RabidWolf

A PCWorld post on their ‘Day 8′ of a Linux newbie day-in-the-life item made me do this. The article, by Tony Bradley, was fine, but reading the comments caused me spew forth these thoughts as I read through, so any rebuttals were enjoyed, but I don’t mention them.

Here we go with my own comments…

ITEM 1: Have been using dual monitors at home several years (desktop, and laptops before that) – at work of course,  we get the cheapest PCs possible. And then they complain when things are late. Smallest screens, motherboard graphics, bla bla bla.

ITEM 2: Don’t really like webmail. Been using Outlook for centuries at home (work standard, too) since I got Office Professional 4, which ever one it showed up in. Outlook does more than everything else I have tried (Eudora was good in the early days) and trying the port of Evolution for Windows on the laptop but not loving it.
I prefer to get my mail and not leave it on the servers for the same reason I don’t use many other cloud services except as adjunct or additional options. Gmail and its services are now more involved for me since I got an Android phone, replacing my old Dell Axim PDA. But I don’t like the watered down options on Google vs Outlook. Of course I also hate Outlook for all the major stupid things it does and doesn’t do. And Outlook (XP home/2003 work) is a Pig & a Hog. If something screws up on your machine, kill Outlook first.  I’ll be looking for a replacement for a long, long time, I think.

FYI I: I used to have about 8 email addresses, but now I am down to 5. Oh, plus a revived spam magnet via Gmail, and my Gmail account. OK. 7. Yikes.

FYI II: I have a real day job that takes a good 10-11 hrs per day just away from home. I’m not just snarking up blog posts. Gotta pay the bills.

FYI III: I spent many years tweaking Dos/Windows and am not really interested in having to spend time tweaking ANOTHER operating system. Formerly, there were the BBS systems and relays where one could get help or info in issues. Now, most forums are mostly snark/fanboys/spammers and or retards. Most without ‘speelchuckers’.

FYI IV: I have Android on my phone, and original Droid. 2-year contract. Hey, it is a PHONE for chrissakes!. But playing with apps and all the upgrades seem to have made it stupider than it was. There are some things I never thought were done right, what I mentioned earlier as less capable. But now it is just getting slow and weird and I don’t have time to investigate. Since I am NOT a 20 something living in my parent’s basement with nothing else to do.

ITEM 3: Well put nonseq. Like FYI II, really.

Some other pretty good comments there.

My ‘takeaway’ (I hate corpspeak) is to try Evolution on the laptop. And it started the install and when I said ‘cancel’, it actually stopped! Without installing a toolbar or requiring 30 minutes of uninstalls. What a concept! Put the question at the FRONT of the process! (Didn’t have time to deal with it. I will return to that later, after the thunderstorms and the root canal.) Not wild about it yet. Still no time (6/27/2011)

I think I have given up on my old Averatec 3225 ever running Linux properly, and it takes too long to boot, etc.

My new-ish laptop is now running Win7, and it will try Evolution.
The old standard desktop running XP? OMG, I have too many other things to do and can’t waste time with it just now. Between things I won’t have (too old to reinstall anywhere) and things I won’t get (I need a version of Excel. LO/OO just really don’t cut it for me, and NONE of my spreadsheet files will ever see a ‘cloud’. I do have a copy of VisiCalc, but there aren’t enough rows. I can’t even think about Win7 on it yet, nevermind Linux.

I do have latest versions of Ubuntu and Mint downloaded, so I may take a whack at them off a CD/DVD again, but the old laptop thing really soured me on that, since it couldn’t seem to be set up and I don’t want to go back to where I was in 1986, learning about operating systems on personal computers and how they compared to the what I had been using, and why all the snarky comments and useless comments waste more time than should be allowed.

Once a few personal crises are over, I need to return to this.

Grins,
RW

I got this thing from my sister, as a sort of Xmas/B-Day present.
Somehow, I feel compelled to write about it.

FINGER PUPPETS (Unemployed Philosophers Guild)

Axis of Evil Theatre

Cast:
Kim Jong Il
Saddam Hussein
George Bush
Ayatollah Khamenei

• Kim will nuke everything, or his moron son will, perhaps only themselves.

• Saddam is dead, but will still fuck things up (see below). South Park studies have shown that.

• Bush would Shock it with Awe, and fuck it up, blaming it on Saddam – Oh wait, he already did.

• Khamenei will jihad his mouth off and his people will say, ‘Meh’

What these finger puppets don’t understand is that
1. They have huge magnets in their heads, and
2. They are finger puppets.

It is late…

OK,

Neither BrightHouse, nor MicroSoft can tell my Mother how to get a BCC option on a new Email she wants to send? As she says, after calling BrightHouse who sent her to MicroSoft.
BrightHouse is the company whose employee set my mother up to use OutlookExpress on her aged WindowsXP machine after she had been on DSL with BellSouth/AT&T and went for something combined and with ‘landline’ phone too.
Whatever.
Neither of them could figure it out, apparently. Granted, MS doesn’t want to hear about OutlookExpress. MS may have disowned OE for help desk queries.

I did in about 10 minutes with a single Google query, though. OK, Bing has the same page…

RoadRunner does the email service portion. (I remember those brief days way back when RR had our cable service here – 1500 miles from my Mom, BTW – it was in those days when it looked like 2nd Terminator movies for the Telco/Cable companies.)
Doubt RR even cares.

Anyway, I sent her the way to do it for OE.

I’m still trying to find out if not-so-BrightHouse slash RoadRunner has a web-based email option for their user accounts.

Why is it so hard to contact these companies?
Online, if you are not the customer, you absolutely NO information without a full sign-in. Not even a chance to ask a question.
VERIZON is the same.
Absolutely NO way to contact anyone like a pre-sale check. We now have better options for Used Cars than for Communications!!

Pathetic that younger people put up with this!! They will need to fix it later.

Enough for one night.

Ciao,
RW

This was building up before, but WHY, does EVERYTHING Fucking Hate ME?
EVERYTHING! [compressed Swearing & Smashing here]Morons in market queues, on highways, work or play, it takes me Effort not to smash this keyboard into dust, but even THAT would go wrong and I would get cut or something by a shard or suffer in some way and I want to kill it now but it won’t get better!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

After quitting smoking, I expected all kinds of things, but even before that I was getting this rampage stuff. Morons on the roads whom I let in, and then end up slowly, helplessly, behind because their fucking parents should have fucking killed them at BIRTH! and I want to SMASH THEM or SOMETHING . Oh, ok, I guess you see how this is going.

As an aside it really is annoying when people who don’t really know how to drive go out during rush hour.  Nothing personal, but don’t pick rush hour to get to your tee-time/hairdresser/breakfast/”nice little run/bike-ride on a road with no sidewalks” on a known major commuter route just because you can. All drivers know you don’t have a report due nor will you be chastised for being late, so they would as soon run your sorry fucking ass over, so get the fuck out of the way asap.  Dickhead.

I purchase more liquid dish soap in a ‘large’ container because I was out and figured it was as close to a ‘refill’ size as they had. And while it had the pop-up ‘squirt’ cap, I figured I could pour it with out it, if I did it slowly, so I took off the cap and tried to pour it and the FUCKING THING POURED EVERYWHERE EXCEPT INTO FUCKING OPENING! And this was a slow-pour attempt. WHAT THE FUCK? If this is businesses idea of built in obsolescence (pissing away product during installation) then this is just another example of business (mostly large) fucking customers.

Between Shaw’s (mine) and the suppliers, we are at their mercy – Perhaps there is another store within “x” miles, but don’t doubt that everything will cost the same, and perhaps even use the same source.

They call them ‘consumers’ which makes them more like bacteria than people.

At my age, I hate what has happened to customer service, personal taste (HomeDepot doesn’t have it, you don’t need it unless you are rich), and I am almost ready for another Tourettes episode because everything just…

Maybe it is just too little smoking and too many years of computers and BBS/Rime/InterfuckingNet. After 35 years of playing state lottery tickets/plays, etcetera, I propbably havbe won about $40 tops. At a buck or two a whack. Piss-poor return.

Asshats in line at a traffic light with at least a car or 1/2 in front of them preventing anyone from taking the right-on-red, even after several polite horn beeps fail to even alert them that a horn is being blown.

If I didn’t just buy this car last year, and like it, I would SERIOUSLY push someone out of the fucking way if…. fuck……… See! ARGH

Is Tourettes something one [fucking] develops?

I’d look it up, but the fucking PC or internet connection would probably fail and fucking….

How is this related to claustrophobia?

EVEN THIS PC (WinXP) is fucking fucked as your fucking .l……………………….. AHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Ciao.

Sorry, old pal, but you gotta go.

Six years of intermittent service. But you just refuse to run any version of Linux for which I can find an .iso download!  It takes you centuries to boot into WinXP, and with each failure at loading Linux, I feel you couldn’t even be a be a decent netbook now.
It pains me, but you will have to go. Not your fault you had an AMD chip, or whatever else is annoying Linux. I do have all your documentation, and your WinXP disk, and even the second battery and snazzy neoprene pouch that I bought for you.
Perhaps I can donate you, and some bright kid will have you back running in seconds, but I can’t afford the time to wrestle with you, and you’re over 6 now. Time to move out!

After over 6 years, I guess we’re done. Sorry you had to hear it in a blog.

Oh well.

Ciao,

RW

Ya gotta love Blog Spammers!
I really loved this one. Get out the dictionary, folks!
You’ll also need your grammar and logic suspension medications, too!
(Oh, this will probably prompt more spam. Bugger.)

One Alleged Comment:

“Innovative, they studied to be taught that filing lawsuits is not the action gap to wind-up piracy. As an prerogative, it’s to skiff something flaunt than piracy. Like ingenuousness of use. It’s indubitably a huge numbers easier to utter iTunes than to search the Internet with risk of malware and then crappy character, but if people are expected to surrejoinder an lustfulness to loads and weather sadness of to against ages, it’s not bourgeoning to work. They exactly would passively use a squat without dally if ever people cut software and Cobweb sites that direct it ridiculously tranquilly to picaroon, and up the quality. If that happens, then there isle of man deemster be no stopping piracy. But they’re too circumspect and horrified of losing. Risks suffer with to be enraptured!”

I mean, how could anyone mistake.. really… seriously…

Ciao!

“Well, Sonny, I remember when we actually used to MAKE stuff around here. But they moved the making part, so now we are just supposed to BUY stuff.”

Recently spotted news items, as well as personal experience, makes me worry for the USA.  All we do now is wage-slave for financial companies, and all our tech is off-shore.

I wonder if our plumbers and electricians are also finding everything they need is “Made in China”??

Getting a little annoying, isn’t it?

Sure, these are even nominally ‘American’ companies, right? Well, they have offices in some American city,  perhaps.

Truth is, what they want us to do is buy stuff, and for work I guess we can just clean toilets or something, rather than actually make something because we won’t work for starvation wages, or in sweatshops. BTW, I consider office cubes as the new sweatshop.
We are all wage slaves, except those in trades. Is anything made here anymore? Clothing, shoes, pots & pans.

I’m just thinking, is all.
Net Neutrality, (ComCrap/NBC), Taking down whole sites on allegations by corporate interests.
America in decline. The reason is we don’t make anything here, we only consume. We consume goods, people. Corporations (large, and getting larger) rule our world. Banks, manufacturing, you name it, everything is outsourced anywhere, just to get that bump on the stock market. Can one even buy a Made in America article of clothing that doesn’t cost way to much? Nope, all your clothing is made in China. Why don’t we at least TRY to retain some skills like that here?

I am disappointed at how this country has become a nation of ‘shoppers’ rather than ‘doers’, and it will only get worse, since anything invented here will be made elsewhere!

Rant #1252

Well, Win7 happened on my laptop, and it needed a clean-install, not an upgrade.
I think my laptop, (HP, which came with Vista) may have been the reason why I couldn’t do an ‘upgrade’. But of course I am better off doing the clean install. Yes, I have my backup CD’s, and I don’t give a rats-ass about the few files that got wiped out.
It has been interesting getting things to work as I want, though. I use an alternative to Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer) and the 64-bit test version seems much better than using the older version on Vista.

Now that OuterWorlds is set up, I am cruising along with this thing.
Beware, though, that I don’t think Thunderbird is all that great (Outlook user) and I am sure many Apps will not transfer from Desktop-Laptop.

Well, folks, this weekend in my condo complex I will be getting FiOS installed! Yep, no more ComCast! Almost 15 years for my internet cable modem, and 30 for TV (given all the buyouts – Cablevision to MediaOne to RoadRunner to AT&T to Comcast, and I may have missed one.)

The internet connection has been fun. Talk about service?
Including a year of intermittent failures eventually discovered to be due to the fact that someone had scraped all the insulation off the cable going into the building on my wire. It was found to literally drip water when disconnected outside. At one point there were three guys here. And then every few years, I call because if piss-poor reception on the TV’s, and they ALWAYS blame the F-connectors!!! And try to bill me for coming out! It is the same damned F-connectors THEY put in the LAST time they were out! Madness!
The best one was when I was waiting for them to show up, and saw the truck go by, and went downstairs. At the same time my phone rang, but I didn’t want to get into a call when Comcast was coming in. Then I saw the truck turn around and LEAVE! Yes, the call was from their office to confirm I was there! What ever happend to knocking on the fucking door!

With any luck, I will be getting Verizon FiOS on Saturday (Nov 6, 2010) and I can get a whole steaming pile of NEW horror stories about service and support.

It will be interesting to see if I notice any speed difference on the internet, or if the video clears up some of the pixelation and sound/picture drop-outs that occur with cable and its compression issues. Not holding my breath, on that.

At least I should save a few bucks a month, until the incumbent starts jacking up prices, too.

Win7 MIGHT happen while all this is installing! I figure I can do that hours-long clean install onto the laptop during the hours-long installation of FiOS.

Brick the Laptop, AND, have no TV service on the same weekend? I can see it coming…