Woof! Woof!

Well, hey Lassie! What's the trouble?

WOOF!

What's that you say?! Rube's trapped under a Dell Inspiron 5100?! We've got to help him! I'll get Paw!

A customer just brought this abomination of a clunker to me for fixin'. I've become such a smug Mac fanboy that I almost refused. This thing is a Cadillac among computers: Weighs about 11 lbs., creaks and squeaks when you type on it, and most of the little rubber feet have fallen off the bottom. The visual design is tasteless and obvious, made with cheap materials, something like a Trabbi with metallic-blue plastic wheels (which actually complements XP quite nicely). The track pad is squirrelly, and clicks and drags and jumps and springs like a dusted-up ferret.

Speaking of which, it also required a repair-install of Windows XP, which just served to sweeten the mixture. You'll never see such a dismal, patronizing display of wrong-headed tips, hints, and Are-You-Sure? stubbornness as the re-loading of a Microsoft operating system. It looks like a Warhol painting reproduced by a color-blind retard. Well, another color-blind retard. Everything is painted in primary colors, with enormous window controls and constant beeps, bloops, and blips that only distract you while trying to crack the activation scheme. And was somebody really so impressed by that over-saturated meadow photo that they decided to make it the default desktop background in perpetuity?

I've never understood how Dell can constantly be rated tops in support. This machine has a well-known problem, judging by the comments at ZDNet or just about anywhere else you check: The heat-sink isn't protected from dust in any way, and so the desktop-version 2.8GHz P4 that's sitting on the motherboard just overheats and shuts off the computer every 5 minutes. The customer spent the last 5 days talking to Dell support about this, and the first solution was always to re-install the operating system. That's always Dell's solution, it seems. Apparently, they've moved that troubleshooting tip up to the call center, instead of back at the repair shop where it belongs.

All you need to do to 'fix' this problem, is blow really hard into the fan vent on the backside of the computer. It may not be a real fix, in addition to looking rather silly, but it works. Then, to get around the poor design decision of putting the fan on the underside of the computer, where something as simple as missing rubber feet will cut off all air flow to the processor, you just slide a slim cd jewel case underneath the front edge of the computer. Asuming it isn't crushed by the sheer weight of the computer, it should give just enough room underneath for air to get in.

The next problem was that, after all the damage done by the Dell support guys, including the wholesale deletion of the C:\Windows directory, none of Dell's hardware worked correctly. USB ports? Forget it. Dell's answer: Re-install. My answer: 1 minute with Google to find the solution (thanks, Mr. Greene, nice work). It was this way with almost all problems the laptop had, and it's a story I will repeat inexhaustibly the next time I'm explaining to them why a $2000 P4 laptop is a worse choice than a $2500 Powerbook. Looks great on paper, but brother, the shit just...don't...work. It's made to the lowest standards, and the tech support solutions you receive are actually worse than the problem. I don't blame them: I wouldn't want to support XP either. But that was their decision. They should start developing to SkyOS.

I've never like Dell. I've always found their combination of stodgy, Warsaw Pact case design coupled with pimp-of-the-minute detail work disastrous. They can't give effective support for their products, and often border on destructive 'troubleshooting' tips that are obvious time-buying ploys to get the customer off the phone. I've had my differences with Apple tech support, but not once did the first support-o-droid on the phone tell me to reformat my hard drive to fix an overheating problem. Over-priced junk, the whole line.

I just made square biscuits. That's how lazy I am.

who doesn't care if I'm a one-way mirror?
who's not frightened by my cold exterior?
who doesn't ask me questions?
who doesn''t want to scold me?
who doesn't look for answers?
who just wants to hold me?

(hint: Isn't this a dream come true? Isn't this a nightmare, too?)

It will slip through your fingers like sand, the energy of your youth. At some point, in your dotage, you'll hear a song that will remind you of a girl you knew, maybe when your were seventeen, or maybe thirty. You may push it out of your mind for a while; a few decades, and years, and lifetimes, but there it is, waiting for you, in a little-visited dusty corner of your mind, where the cobwebs gather like ghosts. There was once a child in you, in all of us, who struggled against the world, and the limits it set for him, arbitrarily. This child had dreams, and plans for the future, and limitless possibilities. It's easy to hate this child, with his bright future and idealistic sensibilities. The reflex of old age is to hate such children, to despise their ignorance. But I've got a special relationship with the eager beaver behind me. I listen to him, and think about what he wants. There were dreams, and longing, and heartbreaking hopes between fast friends, all but forgotten now, lost in the din of the small worries that mar an adult life.

The only thing that stood in my way then is gone now. I'd do well to remember that.

Not after tonight, at any rate.

Barbecue, anybody?

Welcome to the pleasure dome, Howie. Lawrence, Kansas, the heart of conservative America, not to mention far-right gunslinging drug-addled nutcase William S. Burroughs, lordy, where are they when you need them, those big-iron boys.

danny say:

It's a dead man's party
Who could ask for more
Everybody's comin', leave your body at the door
Leave your body and soul at the door . . .

Got my best suit and my tie
Shiny silver dollar on either eye
I hear the chauffeur comin' to my door
He Says there's room for maybe just one more . . .

Go read a beautiful thought.

Being away for a long time is something everyone should do at some point, or at least have done to them. There's nothing like being rotated back, and that moment, after a year overseas, when you put your arms around your baby, your mama, or your brother. I think the only bad part is how much longer it is for you than it is for the people back home. I remember when I came back to the States after being out of the country for two years, and so many people said, 'what? I didn't realize you were out of the country!' And I was like, fucker! I just been to every goddamn corner of the world, wanting every minute to get back home in case something happened without me, and you fuckers didn't notice I was gone?! Fucker!

Well, anyway, Sandy writes it better.

I mean, how hard would it've been to do the following?

1. Press Print-Screen (BMP Saved to desktop)

Nowadays, it's the following:

1. Press Print-Screen
2. Open graphics program (Photoshop, etc)
3. Make "New Document"
4. Paste clipboard contents (the 'Print-Screen')
5. Save as...
6. Choose filename
7. Save

Of course, I've left out a couple of steps, such as, 'Figure out what the hell to do with a .BMP file'. Why does Windows default to BMP's? Does Windows use DisplayBMP(tm)? I know that if you make screenshots in KDE, with KSnapShot (an excellent application, BTW), you get PNG's on your desktop. In OS X, you get PDF's, which is understandable considering PDF is the native Mac graphic format.

In all fairness, I think you can press Alt-Print-Screen and it copies just the active window, but I gave up trying to memorize the difference between the two years ago. I mean, there's a key that says 'PrintScreen' right there on the keyboard, and it doesn't work, actually.

I usually avoid Instapundit, due to envy and a general sense of inadequacy. But this is awfully hard to resist.

I like Condi, even though I know next to nothing about her that I haven't read in New York Post. But still, I think a losing Rice candicacy in 2008 will be the one thing to finally put a nail in the coffin of the American Democratic party, and free up the left side of the aisle for a viable liberal party. There's no way the powers-that-be on the right or the left will let a black woman get elected to the Presidency, no matter how qualified she is.

The powers-that-be on both sides are going to have to expose themselves for what they are, and give up their positions to the ideologies that drive the parties. The Democrats will die by the light of day, and the Republicans will take a hit. But what's left over will be a truly conservative party for people of that persuasion, and the solution to the paradox of the left: namely, the guilt-based crypto-socialist nexus that they aspire to today will be replaced by the more libertarian version of an unregulated, merit-based identity hierarchy where the government plays no role.

It's win-win, Condi, at least for everybody but you. Take one for the team. Whatever Dimmer gets elected in 2008 will have a Republican VP, and will probably both be impeached before the end of 2009.

Wheee! The Powerbook's back!

For those who don't understand OS X, here's the deal: Picture Linux, but with plugins, Photoshop, drivers, the functionality of OS/2 (except with applications to take advantage of it), Microsoft Office (so you can communicate with the cretins who still don't understand that 99.9999% of modern communication should be formatted in plain-text, or, if you need italics to communicate effectively, XHTML). On top of that, there're binary distributions of joe, ncftp, and just about anything else that lets you get shit done.

Ahhh. It's good to be home again. After 3 days of Windows, I feel like somebody just invented the computer. Now, I simply must download some porno, if you'll excuse me...

UPDATE: Oh, yeah, not to mention effective OpenGL window rendering. Hooo-wee! Wonder what the poor people are doin'?

UPDATE II: DisplayPDF, anyone?

Fly my pretties, fly!

Now if I can only get my Powerbook back, I'll be able to continue my role as a smug, obnoxious Mac fanboy. Maybe I should boot back into slackware in meantime. At least there be bash there.

There's something about being an admin that makes people crazier than shithouse rats. Case in point, wherein Sam goes all Letterman on a bitchy PC.

There's nothing like frothy-mouthed violence upon inanimate objects to still the raging blood of a pissed-off computer guy. Too often, we have to smile and keep up appearances for our customers, lest we lose the illusion of being in control of a situation.

The best revenge I ever got to exact on a computer? At my old company, we had a Novell server that kept losing data. Eventually, we tracked it down to its Micropolis drives, which seemed to just be spinning bits off into space, despite being mirrored and duplexed. We called Micropolis, and they denied it could be the drives up until the warranty ran out, then they sent a recall notice for drives that were still under warranty.

So, my boss and I took the drives out, stacked them up a back room, and spent about 2 hours shooting them with a crossbow. A real crossbow, using 8-inch stainless steel bolts.

Micropolis + Crossbow == AWESOME!!!1

I don't want to say it's snowing like hell outside, but this morning, after hacking Scatman Crothers to death, I limped all the way to work with an axe yelling "Danny boy!" in a high, gurgling scream.

The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

Author Hunter S. Thompson Kills Himself

Thompson was an insane dickhead, but goddamn I loved his writing. Although I disagree with every single moral principle he put down in in books like "Fear in Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Generation of Swine", he did it all with a style and humor that kept me in bloody stitches.

He was a huge influence on me when I was younger, wanting to be a writer, trying to find my own growling inner voice to tell the stories in my head.

Rest in peace, Hunter.

So, I'm sitting here, typing away on my newly-reactivated PC, and I just noticed, after 4 hours of working, that either the blue gun is getting all hyperactive, or the red and green ones are sleeping on the job. Every couple of seconds, the color on the monitor washes all blue, then goes back to normal.

So, as a request for comments: I'm now on the lookout for a new monitor. The one I've got is an aging 19" CTX VL90. I'd like to get a 19" flat panel, wide-format if possible. Any suggestions?

The hook, of course, is that I've got exactly €3.50 in the bank.

My bestest little buddy went on a trip today. He's never been out there on his own before, so of course I'm worrying myself sick, hoping he's OK, and that the people at the Apple Repair Center are taking care of him. That's right, at 9:02 this morning, the UPS guy came by and picked up my Powerbook. He wasn't feeling well. The Powerbook, I mean. Thanks to this problem, he's going on vacation.

Now I'm working on my Windows PC. First day today. So far:

• Virus update notification that couldn't be clicked away
• ZoneAlarm popped up while I was playing Doom 3; machine frozen between video modes
• Windows blue-screened for some inscrutable reason (rebooted before I could read the error message)
• Upon restart received "Windows Critical Error" dialog, without specifics on which application it was
• Weird window-management feature, where a window was off-screen, and could only be seen when maximized. "Tile Windows" didn't bring it back
• Font-management bug where a Type 1 font couldn't be substituted in Macromedia Flash

It's going to be a long week.

As if reading my mind, michael say:

Going to a place that's far, so far away and if that's not enough Going where nobody says hello, they don't talk to anybody they don't know You'll wind up in some factory that's full time filth and nowhere left to go Walk home to an empty house, sit around all by yourself I know it might sound strange, but I believe You'll be coming back before too long At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care if you're not here with me 'Cause it's so much easier to handle All my problems if I'm too far out to sea But something better happen soon Or it's gonna be too late to bring you back It's not as though I really need you If you were here I'd only bleed you But everybody else in town only wants to bring you down and That's not how it ought to be I know it might sound strange, but I believe You'll be coming back before too long

In no particular order:

• The comical 'Boing!' sound in Whammy! by the B-52s; 1983; Athens, GA
• The last 2 Space is the Place-minutes of Bugman by Blur; 1992; UK
• My putting Upside Down by The Jesus & Mary Chain right in the middle of a make-out mix tape; 1989; Woodstock, GA
• Peter Buck selling his distortion pedal; 1989; Los Angeles, CA
• 

Poking around Little Green Footballs (no link, because I don't want y'all Bitch-dotting Charles' nice little blog there), I came across this little gem of a page.

Looking at that cheered me up for a number of reasons. First off, Charles is absolutely right about the Valentine's flash banner. Priceless; an absolute masterpiece of medieval Muslim romantik. Xenophobia begins at home, kids. But mostly, I just have to giggle when I see a URL that has "ShowFatwa.php" in it.

Awesome! You guys are nuts...

Just in case any y'all was looking for a good dildo-party this weekend.

Just sayin'...

Click here for the story...

It's Monday again. How do I know this? Well, first of all, I'll be inebriated in just a few short hours. My liver's already quivering --quivering!-- with anticipation. Secondly, every Monday afternoon there's a little parade that marches past my office window. Far from being a celebration of my own glorious acts, it's actually a sad little group of about eight freeloaders protesting Hartz IV, the German social services reform bill.

I don't really know much about Hartz IV, having Googled it for the first time just a minute or two ago, and I don't really care what's in it. Often, I'll eschew informing myself about an issue and simply base my decision on who's marching against it. The bongo-beating, rhyme-chanting mouth-breathers that just limped past my office window have just made me a huge fan of Hartz IV, even if it reads like a Jonathan Swift treatise. Beat those bongos, slackers; I'm going shopping for fava beans.

Just a factoid for the stream:

In typesetting, you generally want to avoid leaving a line of a paragraph by itself on a page. When it's the first line, it's called a widow When it's the last line, it's called an orphan. In German, you called the first line a Cobbler's boy (Schusterjung), and the last line 'son of a whore' (Hurenkind).

Carry on.

[This is a book review I've written for next month's Die Neue Szene, the local scene-rag, in case anyone feels like reading it.]

€16.90
"Digital gestalten: Der Erste-Hilfe Kurs in Typo, Farbe und Layout" (Günter Schuler)
Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005

In this compact volume, author Günter Schuler attempts to cover almost all aspects of modern electronic typographical design and layout. As the subtitle suggests, the book is arranged like a course on design basics, with long stretches of raw information about design and layout, culminating in a detailed example showing its application.

Starting with the evolution of movable type, and tracing the histories of various typefaces, we learn for what purposes many familiar fonts were originally developed, and by whom, and what it is about them that has kept them alive into the digital age. Next, we move on to how one goes about using them. The classic techniques of layout are covered, and are analogized to workflows of modern programs like InDesign and QuarkXPress. This is attractive to budding designers; learning the principles of layout, instead of the tools and tricks, allows the reader to apply this knowledge to any design process.

Unfortunately, Mr. Schuler wastes large portions of the book with endless lists of examples that contribute little to the reader’s experience. The lists of typefaces in the opening chapters, for example, are overwhelming, not to mention boring to page through. Also, many examples of bad design are subtly made, and not clearly marked, giving the reader an uncomfortable impression that the guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, after all.

Despite the occasional glitches in writing style and organization, this book offers an excellent entry point into the world of professional design. It is brimming with the kind of information and concepts one needs to rise above the Web-monkeys and Photoshop-jockeys that saturate the field today.

Every now and then, me and the old lady sleep late, work up an appetite, then get up and enjoy a nice breakfast together. I'm happy to say that today was one of those days. Unfortunately, they don't have Waffle Houses over here, so your options are limited. It's either head over to the coffee shop for a $10 breakfast of yogurt and oak leaves, or do it yourself.

It just so happens that the old lady and me enjoy practicing the culinary arts, and brother, we produced. I'd like you all to meet someone very dear to me, the Small Southern Breakfast:

Let's see, what we got here?

• Hot coffee
• Fresh-squeezed orange juice
• Homemade biscuits au Rube
• One double-sized, spicy-hot Augsburg-style omelette
• Cheese grits (made with Gouda, which is surprisingly good, even for a cheese-grits purist like myself)
• Assorted cheeses (Gouda, swiss, emmentaler)
• Butter, honey, peach jelly, and red-pepper spreads
• Peanut butter, a rare commodity in these parts
• One hungry Rube
• One hungry Augie

Yuuuuuummmmmmm-mi!

Then came the nap, but I forgot to take pictures. Y'all over there living in the Land o' Plenty have no idea what a rare joy it is over here to stuff yourself like a peanut farmer before getting out of your pajamas.

TrustedReviews: IBM, Sony, Toshiba to acCELerate Processor Market?

After three years of co-development between industry giants IBM, Sony and Toshiba the fruit of their labours has finally been detailed to the public. The Cell processor, which among other things will power Sony’s PlayStation 3 games console, is a multicore chip that its designers boast has the potential to run 10 times faster than current PC chips.

They don't mention it in at the end of that article, but in this one (German) they make it pretty clear that this cell processor thing is a 64-bit, multi-core, scaled-down Power5. It's a similar manufacturing scheme as the current Power4 machines from IBM and the Apple G5 line of Power Macs. Can you say 'Power Mac G7'? I thought you could.

There are a couple of things that are interesting in these articles. Apparently, they're already being fabricated. IBM will be introducing them in a workstation line later this year, and the PlayStation 3 is already under development, so prototypes probably exist. Secondly, the price of the chip will be less than those in Intel's line-up. The introduction of the G5 lagged behind the Power4 by just over a year. That means if Apple opts for the cell, and if reports are accurate about its performance they should definitely consider it, we could see the new processor wearing something stylish sometime next year, and with a lower price-tag than the G5s.

So, wonder what Motorola's up to these days? Probably somewhere ordering rubber dicks with Tom Sizemore.

So, I booted up my WIndows computer yesterday, for the first time in a while. What a patronizing, pedantic little shit that thing is. First of all, I get about 50 little things popping up in my system tray, telling me my virus definitions are outdated, that this or that program is trying to contact the Internet, then some pop-up window trying to sell me Half-Life 2, which I already bought about 3 months ago, and that there are approximately six relevant system updates I really, really need to install (I already installed SP2 on this dick thing here, wasn't that just last month?). It also found a "New USB HID Device", which it finds every single time it boots, and can't seem to remember. The signal-to-noise ratio in Windows is rapidly approaching zero.

But I'll be damned if a little pop-up didn't come up at the end and tell me that my Desktop has too much stuff on it, and maybe I don't think I should maybe get off my ass and run the Desktop Cleanup Wizard for once. What is this thing, my mother? Can't try to do anything around here without some little window popping up at you and telling you you're doing it wrong. I'm not trying to make excuses here, but there's only like a baker's dozen things on my desktop. I run my monitor at extra-big resolution and believe me, I've seen worse. I mean, check this out:

It's not exactly bursting at the seams, now is it? But, I figure, what the hell, I'll spend a little time wiping Windows' ass for a change. So, I grab the Quicktime Player icon and drag it over to the trashcan. Easy, one step operation, right?

You might not be able to read German, but that's a dialog telling me that, despite what I probably think, throwing away a link doesn't un-install the application. Now, I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but honestly I wasn't even expecting it to un-install the application. I was throwing a link in the trash. The observant among you may have noticed two suspicious things about this dialog:

1. There's no "Do not show this again" checkbox. I cannot fathom this.
2. There's no option to un-install the program in this dialog.

Every single time you throw a link away from your desktop, you get this dialog saying you're doing it wrong. Don't believe me? Ok, here's one for Ad-aware:

Aaaand, here's one for iTunes:

Aaand here's one for QuickBooks:

Huh? QuickBooks just got deleted, and there's no dialog? What's up with that? Hmmm...maybe he's figured I know what I'm doing. Ok, I'll just throw away Trillian:

What the fuck? Hmm...maybe it doesn't say anything about deleting quickbooks because it actually DID uninstall the program? Nope. More likely because it's a competitor with MS Money.

You piss-ant little fucker. Who the hell came up with this workflow here? First, he tells my desktop, MY DESKTOP, is too cluttered. Did I mention that it is, after all, MY FUCKING DESKTOP? Then he bitches and moans about every single little fucking thing I do, that I'm not doing it right.

Windows, you whiny-ass little bitch. If I had half a choice I'd de-rez your ass.

When deciding what to have engraved on your iPod, please try to be sober.

Jesus, that's one huge fucking pile of crockery.

Back in the good old-to-middlin' days, I was an avid user of OS/2. It had a lot of technical trickery you could entertain yourself with. Shadows, for example. Shadows were like the links you can make in Windows, except they actually worked. In Windows, a link isn't much more that a text file with the path of a document or program in it and the .lnk suffix. This means, of course, that if the document ever moves the link doesn't work any more. It's not a link at all, really: It's a bookmark. Not so with shadows; once made, you could move the document to wherever you wanted, and the shadow would always know where it had gotten off to. Incidentally, Mac OS X is the only operating system I'm aware of that has this functionality today, eComStation excepted.

OS/2 wasn't perfect, though. It was ugly, even by the standards of 1994. It also had a weird interface to it. Sometimes, dialogs were arranged in tabs along the right, sometimes along the top, and they hardly ever had OK buttons. Presentation Manager, the OS/2 version of Windows' Explorer, also had some quirks when viewing things in tree fashion. The multimedia subsystem sucked, frankly. You couldn't reliably changed things like screen resolution, or color depth. The on-screen fonts were powered by some weird, mutated version of Adobe Type Manager, which wasn't compatible with any other version, so you had to convert your Windows ATM fonts over with UNIX tools, just in case you had an SGI sitting around (we did, fortunately). And, compared to DOS and Windows, it was slow and memory-intensive to do anything with.

Probably the only things I miss about OS/2 now are the applications I used with it. You see, kids, back then, when you said 'Office', you just as likely meant Lotus Smartsuite or WordPerfect Office as Microsoft Office. Smartsuite/2 was a combination of Ami Pro, Lotus 1-2-3, Organizer, and Freelance, all distributed on about 40 3.5" diskettes. The very first word processor written for Windows, Ami Pro was a nice environment to get stuff done in. Then Lotus bought it. Then they bought Harvard Graphics out, I think. Then Paradox, the database. While they were busy buying and ruining the pieces they didn't have, and suing people like Borland over competing products (the Lotus lawsuit over Quattro touched off a couple of years of "Look & Feel" paranoia), IBM was getting ready to buy their asses and return the favor.

There were also some pretty innovative programs you could play around with. DeScribe, for example, was the first word-processor that included as-you-type background spellchecking. Clearlook tried really, really hard to be all frame-y like Ami Pro/Word Pro, but was more like KWord than anything else. Galactic Civilizations was a kick-ass Civilization-in-Space game. Then there was OpenDoc. I was really excited about OpenDoc, seeing as OLE sucked ass back then, as it still does today. That functionality is actually worse today than it was back then! OpenOffice is about the only spreadsheet/word processing combo where you can still 'Paste Link'. That doesn't even work with Office anymore. I guess I was the only schmoe that thought it was useful. Ah, the fruits of Taligent, doomed by market forces and the absolutely grisly OS/2 typography engine.

Between IBM and Corel, the roadkill and also-rans of computing history have finally found a home. Kind of like the Island of Misfit Toys, or some'n.

The Dirty Ashtray » Whoever Said Age is Only a Number and Only a State of Mind Can Kiss my Ass.:

I never realized I was old until one day, when I was laying down to go to sleep, I made this long sort of, 'arrrrrrrrrrrr' grunting sound. If I'd then added, "boy, my dogs are a-barkin'" at the end, I would've been my dad. That's when I noticed that pretty much no matter what I do, I make some sort of grunting sound to accompany it. When I sit down, when I stand up, when I reach over to turn on the nightstand-lamp.

And every action has its own distinct sound. I think two old men could always tell what each others doing, even while blind-folded. "Put down that remote, I'm listening to that!" "What remote?" "Don't you try to fool me, sonny, I recognize the reaching-over-to-the-coffee-table groan when I hears it!" I think it starts at 30. You stretch your back and, for the first time, it just doesn't feel right without that, "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh" as punctuation.

Well, that, and those weird ear-hairs that I've got going on.