June 2001 Archives
I've already had enough trouble this week with a system hundreds of miles from proof of product ownership. This sounds like a living nightmare, and another answer to a pressing question. [via Chuck]Frankly, I have no idea what I did, if anything, to change the configuration of my computer. Nor should it be Microsoft's business if I did. As it stands, I am on an airplane, my original Office disk is 6 miles below and 2,200 miles behind me, and Microsoft has just told me that Office will die if I don't immediately reauthorize my copy.
I spent a big part of last weekend working on my dad's computer, and will probably be doing (or more to the point, redoing) the same this weekend. As I'm sure some of my readers know, that's one of the duties expected of the "family techie". (Never mind that my father was a Customer Service Engineer for many, many years; he worked on the Big Iron, and isn't much up on modern PCs.) I don't mind doing this for him all that much, but there are all sorts of irritation involved in trying to fix someone else's computer, often caused by the computer's owner not providing all the information or materials needed.
This time, it was a matter of a CD key. One of the things Dad wanted was for me to reinstall Windows 98 from scratch. Fine, he brought his CDs, no problem. I start to install... and eventually, it wants a CD Key. (For those who don't know, a CD Key is a long string of letters and numbers, a combination of serial number and activation code.) No CD case, no Microsoft license sheet, nothing with my Dad's CD Key on it. Eventually, I found Another Way to do the installation, but still. At least I had the leeway to replace a few inexpensive components for which I didn't have the right documentation or drivers; otherwise, I wouldn't have known what to do with (for example) the jumpers on his extra parallel port card.
There are a lot of things like that which make working on somebody else's system a pain; things the owners forget to provide. A professional computer repair shop has a lot more resources available to fill in the gaps, and enough leeway to reject a job if the gaps are too large. For that matter, a local shop could have asked my Dad to run back home and pick up the license sheet — not an option when he's brought it 600 miles to me. (Although it was arguably a couple of small computer shops that messed up Dad's computer enough that he needed to bring it to me, but that's another story...)
So, I'm considering writing up a guide for people who want to take their computer to a "techie" friend or family member. What you should ask, what you need to provide, and fundamentally, whether you should be asking them to work on your computer for free in the first place. I kind of wonder whether it's worth the trouble, though. First of all, some sort of guide like that may already exist (and if it does, I'd love someone to send me a pointer). Second, I have to wonder if the real target audience — not the techies, but the people asking for help — would make the effort to find the bloody thing, or even read it if they did. It might just be more of a way to vent frustrations than accomplish anything worthwhile.
I don't spend a lot of time in elevators with these things, but I've nearly been run down by them at the mall. The worst part is when some Übermom with a double-wide model decides to remake Death Race 2000 in a narrow bookstore aisle. One place where I'll have to disagree with this rant, though: The author seems to take it for granted that there's actually going to be a child in the stroller. Anywhere I've seen these things, there's at least a 50% chance that the theoretical passenger is walking alongside the stroller; after all, there's no room for kids once all the Cargo has been loaded.But here's what I really don't understand. I really don't understand the women with the strollers. I guess I should add that I just don't understand the strollers, period. I don't remember my own stroller-going days, but I remember my brother's, and back in the late seventies, a stroller consisted of a couple of poles and a little canvas butt-sling and a set of wheels and that's it. You plunked the kid into it, you fastened the little plastic seatbelt -- done. Twenty-odd years later, the average stroller is a behemoth. There's a roof, there's about sixteen storage areas, there's all sorts of attachments, the kid is held in the seat by some sort of pneumatic contraption developed by NASA, and the wheels have hubcaps, people. And that's an average stroller. Do the parents who live in my building settle for the "average" stroller? No, they do not. They buy the stroller equivalent of the Spelling mansion, the one that's barely a CB radio away from entering itself in a monster-truck rally and flattening a chorus line of Pintos while surrounded by TEN THOUSAND POUNDS OF MUD MUD MUD, and the newfangled strollers have better safety features, sure, but first of all, it's a two-year-old -- what's he going to do if you put him in a smaller stroller, call his union rep? He's two! He doesn't need a system of tubes piping oxygen-enriched air directly into his nostrils! Second of all, I peek into these SUV strollers, and some of these kids look like they shave, for real. Come on, Mom. If he's celebrated his bar mitzvah, he can get his ass up and walk, and you can spare us all the aggro of waiting ten minutes for you to parallel-park your Playskool Expedition in the elevator while we all do our rendition of "nineteen frat boys in a phone booth" to make room for you, and the stroller, and the U-Haul you've got hooked up to the back. At least get power steering on the fucking thing.
I still intend to write about tech support for family members, and about my new computer game obsession. However, I had an experience yesterday that I found interesting, and figured I'd write about that first. This will probably bore the living hell out of most people, who will be terrified at the idea that anyone could find this interesting. I am not Elizabeth Miller's Dad; You Have Been Warned.
The state of Missouri seems to be serious about vehicle emissions. At the very least, the St. Louis region is. From what I've read, smog was a significant problem in St. Louis in the past. Since then, things have improved, but it's still an ongoing concern. Even if you've chosen to believe the small minority of scientists who will not believe that global warming can possibly be a consequence of human activity, local air quality gets bad enough at times to pose a real health risk.
At any rate, since I live in St. Louis County, my car has to pass a special emissions test before I can renew my license plates (hopefully during my lunch hour today). I had been putting off going down to the license bureau, and just this weekend, I realized that emissions hadn't been covered by my safety inspection. I was passing near one of the inspection stations yesterday evening, and decided to take a look to see their hours and how much trouble it would be.
A sign on one of the region's main roads easily directed me to the Gateway Clean Air Program station shortly before 7:00 PM, and I was surprised to see that it was still open. What's more, an electronic sign told me that I could expect a 25 minute wait, so I pulled on in; if they couldn't get to me today, I figured they'd just tell me to buzz off.
I pulled up to a gate with a ticket vending machine, much like those used at many parking garages. It turns out that (except for the last few days of the month) if you have an excessively long wait, you get a discount on your test. Though the testing station had four bays, only one was still open, so I got in line behind a handful of other cars. The line moved on at a reasonable speed. Apparently, as long as you show up before closing time, they'll get to you in turn. I was the last car to arrive yesterday; as I waited, I saw an attendant turn off the entrance gate at seven. Eventually, I got to the bay, got out, and watched the test while I waited in a glassed-in hallway along the bay. The overall procedure was reasonable efficient assembly-line procedure, where one car can be prepared and go through some basic tests while another goes through the main test.
The biggest part is a test of emissions under simulated driving conditions, as opposed to the old test performed while idling. They pulled my car up onto a treadmill, put the drive wheels on the treadmill cylinders, and chocked (sp?) the rear tires. A video display on a swing arm in front of the car shows the technician a speed trace which he has to follow, while a hose collects and analyzes emissions. The technician has to keep the speed within a narrow band as displayed on the screen; the old car before mine couldn't manage the required accelleration and failed, I don't know what the next step would be for him. My two-year-old Cavalier managed the required speeds without any trouble, and only needed a short version of the test.
As soon as the test was done, the techs printed out a report, including a sticker to be slapped on my windshield. My car passed with flying colors; emissions were an order of magnitude below the fail point. The test cost, but was a lot quicker and easier than I expected. Pretty painless.
P.S.: Mission accomplished. I managed to get all the paperwork together, and renewed my plates for two years. I am so glad I get to skip this rigamarole next year; while emissions testing wasn't that bad, much of the rest of the process was.
[via Brad]In terms of genetics, var'aq is the bastard child of a back-room tryst between PostScript and Lisp after a Star Trek convention.
[via randomWalks]Despite the fact that Gap makes their clothes in sweatshops, and have been subject to many demonstrations across the nation, they believe that the growing movement against corporate power is now large enough to begin marketing on. Now the protest itself can be essentially sold to consumers as an image.
The bishops' "Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services" not only prohibit abortion but the prescription of contraceptives (including the "morning-after" pill to rape victims), many infertility treatments, voluntary sterilization, and most embryonic stem-cell and fetal-tissue research.
When the bishops recently approved language describing elective sterilization as intrinsically evil, they placed tubal ligations and vasectomies in the same moral category of Church teaching as abortion and euthanasia.
I can already visualize a vodka logo by the collection of human and monkey shrunken heads: "Absolut Shrunken Heads." Wouldn't Orvis love to champion the drawer of 12,000 Arctic fishing tools? And Dorothy's ruby shoes by Jimmy Choo?
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Well, that was a lost weekend.
I'll freely admit that I have no life, but at least I usually leave the bleedin' apartment from time to time on the weekend. To say that I stayed in all weekend would be a slight exaggeration; I did go out a couple of times Sunday for food and spare parts. (Not to mention the exciting trip across the parking lot to the dumpster on Saturday.) However, I spent most of my weekend in front of one computer screen or another, cursing softly. Not only was I doing promised Tech Support duty for my father (upgrading and reinstalling his computer), but I picked up an engrossing new game last week; I plan to address both topics in detail later on. Pathetic, I know.
This is the part of the column where I'm supposed to say something about well gee, I hate those Hollywood cretins as much of the next guy, blah blah blah. Well, fuck that. Just because Tipper Gore got weirded out by Prince ("he looks like a fairy and sings about sexing up girls? That's confusing"), that doesn't mean I should have been blocked access to his music at age 12 (I would have been a better dresser now, for one). Just because someone might take offense of the gruesome "Dark Knight" Batman series doesn't mean that advertisements for it in kiddie comic books should be illegal.
Kids need to be freaked out and challenged by art completely unsanctioned by their parents, whether it's “400 Blows” or “Porky's.” I would argue that movie companies have a patriotic duty to tempt 13-year-olds into R-rated movies. Gives 'em something to look forward to, and hints promisingly of a sexier, more uncontrolled universe.
"A positive and negative voltage controls Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs)," the worrying Nintendo statement begins. "The 'contrast control' that you are referring to is actually a flicker control. The adjustment is used to synchronize the positive and negative voltages. If these voltages are out of adjustment then the LCD will no longer respond correctly. The result will be an excess charge built up in the liquid crystal and permanently damage the LCD. The excessive charge gives the appearance of a brighter screen because the liquid crystal is not reacting properly to the voltages applied. When the adjustment of the voltages is correct the changing polarities will not allow a charge to build up, which prolongs the LCD life."
I really want to see Dubya take the standardized tests he advocates — knowing his results would be made public. I'm reasonably sure he'd pass, but I think he should be subjected to the same sort of pressure these tests would place on every student in America.More subtly, but more important, is Bush's claim that ''Andover taught me independence.'' He had the freedom to clown around. In Bill Minutaglio's book ''First Son,'' classmate Bob Marshall said Bush ''was more interested in social standing than what grades he had in order to get into Yale ... He wasn't a scholar, he wasn't a leader, he wasn't a good athlete. He would call people names, derogatory nicknames. Other people would use them behind people's backs, but he was more open about it.''
We've also saved the shareholders the trouble of pretending that they were going to seriously consider move the team out into the County, or worse, acrosss the river into Illinois."It's unfortunately more of the same that we've been seeing around the country - taxpayers subsidizing multimillionaire owners," Keating said. "The bottom line is it's corporate welfare."
"It just doesn't hold up that these are somehow engines of economic growth," Keating said. "There's economic value in professional sports, there's no question about that. The question is who should be determining that value. Should it be the politicians, or should it be consumers, which is the case in nearly every other business?"
Yes, I do still have issues about school harassment. I'm straight, but I was certainly called a lot of anti-gay names inamongst all the other insults I had to put up with. I have a lot of respect and sympathy for Justen Deal, a high-schooler who campaigned against anti-gay slurs in his high school, until the harassment got bad enough to drive him out. [via World New York] P.S. No matter what anybody says about "don't let it bother you", having a rope tied around your neck is beyond the pale.It was a good day. I only heard the word 'faggot' four times.
It's quiet here at work this morning. Too quiet. Hopefully, that's just because the air conditioning has been shut down.
It's a thankfully subdued Monday morning after a chaotic week. Aside fom the purchase of the company by one of Satan's golf buddies — which, to be honest, seems to be a Good Thing — I have a new boss. A new guy was hired to head the fragmented IT and Networking departments and pull them together into a coherent unit; I consider this to be another Good Thing, although others disagreed quite dramatically (which I should say no more about for now).
Aside from that, my parents are staying with me for a few days. (Hi, Mom!) All of which makes me especially glad for a brief, quiet respite this morning. Cue imminent disaster...
One of the goofiest book reviews I've ever read, for a modern follow-up to Abbott's Flatland: Flatterland by Ian Stewart.I was, I remembered vaguely, listening to a glowing purple cube that had teleported my underwear into a bean can.
He also finds the idea of IMF leader Jim Phelps turning traitor (as he did in the first movie) as distasteful as I did.First of all, there are no franchises of the IMF. There is the IMF, period. We made that mistake in our version of the series in our first episode and I don't know why they didn't catch that. The gist of Mission Impossible is there's only three or four people in the world who can do this stuff. Not, several groups out there of IMF agents, how can THAT be?
Apparently, while I wasn't looking, someone let Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens back on television. I wish him the best, but given the circumstances of his previous disgrace, I have to question the wisdom of letting him host a show called "You Don't Know Jack".
Because, as many of us remember, he does.
I think I saw the Product Placement of the Year last night.
Now, I'm not going to tell you what product because that would be a Spoiler and I'm not as much of a moron as one of the movie reviewers who I mistakenly read beforehand. However, I will tell you that the movie was Evolution, and I enjoyed it no matter how many tomatoes are getting thrown at it. David Duchovny and Orlando Jones have good comic chemistry together, and Seann William Scott adds his own minor piece to it. Julianne Moore was OK, although I hope that if a director's cut comes out someday, her character's clumsiness will serve some purpose other than failed slapstick. I will admit that the kind of gross-out humor that I usually detest worked for me in this one. The writers stole cliches from all over the map, including some from flicks that aren't even out yet. Not a classic, but I had fun.
I have books. Lots of books. I have full bookshelves in my apartment. I have books on loan to relatives at their homes. I have boxes of books in my storage unit. I have even more boxes of books in my parents' storage unit. (I hope, before I die, to get all of these books in one place.) I play games using books; too many books, in fact, to easily take with me when I go to someone else's home to play those games. I take books with me when I travel, both for entertainment and reference. I transport books in heavy, bulky carry-on luggage. I flip through books searching for favorite passages. I buy extra copies of books because I can't find my original. I buy new copies of books to fit on the same shelf with the other paperbacks in the series. I do not fear the coming of the electronic book. [via Booknotes]
P.S. To be completely fair, I do have some concerns with such things as being able to share and trade books with others.
The prelude and first episode are up, and free; later installments look to be on a subscription basis, even if the details are unavailable as yet. [via Flutterby]Shadowmarch is more than simply a novel to download. It's a serial story — episodic, presented in regular installments more like a television show, that can either be downloaded and perused at leisure (even printed out) or read right on the site. We already have (and will continue to add) art, maps, and background history of the world, all available as part of the package. The site is a growing multimedia experience — we'd like to expand to animation and 3-D art of the locations, even RPGs — but we're going to start modestly. (Modest is all we can afford — more about that later.)
He is adept at the sort of "self-effacing humor" that lets people see him as a regular guy. Through this pose, first of all, he turns his major weakness — his enormous ignorance — into a seeming strength. Anyone who calls him on his lack of education can be dismissed as stuck-up and elitist, like the Stevenson supports who would jeer at Ike's weak syntax. (That confusing syntax was deliberate on Ike's part. He was incomparably more literate, and better-educated, than this Bush.)
It's times like this that I really regret the disappearance of the "Low Bullshit Guide to St. Louis", a website that explained many of the area's quirks to me a few years ago; I can't possibly do justice to the region's insanely Balkanized politics. Many years ago, the City of St. Louis politically divorced itself from St. Louis County in the belief that the suburbs would drain its resources. Ever since then, the county has prospered while the city itself declined. With no central entity to hold it together, the county has developed into a patchwork of disparate municipalities, ranging from a few blocks to sprawling towns nearly as large as the city itself. Naturally, the idea of working together or pooling resources to create common services is totally alien to most of these fiercely independent little domains.The aquatic parks and recreation centers are so popular here that voters in several cities have approved large tax increases to build them while turning down more money for their public schools.
"Often there is a desire to have something bigger, better, different. Nobody wants to be like the other guy," says David Markey, whose Atlanta-based engineering firm, Markey & Associates, designed more than a half-dozen municipal aquatic centers in the St. Louis area. "They want something that matches their perception of their community. And better is in the eye of the beholder."
The latest news is that someone (not the rumored Kevin Smith) claiming to be the Phantom Editor has popped up for an interview.Anakin is a stronger character. His crappy whoops and oops and that stuff is gone. It makes the kid seem like someone who is strong with the force and worth going against the council for as opposite to the whiny little kid in the original cut.
Let us all hope that today's equivalent of "Don't take candy from strangers!" is beginning to sink in.The latest bug contains a highly damaging payload, which among other things attempts to format a user's hard disk drive and overwrite essential Windows files (including system.dat). However early indications are that it is not spreading - giving rise to the hope users have finally learned their lesson about suspicious email attachments.
All of the anti-MP3 measures I've seen implemented or suggested so far look to be more of an obstruction for legitimate users than for determined pirates.What are those desires? They include flexibility in storing digital content, so you don't have to pay twice to create a CD with a few songs from one album and a few from another. They include ``fair use'' rights, enshrined in law, that allow individuals to make copies of songs and other material for playback on other devices they own.
Napster and other file-sharing systems have shown the record industry that it must be more flexible, Duea says. But I've seen no such recognition on the part of the labels. Rather, they've aimed expensive lawyers and other weapons at anything that might encourage unauthorized copying even if legitimate customers are harmed in the process.
Of course, that's only the first of the Revelations in this interview with the Buffy and Angel creator.Cheese. Man. Means. Nothing! It doesn't mean it means nothing to everyone who sees it. There may be somebody who has a big thing about cheese that wept every time he came onscreen. To me, he meant nothing. Except the idea of meaning nothing. Therefore he meant something. [Pause] Ohmigod!
Personally, I usually think of it as a Slurpee Brainfreeze. Whatever you want to call it, there's the explanation.You especially cool off a couple of bulbs in the back of your nose if you eat the snowball too fast. Then you get what is known everywhere else as an ice-cream headache, but is in New Orleans called a snowball headache.
And that's just physical abuse; I'm sure an even higher proportion of users install Microsoft products on their poor, defenseless systems. (Yes, I'm guilty of the latter. Please forgive me.)"We are all pagans to some degree or another," Takacs said. "We invest machines with personalities, because we don't understand the technology that allows computers, or cars or televisions to do what they do."
"We treat our machines as if they are persons. We talk to them, we name them, we even sometimes plead with and try to cajole the little god inside each machine. And when the little god turns out to be evil we beat the machine to purge the demon."
The few FR threads I've read in the past have been pretty terrifying; however, it gives me a great deal of hope for humanity that even these guys are capable of taking an occasional joke at their own expense with good grace. [via Plastic]3. Libertarians and Buchananites (as well as readers of Harry Potter books, those who eat a lot of fruits and vegetables or who are not mainstream Protestants or Catholics) are to be freely and openly attacked, brutalized and killed for sport. JimRob's rule about no racist or violence posts or profanity is suspended for action against these groups. (Note: the level of racist, violence or profanity posts permitted to any poster is proportionally graduated to his or her level of financial contribution to FR.)
I'm so glad that I run Nero instead. The RIAA and its lackeys always couch these restrictions in terms of piracy, but it looks to me like yet another attack on the principles of Fair Use. [via eJournal]EMI Group on Monday signed a deal with Milpitas-based Roxio, the maker of popular CD-authoring software, that would add copy protection to its recipe for burning music discs. EMI will buy an equity stake in Roxio in exchange for it developing new software, due out next year, that would prevent consumers from burning copyrighted songs onto homemade CDs without the label's permission.
From what I can tell, offenders include such role models as Cruella De Vil and her cigarette holder, Basil with his Meerschaum, and probably Bacchus enjoying his wine. None of which seem as great a danger to youthful spirits as the kind of people who go through life looking for something by which to be offended.A study of 81 G-rated animated features from 1937 to 2000 found that nearly half show characters using alcohol or tobacco -- sometimes to excess.
That's right, he was hauled off for drawing a gun on paper with (one assumes) a pencil. Just the latest victory of Zero Tolerance. [via The Reg]"There were some drawings that were confiscated by the teacher," principal David Schmitt said. "The children were in no danger at all. It involved no real weapons."
Church groups seem to be getting involved in anti-SUV protests, on the principle of stewardship of God's creation.At Saturday's rally in Lynn, rain-spattered posters bearing messages such as "Test drive your feet. Walk away from SUVs" shared sidewalk space with several signs drawing on religious themes.
The family that plays together... [via Q]"At first I didn’t think it would be possible, but my dad said he knew how," she said. In fact, her whole family were like commandos in the night, with her grandmother and mother standing by with walkie-talkies to let them know when cars went by so they could turn off their flashlights.
[via wood s lot]One of the most painful truths in American publishing is that genre fiction is better than literary fiction. There are two basic reasons for this. One is the market angle: detective stories outsell “quality” novels at an exponential rate. The second is tougher to defend, but it’s the truth. The writing’s just better. Genre fiction, by providing a steady diet of sex, violence and adventure, and little or nothing more, serves the reader in a way that so-called “quality” literature can’t approach. No short story in Harper’s or The Atlantic could ever be described as “gripping” or a “page-turner.” And since all storytelling rests on the inherent fascination of the tale, not the finesse with which it’s told, it can finally be stated here: Raymond Chandler is a better writer than John Updike.
Stadium funding has been one of the few Hot Topics in this town to which I've paid much attention, but I'd never heard of the DeWitt connection.In 1989, George W. Bush was part of an investment group that bought the struggling Texas Rangers. One of his partners was sports speculator William DeWitt Jr., who at various times has also held interests in the Baltimore Orioles, the Cincinnati Reds and the Cincinnati Bengals.
While G.W. has moved on to the White House, DeWitt is now part owner of the St. Louis Cardinals. Perhaps not coincidentally, there is an effort underway to build a new stadium in that city.
Never before in my life have I seen a group of allegedly commercial enterprises work so hard to avoid meeting a proven demand.The power, then, is consolidated squarely back in the hands of the same record industry executives that held the reins before. Everyone with a good idea that doesn't fit into what the music moguls have already deemed appropriate is out of luck. That personalized radio station will be shut down, that peer-to-peer network will be decimated before it even has a chance to offer a subscription plan, prices for music downloads will be set sky-high, and new music-exchange services will contain only limited catalogs.
The loser in this equation is, of course, the customer, as the pre-Internet status quo of high-priced CDs and generic radio playlists is simply replicated for the digital age.
