2013

“HAHAHA. Thank you for correcting my English, which stinks”

Hoping for a happy Winter

Yesterday after work (and a nap) I figured I’d make my bleak Blackberry a bit more merry for the season.

This is the most cheerful this phone will ever get, I fear

I still haven’t been able to get rid of Bing (which wasn’t there when I first got the phone) thanks to Verizon sneaking in crapware, but aside from that, being my primary email phone and second line, it’s doing pretty well. Battery life is still abysmal though and I’ve been told this is an existing problem in the 9930 and 9900 series. Lovely!

Meanwhile my voice phone is the Samsung Galaxy Stellar which, contrary to nay sayers is actually pretty good despite not being as powerful newer models. I got it free with my renewal plan.

And this was taken with the Blackberry’s allegedly superior 5MP camera.

And these are the same lighting conditions. Can you believe it?

Grainy and out of focus? Check.
Tweaking settings have no effect? Check.

When Blackberry builds better products and stop riding on the coattails of its past achievements, it will be a successful company once again. I won’t be holding my breath.

Reception of the Stellar is on par with the Blackberry. I even lose high-speed internet, and all the bars even, at exactly the same locations while on the train (before the tunnel’s in sight). 4G — and Blackberry’s 3G — is confined to my apartment most of the time, when I don’t need it, and only at certain spots in New York. Because Verizon lies through its teeth about the 4G coverage. I noticed this happens mainly around Crestwood, back to full strength at Tuckahoe and Broxville, down again at Fleetwood and Woodlawn, back again at Williamsbridge through Botanical Gardens, somewhat spotty at Fordham and finally down again at Tremont and Melrose.

After Harlem the train is right about to enter Grand Central underground so naturally there should be no signal. Yet somehow, I get 2-3 bars around 10 seconds after we enter the tunnel.

I guess poor people really don’t need 4G.

Edit.

Just realized, this post’s ending was anything but happy, so here’s the balcony decoration my neighbors put up. Think they went a wee bit overboard?

It’s a deer!

Why Linus sucks and is awesome at the same time

Warning, naughty language.

Behold :

On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 6:08 AM, Mauro Carvalho Chehab
<mchehab@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Are you saying that pulseaudio is entering on some weird loop if the
> returned value is not -EINVAL? That seems a bug at pulseaudio.

Mauro, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

It's a bug alright - in the kernel. How long have you been a
maintainer? And you *still* haven't learnt the first rule of kernel
maintenance?

If a change results in user programs breaking, it's a bug in the
kernel. We never EVER blame the user programs. How hard can this be to
understand?

To make matters worse, commit f0ed2ce840b3 is clearly total and utter
CRAP even if it didn't break applications. ENOENT is not a valid error
return from an ioctl. Never has been, never will be. ENOENT means "No
such file and directory", and is for path operations. ioctl's are done
on files that have already been opened, there's no way in hell that
ENOENT would ever be valid.

> So, on a first glance, this doesn't sound like a regression,
> but, instead, it looks tha pulseaudio/tumbleweed has some serious
> bugs and/or regressions.

Shut up, Mauro. And I don't _ever_ want to hear that kind of obvious
garbage and idiocy from a kernel maintainer again. Seriously.

I'd wait for Rafael's patch to go through you, but I have another
error report in my mailbox of all KDE media applications being broken
by v3.8-rc1, and I bet it's the same kernel bug. And you've shown
yourself to not be competent in this issue, so I'll apply it directly
and immediately myself.

WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE!

Seriously. How hard is this rule to understand? We particularly don't
break user space with TOTAL CRAP. I'm angry, because your whole email
was so _horribly_ wrong, and the patch that broke things was so
obviously crap. The whole patch is incredibly broken shit. It adds an
insane error code (ENOENT), and then because it's so insane, it adds a
few places to fix it up ("ret == -ENOENT ? -EINVAL : ret").

The fact that you then try to make *excuses* for breaking user space,
and blaming some external program that *used* to work, is just
shameful. It's not how we work.

Fix your f*cking "compliance tool", because it is obviously broken.
And fix your approach to kernel programming.

             Linus

Meanwhile in Amish country…

Hope everyone had a Merry Indoor-Pine-Tree-Wrapped-In-Paper-Mache-With-A-Star-On-Top Day! I tend to celebrate IPTWIPMWASOTs with plastic trees only because I have girly hands that are girlier than most girls’ and pine needles are absolute murder on them. I’ve had a bout with Pericarditis a few years ago and I’d much rather go through that again than have to stick my hands in a pine tree.

My mom got me a bottle of Inca Kola. BEST GIFT EVAR!

I got dragged into the shopping foray over Thanksgiving despite not feeling well (who in their right minds would turn down a free chocolate cake even with a fever?) I’m sorta glad I did, because it’s not often I really go shopping on the count of my severe allergy to commercialism and fixing-things-that-ain’t-broke. An old friend of my mom brought me along to go shopping at the Danbury Mall in Connecticut. I’ve been here before when the iPhone first came out.

The Crappening

I came across these stalls where women would apply toxic chemicals in vials of goo in an effort to look more beautiful superficially by destroying their natural beauty, because (God forbid) a presence of personality and charm haven’t been bottled yet. I’m sure Avon is working on it though.

There was an eerie silence as I waded through clothing isles punctuated by the sound of me gasping at the creepiest thing I’ve seen in a while. This is the sort of thing I’d expect to come across in a cemetery at night. I’m the kind of person that can shatter a mirror just by smiling at my own reflection and it still caught me off-guard.

It’s the New England Chupacabra!

Clearly, it looks human. Sort of. I quickly went past that… whatever it was and came across the men’s watches section. Is it just me or are these getting bigger and bigger for no discernible reason? Are men’s eyesight getting weaker somehow or are our penises getting smaller? I mean, I know men do have bigger wrists… well not me; I look like a hairy 16 year-old girl with a face that could turn Medusa to stone, but these were approaching ridiculous sizes.

Is that case made of Depleted Uranium?

These things really do weigh more than a small moon

These were almost the size of my whole bloody palm! It’s a shame that good taste in appearances have gone out the window and it’s not just in the West. Although I most certainly can’t afford one, and I know taste is subjective, I think Bell & Ross is one of few brands that have the ideal appearance for men’s watches mastered. They’re clear (the chief function of a watch, in case people forgot, is to tell time), have good Swiss movements, simple and above all else are tasteful.

Well, this was the mall so onward…

I then came across a picture of an actor with a beard wearing simple, quaint, clothing selling a heater that Amish people don’t make.

Did they make the cabinet or the heater? Or neither? Still not clear on the details.

I can’t lie; I do like the idea of having one of these in my cabin, but the power demand will still be unacceptable considering the small roof size for solar panels. Plus the pellet stove will be more effective for heat anyway.

I popped into the Verizon store to get a new Bluetooth hands free set since mine got stepped on at work (yeah, someone will lose an ear when I go back to work). I’m reminded this is still Danbury, I.E. New England country bumpkin territory when I came across this.

Sure love em corn dogs done right, but I ain’t riskin mah fingers!

There’s been a lot of hoopla over the “War Christmas” which is ironic since Christmas has been waging a war on Christians since the advent of commercialism decades ago. The Lexus ads call it the “December to Remember Sales Event”, but I think calling it the “Buy-More-Useless-Junk Event” is more appropriate. The above iGrill really drove the point home to me that the “War on Christmas” people really have their priorities misaligned.

I got into an argument with someone over this very point right before Christmas. He’s one of those people who claim that somehow everyone coming together and enjoying the holidays in their own way is somehow detrimental to the spirit of Christmas. When I tried to explain to these people how their beliefs are quite safe, because, well… they’re their beliefs (unless the aliens come down to Earth and reach into their minds to brainwash them into clicking on PSY’s Gangnam Style video over and over until it reaches 1 Billion views on December 21^st thereby initiating the End of the World… which didn’t happen), I usually the get irate retort :

WELL, WHAT ABOUT YOU, HUH? WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IN?!

Chocolate and Donny Osmond.

No, seriously. Hear me out.

For every problem you may have (short of being able to fly an airplane during a hailstorm while being attacked by chimps tripping on acid) you will find an answer in either Chocolate or Donny Osmond.

Consider this :
If you’re faced with the problem of choosing between charity and avoiding troublesome in-laws, Donny Osmond would say to face them with your heart open and you shall overcome whatever adversity may strike you. I have followed this whenever I meet family and Donny’s advice (that he never gave me personally, but came to me in a vision through Crazy Horses) has never let me down. If this is not enough, chocolate will be the ideal peacemaker between all. And if that fails, well… Chocolate and Donny Osmond work in mysterious ways.

I have to start work again tomorrow, sadly, and even though I do have the coming weekend off, I’ll probably be spending time with family. So if I don’t get to post until after the 1st…

Happy New Year!

I Survived 2012

If you survived the Mayan Doomsday / Apocalypse / etc… etc… and want the rest of the world to know (you know, in case they’re still stuck in bunkers and staring at you through the peephole), wear the proof of resolve on your sleeve. *Yes,  this is totally a shameless plug.

I Survived 12 – 21 – 12 . You know, in case that crazy uncle still won’t believe you.

Somehow we all know it was… or the people reading too much into it were.

Spoiler… Nothing Happens.

 

Or if you like the original calendar and don’t want any snark…

The original calendar (minus snark)