• Hawt... Britney looks damn good, and naked, sweaty and covered in oil (or maybe sweat) to boot (yes, really). Guess when you're a bazillionaire you can get yourself a great personal chef and team of trainers.
  
• The actual music is standard crap, generic poppy crap. Sorry.
  
• Her voice is way over-produced and over-effected, goes with it being poppy crap though I guess. Especially after listening to a version of Hotel California by Don Felder at a radio show, live, just him and a guitar. Holy crap the music kids listen to these days is crap.
  
• Some kinda cool special affects shots... one I liked was of a guy who turns around "into" his suit. Very cool.
  
• The story of the video is hard to get, it's either about a slutty girl who is slutting it up with a bunch of guys, or getting back at guys who slutted around on her, or.... wait a minute, who really cares.
  

The conversation at the door went something like this (I answered the door while listening to a podcast):

• Pizza Guy: Hey cool, that an iPod or something?
  
• Me: [gives money] yea, my iPhone.
  
• PG: Wow, cool, I'm jealous!
  
• Me: Uh huh [please just give me my pizza so I can go]
  
• PG: So what sort of work do you do?
  
• Me: [go for the vague answer, instead of detailing how I'm an OS Developer for a company that does business communications hardware and software security solutions] Computer stuff.
  
• PG: Cool, you interested in making some money?
  
• Me: [oh god, he wants me to program a website for his kids soccer team or something] Not really, see, I have a bunch of stuff on the go right now, I'm really not wanting to get into anything....
  
• PG: No, I mean some real money.
  
• Me: [oh oh, I've heard that before, I know what's coming next] Ok, give me the 20 second pitch. [I'll be open to new things, just give it to me fast]
  
• PG: How about I just give you a card, go to this website and check it out. [pulls out a home printed card whose ink still smeared]
  
• Me: Uh huh.
  
• PG: [random mindless talk about how "it really works" and how "you have to check it out"]
  
• Me: Uh huh. [if you're rolling in dough why don't you buy your own iPhone?]
  
• PG: [more random mindless talk]
  
• Me: Ok, I'll check it out. [please please please let me go]
  
• PG: Ok, have a great night.
  
• Me: Uh huh. [Close door, lock door, go back to beer and TV]
  

Oh, and searching for information on the company had the second suggestion from google as postfixed by "scam". I won't give them any juice by even linking to it here.

The PDF file consisted of two pages, one was nothing but a guy standing in front of a Lexus with a inspirational saying, and a second page with more of the same "blah blah company is awesome blah blah amazing blah financial freedome blah blah".

*Sigh*

At least I got my pizza :)

Did I mention bleah?

Next time I'll either have to say "no" or look much more carefully at the travel itinerary. Apparently horribly early mornings, long days, and late nights are "normal" for business travel, but not for me again thanks. Originally the plan was I go down Monday, do the training on Tuesday, and fly back Tuesday night. I convinced them to let me go down a day early to have a day of recovery and sightseeing.

So tonight we have:

• Prison Break (new episode). Grrr... once again I'm sucked in. Dammit.
  
• Terminator (new episode). Ditto.
  
• The Big Bang Theory (season 2 premier)... I hope it's as amusing as last season.
  
• Heroes Clip Show. Nothing new it sounds like, but probably it's a good idea to remind yourself of what happened last season.
  

• Heroes (the actual episode). I so hope it's kick ass like season 1 and not sucky like season 2.
  
• Prison Break (same as before). Luckily this has a second showing so I don't need 4 TV tuner cards.
  
• Boston Legal (new episode, season premier maybe?). I got into this at the end of last season, it's fairly amusing, not a must-see like Heroes or Prison Break though.
  
• The Mentalist (season pilot). This could be interesting, I almost hope it completely sucks so I don't have to add more TV to my watching list.
  
• Heroes (the second hour of the premier). Hoping still that this doesn't suck.
  

The Shield

The problem with a lot of these shows is it feels like more time has passed, and I had completely forgotten all the nuances of plot that were around the characters in this. In the start I was a bit worried that it'd just be a spaghetti of plotlines that I'd have to trudge through. Most of them simplified themselves out and Michael Chiklis was back to causing shit, lying to people left right and center, and doing what he has always done.

My rating (with only one show so far) is 4/5 stars for quality, 4/5 chance of keeping on watching (note that the bad quality of a show doesn't mean I won't watch it... I'm a media whore).

Prison Break

*sigh* Another season, another contrived plot to have the same characters doing pretty much the same thing with some slight twist to make it reasonable to call it a plot for the next season. IE: season 1, get out of prison, season 2, be on the run after escaping from prison and be on the run from the "good" guys, season 3, escape from a different season, but this time some of the "good" guys from season 1 are in there as well. So now we have season 4.

In this seaons plot so far, all the loose ends were tied up and the seeds of this seasons "mission" were set up by the end of the first hour of the two hour premier. This season's plot, which is to take down the evil corporation that was behind being put in jail in the first season, with people who knew the characters father who was also trying to take down the.... no, forget it, it doesn't matter really, each episode will end on a cliffhanger, the plot will progress just enough to keep you from realizing what they're doing to you, and in the end they'll set up a dramatic ending and get you set up for season 5. At least this one isn't people breaking out of prison (at least yet).

Rating 2.5/5, chances of watching, 4/5.

America's Next Top Model

Same crap, new season. Same batch of interchangeable, overly emoting, overly hyper attention-whore girls. Same critique, same judges, same challenges. The only new and potentially interesting (but not really) aspect this season is the inclusion of a transvestite in the contestants. Ironically enough (not really) the one girl most vocal about how s(he) didn't belong was the first to be sent home. They had said before how a "top" model can look like a tranny, seems they wanted to test the theory. My prediction is that s(he) will stick around a while, cause lots of controversy, be involved in at least one nude photo shoot, and then be voted out mid-season amid accolades of how s(he) helped further awareness and the cause of transgendered people everywhere. Then s(he) and all the contestants and winners return to obscurity after becoming the 10th (or is it 11th) "top" model. Seriously, has anyone seen any of the previous winners anywhere after the show? Anyone?

Last season they made a big deal because a contestant had aspergers, this I figure is just upping the ante a bit. The next season I'm expecting an all-midget lineup.

Rating 3/5, chances of watching 5/5 (but only for the photography aspect you understand?).

Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles

Premiering tonight, just before episode 2 of Prison Break. Taking up exactly where season 1 left off this at least doesn't do the "clean up loose ends right away and start a new tact" thing. Kinda. Actually no, they did pretty much exactly that and (spoiler alert, select to un-hide) completely reversed Summer Glau's role in the first 30 minutes from protecting terminator to attacking terminator... at least for some of the episode.

I wasn't hugely into this show for season 1 to be honest, it always felt like a really low budget terminator movie that some film school student had done. Different actors, lower budget, etc. Still not terrible, but it never seemed to escape feeling like a cheap knock off from the movie.

Rating 3.5/5, chances of watching 3.5/5.

Beverly Hills 90210 2.0

No. Freakin. Way.
Actually I did record this as I remember enjoying the first one in the throws of teen angst back in the 90s. Luckily for me the PVR was on the fritz and it recorded without sound. I flipped through it a few minutes at a time just to see what it looked like and decided "never" based on that alone. Maybe the current generation will appreciate it though.

Tomorrow is the premier of the first new show of the season, Fringe which sounds like a bit of a different version of the X-Files. We'll see how that goes. Survivor, Heroes, The Office, and Knight Rider, and Dexter are all upcoming in the next weeks.

Will update when there are updates.

Update #1: Looks like there are still routing issues, which is causing DNS resolving issues (even after putting in the openDNS servers to use). So my guess is that the hosting company's network is a bit FUBAR right now, and there's not much I can do about it on my end here. Hopefully this will resolve itself soon.

Update #2: And like magic, everything is fixed in the morning. Looks like the hosting company's router is back up and going.

• First is the fact I had to step over a bum walking to my car from the train this afternoon. I have sympathy for the down and out, I really do, and I have enough guilt that I put probably more money than I should in the various hats, cups and plates stuck under my nose on a daily basis. It's really not just the fact that some guy was asleep stretched out over most of the stair on the walkway from the train station to the parking lot. It's that, plus the guy asleep under the walkway last week (same guy maybe?) and the groups of kids who commonly gather without regard for the commuters coming home after a long day of work who may not want to navigate through their gaggle of "look at us, we're cool rebellious teens!" in the walkway. It's also the graffiti that's all over the walkway and station, which used to be cleaned up and painted over before the city gave up, and that three of four different occassions in the last year a plate or two of the no doubt very expensive glass was broken by (I'm assuming) kids horsing around and doing damage just for shits and giggles.
  
  I (vaugly) remember what it's like to be a kid and no doubt did all sorts of stupid things in my youth (none of which I'll detail here as my parents make up at least 1 of the 4 readers of this page). I grew up in a small town and no doubt got just as bored as people in mission do when you're young and have nothing to do.
  
  I'm proud of this town. I've lived here four years and enjoy the small town feel, good environment (for the most part anyway) and overall "good feel" of the town. However, the train station though is the first thing that a lot of visitors see when they visit the city, and I'm embarrassed that the first thing they should see is a bum sleeping on the stairs, or a bunch of kids rudely blocking their path. I hope I find the proper outlet to vent on (probably by phone as there isn't a mayoral email address I can see).
  
• ICBC. F-n IC-F-n-BC. Argh. So after my little fender bender the other week I got a letter from ICBC saying "you're 100% at fault." OK, sucks to be me, so I call them and put in an impassioned plea and appeal the decision. I give a statement to a nice lady (Nice Lady #1) with all the details that I could.
  
  Fast forward a week or three. I get a call from another nice lady (Nice Lady #2) saying that she's looked over my statement and feels that I shouldn't be 100% at fault, and that the file needs to be sent to some internal process, or higher up the chain (or something) for review and will (most likely, I understand there's no guarantee) come back with a "not 100% at fault" decision. This costs $50 to me, but that will be waived if the 100%-my-fault decision comes back changed (which again, she thinks it would be). At this point it sounds good to me, $50 is way better than the loss of some of my safe driver discount and all that other stuff.
  
  Fast forward another week or so, now last thursday or so. I get a call from now a different nice lady (let's be original and call her Nice Lady #3), who I presume is calling to get information about the case, or review things, ask questions, something like that. She starts talking about sending case notes to me for review, which confuses me a lot (not hard to do). After a fairly confusing phone conversation I'm able to gleam that the "internal review" is for ICBC to look at things and see if they did their job right, and also an opportunity for me to have the case reviewed by a third party (a lawyer I guess?). She also tells me that if Nice Lady #2 thought that the decision was wrong, she had the opportunity to change it right then and there, and there was no need to send anything off for any review, which is for some other reason (I think). The conversation ended with Nice Lady #3 saying she was going to talk to Nice Lady #2 about this (and from her tone of voice, rip her head off) and get back to me.
  
  So now it's another few days later with no word from anyone. Maybe I can get a "no fault" decision by default, or ICBC incompetence?

One of the great things about linux is that there is a real feeling that the community actually listens. I have no idea how you'd submit a bug to Microsoft or Apple, I really don't. I don't know if I need to be an MVP, an Gold level partner, a ACG (Apple Certified Genius(tm)(r)(c)) (actually I just totally made that up), or what. With Linux distros, desktops and major (and minor) projects there's generally a way to submit bugs or get support via bug tracking sofware of some sort, and more often than not you get a response. You can even submit suggestions and there is a good chance that it will actually get implemented or fixed (I believe a bug I reported to the Mozilla browser got fixed, go me!).

However there are now three bugs that I've reported and recently got updates about that pissed me off a bit.

[Bug 145524] Show emblems from Nautilus

In the main file manager for GNOME there is some inconsistancy with the "emblems" you can apply to folder icons... seems like a simple fix to me, but I'm not a GTK coder. The only real activity this has gotten over the last 4 years is people agreeing with me that it's a bug, showing examples of it, asking about the status, doing the classic OSAM (Open Source Asshole Move... I totally just made that up too) of "well you write a patch then!"

[Bug 85973] no drop down box for "find" in groups

This is another simple (to me anyway) omission when Pan (my newsreader of choice) got rewritten from the GTK 1.x to GTK 2.x toolkits. Basically the whole thing was re-written and a few minor details were missed. No biggie I guess. Except that in six (6) years this hasn't been done. It was re-prioritized around 2004, a suggestion made in 2006, and then in 2008 the commenter from 2006 was reproached for the way they did a OSAM.

[Bug 123796] hiding a panel with dual monitor moves panel to other monitor

This was an issue I got probably around the time I first got a dual monitor setup in 2003, 5 years ago, with an easily reproducible issue regarding panels and dual monitor setups. The only activity it's gotten in 5 years is people reporting that it's still happening.

These are the sort of things that turn people off to FLOSS and the community, which is sad. If you're not a coder with a good knowledge of the guts of the system the main ways you can contribute is to write documentation and report bugs, and people asking "how can I help" are constantly told this. But when those contributions are ignored for months and years, well, why bother? To put things in perspective, the last bug was reported on GNOME 2.4, the current version is 2.22, that's 9 releases (assuming that they did actually go all the way from 2.4, 2.6, 2.8 .. 2.22).

From the developer perspective of course, I'm sure it's tough dealing with an army of demanding whiners complaining that some incidental bug on some hardware or software set up that you may not have complaining that you're not fixing at the same time as you have a day job and put out software in your spare time for free, and not doing anything to help you along other than mention that it's still not fixed.... still not fixed.... still not fixed.....

Course, at least I don't have to pay Microsoft $99 per incident to be told it's not a bug, it's a feature, and it's my fault anyway. Well, that's how I imagine it is anyway. A search for "How to report a bug to microsoft" has the top results either dead links (requiring me to login with a live.com / hotmail.com email address), outdated information or articles saying how it's impossible to submit a bug to Microsoft. Submitting a search for "report a bug" from the front page of Microsoft.com crashes Firefox!!!

I don't know if it's better to not be able to report bugs, or report them and have them ignored... :)

[Bug 113556] META Refresh does not update back history as expected

This is the oldest bug in the list, one I reported to mozilla in 2001... looks like mozilla is doing a big bug-triage and this bug is being shuffled around.]]> http://arcterex.net/blog/archives/2008/07/30/allow_me_to_defanboy_a_bit_lin.html http://arcterex.net/blog/archives/2008/07/30/allow_me_to_defanboy_a_bit_lin.html Linux Rants Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:20:16 -0800 Normally I'm not a huge fanboy, and I try (no, really, I do) not to turn into an Apple Fanboy (or a Linux Fanboy), at least to too extreme an extreme.

However, one thing I noticed a bit ago that I thought I should mention, at least in the "this is where Apple wins" department.... I opened up the iWork '08 spreadsheet program, Numbers and was asked to choose a template. For shits and giggles I selected "Budget" and was presented with this default document:

(Clicky Clicky for a bigger image)

So first of all it's beautifully setup, second of all it's functional, and third, it's well thought out. The sections and definitions make sense, it deals with the standard cases for a normal household budget. Also it allows you to relatively easily figure it out, giving very low barrier to entry by allowing the user to just plug numbers in to match your own particular circumstance. Oh, and this is probably the least colorful and "fun" of the templates that you're presented with.

Does excel have anything like this? I really don't like railing on Microsoft but when you start up excel you get an empty spreadsheet at worst, and a list of boring stock templates (if I remember right, no copy of Excel around here right now).

It's this sort of thing that creates the Apple fanboys, and keeps them. The non-fanboys discount this sort of thing with "blah blah not industry standard software, blah blah too expensive blah blah pay Steve Jobs $200 every year for updates blah blah", but someone (like me) who is not a fanboy and who has the opportunity to experience "the cult of mac"... it blew me away.

Apple somehow was able to make spreadsheets fun. Fun! Spreadsheets!! Me and Firefly sat down and started plugging in our own numbers and watching the graphs go up and down and it was fun! WTF!? It's easy to talk about these things and discount them, but it's really weird when it actually happens.

Fanboy mode off.

Don't get me wrong, I know I'm doing it wrong, but as a rational person I had the idea that running 6 miles a week and going to the gym twice (though I rarely make it past 45 minutes in there) would do something all other things being equal.

And of course proper diet and everything, and the 2 hours of sitting on a train and 8 hours of sitting in a desk certainly doesn't help either. I'm wondering if just stopping the exercise would affect anything.

Bah.