May 22, 2007
Exciting times!
I make it a point to NEVER talk about work here on this blog as I don't want it to ever come back and bite me in the ass but this is crazy news so I have to at least mention it.
Intel to spin off flash memory unit in partnership (btw yes I work for the Flash memory unit...
Posted by Scott at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)
May 15, 2007
New Toy
Yesterday my new camcorder arrived. I have wanted one for a while so I just went ahead and did it.
I didn't get to play with it too much as the battery was basically empty when I got it, but I did make one small video of Coda. Enjoy!
Posted by Scott at 09:14 AM | Comments (2)
January 18, 2007
We've moved!!!!!
I have FINALLY moved web hosts. I was getting kinda tired of my old hosting solution. So I decided to take matters into my own hands. This website (as well as my others) is now hosted of my own Mac Mini at macminicolo.net. This is the coolest thing ever. You buy a Mac Mini, you set the sucker up, ship it do them and they host it in their data center.
I love it, my site is SUPER fast now.
Go little Mini go!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by Scott at 08:46 AM | Comments (1)
May 20, 2006
I am a shopping whore
I have been waiting for the new Macbook to be released. It has been time for my poor ibook g3 to be replaced. The environment was just right. I had some money in my account, the macbook was finally released, and there is an apple store in the local mall. I went shopping today. And I am totally satisfied!
This macbook is beyond yummy, and it's like a billion times faster then my ibook g3.
But now my new macbook needs a name, what should it be? I need to do some thinking.
Posted by Scott at 07:52 PM | Comments (3)
April 17, 2006
Prgramming rant....
I am a programmer, it's what I do for a living. And there are several things that bug the snot out of me when reading other peoples stuff (or OPP - Other Peoples Perl, yes I program in Perl).
- Global variables - Just don't use them they are evil. And they make trying to figure out where values come from really hard cause it looks like the come from no where!
- No comments - I am not you and I can't read your mind (specially from back in the past when you wrote the code). Comment your code!!!!!
- Use real variable names - Seriously, is it that hard? Maybe I don't know what the variable "w" does, cause it's kind of not specific. And if we go back to item 1, that variable "w" could have come from ANYWHERE in your code!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- It's really not necessary to prove how much smarter you are then the rest of us by writing code that is totally unreadable by mere humans. People will appreciate your brilliance far more if they actually know what you are doing.
OK I am done.....
Posted by Scott at 04:01 PM | Comments (1)
March 07, 2006
New Razr Phone
I finally got a new phone. Although my last phone was not very old (less then a year in fact) it has problems. I did not do enough research before I bought that phone. I just assumed it was going to be good because it was a brand I have bought many times before and really liked. I was wrong, that was the worst phone EVAR.
Anyway out with the crappy and in with the stylish yumminess! I purchased me a brand new slick Motorola Razr phone. This is a really cool phone. It's so thin you hardly even notice it. The sound quality is amazing, and it just plain looks great.
I like my new phone. YAY!
Posted by Scott at 09:00 AM | Comments (1)
January 11, 2006
Make it Feb already!
Even though it's not going to be mine, I still can't wait to play with it when it comes in :) I think that after I finally graduate with my masters this year I may buy a new laptop as a graduation gift to myself :)
Posted by Scott at 09:23 AM | Comments (2)
January 10, 2006
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG
OMG today is such an exciting day! Finally Intel and Apple are together! The new Macbook is so yummy. I think I am simply gonna be foreced to buy one....
I think the iMac may be my next desktop.
Only apple can make such cool stuff.
And I am double exctied because I no longer need to feel ashamed for being a Mac person. For those of you that don't know, cause I never say so here, I work for Intel. But now I can buy Apple products and be proud that not only did I buy a superior product, but I bought a computer with our chips in it!
Posted by Scott at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)
OMG!
The Keynote is starting right now and I don't get to watch it!
Posted by Scott at 09:03 AM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2005
Video Game Fun
It's loosely based on D&D type game play. But the coolest thing is that you can play together on this game. You're always in a four person team. If you play alone the other 3 characters are in AI mode. And you can have 3 others play along with you. Others can join and leave the game at any time. What this means is I played with Roque for a while, then I went to bed, and Roque kept playing till like 2 am. He has been rather obsessed.
At least someone is using the Game cube, I bought it and I almost never use it!
Posted by Scott at 07:44 PM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2005
I am a TIvo whore
Roque and I just bought a second Tivo for the bedroom. We know have 2 Tivos, and it ROCKS!
Posted by Scott at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)
August 08, 2005
Oh My Damn! - My Tivo died
The worste thing that could EVER happen, happened this satruday. My tivo died! I have directv with tivo which means its also my reciever so not only was I tivoless, but I was also TVless because I could not even watch tv!
The fact that the Tivo died was bad enough, but it was easily replaced, and for free since right now they sell for 100 with a 100 rebate via directv. But was sucks the most is the shows I had on the hard drive! I had not watched Battlestar Galactica yet! And Roque had a bunch of stuff saved on their too!
Anyway it took me all of 20 minutes before I drove to Best Buy and bought a replacement. So now I have brand new Tivo! It's actually a bit nicer, my last one was old and was having some issues anyway.
Posted by Scott at 09:30 AM | Comments (2)
August 05, 2005
A new toy!
Anyway, my new phone rocks, it makes me happye, and it fulfills my retail therapy needs even though it was free because it was my time for a free upgrade! Rock on!
Posted by Scott at 11:08 AM | Comments (1)
May 27, 2005
Question to Mac Users Everywhere
So for all you Macheads, what browser do you use on your Mac?
Posted by Scott at 11:22 AM | Comments (5)
Happy About Tiger
If you don't have Tiget yet and you own a G5 processor, get it now! Tiger is incredibly fast. You will not be disappointed. It makes me happy!
I have not played with dashboard too much, but so far I think it's kinda cool! The weather ticker is neat. I have not setup stock quotes yet. And the dictionary, which is totally key for someone like me that can't spell worth anything.
Go buy Tiger today!
Posted by Scott at 09:33 AM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2005
Tiger is here!
Here are my impressions. I like it. It makes my G5 happy, it runs nice and fast. Also it has native drivers for my printer which is a good thing because the drivers that HP makes for my printer make my computer shit itself (darn you HP!!!!).
Here is what I don't like. I did a clean install. And when you install a fresh copy of Tiger you do not get Stuffit Expander OR iPhoto. WTF! As it happens my internet died at that exact second so I could not go and download Stuffit Expander so I could not install any of my software that I had compressed! And what is up with no iPhoto? They have always included that! Grrrr, that is the thing I am most pissed about. They get me hooked on this software now I have to go buy it. Bastards.
But I still love Apple and I really love my Mac.
Posted by Scott at 09:09 AM | Comments (3)
May 06, 2005
Web Monitoring Nazi Employers
There is NOTHING I hate more in this universe than employers that find it necessary to spy on their employees and every aspect of there internet habits. I mean who the hell cares. If you are getting your work done does it matter that you go to the web and check your personal email? Does it matter you read one of the blogs you like just to break up the monotony of the cubical life?
Someone I know (who shall remain nameless) got reprimanded today for web and email usage. They totally blind sided this individual with TWO binders full of email and web content. They went to EVERY web site this person has ever been to (including this one) and printed everything. Apparently they even printed all my archives! They had copies of every email ever sent and received.
First, if you don't allow people to get on the internet and check personal email, they are going to use there work email as personal email, it's just that simple. Wake up and smell the coffee.
Second, this persons internet usage got flagged because of repeated visits to this site. Why did this site flag an automated web usage spy system? Because it has the word GAY in it. And as every red blooded american knows, any URL with the word 'gay' in it is clearly a porn site! I have one thing to say to your automated spy web usage system standards COULD THERE BE ANYTHING MORE BLATANTLY DISCRIMINATORY TOWARDS HOMOSEXUALS THAT FLAGGING THE WORD GAY AS PORN? I mean clearly if it has the word gay in it its porn cause that is all the gays do right? I am so angry right now I can hardly type.
So in conclusion, to all you web monitoring, nickel and dime, efficiency expert, nazi employer freaks, MONITOR THIS.
Posted by Scott at 12:13 PM | Comments (3)
June 02, 2004
Oops forgot to mentions this
Things have been so hectic and all consuming with sick kittens I forgot to mention that this weekend I bought this. And it rocks! Best computer EVER.
Posted by Scott at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)
February 03, 2004
A Tivo first!
Well according to Tivo, the whole Janet showing her boobies stunt at the Super Bowl was the most replayed bit of TV ever recorded by the company. That is really funny. I can just imagine Tivo users across the country hitting the instant replay button over and over again trying to process what just happened. Hitting the pause then slow motion buttons to get a proper view!
Again, all I have to say is Tivo rocks my world.
Posted by Scott at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2004
Do people actually fall for this?
I received this email this morning:
From: joe@winzip.com
To: scott@poweredbygay.com
Subject: a Trojan is on your computer!
Attachment: remove-smss-patch.exehello, I am from Norway and you'll don't believe me,
but a trojan horse in on your pc.
I've scanned the network-ports on the internet. (I know, that's illegal)
And I have found your pc. Your pc is open on the internet for everybody!
Because the smss.exe trojan is running on your system.
Check this, open the task manager and try to stop that!
You'll see, you can't stop this trojan.
When you use win98/me you can't see the trojan!!On my system was this trojan, too!
And I've found a tool to kill that bad thing.
I hope that I've helped you!greets
Well hello Joe, how the heck are you? There are a few things I would like to make you aware of. You just spammed a virus to an electrical engineer/software engineer. I know more about computers than you EVER will. Second, had you actually port scanned me (which I know you did not) you would have noticed that you hit my firewall and I actually don’t have any open ports. Third, I only have two computers at home, one is my Linux server and the other is my Macintosh, neither of which run windows. So Joe, I am afraid I actually don’t have this Trojan, nor can I even click on this executable file you sent me that will most assuredly give me this virus. And even if I did have a windows machine at home, I am not dumb enough to install your virus onto my computer. Alas I know your email address is fake for if it were real I know how to do some seriously not good things to your computer.
Have a nice day Joe, be glad I don’t want to bother tracking down the path of this email.
Posted by Scott at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2003
The Grinch that stole linux
OK so this is probably kinda geeky for my normal readers, but I am a geek and a programmer, and a linux guy so I found this rather funny and amusing. If you choose to read it, click on the READ MORE link and you can see it.. :)
The Grinch that stole linux
thought i would share this, got it from a friend
The Grinch Who Stole Linux
-- by Scott Lazar
Every GNU
Down in GNU-ville
Liked Linux a lot...
But SCO,
who lived just North of GNU-ville,
Did NOT!
SCO hated Linux! The GNU Linux season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be that their heads weren't screwed on quite right.
It could be, perhaps, that their shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that their bank account was two sizes too small.
But,
Whatever the reason,
Their wallet or their shoes,
They stood there looking at Linux, hating the GNUs,
Staring down from their cave with a sour, SCOy frown
At the warm lighted windows below in their town.
For they knew every GNU down in GNU-ville beneath
Was busy now, hanging a free wreath.
"And they're hanging their copyrights!" they snarled with a sneer. "It's free software! It's practically here!" Then they growled, with their SCO fingers nervously drumming, "We MUST find a way to keep Linux from coming!" For, tomorrow, they knew...
...All the GNU girls and boys
Would wake up bright and early. They'd rush for their GNU toys! And then! Oh, the noise! Oh, the noise! Noise! Noise! Noise! That's one thing they hated! The NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!
Then the GNUs, young and old, would sit down to a feast.
And they'd feast! And they'd feast!
And they'd FEAST! FEAST! FEAST! FEAST!
They would start on GNU-pudding, and rare GNU-roast-beast
Which was something SCO couldn't stand in the least!
And THEN
They'd do something he liked least of all!
Every GNU down in GNU-ville, the tall and the small,
Would stand close together, with Linux bells ringing.
They'd stand hand-in-hand. And the GNUs would start coding and singing!
They'd code! And they'd sing!
AND they'd CODE! SING! CODE! SING!
And the more SCO thought of the GNU/Linux Sing
The more SCO thought, "We must stop this GNU/Linux thing!
"Why for twelve years we've put up with it now!
We MUST stop Linux from coming!
...But HOW?"
Then they got an idea!
An awful idea!
SCO GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA!
"We know just what to do!" SCO laughed in their throats.
And they made a quick license out of vapors and quotes.
And they chuckled, and clucked, "What a great SCO trick!
"With this license, We'll look just so smart and quick!"
"All we need is a reason..."
SCO looked around.
But since reasons were scarce, there was none to be found.
Did that stop SCO...?
No! SCO simply said,
"If we can't find a reason, we'll make one instead!"
So they called their dog Micro. Then they took some red thread And they tied a big SUN on top of his head.
THEN
They loaded some bags
And some old empty code
On a ramshakle sleigh
And they hitched up old Micro.
Then SCO said, "Giddyap!"
And the sleigh started down
Toward the homes where the GNUs
Lay a-snooze in their town.
All their windows were dark. Quiet snow filled the air.
All the GNUs were all dreaming sweet dreams without care
When they came to the first house in the square.
"This is stop number one," SCO hissed
And they climbed to the roof, empty bags in their fist.
Then they slid down the chimney. A rather tight hole.
But if Santa could do it, then so could SCO.
They got stuck only once, for a moment or two.
Then they stuck their heads out of the fireplace flue
Where the little GNU copyrights all hung in a row.
"These copyrights," they grinned, "are the first things to go!"
Then they slithered and slunk, with smiles most unpleasant, Around the GNU's room, and they took every present! NUMAs! And JFS's! Sambas! Drums! Checkerboards! Tricycles! Popcorn! And plums! And they stuffed them in bags. Then SCO, very nimbly, Stuffed all the bags, one by one, up the chimney!
Then they slunk to the icebox. They took the GNUs' feast!
They took the GNU-pudding! They took the roast beast!
They cleaned out that icebox as quick as a flash.
Why, that SCO even took their last can of GNU-hash!
Then they stuffed all the food up the chimney with glee.
"And NOW!" grinned SCO, "I will take what is free!"
And SCO grabbed the free software, and they started to shove When they heard a small sound like the coo of a dove. They turned around fast, and they saw a small GNU! Little Cindy-Lou GNU, who was not more than two.
SCO had been caught by this little GNU daughter
who'd got out of bed for a cup of cold water.
She stared at SCO and said, "SCO, why,
"Why are you taking our free Linux? WHY?"
But, you know, that SCO was so smart and so slick
They thought up a lie, and they thought it up quick!
"Why, my sweet little tot," the two-faced leader lied,
"There's code on this tree that won't work on my side.
"So we're taking it home to our workshop, my dear.
"We'll fix it up there. Then we'll bring it back here."
And their fib fooled the child. Then they patted her head
And they got her a drink and they sent her to bed.
And when Cindy-Lou GNU went to bed with her cup,
They went to the chimney and stuffed the code up!
Then the last thing they took
Was the log for their fire.
Then they went up the chimney themselves, the liars.
On their walls they left nothing but hooks, and some wires.
And the one speck of food
They left in the house
Was a crumb that was even too small for a mouse.
Then
They did the same thing
To the other GNUs' houses
Leaving crumbs
Much too small
For the other GNUs' mouses!
It was quarter past dawn...
All the GNUs, still a-bed
All the GNUs, still a-snooze
When they packed up their sled,
Packed it up with their code! The copyrights! The patents!
The free licenses! Wrapped them up in their lies and pronouncements !
Three thousand feet up! Up the side of Mount Crumpit,
They rode to the tiptop to dump it!
"Pooh-pooh to the GNUs!" they were SCO-ish-ly humming.
"They're finding out now that no Linux is coming!
"They're just waking up! We know just what they'll do!
"Their mouths will hang open a minute or two
"Then all the GNUs down in GNU-ville will all cry Boo Hoo!"
"That's a noise," grinned SCO,
"That we simply must hear!"
So they paused. And SCO put a hand to their ears.
And they did hear a sound rising over the snow.
It started in low. Then it started to grow...
But the sound wasn't sad!
Why, this sound sounded merry!
It couldn't be so!
But it WAS merry! VERY!
They stared down at GNU-ville!
SCO popped their eyes!
Then they shook!
What they saw was a shocking surprise!
Every GNU down in GNU-ville, the tall and the small,
Was singing and coding! Without any worries at all!
They HADN'T stopped Linux from coming!
IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!
And SCO, with their SCO-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?
It came without charges! It came without price!
"It came without warranties, indemnification or gripes!"
And they puzzled three hours, `till their puzzler was sore. Then SCO thought of something they hadn't before! "Maybe Linux," they thought, "doesn't come from a store. "Maybe Linux...perhaps...is worth little bit more!"
And what happened then...?
Well...in GNU-ville they say
That SCO's small heart
Shrank three sizes that day!
At that minute the feeling in their wallets didn't feel quite so fun, as they whizzed home with their ill-gotten load through the bright Utah sun. For IBM had arrived, and there was no place to run!
Later that day,
the hero of the GNU's sat at the head of the table,
Sharpening their knives, all willing and able.
And they smiled at the GNU's and said with a grin,
"Who wants the first slice?"
Then the carving would begin....
And all through the night the GNU's enjoyed their free feast, SCO stew, SCO pie and of course, roast SCO beast.
Copyright © 2003 Scott Lazar
In appreciation and thanks to Dr. Seuss. »www.seussville.com/seussville/
Posted by Scott at 09:24 AM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2003
Panther Review
Well I finally got a chance to play with Panther a bit last night. Let me tell you I am impressed with this new operating system. I have not had a chance to explore everything but what I have seen does impress me. It runs faster then Jaguar did and it has a slightly refined GUI which makes it look O so slick.
But by far the absolute coolest thing I have ever seen in an operating system is this new Exposé thing they put in it. The ability to just hit one button and all your windows get resized and moved so non of them overlap and you pick the one you wanna have in the foreground. WOW! This feature is beyond cool. Never again will you be hunting for the window you want. I have been using Panther only for one night and already I am using this feature all the time. I was skeptical at first too, I had heard about it and thought it was cool but didn’t think I would really use it or need it. I was wrong, so very very wrong. I don’t even know how I lived without it now!
For all you mac heads out there that have not bought Panther yet, um what is your deal? Go by Panther NOW!
Posted by Scott at 07:40 AM | Comments (0)
October 31, 2003
OH NO!!!!!
So when I was getting ready for work this morning, I was playing with my wonder full ibook, then all of a sudden the screen goes all freaky and freezes. I think “OH crap this is not a good thing.” I reboot and it boots but as soon as it comes up the screen freaks out and it freezes. I reboot again and it boots but my screen wont turn on anymore. My computer is hosed!
I call up Apple this morning and now they are shipping me a box to send my computer to them and they can fix it. It’s still under warranty so this wont cost me, but still, this sucks major. The one good thing here is that I upgraded to Panther 2 nights ago and before I did that I backed EVERYTHING up. So I still have all my data even if for some reason they need to do something horrifically freaky to my system.
At least I still have my work laptop that I can use to do my homework though other wise that would really suck a lot. Oh well life goes on, computers break and we fix them and all is good again.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!!!!!!!!
Posted by Scott at 01:19 PM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2003
Yippy!
I just ordered my copy of Panther. I simply could not resist, how can I not be on the cutting edge of operating systems? I know it costs more then a copy of windows, and they come out more often but I trust Apple not to put out crap, I don’t trust Microsoft to not put out crap.
SO this means some weekend very soon I need to spend the day backing up, formatting and reinstalling everything so I can have my nifty new OS.
Posted by Scott at 02:01 PM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2003
On Oracle Buying PeopleSoft
This whole little scheme by Oracle to buy PeopleSoft seems very lame to me. It’s one thing if two companies merge in order to expand market share and gain better technology, but Oracle has flat out said it was going to just dump PeopleSoft and move its customers over to Oracle. In the end all that really does it eliminate your competition, and it does so in a not so nice way. And what of all the current PeopleSoft employees?
I for one hope Oracle does not get to purchase PeopleSoft. Competition is a good thing, it creates better products. If you have a total domination of the market what are you left with (windows that is what ;-).
Posted by Scott at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)
June 11, 2003
Will the shopping never end?
Ok yesterday I managed to get dual head monitor support on my ibook. Those of you with ibooks out there may be saying “but Scott, you can’t dual head on an ibook you can only mirror the displays”. Well that is not entirely true. See the video card in your ibook (especially if you have one of the new 800 or 900 MHz ones is really nice and does support dual head). The thing is Apple turns that little option off on the video card so the OS does not think it can do it. But I found a little tutorial on the web where you can boot you ibook into the bios, type some totally obscure commands and pray like HELL when you restart your computer actually boots. I was lucky, I made no typos, my computer rebooted fine and poof, I had two desktops. SCORE.
The problem now is all I have is this 5 year only Sony Trinitron monitor. Mind you it was a damn good monitor at the time but when you place it next to that super slick LCD on my ibook, it looks like pure crap. So now the only solution to this problem is to buy a brand new flat panel LCD if I wanna dual head at home. But do I really need this? Is it worth the price of a flat panel LCD? The extra screen space would be nice, specially when I am at my desk with the external keyboard and stuff cause my laptop screen is just a wee bit too far away. Hmmmm. This is something to think about.
Posted by Scott at 08:17 AM | Comments (0)
May 27, 2003
I am a retail therapy addict
I just finished school last week. Clearly I need to give myself a gift for a semester well done right? I was originally going to get an ipod (and I still plan on getting one) but I decided first I needed to completely upgrade my sound system.
Currently I have on of the Aiwa mini sound system. Not horrific mind you, but not exactly a high quality piece of sound engineering. Plus I wanted some serious home theater action, which mine just can not provide because it does not have Dolby Digital.
Today during my lunch hour I went on a bit of a shopping spree. I bought a Harman Kardon receiver and a Jamo home theater speaker package. I got a sweet deal too cause I got hooked up by my friend, I got all this at just a little over cost.
Now I am trapped here at work when all I wanna do is go home and play with my new sound system. Grrrr…stupid job :-P
Posted by Scott at 03:06 PM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2003
L33t
To my buddies ducati and pfloyd on IRC
ph34r
uptime:
11:07am up 100 days, 5:19, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Posted by Scott at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)
May 14, 2003
Must walk away from computer NOW
How do you know when you have been sitting infront of you computer for too long? I have a perfect example. Here is an snippet from my IRC log (I am aggiepm btw).
<aggiepm> OMG Kill me. I just tried to move my curser off my screen onto my desk to look at a paper document on my desk
<pfloyd> ROFL!
<paso750> haha
*pfloyd submits to bash.org
Yes kiddies it's officially time to stop being a programmer :-P
Posted by Scott at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)
April 29, 2003
Apple ROCKS
I just downloaded iTunes 4 so I could use the new music service Apple launched. I am super impressed. It's about time someone did the online music thing right, and no shocker it was apple. The online store is perfectly integrated into iTunes and when you download it's automatically in you library. So very cool. I already downloaded a Weezer album.
The cool thing is that you can buy single songs. Or if you want you can buy a whole album. The songs are only 99 cents and most of the albums are only $9.99. That is so cool. I don't always want a whole album. But sometimes I do and this online price is much cheaper. Sure I have to burn it myself but whatever. And the music is high quality. When you go to Kazaa you never know what loser ripped the CD and usually its horrible quality.
The only downside to this is that now I clearly have to buy an ipod.
The music selection right now is not that great, but I have confidence it will be getting better. Way to go Apple.
For all you poor windows users, there will be an iTunes version for windows later in the year, but the real question is why have you not switched to Mac when they are SO much better?
Posted by Scott at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2003
Who said Linux is not easy?
Today I had piles of stuff I needed to print. I tried to print my first 10 page document and it did not print. My printer would give some error. Mind you there is no display on my printer, just a blinking light. It is supposed to send the error message to you via your print driver. My printer is connected to my linux box where a print server is running, so I can print from my laptop. There are no nifty windows drivers to capture said error message. I have no idea what is going on. All I know is my printer will only print 2 pages, the crap out. This clearly is not OK.
At first I think maybe it's my toner and it's low. My printer is about due for new toner so yeah, that could be it. I buy new toner (toner is not cheap, especially when you are unemployed). Nope that is not the problem. I then spend ALL day trying to figure this issue out. Clearly my printer server is jacked. I decide to load a new printer server, maybe it will work better. But I don't know how to make it work cause its new.
The point is, it is now 10pm and I finally got my printer working again. I ask again, who said linux was hard?
Posted by Scott at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)
The browser wars
I just started a huge argument with my friends about whether or not Internet Explorer is the better browser or not. I will go ahead and say right now that IE is not the better browser. It does however seem to provide a better browsing experience for the end user. I use the word seem because it is a fact more pages render better in IE than in the other browsers like Mozilla. The argument here is not that IE is superior, its that IE being backed by M$ is able to force its will onto the web community. They do this by making IE just every so slightly non standards compliant. In order for websites to look correct in IE, developers purposefully write broken code (I know this is true cause this used to be my job). This makes standards compliant browsers like Mozilla render the page incorrectly. This makes the general user think Mozilla sucks and IE is good, hence IE remains the prevalent browser.
This bugs me a lot. I will concede that IE will give you a better browsing experience but it is only because of the underhanded way M$ forced its weight on the web community. Also IE is integrated in the OS which means they can make things more spiffy like font rendering and what-not.
Anyway this whole thing got started because I was helping Roger with his redesign. He had his site working and looking perfect in everything except IE 6. This is a direct result of what I said above, IE 6 does not conform to the standards hence it renders different that all the other browsers which are standards compliant. But this leads back to the basic problem, Roger knows that probably 80% of the people surfing the web and his site are using IE so he has to make it work for IE.
Posted by Scott at 09:44 AM | Comments (0)
August 23, 2002
Tivo, welcome to my life!
My Tivo system arrived yesterday! I am thrilled beyond words. Not only because I have a new toy to play with, but seriously, who can pass up the option to pause live television? Something crucial is about to happen on Big Brother 3, but you ::really:: have to pee. NO problem, just press pause, pee away and come back on keep watching where you left off. Did you miss something cause you looked away? Just hit the instant replay button and see the last 8 seconds over again.
I had that darn Tivo box sitting on my desk at work for hours (which seemed like days!) and all I wanted to do was go home and play. And when the moment finally arrived, I was out the door and I flew home!
Setting up the Tivo was piece of cake! I did have to totally rearrange my entertainment center, but that is the price you pay for installing new hardware. I removed my VCR and put in my Tivo, hooked up all the wires and stuff, and poof! Plugged that sucker in and I was off!
Setup was a piece of cake. All I had to do was answer it’s easy questions, setup the proper codes so it could control my cable box, then it called up Tivo for the first time to download the program guide info and stuff. The whole setup and downloading was actually way shorter than I thought it would be, cause I have heard the initial download can take up to an hour. But it was done for me in about 10 minutes!
You can’t start using the program guide and stuff immediately. The Tivo box has to munch through all the data and setup it’s databases so you have to wait several hours before you can setup shows to record and stuff. But you can start pausing live TV right away! Hee hee, I was having fun with that option, and the instant replay. Really cool.
Before I want to bed last night, the guide was all processed so I setup my first season passes to shows: SG1, Farscape, and Big Brother 3.
I have only used this Tivo for a few hours but I already know it will change my life.
Posted by Scott at 07:59 AM | Comments (0)
July 15, 2002
Impressed by Yahoo Messanger
I must say that I am very impressed. Since I have switched to Linux finding my favorite programs has not been super easy. Non of the "mainstream" software is written for Linux. For example messaging clients. This usually isn't a problem cause people write messaging clients that combine all clients into one. The problem is they don't always work right all the time. For instance I use Gabber and it doesn't seem to work with Yahoo Messenger. So I went to the Yahoo Messenger website to see if "maybe" they had a java client (which usually bite) but it will work in Linux. I was SO pleased to see they didn't just have a java client, but they had an honest to god Linux client. SO cool. Yahoo scores ten points.
Posted by Scott at 08:21 PM | Comments (0)