Hacked Road Sign

This is a bit old, but worth posting. Recently, some clever pranksters in Austin, TX hacked a road sign and replaced the messages with, "CAUTION! ZOMBIES AHEAD!" "RUN FOR COLD CLIMATES" and "THE END IS NEAR!" Apparently the roadway maintenance folks didn't change the default password on the electronic displays. (Source: Yahoo! News)

Ugly Betty Laptop

I don't watch the show Ugly Betty, but I thought this post from Engadget was hilarious. If you're tech-savvy, you'll appreciate the comedy in the technological inconsistencies in this scene from the show:


(Source: Engadget)

Boggle in Excel

As a follow up to my previous post about a Boggle game for iPhone/iPod touch, I'd like to share a recent homework assignment I completed for my Excel VBA class. Our professor asked us to use Excel to simulate the part of Boggle that randomly selects the letters to be used in the game. The result is a macro-enabled Excel file that will generate a "Big Boggle" (5 x 5) board using the actual letters from the Boggle cubes. Click Start to randomly generate a new game and get your Boggle on. (See rules)

Excel 2007 format: boggle.xlsm (30 KB)
Excel 97-2003 format: boggle.xls (123 KB)

Google Sync

Google announced a new application that automatically synchronizes your Google Calendar and Contacts with your iPhone, iPod touch, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Android-powered or other mobile device wirelessly. A warning appears on the iPhone/iPod touch download page, "During Sync setup, the iPhone will delete your contacts and calendar information. Please back up your data." I have been using the Outlook Connector to synchronize my Outlook contacts with my Hotmail account, and then synchronizing contacts to my iPod via iTunes. I have also been using the Google Calendar Sync program for Windows, which synchronizes my Google calendar with my Outlook calendar, which also gets synchronized via iTunes. I'd like to get everything syncing on one service and Google Sync looks like it will fit the bill nicely. (Sources: Google Sync, CNET)

TurboTax Online "Temporarily Unavailable"

I decided to use TurboTax Online to process my tax return this year. Last night when I tried to log in to complete my return, I got the message, "TurboTax Online is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and ask that you check back with us shortly." When I checked back again this morning, I got the same message. Has anyone else seen this message when trying to access TurboTax Online? "The cloud" has failed me!

The engineers must be busy calculating the optimal method for maximizing my tax return.