BunkBlog

Ate cinnamon rolls, watched Macy’s parade, played bocce ball with the boy (OK, so he just chucked the balls around the yard), now to make cookies.
current_music:
current_mood: content

You know those marvelous pop-up blocking programs that IE users have? The ones Opera and Mozilla/Netscape users don’t need because it’s built into the browser? Well, there’s a company that is campaigning to “raise awareness” of how using a pop-up blocker is thievery. I’d have an easier time taking these guys seriously if they didn’t have at least one egregious English error per paragraph. Not terribly professional.
current_music:
current_mood:

Yet another new design in the Andy Social Emporium.

current_music:
current_mood:

Every document we create here at the JITC (subsidiary of the Dumbass Information Sabotage Agency) is designed so that, when printed doublesided, every new section starts on an odd page. This is a common convention in reports and books, so no problem. The strange thing to me has been that we never print things double-sided. Oh, we’ve got dozens of duplexing printers, but it has been decreed by our many bosses that they prefer to receive documents that use as much paper as possible.

Last week, the LAN ops guys reset all the duplexing printers so they would duplex by default (the default had been the opposite for years). Now, my cow-orkers are bitching that the damned printer is printing everything doublesided. Do they have difficulty with books, which must be overly complicated to them?

Yet another way in which our tax dollars are wisely shepherded.
current_music:
current_mood:

Another wonderful day at the Defense Information Systems Agency. After upgrading the Outlook clients over the weekend, they’ve somehow been able to bring the network down on Monday.

As previously bitched about, all our applications are stored centrally, so as to maximize the likelihood of a network packet collision crashing a program at the most innoportune moment. They have, however, made our Outlook app available via the oh-so-hostile Outlook Web Access system. Can I log into OWA via my personal ISP account? That would be NO.

With no applications available, we may as well not be here. We can’t even open up our contacts and get phone numbers to call, since the contacts list is stored on the same server that is unresponsive.

And this is the same bureaucracy that is in charge of the Homeland Big Brother Agency. Great…
current_music:
current_mood: annoyed

After consultation with , here’s an alternate Friday Five. You can choose whether the questions apply to holiday gifts or sexual favors…

1. What would you most like to get this year?
2. What would you least like to get?
3. What’s the best you have had in the past?
4. What’s the strangest?
5. What is the best you gave?

hehe
current_music:
current_mood:

This article just made me feel so much for Mr. Ralsky. He’s made millions on spam, and yet he feels so harassed by the public that he hides his address and phone number, working from cell phones and unlisted numbers to remain anonymous. He talks of “covering his tracks” and is unapologetic about his earlier convictions for fraud. Dude, if your business resembles the Sopranos in many details, perhaps you are doing something wrong.

There are many impatient people in the world, it seems. I just got an IM out of the blue from a complete stranger. I responded with a single word greeting, then went back to work (I am at work after all).

A few seconds later I notice a message on my screen telling me I’m rude for ignoring people. Well, excuse me for not responding in three seconds to a complete stranger who is not even saying anything beyond “Hello” and shit. That makes as much sense as telemarketers getting mad because I don’t pick up the phone. Just because I have Trillian running doesn’t mean I’m required to answer people in under 5 seconds. Get a life.
current_music: The incessant dings and bells from a coworker’s computer
current_mood: annoyed

Got a clarification on Cafepress’s “make $25 or get erased” policy. Apparently, there is a significant accounting problem at CP, due to the many stores with a small amount of commission due, yet not enough to send them a check. Those stores cause headaches. Stores with no commission due (all too many of them, I’m sure) don’t cause a problem.

So, I fall into the “pain in the ass” accounting category, it seems. I get about 25 bucks a year in commissions from Cafepress. But, they say they’ll make it easy on folks, by allowing them (soon) to use their commissions as partial payment on Cafepress products. If you do that, the commission accounting mess goes away, and your store remains open. Of course, it also means you used up your commission to buy a t-shirt instead of getting a check, but if you’re not making more than $50 per year, it probably doesn’t really matter anyhow.

Now, to prevent me from having to use CP-Bucks to buy my own stuff, you could head over to my store and help me out. Nobody has bought any “Eat Me” gear yet, which is quite a surprise, considering the folks on LJ…

Microsoft screws up privacy again

They got some real dim bulbs over there, I think.
current_music:
current_mood:

For further proof that our education system is, perhaps, lacking in some basics, this story from CNN today:

WHERE IN THE WORLD

Among 18- to 24-year-old Americans given maps:

• 87 percent cannot find Iraq
• 83 percent cannot find Afghanistan
• 76 percent cannot find Saudi Arabia
• 70 percent cannot find New Jersey
• 49 percent cannot find New York
• 11 percent cannot find the United States

They can’t find New Jersey – ok, well, who would want to. But, for nearly half the respondents to be incapable of finding New York? Damn.

After consultation with my expert team of marketing researchers, I’ve put together another design. More of a broad-interest design than my norm, it’s still a goofy little niche.

current_music:
current_mood:

This is a great calendar. I think I may have to get one of the Remixed Propaganda calendars, complete with “John Ashcroft is Watching You” image…

Which is geekier, the Clie NX70V or the Fossil Wrist PDA?

I can’t believe they actually put a full Palm PDA into a watch. It has the same resolution screen as my decrepit Palm III, but it’s not much bigger than my current (admittedly large) watch. Battery life measured in days is probably not good for a watch, but you could finally sneak a PDA into a SCIF… OK, that was a bad thought. 🙂

Imagine playing Bejeweled on that little screen. hehe
current_music:
current_mood:

I have no idea when I’ll get to the backlogged Userpic requests I have right now. While trying to get a crossover connection working, I somehow borked my dialup connection. No matter how much uninstalling, reinstalling, and safe mode nonsense I do, the damned thing fails to function.

Get this, the network connection seems to work, and the DNS servers are found, a decent IP address assigned. But, not a single internet application works, not even ping or nslookup. The programs that give an error message with any info at all indicate that the programs are unable to create sockets or allocate sockets. This helps me in no way at all. I tried uninstalling every network item, which even removed the network neighborhood icon. Then, I rebooted into safe mode to remove even the vestiges of winsock. Well, I’ve got Windows ME, so I can’t boot to a command line and the files are locked and “in use” even on a system with no networking setup. Go figure.

Anyone have a handle on this? Anyone?

Update

After trying the “remove winsock2” trick in regedit, unsuccessfully, I ended up just installing WinME over itself. All better. Stupid system that breaks itself…
current_music:
current_mood: frustrated

I have forgotten until just now my old pal’s birthday. Hope you had a good one, soldier boy.

Pakistani gunman executed after many appeals, 9 years after killing 2 CIA workers and injuring 3 others. Our Pakistani “allies” burn US flag in protest. He’s a Hero, you know.
current_music:
current_mood:

Get to spend an exciting three days in Jacksonville. At least the flights were uneventful. Now to go spend two days on a ship, watching really dull computer screens.
current_music:
current_mood:

“In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.” – Mark Twain

Reminds me of many a day in Korea…
current_music:
current_mood:

From the creator of The Bachelor

What next, bloodsport?
current_music:
current_mood: