Archive for the ‘ Stuff ’ Category

According to Steam

Steam keeps track of just how much gaming I do. It is a wonderful system, (set aside the total lack of stats mgmt), and I have purchased and/or connected all my games through Steam.

And according to Steam:

Member since: November 17, 2004
Steam Rating: 4.6
Playing time: 14.8 hrs past 2 weeks

My running average has been about 14 hours every two weeks for the last 6 months. 7 hours a week or 1 hour a day. In comparison, most of the other admins in my community are at least double, triple, or quadruple (!) my playing time.

Crazy.

Fashion fail

Pink jeans?  Red socks?

Pink jeans? Red socks? == FAIL.

WordPress Upgrade

All software should work as well as WordPress (what this blog runs on).

I upgraded to 2.7 from 2.1 yesterday, and not only was the upgrade flawless, it was simple.

In the world of software, why is it so hard to make software simple? WordPress == simple.

User experience is important, but I think the admin experience is even more important. And when I deal with Sharepoint or Exchange, or any complex technology product, simple is so far from the product, you wonder how it was even written in the first place.

Bravo to WordPress.

The world keeps spinning

Laying in the grass and looking up into the blue sky, crossed with clouds and the occasional contrail, I remember so many things. My mind is a film reel of the nonsensical. Unrelated items cross my field of thought, related, yet not related in any way, and I am left to wonder and ponder the connections between seemingly unconnected things.

Left to wonder how I ended up the future owner of a minivan. I clearly remembering vowing never to drive one in my younger days.

That’s a kick in the pants. The universe likes to remind us that you are not in control.

Not even an iota.

Brilliant analysis on geek vs. suits culture clashes

Quote from here:

But it brings the two cultures together in what are probably the worst possible circumstances: The old-skool scarcity-driven infrastructure probably didn’t know these people even existed. Or if they did, they had wildly inappropriate expectations about demographics and values and potential impact on the status quo. And the scarcity-avoiding geek culture that didn’t until until now give a damn about what “suits” did is now suddenly swinging the full measure of its attention to bear on this affront, and they’re processing it on fucking Internet timescales, without old-skool handicaps like “business hours” or “weekends” or “face to face meetings”.

Hilarious.

Another good quote from the same article:

Cue fan. Cue shit.

Priceless.

If I ever meet Samuel L. Jackson

I will ask him to read a series of lines into a recording device. I will then use these recordings in a variety of ways.

For example:

  • I am on the phone, motherfucker!
  • Stop being a bitch and leave a message, motherfucker!
  • Stop thinking you are the end all of the universe, motherfucker!
  • I will pop a cap in your ass!
  • I am a JEDI, MOTHERFUCKER!

You can imagine one could have with a soundboard of key Jackson phrases. You could probably build one of the myriad of movies he has been in, but then again, you can only get the crazy Sam Jackson in only a few movies and only a few key scenes.

Tell you what, you may discount him as an actor, but looking at his page on IMDB, it is amazing just how many things he has either starred in or appeared in. And for the life of me, I did not know he was Frozone in the Incredibles.

Conspiracy Theory

I used to think vast huge conspiracy theories were indeed possible. Then I grew up and realized that humans as a population, are complete idiots. It is amazing that we are able to accomplish anything as a species, much less be able to survive.

I mean seriously, it is a miracle that we are able to get anything done.

One person doing something is fine, get two people doing something together is doable, three people and you start pushing the increased gains, and you can extrapolate from there. The more people you have involved, the less you will be able to accomplish and the more you will have to spend.

Government is a perfect example of this theory. Large bureaucracies are expensive, slow, and slightly retarded in policy making.

So how could any body of people cover up aliens or assassinations or anything of the sort?

It would take far too much coordination/money/effort on an exponential scale to cover up anything significant. It is just not economically feasible for singular selfish individuals that make up any group of individuals to pull something of that level off. Regardless of motivation.

Feasibility is nil on anything past a specific critical mass of involved individuals.

Firefox Memory Hack

Seriously, the memory hack from the post below is fucking awesome.

Minimize your browser with a current memory footprint of 120MB and then BAM!, 10MB.

That should be a default, right there. DEFAULT!

***

And here it is again for posterity:

This little hack will drop Firefox’s RAM usage down to 10 Mb when minimized:

1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter “config.trim_on_minimize”. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.

Garfield I ain’t

But I love lasagna. Out of all the foods out there, lasagna has to be my #1 comfort food.

Which is odd, since my mom never made it. Or that I had very rarely as a kid.

But as an adult, a steaming hot pan of lasagna is like love covered in a sauce of awesomeness.

Tech slang

It is interesting how you get steeped in the job/life/stuff you do. You start to use slang that is straight from your experience and not really remembering that most, if not everyone, outside of your profession or hobby, will have absolutely no clue what you are talking about.

I personally love my vernacular. I think my diction and overall vocabulary is fairly balanced and well used, but then again, sometimes I get caught using an acronym or slang that just draws a blank stare.

Like a deer caught in headlights, the poor creature just got brain-slapped by my stream of languagetrash (new word). (I am a firm believer that similarly to German, concatenation of two words should always result in a new, better, word.)

Last week, while fixing someone’s computer, they asked me a question about a website. I mentioned that if they typed a secure link instead of the standard http address they would be able to go around the redirect. So I said, “Just type in h t t p s colon whack whack, dub dub dub, and your address.”

The whack whack got em. But if that didn’t, the dub dub dub would have. I laid them out like landmines.

“What is a whack whack?” At this point jokes about the “Any” key start spinning around my head.

And I had to explain the back slash, forward slash distinction.

Then, “Dub dub dub?”

“That is short of w, w, w, as in www.address.com.” It is less of a tongue twister and a bit faster if you say dubdubdub, instead of double-u, double-eww, double-you.

lulz. (That is the plural form of lol for you plebes.)