jr conlin's ink stained banana

At work, there's a conference room that looks out over a section of Winchester Blvd. Winchester is major road with a ramp to the local freeway and has a set of rail tracks running next to it for a bit. Those tracks were damaged last year when a train derailed, and they're finally going in to fix them properly, so that section of Winchester to the south of us is closed. There are several large "ROAD CLOSED" signs located just after the ramp onto the freeway, along with three or for big, blinky, CALTRANS traffic info signs further up Winchester, announcing the fact that said road is closed.

i note all of this because this afternoon, whilst waiting for a meeting to start i watched eight cars jockey drive through a narrow gap between the multiple ROAD CLOSED signs in order to drive across the overpass, and then do a U turn once they discover that several sets of jersey wall barriers really do mean that the road is not open. i'll even add that a couple of the drivers had to stop in front of one of the ROAD CLOSED signs in order to let other fellow soon-to-be-turning-their-collective-asses-around drivers to enter.

Part of me really wanted to go down to the intersection when they returned so i can point at them and laugh.

Doubly so when another batch of 10 cars decided that multiple ROAD CLOSED signs apparently didn't mean them.

Oh, and that i later learned that one of the signs was pushed out of the way by a driver of an expensive automobile who was quite positive the road was indeed open, regardless of any statement to the contrary.

Sigh. This is why i want to pass legislation allowing for remotely activated head slapping devices installed into vehicles.

Part of me shouldn't be horribly surprised. When Vista came out, i made a personal promise that it was going to be the last version of Microsoft's OS i'd buy. This sounds like a noble sentiment, except for the fact that i'm no fan of Mac OS's life on rails and the various versions of Linux are still very much a mess. So if i want to do anything that 95% of humanity would like to do, i've got to slog through this crap.

Plus, being able to get a copy of Win7 Home Premium for $44 was a nice bonus.

i had heard some fairly good things about Win7. It was heralded as "Far better than Vista" and a more usable OS. Now, by and large, i wasn't terribly put off by a good deal of Vista. Yeah, there were psychotic restrictions preventing me from doing some things i'd previously been able to do, but i was able to turn off the Paranoid Clippy that is UAC, the fugly Barbie Dreamworld of Aero, and tweak things like my desktop icons to something that didn't consume tremendous amounts of precious real estate so they could smooth the dithered shadow of a pencil eraser.

Heck, i was even kinda grooving the quick search tool in the menu bar for quickly finding programs i'd installed.

So i figured "No big deal, i'll toss a copy of Win7 on my old Fujitsu (with the new, much quieter fan) and set that up for guests." i figured i'd dual boot it so if Win7 turned into an ugly fracas, i'd still be able to use it.

Yeah, about that…

Turns out that there's a few things that even those 15 page Win7 overviews kinda skipped. One being that if you do a custom install, Win7 "helpfully" moves your old install from /Windows to /Windows.old, which kinda breaks dual boot. Oh yeah, and the install process doesn't tell you this until after you're irrevocably committed to that path. Yay!

Still, having long ago realized that to retain one's sanity, never upgrade an Windows install, i forged ahead, and discovered that much of my more than two year old laptop wasn't actually supported under Win7. To the point where the Vista64 drivers wouldn't install. Urgh. i was also very happy i replaced the CPU fan because that puppy was kicking on a helluva lot during the install. One would think that for what effectively is a file move and copy with a few quick hardware polls that wouldn't be a problem, but apparently it was. Likewise was the fact that Microsoft again decided to move things to inexplicable locations just to mess with folks that have previously used any version of their system. (One might guess that they pretty much assume that nobody realistically uses their software past one install.)

Several hours later i've got a laptop that does 40% of what i want, doesn't appear to do the "Control Wheel" trick to resize the desktop icons from "Gran'ma doesn't need her glasses" to "i've only got 1200×600, can i have more than three icons please?", and still need to move a bunch of apps from warm storage to their new home. Fortunately, i'm not going to use this box heavily.

(i'll toss in that so far the easiest programs to move this way have been Mozilla stuff. Install TrueCrypt, mount the secure drive, copy the directories and boom, i'm up and happy. i'll bet iTunes has a complete conniption what with one of the "Authorized Computers" now being completely unaccessible, but then that's why i don't buy DRM'd crap from Apple.)

i'll also toss in that without careful construction, major linux upgrades aren't worlds of candy and sunshine either, but those tend to be far more predictable. Usually. Ok, KDE generally screws things up, but at least you've got clear options.

Needless to say, when i get the "free" upgrade to win7 for the new laptop, i'm going to be holding off performing that bit of brain surgery for a few more months. i'll need to do a lot more prep for that: Full backups, cleaner partitions, removing sharp implements, acquiring large quantities of alcohol, etc.

Recently, while trying to use Teh Technologies of the Interwebs with a relative of reported technical expertise, i was reminded that a number of folks still don't have the minimum set of accounts on the various services.

Truth is, to use all that the internet has to offer, you need to still hold accounts on several services, or at the very least with two core companies: Yahoo and Google. i'd recommend that you don't stay logged in to either of those accounts beyond using the service of interest, use fake personal information where and when possible, and reasonably unique passwords to prevent bad guys from grabbing control of all of these should one fail. You can do things to make your password secure like "{Common Word}-{middle 2 digits of your social security}-{sitename spelled backwards}" e.g. "Daisy-29-oohaY" works great. Why spell the site name backwards? Because far too many feel that including the site name in the password is bad. So even if you were to use something heavily secure like "06613a5f567bd16d8699cdb972f6bb29#Yahoo" it's still inadmissible.

So, why those accounts? Because those will get you 90% of the online stuff that's free.
Yahoo: YMail, Delicious, Flickr, Pipes, Messenger, Upcoming.
Google: Picasa, Docs, Calendar, GMail, GTalk, Reader, Youtube.

Having accounts on those three services will make both your and your friends and associates lives far easier.

i'd also optionally recommend Amazon for services like Mechanical Turk, and Wishlists which tend to make relatives stop asking what you want for Christmas/Birthday/Anniversary/J. Random Reason.

Honestly, having to put together this list kinda saddens me, because in reality, we should all be using OpenID for this crap. Unfortunately, while OpenID is valuable to you as a person, actually offering it for users to log in means that companies such as Yahoo, Google and Facebook can't own the picayune details of your life that they can resell as ad marketables, so there's precious little financial incentive, and a whole heap of disincentive to offer OpenID. While both offer OpenID services, sites like Facebook don't accept everyone's (In fact, Facebook accept Google's credentials, but not Yahoo's).

So, you now have your assignments. Get your relatives and others set up on both those accounts so you can stop banging your head against the keyboard when they tell you they want you to email them a full sized copy of a picture you posted on Flickr.

In the last quarter of the previous millennium (when these sorts of things were kind of popular), i attended a computer fair. It was full of folks selling new and used computer parts and programs back when you couldn't just pop down to Frys or MicroCenter and pick up a new full height, 300MB drive. In the darkened corner of the fair was a chiropractor who was offering free back alignments. i don't believe he got a single customer.

i was reminded of this recently when seeing the latest folderol surrounding the Y!Hack Day Taiwan Lap Dances. In it, you see programmers with scantily clad go-go dancers prancing about them. While i understand cultural differences, and tend to agree with folks like Simon who feel that it's not really the best way to get more women excited by hacking. i'd say it's more like the guy with the chiropractor stand.

To me, the crappiest parts of various Hack Days are the distractions. While i totally understand having something like a Wii or a few Playstations with Guitar Hero so that folks can engage their subconscious mind on a particular problem, those things are less distracting than a Big Ticket item like concerts or simulated sex. You're in the midst of thinking about a big issue, and wham, suddenly you've got a scheduled distraction.

Sure, you could skip it, but the peer pressure and constant worry that "You're missing The Cool Thing!" is pestering the back of your head. These are the equivalent to the meeting that crops up in the middle of the day, except this goes longer than an hour and takes even longer to come back down off of.

Add-On events like these are inevitably conceived and planned by folks who aren't really coders. They're marketers or directors looking for some reason why folks would want to be there other than to code. They're the same sort of folks that feel you need to have a star-studded half time show or have a raffle at a reunion dinner because the main event is obviously not that interesting to them, so it can't be that interesting to you.

(i'll also note that these sort of big events tend to draw huge temporary crowds of people who aren't there for the main event and just get in the way.)

Me? i like these sorts of events as is because coding with a group of peers is electric. It's a huge rush and a great bonding event even without getting a pretend STD from some random individual. If you're a coder and haven't been to one, try organizing one, or go to a lan party. There's a reason these things are popular and it's not the balloons, circus animals, or the opportunity to have somebody crack your back for free.

Well, i think i'm moved in.

Ok, i'm still in the same house and all, but i've moved my portable brain over to a new machine. In this case, an Acer Timeline which i'm seriously starting to dig. Mostly.

i still really like my Fujitsu, but truth be told, it was starting the inevitable slide. The battery barely lasted an hour, the fan bearing was wearing out, and the earphone jack was broken. None of which are really huge problems, and i'll probably fix all of them, but honestly, lugging around a 6lb laptop was also getting a bit old.

The new box weighs in at around 3lbs and is far less capable. That said, it's a portable brain and not meant to be my main machine, so what it lacks in ability, it makes up for in portability. It's not all sunshine and roses, naturally:

The Bad Bits:
Build Quality: It feels cheap. One of the hinge covers broke off in transit (fixed, but annoying), the USB slots are a tad tight, the keys are a bit wobbly and every square inch is a fingerprint magnet. In addition, it's single core, 1300×768 and only has 3 USB ports.

The Good Bits:
The battery lasts 8 hours. That's 8 hours of being online, actually doing things with the display half dimmed. It's also fairly zippy for single core. It's around an inch thick, and with a 14" screen, it's small enough to fit into the smaller pocket of my backpack. Basically, it fulfills the goal.

The twiddly bits:
It's currently running Vista, which i've turned off a ton of stuff, as well as optimized it for a small screen (Set the window title size to be a 7pt font and the bar size to be 16pix, Ctrl Wheel resized the desktop icons to around 24px, turned off Aero, and sized down the control bar as small as possible.

So, why not a netbook? Because i couldn't justify getting one. Netbooks don't fit in my pocket either, generally have a smaller screen and keyboard, and the battery doesn't last that long. Yeah, i'd save a few hundred, but honestly, they're not as good.

i know that this box will annoy me too sometime in the future. i'll happily point out when that happens.