Disconcertation.

Did you ever forget what operating system you're using?

I used to use WinME. Then I switched to XP, which is also the OS on the most important computers at work.
Then I went on vacation and spent hours using (and tweaking) a Win98 box.

I just went to mess with a critical system file, and I forgot where it is. Because I forgot what OS I was using.

It was very disconcerting. I hope it doesn't happen again.

I get GMail and you don't!

As a gift for ranting frequently enough, Google gave me (and other active Bloggers) a beta GMail account.

Now if someone logs into arkleseizure.blogspot.com and sees a GMail invitation, I'll be very upset.


Going off on a tangent, I have decided that if we collected a group of a hundred four-year-olds and forced them to learn about physics, we'd have warp drive within a year.
They just think different from us. They understand that "eight pounds is bigger than forty-five minutes."
(This was one of the few things my nephew has said that hasn't annoyed the fuck out of me.)

I say this every year around this time...

"If God had meant for man to be uncomfortable, he wouldn't have given us air conditioning."

We thank thee, oh great Chlorofluorocarbons, for this blessing you have given us...


"I'm on dipsoluscious vacation." - Peter Griffin
Seriously. I have a week. To essentially do nothing. Yaaaay!

It took three years to get me to use XP.
You'll have to drag me into Longhorn kicking and screaming.

NTFS sucks. Sure it's faster, and more reliable, and more efficient. But the OS gains the ability to deny me access to files. If I want to delete System Restore files manually then by God I'm going to delete them.

And if they only release IE 7 for the next OS, then it's full-time Mozilla for me. If they're going to give millions of people the finger for not switching to another new file system, then they can bite my ass.

Chances are, you've met someone who's killed someone.

I've always wondered why serial killers live so close to the people they kill and the places they leave the bodies.
If you want to kill someone for no reason, drive to a bus station fifty miles away, take a bus another hundred miles, kill a random person, then take Amtrak back to your car, and drive home. I figure you could probably kill four to six people that way and NEVER be caught. Heck, you could do that once on the east coast, then the midwest, then the west coast. Commit eighteen totally random killings in three sort of spider-web patterns.
And don't leave "calling cards." Use different weapons each time, but nothing uniquely traceable like poison or a flamethrower.
Damn, who can say that this isn't done all the damn time!?

Bork!

I waste such an incredible amount of time on stupid things. It's almost obscene.
And yet I'm so bored.

Stupid people should have their own serving lines at restaurants.

I want blinking lights attached to my face like Data.

Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.

I'm melting... What a world...

My brain hurts. For a week or so, I'm (allegedly) in charge of the Shack.

Based on my observations thus far, and according to the theory of intellectual osmosis, I suspect that the idiots will have absorbed most of my intelligence by Wednesday.

My day thus far:
2:10 AM: Go to sleep, after a night of working on my new computer, Sybil.
6:20 AM: Attempt to wake up. Fail to wake up.
7:05 AM: Wake up. Notice the time. Rush like a madman to get ready.
8:05 AM: Get to work, 5 minutes later than I planned but 25 minutes before scheduled.
8:05-8:45 AM: Check stuff, file stuff, sign stuff, and do other managerial tasks I don't get paid for.
9:00-9:50 AM: Wait. Deal with idiots. Wait some more.
9:50-11:30 AM: Deal with a problem with a Verizon phone I didn't sell, a FutureDial cable I didn't sell, and a laptop I didn't sell. Solved a problem that the customer, their friends, and their relatives all failed to fix.
11:30 AM-12:50 PM: Wait. Deal with other idiots. Wait some more.
12:50 AM: Talk to my manager, who reminds me to do stuff I was already planning to do and/or already did.
1:00-2:00 PM: Wait. Deal with fresh set of idiots. Wait some more.

I need a drink.

Odd.

I am hereby establishing ownership of the phrase "Don't Touch The Kip."

Some of you remember that. Some of you may not. I just can't believe that in five years of maintaining some kind of web presence, I have never posted this phrase. Maybe Google's just borken.

Anyway, I own it.

Failure to Communicate, revisited.

Why can't people understand that I can't help them if I can't understand them?

"Yaw god anymo dem pow daptas to da cah lak dem obadayo?"

What in the holy fuck does that MEAN?


Unrelated topic: Kipish Legislation part 4004:

All grocery and department stores must be required to install a number of checkout lanes based on their square footage. The number of square feet per lane should be set so that no store in America will have fewer lanes than it has now. Then all the lanes must be legally required to be open at all times.

The Plan.

The Kip administration: The first hundred days...

1. Have PETA, NOW, GLAAD, and the ACLU declared "terrorist organizations."
2. Invent a more painful version of the death penalty. Something that takes a long time, but leaves a recognizable corpse.
3. Issue incredibly gruesome weapons to our military and law enforcement. Maybe like the guns in Logan's Run (the book, not the movie) that simultaneously stimulate every nerve ending so your brain shuts down from pain.
4. Seal the US borders. Build a wall.
5. Round up all illegal immigrants. Implant tracking devices into their bodies. Irradiate their testicles. Deport them to Mexico, even if they're not from there.
6. Establish mandatory public strip-searches for all brown-skinned people boarding planes.
7. Pull all of our military bases out of Europe. Tell the Russians to have a ball.
8. Take all the military power we just recalled and establish permanent bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9. Impose martial law in Iraq and Afghanistan.
10. Turn Fallujah into a parking lot. Erase every mention of its name from public record.
11. For every one dead American, kill 10 random Iraqi males.
12. If anti-American violence continues in Iraq, kill ALL the Iraqi males and all the ugly women.
13. Withdraw from the UN. Expel the UN from New York. Turn the UN building into commercial office space.
14. Outlaw male homosexuality on penalty of castration.
15. Have Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy arrested for murder.
16. Make use of the word "McCarthyism" a capital offense, retroactively.
17. Arrest the French and German ambassadors to the US. Drop them off in the middle of the Atlantic in a canoe.

Bob help me, I'm actually enjoying this...

It takes an awfully long time to install 65 hotfixes.
I'm going to feel kinda stupid when XP SP2 comes out a month-or-so from now, but The Kip must be on the bleeding edge of software updatedness.
Back when I used Windows Me (yes, way back when... three days ago!), I had the equivalent of a Service Pack in individual updates. I even swapped files in FROM Windows XP to fix problems Microsoft didn't feel like bothering with.
(Going off on a tangent, doesn't "Windows Me" sound like a verb? As in "Bill Gates is Windows-ing Me up the ---" [OK, let's not get rude].)

But back on the topic of how stupid I am for not upgrading to WinXP two years ago...
My CD Burner works again. I haven't used it for months, because everything got all flaky when I had it and my DVD drive hooked up. Now they work together seamlessly.
And my PS2 mouse port problem is fixed.
And 8-bit wave output hasn't gone all funny. Used to be, when I played a MIDI, and then something played an 8-bit sound, the wave came out as the digital equivalent of a foghorn blast. Not anymore.
And "restore points" are a gift from Jebus himself.
And the grass is greener, and the sky is bluer, and...

OK, maybe that's just excess caffeine combined with Daylight Saving Time.

Speaking of DST, isn't that a peculiar animal?
On one hand, for about a week it will feel like I have to get up at 5:00 AM to get to work.
On the other hand, even The Kip needs a little sunlight now and then. I can't live in a cave ALL the time. (We cannot allow a mine-shaft gap!) I'm not Osama Bin Laden, for Bob's sake.

You know the CIA is holding Osama in a comfy cell in Pakistan, right? He's been drugged out of his gourd since they caught him a few months ago. They'll tell the world "We got him!" about a month before the election.
Outlandish as it sounds, it could easily be true. And I have no problem with Bush2 using it as a re-election tactic. Because President Gore wouldn't have caught him in the first place. Assuming any of us were still alive.
I still wish Dole was president.
Maybe Bob Dole should run. Bob Dole thinks Bob Dole should. Actually, Bob Dole just likes to hear Bob Dole say "Bob Dole." BOB DOLE!

ANY-hoo... I gotta get back to "work."

Hear that, Mr. Anderson? That... is the sound of inevitability.

Or, as another Sci-Fi program put it, "you too will become one with the Borg."

As of 2:00 AM, I am a Windows XP user.

It couldn't be helped. Sometimes even The Kip must succumb to the overwhelming force of "progress."
Please note the use of sarcasm as denoted by quotation marks.

I've been using WinME since it came out. August 2000 to April 2004 without upgrading my OS. Contrary to what everyone says, it's just as stable as Win98 if you know how to rough it up a little, and bend it to your will.

But I realized I would have to get XP when the uptime on our Compaq demo computer hit 150 days. I've never seen that before. Ever. Even in the few months I used Linux, my best uptime was only 10 days. The demo machine is at 158 days now. Barring a power failure, it could go on forever.

So last night, I installed XP Home. I got an OEM version from a source I shall not name, and used an OEM license key, then applied the appropriate cracks to winlogon.exe and the registry to disable WPA. Windows Product Activation is a joke. A very well-publicized, very expensive joke.

I haven't paid for an OS in 11 years, and I don't plan to start now.

SP1 installed flawlessly, as did all the Pre-SP2 patches (which, by the way, are installed on all 3 XP machines at work. We're miles ahead of store support services and most [every] other store).

And I disabled Windows File Protection, as I did in WinME. I can keep track of my file versions my own damn self, thank-you-very-much. (It's so hard to convey a facetious tone of voice in text form.)

Now begins the long process of bitchslapping the computer to work exactly the way I want. Fortunately, because I waited so long, there are myriad tools for exactly that purpose.

But I miss DOS already.

Modern Convenience, chapter N

I just had a minor electrical emergency. It was fun.

My microwave was (WAS!) plugged into the same outlet as my computer. As I was microwaving some water for tea, I hear a loud POP, and the microwave and computer go dark. Uh-oh. So I feel the wall to make sure nothing's burning, then I stop to assess the situation.

Step 1: Prepare tea.
I remove the water from the microwave, which had just started boiling (I was watching. I was bored.). I pour the water over the tea bag and set it aside.
Step 2: Formulate a plan.
I decide the quickest course of action is to use another outlet. One is directly across the room, the other is in the farthest corner. Step 3: Assess available supplies.
It takes a few minutes to determine that while I have a box full of surge protectors, I have no extension cords. Even if I had enough surge strips to daisy-chain across the room, it would just be stupid.
Step 4: Acquire required supplies.
Thank Bob for the 24-hour Walgreens. A quick drive up the Boulevard, a quick drive back, time for Step 5.
Step 5: Apply fix.
I plug the master surge protector into the spiffy new orange cord, stretch it across the room, and restart the Infernal Machine.

Total downtime: 14 minutes from power outage to Windows boot. The tea wasn't even cold when I was done.

Total damages:
One dead power outlet, which will take Bob knows how long for the landlord to fix.
$10.44 for emergency supplies.
5 minutes of the John Henson Project missed. This bothers me most of all.


I kind of wish there had been more of a problem. I'm so damn bored.

What a fucking brilliant idea.

A completely isolated ecosystem exists under the ice of Antarctica. Totally separate from our own, existing in what is essentially an alien environment. We know nothing about what could live there, and it hasn't been open to the outside for thousands of years.

So what should we do? Drill a hole in it!

Remember what I said about scientific curiosity destroying the world?
I hope these dumbasses die quickly, before they can spread whatever ancient bacteria they find.

Global Manifest Destiny

I have come to the conclusion that I hate foreigners not because I hate anything different from myself, but because the U.S.A. is just inherently superior to all other countries.

And if I had been, by some bizarre chance of fate, born in some inferior country, I wouldn't hate all foreigners including Americans, I'd hate everyone except Americans, including fellow natives of my inferior country. And I'd have to move to the U.S. at the earliest possible time.

You KNOW I'm right.

Splendid.

As sacrilegious as I have always considered artificial sweeteners, "Splenda" fails to suck.

And it might be Evil!