Outguessing the machine

Category: Rants & Rambles

  • Spirit of X-Mas in America

    True story. The following overheard on my way into the Shaw’s on Locust St., where a cop (or rent-a-cop, they all look alike) was hassling what I could only guess was a suspected shoplifter (or generally suspicious mixed-ethnicity youth, etc.): “You walk into the store, you walk out of the store, you don’t buy anything……

  • Takin’ Care of Bullshit, everyday

    This week was the week of dealing with billing-related BS – namely, clearing up why the city is still sending tax bills to GJM (in Texas), a discrepancy between the written and printed oil bills we got, and suspicious charges on my last mortgage statement. The first two were quickly and easily resolved. As for…

  • IEEE Sez: Open Source == Terrorism!

    No, that’s not a typo, and not (much) of an exaggeration*. For a limited time, you can read the full article here in IEEE Spectrum of all places (IEEE is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). But basically, it exists to draw none-too-subtle comparisons between Iraqi insurgence and the Open Source movement, drawing heavily…

  • Warning to Verizon cuss-tomers

    In about 30 days, Verizon will begin selling your calling records to marketing companies, unless you call their opt-out number. (Yeah, this does sound like some kind of bad chain letter, except not.) This information (CPNI, or customer proprietary network information) includes the numbers you call, how long, how often, and how much it cost…

  • Just another day, you and me in paradise

    So, today I did this massive circuit board layout for our big Shaft Seal test fixture controller. All right, I mean, I really meant to. Honest. Oh, and got on about half the company’s shit lists within a few days. It’s not everyday you can piss off two entire departments by accident. Anyway, last Friday…

  • Done with people

    This feeling has been steadily building, but really reached boilover this weekend or so. I kind of don’t want to see or hear any other humans, at least for a while. Nothing personal; just being around people, friends etc. – too many, too frequently and for too long – causes them in general to become…

  • PQI Sucks

    UPDATE 2007/10/12: PQI have now replaced the card with a brand new one which appears to be in perfect working condition. In an apologetic note, PQI’s warranty department mention that Eddie (the guy who handled my original RMA) “is not longer working with PQI.” So, the issue ranted on below is most likely a fluke…

  • yourtypicalbank

    So, apparently my bank has noticed that I’ve just transferred a huge hunk of money over to my checking account. Not a week later, I get this. Yeah, I think they know what’s happening. Looking up this “circle gold” business, among its main selling points are ‘preferred’ rates on loans, and various amenities concerning home…

  • Wicked Smaht idea of the day – re: sucky office suites

    AutoCrossreference So I’m at the office writing up some BS in MS Word and I’ve just typed “(blah blah blah) as shown in Figure…”, because I’m about to refer to a figure. Now to make a crossreference. I select crossreference, the window pops up and defaults to “Table”. WTF? With a modern computer’s gigahertz of…

  • Notes on Windows 2000 Server Edition…

    Windows should not be used for servers. End of discussion. OSes which have a Registry should not be used for servers. OSes which can only be configured through a GUI should not be used for servers. Three guesses why I didn’t get jack done today, why the entire office has no website or email, and…

  • Cars with Stupid Smarts

    Note to self: Never buy a modern car unless you can disable all the “smarts” in a sneaky enough way as to not void the warranty. I’m sure the engineers who build in said “smarts” have the best of intentions, but it doesn’t do much good for confidence when a large, dangerous piece of machinery…

  • Protected: Darwin “Award” – dumb kid flips his bike, jury awards $41 mil

    There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

  • Dear User, Something Bad Happened

    I’ve figured out why the whole process of installing XP (sorry folks… the OS and its manufacturer are crap, but most of the good bread only works with their toasters) was such a nightmare. I gave a good hard think, and realized that of nearly a dozen error conditions that prevented this from occurring successfully,…

  • Yeah, any excuse to build a new machine…

    Today’s entry, involving cool things that blink at VNV concerts, will not be seen at this time, because all the pictures are on the computer that just bit the dust. Ok, the computer’s fine (or as well as it was for the last several years), but one of the drives took to making this loud…

  • How does a pimp count?

    From the archives, when I was (more of) an OCD freak and taped every morning radio show to maintain my exhaustive song parody collection: “How does a pimp count? Ho, ho, ho! Which reminds me – merry Christmas, from Mancow’s moooorning madhouse! On Rock 103.5, Chicago.” I read an opinion piece in the WSJ today…

  • Medford street sweeping today

    This is a datestamp entry. Backreference (Where all the Tufts students live, the day after a major holiday people typically spend back home with their families. Methinks somebody’s cousin in Mefud needed money to repaint his boat or something.) In the unlikely event that I live in Medford long enough, I’m going to generate a…

  • Ok, last rant on these for a while, I swear :P

    “This is Habib with Industrial Machinery Magazine(…)” “No thanks.” “It’s an entirely free subscription, which I’ll send out just as soon–” “We’re not interested, we get too many magazines.” “OK, can I just confirm your information–” “Not interested.” “It’ll only take a minute–” “Not interested.” “When should I call back?” “Er… call back? If you…

  • Odds & ends

    fr33 mp3z d00dz Here’s a kickass site I found: Jamendo. Download and share mp3s, free & legal, without worrying about keeping the RIAA out of your cornhole. All albums released under a Creative Commons license. (And they’re actually pretty good!) Sync on Green, or something to that effect I’ve long been bothered by an unparseable…

  • SpaceAliens and ponies

    Not a rant on politics (and indeed, I’m not stating a position), but a rant on language. At one point when I was a young ‘un, there was this high-sugar kids’ cereal commercial (I think it was for Cap’n Crunch) where one of the characters was rattling off a long list of those who couldn’t…

  • Category: Things heard while coming out of sleep (hey FCC, do your job!)

    For suitably large values of emo singer, “inside of me” and “in sodomy” sound exactly alike.