After the Thanksgiving weekend ended (a little over 1 calendar week from when I bought my Orb), I finally got a response in email form Monday afternoon...

The response said they believed to have fixed the problem and to go ahead & re-register my Orb. I immediatly proceeded to do so only to hit the same roadblock I had prevously. That being, upon attempting to register I get an error that my device id is already registered. Per the email's statement I emailed them back, as it said they would 'keep working on it' if I still had problems. As of today I still have not recieved ANY kind of response, and my orb still is not funcitoning as desired (which, based off their hours of operation, means at least a total of 48 hours before they do in fact respond)...

Needless to say, I'm rather frustrated at this point. These items sell for $140 on Amazon and the least you could expect is for it to actually work as adveratized... Somehow I manged to get the one product who's Id is capable of physically capable of not existing in their database, but the database still recognizes my device id as in fact registered...

My only hope at this point is that they are actually doing something... In the mean time I'm in about 10 days of my 30 day return window at the store where I bought it... I'll have to pay attention to see where this goes from here...

I purchased an Ambient Orb over the weekend & registered it on their website. For thoes who don't know what an Ambient Orb is, it's bassicaly a little frosted globe that changes colors indicating different things. One example is that (by default) it will glow red or green depending on the state of the Nasdaq.

At any rate, after setting mine up, I found I could no longer log in to control my orb. I submitted an email for support which was finally replied to yesterday. They said they could not see the serial number in the system, so told me to re-register it. When I did, I got an error saying "This device is already registered".

So I called their phone support today where they told me that they forwarded a ticket to their tech guy as they are saying that, yes my orb is in the system, but no they cannot find it. So there is basically nothing they can do since the only guy that can fix it is gone on thanksgiving vacation...

I did get a good deal on it, but at this point I'm not exactly pleased... The concept is nice, but their support and reliability is pretty ugly...

Welp, took longer than I thought it would but there is now a story which is refuting the article I refered to in a prevous post.

With little surprise to me, the first thing the article does it attack the credability of the author, falling just short of outright calling him names. As it usually boils down to in thoes who support the global warming debate, why attack the science when you can attack the author???

He goes on to mention the graph and then makes his proof simple: They are measuring two different things.

Welp, measuring temperature as apposed to measuring temperature... Two completely different things... Riiight...

First off he says that the first graph is global, the second is European... Well that clears everythign up... Because everybody knows Europe isn't really part of the globe any damn way... So what happens in Europe plays no role in a global measurement... So if it gets 20,000,000 times warmer in Europe durring that period, as long as it gets 30,000,000 times cooler in, say, Antartica, then globally it's cooler...

He then proceeds to stat the scales are different... Welp, there ya go... If you've got two graphs measuring something, but they are in different scales, then there's no way to compare data, as they are absolutely different... I'm not a mathamatician, and not an expert when it comes to temperature, but last time I checked, scales are easily adjusted and comparisons can be made...

The author then further goes on to explain how only someone with a science degree dare attempt to analize and understand envronmental science...

It is a fact that Albert Einstein dropped out of school. So how dare he write the theory of relativity without having a scientific degree.

Al Gore is now saying that the US & Australia are the 'Bonnie and Clyde' of global warming...

I guess that makes Al Gore the Joseph McCarthy of global warming...

Universal music is now saying anybody using an MP3 player other than a Zune is a theif. What's ironic is that every song I've downloaded for the past few years has come to me buy paying $.99 a song on iTunes. Apparently this doesn't matter, as since I'm using a non-zune player (as Zune is not compatible with iTunes purchased music) I'm a theif.

As I see it, I was trying to do the right thing. It's still fairly easy today to download songs off of P2P, yet I've gone iTunes all the way. But seeing as I'm still a theif, why am I bothering trying to do the right thing? Why should I pay another $.99 for a song if it's still stealing???

Being Microsoft won't be releasing Mac compatible Zune software (their choice) anytime soon, there is no possible way for me to get on the 'not stealing' list (as I don't own a Windows PC). Even if I didn't use iTunes, the only MP3 player choices I have that will still work with my Mac are limited to non-Zune players ONLY. And unless M$ decides to spend the time & release a Zune compatible piece of Mac software (I'm not holding my breath), I cannot seemingly use any type of MP3 player and not be a theif (seeing as downloading is not even a requirement to use an MP3 player).

So much for trying to do the right thing...

Here's another tirade on my part as to why I think the concept of Global Warming has little to no merit in reality.

One of the most common ways of attacking any scientist who says "there is no global warming" is the proverbial "that guy works for the fossil fuel industry." Ironically, this is always the first and many times the only method refuting the facts and analysis they put forth.

The problem that most people don't seem to realize, is that working for the fossil fuel industry doesn't inherently mean the person is flat out lying. But what's more important is that people also assume that if someone isn't working for the fossil fuel industry, everything they say must be true...

The truth is, those who are supposedly independent often have reasons for pushing the idea of global warming, even at the expense of the truth.

In an attempt at a quick explanation I'll keep this short: Independent scientists who are funded to study global warming have more incentive to side with proving global warming than presenting the whole accurate picture. You see, if those scientists are funded by an organization looking to find out about global warming (even if the origination isn't necessarily out to find evidence supporting the theory), but things that are causing it and ways to stop it. You see the moment they come forward and say (as a whole) the evidence suggests that global warming is nothing abnormal, it's the normal cycle of the earth, and evidence suggests earth regularly rebounds from this type of thing, they're done. No more studies need to be done, no more causes need to be found, no more outcomes need to be derived. They will cease to be funded because there would be nothing left to study.

This occurs every day in many other areas, and many of us realize it does but usually don't even care enough to remember 5 minutes later. One of the things my mom always said when I was a kid, after having been diagnosed with diabetes, all the money given to diabetic charities is used solely for the purpose of funding the findings of new treatments. The moment they find a cure, a ton of money is lost.

Yet, it's also seen in arguments that global warming proponents state as gospel: The fossil fuel industry prevents alternate energy innovations because there's more money to be made in fossil fuel. Yet those same proponents refuse to even acknowledge that on their own side of the spectrum, there is actually a lot more money to be made studying global warming than there is to find it doesn't exist...

In the end, there is an article that caused me to write this today. A post titled Climate chaos? Don't believe it mentions the following:

The Royal Society says there's a worldwide scientific consensus. It brands Apocalypse-deniers as paid lackeys of coal and oil corporations. I declare my interest: I once took the taxpayer's shilling and advised Margaret Thatcher, FRS, on scientific scams and scares. Alas, not a red cent from Exxon.

The interesting this is that he needs to include this fact just so that the number one argument that would likely be used to ignore his claims isn't pulled, even though scientifically that argument is not an argument of fact and merits. And I'm sure even with this included there is some team out there trying to find the complex path of funding somehow trickling down to him by the fossil fuel industry...

He makes one point that, if in fact true, seems to refute the entire concept that the climate warming of today is not only not caused by your neighbors SUV, but that it is in fact normal in the short term and that all of 800 years ago the average temperature was higher than today.

He states that as of today organizations such as the UN uses what he is calling a hockey stick graph. What happens is that the average temperature for the past thousand years goes up and down in a range of plus or minus .02 degrees Celsius (give or take). That is except for recent history which goes up almost a full degree. This is the evidence we are given today, that today's temperature is a full degree warmer than anything in a long time.

The problem with this graph is that it deceptively used means to be generated to control what the end graph looked like. The thing about mapping any temperatures past a couple hundred years or so is that you have to use methods to extrapolate the approximate temperatures, because thermometers didn't always exist...

One of the first things they did, however, was to give a single method for figuring out the temperature 390 times more weight than any other method. This isn't inherently bad, assuming that one method is 390 times more accurate than any other method. However it so turns out that the method they did use is one already ruled (by the UN in 1996) to be an inaccurate method. The method was this: Tree-rings are wider in warmer years.

Another thing about the graph was what they chose to exclude. The graph included "24 data sets" going back 1400 years. However, they fully elected to exclude one (without stating that they excluded it). That is, the data showing the medieval warming period. But not only was that data source omitted (without it being indicated they had elected to omit it, also thereby preventing them from giving any reason for saying why it was omitted), but that piece of data was placed into a folder marked "Censored Data". So while omitting the data, they also felt they had to hide it for some reason.

Then using this information, they generated a computer model, which gave the hockey-stick graph. This in itself was not the goal they were going for, as a perfectly shaped graph like that already seems to indicate some distortion, as temperatures are never completely constant. However even when trying to add extra random pieces of data to modify the shape, it always came out as the perfect hockey-stick shaped graph.

So what happened with the graph?

Even after the "hockey stick" graph was exposed, scientific papers apparently confirming its abolition of the medieval warm period appeared. The US Senate asked independent statisticians to investigate. They found that the graph was meretricious, and that known associates of the scientists who had compiled it had written many of the papers supporting its conclusion.

In short the graph is extremely questionable at least if not wholly inaccurate. Ironically even though this occurred, the graph is in fact still used today in UN publications.

The article also includes a more accurate graph which take the medieval warm period (representing climate changes in Europe). The graph literally shows a warming period 3C higher than today occurring all of 800 years ago (long before your neighbor's SUV was built), followed by a low point around 350 years ago. This actually shows that temperature changes of a couple degrees do in fact occur over periods of a few hundred years.

The article continues further talking about the effects of the medieval warming period: Greenland was once green, today it's covered in ice. The tropical Andes had no glaciers, today they do. There was less ice in the North Pole than there is today.

I'm going to end here, but the article continues. It points out that the Sun plays a bigger role in the climate than many want to admit, and even goes on to show how the UN managed to adjust their math to remote the sun's influence on the environment (it's amazing how easy it is to prevent the sun from having any effect on us, next time I spend time out in the sun I need to adjust my math so I can keep from getting a sun burn).

The final point is this: If half the stuff this guy writes about is true, than the theory of global warming is in fact a sham. The ironic thing is, a lot of what he is saying has been verified, but what happens when a piece of evidence is verified as being true (that conflicts with the overall concept of modern global warming), is that it's then discounted as not being significant in the big picture. The only evidence used to prove global warming is that which supports it at the time, and anything that those doubt into the picture is minimized...

Al Gore admitted to exaggerating the truth in his little movie about the environment. This is considered acceptable to those advocating what they claim is the truth of global warming. Evidence against that isn't verified as absolute truth is labeled as false. Evidence against that is verified is labeled as insignificant or is buried where it can't be found...

With TiVo's special deal last month ($125 for a series 2 80-hour TiVo + 1 year of service) I picked up my first TiVo... Interstingly on the site they stated it's a savings of 40%, but if you take the free year into account it was a savings of over $300...

The deal is now expired, so I can't help you much if you missed it, but I would still recomend you get TiVo. There are other offers present which are almost as good...

So, if you've now decided to get TiVo, remember who recomended it...