I’m still not sure which I like the most:

1. You can set the startup page to be about:blank, but the text will highlight incorrectly when you start typing in the omnibox.
2. Or you can set the home page to be: javascript:(“”)
3. Or you can open a Chrome New Tab page with:  chrome://newtab/

Here is how to set the Chrome startup page

1. Click the wrench
2. Click “Settings”
3. Click “Open a specific page or set of pages.”
4. Start adding new pages!

I’m taking prerequisite classes to get into a Radiography program, that’s an allied health profession doing things like taking diagnostic X-ray, MRI, CT scans and the like in hospitals. My first choice is CCSF (City College of San Francisco), they have one of the best reputations of any Radiography program in the country. I’ve been volunteering at CPMC Pacific Campus since December 2011 in the Radiology Department and it’s been going well. The biggest bother right now now is that the program gets like 120 applications for 30 spots each year and pretty much as long as you meet their 2.5 GPA requirement, they put your name in a hat and draw names randomly! So I’m preparing myself to apply elsewhere too!

I had been considering doing a Radiation Therapy program instead. A Radiation Therapist is the person who zaps somebody who is getting “radiation” when they have cancer. But I did some volunteering at CPMC and it’s not for me. I’m glad I found out!

Onward!

Until last year, people could buy dollar coins with their credit cards from the US Mint and have them delivered, with no shipping or service fees. People often used this “loophole” to rack up airline miles on their credit cards. The purpose of this crazy loss-leader by the US Mint was mostly to get people to use Sacajawia dollars!

Here’s an online forum where people are bemoaning the loss of their beloved loophole. And talking about how nobody likes the coin. For instance, “the cashier [at the supermarket] told us that nearly all of the $1 coins that make it into the cashier tills get rolled and sent back to the fed because most customers refuse them in change.” There’s a hundred more stories just like it.

Funny.

————————————————–

I despise the coin because it is indistinguishable from a quarter when feeling for it in your pocket and under moderate to poor light. And the gold color fades over time, making it look even more like a quarter. Some folks have disagreed with me about the pocket test until I put them to the test. Every person changed their tune when I asked them to try the pocket test themselves.

The US Mint continues to throw good money after bad. It bothers me at how stupid their efforts are and how they are doing it “for the people”. If they could get a dollar coin to stay in circulation, the rewards would be dramatic: dramatic savings in minting costs.

A dollar bill costs about $0.10 to mint and lasts about 1 year
A dollar coin costs about $0.20 to mint and lasts about 30 years.
The US mints about 20 million $1 bills every day, costing about $2 million per day, or $730 million/year.
If we switched to a dollar coin, the US would only need to mint about 666 million $1 coins, costing about $133 thousand per day, or $48 million/year

Switching from bills to coins would save about $680 million dollars/year, every year. Not bad for fixing one stupid problem.

But more than that, it is bad design and bad design hurts my soul. I want nothing to do with it.

California just changed the election process so that the primary election (being held June 4th) is now more important than the election election (held this coming November).

“Huh?” I hear you say.

Here’s a good description from the California Secretary of State Debra Bowen

What is a voter-nominated office?

The  Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act, which took effect January 1, 2011, created “voter-nominated” offices. The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act does not apply to candidates running for U.S. President, county central committees, or local offices.

Most of the offices that were previously known as “partisan” are now known as “voter-nominated” offices. Voter-nominated offices are state constitutional offices, state legislative offices, and U.S. congressional offices. The only “partisan offices” now are the offices of U.S. President and county central committee.

How are primary elections conducted in California?

All candidates for voter-nominated offices are listed on one ballot and only the top two vote-getters in the primary election — regardless of party preference – move on to the general election. A write-in candidate will only move on to the general election if the candidate is one of the top two vote-getters in the primary election.

(read more)
That’s weird. We’ll see how that goes. Maybe it’ll work out fine.

In case you were thinking of trying Funginix, I would suggest that you not give those scamming scammers any money. Their website looks pretty but if you read it closely at all, you can see that they sound more like snake oil salesmen than sellers of a medical product.

Their website is ridiculous. Let me count the crock of shit ways these scammers are trying to scam you:
“FUNGINIX is the most sophisticated and complete topical treatment created to fight and eliminate the fungal infections” — Umm, no. It’s some guy in a basement. “Sophisticated”? To claim that means you spent millions on developing it. And if you spent millions developing it, you wouldn’t use the word “sophisticated”.

“Only FUNGINIX has been thoroughly tested to guarantee that it kills fungus and will promote the restoration of healthy nails in a fungus-free environment” — What bullshit ad copy. There are a hundred products out there, some put out by big pharmaceutical companies. And Funginix (which is only available on some website) is the ONLY product that works? And I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

The first “testimonial” starts out “This product is ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS!” First, what consumer ever uses the word “product”? Next, her mug shot is from iStockphoto.com.

I could go on. For a long time.

But let’s cover some facts. Here are the claimed ingredients from their website:

Ingredients
Active Ingredient:
Undecylenic Acid, USP 10%

Other Ingredients:
Water
Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis (Sweet Almond) Oil
Oleth-10 Phosphate
Triethanolamine
Polysorbate 20
Acrylates Copolymer
Glycerin
Propylene Glycol
Uva Ursi (Bearberry) Extract
Beta-Glucan
Propolis Extract
Aloe Barbadensis Juice
Tocopheryl Acetate (Vitamin E)
Camphor
Menthol
Melaleuca Alternifolia (Tea Tree) Leaf Oil
Lavandula Angustifolia (Lavender) Oil
Jasminum Officinale (Jasmine) Oil
Eugenia Caryophyllus (Clove) Flower Oil
Theobroma Cacao (Cocoa) Seed Butter
Rosa Canina (Rose Hip) Flower Oil
Cetyl Hydroxyethylcellulose
Ethylhexylglycerin
Phenoxyethanol

The first ingredient, Undecylenic Acid, USP 10% is a common antifungal. It does not cost $40 per 1/2 ounce! All the other ingredients, meh.

Short form: scam.

I don’t have any easy answers but you might want to check out all the other (real) posts and comments on my site about my battle  with nail fungus.