What if you can’t “Google” it?

About 100ft from our house, on the corner, is a fairly tall metal pole with a solar panel affixed on top.  Observe:

Toward the bottom of the pole is a locked metal box with the words “Solar Corrosion Control Station”.  Check it out:

You know what?  I have NO IDEA what that box does, but judging from the rust on the pole and box, it doesn’t appear to be “controlling corrosion” particularly well.  What’s a guy to do?  Oh, I know – we’ll search for it on Google!!!  The answers will abound.

Unless, of course, Google doesn’t know either.  Here’s what comes back…

Live Search fails as well…

The *only* clue that I have so far is something that my neighbor said a few months back.  He claims that the “solar corrosion control station” ties in with the natural gas lines in our area, collects a small charge from the solar panel, and that charge helps keep the gas lines from rusting.  Sounds plausible, I guess, but it’s *really* strange to search for something like this and find nothing.  Nadda.  Zip.  Zilch.

In fact, it’s kinda spooky.

Advertisement

THAT can’t be good

I was looking to install the Windows Live Writer product so that I could use an “application” for updating this blog, rather than the web-interface.  Don’t get me wrong: the WordPress interface is really quite good, but sometimes an actual application is nice to use.  Ever used the Google Docs online app?  It’s fine and all, but I’ll stick with Word 2007, thank you very much 🙂

Anyhow, I cruised out to the Live Writer download page, grabbed the installer, and launched it on my box.  This is basic stuff, right?  Well, yeah, until you get *this* error message….

“Catastrophic failure”, eh?  Yikes!

Fortunately, the error appears to be based upon the fact that I already had Live Writer installed on my box!  Perhaps the error message could’ve informed me of that in a more graceful fashion.

Perhaps.

(P.S. – I used the Live Writer product to make this posting!  Somewhat ironic, isn’t it?  Anyhow, I like this product a lot.  Good stuff…and free!)

Oops! Zune “MixView” missed an obvious tie-in…

The “MixView” presentation within the latest Zune software is really a pretty nice visual representation of related Artists, Albums, and Users to a particular artist/album that you might be looking at.  Read more on my Zune 3.0 software thoughts here.

Or don’t.

Anyhow, it goes without saying that any piece of software isn’t without it’s flaws, but upon checking out the latest Chris Cornell single today — recommended by a co-worker — I noticed that the MixView missed some pretty obvious (to me) tie-ins for Mr. Chris Cornell.

Observe:

See anything missing there?  How about “Soundgarden”?  How about “Audioslave”?  Reaching a bit further, how about “Temple of the Dog”??  Perhaps some of those tie-ins are too obvious, but you *know* that there are some folks out there listening to Chris Cornell who have no knowledge whatsoever of Soundgarden, Audioslave, and so on.  Trust me on this.  I had a classmate in 10th grade who did not know who The Beatles were.

I’m serious.

Tighten it up, Zune team!  🙂