Archive for October 2008
A Tribute to the Ugliest Man on the CBC
So Abby and I are watching TV, flipping through channels because there’s nothing on. I’m sitting at my computer, so I’m not paying attention, when suddenly dear sweet Abby stops on the CBC, and we get a face full of this:
Believe it or not, this is a *good* picture!
“WAAAAHGHGHAAUUUAG!” is the closest aproximation to what came out of my mouth. “I think I’m sterile now! All of my sperm commited suicide just to be certain that there’s a slightly less chance that something that ugly will ever be born again!”
I need alcohol. Lots of alcohol.
Update: Just when you think the CBC has cornered the ugly market, CTV has to throw their hat in the ring with Craig Oliver:
Move over, Harvey - this is the real Birdman!
The Wonders of Tech Support
For the first time in ages, I’ve found myself on the other end of the phone. I worked in tech support, providing telephone and ticket-based troubleshooting for the past my-resume-doesn’t-go-back-that-many-years. Today, at the end of my first week of my new job as a Systems and Networks admin, I got to experience the joys of calling on of my former brethren.
It wasn’t pretty.
Sharing!
I thought this was funny and creepy if it were true!
On Serious Business
One would think that after watching a day of election coverage, and watching my party-of-choice come in fourth overall, I’d comment on it.
Instead: Best Article Title Ever! “A little pee came out: Ars reviews the scares of Dead Space“.
Classic!
Why do we need customers again?
I guess I should start by “introducing” myself. I’m new around here. I’m a long-time friend of Scout. Going to back to kindergarten actually. And now we’re kind of-sort of related. Laslow is married to my first cousin. So technically I’m related to him. Anyhoo, I’ve been invited to contribute so here I am.
I was blessed to be able to work at a grocery store as a cashier the last two weeks. In those two weeks I met some memorable customers.
On Linux Douchebags
While messing around with Debian 4 and attempting to upgrade the kernel to 2.6.27 (now that it’s finalized), I came across this in a mailing list – the names have not been changed to ridicule the retarded:
You need libncurses5 and libncurses5-dev. You could have found that
information in the archive or on groups.google.com, if you had looked
for it.
best regards
Andreas Janssen-- Andreas Janssen andreas.janssen@bigfoot.com PGP-Key-ID: 0xDC801674 Registered Linux User #267976
(Emphasis mine).
Seriously people, if you ever want “the year of the Linux Desktop” to come to pass, you need to stop being elitist pricks and be nice when answering people. Pointing out how to find an answer is fine, but you don’t have to be condecending while doing it it. Sadly I doubt the email address is still active.
On Retirement Communities
Ari, Scout, and I live in a small city of around ~40,000 people. We have two malls, a Wal-Mart, more fast-food places than you’d figure a city of this size needs, a ski hill, several lakes, and lots of other things for young people to do.
However, the town is also home to an obscenely large number of churches (five on one of the main roads, with at least two dozen more scattered throughout the valley that we occupy) and funeral homes. What does this mean?
Old people. Lots and lots of old people.
Opening a can of worms of another color: Game Consoles
Disclaimer: I own a Nintendo Wii and an Xbox 360, as well as a multitude of computers in various states of working.
Game Consoles are like Gift Certificates – you can use a Gift Certificate just like you would cash, however you can’t do *quite* as much, and are often imposed by sometimes ridiculous restrictions that make you wonder why you just didn’t stick with cash in the first place.
Discuss!
Challenge: 30 Days of Linux — Day 1
I really don’t get it.
Each year, tech sites predict it will be “the year of Linux on the desktop”. And, thus far, each year they have been wrong. Linux makes for an excellent server OS, but in the consumer market, it has a long way to go.
Aspire One – BIOS of DOOM!
Abby and I recently purchased an Acer Aspire One “netbook” for use on the road, as her current laptop sports a 17″ widescreen monitor that firmly takes it out of the ‘portables’ category.
After a lot of heavy customization (using nLite to trim down Windows XP to fit on the 8GB SSD hard drive, replacing Explorer with an alternative shell, and several other tweaks), all was well.
Occasionally, we’d run in to an issue where, after trying to reboot, the screen would go black and refuse to turn off. I found an article explaining the problem, and offering a fix, which worked well.
However, after using this fix, I’ve found that I’ve been unable to update the BIOS again. Currently, the BIOS setup screen reports that it is using v3.109. Regardless of what version I attempt to flash, after the reboot it always shows that version. Additionally, when I attempt to flash, it shows this:
Current BIOS Model name : N/A
New BIOS Model name : N/A
Current BIOS version : N/A
New BIOS version : N/A
The flash process goes by rather quickly, although it does give the appearance that it is doing something.
I’ve tried several of the other switches allowed by the flashit program used to flash the BIOS, and with the following combination, I get an interesting display:
C:\>FLASHIT ZG5_3304.FD /MC /DC /ALL /BIOS
<snip useless header information>
Error: IHISI 17h fail.
Internal Error ef
Function not supported.
Error: Get region map fail!
So it appears that the emergency recovery process corrupts a portion of the BIOS that shows where the different portions of code live, and as a result, the flash process does not actually update the important bits.
I still haven’t found a solution to this, however I’m going to keep looking in to the issue – if anyone else has run in to this and know of a solution, though, I’d be happy to hear it!
