I'm playing Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and trying to get the stupid achievement for keeping the fucking gnome from the beginning of the game until the end of the game.
All is going well, but then I get a car.
Surely, there's a spot in the car where I can put the gnome and have it reliably stay in the fucking car, right?
Right?
RIGHT?
Well, no. Valve, in all their infinite wisdom, gives you nowhere to put the gnome in the car. This means that every time you go around a corner, over a hill, jump, or just whenever it feels like it, the gnome falls out of the fucking car. So regardless of what's happening around you, you have to stop, go find the stupid thing, and put it back in the fucking car.
Then, after the bit with the first Advisor, of course the game spawns the Combine's car in my car, pushing my car forwards, and ejecting the gnome from the car. So I get through the fight after the Advisor, I have to go find the damn thing and put it in the car, WHILE UNDER FIRE FROM A FUCKING HELICOPTER. Had enough of stroking your dicks yet, Valve? The challenge here is to keep the gnome until the end of the game. The tedium is getting it to stay in the fucking car. The extra source of tedium is the completely unnecessary helicopter that rains death down upon you if you stop to look for the damn gnome after it falls out of the fucking car. Also, you don't have any weapons with which to take down the fucking helicopter, and it's an open area, so it gets all the angles on you that it wants.
Fuck you Valve.
Showing posts with label RAGE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RAGE. Show all posts
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Sunday, June 3, 2012
FUCK
This morning before I went to bed I had the bright idea to try and install Plop Boot Manager to my hard drive's MBR, so that it would control the boot process instead of the Windows boot loader. It offers a lot of extra capabilities, hence why I wanted it.
Except that trying to install it fucked up my partition table.
Fucked up partition table = BIOS no see OS = Can't use computer. Simple as that.
So when I woke up, I j-j-jammed in my WinXP install disc and reinstalled XP. All was fine, except for one thing that I swear I've fixed before but can't remember for the life of me how I did it: my boot drive was K: instead of C:. One of my other hard drives had taken over the stupid C: drive letter. And with Windows being so infinitely intelligent, you can't use its own disk management software to change the drive letter of your boot drive. It won't even entertain the thought of queueing it up as something to do when the computer is restarted and then telling you "Reboot your computer, moron!".
In the process of rebooting and trying to get it fixed, my BIOS started doing its thing again, where it goes "lol what IDE Primary Master? I see no IDE Primary Master!". Usually if I just turn the computer off and let it sit for a while to think about what it's done, when I turn it back on it goes "lol jk" and starts up.
That was several hours ago. Letting it sit has never taken more than 20-30 minutes before.
So I go "okay, might as well see if it's the hard drive" and swapped it out for what appears to be a brand new 120GB hard drive that had never been formatted before. Start up computer, and it still can't see it. In other words, suspicion confirmed, it's my BIOS.
First thing you're thinking is "lol, you still use IDE devices?" Yeah, yeah. I built that computer in 2004. You know, before SATA became really popular. Hell, it's got a 64 bit processor. I've never been able to use it at full power because I've lacked a 64 bit OS for it to run.
My plan was, if the 120GB drive magically worked, I was going to partition it about half and half, and set up Windows on one half and one or another flavor of Linux on the other half. But that doesn't mean much now, I can't use the damn thing.
All I can hope for now is to earn enough money from this job that I can buy the stuff for an all-new computer. Which will take very uncomfortably longer than I really want it to. If anyone I know is reading this and you have even a semi-decent computer you can lend to me for a while, I'd be really grateful. I'd want to be able to install stuff on it though. Stuff meaning my usual day-to-day setup, rather than me being a retard and FUBAR'ing your computer.
I should have just gone to sleep at 4:30 AM like I wanted to, but noooo, I was just like "lol let's install plop to the MBR! This won't take very long!" Well, half of that was correct. It didn't take very long. But now due to circumstances entirely unrelated to it, I can't even use my computer at the moment.
I'm downloading the latest Ubuntu livedisc, I'm going to see if I can't boot off of that and not have to use my parents' computer. I won't be able to watch anime (sadface), but... At least I'll have the internet.
Except that trying to install it fucked up my partition table.
Fucked up partition table = BIOS no see OS = Can't use computer. Simple as that.
So when I woke up, I j-j-jammed in my WinXP install disc and reinstalled XP. All was fine, except for one thing that I swear I've fixed before but can't remember for the life of me how I did it: my boot drive was K: instead of C:. One of my other hard drives had taken over the stupid C: drive letter. And with Windows being so infinitely intelligent, you can't use its own disk management software to change the drive letter of your boot drive. It won't even entertain the thought of queueing it up as something to do when the computer is restarted and then telling you "Reboot your computer, moron!".
In the process of rebooting and trying to get it fixed, my BIOS started doing its thing again, where it goes "lol what IDE Primary Master? I see no IDE Primary Master!". Usually if I just turn the computer off and let it sit for a while to think about what it's done, when I turn it back on it goes "lol jk" and starts up.
That was several hours ago. Letting it sit has never taken more than 20-30 minutes before.
So I go "okay, might as well see if it's the hard drive" and swapped it out for what appears to be a brand new 120GB hard drive that had never been formatted before. Start up computer, and it still can't see it. In other words, suspicion confirmed, it's my BIOS.
First thing you're thinking is "lol, you still use IDE devices?" Yeah, yeah. I built that computer in 2004. You know, before SATA became really popular. Hell, it's got a 64 bit processor. I've never been able to use it at full power because I've lacked a 64 bit OS for it to run.
My plan was, if the 120GB drive magically worked, I was going to partition it about half and half, and set up Windows on one half and one or another flavor of Linux on the other half. But that doesn't mean much now, I can't use the damn thing.
All I can hope for now is to earn enough money from this job that I can buy the stuff for an all-new computer. Which will take very uncomfortably longer than I really want it to. If anyone I know is reading this and you have even a semi-decent computer you can lend to me for a while, I'd be really grateful. I'd want to be able to install stuff on it though. Stuff meaning my usual day-to-day setup, rather than me being a retard and FUBAR'ing your computer.
I should have just gone to sleep at 4:30 AM like I wanted to, but noooo, I was just like "lol let's install plop to the MBR! This won't take very long!" Well, half of that was correct. It didn't take very long. But now due to circumstances entirely unrelated to it, I can't even use my computer at the moment.
I'm downloading the latest Ubuntu livedisc, I'm going to see if I can't boot off of that and not have to use my parents' computer. I won't be able to watch anime (sadface), but... At least I'll have the internet.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Really? REALLY?
So, CAINE is a student organization at the University of Virginia. Its website is http://www.desudesudesu.org/. It has officers, including a treasurer, whose job it is to procure funding from the university so we can have materials for meeting activities as well as expanding our collection.
A few years back, we decided that our website really needed an overhaul. After weighing our various options we ended up buying hosting and the domain name that we use today. The main reason was that if we weren't hosted by the university, they had no say in the content of our website and we could be sovereign.
The first thing they took issue with was how we referred to ourselves. They claimed that saying "UVa Comics and Anime Club" implied that we were affiliated with the university, most likely in an "official endorsement" sense. They recommended that we change it to "Comics and Anime Club at UVa". Fine, whatever, they were happy with that, so we changed it and went on with life.
Until yesterday.
Now, apparently, that's not enough. It's no longer crystal clear that we carry no official endorsement from UVa. To rectify this, they sent a huge wall of text of legalese that we are to copy, verbatim, onto our "front page". This is essentially a non-affiliation notice.
Only problem: our "front page" is the forum index. I imagine they'd want it immediately visible to visitors of the site, which means placing it near the top. This would push our actual forum content down the page just far enough to confuse new visitors, who don't generally expect a forum to have 5 miles of legalese at the top of the page. A new visitor is going to take one look at all that legalese, go "ok, whatever", and then look for whatever they actually wanted on the site and effectively ignore it. So basically, this legalese is for the sole purpose of UVa stroking its giant cock. Not on my face, thanks. I'll keep my site clean of such things.
The funny thing is that part of the notice states that they "have no control over" us. Which is exactly why we have our site hosted by someone other than them in the first place. So if they have no control over us, then why are they suddenly allowed to dictate content that should appear on our website?
The answer: they're not. At least, not on my watch. Good luck, UVa, I'm not putting your jerkoff legalese on my site. I did, however, change the reference so it says "Comics and Anime Club in Charlottesville". Let's see Charlottesville send us a notice next. I'm waiting. Then I'll take a shit on it and send it back. In a country that's as extremely litigous as ours is, SOMEONE has to stand up for common sense.
A few years back, we decided that our website really needed an overhaul. After weighing our various options we ended up buying hosting and the domain name that we use today. The main reason was that if we weren't hosted by the university, they had no say in the content of our website and we could be sovereign.
The first thing they took issue with was how we referred to ourselves. They claimed that saying "UVa Comics and Anime Club" implied that we were affiliated with the university, most likely in an "official endorsement" sense. They recommended that we change it to "Comics and Anime Club at UVa". Fine, whatever, they were happy with that, so we changed it and went on with life.
Until yesterday.
Now, apparently, that's not enough. It's no longer crystal clear that we carry no official endorsement from UVa. To rectify this, they sent a huge wall of text of legalese that we are to copy, verbatim, onto our "front page". This is essentially a non-affiliation notice.
Only problem: our "front page" is the forum index. I imagine they'd want it immediately visible to visitors of the site, which means placing it near the top. This would push our actual forum content down the page just far enough to confuse new visitors, who don't generally expect a forum to have 5 miles of legalese at the top of the page. A new visitor is going to take one look at all that legalese, go "ok, whatever", and then look for whatever they actually wanted on the site and effectively ignore it. So basically, this legalese is for the sole purpose of UVa stroking its giant cock. Not on my face, thanks. I'll keep my site clean of such things.
The funny thing is that part of the notice states that they "have no control over" us. Which is exactly why we have our site hosted by someone other than them in the first place. So if they have no control over us, then why are they suddenly allowed to dictate content that should appear on our website?
The answer: they're not. At least, not on my watch. Good luck, UVa, I'm not putting your jerkoff legalese on my site. I did, however, change the reference so it says "Comics and Anime Club in Charlottesville". Let's see Charlottesville send us a notice next. I'm waiting. Then I'll take a shit on it and send it back. In a country that's as extremely litigous as ours is, SOMEONE has to stand up for common sense.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Ordeals
So my dad mentioned at dinner that he had his USB flash drive set up to be bootable with some drive recovery software on it. However, there was something he didn't quite understand about it and asked me if I could help. So when we got home, I grabbed the flash drive, and it began.
First, I tried to be sneaky/clever and boot it in VirtualBox without having to reboot my computer. But that failed horribly. So, I rebooted.
After not finding an option in my BIOS specifically for booting off of a USB drive, I poked around some and eventually noticed that it showed up as a hard drive in the Hard Drive Boot Priority list. So, move it to the top, save and exit, and bam, it boots.
Now, I follow the standard tech support cheat sheet, and figure out how to do exactly what it was he wanted to do. It ended up being pretty simple, it hadn't occurred to him to double click on something. Whatever.
Powered down, gave him his USB drive back, and went into BIOS to set stuff back so I could boot off of my hard drive again. Except that now it insisted that my boot drive (the IDE Primary Master, remember PATA drives?) didn't exist.
I've mentioned before, maybe on Twitter, I forget, but anyway... My case fans died recently. The CPU fan is still good, but both of my fancy red LED case fans, that were in themselves replacements for older fans that had died, died. Rather than going onto Newegg and ordering more case fans only to have the same thing happen later on in life, I removed the side panel on my computer and pointed a small box fan at it. This is only relevant because recently I'd decided it wasn't needed and turned it off. Computer worked just fine without it, content with just the side panel removed.
I don't know if heat played into it, but the drive appeared again after I had the fan turned on for a while.
So now boot up and go, right? Well, wrong. It says "NTLDR is missing". Fuck. I mean, I've gotten this before, and a black magic three-finger salute has seemed to make it go away. Except this time it's persistent. Diagnostic mode, engage.
I get out an Ubuntu livedisc. Note to self: burn a more recent Ubuntu livedisc, as 6.06 is quite old. At any rate, it failed to start X or something, which I've never seen before. Even my shitty laptop with dead battery, hard drive, and LAN card can boot it. So then I whip out my Arch Linux install disc. Get into its install environment, mkdir /mnt/sda1, mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 -o ro (mounting it read-only because I still don't trust Linux NTFS tools), and ls the fucker. NTLDR is there. So obviously it's something else that's preventing it from finding that.
I boot back into the BIOS and inspect the Hard Drive Boot Priority list once again, and notice that the drive where Windows is installed isn't the first one in the list. Shove it on up there, save and exit, and bam, now I'm here writing this post.
First, I tried to be sneaky/clever and boot it in VirtualBox without having to reboot my computer. But that failed horribly. So, I rebooted.
After not finding an option in my BIOS specifically for booting off of a USB drive, I poked around some and eventually noticed that it showed up as a hard drive in the Hard Drive Boot Priority list. So, move it to the top, save and exit, and bam, it boots.
Now, I follow the standard tech support cheat sheet, and figure out how to do exactly what it was he wanted to do. It ended up being pretty simple, it hadn't occurred to him to double click on something. Whatever.
Powered down, gave him his USB drive back, and went into BIOS to set stuff back so I could boot off of my hard drive again. Except that now it insisted that my boot drive (the IDE Primary Master, remember PATA drives?) didn't exist.
I've mentioned before, maybe on Twitter, I forget, but anyway... My case fans died recently. The CPU fan is still good, but both of my fancy red LED case fans, that were in themselves replacements for older fans that had died, died. Rather than going onto Newegg and ordering more case fans only to have the same thing happen later on in life, I removed the side panel on my computer and pointed a small box fan at it. This is only relevant because recently I'd decided it wasn't needed and turned it off. Computer worked just fine without it, content with just the side panel removed.
I don't know if heat played into it, but the drive appeared again after I had the fan turned on for a while.
So now boot up and go, right? Well, wrong. It says "NTLDR is missing". Fuck. I mean, I've gotten this before, and a black magic three-finger salute has seemed to make it go away. Except this time it's persistent. Diagnostic mode, engage.
I get out an Ubuntu livedisc. Note to self: burn a more recent Ubuntu livedisc, as 6.06 is quite old. At any rate, it failed to start X or something, which I've never seen before. Even my shitty laptop with dead battery, hard drive, and LAN card can boot it. So then I whip out my Arch Linux install disc. Get into its install environment, mkdir /mnt/sda1, mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 -o ro (mounting it read-only because I still don't trust Linux NTFS tools), and ls the fucker. NTLDR is there. So obviously it's something else that's preventing it from finding that.
I boot back into the BIOS and inspect the Hard Drive Boot Priority list once again, and notice that the drive where Windows is installed isn't the first one in the list. Shove it on up there, save and exit, and bam, now I'm here writing this post.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
SOPA and PROTECT IP: Why I fear for the future of the Internet
Pretty much anyone who gets around on the internet has heard of these two bills by now. These bills, created for the purpose of preventing copyright infringement on the internet, basically set up the framework to allow our government to control what sites we can and can't visit, effectively turning America into China.
Never mind that there's already a system in place for dealing with infringement of copyrights on the internet. It's called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Under that act, any corporate entity who finds one of its copyrights being infringed on the internet simply has to send a takedown notice to the site with the infringement. That notice has to include the page holding the content and an assertion that the company does indeed own the copyright in question. If it's ignored or contested, legal action is the next step.
Unfortunately, rights holders, and specifically the American entertainment industry, don't see this as enough. You see, there's this thing called 'other nations', and they are sovereign, meaning they have different laws than us and aren't subject to our laws. Generally speaking, a website is subject to the laws of the nation in which that site is hosted, and not subject to the laws of any other nation.
Basically, what it boils down to is one simple thing. Right now, sites aren't responsible for user-posted content. This means that if a popular content-hosting site, let's say YouTube, has a user who uploads something that infringes on a copyright, they're not liable for that. All the copyright holder has to do is send them a notice (or use their Content ID thing), and they'll take down the infringing content.
Now, issues with claims verification aside, the system works as-is. But the American entertainment industry doesn't think that's enough. They want sites to be liable for user-posted content. This presents a very real threat to anyone who hosts a community with forums, no matter how small. In fact, I'd wager the smaller communities are at a greater risk because copyright holders know they have less resources to fight back. All it takes is one user posting an infringing link, and bam, your entire site is gone. I wouldn't put it past the entertainment industry to pose as regular users on sites, post infringing links, and get those sites taken down, either.
The chilling thing is, as I hinted at, that all it takes for any of this to happen is a mere accusation. You don't get your due process, your opportunity to defend, or anything. To the government, the entertainment industry is infallible. You see, entertainment industry, there's this thing called the Constitution of the United States of America. One of its amendments states that all American citizens have the right to a trial by a jury of their peers. Setting up a system like this that bypasses that is, well, unconstitutional.
Sadly, these unconstitutional bills will probably pass. Why is that? The entertainment industry has money, and that's what drives our government. Whoever has the most money gets their way. It's sad, but true. Also, another reason they will probably pass is because of the general public's ignorance towards all things technology and internet-related. A third reason is the fact that neither of these bills have been front headline material or even made the evening news, so the general public for the most part doesn't know about them.
I'm worried for a number of reasons that can be derived from the past wall of text. One, because I am the administrator of a community where any one of the links already posted could theoretically be considered infringing, since we revolve around comics and animation and frequently indulge in fan-translated manga and anime. Two, because unlike anyone in our government, I actually understand the internet and every word I hear about these bills tells me nothing more than that they are bad for the internet.
The entertainment industry has struggled to come to terms with what the internet lets people do, and has made all kinds of bad decisions while failing miserably at adapting to modern society. I believe they would try to pin anyone who dissents on the subject of preventing piracy to be a pirate themselves. Unfortunately for them, it's not their intended result that we dissent against, it's the method they're using to obtain that intended result.
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" --Thomas Jefferson
Edits/addenda:
Apparently I forgot to mention that one of the scariest parts of this is that the people in Congress who ultimately make the decision have readily and openly stated on the record that they know nothing about computers or the internet. They don't understand the implications of this bill, and they're only hearing one side of the issue: the lobbyists' side. They're not hearing the public outcry against it.
Also, here's a rather comprehensive video by TotalBiscuit on the subject. He says some things in better ways than I do, and since he's actually speaking rather than typing, he can convey the proper level of emotion to go with his words.
The video that led me to TotalBiscuit's is this episode of Far Lands or Bust. Kurt discusses the issue for most of the episode and makes a few points that TotalBiscuit doesn't. They both slip up and name Activision as a supporter when in fact it's EA, though. Just FYI.
I personally will boycott any company that supports either of these bills.
Never mind that there's already a system in place for dealing with infringement of copyrights on the internet. It's called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Under that act, any corporate entity who finds one of its copyrights being infringed on the internet simply has to send a takedown notice to the site with the infringement. That notice has to include the page holding the content and an assertion that the company does indeed own the copyright in question. If it's ignored or contested, legal action is the next step.
Unfortunately, rights holders, and specifically the American entertainment industry, don't see this as enough. You see, there's this thing called 'other nations', and they are sovereign, meaning they have different laws than us and aren't subject to our laws. Generally speaking, a website is subject to the laws of the nation in which that site is hosted, and not subject to the laws of any other nation.
Basically, what it boils down to is one simple thing. Right now, sites aren't responsible for user-posted content. This means that if a popular content-hosting site, let's say YouTube, has a user who uploads something that infringes on a copyright, they're not liable for that. All the copyright holder has to do is send them a notice (or use their Content ID thing), and they'll take down the infringing content.
Now, issues with claims verification aside, the system works as-is. But the American entertainment industry doesn't think that's enough. They want sites to be liable for user-posted content. This presents a very real threat to anyone who hosts a community with forums, no matter how small. In fact, I'd wager the smaller communities are at a greater risk because copyright holders know they have less resources to fight back. All it takes is one user posting an infringing link, and bam, your entire site is gone. I wouldn't put it past the entertainment industry to pose as regular users on sites, post infringing links, and get those sites taken down, either.
The chilling thing is, as I hinted at, that all it takes for any of this to happen is a mere accusation. You don't get your due process, your opportunity to defend, or anything. To the government, the entertainment industry is infallible. You see, entertainment industry, there's this thing called the Constitution of the United States of America. One of its amendments states that all American citizens have the right to a trial by a jury of their peers. Setting up a system like this that bypasses that is, well, unconstitutional.
Sadly, these unconstitutional bills will probably pass. Why is that? The entertainment industry has money, and that's what drives our government. Whoever has the most money gets their way. It's sad, but true. Also, another reason they will probably pass is because of the general public's ignorance towards all things technology and internet-related. A third reason is the fact that neither of these bills have been front headline material or even made the evening news, so the general public for the most part doesn't know about them.
I'm worried for a number of reasons that can be derived from the past wall of text. One, because I am the administrator of a community where any one of the links already posted could theoretically be considered infringing, since we revolve around comics and animation and frequently indulge in fan-translated manga and anime. Two, because unlike anyone in our government, I actually understand the internet and every word I hear about these bills tells me nothing more than that they are bad for the internet.
The entertainment industry has struggled to come to terms with what the internet lets people do, and has made all kinds of bad decisions while failing miserably at adapting to modern society. I believe they would try to pin anyone who dissents on the subject of preventing piracy to be a pirate themselves. Unfortunately for them, it's not their intended result that we dissent against, it's the method they're using to obtain that intended result.
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" --Thomas Jefferson
Edits/addenda:
Apparently I forgot to mention that one of the scariest parts of this is that the people in Congress who ultimately make the decision have readily and openly stated on the record that they know nothing about computers or the internet. They don't understand the implications of this bill, and they're only hearing one side of the issue: the lobbyists' side. They're not hearing the public outcry against it.
Also, here's a rather comprehensive video by TotalBiscuit on the subject. He says some things in better ways than I do, and since he's actually speaking rather than typing, he can convey the proper level of emotion to go with his words.
The video that led me to TotalBiscuit's is this episode of Far Lands or Bust. Kurt discusses the issue for most of the episode and makes a few points that TotalBiscuit doesn't. They both slip up and name Activision as a supporter when in fact it's EA, though. Just FYI.
I personally will boycott any company that supports either of these bills.
Monday, December 13, 2010
IT FUCKING HAPPENED AGAIN
RELATED FUCKING POSTS: http://xt-8147.blogspot.com/2009/06/sleep-at-last.html
http://xt-8147.blogspot.com/2009/06/fffffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu.html
This time it was the valve under the kitchen sink. You know, in my post about the last one I mentioned that the plumber said these fucking valves were ticking time bombs, right? That's exactly what I told my dad. His response: He got two valves replaced. The one that had to be emergency-replaced, and the one on my toilet. The plumber recommended replacement for the entire house.
We can go on like this if you want, dad. It'll be the most expensive game of "I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO" ever.
Water's off, parents asleep, and the best part is both my parents need to shower when they get up. Sucks to be them.
I've got two hours until my mom gets up, until then I get to dry the kitchen floor.
Further edits as events unfold.
Edit 1: well, dad made a temporary fix involving duct tape. When they leave for work I'm going to turn the water off again just so I don't have to fucking worry and can get some goddamn sleep.
Edit 2: for whatever reason the plumber can't get here until Thursday. So this duct tape fix has to last until whenever in the afternoon they feel like showing up. At least this time my dad's going to spring for the full-house replacement.
Edit 3: and yes I already dropped the "aren't you glad I haven't moved out yet?" bomb. If I hadn't been here, water would have been spewing into the kitchen (and leaking through into the basement... our house was constructed awesomely like that) for around 2.5 hours before anyone would have noticed. So basically I saved us a ton of money by still living here and being awake at 2 AM. Now to get my dad to realize that.
Edit 4: and then to find a job that pays well enough that I can move out so I never have to deal with my dad ever again.
Edit 5: the plumber showed up today and replaced the broken valve. Apparently the other ones are a different size or something and couldn't be replaced today.
Edit 6 (December 27th): apparently the estimate the plumber gave for replacing all the other valves was unreasonable, and my dad, being an engineer and noticing it would be far cheaper to do it himself, is going to do it himself. All an engineer needs to do anything is proper tools, the materials, and a general understanding of how it's done. Pretty much why most engineers stay single longer, since love is not a system that one can learn and operate within.
http://xt-8147.blogspot.com/2009/06/fffffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu.html
This time it was the valve under the kitchen sink. You know, in my post about the last one I mentioned that the plumber said these fucking valves were ticking time bombs, right? That's exactly what I told my dad. His response: He got two valves replaced. The one that had to be emergency-replaced, and the one on my toilet. The plumber recommended replacement for the entire house.
We can go on like this if you want, dad. It'll be the most expensive game of "I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO" ever.
Water's off, parents asleep, and the best part is both my parents need to shower when they get up. Sucks to be them.
I've got two hours until my mom gets up, until then I get to dry the kitchen floor.
Further edits as events unfold.
Edit 1: well, dad made a temporary fix involving duct tape. When they leave for work I'm going to turn the water off again just so I don't have to fucking worry and can get some goddamn sleep.
Edit 2: for whatever reason the plumber can't get here until Thursday. So this duct tape fix has to last until whenever in the afternoon they feel like showing up. At least this time my dad's going to spring for the full-house replacement.
Edit 3: and yes I already dropped the "aren't you glad I haven't moved out yet?" bomb. If I hadn't been here, water would have been spewing into the kitchen (and leaking through into the basement... our house was constructed awesomely like that) for around 2.5 hours before anyone would have noticed. So basically I saved us a ton of money by still living here and being awake at 2 AM. Now to get my dad to realize that.
Edit 4: and then to find a job that pays well enough that I can move out so I never have to deal with my dad ever again.
Edit 5: the plumber showed up today and replaced the broken valve. Apparently the other ones are a different size or something and couldn't be replaced today.
Edit 6 (December 27th): apparently the estimate the plumber gave for replacing all the other valves was unreasonable, and my dad, being an engineer and noticing it would be far cheaper to do it himself, is going to do it himself. All an engineer needs to do anything is proper tools, the materials, and a general understanding of how it's done. Pretty much why most engineers stay single longer, since love is not a system that one can learn and operate within.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Fuck Football
It's another fall semester, and since football games are for some reason scheduled on the same day as CAINE's showings, it means that it's (entirely randomly!) extremely difficult for me to get to them.
Whether or not I can get to them depends solely on the kickoff time. Ideally UVa should schedule these games as early as possible (10 AM kickoffs at the latest, no TV games) so as to not conflict with the vastly more important anime club showings. And no, that's not sarcasm.
Sports, as much as you may or may not like them, are entirely superfluous. Some would argue that watching television shows is also superfluous, but at least there you have variety and don't always have to watch grown men of questionable sexual orientation wearing tights and trying to wrestle each other to the ground. I mean, if you want that, there's plenty of sports-related anime to choose from, with generally better action to boot.
Both football and our showings exist solely for entertainment of their respective attendees. The only difference is, one is vastly overrated: Football.
I especially hate how the City of Charlottesville acts about it. Football is the only thing that happens. Nobody does anything on gameday other than watch football. There's no other plausible reason anyone would ever need to be in the vicinity of the stadium. If you're there on gameday, obviously you're there for the game, regardless of the truth or anything you say. You are presumed guilty and not given the opportunity to prove yourself innocent.
Look, Charlottesville. I don't care about football. Your traffic direction is getting better, but still lacks respect to local traffic. People have non-football places they need to go, and may not have time to cope with the random street and left turn blockages.
I just want to attend showings every week and watch anime with my friends. What I don't want to have to do is miss hanging out with my friends and then be forced to catch up in everything we're watching.
Whether or not I can get to them depends solely on the kickoff time. Ideally UVa should schedule these games as early as possible (10 AM kickoffs at the latest, no TV games) so as to not conflict with the vastly more important anime club showings. And no, that's not sarcasm.
Sports, as much as you may or may not like them, are entirely superfluous. Some would argue that watching television shows is also superfluous, but at least there you have variety and don't always have to watch grown men of questionable sexual orientation wearing tights and trying to wrestle each other to the ground. I mean, if you want that, there's plenty of sports-related anime to choose from, with generally better action to boot.
Both football and our showings exist solely for entertainment of their respective attendees. The only difference is, one is vastly overrated: Football.
I especially hate how the City of Charlottesville acts about it. Football is the only thing that happens. Nobody does anything on gameday other than watch football. There's no other plausible reason anyone would ever need to be in the vicinity of the stadium. If you're there on gameday, obviously you're there for the game, regardless of the truth or anything you say. You are presumed guilty and not given the opportunity to prove yourself innocent.
Look, Charlottesville. I don't care about football. Your traffic direction is getting better, but still lacks respect to local traffic. People have non-football places they need to go, and may not have time to cope with the random street and left turn blockages.
I just want to attend showings every week and watch anime with my friends. What I don't want to have to do is miss hanging out with my friends and then be forced to catch up in everything we're watching.
Friday, May 28, 2010
My TracFone Experience Has Been Pretty Shitty
Shortly after the new year, I bought a TracFone. Right after activation I noticed that I had no signal most of the time in my house, but if I drive pretty much a block in any direction I have a full signal. Note that going a block in any direction from my house involves going uphill. Now, TracFone isn't really to blame here since they don't have their own network. They use the networks of larger cell phone companies, mainly AT&T and T-Mobile. Googling my phone's SIM card number (TF64SIMC4) tells me that it's an AT&T SIM card.
Adding minutes is pretty simple, right? Buy the minute card, scratch off the thing covering the PIN on the back, and enter the PIN in the phone's Prepaid menu. A minute or so later you get a message telling you that it succeeded, and then the phone's home screen shows the new service end date and number of minutes.
Well, you need to have signal for it to work. And you need the card to actually scan at the checkout of whatever store you're buying it from. The checkouts at both Giants here won't actually successfully scan the cards. Despite how they have hundreds of them in stock. I haven't seen them in the other stores around here. So, thankfully, you can buy online.
Online you can buy multiple cards at once, so I was going to get the double minutes for life card and a 60 minute+90 day card in one transaction, but I sat there and thought about it. Could I trust them to add the cards in the proper order, such that the 60 minutes get doubled to 120? I didn't want to risk it. I bought the double minutes card and drove to where I could get a signal to receive it. Then I came home, bought the 60 minute card, and again drove to where I could get a signal to receive it. I needed the service days much more than the minutes, but either way, I'm set. It would be nice if they had a card that added a ton of service days and only a few minutes.
Lately the phone (a Motorola W260g) has been randomly WSODing on me. Closing the phone and opening it back up will make the phone useful again, but I don't know when the WSOD will be permanent.
Now let's talk about how TracFone deducts minutes. For a text message, it deducts 0.30 minutes. So if you're at 45.00 minutes and send or receive a text message, you're now at 44.70. Another, you're at 44.40. One more, 44.10. Again, 43.80. And so on. You use 3 of your minutes by sending or receiving 10 text messages. Thankfully, the system messages they send out, both to tell you of promo codes and to tell you that adding airtime was successful, don't deduct minutes.
For a call, it deducts a minute immediately. A full minute gone, just by placing or receiving a call. Even if the call is only 30 seconds, a minute is gone. If the call is a minute and one second, congratulations, you just used two minutes. Basically, they round up. I don't agree with this, it appears extremely unethical.
Let's look at the phone itself. The phone charges via a USB Mini-B port on its side. Motorola says you can charge this phone with your computer, which is very attractive. Have a USB cable, charge your phone. I have a friend who has a phone that charges via USB and when I take my PS2 over to his place he charges his phone using one of the USB ports on my PS2. It's just convenient.
Of course, you can't do that on the TracFone version of this phone. Plugging it into a computer just makes it say that it can't charge. I have to use the charging cord that came with the phone, which adapts a wall outlet to USB, to charge the phone. Assholes.
The phone is very slow and lags from time to time while I'm navigating its menus. While playing one of the three shitty games on it, I think I get maybe a bit over two frames per second, no higher than three. I honestly didn't expect blazingly fast performance, but when the phone lags just from navigating its menus, something's wrong.
I'm not going to complain that the phone doesn't have a camera, MP3 player, ability to use real ringtones and wallpapers, better games, etc. because I only need it to be a phone. If I want a camera, I'll go buy a fucking camera. It'll take much better quality pictures than a shitty camera stuck in a cell phone. The same for the rest of that stuff. I would like to have a real wallpaper, but so much of it would be obscured by all the shit that needs to be displayed on the home screen that it's not really worth it to bitch about it.
Overall, if you need a cheap phone for something nonessential, or you want to get a phone with no personal information linked to it, go prepaid. Otherwise, there's no excuse for not having a better phone from a better company on a better network. It would be nice if there was a prepaid company that actually gave major carriers a run for their money. But instead you get utter crap all around.
Adding minutes is pretty simple, right? Buy the minute card, scratch off the thing covering the PIN on the back, and enter the PIN in the phone's Prepaid menu. A minute or so later you get a message telling you that it succeeded, and then the phone's home screen shows the new service end date and number of minutes.
Well, you need to have signal for it to work. And you need the card to actually scan at the checkout of whatever store you're buying it from. The checkouts at both Giants here won't actually successfully scan the cards. Despite how they have hundreds of them in stock. I haven't seen them in the other stores around here. So, thankfully, you can buy online.
Online you can buy multiple cards at once, so I was going to get the double minutes for life card and a 60 minute+90 day card in one transaction, but I sat there and thought about it. Could I trust them to add the cards in the proper order, such that the 60 minutes get doubled to 120? I didn't want to risk it. I bought the double minutes card and drove to where I could get a signal to receive it. Then I came home, bought the 60 minute card, and again drove to where I could get a signal to receive it. I needed the service days much more than the minutes, but either way, I'm set. It would be nice if they had a card that added a ton of service days and only a few minutes.
Lately the phone (a Motorola W260g) has been randomly WSODing on me. Closing the phone and opening it back up will make the phone useful again, but I don't know when the WSOD will be permanent.
Now let's talk about how TracFone deducts minutes. For a text message, it deducts 0.30 minutes. So if you're at 45.00 minutes and send or receive a text message, you're now at 44.70. Another, you're at 44.40. One more, 44.10. Again, 43.80. And so on. You use 3 of your minutes by sending or receiving 10 text messages. Thankfully, the system messages they send out, both to tell you of promo codes and to tell you that adding airtime was successful, don't deduct minutes.
For a call, it deducts a minute immediately. A full minute gone, just by placing or receiving a call. Even if the call is only 30 seconds, a minute is gone. If the call is a minute and one second, congratulations, you just used two minutes. Basically, they round up. I don't agree with this, it appears extremely unethical.
Let's look at the phone itself. The phone charges via a USB Mini-B port on its side. Motorola says you can charge this phone with your computer, which is very attractive. Have a USB cable, charge your phone. I have a friend who has a phone that charges via USB and when I take my PS2 over to his place he charges his phone using one of the USB ports on my PS2. It's just convenient.
Of course, you can't do that on the TracFone version of this phone. Plugging it into a computer just makes it say that it can't charge. I have to use the charging cord that came with the phone, which adapts a wall outlet to USB, to charge the phone. Assholes.
The phone is very slow and lags from time to time while I'm navigating its menus. While playing one of the three shitty games on it, I think I get maybe a bit over two frames per second, no higher than three. I honestly didn't expect blazingly fast performance, but when the phone lags just from navigating its menus, something's wrong.
I'm not going to complain that the phone doesn't have a camera, MP3 player, ability to use real ringtones and wallpapers, better games, etc. because I only need it to be a phone. If I want a camera, I'll go buy a fucking camera. It'll take much better quality pictures than a shitty camera stuck in a cell phone. The same for the rest of that stuff. I would like to have a real wallpaper, but so much of it would be obscured by all the shit that needs to be displayed on the home screen that it's not really worth it to bitch about it.
Overall, if you need a cheap phone for something nonessential, or you want to get a phone with no personal information linked to it, go prepaid. Otherwise, there's no excuse for not having a better phone from a better company on a better network. It would be nice if there was a prepaid company that actually gave major carriers a run for their money. But instead you get utter crap all around.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Chinese Spammers GTFO my blog
Seriously. I delete your comments. You're also the reason why any comment on a post that's more than a day old gets moderated.
I want to eventually have people comment on a somewhat regular basis. This is really hard because I don't have a set theme or topic, but it'd be nice. Spam comments are absolutely meaningless to me. They don't make me feel better about what I posted, they don't provide additional insight, etc. They're just wasting space on the internet.
Blogger could make some changes to their commenting controls. Currently the options are:
I get spam followers on Twitter as well. I'll go on Twitter and notice that my number of followers has gone up from three, then look at the page of my new follower and surprise, every single post is a headline and a shortened URL. The shortened URLs are usually through a URL shortener that displays an interstitial ad before redirecting you to where you actually want to go, so I don't even dignify them with clicks to see what they're posting about (even though I won't see the ad anyway, /hug AdBlockPlus).
Every spam follower I've gotten has been blocked and reported for spam.
Once again, I'd love for real, live people to follow me on Twitter. Three real live people do in fact already follow me on Twitter. I know they're real because:
I want to eventually have people comment on a somewhat regular basis. This is really hard because I don't have a set theme or topic, but it'd be nice. Spam comments are absolutely meaningless to me. They don't make me feel better about what I posted, they don't provide additional insight, etc. They're just wasting space on the internet.
Blogger could make some changes to their commenting controls. Currently the options are:
- Anyone - includes Anonymous users
- Registered Users - includes OpenID
- Users with Google accounts
- Only members of this blog
I get spam followers on Twitter as well. I'll go on Twitter and notice that my number of followers has gone up from three, then look at the page of my new follower and surprise, every single post is a headline and a shortened URL. The shortened URLs are usually through a URL shortener that displays an interstitial ad before redirecting you to where you actually want to go, so I don't even dignify them with clicks to see what they're posting about (even though I won't see the ad anyway, /hug AdBlockPlus).
Every spam follower I've gotten has been blocked and reported for spam.
Once again, I'd love for real, live people to follow me on Twitter. Three real live people do in fact already follow me on Twitter. I know they're real because:
- Their posts don't all conform to the same format.
- They post stuff about what's happening, which is what Twitter's actually for.
- I know all three of them in real life (and I'm following them).
Monday, April 12, 2010
Washington, D.C. Fails
As promised, here is a rant on the road signage and traffic patterns in our nation's capitol. If you want the gist of it now so you can skim the rest, well, they suck.
Since the source material for this rant was obtained by driving around Washington, D.C. on CAINE's Cherry Blossom Festival trip, chances are there are going to be some references to events that took place during said trip.
First up, road signage. You know how highways have all those helpful signs telling you the places you can go if you get off at each exit? You know how in regular cities they will also point you towards other nearby major roads you may be interested in getting on (or at least are interested in using as a landmark)? Yeah. Getting onto Route 7 from Interstate 66, there is absolutely zero signage telling you to get on Route 7 West if you're interested in Route 123. Which we so happened to be using as a landmark since our destination was in a shopping center just after it, which was ironically very close to the MAGFest 5 hotel. We drove quite a ways on Route 7 East before getting hold of people and figuring out we'd turned the wrong fucking way.
Furthermore, getting back onto Interstate 66 from Route 7, the sign that tells you "hey this exit takes you to I-66" is literally in the inside of the curve of the exit ramp, helpfully obscured partially by a nearby tree. Furthermore, there is absolutely no sign whatsoever stating that the very same exit branches out to let you choose your destiny (East or West). Hell, there wasn't even a sign saying "Junction I-66".
So we went a few blocks past and used a parking lot on a side road to turn around. It was then we noticed that another one of our cars had been following us and had also missed the I-66 exit. Going back, the exits (that's right, there were actually two of them on this side of the road) were clearly labelled in advance of the exit and we easily made it onto I-66 West so we could go home. What the fucking shit.
While we were driving the wrong way on Route 7 due to lack of useful signage, naturally, we had to experience some traffic patterns. They range from confusing to absolutely fuckstupid. At one point I changed lanes one lane to the right only to discover that the lane I had just changed into was ending at the next traffic light and I'd have to move back into the lane I was in to begin with. Going further in the wrong direction, there's an interchange with Route 50 and one other road whose number and designation I forget where it's basically just a huge intersection with roads branching off everywhere and it's up to you to look far off into the distance for that Route 7 sign if you want to stay on it.
After turning around so we were headed in the correct direction, we went over the interchange with Route 244, and all I can really say is "WTF road maintenance wut". Seriously. The road is bumpy as all hell there. For no real reason as far as I can tell.
Washington, D.C. is full of richfags. People that have money out the ass, as is evidenced by the number of people I noticed on I-66 who were passing the subway train and getting abysmal gas mileage while doing so, meaning they have to fill up their gas tanks more often and thus have money to burn. If there are so many rich people in D.C., why can't they put up any god damned signs that fucking help motorists who don't fucking live in the area and therefore don't fucking know exactly where everything is? Oh wait, I forgot, the only way to get rich is to sit on your money and not use it for anything. If you actually spend you don't get rich. Fucking money hogs. You're the reason the economy sucks right now.
Since the source material for this rant was obtained by driving around Washington, D.C. on CAINE's Cherry Blossom Festival trip, chances are there are going to be some references to events that took place during said trip.
First up, road signage. You know how highways have all those helpful signs telling you the places you can go if you get off at each exit? You know how in regular cities they will also point you towards other nearby major roads you may be interested in getting on (or at least are interested in using as a landmark)? Yeah. Getting onto Route 7 from Interstate 66, there is absolutely zero signage telling you to get on Route 7 West if you're interested in Route 123. Which we so happened to be using as a landmark since our destination was in a shopping center just after it, which was ironically very close to the MAGFest 5 hotel. We drove quite a ways on Route 7 East before getting hold of people and figuring out we'd turned the wrong fucking way.
Furthermore, getting back onto Interstate 66 from Route 7, the sign that tells you "hey this exit takes you to I-66" is literally in the inside of the curve of the exit ramp, helpfully obscured partially by a nearby tree. Furthermore, there is absolutely no sign whatsoever stating that the very same exit branches out to let you choose your destiny (East or West). Hell, there wasn't even a sign saying "Junction I-66".
So we went a few blocks past and used a parking lot on a side road to turn around. It was then we noticed that another one of our cars had been following us and had also missed the I-66 exit. Going back, the exits (that's right, there were actually two of them on this side of the road) were clearly labelled in advance of the exit and we easily made it onto I-66 West so we could go home. What the fucking shit.
While we were driving the wrong way on Route 7 due to lack of useful signage, naturally, we had to experience some traffic patterns. They range from confusing to absolutely fuckstupid. At one point I changed lanes one lane to the right only to discover that the lane I had just changed into was ending at the next traffic light and I'd have to move back into the lane I was in to begin with. Going further in the wrong direction, there's an interchange with Route 50 and one other road whose number and designation I forget where it's basically just a huge intersection with roads branching off everywhere and it's up to you to look far off into the distance for that Route 7 sign if you want to stay on it.
After turning around so we were headed in the correct direction, we went over the interchange with Route 244, and all I can really say is "WTF road maintenance wut". Seriously. The road is bumpy as all hell there. For no real reason as far as I can tell.
Washington, D.C. is full of richfags. People that have money out the ass, as is evidenced by the number of people I noticed on I-66 who were passing the subway train and getting abysmal gas mileage while doing so, meaning they have to fill up their gas tanks more often and thus have money to burn. If there are so many rich people in D.C., why can't they put up any god damned signs that fucking help motorists who don't fucking live in the area and therefore don't fucking know exactly where everything is? Oh wait, I forgot, the only way to get rich is to sit on your money and not use it for anything. If you actually spend you don't get rich. Fucking money hogs. You're the reason the economy sucks right now.
Monday, March 22, 2010
GH Controller Autopsy
I decided to see what exactly the issue was, so I opened it up. See if you can see what's wrong from this photo.
If you don't see it, here it is again, this time cropped to show what's actually relevant.
See that one pad that's separated from the rubber piece? That's it. That pad was beneath the blue button. When I removed the rubber piece and touched that pad, it fell out. To make things worse, the ones that correspond to red and yellow are about to do the same. I don't think this is easily fixable. My initial instinct was to try and tape it back on, but due to the design of the rubber piece it would be very difficult and would still lead to errantly registering button presses.
Long story short: I need a new controller. Only problem: No money. Other circumstance: At this point if I do get another controller it won't be until after I obtain an Xbox 360, and I will obtain said controller with the 360 full band version of one or another GH game. I need a console from this generation, and even though PSN is free, Xbox Live does it better. I'll have to get used to a different star power button location and feel, but... I'm reasonably used to the open notes and extended sustains, so I can adapt.
So, yeah. Guitar Hero withdrawal is a bitch. I want to play so many songs...
If you don't see it, here it is again, this time cropped to show what's actually relevant.
See that one pad that's separated from the rubber piece? That's it. That pad was beneath the blue button. When I removed the rubber piece and touched that pad, it fell out. To make things worse, the ones that correspond to red and yellow are about to do the same. I don't think this is easily fixable. My initial instinct was to try and tape it back on, but due to the design of the rubber piece it would be very difficult and would still lead to errantly registering button presses.
Long story short: I need a new controller. Only problem: No money. Other circumstance: At this point if I do get another controller it won't be until after I obtain an Xbox 360, and I will obtain said controller with the 360 full band version of one or another GH game. I need a console from this generation, and even though PSN is free, Xbox Live does it better. I'll have to get used to a different star power button location and feel, but... I'm reasonably used to the open notes and extended sustains, so I can adapt.
So, yeah. Guitar Hero withdrawal is a bitch. I want to play so many songs...
Thursday, March 11, 2010
I need a new guitar controller.
It's official, my blue button has finally sunk far enough into the controller to register on its own. I had an extraordinarily good run on Enter Sandman where I almost FCed the solo, and then went to play Frantic and started dropping in the intro, which I never drop in. Restarted, then noticed that blue was held down even though I wasn't pressing it.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
I got through Frantic by tilting the guitar forwards in sections that had blue in them (yay gravity), but I shouldn't have to do that.
It's been a few years since I got this controller, so some wear and tear is naturally to be expected. Unfortunately, I don't know if I can fix this problem like I did the detachable neck and the whammy bar.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Virginia's new anti-smoking law
Finally, we can all breathe fresh air in restaurants. Smoking has been banned in restaurants across the state for a while now. I thought all was good, but the law has one exception: Smoking can still happen in a separate, ventilated room.
Seems innocuous, right? What do you think of when you think of a restaurant with a separate, ventilated room for smokers?
I think of a smaller space set aside for those less intelligent.
However, some restaurants are abusing this exception. One in particular is the Lazy Parrot Grill in Pantops Shopping Center. Their restaurant has three entrances, a bar, and some of the best wings in the city. Unfortunately, two thirds of their restaurant space is reserved for smokers. Those of us with a brain between our ears are exiled to the remaining cramped third of the restaurant.
It gets even worse. Their serving staff, whether they smoke or not (I don't know, I didn't ask) have to go through the smoking area to serve the higher lifeforms in the non-smoking area. This presents them with an unnecessary health risk.
This law needs to be amended immediately. It needs to require restaurants to devote no more than 50% of their serving space to smokers (this must be carefully worded to not have loopholes). It further needs to require an exit from the kitchen into both the smoking area and the non-smoking area. Last but not least, it needs to require separate serving staff for the smoking area and the non-smoking area; with no pay, treatment, or employment consideration penalty based on the server's preference.
Banning smoking isn't about taking away freedoms. It's about public health. People in America are notorious for not wanting the government to make their decisions for them. However, in most cases (this one included), those very same people don't have the requisite mental capacity to be making the decision for themselves.
On the other side (both the other side of Charlottesville, and the other side of the exception), Buffalo Wild Wings in Barracks Road Shopping Center is a fine establishment and thus gives non-smokers plenty of room.
Looks like I'll be going to Buffalo Wild Wings more often, because I want to support what's right.
Seems innocuous, right? What do you think of when you think of a restaurant with a separate, ventilated room for smokers?
I think of a smaller space set aside for those less intelligent.
However, some restaurants are abusing this exception. One in particular is the Lazy Parrot Grill in Pantops Shopping Center. Their restaurant has three entrances, a bar, and some of the best wings in the city. Unfortunately, two thirds of their restaurant space is reserved for smokers. Those of us with a brain between our ears are exiled to the remaining cramped third of the restaurant.
It gets even worse. Their serving staff, whether they smoke or not (I don't know, I didn't ask) have to go through the smoking area to serve the higher lifeforms in the non-smoking area. This presents them with an unnecessary health risk.
This law needs to be amended immediately. It needs to require restaurants to devote no more than 50% of their serving space to smokers (this must be carefully worded to not have loopholes). It further needs to require an exit from the kitchen into both the smoking area and the non-smoking area. Last but not least, it needs to require separate serving staff for the smoking area and the non-smoking area; with no pay, treatment, or employment consideration penalty based on the server's preference.
Banning smoking isn't about taking away freedoms. It's about public health. People in America are notorious for not wanting the government to make their decisions for them. However, in most cases (this one included), those very same people don't have the requisite mental capacity to be making the decision for themselves.
On the other side (both the other side of Charlottesville, and the other side of the exception), Buffalo Wild Wings in Barracks Road Shopping Center is a fine establishment and thus gives non-smokers plenty of room.
Looks like I'll be going to Buffalo Wild Wings more often, because I want to support what's right.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Azureus is now annoyware
Nearly every time I download something it pops up a box asking for a donation. There's no way to turn this shit off in the options. They're trying to guilt trip donations out of people. How many times do I have to say "no I'm not fucking donating" before it stops fucking bugging me? There's no option to say "Never ask again", only "ask later".
What was the last version of Azureus to lack this nag dialog and where can I download it?
You seriously think annoying the fuck out of your users is going to get you more donations? That's not how donations work. People have to want to donate. Otherwise it's just extortion.
If another bittorrent client would add a decent rss feed scanner I would switch away in an instant. Seriously, that's the only thing keeping me on this pile of shit. I need regex matching and the ability to tell each filter what feed it should be looking at. I don't want bullshit "oh we try to figure out what season and episode it is" predetermined shitty matching options, I just want straight regular expressions. None of the stuff I download has a season/episode number in any of the expected formats anyway, it's usually just "[group name] series title - episode number (codecs involved)" or something similar.
I'm going to give Deluge a try. It has a few RSS plugins with regex support. One is really wonky with its formatting strings though. Seriously just give me a straight up regex matching the feed entry title. None of this "oh I want episode [0-9]{1,2}." I want to be able to take my existing regexes and paste them into the new thing and have it work. For instance, my Basquash filter is Basquash\! [0-9]{1,2} \[umai\]. Why does it need to be more complex than that? As long as it's case insensitive or can be globally configured to be case insensitive it's all good.
The only decent looking RSS-with-regex plugin for Deluge is for its webui. That might actually work out better, if I just ran off of a web ui and could access all my running torrents from my web browser. Less taskbar clutter and all.
I can't switch immediately because I have three torrents going (with a fourth destined to come in just as soon as the next episode of Basquash is released), but once I can afford to close Azureus and free up the port it's using, it's go time. I'll probably post a review of Deluge once I get it going and set it up the way I want it and all.
What was the last version of Azureus to lack this nag dialog and where can I download it?
You seriously think annoying the fuck out of your users is going to get you more donations? That's not how donations work. People have to want to donate. Otherwise it's just extortion.
If another bittorrent client would add a decent rss feed scanner I would switch away in an instant. Seriously, that's the only thing keeping me on this pile of shit. I need regex matching and the ability to tell each filter what feed it should be looking at. I don't want bullshit "oh we try to figure out what season and episode it is" predetermined shitty matching options, I just want straight regular expressions. None of the stuff I download has a season/episode number in any of the expected formats anyway, it's usually just "[group name] series title - episode number (codecs involved)" or something similar.
I'm going to give Deluge a try. It has a few RSS plugins with regex support. One is really wonky with its formatting strings though. Seriously just give me a straight up regex matching the feed entry title. None of this "oh I want episode [0-9]{1,2}." I want to be able to take my existing regexes and paste them into the new thing and have it work. For instance, my Basquash filter is Basquash\! [0-9]{1,2} \[umai\]. Why does it need to be more complex than that? As long as it's case insensitive or can be globally configured to be case insensitive it's all good.
The only decent looking RSS-with-regex plugin for Deluge is for its webui. That might actually work out better, if I just ran off of a web ui and could access all my running torrents from my web browser. Less taskbar clutter and all.
I can't switch immediately because I have three torrents going (with a fourth destined to come in just as soon as the next episode of Basquash is released), but once I can afford to close Azureus and free up the port it's using, it's go time. I'll probably post a review of Deluge once I get it going and set it up the way I want it and all.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
sankaku's danbooru instance is slow
Click next page, go browse other sites for 5 minutes, come back, see that the page doesn't contain anything I'm interested in, repeat.
Someone get them a faster server or optimize the software or something, because fuck.
The only thing that prompted this is that I had seen a couple images of Yomi in their galleries that don't show up when you search for mizuhara_koyomi. I figured I'd be nice and go tag them, but it's taking for-fucking-ever.
On top of that apparently I'm not allowed to use more than four tags in a search. Maybe this is because I haven't registered or something, but being able to search for more than four tags would definitely make this go faster.
Holy shit there's a lot of K-On ero. I just got an entire page full of it. My tags I'm searching for are "megane brown_hair brown_eyes -mizuhara_koyomi". I'm excluding mizuhara_koyomi because the images I'm looking for don't show up in a search just for that tag, so having those in the result set (as megane brown_hair brown_eyes will do) just makes it take longer.
The two images I've seen that don't show up are from a Santa-san gallery a while back and their recent "oppai pressed against glass" gallery.
I just noticed an image that brings up a new point. Apparently there's a To Heart character (Tsuina) that looks fairly similar to Yomi. That may in fact be the character in the Santa-san image.
If you hadn't figured it out already, I'm making a new paragraph every time I start another page loading.
Just saw Tsuina again. Dammit. Going through all 60 pages of results for this search is going to take at least a couple hours.
I might as well link both images. Maybe in the process of doing this I'll find a faster way to find them because holy fuck this is taking forever. Aside from the useful tagging features, why would anyone want to use the Danbooru software if it's this fucking slow?
Fuck I think both of them are actually Tsuina. They both have the same hairstyle, which is the same as the hairstyle in the other pictures I'm finding that are tagged to_heart. It's slightly different from Yomi's, and I'd been disregarding that because it looked like her.
Maybe now I need to see To Heart? Wasn't it originally an eroge before they made the anime?
Fuck, they're both indeed Tsuina. A search for "to_heart tsuina" just showed me both images I was looking for.
RAGE
On the plus side, I did find this image before starting my search. Maybe it's time to go through all images tagged akiyama_mio again?
Someone get them a faster server or optimize the software or something, because fuck.
The only thing that prompted this is that I had seen a couple images of Yomi in their galleries that don't show up when you search for mizuhara_koyomi. I figured I'd be nice and go tag them, but it's taking for-fucking-ever.
On top of that apparently I'm not allowed to use more than four tags in a search. Maybe this is because I haven't registered or something, but being able to search for more than four tags would definitely make this go faster.
Holy shit there's a lot of K-On ero. I just got an entire page full of it. My tags I'm searching for are "megane brown_hair brown_eyes -mizuhara_koyomi". I'm excluding mizuhara_koyomi because the images I'm looking for don't show up in a search just for that tag, so having those in the result set (as megane brown_hair brown_eyes will do) just makes it take longer.
The two images I've seen that don't show up are from a Santa-san gallery a while back and their recent "oppai pressed against glass" gallery.
I just noticed an image that brings up a new point. Apparently there's a To Heart character (Tsuina) that looks fairly similar to Yomi. That may in fact be the character in the Santa-san image.
If you hadn't figured it out already, I'm making a new paragraph every time I start another page loading.
Just saw Tsuina again. Dammit. Going through all 60 pages of results for this search is going to take at least a couple hours.
I might as well link both images. Maybe in the process of doing this I'll find a faster way to find them because holy fuck this is taking forever. Aside from the useful tagging features, why would anyone want to use the Danbooru software if it's this fucking slow?
Fuck I think both of them are actually Tsuina. They both have the same hairstyle, which is the same as the hairstyle in the other pictures I'm finding that are tagged to_heart. It's slightly different from Yomi's, and I'd been disregarding that because it looked like her.
Maybe now I need to see To Heart? Wasn't it originally an eroge before they made the anime?
Fuck, they're both indeed Tsuina. A search for "to_heart tsuina" just showed me both images I was looking for.
RAGE
On the plus side, I did find this image before starting my search. Maybe it's time to go through all images tagged akiyama_mio again?
Friday, June 19, 2009
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Ok so I was using the bathroom and about to go to sleep and suddenly I hear a weird noise.
I go check it out and the water shutoff valve to my parents' toilet has burst and water is spewing out all over the floor.
I went into the basement and shut off the main water valve but for whatever reason water is still leaking out of the toilet's valve.
I've left about 4 or 5 messages on my mom's cell phone (they're conveniently in Indiana on vacation), which of course is not on because she never has it on, even while charging it.
I know it's 6:30 AM or something where they are.
I don't care.
TURN YOUR FUCKING CELL PHONE ON MOM WHAT THE FUCK SERIOUSLY WHY DO YOU HAVE A GOD DAMNED CELL PHONE IF YOU NEVER FUCKING TURN IT ON.
I just want to go to sleep, but I can't when water is leaking throughout the house.
I go check it out and the water shutoff valve to my parents' toilet has burst and water is spewing out all over the floor.
I went into the basement and shut off the main water valve but for whatever reason water is still leaking out of the toilet's valve.
I've left about 4 or 5 messages on my mom's cell phone (they're conveniently in Indiana on vacation), which of course is not on because she never has it on, even while charging it.
I know it's 6:30 AM or something where they are.
I don't care.
TURN YOUR FUCKING CELL PHONE ON MOM WHAT THE FUCK SERIOUSLY WHY DO YOU HAVE A GOD DAMNED CELL PHONE IF YOU NEVER FUCKING TURN IT ON.
I just want to go to sleep, but I can't when water is leaking throughout the house.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
HOLY HELL WINDOWS MORE LIKE WINBLOWS
I'm not using VistAIDS, but I feel like Windows is giving me the middle finger and this is the best image I have to represent that with.
I woke up yesterday to discover that my computer couldn't access our local network, or for that matter the internet. I tried everything I knew and nothing could get it working, no amount of rebooting, release/renew, etc. would fix it.
So I overreacted. Honestly I don't know what else I could have done, but whatever.
I opted to wipe my OS hard drive and reinstall Windows. It had needed it for a while, what with all the posts about my computer shitting bricks and whatnot a while back.
At first I tried to put the Windows 7 beta on it, but even after a successful install I couldn't get it to refrain from BSODing upon reboot.
So I reinstalled XP, then went through hell getting it up to SP3. What hell did I go through? First off, after a virgin install of SP1 (what my XP Pro disc contains), you can't just grab SP3 off of Windows Update. Microsoft can't make anything simple to save their lives. You have to update to SP2, reboot, and then update to SP3. On top of that, every few minutes it goes "lol what's a network connection?" and I have to run XP's uber-hidden network diagnostic tool to fix it.
For reference, this tool is xpnetdiag.exe. Search it up. You'll have to allow windows to search in system directories to find it.
I'm typing this on my crapass laptop that's basically fubar but can still boot an Ubuntu livedisc.
Actually, the network connection might have relaxed a bit. I don't know if it's because I'm not using the computer or what, but I haven't had to run the diagnostic tool to fix it in a while. I've got Azureus going with a few torrents and they're still active. (inb4 it craps out again)
If it's directly related to user activity, which seems a little weird, I'll have to shift my use pattern around to my other computers, perhaps using this laptop a bit more. I hate laptop keyboards though, I've had to backspace so many fucking times already.
The problem that forced me to type this on my laptop isn't the intermittent connectivity issue. It's one that's far more aggravating (and just happened again). The computer will simply just stop accepting input. The keyboard doesn't work, my trackball doesn't work, nothing fucking works. The screen doesn't even update if things should be changing. Yay reset button.
What all this boils down to is that my desktop in its current state is unusable. I'll have to replace it with a brand new computer a little sooner than I'd predicted. Which means going out and getting a fucking job during a fucking economic recession just got a little more fucking important.
Shit really? It just fucking stopped again. No more than a minute after rebooting, logging back in, and starting Azureus again. What the fucking hell. Shit's definitely unusable.
You know what forced me to have to type this again? Pretty much the same fucking issue, only this time on my laptop. I got out my USB flash drive to store the file on, plugged it into my laptop's only USB port, and it froze. What the hell. After rebooting my laptop I immediately made a text file on my USB drive and have been saving every so often. I can deal with the line ends being unix format. I'd just like to have something to fucking post.
I need a lot of alcohol. Now. Found a bottle of rum (not spiced, sadface), made rum and coke (zero).
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Google Maps directions require accomplishing the impossible.
So CAINE (UVa's anime club) decided to go to the Cherry Blossom Festival (or as we call it to try to sound cool (inb4 GIRUGAMESH), Sakura Matsuri, which is "Cherry Blossom Festival" in Japanese). Getting there from Charlottesville is simple. Take 29 North to Interstate 66 East, then exit at the Vienna/Fairfax-GMU Metro station, park, and ride the Metro the rest of the way to avoid the nightmare that is driving in Washington D.C. Getting back is equally easy, just get back on I-66 West, and then 29 South. Not hard, right?
Google Maps wanted me to somehow dart across the 4-lane-wide Capitol Beltway (I-495 loop around Washington, D.C.) from an entrance ramp to an exit ramp.
Of course I have a link. (and the above screencap in case they've fixed it)
Zoom in where the blue line crosses itself and you'll see what I'm talking about.
How should it go? Here are revised directions, (screencap thereof above) created by dragging the endpoint around to bring the route within the possibilities of human capability. Purposefully created with the same viewport and zoom level so you can see the difference.
I've sent them a support thing telling them of the error, providing the first link and the suggested (and correct) correction of using I-66 exit 62 instead, which dumps you right into the Vienna/Fairfax-GMU Metro station parking lot.
Now, I am partially at fault here. I wasn't in the rightmost lane when we noticed the sign clearly stating "Vienna/Fairfax-GMU Metro Station Exit 62". This is due to my habit of driving one lane over from the rightmost lane anywhere in or near a huge city like Washington, D.C. I do this so that people can enter and exit onto the highway without me having to slow down, speed up, or change lanes to accomodate.
However, the sign is entirely too close to the exit (too close for me to have changed lanes and gotten onto the exit), and SERIOUSLY GOOGLE WHAT THE FUCK DRIVING ACROSS A 4 LANE HIGHWAY IN LESS THAN A TENTH OF A MILE DID YOU SERIOUSLY THINK THAT WAS POSSIBLE. There's only one time of day where such a maneuver is possible, and that's at midnight when nobody's on the Beltway. We were attempting it just before 10 AM. I made it two lanes, had I tried for a third or the fourth plus the holy grail, there would have been a pileup. Not to mention that the parking lot for the Metro station is NOT on the other side of the road, so the effective U-turn these directions gave was invalid to begin with.
What did we do? Well, I couldn't traverse the remaining two lanes in time to hop off at route 7 and get on 495 going the other way, so I did the very next exit, turned around in the driveway of the CapitalOne building, and after much frustration we made it to the Metro station.
Getting home was relatively pain-free. We did caravan three cars from the Vienna Metro station to the Fuddrucker's in Annandale where we ate dinner, but we went right over 495 in the process so I just hopped on that (going north, seems unintuitive but isn't, we were south of where I-66 meets I-495) and then hopped onto I-66 West and we were on our way home.
At this point it's less of an "I was stupid" issue and more of either a "Google can't give directions to anywhere in Washington D.C. worth shit" or a "Washington D.C.'s signage is seriously lacking" issue.
The festival itself was great. Perhaps I'll make another post after I get a fuckton of sleep that describes some parts of it in greater detail.
Google Maps wanted me to somehow dart across the 4-lane-wide Capitol Beltway (I-495 loop around Washington, D.C.) from an entrance ramp to an exit ramp.
Of course I have a link. (and the above screencap in case they've fixed it)
Zoom in where the blue line crosses itself and you'll see what I'm talking about.
How should it go? Here are revised directions, (screencap thereof above) created by dragging the endpoint around to bring the route within the possibilities of human capability. Purposefully created with the same viewport and zoom level so you can see the difference.
I've sent them a support thing telling them of the error, providing the first link and the suggested (and correct) correction of using I-66 exit 62 instead, which dumps you right into the Vienna/Fairfax-GMU Metro station parking lot.
Now, I am partially at fault here. I wasn't in the rightmost lane when we noticed the sign clearly stating "Vienna/Fairfax-GMU Metro Station Exit 62". This is due to my habit of driving one lane over from the rightmost lane anywhere in or near a huge city like Washington, D.C. I do this so that people can enter and exit onto the highway without me having to slow down, speed up, or change lanes to accomodate.
However, the sign is entirely too close to the exit (too close for me to have changed lanes and gotten onto the exit), and SERIOUSLY GOOGLE WHAT THE FUCK DRIVING ACROSS A 4 LANE HIGHWAY IN LESS THAN A TENTH OF A MILE DID YOU SERIOUSLY THINK THAT WAS POSSIBLE. There's only one time of day where such a maneuver is possible, and that's at midnight when nobody's on the Beltway. We were attempting it just before 10 AM. I made it two lanes, had I tried for a third or the fourth plus the holy grail, there would have been a pileup. Not to mention that the parking lot for the Metro station is NOT on the other side of the road, so the effective U-turn these directions gave was invalid to begin with.
What did we do? Well, I couldn't traverse the remaining two lanes in time to hop off at route 7 and get on 495 going the other way, so I did the very next exit, turned around in the driveway of the CapitalOne building, and after much frustration we made it to the Metro station.
Getting home was relatively pain-free. We did caravan three cars from the Vienna Metro station to the Fuddrucker's in Annandale where we ate dinner, but we went right over 495 in the process so I just hopped on that (going north, seems unintuitive but isn't, we were south of where I-66 meets I-495) and then hopped onto I-66 West and we were on our way home.
At this point it's less of an "I was stupid" issue and more of either a "Google can't give directions to anywhere in Washington D.C. worth shit" or a "Washington D.C.'s signage is seriously lacking" issue.
The festival itself was great. Perhaps I'll make another post after I get a fuckton of sleep that describes some parts of it in greater detail.
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