Skaryd's Rants

America's New Hero - Anita Esterday

So after read a story about Hillary not leaving a tip at a restaurant she ate at and the resulting "scandal," I was beginning to feel sick to my stomach. Of all the stupid crap to report on... And then I read the last two paragraphs... Anita Esterday, my new hero for the campaign season. (Season here being about 2 years long...) If I had her address, I'd send her Hillary's forgotten tip as a thank you for having some common sense. And more importantly, getting it printed in the New York Times.

Windows Needs Your Permission to read this Blog Entry

So I've been trying to use Vista as my primary OS on my laptop this week. However, since I heard grumblings about XP Product Key deactivation it went on my secondary hard drive which had previously had Zod (Fedora Core 6) on it. That got wiped and my old copy of Win2kPro went on, to be immediately upgraded to Vista. Happily it did a fresh install, but left a lot of 2k cruft around. So here's my opinion of Vista after a few days of use.

1) No PNGs for desktop backgrounds? Are you frickin' kidding me? Argh. That would be a feature removal from XP. Quite annoying.
2) UAC. I tried. Really. I tried to keep it on. But holy Hades in a halfshell... Windows Needs My Permission to any little damned thing at all. Not only that, but I don't trust it. I trust SpyBot's TeaTimer to protect me more than UAC. So after running it for a week, and clicking allow buttons more times than I count, I've given up on that. I wish it was a per-user setting, just in case someone else used my box. But of course not that would have been a handy feature.
3) Open-Apple-Tab is really cool.
4) I hate - HATE! - not being able to set the Start Menu up the way I want it. Since Win2k, I've been sorting my start menu and renaming things so that I can hit Open-Apple-P-A-N for Notepad, Open-Apple-P-O-W for Word, Open-Apple-P-D-V-5 for Visual Studio 2k5, Open-Apple-P-D-P for Python, etc. Without fail, I am faster and more efficient than 90% of the people I know when navigating around on the computer and getting things running because of this. The new Search box embedded into the Start menu destroys my ability to do so and worse annoys the crap out of me. Happily, though, since the last beta, you can revert to a Classic start menu and not lose the other Aero visual enhancements. Yay.
5) Sitting here idle with nothing running, the CPU routinely takes up around 13% of the CPU, but I've seen it spike up to 40%. What in the hell is it doing while doing nothing? My XP box with several apps open (but doing nothing) only take up between 1% and 4%. I don't like that at all.
6) I thought the Battery and Speaker icons in the task bar hadn't yet been drawn out when I played with the last beta, but nope, they are supposed to look cheesy and white like that I guess... WTF were they thinking? Any why the several extra pixels on the left of the battery icon?

I have yet to actually do too much with VB6, and VS2k2, 2k3, and 2k5. I've heard gumblings that the latter doesn't work too well. (????!?!?) We'll see.

Voicemail-haters of the world - UNITE!

Reddit had an article regarding this Guardian author's hatred for Voicemail, to which I can only say "Bravo!" Up until a little over a year ago my feelings were exactly the same. I can't stand listening to Voicemail. Mostly because it seems like the Voicemail lady speaks at 3 words a minute... "Welcome to X voicemail.... you have...................... 25................. new messages. First message... received.............. Saturday......... at................. 9........... thity........ six...... PM....... 1....... minute......... thirteen................ seconds." I'm already 3 minutes into the call to retrieve the messages and I'm no more informed than I was before I called in to get my messages. And of course, I can't remember which key it is to get her to shut up and play the damned message already. Furthermore, Verizon - my cell provider, Vonage - my home service provider, and Voicepipe - my office provider, all use different keys to get the lady to hurry up. (Interestingly, the lady sounds the same for all three.)

Happily, when I switched my home service from POTS to VOIP, I immediately activated the email voicemail attachments. ("...And there was much rejoicing -yay!") Since I spend the majority of my day in front of Thunderbird, I can get my messages pretty much instantly and then delete them through the web interface. My office also switched to VOIP around the same time, and as long as I'm in the office or somewhere with internet access, I leave that to email the messages as well. The bonus with VoicePipe is that the message isn't saved, so I don't have to log on to their God-awful web interface to delete the message.

Now if I could get Verizon to email my messages and allow me to delete them through a web interface, I would be VERY happy. If any other provider offered this, I'd switch instaneously. I'd also have the added benefit of not having to threaten The Wife to never leave me a voicemail. I have a list of missed calls. Don't leave a message on the cell. If I've missed your call, I'll call you back. Better yet, text message me.

New Cleveland bishop.

Richard Lennon has become the newest bishop of Cleveland. Previous job? Top aide to Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston and interim head of their diocese. Oh goodie, a guy who thinks covering up child molestation is going to head the Catholics in Cleveland.

But then to be fair, I guess we did send Boston Manny Ramierez. Paybacks and all.

Yahoo! page overhaul

So I see that Yahoo! is overhauling their website? Does this mean that instead of the page being 40% ads, it will now be 80% ads? Wake up, use Google to search and MyWay for your portal. You'll actually be able to find your content and search results without annoying flash ads and monsterous banners.

West Wing ends run

So yesterday was the end of the West Wing. I had gotten really into this show over the last 4 years. The last 2 seasons focusing on the Santos vs. Vinnick presedential run really point out how ridiculous running for office must be. But more importantly showed us 2 candidates that made you feel you could vote FOR either of them rather than AGAINST them. I realize it's a fictional show, but I can't remember the last time I can recall not getting a mouth full of bile at the mere thought of voting FOR one of the candidates. I hated Kerry. I thought he was a worthless, no talent assclown and would ruin this country if he got in office. But I voted for him because 1) I didn't want to waste a vote voting libertarian and 2) as useless as I thought he was, I hate Bush even more. And I can't see how it could have been possible for a brain dead chimp with a crack addiction to have done worse than Bush. And we still have more fun to come from Bush in the next couple years. Ugh. Could we PLEASE have some worthwhile candidates in 2008? Please? No Jeb Bush. No Hillary Clinton. And no John McCain, which bums me out, as I used to really respect the guy and WOULD have happily voted for him. Now he's turned into a blog-hating, Jerry Falwell loving nutjob. Argh.
Anyway, I really wanted West Wing to continue, so that was pretty much it's death knell. Scrubs was renewed, but not given a timeslot, again. As was Crossing Jordan, which was moderatly entertaining, even with how ridiculous it was. So I assume, we'll get more shows with judges, or jackasses eating disgusting stuff. I'll bet House is cancelled or put on hiatus too. Why keep the good shows on the air? Convicted lasted about as long as L&O: Trial By Jury, although I didn't really care for Conviction much, it was still better than most crap on the tube.
One bright spot is that NBC did pick up a new Aaron Sorkin drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. SportsNight, West Wing, American President. This guy can write a show. Matthew Perry was the only bright spot on friends, and his on screen chemistry with Amanda Peet was great in the Whole Nine Yards. Let's hope NBC gives it more than 2 airings before pulling it for more reality show crap.

RIP: Ed McBain

Total bummer. So Drue and I stayed to Selkirk Lighthouse for the weekend. Pretty cool to go up in a lighthouse built in the late 1830's. I hit the library and picked up an Ed McBain book - The Frumious Bandersnatch - I hadn't read yet. I'd read a couple of his books in years past, and then forgot to pick up the rest. As with his past work, I devoured the book and loved every page of it. I was making plans to start from the first one in the 87th Precinct series - Cop Hater (published in 1956!) - and read my way through them all in order. When I got back into town and checked up on the news I found that Evan Hunter - Ed McBain's legal name - had died over the weekend. I still plan on reading the series. There is one more book in the series that has yet to be published. I'm just very disappointed that after that the series will have died with Hunter. Thanks for the great story-telling.

What a Good Idea.

Since I'm frequently bored and always looking for something stupid to do, when I stumbled upon this following a link from Slashdot, I just said to myself, "Self, that's something you should try too!" I think I'll even go a step further, and sort it out by type. I'd love to know just how many credit offers Discover sends me in a month, let alone a year. Should be fun. Now, I just need to train the wife NOT to throw away the crap.

Set Phasers On Diet, Number One

Well, I finally watched the series finale of Enterprise last night and boy did it suck. Off the top of my head, the number one thing that ticked me off was the writers complete change in character for T'Pol. Did they forget that she was a Vulcan and supposedly supresses her emotions? Tripp also seemed very out of character when he makes the decision to kill himself to save Archer. It's in the nature of an engineer to look for a way out of a problem, but the writers opted to just say "Screw it, let's kill off a main character, and worry about how to do it later." Very dissatisfying episode. Just rude to have the final episode basically be a throw-away TNG episode rather than a proper Enterprise episode. Meh. Hopefully the series will live on in books as DS9 has.
And man, at the risk of being the pot calling the kettle black, Riker and Troi seemed to have put on a little bit of weight. Those TNG uniforms aren't very forgiving.

NBC Cancels Trial By Jury

Argh. NBC canceled Law & Order: Trial By Jury, one of the few decent TV shows on the air. Unlike the newest CSI (the NYC version), TBJ was a worthy successor to the franchise. The characters were well-writen and the stories weren't too bad. They strayed from the original formula of focusing on the jury portion of the Trials and moved towards being a clone of the original, but the stories kept it from being dull and I really liked Bebe Neuwirth's character. At least they kept West Wing on the air, although it's been moved to Sundays. So I'm sure that will get killed during the middle of the season without us knowing who the new President will be. (Either Vinnick or Santos would be lightyears better than Bush or Kerry. Ahh, the magic of fictional television, presidential candidates that DON'T suck.)
ABC canceled Blind Justice, which I tried to like as a show to replace NYPD Blue, but in general kinda sucked. Something about Ron Eldard just always struck a sour note with me.
And of course, Enterprise is now gone too. Just when it was getting really good. (Except for the last episode, I guess. I haven't seen it yet.)
I swear the TV Execs are smoking crack when they decide what to let continue and what to cancel. I'm half surprised to see that Scrubs is coming back, since it's a good show. I thought the networks only cared about reality show crap. Basically, I think it works like this: Is it good? Cancel it. Does Chris like it? Cancel it REALLY quickly. Is it mindless shlock that only people with an IQ of under 50 like? Renew that crap! Of course I guess that's the majority of the country though...

Home Keys Please

I would like to know when I missed the meeting when "they" decided to change the orientation of the Home Keys block on computer keyboard. It's damn near impossible anymore to buy a keyboard with the old standard three across, two down Home Key keyboard configuration. See here:

All you can find nowadays is some new design where the Delete key has been made twice the size and the Insert key is GONE. See here:

Why is this a problem? Well, Copy-N-Paste for us who grew up before Windows existed was always Ctrl-Insert and Shift-Insert, respectively. Old habits die hard. Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V are for wimps and newbies. I guess I'm going to need to start buying up all the MS Natural Keyboard Pro's I can possibly find. As far as I'm concerned that was the peak of keyboard innovation. Gotta have the split keys, and you gotta have the 3x2 Home Keys.
Somehow this is Microsoft's fault. I just can't figure out how.

MyMortgageStatus.com

The OPAL Group announced our initial release of MyMortgageStatus.com, our newest product. (Yes, this is a plug, but we're excited about it.) MyMortgageStatus.com is a tool for Mortgage Brokers or Loan Originators to help manage their company and to offer an additional resource to interface with realtors and customers. If you're buying or refinancing you home, hopefully you'll see our product in the near future. :)

I hate Rush Limbaugh and if you drive in Ohio I hate you too.

I found myself listening to Rush Limbaugh* on my way to lunch today and I actually agreed with him on something. God help me. Basically, Rush was reporting on a story in which Dell told a bunch of Muslim employees that they couldn't take time off from work to pray. Of course the employees are up in arms and so is some civil liberties group. Excuse me, but you are at work to work, not to pray. Pray at home, at church, at temple, or wherever else appropriate. The place I agreed with Rush is that (God help us) if this was a Judeo-Christian group that was complaining there would be no civil liberties group up in arms. (Of course the religious wacko nutjubs would be, but not other freak shows like the ACLU.) I don't care who you are or what you pray to. It's not for work. Shut up and get on with it. Get a different job or start your own company and work with like minded people. And go out of business because you'll never get anything done.

Anyway, the only reason I had the time to hear this was because more than 3 snowflakes fell in Cleveland last night, so the maximum speed one can travel is 2 miles per hour. One would think that living in a town in a snowy climate, one would learn how to drive properly in such conditions. Nope, the entire population has to piss me off by driving ridiculously and needlessly slow. What should have been a 5 minute round trip took 15 minutes each way. Maybe I should drink less coffee, but I am the most impatient person in the entire world when driving behind an idiot. And Cleveland has no small lack of idiots.

* Not on purpose; my radio was still tuned to 1100 from my morning drive in.

By the way, I hate Al Franken too.

Newsradio DVD.

It's about frickin' time. Now, I wanna hear about The Adventures Of Brisco County, Jr.

Spring Training 2005

Woo-hoo! Finally. Baseball is back. 1pm today Tribe vs. Astros. I'm going to have to dig out the radio again so I can tune in to Dub-Tam and get into the mood.... while staring at the mountain of snow out my window. Ah well. I'll live. My only regret is that powers that be didn't listen to my rantings and ravings and stick Casey Blake out to pasture. At least he's been moved to the outfield where he will hopefully not cause as much damage. If I had to see one more ball roll lazily by him down the third base line, my head would frickin' explode.

Getting Started.

Dumped my ancient version of Greymatter. Haven't blogged in about 1.5 years. Trying again.
Bare with me while I get the layout, styles, and stuff worked out.

I should point out that - to start - I've blatantly ripped off the layout and styles from Jason Clark for this blog. I wanted something to start with and after looking for someone using the same blogware that I am, I stumbled upon his page and proceeded to thieve it. Hopefully soon, I will come up with my own design, ripping off learning from former co-worker and CSS master, Eric Meyer.

Holy Matt Kantor Batman

Matt has a blog. Unbelievable.