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thank you for this opporunity

The world's largest Microsoft SQL server lives just a puddle hop away in Pinellas County, Florida.  The owner, who I will call 'QRS Inc." owns enough server hardware to single-handedly account for global warming.  Local experts have gone so far as to say that the output from their server rooms' cooling systems accounts for Florida's [...]

quick and dirty

For a current project, I must convert a number of PDF documents to plain text. I could do this manually using a free conversion program, but that would not be nearly adventurous enough.
You might recall that I mentioned xpdf in a previous post. It is a good tool, but unfortunately it does not support batches [...]

• welcome

  You have entered 'start your head on fire,' housed at www.robertbeverly.com. 'start your head on fire' is the semi-serious blog of Robert Beverly. Mr. Beverly writes most of the news items, but you will also see us (Debbie and Secretia) posting from time to time to clarify things. We are his "blog secretaries." Common topics on this site are insurance, real estate, investing, martial arts, and satire. We really aren't interested in these topics, but like Debbie says, it's better than working part time at Burger King.

• View Robert Beverly's profile

• who?

  Rather than publish a biography or ask Mr. Beverly to record his memoirs (which would be dull), we thought we would post a summary for anyone who was wondering. He said we should do something like this because that's what other people's blogs have on them. Mr. Beverly goes by Rab, which is a common name for Scotsmen and their dogs. We call him Mr. Beverly in person because we're trying to talk him into a raise, but you can call him Rab. Rab is an educator, insurance professional, investor, and IT & security enthusiast. He drinks gallons of coffee daily and makes jokes that we usually don't understand. We laugh politely because he writes the paychecks for Debbie and I (he hired us both as blog secretaries back in October 2006... we didn't even know what a blog was before this). Mr Beverly goes to the gym a lot, which is why he doesn't have time to type in his blog entries, and he does all kinds of weird exercises like Kung Fu and Yoga (NEVER ask him about this unless you want to hear all about martial arts). He enjoys analysis and esoteric mental challenges and games like "Go" (the ancient Japanese strategy game) and chess, all of which account for why we do not to start conversations with him. We like talking about peekapoos and the best grocery store sales, but he won't let us post anything about that.

• Categories

  • 13th of the month
  • Business and Investing
  • Consulting
  • Cool Technology
  • countersales
  • culture
  • exercise and martial arts
  • fitness and medicine
  • Games and other stuff
  • health
  • In all seriousness
  • Insurance
  • law
  • Mundane Mondays
  • Music
  • politics
  • Programming
  • Pronouncement
  • Risk Management
  • Saturday Satire
  • Security
  • Thursday Thamauturgy
  • Uncategorized
  • Writing

• starting your head on fire

  Delivers oxygen to your brain faster than all other methods! Proven in double blind placebo controlled studies.

• Places to Go

  • The Cato Institute
  • The Florida Insurance School, Tampa and Tallahassee, FL
  • All County Insurance, Tampa FL
  • Florida Insurance School Continuing Education, Tallahassee FL

• Blogroll

  • Cato @ Liberty - Cato is a libertarian research foundation. If you wish to stay informed on public policy, you can not ignore the Cato blog. Pay them a visit.
  • Greg Lincoln
  • InQuest Journal - Blog and podcast of Nancy Beverly and Jade Macalla. All things unexplained and inexplicable will be addressed here.
  • Modo Vernant Omnia - Tampa local with many topics of interest to my readers. As you might imagine, I could not resist blogrolling a site that has tags as diverse as: economy (with views similar), spinning (as in wool), ancient Greek stuff, and occult.
  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Fooled by Randomness - The Economist turned me on to Mr. Taleb, a trader turned philoisopher (as described by Forbes). His writing and his thinking are quite interesting, and certainly more worthwhile than anything you will find here.
  • Ouralexander.org - Site discussing informed consent in pediatric medicine, by a family that experienced the worst possible tragedy.
  • RiskProf - An Insurance Blog - A truly marvelous blog. I know risk & insurance are less interesting to most of you than organizing your sock drawer, but this is excellent writing. Besides, if you understand insurance you have the right to complain about it.
  • Schneier on Security - This will be your favorite security blog. Bruce Schneier exposes “security theatre” and proposes realistic problems and solutions. Stay up to date on security policy and IT risk management with CRYPTOGRAM, his email newsletter.
  • The Goodly Mr. Plotkin - My excellent friend Richard Plotkin. Read his musings and insights, or wander through the social network of MySpace users. Several of his blog-friends are people I went to school or knew other ways… I wonder if they will Google me and say ‘hi.’
  • Worlds Healthiest Foods - I love this website. It is all about the nutritional value of foods that are considered ‘healthy,’ with tons of sources cited.