Some time ago, I complained that our new office was loud. Since then they’ve actually decided to move a small rack into the office right next to my desk, which only exacerbates the problem. A few of my coworkers got pairs of the Bose noise reducing headphones (much as Reuven suggested in the comments), and seemed to have good results. After reading a review in the NY Times, I decided to go for the Panasonic RP-HC500 (which retail for $199, but could be found at J&R’s music world for $99, although the price has now been raised, assumably due to high demand).

The concept of noise reducing headphones is pretty simple – they have circuitry which monitors the incoming low frequency sound waves. It then plays a sound wave which is the exact inverse of what it saw coming in, creating a cancellation effect.

I had to wait a few weeks for them to show up (high demand had left them unable to keep inventory in stock), but I now think they’re the greatest invention since sliced bread. I put them over my ears, turn them on, and the world simply vanishes. The first time it happened it was such a weird sensation I had to take them off immediately in case I had suddenly gone deaf. All the regular everyday background noise that you don’t notice suddenly goes away and leaves you with nothing but dead silence. They are tuned for low frequency noise (engines, fans, air compressors, etc.), so when I wear them I can still talk to coworkers and hear the phone ring. The silence they create is practically addictive – my ears feel abused now by everyday activities and noises that come from living in a city. (Which also makes me seriously wonder what kind of long term damage we do to our hearing every day). Without a doubt, these are one of the best $100 purchases I’ve ever made.

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Originally uploaded by bachrach44

Live from New York (seriously – it’s in the central park zoo), it’s a Gentoo penguin. I find it interesting only because while I’ve been using the king of all Linux distros for a few years now, I’ve never actually seen its namesake before.

Please note: although dissent on which Linux distro is the best is clearly allowed (after all, competition is what makes them all better), anyone who suggests that Redhat still counts as a Linux distro will be bludgeoned with a softcover Unix operating manual manual until they recant.

This is the best fact I have ever read (from here):

On AMD K8-based microprocessors (which were codenamed “hammer when in development) such as Athlon64 and Opteron, CPUID function 0x8FFFFFFF returns the string “IT’S HAMMER TIME” in registers EAX, EBX, ECX, and EDX.

Has anyone noticed that Chase Utley has 41 doubles and could break the all time record for doubles (which is currently held by Earl Webb, who had 67 in 1931). What’s even more surprising is that almost no one seems to notice this.

Since everyone else is doing it, I’m going on record with my Harry Potter prediction. Even though I’ve never read a single word of any of the Harry Potter books, and Rebecca had to drag me to see the first two HP films (I went willingly to some of the later ones), I think it’s obvious that:

Let’s take the case of two men for a moment: