It may not be apparent with all the half-naked pictures and drug talk, but I'm a life-long computer geek. How hardcore am I? I once told a friend that if I accidentally dropped my computer bag into the Rideau Canal when it was barely above freezing I'd be hopping in after it. And I would too.
You're looking at someone who has hugged his computer on more than one occasion. I even named it after a Queer as Folk character I had a crush on. It's a terminal case, folks.
But hell, have you seen an iBook? It's an adorable little white chicklet. And how many people can say their computer always does exactly what they want?
I could, until yesterday. I came home from work after a tough day and Mac OS X needed to install an update. I said "go for it"...and something went wrong. The update program crashed. Then no other software would start. So I tried rebooting, and she never came back up. For someone who would rather go without food than his computer, this was not acceptable.
Long story short: I have to get me some install disks and it'll be fixed shortly.
It's funny though. Apple advertisers Macs as a trouble-free alternative to Windows, but my friends still seem to have a lot of problems. Mac users are just a lot more forgiving.
Let me put it this way: running Mac OS X is like being married to a really wild woman. She's dressed to the nines in designer clothes and when you're in bed you get the feeling you're in it together. She knows just what you want and she's happy to oblige. Once in a while she flies off the handle, but how could you stay mad when the makeup sex is this good?
Running Windows is like being married to...a bitch. She looks alright, but instead of buying designer clothes she shops at Winner's. She carries a clearly counterfeit Louis Vitton bag. She doesn't get upset any more often than the firecracker, but when she does she rips up all your photos and throws your clothes on the front lawn. You spend as much time trying to coax her into sex as you do having it, and she acts like she's doing you some big favour. She gets the job done but leaves you secretly bitter that she makes the simplest of tasks complex and stressful.
Have I carried that metaphor far enough yet? And thus ends the geekiest blog post I will ever write.
Nobody that reads this will ever sleep with me.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
My roommate was watching TV when this came on. I thought it was going to be another lame Steve Jobs parody, but it was freaking hilarious. The first couple minutes kinda suck. You have to be patient, trust me. My roommate isn't geeky at all and he was cackling as much as I was. Enjoy!
Well it was needlessly painful, but I've finally replaced the template on this sounding board of the damned. I like it. It looks...grown-up. I looked at a cached copy of the old version and I can't believe how long I put up with it. It looks so gaudy by comparison. Take a look and compare for yourself.
Today's lesson: Google is not infallible, 'cause Blogger ain't all it's cracked up to be. Regardless, I whipped the bastard into shape and now I'm calling the shots.
If only I could alter my appearance as easily as I can alter that of my blog. I'd give myself bigger...everything. Of course it'd be a little embarassing to walk around with my nose on my ass because some idiot fucked up the HTML, but at least a fix would be just a quick edit and refresh away!
Every so often at work I have to pretend it's 1989 and saunter up to the fax machine. As I approached the discoloured piece of arcane technology yesterday I leafed through the small stack of junk faxes, as I often do.
Honestly, why are people bothering to send this 20th century version of spam? Do people trust some random ad they get through their fax machine. I mean, at least with email you can reach millions of people pretty quickly. With a fax you can send, at most, one per minute per phone line. Wow.
Anyways, as I was idly perusing the junk yesterday, I spotted something a little more entertaining than the usual vacation packages and Nigerian scams. Take a look at this (click to open full-size):
I don't even know where to begin poking holes in this thing. But let's give it a shot.
They increase their odds of winning by playing "intelligent numbers"...umm, what? As in some numbers are more likely than others? That's fundamentally not how the lottery works. They're all equally likely, stupid. The only way to beat the lottery is to rig it, or get unbelievably lucky. It's not a charity, folks.
It's said that the lottery is for people who suck it math. I say this is for people who suck at life.
They're pretty smart about the way they present it though.
WE HAVE ONLY 20 POSITIONS LEFT !!!!
YES! OVER 80% ARE FILLED
DON'T LOSE OUT FOR EVER
See the whole limited-time offer thing is smart. Creating a sense of urgency makes people act before they think.
Now the problem is thus: It costs $10,000! I would really like to meet the person who has $10,000 yet is stupid enough to fall for this half-assed scam. If you have ten grand in the bank and you can't see through this, you don't deserve that $10,000.
In fact, I'm not even going to condemn the scammers, because the holes in this are so obvious that anyone who falls for it must be blinded by greed or incredibly stupid. I bet if they made it $1,000 to enter they'd get a lot more takers.
Regardless, it's nice to see some home-grown Toronto scams for once. At least the money's staying right here, am I right? That's gotta be good for the local economy!
One final word to anybody thinking about contributing to this "plan." If you're going to flush $10,000 down the toilet, at least do it in style. Rent some hookers, order some blow, and take it all on a flight to Luxembourg. Go on a bender to end all benders. Then you can look at your empty bank account and say "I may have wasted a ton of money, but at least I can't remember a fucking thing!"
For a long time, I've had virtually no use for it. After all, I was carrying around a T616 which is a first-gen camera phone that is completely useless. If you have direct sunlight on the fourth Sunday of the month during the year of the donkey you might be able to get a usable low-res picture. Might.
But now I have a very nice 2 megapixel phone. I even grabbed a flash attachment off of eBay. This thing takes decent pictures. So once in a while, I figure it's fun to send a funny picture to someone.
Last weekend at the club I took a pretty funny (and highly sketchy) picture of myself with the bathroom attendant. I sent it to three people and none of them got it. Something always goes wrong.
I have no trouble sending. Which is great, because that's the part they charge you for. But half the time the recipient doesn't get anything, or they get a notice saying they have a picture message and they can't pick it up. Or something else goes wrong.
I'm not doing anything esoteric here. I'm sending a picture message, a feature that's been on phones for three or four years now, from my stock Rogers phone to my friend's stock Rogers phone. I figure by now I've paid out four or five bucks for photos that went into oblivion. It's right in that sweet spot where it's not enough to be worth complaining about, but still enough to bug the crap out of you.
This should just work. Is it any wonder this hasn't gotten off the ground yet? Look how long it took text messaging to really pick up, and that's about 45 times more reliable. If a communication channel doesn't work at least 99% of the time it's virtually useless. Do you have to phone someone every time you send an email to make sure they got it? No, but I have to text my friends whenever I send a picture message.
I'd send Rogers a photo of my ass and ask them to kiss it, but that'd probably be another 50¢ down the toilet
Image courtesy of Seth W.
So I was taking a look at the site stats today, as I often do, when I noticed a couple of anomalies. Normally my visitors are about 70% Windows 2003/XP and 30% Mac OS X. However, this time I was excited to see a Linux user. While I do the iBook thing I've been a big fan of Linux for a while now. But something else wasn't quite right.
Windows Me. One of my visitors was running Windows Me.
You don't have to be a tech guru to know that Me was, by far, the most horrific Windows version ever to spew from the code-developing bowels of Microsoft. Me was coming pre-installed on computers when I started first year university, so of course that's what everyone had, and it was a freaking nightmare. Non-stop problems.
You know that "clunk" sound old monitors make when they change resolutions or turn on? They make that when Windows blue screens too. One friend of mine was actually terrified of the sound, to the point that she jumped when she heard it, because Me crashed so much. Now she'll forever associate it with lost documents and wasted time. They didn't nickname it Windows Mistake Edition for nothing.
Anyways the bottom line is: if you're browsing this site with Windows Me, you're going to be seeing a lot of this:
If you are this poor Georgia soul I want to help you. I swear, give me the money and I'll catch a Greyhound over there and install Windows 2000 on your computer. Hell, even better, me and my Linux buddy will mail you a Linux CD and walk you through the setup. With my help you'll be able to think of blue without trembling in fear!
There was a time not too long ago when all my disposable income went toward gadgets. In the last 18 months I've really cut back, partially because I've mostly got everything I need, and partially because I spend money on other things.
However, Apple's got me wanting a bright green iPod shuffle like nobody's business. I thought it was cute when they introduced the silver model a few months back, but now I can barely resist. Why is it that we humans are so easily amused by a few bright colours? I mean I already have a very good MP3 phone with a 1 GB card. But it's not green!
It's funny to think about how quickly times have changed. Not too long ago, if you saw someone walking down the street alone while talking you'd cross the street ASAP. Then it became okay if you were holding a phone to your ear. And now, with those clever little bluetooth headsets, we can barely tell who's whack at all anymore.
But that's not all that's changed. Electronic communications have changed the way modern relationships work, and not always for the better.
Once upon a time when you agreed to meet someone somewhere, you'd damn well better be there around the right time or they'd take off and you could spend a fair bit of time trying to track them down. But now we've got a license to be lazy and rude. We don't need to be on time. We can call ten minutes before and warn them that we're going to be late.
Hell, half the time we're not even clear on where we're supposed to meet anymore. How many times have you told someone to meet you at the Eaton Centre without mentioning which of the hundreds stores you should be at?
Not only that, cell phones have given us more excuses. "My phone died" is the 21st century's answer to "The cheque's in the mail." You can just fake a couple of desperate hellos and hang up on people whenever you want. The technology's lack of reliability has rubbed off on us.
Of course we all should've seen this coming. Early 90s heartthrob Zack Morris was on the bleeding edge of cellular technology, and I can't imagine a more inconsiderate or lazier prick than him.
