I heard on the radio today that Hasbro is releasing a new version of the Game of Life this summer, with a Visa card instead of cash. Personally, I don’t think too much of this game to begin with as its nothing like real life, however, for those parents who use it to teach their kids about life, I think this is a bad move. Todays culture is one of “Buy it Now, Pay for it Later”. So much so that people today are drowning in debt more than in generations past, and it seems to be the Norm. Shouldn’t we be teaching our kids how to be financially responsible with good, old fashioned cash before we teach them about credit? Certainly, many of us as parents could use a lesson in how to be financially responsible before we even try to impart that knowledge on our children. My father always tried to tell me what I was doing wrong when it came to money and I never (ever) listened. All he wanted was to keep me from making the same mistakes he had, but he didn’t. We managed to get ourselves in some pretty good debt, and we managed with hard work to get out. Its my hope that by changing my habits, the lesson comes more, do as I do than do as I say for my children. Hasbro and Visa be damned.

Another thing that is driving me mad this week (besides the fact that every other post on digg.com is about dell putting linux on their machines) is the need that society has for warning labels on Crocs (you know, the incredibly comfy sandals). Apparently some kids too stupid to use an escalator got their footware and subsequentely themselves mangled by an escalator and now people are calling for crocs to come with warning labels.

From where I stand, very few products (and by very few, I mean NONE) should come with warning labels. If you aren’t clever enough to know how to get on and off an escalator, or that you shouldn’t put a plastic bag over your head, or take a bath with a toaster, then by all means, take that bath and make your toast at the same time. If you think blow drying your hair in the shower is a good, time saving idea, then GO AHEAD AND DO IT. Save some trouble for the rest of us.

Yar, this weekend, almost 2 full weeks earlier than years past, the sound of people waking up an hour late for Sunday morning Services (or work) will be heard across the country. If you’re operating on a windows based OS with automagic updates enabled, you’re covered. If your cell phone is set to use the network time, then providing your carrier is up-to-date, you’re covered. What about us Lee-noox users? Well, you can make sure you’re covered in a relatively simple way….

Open up an xterm (or aterm, or whatever term you like….) and type:

# zdump -v EST5EDT | grep 2007

The output should look exactly like this:

EST5EDT Sun Mar 11 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000
EST5EDT Sun Mar 11 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
EST5EDT Sun Nov 4 05:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:59:59 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
EST5EDT Sun Nov 4 06:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:00:00 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000

If that’s not the case, then do an ‘apt-get update; apt-get upgrade’ (if you’re on debian that is, you could probably do an emerge sync && emerge world on gentoo based systems…) and then run the command again. If that didn’t fix your issue, then there’s the NIH.gov technique (mind you this is all in the terminal:

1. su
2. cd /root
3. ftp elsie.nci.nih.gov
user: anonymous
pass: you@you.com
4. cd pub
5. ls
6. use ‘get’ to get the latest tzdata file like so:
get tzdata2007a.tar.gz
7. quit
8. mkdir tzdata
9. mv tzdata*.gz tzdata/.
10. cd tzdata
11. tar xzvf *.gz
12. cp /etc/localtime /etc/localtime.LAST
13. rm /etc/localtime
14. zic northamerica
15. ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/EST5EDT /etc/localtime
16. zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007

It should show Mar 11 and Nov 4 as the new times, in my case. My example above is only for the east coast of USA. If that’s not you, then modify for your timezone. Sorry I don’t know about other timezones, but you can grep the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory to see what else is there….

Note: This info was gleaned from UbuntuForums. Props to the original poster!