You Want Moi? For iReport? Do Go On...

So, back on monday I submitted my first ever, um submission to CNN's iReport.com about the demise of Pontiac. I of course was temporarily crippled by immense sadness, as much as one can feel for a subdivision of a failing but still historic megacorp whose new politician overlords and greedy unions most likely hastened the death of said subdivision mentioned at the beginning of this so-called sentence.

What was that? Yes, I am not feeling as sad now that I got that sentence out of my system. And yes I agree, the GM execs who screwed the pooch with Pontiac now have blood on their hands. Or maybe 10W40. Either way, sticky thick fluid on their hands, I say!

*ahem* think happy thoughts, happy happy thoughts... as in, those responsible for this gruesome act shall be condemned to driving only Pontiac Aztecs for the rest of their (and their children and their children's children) natural life.

So... yeah I now think CNN just wanted to use the photo I submitted, since the commentary part was pretty much what I just rambled about :)~

It's Official. RIP Pontiac.

News leaked out last Friday, and I was hoping for a hail mary, mirace on ice, the empire strikes back return of the jedi-esque comeback. Alas, it looks like it's official. Pontiac is no more. Long live... Buick?! SERIOUSLY?

I think I am now officially apathetic about GM's potentially gruesome death.

:(

Time Warner Temporarily Less Greedy By Public Demand

The recent PR Bay of Pig by Time Warner shows that there is hell to pay when you mess with the public's unlimited access to porn, eh data.

So this is what being a victorious Cuban commie feels like.* Cool :)

The main reason TWC pisses me off? Mostly their desire to have the cake, molest it à la American Pie and then eat it too. TWC like most other major broadband ISPs seems to have a quasi-monopoly in their respective markets. It's inevitable that greed and lack of consequences will lead to crap like 40GB monthly cap or this seriously-it's-legal-to-do-this BS. I would have sooo paid cash to see a TWC exec meeting right after this thing blew up in their face!

I have used TWC as my broadband ISP since... HOLY CRAP, it's been my first and only broadband ISP! I still remember when the cable connection first went live at 2Mb/384Kb so many years ago. Right now I am on their "standard" connection, 7Mb/384Kb. Hmmm... the same upload speed for a decade?! That reminds me... this time last year I was going through TWC Hell, mainly because the node I was on was at 99% saturation between the hours of 5 pm to 3 am, and also the entire weekend. I spent countless hours with TWC support, who seemed to have a fetish of telling people to reboot their modems repeatedly. I was finally referred to a "tier 3" tech rep who really knew what was going on. She told me the node was essentially jammed, conveniently during hours when I am actually home and might want to use my paid connection. It was literally slower than dial-up. No exaggeration.

Loooooong story short, after 8 months of continuously bugging TWC, they finally split the node or whatever and I got a usable connection. During this entire "incident", I was still paying the Roadrunner standard fee.

Well, you know what I did when I heard TWC's "customers need more education" BS? I fired up uTorrent and started downloads for every Ubuntu and fedora distro images known to mankind, repeatedly :)~

I think I went through 40GB in three days or so. And that's just download :)


*no offense to Cubans, victors, current or ex-commies

A Bag 'O Weed, A Bag O'Weed...

Oops sorry... stupid Family Guy mini musical number that's so awesome and difficult to get out of your head :)~ I do believe it's the second most awesomeist Family Guy song after the AIDS song.

*cue peter griffin laughter*

So, a lot's happened since my last post! Pirate Bay guys lost (boo~~~), Pirates von Somalia got shot, Family Guy did their 420 special (crap, it's back in my head), and I need to go on a diet since I started exercising somewhat regularly (woohoo!).

Ok, let's take the first one. Court system being manipulated by parties with beaucoup amount of money? Check. Pirate Bay site still up and running? Check. More fans turned off by the suits at RIAA/MPAA/other misc collection of letters? Check. Artists seeing any dime of the potential settlement cash? Not likely, from the lawsuits up till now anyway. It was interesting to see the Pirate Bay guys' video responses. I seriously hope their faith in the Swedish higher courts is not misplaced. I know I would be PISSED if I am Swedish, seeing my judicial system pushed around like that!

Now, the real pirates... and hostage fighting back, and Nave SEALs, and multi-ship Mexican standoff, holy crap! I have mixed feelings about this one. I thought it was downright hilarious to have pirates-on-a-lifeboat playing who blinks first with an Aegis class destroyer. And each side was REINFORCING with more ships! Sorry... it's just such a comical and WTF moment, at least to me. It's sad that three pirates got headshotted. But then again, when they kidnap ships carrying humanitarian aids, that takes away from their Robinhood cause. I dunno... let's see how our beloved world leaders deal with this. Should be interesting.

Family Guy 420 special? Bag 'o we... CRAP. It's back again. On to the next topic, stat!

Ahh yes, dieting. By dieting, I mean eating more. Way more. You see, I've been successfully getting my butt to the gym and the running trails in the nearby woods. I am definitely feeling a little more energetic than before. But now I am hungry, like all the time! I've been off the Mickey D stuff for about 4 months now (woot). I'll have to double, nay triple my calorie intake if I want to keep up.

And Homer says, Mmmmmmmmm ICE CREAM... :)~

Converj This.

The Cadillac Converj was one of the cars that drew me to the Washington Auto Show earlier in the year. Unfortunately, it did not make an appearance even though the Volt and Tesla and Karma did. It seems like GM is betting their future on their Volt platform... and for once I think they might be actually doing the right thing. It's actually modular, so if/when say fuel cells become affordable (ha), they can just yank out the 4 banger and put one in there. If new battery technology comes through, just replace the battery pack. Actually, the engineering concept is pretty practical and sensible. Never thought I'd use those words to describe GM :)~ Of course, execution is another story. So far, GM seems to be on the ball with the Volt. For some reason though, the Obama people seems to hate GM just because. I mean, they finally have something good and you want to be anal about meager things like financial feasibility?

Okay, maybe they should be. But somehow I don't remember the same treatment given to the boys in the financial sector. Just saying. If I had to pick between giving my tax money to car makers or bankers...

Btw, what's up with Obama tapping all these RIAA lawyers for government positions? This is NOT the change I voted for... oh well, politicians

Spark Plugs + Wires + Fuel Filter = $450...?

So my baby has been going through some issues. A mysterious misfiring problem that seems to get better and worse depending on the moon phase. I finally broke down and took her to a local shop. The shop came highly recommended from a coworker friend, who claims to have been with them for over two decades. This is a pretty big step for me, since I don't like to have strangers touching my baby...

Guess what they told me yesterday?

"You need new plugs, wires and fuel filter for $450".

me: were you able to get the SES light to come back on?

"No."

Me: Did you even try?

"No."

Me: But like I told your guys when I dropped off my car, the light went off the day before. It went off once already - it will most likely come back on if you give it WOT, or run through the gears under 2K.

"Sir, we don't have time to drive 50 miles around to try to see if it would come back on."

(in my mind) well then did you actually DO any testing...?

Me: so the $450 is based on how many hours of work?

"3 and 1/2 hours"

Me: is John#1, John #2 or John#3 in? I spoke to them when I was there.

"everyone's out on vacation. For the entire week."

Me: ...

Granted, the last one is probably just a coincidence. But I took the car to the shop because I was worried it was something more serious. I think I was partly responsible because, well I gave them too much info when I dropped off my car. You know, when you go see the doctor, OBVIOUSLY you wouldn't want to give him/her anything more than "this hurts right here".

Anyway, guess I'll have to go the DIY route, just as the traffic gods intended.

RIP Raptor

Being somewhat of an aviation dork, I felt a bit sad when I heard the news that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had pretty much killed off the F-22 program in the name of saving some cash. I can definitely see where he's coming from, but the major media outlets' responses following the decision has been somewhat curious. A quick look around and you have stories from say Newsweek, MSNBC, CNN, etc all saying the F-22 is essentially worthless because it's not being used in the "war against terror".

I think that's a little short-sighted. Actual wars are hell, no matter if it's proxy wars between two superpowers or unconventional conflicts between people who take religion a wee bit too seriously and people who wish they had oil instead of drinkable water. Saber rattling is always better than actual wars. But if you have enough of a deterrence to prevent even that, then hey why the hell not? In that regard, the F-22 is a heck of a deterrence. Yes, I know everyone just WISH we have live targets to shoot at with our fancy stealth jet, but the world isn't perfect. Throwing away a program that costs however many billions in R&D money is a bit of a waste, especially when them commies (China) are gearing up for more regional conflicts and the ex-commies (Russia) is shooting for a return to former glory. They didn't restart their Bear patrols for nothing!

Ok fine, the Tu-95 bears are pretty cool, for a prop bomber :)~

But I do see the merits of the argument - at the moment, F-22s are pretty useless except for when our Air force needs to tell the world, OURS IS BIGGER AND BADDER THAN YOURS. But then I see Newsweek start arguing that the upcoming F-35 is also useless, and that there's absolutely no point in updating our air force - that's just stupid. Didn't some F-15 literally disintegrate in the air during a high G maneuver a while back, and the entire fleet had to be grounded? Isn't the current fleet of fighters children of the 80s, having being designed a decade or two earlier? Do they understand that modern fighter development takes decades, not months? Do they not know how children of the 80s tend to turn out? (oh wait, I am one. Oh well, more evidence for my argument)

This sounds a bit like the isolationist thinking prior to World War II.

But now that we've killed the F-22... can we bring the (Y)F-23 back? Pretty please?

Madness? THIS IS SPARTA!

I know the Final Four was a week ago, but just thought it would have been soooo appropriate if at the championship game one of the Michigan State players yelled that to say Hansborough's face before, you know drop kicking him into a deep well :)~

But a congrats to the ACC. You don't hear that Big East basketball nonsense any more, that's for sure!

Would You Be My Prom Date?

But only if you are wearing this classy prom dress...


No babe, that's not a photoshopped pic of what I want you to wear. Trust me, if photoshop's involved... hello transparent layers :)~

Foiled By My Own Smugness.

It would look like Microsoft somehow managed to gain a new fan in me from my last posts.

Well, remember that hang glidin' pig outside my window? Yeah, he crashed and burned.

You see, I had forgotten that I spent a few hours hacking Windows 7 Beta after the first install. Taking out unnecessary services, startup programs, windows media player 12, DRM crap. Basically a necessity for my trusty old laptop.

Unfortunately, after my unsuccessful attempt at making 7 beta and Fedora 10 mutually tolerable, I used window's system restore to try to fix the screwed up boot sequence. It didn't work. But when I finally got 7 beta back up, I saw that it indeed "worked". All that portly junk that I removed came back, and some. The DRM stuff is worst. Windows 7 will support more codecs natively (namely divx/xvid & h.264), but EVERYTHING is routed through the built-in DRM pipeline. You know, to protect the unalienable rights of swell guys over at the RIAA and MPAA. Even if the content isn't copyrighted.

Okay, I know artists gotta eat and RIAA and MPAA suits need to buy yachts. But it sucks when said built-in DRM pipeline system is grossly inefficient. Video and music files that my trusty lappy used to handle at the lowest power state (600Mhz) now consistently devour over 90% of the CPU at full speed (1.4GHz). Besides using more juice and creating more pollution, it generates more heat which keeps the laptop fan on constantly. Definitely not cool. Literally.

I remember I was able to override 7 Beta's built-in codec with Xvid in the first go around, which seemed to alleviate most video issues. But thanks to system restore, the 7 beta codecs are back and refuse to give up power.

D'oh!

Time To Mix It Up! Part II: Attack of the Linux Clones

So, in my last post you heard me ramble on about Windows 7 beta like a catholic school girl with a puppy crush. Well, if it helps, the switch to 7 Beta got me going so much that I decided to try out the latest linux Fedora distro via, you guessed it, dual booting.

It's been a while since I got messed with ubuntu on my other PC, a homegrown desktop that's a decade old. I know... damn. Don't get me started on my OTHER PC, also a homegrown desktop but even older (don't think it's polite to ask any more... yeah that bad). That baby sports a K6-2 CPU and Windows Me! Hey, don't judge. Genuine Windows 9x support comes in handy whenever an urge for old games flare up.

One of these days, I might just install MS-DOS 6.22 somewhere. Watch me.

Anyhoo... oh yes, trying to make Fedora 10 play nice with Windows 7 Beta. I got one word for you...

friggin'-disaster

Pronunciation: \o-'hell-no, -'shi-t-f-me\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English & Finger; see dual-boot on same drive with radically different OSes

1. Panic-inducing event. See Cuban Missile Crisis.
2. Cuban Missile Crisis.

First of all, I learned that the Fedora image file is a picky princess. My usb dvd burner was JUST not good enough for her. For a while I didn't think I would be able to attempt to get into this princess's pants with my stupid external burner as wingman. Fortunately, my laptop was big enough to have an internal slot-loading burner. Again, 6-yrs-old! I love my lappy. *Ahem* Sorry about that. But then... the same problem with the Windows 7 Beta/XP Pro setup came up. Basically, bootloader's confused and I can't get into either OS. No matter, just need to adjust some partition settings and booting order and position of crossed fingers. But no... the damn thing just won't boot up. At all.

So, after an hour or three of repeated OS installs (started to be a turn-off after the third cycle), I decided to utterly give up. Only now, I can't get 7 Beta to boot. Not even a little bit. There's a blinking underscore that eerily resembles the one on the Jurassic Park main computer after the power shutdown. You know, when Shaft the Jurassic Park IT Guy declared he needed to go switch some jumpers back on. Famous last words before the raptors got 'em, indeed.

Crap, now I want to watch Jurassic Park. Better wrap this up.

So yes, thanks to some googling on the work tablet, I was able to fix Windows 7's corrupted MBR (yes Fedora, bad princess) and boot up. I am happy to report that in the end no animals or data were lost. I guess I can try Fedora on the desktops... but right now, I am a bit exhausted and just want to sit back and watch dinosaurs chase after humans.

Is that too much to ask?

Time To Mix It Up! Part I

I was slightly bored this week, despite life obligations galore.

No, I haven't done my taxes. Yes, it's due like, soon.

I decided to try out big evil MS's latest and greatest, yep that Windows 7 Beta thingie. I downloaded it a while back, mainly to put my "blazing fast" road runner standard connection to some good use. I mean, there's only so much illegal TV shows and movies and porn that one can download. The ISO image had been sitting quietly on my My Book (WD marketing obviously failed to ponder the situation when a customer wants to announce ownership of his/her brand spankin' new external hard drive). A quick burn with Nero and partition work with Acronis and I am ready for a smooth installation of 7, right?

Wrong.

Well, not entirely. You see, I started by installing Windows 7 on a spare HD on my laptop (just realized it's 6 years old *sad gasp*). It was truly a pleasant surprise. Really. All the positive press and hype were true! I actually had a Vista SP1 install on the spare HD, which I used maybe a total of 20 minutes. Windows 7 blew it out of the water upon first impression, even if it was only 20 minutes. But that's like taking candy from a retarded sleeping sheep. Time to pick on the awake sheep - XP Pro. And the awake but drunk sheep - ubuntu. Sorry, no three-legged sheep with a fetish for Apples in my house, yuppiness be damned.

And the journey began... First, it turns out Windows 7 did not like dual booting with the XP Pro install on my laptop's main drive. No matter how many times I messed with the bootloader, partition type and position of my animal sacrifice to the Installation Gods, Win 7 Beta never made it past the first reboot. So I pretended I was French and capitulated to the stupid bootloader. An hour later, XP Pro was backed up before it was deleted off the drive, and soon I was staring at a strangely alluring Betta fish on my desktop.

And boy, Win 7 really rocks. Using my laptop as a test platform is good because a) it's 6-yrs-old and b) it's got a 6-yr-old CPU/chipset/Vid card combo:

Pentium M (banias) 1.4Ghz
i855 mobo chipset, rev b (woohoo, 33Mhz more DDR RAM speed than rev a!)
2GB RAM, maxed out :(
Radeon 9600 w/64MB RAM


So... with the "Aero" GUI maxed out, Windows 7 runs basically as fast as the old XP Pro SP2 install, which I've really streamlined for max efficiency (I know, it's Microsoft, but me like games and to be fair, XP has been rock solid). And once I adjusted the power scheme for passive cooling... my 6 year old lappy is back to her quiet self.

I think at that point, one of my eyebrows went up as I thought to myself, crap I actually might want to buy a copy of windows. Yes Vista, this is how it's done! And hell, I even left UAC (the uber annoying User Access Control) on!

Oh my gosh, did I just see a pig hang glide past my window?