Author Archives: Clay

About Clay

I'm a Data Center Operations Engineer in beautiful Charleston, SC. I'm happily married to my wonderful wife Nan and we have an teenage daughter Lela. I'm a total geek. I got into electronics when I was around 9 or 10 and got hooked on computers shortly thereafter. I also love Sci-Fi, (not fantasy) particularly Star Trek. My favorite outdoor activities include rollerblading, biking and hiking. I'm also a bit of a car guy and amateur racing driver.

Fed defrays cost of digital TV

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Now up for grabs: Federal funding for your digital-TV upgrade | Tech news blog – CNET News.com

In case you don’t remember, traditional analog TV will cease to exist (in the U.S.) next year. For many people, that’s still going to be a problem. With the price of even the cheapest digital TVs still over $100, many people will either purchase a tuner, or lease a converter box from their local cable/satellite provider. Thankfully the federal government is providing up to 2 coupons to those that apply before the cutoff date or whenever they run out of coupons. The coupons are good for only $40 each, but at least it’s something.

Keep your eyes on Mars

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An Asteroid Hurtles Toward Mars – TIME

According to a report in TIME, there’s a 1/75 chance that an asteroid will impact Mars in late January. That’s obviously not a very large chance (about 1%), but if the small rock does manage to hit the red planet it could well be a spectacle worth watching. Mars is currently as close as it’s going to get to Earth until 2040, so we’ve got front row seats for the event.

update: JPL (NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory) has revised their prediction to give the asteroid a 1-in-25 or 4% chance of hitting Mars in January.

My first WordPress widget

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I’ve taken my first swing at writing a WordPress sidebar widget. Ever since upgrading to WordPress 2.2, I’ve wanted to convert some of the static elements of the old blog theme into widgets. Last night I was inspired to do that for my recent flickr photos section. You can see the result to the right.  If you have a WordPress blog and think this would be useful, please feel free to download my Flickr widget and use it on your site.