BunkBlog

From the wonderful Sinfest, this hilarious monologue…

Simple is beautiful. The masters of any given field always go back to the basics, the fundamentals, the bare essentials of their craft. The fancy stuff is nice, but the real cool shit is minimalist. Drum and bass. Color and light. Meter and rhyme. And the works that grab us are usually built on the simplest of concepts–a love song, the hero myth, the afterworld. Of course, this is not recommended for all professions, like say, medicine. If I ever go under the knife, I don’t want some quack trying to go “minimalist” on me. I’ll be in pain cuz he won’t give me any drugs, and he’ll be like, “Hey, I’m retro.” Or pilots. Those guys definitely shouldn’t be getting too avant garde. “Attention. This is your pilot speaking. I thought I’d break down my craft to its bare essentials. Hold on, everybody.”

According to Jerry Falwell, the gays and liberals are at fault for the deaths of approximately 5000 people. Since Jerry also believes that the Teletubbies are gay, does that mean that children’s stuffed animals are terrorists? Radicals of any type are just repugnant.

A number of people are trying to get the U.S. into a very long war to eradicate all terrorist-friendly countries once and for all. That may very well be counter-productive. I notice that almost none of the people clamoring for war have ever been near one.

Conversely, there are a rather strident group of folks that think we should turn the other cheek and take our lumps as a deserved response to our imperialist ways. WTF?
I also note that none of these obnoxious twits have been in combat, nor even served the country which they take such pleasure in trashing while simultaneously sucking up all the advantages inherent in American life. To those people, I’d like to say, “Fuck you. You don’t get a vote until you have volunteered to go in the line of fire to defend your way of life.”Not every soldier has been called into battle, but every one of us that enlisted in the military knew that was on the option list. So, until you can say the same, your opinion on when we should risk our servicemembers’ lives is worth a lot less than you might like.
I know this makes me sound a bit too much like the ever provocative , but we agree on a few things at least.
current_music: Pearl Jam – Jeremy
current_mood: grumpy

I’m ambivalent about being “non-essential” but after more than an hour waiting to get on-post to work this morning, I was turned away.

Pretty effective crippling of the entire country…
current_mood: indescribable

I doubt the veracity of this, since it asked so few questions, and I answered quite strongly in favor of free markets (which seems to be anti-socialist), but here we go anyhow.

# 1 Socialist
# 2 Progressive
# 3 Leninist
# 4 US Liberal
# 5 Anarchist
# 6 US Libertarian
# 7 Marxist
# 8 US Conservative

Don’t expect me to fill out many of these “follow the leader” polls, but this one was entertaining in its lack of accuracy.
current_music: Stacy coughing
current_mood: bored

I’m convinced there is a correlation between gender and shampoo timing. Let’s see…

While looking through the sample page for GiggleCam, I had a thought (remarkable, no?). How exactly does one go about starting a game of naked Twister? And, is this a common game among friends? Heh
current_mood: amused

Hey, this is kind of cool. My “Friends Don’t Let Friends Reenlist” t-shirt is up to number 42 on the T-Shirt Countdown website. Hope someone buys them now. Or at least the Origami shirts, they’re cooler anyway. More colorful design will show up as soon as can get me that 102nd logo…

You can vote (if you want me to be more famous) at my website.
current_mood: tired

Wednesday –

Microsoft has a new browser, Internet Explorer 6.0. Netscape has the new Communicator 6.1. Opera has the relatively recent Opera 5.12.

That’s a lot of choices. Not to mention the truly fringe browsers, like the text-only Lynx and the Linux-only Konqueror. Let’s focus on the options available to Windows users; like it or not, they own the market right now.

IE 6.0 and IE 5.5 Service Pack 2 have something in common that is unlike the other two big browsers: no Netscape-style plugin support. Microsoft didn’t announce this new “feature” before implementing it, and included it in a service pack, which normally only includes bugfixes, not significant changes in behavior.

Microsoft also has decided that IE6 will no longer have a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) installed by default. It will have to be downloaded separately. Microsoft blames this on Sun, saying that the lawsuit Sun filed against them requires MS to stop bundling the JVM, and that nobody uses Java anyway. This is blatantly false. Sun sued Microsoft to get MS to honor the contract they had signed. That contract stated that MS will only include Java Virtual Machines that are fully compliant with the Java standard, as defined by Sun.

That does not excuse Microsoft from breaking the contract they voluntarily signed with Sun. Nobody forced MS to promise Java compatibility, they did it on purpose and then broke their promise (contract). When it looked like Java was going to be vitally important, MS pledged allegiance. Now that Java looks more marginal (I know some businesses use it for important functions, but not most consumers), Microsoft sees no gain in going along with someone else’s standards.

Sun didn’t want to make an “open” standard, they wanted a standard. If it were open, they would allow others to change it. Instead, they want others to abide by their agreements.

That way, you could write a Java applet and know it would work on any JVM on any OS/platform. Does “Write once, run anywhere” ring any bells?

ActiveX controls, which were embryonic at best when Java was introduced, are now at the forefront of MS’s plans.

The convenience angle has been what Microsoft has ridden to market dominance. Breaking contracts willy-nilly has been another thing that has helped them, however. Whenever MS has a strong belief they can out-litigate their opponent, they do so, but still scream foul when anyone else takes them to court.

The rather ominous security and privacy problems with Microsoft’s current products are getting a great deal of press, but I wonder how much the average consumer notices.

I personally think that MS will stand firm on their new “no-Java” policy, and we’ll end up with even more of a headache for web developers. Especially with their recent announcement of no non-ActiveX plugins either. Makes most content quite dull, unless you buy into the ActiveX plan, which breaks all cross-platform compatibility, as well as introducing those lovely ActiveX-based virii and such.

We techies can rail against the absurdity of Microsoft’s plans all we like, but “normal” consumers are most concerned with convenience. The business community won’t have to deal with the onerous Activation Wizard, but consumers will. Guess who the bigger cash cow is and win a prize. 🙂

The big problem with Sun’s lawsuit against Microsoft wasn’t that their JVM had Windows-only speed enhancements (it was the fastest JVM for Windows), but that they had extended the language to add commands that only worked in Windows. Obviously, Windows is the biggest part of the market, but it is not the ONLY market.

As a web developer, I’m continually amazed at how the same page renders in different browsers. IE gains some of its ease-of-use at the expense of breaking some web standards (http://w3.org), and creating extensions that aren’t defined by or recognized by W3C. Netscape started that trend, but they’ve begun to play nice with version 6.1 finally.

Opera is the most standards-compliant browser, and I’ve recently adopted it as my primary browser (after using IE exclusively for over a year). I still have to use IE on occasion for some websites that refuse to follow the recognized standards, but it is quite rare now. I think the HTML 4.01 and CSS 2.0 standards are helping make the differences between browsers more negligible. NS 6.1, Opera5.12 and IE5.5 all render my web pages correctly, for instance. That may be because I validate all my pages for standards-compliance, but the differences between the three are minor now. Trying to view my pages with Netscape 4.x, though, will usually cause some non-fatal errors. For one thing, the CSS2-based buttons on my Livejournal page are invisible and non-interactive on NS4, but work fine in the newer version. Also, the “fixed” background works in Netscape 6.1 just as in IE and Opera; this is the first time that NS has supported the “watermark” background that Microsoft introduced years ago.

Even Netscape actually works now, for the first time in 4 years. 🙂

I’ve updated my website with a rather lengthy screed, regarding the lovely state of Web Browsers today. All the major players seem to have matured to the point of near-identicality. Read more for my hate-filled loathing of Microsoft. Well, maybe not quite hate-filled.
current_music: Texas – Say What You Want
current_mood: cold

Added a new page for my Photo Album: Origami Photos. Showcased currently is the John Montroll Stegosaurus, a truly cool looking model.

I have a package being delivered via UPS, which left Kentucky on the 25th, bound for Arizona. So, why, exactly, is the package now in Illinois? Is it being routed through Alaska next?

Yep, sure is cool to track packages on the web, although very frustrating. In San Angelo, I’d be able to watch the package arrive in Dallas on Monday and sit there for 3 days before it moved to San Angelo, where it would sit for at least one more day. Grrr…
current_music: Garbage – Silence is Golden
current_mood: annoyed

So, exactly why is it that so many people seem incapable of separating an email address from a person’s actual name? I’ve got a friend, named Aaron, who uses his initials for his website and consequently his user id on this system as well. His primary email address that he hands out is mail@hisdomain, yet people often think his name is Al. I have even more fun, since my domain is AndySocial, and I get people (who apparently are less endowed with a sense of humor than I had expected) emailing me as “Dear Andy” on occasion. Even better is when I email someone and they respond to “Andy” when my email return address is quite clearly “Gary Bunker (andy@andysocial.com)”. Makes you wonder how smart you don’t need to be in order to operate a computer nowadays. Twits.
current_music: Everlast – Children’s Story
current_mood: cold

The Wall Street Journal today has an editorial piece bidding farewell to that “Great Jacksonian” (sic) Jesse Helms. They believe that he should be lauded for his achievements during the civil rights battles of the 60s. Helms’ great achievement is that, when blacks in the 60s attempted to assert their civil rights, Helms was not, unlike previous Southern erstwhile segregationists, “directly and openly involved in the murder of black political leaders.” Wow, what a big-hearted tolerant fella he is, eh?
current_music: Travis – Why does it always rain on me?
current_mood: cold

Well, I was planning to put up some KMFMS shirts and such on my site, but I’ve since found out that someone beat me to it years ago. And here I was thinking I was clever and stuff. I’d hate to tread on someone else’s toes, so what should I add? Anyone have a suggestion for something rude and nasty, and maybe even not military-related? 🙂
current_mood: annoyed

OK, as threatened earlier, the Andy Social Antisocial paraphenilia emporium is now open for business. So far, we’ve got three shirts, and that’s just because I’m on vacation prepping for my upcoming nuptials, so I’m away from keyboard bigger than shit this week.
current_mood: accomplished

OK, just for fun, I’ve built a Cafepress Storefront. Origami Swag has a variety of items with logos and slogans appropriate for those of us who enjoy folding paper into intricate forms.

Next week, the Andy Social Antisocial Store. or something. Thinking of the KMFMS t-shirt, and “It’s not just a job, it’s an indenture” stuff.

According to the new stats page on my site, the most popular search term is Rachbomb, finally beating out “smallest penis ever seen”. Bunch of damned perverts, I swear…
current_mood: amused

OK, after 10 years, I’ve made the second piano with pianist model. Started out 76 cm x 19 cm, ended up about 15 cm long. Pretty neat, huh?

Anyone have a good webhost suggestion? Mine (Virtualave) seems to be a little flaky at times. Currently, any externally linked file returns a 403 (Forbidden) error, although no such error was in evidence yesterday.

This may seem reasonable, if there were banner ads on my site that subsidized my bandwidth usage. There aren’t. I pay for my hosting, there are no ads that I’m circumventing by posting a picture of a cake on my LJ, and I even pay for excess bandwidth usage (3 bucks last month, a bit more this month).

So, I’m considering moving to a different host, if the spurious 403 error becomes a corporate policy instead of a bug. Let me know what’s a good, relatively cheap host. I’m paying about US$100/year now.

Update: Virtualave, with no email yet in response to my (quite bitchy) query into the reason for this random failure, has now resumed functioning normally with regard to external links. Whatever.
current_music: Tricia typing
current_mood: annoyed

I’ve always been a bit smug about my lack of PC viral infections. I scoff when people make the assumption that, when their computer acts a little weird, it’s a virus. I’ve been infected by one virus, and (until this week) only received three in the last 15 years that I’ve been online. Since I’m an online whore, that indicated to me that viruses are much less common than the tech news guys would like you to believe. Of course, I’m much more smug about the fact that I don’t use Outlook Express, which seems to be a petri dish for VBS virii and other fun stuff.

This weekend, I received 4 different emails (all from strangers to me, but addressed to webmaster@andysocial.com), all containing some variant on the theme:

I send you this file in order to have your advice.

Of course, Norton Antivirus popped up and killed the worm contained in the attachments from these email messages.

The W32.Sircam.Worm has hit me! Oh, no! Fortunately, the fix for this worm is pretty simple: don’t open strange attachments. And, if you must open them (curious monkey), go to Symantec’s info site to find out how screwed you may be.

Ah, the joys of computing…