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On Tuesday I voted. I did not for, I voted against. I voted against an existential threat. I was not, am not, happy with what that required. I fear I gave a vote to someone who will turn out to be another LBJ (that is NOT a compliment). Unfortunately the alternative was far worse. Did I mention existential threat? Yes, really. No, not overstating it. And I also fear that we didn't avoid the threat, but delayed it - slightly.
But...
I am goddamn tired of being told I and anyone like me is racist.
I am goddamn tired of being told I and anyone like me is sexist.
I am goddamn tired of being told I and anyone like me is homophobic.
I am goddamn tired of being told I and anyone like me is xenophobic.
I am goddamn tired of being told I and anyone like me is uneducated.
I am goddamn tired of all those damned lies, and good many more.
So, yes, I am going to bloody well enjoy a sound message of "FUCK YOU" to damn fools saying such things. I know it won't solve a damn thing, but it's all I have left. And no, I will NOT kiss your ass and make up. I've heard this message, in various forms, for years if not decades now, and e-freaking-nough. You want civility? Try offering some for a change.
We (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jmaynard and I) got started fairly early. We managed to be on the road around 7:30 AM and reached Mount Vernon, IL a little after 6 PM. It was less than 12 hours on the road, but still a long day. I suspect neither of use stayed properly hydrated, though I think I did manage to drink a bit more water than on the Penguicon trip. I still drank two glasses of water at Cracker Barrel before the food arrived.
Tomorrow's segment of the trip will be a bit shorter in mileage and not have the majority in IL, which is a 65 MPH speed limit state - unlike almost every other state in I've traveled. So getting to Huntsville should go fairly quickly and we can start out a bit later if we like. And maybe I'll manage to drink more water and not feel a bit off upon arrival.
And now the rant: Can we just nuke the snapsh*t idiots already? Please? A small one should do.[1]
I'm using the Mac Powerbook, and I'm not sure if I can edit the hosts file and have it take, which while admittedly something of a dirty solution it's the only solution that actually works every time, forever for getting rid of the craptastic snapsh*t barf when I view some folks journals.
[1] Rant applies to LJ, not IJ. IJ is clearly the sane one here.
In the late twentieth century, a new corporate philosophy to all but blow the shareholders had ravaged newspapers and TV stations, bleeding off staffing, experience and standards until what was left of the profession was a karaoke rendition of itself. The Old Guard of journalism came to the rescue by increasing the number of awards and self-congratulatory fetes until journalism officially passed bowling for most trophies per calorie burned.
-- Tim Dorsey in Hammerhead Ranch Motel
Remember that when the media screws up something you know about, that it treats everything else with just as much accuracy. Background left out is a lie of omission and is just as much a lie as an included fabrication.
Howie Carr in Caution: Hunters at work (Human season arrives with a bang) makes at least lie of omission. In his anti-hunting diatribe he says, "Wisconsin: A grandfather mistook his 18-year-old grandson for a deer and blasted him to kingdom come in Saxeville a week ago today." Sounds terrible, and it is. And if that's all there was to it, it would say something only about the grandfather. What was omitted was that the grandson showed poor judgment as he covered his blaze orange hunting clothes with a brown and white jacket blanket. That's a bit different. It does not excuse the event, as the grandfather certainly should have had a definite view and an absolute certainty that he was, in fact, aiming at a deer. It does however explain things a bit. After all, the thing going through the reader's mind is likely, "Only an idiot would mistake a hunter (wearing blaze orange) for a deer." The blaze orange had been covered by something that was the color(s) of a deer. Was the grandfather wrong to pull the trigger in the circumstances? Absolutely! But the actions of the grandson were a contributing factor. That went unsaid.
Are there idiot hunters? Yes. Too many of them, as even one idiot hunter is one too many. But one idiot columnist is also one too many. If he left out that "little detail" I can only wonder what else he left out or plain got wrong.
Full disclosure: I do not hunt. I have relatives that do or did. I have killed a deer. I killed a Ford (that was really a Kia) at the same time.
Occassionally people mix up "its" and "it's" and that's a bit of an irritation. I don't like it, but I know I screw up the same way from time to time, and if it's (it is - Got it right that time, yay!) just a one-off flub it doesn't bug me too much. It's like a typo. Everyone makes an occasional error, it's (Right again, yay!) the repeating error that is a real problem.
Lately, though, I've been driven to distraction by people screwing up apostrophe usage and getting plurals and possessives mixed up, it is as if rather than realize "it's" is "it is" they simply reversed the general rule (for which "it's" is an apparent exception) that plural is "-s" and possessive is "-'s" or, worse, they apply the apostrophe completely randomly, mixing everything up. Backwards usage at least has some, if wrong, logic to it.
The strange thing is that I am seeing this done by fairly articulate people. It's (Hey, got it right again. I expect I'll screw up somewhere in this rant. That is one of the rules about usage rants, it seems.) done by people who can spell, who can form complete sentences, and don't resort to irritating "txtspk" that would let me simply dismiss their text as being from someone too stupid to bother with.
Also, it's not just capitalized abbreviated plurals, like "CD's" for "CDs" which, while they bug me, I've gotten to the point where it's not a huge distraction. What bugs me are things like this:
Have you read any good book's?
Those are Orvans.
Huh? Any good book's what? Any good book's titles? Covers? Reviews? And how many Orvans were there? Was there a convention of folks named Orvan? These are jarring. They are potholes in reading. Everything flows fairly smoothly, then *WHUMP* there goes the suspension. Really, any suspension of disbelief is damaged by needing to do error-correction on the text.
I had hoped to have RCFM photos ready before making a post about it, but that hasn't worked out so I'm writing about RCFM now before I forget.
Die InfectMeX, Die!
10 April 2006 10:30If I had the option of using a decent browser at work, it would be a non-issue. But I'm stuck with the wretched thing that is IE, due to an IE-specific proxy. Since I must use IE, I at least plug a few of the holes in it. One such hole is "ActiveX" which I keep firmly disabled.
Most of the time this is not a problem. But some pages do have some (unnecessary) InfectMeX garbage on them and then IE complains about it as some Microsoft moron in ever so finite wisdom decided that if someone disables their security sieve, that someone should be harassed about it.
Unfortunately my voice post of a few days ago has some ActiveX trash in it, put there by LJ. So whenever I load my own LJ page, I get the stupid "warning" that I don't have InfectMeX enabled: Your security settings prohibit running InfectMeX controls on this page. As a result, the page may not display correctly. Of course not, there's a stupid fricking dialog in the way, and IE will sit there and not finish displaying the page until the offending harassalog box is closed.
It's annoying. I want to switch it off, ideally at the browser, but still have the regular page load properly. I don't need a reminder that I turned InfectMeX off. Irritating me about it won't make me turn InfectMeX back on. I'd like to disable its inclusion anywhere at all on my LJ, at least. That option seems to likewise suffer from existence failure.
I should not have to put a post behind an LJ cut just to not be harassed by a Broken-As-Designed browser. But that's what I'm stuck doing. It's not a real solution as it leaves the problem intact only hidden somewhat.
I know melissasutton has been almost always been busy and has a lot on her mind of late, so maybe she missed or forgot about this and this.
I will not be listing any so-called "guilty pleasures" here, nor will I be inflicting a viral quiz or list thing on anyone. If anyone desires to do post a such a list, they have no need to wait for me to add them to a chain letter.
I thought malterre knew me better than this. Or then maybe she does and is wondering how I'll respond. Well, this is how:
List 3 things that bug you - things that others may find trivial.
1. Viral quizzes.
FULL STOP
While it is not my birthday, nor the anniversary thereof, there have been a couple folks at work yesterday and today that did have their 40th. They both wound up with black balloons and that sort of thing to indicate aging and such. It seems to be a tradition, but really, it's not so much a tradition as merely a rut. It's a default bit that isn't very amusing as it's been done so many times that it lost any humor value it might have once had.
I expect I'll take my 40th off, when it eventually arrives, just to avoid some of this nonsense. I toyed with the idea having someone call in to work saying I wouldn't be there to my death (if they're going to celebrate it mockingly, why not go further?) - but that might set things in motion that would complicate my life when I showed up the next day.
There's a fascination with numbers divisible by 10 when it comes to age. I was fortunate enough that when I turned 30 nobody really noticed and I didn't have to put up with this unfunny bit of attempted humor. Why not use other numbers? How about a Jack Benny theme when someone turns 39? Or a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy theme at 42? Well, at least for those who'd know and could appreciate it. At least it wouldn't be the same old tired default. But that could require some creativity and effort and not just a couple dollars at a drug store for the by-the-decade pre-fab junk.
Sturgeon's Law: Ninety percent of everything is crud.
And thus most April Fool's Day jokes are crud.
The best I've seen this year is either the Astronomy Picture of the Day image of water on Mars or howardtayler's "moving" (or is it moving?) of Schlock Mercenary off of Keenspot.
The best I can recall from the past is the Great Comics Switch a few years ago - it didn't mess things up much if at all and didn't slap the comic reader in the face with idiocy. The next year, however, a truly idiotic stunt was done. Some comics were flipped left-for-right, making them readable only with difficulty.
A faire related website a few years set up the front page as if it had been change to a county or state fair site, which made it useless for the actual purpose for a day or so. This has been an on-going thing. A couple years back the guy who runs the site put the domain on ebay as the joke - except someone made a sizable bid and bought it - even with handing it right back, ebay wanted the seller's fee. The lesson was not completely learned. Now he just messes up the web-board of the site. This year it posts in StUpid lOSer mIXeD uP CaSe. Blargh.
Slashdot is getting filled with useless fake stories again this year. Had the folks running slashdot really been thinking they'd have simply re-posted one of the real stories over and over all day - poking a bit of fun at both themselves and those who shout "DUPE!"
Back when the magazine Popular Electronics still existed and used that name, they'd have *a* column and maybe *one* story that was an April Fool's Day special. That wasn't too bad. But they hurt themselves once when it seemed every story in the April issue was a joke. There was no April issue, really. It was replaced with this fake. They got complaints - and deserved them.
I suppose I'll now be accused of not having a sense of humor. An accusation which is itself humorous. It's simply that I prefer things claimed humorous to actually be funny. Most April Fool's Day jokes are not.
An article arrived in the mail today. It was clearly advertising trying hard to not look like advertising. It wasn't in a normal envelope but in a pull-the-perforated-edge off thing. It was made to look as if it had been stamped "Check enclosed" (no check I've received in the mail has needed such advertisement, nor desired it.) The check was for $10. The program it would have started would have cost $11.99 per month. The program? So-called "Fraud Protection." Don't they see the irony in this?
Infection from kinkyturtle as can be seen here.
1. Total amount of music files on your computer?
None. I don't keep files, musical or otherwise, atop my computer.
I keep the files in a toolbox, where they logically belong.
2. The last CDs you bought were...
A 16 month CD a few years ago and a 5 month CD a week or two ago.
3. What was the last song you listened to before reading this message?
Whatever the background music to the Weather Channel's local conditions report was.
4. Write down five songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.
"Five songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you."
5. What 3 people are you going to pass this baton to and why?
I'm not. I don't like viral quizzes and thus will not foist this infection on others.
I "opt out" most of the "and then copy this" crap as I dislike the viral, infectious nature of such - and what I do copy I repair the terms of so I'm not in turn demanding others carry on the infection if they choose to respond. I find the naming of people as a means of spreading a viral, infectious quiz utterly revolting. I suspect, however, that this abomination will not die the instant death it so richly deserves but will become the new "in thing" for quiz-starters hoping to breathe life into quizzes whether they deserve it or not.
Dear $COMPANY,
13 January 2005 12:35Dear Insurance Company A,
Your marketing folks might have thought that the plain envelope with a return address indicating rate adjustment and a letter with a big check mark by the word DECREASE rather than INCREASE would get my attention and get me to switch to you. They were half right. I now know you engage in deceptive practices by trying to pose as my actual insurer. You just landed on the fecal roster. I don't do business with places that start off by lying to me.
Dear Credit Card Company A,
You can stop trying to get me to get another card from you. I already have one. It's at a lower rate than you're pushing now, and that rate is a fixed rate. I don't need a 0% introductory rate or 0% rate on balance transfers. I don't have balances to transfer from higher rate cards. If I got the card you're pushing, it would be the higher rate card.
Dear Credit Card Company B,
You can stop trying to get me to get your credit card, or you can actually make an offer that's worth more than a warm bucket of spit. I have no need of high rate cards, let alone high rate variable cards, no matter what gimmicks and toys come with it. I don't need worthless points, as I accumulate so few on the fixed rate cards I do have and they all seem to only be good for items I consider to be worthless crap. That's not much of a reward. Oh, I also don't need airline miles, either. I neither spend nor fly enough for them to be worth anything to me.
Dear Credit Card Company C,
Calling a rate fixed and then revealing in the fine print (which I do read, unfortunately for you liars) that it's only fixed for a month at a time and varies from month to month is not being truthful. A fixed rate stays put for more than a month at a stretch. You get a place on the fecal roster too.
Dear Credit Card Company D (and others),
Enough with the phony baloney checks and "free" offers that if gone for enroll a person in an expensive program. The latest one, for a "free" credit report was particularly dandy. Unfortunately for you, I read the fine print. Oh, and in a few months I'll be able to get a free credit report that really is free.
Dear Mortgage Company Advertising on Radio,
Your "interest only" loan sounds good, except for the one huge thing you don't mention directly. Sure, the payments are lower, that's because it's interest only. What about principle? You don't mention that after all those years of low monthly payments the principle will be due in a huge balloon payment. But you want people to ignore that ticking sound, right? Why, at the end I suppose a person could refinance with another mortgage, and remain in debt. I, however, am not that person. My payments may be higher, but when they end, they'll end.
Dear Auto Dealership,
No, I'm not interested in buying a car when the one I've got runs just fine. I was even less interested in buying a car when I was still making payments. I am not interested in a lease, either; the payments don't stop. Oh, you say I get a new car every few years that way? Are your cars so bad they need constant replacement? Next time we meet we'll talk price and I'll be ready to walk out. Even if you were the only game in town, there are plenty of other towns. It's a mobile society, or did you somehow manage to forget that?
Dear Auto Dealership in Another State,
Stop wasting your time saying I'm entered in or can enter in some contest - which excludes people outside your own state. Just because you are stupid, don't expect everyone else to be just as stupid.
There. I feel a bit better now.
Back from MFF
22 November 2004 07:28This is the short version.
Thursday: Travel.
Driving in MN: No problem.
Driving in WI: No problem.
Driving in IL: I have a renewed contempt for tollways and bad design. And for poor signage. And for hotel clerks who don't know the area. Evidently the right way to get to the Schaumburg Hyatt, at least for me, is via Elgin.
Arrived at hotel at long last - met some folks. Generally had a good time.
Friday: Attended a couple panels, saw a show or two, wandered around.
Saturday: Like Friday, but with the amazing sponsor's bunch. How good? There was smoked salmon available and I simply never got to it.
Sunday: Attended a panel, recovered sketchbooks from dealer's area and artist's alley, and drove home. Via Elgin since the supposedly closer access to I-90 was effectively blocked by a crowd of folks whose mental capacity indicates that they probably were designers of signs for Illinois tollways.
Conclusion: MFF was great, though I can't really say I did that much. It helped that I knew some people already and saw them repeatedly. I will almost certainly return. If the weather looks decent, I am very likely to plot a route that avoids I-90 in IL and aim for Elgin intentionally.
That message is one I expect to see if I made changes to some file and tried to exit the program without having saved the file. That's fine. I like that reminder. It's useful and has saved me headaches and re-work.
What I do not like is using Word, saving the file, printing it, and then being asked if I want to save changes. Huh? I made no changes. I printed the file. Printing is not editing. Or with Excel, I open a spreadsheet, look at it, make no changes - not even moving the highlighted cell or scrollbars! - and when I close the thing I get asked if I want to save changes. There were no changes. Why ask if I want to save changes when there aren't any?
Is it any wonder I prefer to use third party software whenever possible?
I like to believe I'm a fairly good programmer. I don't claim to be Wile E. Coyote, programming super-genius. But evidently some folks at work figure I can re-program external reality. (If I could, do you think I'd have left it in the condition it's now in?) This morning was "How is the ____ program coming along?" in regard to a problem that showed up yesterday afternoon during what should have been final testing.
After some digging and some more testing, I was able to demonstrate that the program actually did do exactly what was asked. Actually, two programs on two different pieces of hardware that had to talk to each other. Connected by cable, they worked just fine. Connected by a radio link, a necessity for this particular project, things got shaky. I have exactly zero control over the radios. But somehow I'm supposed to fix them in software on other hardware. I don't think so.
It turns out that not only were the radio-modems never properly configured, the guy who was setting them up didn't have the configuration tool for it. And that should have been a clue - we stopped using that brand of radio-modem a couple years ago. Gee, maybe there's a reason we switched brands? That was pointed this morning. Now, this afternoon, it finally dawns on the guy with radio-modems that maybe he should use the radio-modems that work.
Express
Doesn't that imply speed? Like Pony Express, the fast for its day delivery service, or Express Lane which is supposed to be faster than those other lanes?
Well, the United States Postal Service has revised the definition. Express Mail used to mean that if you sent something today, it'd get where you wanted it tomorrow. Not anymore. I had to Express something today[1] (because Airborne Express - there's that word again - wasn't swift enough to follow simple directions about where to pick up that something... but that's another rant).
Other package delivery services use Express in their name to indicate speed. It's not Federal Someday Get There, it's Federal Express. Why? It's a next-day service! Sure, you can now get a cheaper, slower FedEx service, but they still offer the point of their name: Getting stuff places fast. Airborne Express, had they been smart enough to understand a simple location description, would have gotten the parcel where it needed to be next-day. But since they weren't competent enough to handle a simple pick-up, I got to have this exchange at the Post Office:
Clerk: When do you want this to get there?
Vakko: Tomorrow.
Clerk: I can get it there Saturday.
Vakko: Saturday isn't tomorrow. Isn't the whole point of Express mail to get something there tomorrow?
Clerk: No, it's to have it tracked. (Or was it confirmed delivery)
Vakko: Nice of USPS to change the definition after telling everyone it was for speed.
Clerk: Do you still want to send it Express?
Vakko: *grumble* Yes... *what choice is there?*
What's annoying is the quiet redefinition of "Express." If it's just delivery confirmation, then call it that. If it's second-rate package tracking, than call it that. First rate tracking is what Registered Mail gets. But Registered ain't Express. Since they are not offering a truly Express (fast!) service, they have no business using the name and implying that that is what they have. Bait-and-switch seems a good description of what USPS is doing with its alleged Express Mail service. It's one thing if USPS simply can't do what other places do. I can accept that. But being lied to is another matter, and using the term Express Mail for two-day delivery is a lie.
So now, because of a bungle by Airborne Express and the false advertising of USPS, I've wound up having to pay $17.85 for inferior service.
[1] I had not known that this item needed to be shipped until last night. Had I known about it earlier, I would have sent it earlier.
They call this one an "Up front reward" and claim not to have some complex reward program and no teaser rates. The bait is a "free" Dell Dimension 2400 desktop computer. But there are a few catches. "Free" is not free, of course.
To get the computer one must transfer balances to get at least $5,000 on their card - and then keep a balance of at least $3,500 for at least 18 months... at 9.99%. That's also a variable rate. But what if you don't have that much to transfer? Why, there's always a cash advance (up to $2,500) option to boost debt and cash advances get that higher rate of not less than 19.99%. They point that this would be a saving if I transferred my higher rate balances. I pride myself in not having higher rate balances. My reward is very simple: not making interest payments.
It gets even better. The system they picture has a flat-panel display, which is an option. The DVD drive is also an option. Naturally both options cost more money.
Of course this offer is only to "credit-savvy individuals" who have earned it. Well, this credit-savvy individual knows better than to fall for this. It costs more in interest than simply saving up and buying the machine. And for that, I could certainly do better than a mere Dell if I wanted to get another computer.
Topping it off is the result of Googling:
http://milwaukee.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/2004/03/29/story2.html?page=1
Verdict: Universal Savings Bank, meet Mr. Shredder.
Before anyone gets the wrong idea, this is post is not about selfishness, but relevance.
Every once in a while I see or hear someone tell someone else to think of how fortunate they are and how there are those in far worse situations when something is wrong. The person who says this means well, but doesn't really help. The reminder that someone, somewhere is having a worse time of things does nothing to improve the situation with which one is dealing.
Stubbing a toe, for example, hurts. Being told that someone else has no legs doesn't do anything to decrease that pain. At best it is a distraction, and not a very good one. Now the person with the stubbed toe gets to feel bad about someone else's situation. Or maybe even feel guilty that he has a toe to stub?
It's not that the person with the stubbed toe is being inconsiderate. The other person, the one worse off, wouldn't be any better off if the toe-stubber thought of them or not at that instant. The net effect is a negative one. Nobody is helped. The legless person doesn't suddenly grow new legs because the guy who stubbed his toe thinks of him. The person with the stubbed toe feels down not only because of the pain in his toe. Now in addition to that, he might feel guilty for daring to think of himself, or he might feel that whoever tried to help seems to have just belittled his problem. Some friend that.
This sort of thing bugs me. It's well meant, but so counter to its own purpose that one has to wonder what someone was thinking. "I wept that I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet." Well, the footless man is worse off, true enough, but unless he happens to be a shoemaker you still have no shoes. The original problem remains.
