OK, here's some trivia for you: a case fan situated 17 miles from the epicenter of a 6.6 earthquake can be shaken lose to the extent of creating a significant rattle.

Now you know.

Thank god for first-world construction codes.

This morning's earthquake, which occurred pretty much directly offshore from us, was several factors more severe than anything I experienced while living in California. I was in the city of San Francisco for the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and I compare that experience to …

CNN is incredibly over-dramatizing the situation in Kona. They are getting over-wound-up quotes from people who are saying "like a war zone." This is not true!

One of the "highway blockages" is 100 yards from my house -- it's a couple big rocks in the road. Too big for a person …

That sucked. We're directly onshore from the epicenter, as we understand it.

We're okay, though, and the house (pretty incredibly, given the experience) doesn't seem to have any structural damage. Much more extensive blog posting to come.

Power is on (for the moment?) and water is back on.

On Queen …

"Dog The Bounty Hunter" Duane Chapman, his son Leland (who we see around town), and Tim ("Youngblood") have been arrested and are facing extradition to Mexico. They are charged with kidnapping (bounty hunting being illegal in Mexico) a man who's now serving a 124-year sentence for rape. I wonder if …

A commenter on a recent post asked a question I get quite a bit, namely, "What's the market in Hawai'i for high-tech professionals?" The short answer is that in Honolulu it's great and that every place else in the state it's poor. Honolulu's a million-person city and has banks and …

BookMooch is a good idea -- give a book, get a point, get a book, take a point -- but the logistics proved too off-putting for me. Not that they were egregious, but given my life, the last thing I need is another errand on my "to do" list.

Perhaps you've noticed the "Universal Service Fee" on your telephone bill. This is a government-mandated subsidy to support phone access in rural areas. Fair enough, perhaps. Here in Hawaii, SandwichIsles Communications Company receives more than \\(16M dollar per year to service... are you ready? ... 1,238 customers. That's \\)13,345 …

Eric Sink, who among other things wrote "The Business of Software," says I seem to "really understand both technology and business at a deep level." Me? Understand business? Lord, no! The industry, I pay attention to, but I'm an insanely bad businessman. I've flirted with personal bankruptcy, been a VP …

If you've been following my "Offtopic" or "Hawaii" topics, you've been hearing me lament what it's been like assembling a non-standard desktop machine (dual processors, huge hard drives, All-in-Wonder 800XT) by mail order when you live 3,000 miles from the mainland. Well, aside from cleaning up the boxes everywhere …