Ed The Dev .com

Idiom: The early bird gets the worm.

Meaning: Many opportunities are just waiting for the first person to come along and claim them.

Idiom: The first penguin is the one that gets eaten.

Meaning: Be careful; sometimes there’s a reason everyone else is waiting.

Idiom: The last penguin doesn’t get any shrimp.

Meaning: If you’re too careful, you’re going to miss out on the thing you wanted.

Idiom: Be the second penguin.

Meaning: For a good opportunity, find someone who did it wrong and improve on their method.

Idiom: Be the (n+1)th penguin, where n is the predicted number of seals.

Meaning: Even the second penguin can get eaten.

Idiom: Be the ((prob.nearby * prob.hungry * num.seals)+1)th penguin.

Meaning: Math can be handy, if you do it quickly enough that you haven’t already missed all of the shrimp and quite a bit of the tobogganing and other penguin shenanigans.

My brother and I were discussing how sometimes someone asks for your help diagnosing their computer / iPhone / digital clock problem, and you ask them if anything strange happened lately, and they say no. You take it apart and have a look inside, and see burned out capacitors. So you ask “Did this let off smoke recently?” and they say “Yes.”

There are people who do not know which devices they own should and should not give off smoke. So as a public service, I’m writing a guide: Is some smoke okay?

Tune in next week for ongoing segments, including “Is it okay if it’s really really hot?” and “Can I safely submerge it in water?”

The University of Illinois Network Security team offers a computer registration service for campus networked devices. Registering a device used on campus increases the chances that Campus Police (with help from Network Security) can recover the device if it is stolen. I’m a big fan of this service because I wrote it for them.

http://www.cites.illinois.edu/security/register/