20060326

Adventures in Fast Forwarding

Legend of Lemnear, save your sanity and don't watch it. Don't believe me? Believe him or him.

Or believe me.

A comprehensive list of things Lemnear fails to be.

-Entertaining
-Intelligent
-Porn (Though it tried)
-Worth watching

The story unfolds with the obligatory burning village, the obligatory dying townspeople, the obligatory "I'm the only person in the whole village who stands a chance against the evil but gets caught or killed anyway" would be hero, the obligatory sorceror etc. Everything in this was so standard it might as well have been titled, "An animated summary of common elements in 80s anime".

To put it simply, I watched this via occaisional glances over my shoulder while a couple of my friends watched it at 4x speed. I didn't miss anything. I quite honestly knew as much as they did concerning plot, character development, and events, probably because there were none that were noteworthy.

Actually, I lie. There was one noteworthy event. The main heroine dies. She's the legendary warrior who has to save everyone, and she dies. This was the most beautiful moment in the entire "epic". The world was righted, and all the people in it beautiful; until she arbitrarily revived, and with her brought back to life her brother/lover/person/thing.

Yeah...

20060321

Hah!

I knew the instant I made certain assertions (in the post below which you should read first) they would be refuted by empirical evidence, and so they were.

It appears that the problem with my CD-ROM is either a function of the case I have it in or the CD-ROM itself. The Floppy may just be related to its current hookup, which was done after installation using the old motherboard.

The long log in time thing, however, is just something else that I've managed to fix.

What I guess I'll end up doing for a while is not using CDs. However, this sucks royally.

I'll figure out whether I should eat the cost of a new CD-ROM drive or whether the case itself is the problem soon enough, but this has been a stressful enough morning as is.

Gyargh. Way to waste an hour and a half of time I had set aside for RELAXING. Now the only things I have to look forward to today are lunch, two classes, and a paper due on my birthday.

I'd cry, but somewhere kids are starving.

Rantification

Rant rant rant.

Right now, I'm watching another system restore attemp to remedy the following crippling problems with Raijin.

1. Exceptionally long wait time between Windows loading and the login screen appearing.
2. The inability of Windows to read floppy disks in my drive.
3. The inability of Windows to realize that there are more kinds of CDs than just audio CDs.

Now that I've finally solved once and for all every hardware issue I was having, Windows has decided it is time to make up for all those years I missed out on the suckiness of 3.1, 95 and so on.

Let me also specify that Norton Antivirus is crap. Crapity crap. Crapity crapicity of craphood. I think it operates on the principle that if it uses up gobs of CPU time and claims it didn't find any viruses, people will think it does such a great job at auto-protecting the computer from them. I would do just as well using a method of defeating viruses pioneered by a friend of mine. Namely, let them all in and hope they cancel each other out.

If it wasn't for the fact that I managed to fix the CD-Rom problem last night, only to have it return this morning, I'd think there was something wrong with my drive. If it wasn't for the fact that the very floppy drive that "has no disk" in it was used to install my RAID drivers, I'd think that was screwy coincidentally at the same time. If it wasn't for the fact that my Windows installation was obviously ripping apart at the seams, I'd think it was a good OS.

Needless to say I'm glad that I've been backing up important files on my Mac. The latest version of my senior project lies housed safely in the bosom of an ancient iMac whose only failings have been in hardware, and only twice at that. The ease with which Macs rebound from disaster has amazed me. In comparison, the complete shenanigans I go through to simply diagnose my problems leave me in tears.

So now as system restore fails to correct any problems once again, I pray that my CD-ROM can function long enough to repair my installation. As it stands, nothing seems to be working and my system is royally screwed.

That's not to say I couldn't live without CD-Roms, floppies or stand to wait an extra minute for my system to start up. However, that's like saying one can still bicycle with only one wheel. THERE'S SOMETHING FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG AND ONLY AN IDIOT WOULD STILL TRY TO USE IT FOR ANY SERIOUS PURPOSE.

I have enough on my plate at the moment without having to deal with Windows going bonkers on me.

And there it goes again with the "lets take 2 minutes to get from loading Windows to the login screen" crap again. This is blargh and a half my friends. Blargh and a half.

I swear there's an undocumented feature in Windows, "Detects most busy time for user and screws up then."

20060320

Temporary?

I have temporary memory. To be more specific, 95% of everything important I digest vanishes into a dusty filing cabinet in my brain, never to be seen again.

In coming home from spring break, I managed to remember everything. Absolutely everything from the least important to almost the most important. I say almost with good reason.

I left my wallet, my keys, and my student ID 500 miles back in Massachusetts.

Whee.

My deepest apologies to my dear parents who have long endured these continual, patience trying adventures.

So I've got a temporary card for the time being. I think the guy I got it couldn't have shaken his head in a more depressing manner when I informed him that I couldn't show him any identification because that was also left behind. Thankfully, some people still do things on good faith.

20060315

Franklin: "Trash"

Hai guys!

This is Franklin. I wanted to let you know, that today is a special day. Today the garbage man gets a big hug.

I always wanted to be a garbage man. Maybe it was the glamour. Maybe it was the interesting things you can find in the garbage. But mostly, it was the fact that I spent so much of my life in a garbage can. My nickname was "Trash"!

My parents were fond of that name. Whenever I opened my mouth to speak, they would throw me in the garbage in appreciation. That's where I met Roachy. Now Roachy and his vast family live with my parents. They were so overjoyed that the regular trashcan was not good enough.

My parents dropped me off at the town dump. It was a goldmine of new friends and ideas. I was so thankful for the kindness my parents showed me.

20060313

Technically Incompetant

Job hunting is in full swing during spring break, and I'm plowing ahead despite many, many discouragements. There are plenty of jobs flying around for people with 3 or more years of experience, but trying to find entry-level positions for graduates can be like pulling teeth.

On of my major frustrations is concerning searching various websites that are dedicated towards jobs for graduates, or other websites with an option for restricting searches to such jobs. The problem is, namely, incompetants posting irrelevant jobs or failing to post jobs in such a way as to get the proper response.

Example: I search for jobs in my field. Because I search entry level, jobs for which experience of less than one year is required are shown. However, because whoever posted the job was technically incompetant, they failed to actually fill out the job form properly and simply put everything in the description field and assumed that would work. The requirements field, and the experience field are left to blank and default (less than one year experience) respectively. Thus, I keep getting jobs listed to me that require 3 or more years of experience.

Is it simply because anyone who has any technical knowhow is simply too smart for such mundane jobs? I have no clue, but it keeps bugging me because I have precious little time to figure out whether or not I definitively want to live with my sister and brother-in-law and having my time used up by jobs I'm obviously not qualified for is frustrating.

Grr.

20060307