Posts in month: July, 2003

Ok as you might know I’m a computer technician. Everyone once in a while someone trys to explain a computer problem to me in lay-persons terms that just cracks me up. I’ve had two really good ones today I thought I’d pass along.

Example A:
“I was usin’ Avanti (our print-shop organization software) and I keep gettin’ this error. It keeps askin me what I been doin’ lately.”

I just kept havin images of the computer trying to pick the user up at a bar… “Hey baby, what you been doin’ lately?”

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Example B:
“So I was trying to open this wordperfect thing see? And it says it wants to install something– So I hit ok. Then it starts to download but stops 1/2 way through and says ‘Fuck You!’”

I don’t love my job, but shit like this helps.

I love a good hack. I use XP and have been tinkering with custom themes lately. Like many I used TGTsoft’s StyleXP. This is a decent enough program but it runs as a service and takes up valuable system resources. In today’s surfing on the subject I found a nifty little patcher that will update your uxtheme.dll file to allow the use of non-M$ signed/checksumed themes! Joy and rupture. Here it is if you want to give it a whirl. It was made by the good folks at www.xp-erience.org. Regretfully it looks like their site has been shut down.

Note: This is for Windows XP SP1 ONLY! don’t be a tool and try to use it on something else and break it.

I lost my favorite bar this weekend.
RIP Kronies, may your free beer flow forever in a better place.

I was feeling witty and a little geeky today as I installed a fresh copy of FreeBSD 5.1 on my experiment computer this afternoon. I thought I would share my new motd, inspired by Stanley Kubrick, the USMC and Robert Jones:

FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE (GENERIC) #0: Thu Jun  5 02:55:42 GMT 2003
---------------------------HOBBES----------------------------------
|  This is my unix box.                                           |
|  There are many like it, but this one is mine.                  |
|  My unix box is my best friend.                                 |
|  It is my life.                                                 |
|  I must master it as I master my life.                          |
|  My unix box, without me, is useless.                           |
|  Without my unix box, I am useless.                             |
|  I must secure my unix box well.                                |
|  I must secure it better than my enemy who is trying to hack it.|
|  I must dectect him before he dectects me.                      |
|  I will...                                                      |
-------------------------------------------------------------------
|  If you don't belong here, please fuck off.                     |
|  If you do, have a nice day and be kind to the bandwidth.       |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’ve been a big fan of Tatsuya Ishida’s online comic strip SinFest for quite some time. He’s been just one of the struggling artistic minions for years. You have to admire the tenacity of someone who’s been rejected by the comic book syndicates 11 times so far and keeps trying. Last Wednesday’s strip was a classic, check it out (along with the rest of his entire body of work) here. Although be careful if you’re at work, while its not graphic it has some slightly mature (or if you want to be technical immature) themes.

Oh, by the way, the website is www.sinfest.NET, don’t go to .com unless yer looking for some mediocre internet porn.

Ok I went ahead and imported all of the old entries from my blosxom blog to this one. Some of the formating may have gotten fubar but all the important stuff is there.
Now to actually write something new.

As you can see I’ve moved my blog in an affort to write more in it.
Why you ask?
Simple really I felt that it didn’t belong on a work computer, and I felt that the fact that it was hosted at work limited the things I felt I could talk about.

You will also notice I moved from blossxm to Movable Type.

The main reason is that its just easier, esp since I don’t have a shell account where it’s hosted now.

Anyway I hope I’ll start writing in this again soon. Over the next few days I plan to move all the old stuff over and then on to the new.

Ciao for now.