BunkBlog

So, the fine intelligent IS professionals that work for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) have finally gotten around to installing Office 2000. Now we’re only one generation behind, woohoo. Simultaneously, they upgraded the browser to IE 5.5 (not SP1 yet but at least within a year of the current version) but with their security enhancements turned on. More accurately, many features turned off, such as Java (no loss), Javascript (kind of important), and VBScript (thank goodness). The loss of Javascript means that many of the sites that we are required to go to to complete our normal daily jobs are inaccessible or broken when using Internet Explorer.

The DISA “solution”? Use Netscape 4.7, which is still the official DISA browser. Good to see that the Information Systems masters are so completely out of touch with modern realities.

Firstly, if they wanted to enhance security by turning off Javascript, why leave it enabled in Netscape? Secondly, although I’m hardly a Microsoft fan, it’s absurd to pretend that all sites will work with Netscape. Does the term Embrace and Extend ring any bells at DISA, I wonder.

And these are the folks that the Department of Defense entrust with their most prized IS tools. Your tax dollars at work.
current_mood: amused

Well, if can do it, I suppose I can. Check out my wishlist at Amazon. only 5 weeks until my birthday. Heheh
current_mood: silly

OK, so now (or actually it has since the latest re-install), the machine will take a five-second siesta every minute. This is most noticeable during high-speed gaming sessions, when it is (naturally) the most important to not have a random hesitation pop up.

Anyone know of something that causes a five-second period of sluggishness every minute (or 70 seconds), like clockwork? Very annoying.

OK, so now my “new” computer (all of 6 months old) is going down more than a bargirl. Windows ME is crashing with such regularity I can almost set my watch by it. I can rip 2 tracks from a CD before a BSOD, or I can try to talk to someone on AIM at the same time as I download my mail. Now, since I’ve got a 1 Ghz Athlon with 384MB or DDR RAM in a Micron machine, I’m assuming my hardware is not an issue.

The big question is: Do I go back to Win98SE (the machine was preloaded with WinME but it blows), or should I go to Windows 2000? Either one requires much time-consuming backup and restore stuff to bring ICQ and such back from the dead, but which is better for a normal home user that plays a few games? I’m kinda leaning toward Win2k right now, but if I install that, will I be able to dual-boot with Linux later? NTFS5 is supposed to be a bitch file system, from what I hear.
current_music: A Perfect Circle – Nom De Mers
current_mood: bitchy

Reading over some email, cleaning out crap, doing maintenance on the file system, you know: usual geek crap. Came across this gem “The good ones are always taken.” HA! Sure, if you waste enough time, they are. 🙂

I suppose I shouldn’t be too gleeful that someone who treated me poorly has realized her error. But, it sure is cathartic.
current_music: Staind – Can’t Believe
current_mood: happy

Everyone go over to Neurosis’s journal and tell her to get naked. All these people going for posting numbers before they’ll bare all, what an interesting trend…

I blame Nikki for starting the whole thing with her breast shot last week. Oooh, I hope she starts something else. Gnomey Breasts are good

Honestly, this will be my last complaint about peculiar online choices tonight.

Red and Yellow do not make a good, eye-soothing, web design. If your intent is to look like the Oscar Meyer hotdog wrapper, congratulations. If your main desire was to entice people to actually view your site, sorry but you missed the mark.

Let’s go back to elementary school here and think of complementary colors, shall we? Yellow and Red aren’t. Red and Green are decent, although kinda Christmasy. Yellow and Purple are an acceptable combination as well.

Or, you could just look around and copy a webpage you like. If you like Oscar Meyer, then fine — stick with your red-on-yellow monstrosity. Just don’t be surprised at only getting visitors who are hankering for some processed meat by-product. 🙂
current_mood: silly

Been surfing the “random users” feature for a few minutes, trying to find ideas for new LJ Styles (rather unproductive at that task). There are a surprising number of folks that have journals with absolutely NO public entries. Um, why bother? Just use email or something. 🙂
current_mood: impatient

Why have a bicycle, if you stop at corners, walk across the street towing said bike, and then get back on and ride on the other side? Huh? Bicycles are meant to be ridden, look at how ungainly they are when pushed, in comparison.

So, I’m wandering through my httpd logs, and I notice that some folks have really funny machine names. What’s most interesting, though, is that a lot of the military domains are goofily named. For instance:

squid1.tacom.army.mil
jaguar.andrews.af.mil
centurion.warren.af.mil
viper.usafa.af.mil
B-Kahuna.hickam.af.mil

Alas, the vast majority of military domains, as most com and edu ones as well, are dull and cryptic. wrtc53254-139.westriv.com, anyone?
current_mood: silly

Yes, it is true, May has great significance as a commemorative month.

It is Masturbation Month.

Make a party this month to observe the event. Here’s some planning tips for you. hehe
current_mood: silly

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So, the FBI finally announced how often the infamous Carnivore email-snooping program has been deployed. During a 10 month period, they used it 13 times. Some civil liberties reactionaries.. er, groups claim that is too frequent. How often did they run wiretaps? Bet it’s more. Why are you more worried about email than phone taps? Or is it just the allure of the new? Seriously, most people are boring, so don’t worry about the FBI and the NSA snooping on your email: nobody wants to read it, including many of the recipients. Deal with it.

OK, so, when going to the US name generator, I discovered that, although my family name has been in the US since 1640 (130 years before there was a US), it’s not American enough. I guess we just have to breed faster. I am now Robert Greer.
current_mood: amused

To further prove my propellerhead status, I’ve been playing with my stats output. Yep, Added a graph and still made the HTML smaller. Pruned down the list of requested files, and added a graph showing where people are coming from.

Here’s a shocker: most folks are coming from LiveJournal to my site. A few months ago, most of my visitors came from Winfiles, but CNET has killed the site and not reinstated all the files that were listed there. So, my Linux Theme and startup screen have not been getting a lot of hits lately. Tux is lonely.

On my personal stats output (still huge, yes Corto), I find that the most popular PART of LJ that visitors are arriving from is (drum roll please) NakedParts. Go figure. Not that I’ve posted many nekkid pix there, but I guess my witty commentary is hard to avoid. My host has told me I may be charged 5 or 6 bucks next month for my profligate bandwidth usage. I think I can afford it. heh

OK, so I’ve finally gotten around to getting Mensa membership. Why did I do it, you ask? It looks good on a resume. At least, that’s what I’ve been told.

Why did I put off doing it for the past 15 years? Every Mensa member I know is an arrogant pain in the ass. So far as I can tell, the entire point of the organization, besides being able to tell people how wonderfully brilliant you are, is to make sure your kids are raised to be equally brilliant. It’s some freakin’ eugenics experiment, I swear.

I have absolutely no intention of ever going to a meeting, and don’t plan to submit any articles for their newsletter. Am I being a self-serving hypocrite? Well, probably, but at least it will be one more line on a resume. Self interest uber alles.

I really need to go to bed.

I have way too much time to waste. I’ve been spending it surfing through Live Journal. Seems reasonable to me.

Apparently, there is some requirement to post a long, interesting only to you, rambling kind of online conversation log in your journal every so often. I’m not sure, but it seems to be mainly observed by the high-school and college-age folks, with an occasional older person posting. Um, why?

I would think that the person on the other end of that private chat usually doesn’t expect you to archive and share that conversation with all and sundry. Perhaps I’m wrong in some cases, but I’d be willing to bet that most of the folks who have posted 300 lines from an AIM log file didn’t ask if it was ok to share.

If you shared someone’s personal snailmail, or recorded a phone conversation for the amusement of others, wouldn’t you find that rude? Are there different standards of civilized conduct online compared to the real world?

Do I need to get some sleep?

Cam’s up. In case anyone cares to see me surf and drink Pete’s

Pete’s Strawberry Blonde is much better cold than warm. I guess I’ll just have to drink faster.

I’ve totally reverted to my behavior from 15 years ago. Cool Ranch Doritos, Mountain Dew, and a computer. Back then, 64 k of RAM and a 270k floppy drive, now 384 M of RAM and a 20gig HD, but still the same online fetish and randomness. 🙂
current_music: Shaggy – Keepin it Real