Supercow.net

There’s a stereotype throughout much of the United States that Kentucky is a poor state. I often wondered why this was, because even though we do have some poor areas in Kentucky, I’ve also seen poor areas in every state I’ve traveled in so that’s definitely not the only reason for the stereotype. I thought I’d dig into the topic a bit more after seeing this picture from Mentalfloss.com floating around the Internet.

After a quick Google search for “median household income by state,” I found that Kentucky is just 4th from the lowest income.  I can see why that might make someone think Kentucky is poor.  However there is a flaw in that idea; the cost of living isn’t the same everywhere.  In fact, Kentucky has the 4th lowest cost of living in the United States.  I’ll spare you the math but you can take a look if you’re interested.

All you need to know to understand the chart below is that it’s the median income with cost of living factored in.  The results when you factor in the cost of living get mixed around a bit, but West Virginia and Mississippi are still firmly in our bottom four.  The new loser is Hawaii, tumbling all the way from the 8th highest median income down to #50 due to the extremely high cost of living.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, Virginia takes the lead, climbing from 7th place to 1st place due to a lower cost of living and higher median income.

So it boils down to people comparing Apples to Oranges.  When was the last time you heard someone say New York or Hawaii are poor states?  Yet, while someone who lives there might have 10-20k more on their paycheck each year than someone living in Kentucky, due to the higher cost of living, they can buy fewer goods and services than the Kentuckian.  Maybe the question everyone should be asking instead is, “Why is it so awesome to live in Kentucky?”

Statfink released a new update recently including a new mobile phone interface.  If you play in a yahoo fantasy football league it is definetly worth checking out.  The new mobile interface is really slick.  It’s designed for the iphone but should work well with most mobile phones.  You can take it for a test run on your mobile by connecting to my server at supercow.net/statfink and selecting the iphone interface.

I was having overheating issues on my Shuttle SN85G4 XPC.  It’s an older box but it’s been running great so I decided it was worth keeping alive.  After checking the fan it seemed to be fine but the motherboard quit supplying power to the fan!  I decided the best thing to do would be to replace the fan and get a separate speed controller for the fan.  I found the Zalman ZM-OP1 after doing a little researching and it worked out perfectly.  It’s originally intended for one of their video card coolers and as a bonus contains an extra splitter that can select between Silent mode: 20 dB/1400 RPM and Normal: 32 dB/2800 RPM.

New Fan!

The box – time to tear it apart, remove the case (three screws on the back)

The Broken Fan, remove the fan (four screws on the back)

The problem – Remove the 4 screws and replace it with the new unit

Install the fan back inside the box – I used the new Zalman Cover

Hook up the speed control if your using it – I used the silent setting (white plug) – otherwise just plug it into the motherboard

It Works!!

I just got this in an email and think it’s a pretty good solution to our current economic problems. If you’ve read any of Dave Ramsey‘s Books you’ll know he’s extremely anti debt. Debt of any kind, even school loans, the only exception is a mortgage. So take a look and if you like his solution follow the few steps below to inform your Representatives and Congressman.

We are at a crucial time in our country’s financial history. Congress defeated the $700 billion bailout plan on Monday. However, they are revising it and trying to push it through again. I’m supporting an alternative plan that will keep our nation from going even deeper in debt, and I’ve been on TV and radio all week telling people about it.

We need everyone’s help!

Follow the instructions below. Together we can change history.

Pray for them to resist a spirit of FEAR and to embrace WISDOM. Even if you don’t like them or agree with them, pray for them and tell them you are praying for them. There is a spirit over this problem that must be broken. Also, most of the media personalities are afraid as well and that is affecting their reporting. Pray for fear to be removed from them; they are making this worse.

Send The Common Sense Fix to your Representatives and Senators and tell them how you expect them to vote, and that if they put this nation in $700 billion of debt, that you will vote them out. It’s their job to listen to us! (Whichever presidential candidate or political party that champions this plan from their leadership down will likely become the next president. That is because this plan fixes the crisis while going along with the wishes of the vast majority of Americans.)

1. First, read this page (PDF)
2. Next, copy the info on this page (text file)
3. Send it to your Senators and representatives by copying and pasting the text in the web form you’re sent to.

*Note: If their websites are down, that means we’re making a difference! Keep refreshing the page until you get through. You can also go through Congress.org, though we don’t endorse this site.

Forward this email to everyone in your address book and tell them to urgently follow these 3 steps TODAY. The more people we have supporting this and contacting their elected leaders, the more likely we can turn our economy around!

I just saw this video for the first time and was amazed.  I would have never though that buffalo could organize like that.

Watch it all the way through, I usually don’t like wildlife videos and this one was pretty amazing.  You’ll be glad you did.

I recently had to recreate a Vista profile again and with this process being a little more complicated in Vista than it was back in XP I thought I’d pass along the info.

If you try to do it the same way you have in the past with XP.  By deleting the profile folder as the administrator and the relogging in as the user you’ll find you get stuck in a “temporary” profile.  Which gets regenerated everytime you login.  Most likely NOT what you were looking for.  But fortunently you haven’t gotten too far off the path.

Recreating A Vista Profile

1. Login as administrator delete the username folder in C:\Users\

2. open the registry and go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

Locate the S-1-5-xx key which had the old profile name and delete it.

3. Reboot the system

4. Let the user login

Weezer has a new video out for their new self-titled “Red Album” due out June 3rd, 2008! How many internet celebrities can you spot???

I did a little searching and so far this list of video’s are what I’ve found.

Update!:

Weezer isn’t allowing embedding of the video so click here to view the video on youtube.

(more…)

I’m amazed at just how soon we forget. I remember not two years ago everyone complaining about the security flaws and instability of XP. Just 7 short years ago people were just getting into hating XP. Do you remember the lines? All the security is going to mess it up, it takes way to much resources, the interface is ugly! Today It seems to be much more popular to sing it’s praises and fight the discontinuation date by buying pc’s as quickly as you can while you can “still” get xp before the june 30th date.

Being in the techinical services field I generally have to be an early adopter when it comes to anything the average small business is going to get into so I’ve been running vista since release candidates. I’ve been very impressed the whole way. I now use it daily on my Asus Laptop (2ghz turion, 1 gb memory, nvidia graphics) and my desktop (p4 2.6, 1gb memory, ATI Radeon 8000 pro). I haven’t had one complaint and have had nothing but stable performance since day one. So why do the masses hate it?

1. People in general hate change. The number one complaint I hear is I can’t find what I’m looking for. This took me all of two days MAX to overcome. Come on people this OS is going to be everywhere for the next 5 years. Just learn it!
2. Many manufacturers rushed inadequate machines to market just to get those early sales when people were excited about a new OS. The machines best buy were selling just barely met the minimum specs. Just take a look at Xp’s minimum specs. Compare them to your system specs… yeah.
3. Vista is the natural progression of things. The OS itself is much more secure than xp ever will be unless you have about 3-4 third party programs protecting you. It’s much more user friendly and no the pop ups aren’t nearly as bad as apple wants you to think. As a tech person I’m glad they are there so my less tech savvy customers and friends are less likely to break things on accident.

So all I’m saying is Vista isn’t the evil looming giant some seem to think and in just a few short years any problems you might have had will be a distant memory and the masses will again be upset about the newest Microsoft offering… it’s the circle of life!

I was talking with Trever in the office the other day about how much the war was costing the U.S. I made the comment that it isn’t really all that bad yet even with our $4/gallon gas compared to World War II when they had all kinds of rations and scrap drives to help the war effort. Which brought up the question just how much Iraq is costing in comparison to other wars in recent history.

When you look at it in comparision we still have a extremely long way to go till Iraq is even close to World War 2. There is at least another year before we catch up to even World War 1 (aka the war to end all wars) with Iraq currently costing 2 billion a week.