You must be present to be here
With apoligies to the two people that may still keep track of this blog, a change of hosts has played havoc with the posting dates. Apparently, we cannot properly unpack an archive of the past posts, so all the timestamps on the posts have been reset to today. Chronology is lost. It's all still there, but just not in the right order.
Perhaps, if overcome with some sort of ambition, we may look at an alternative to Bloxsom. But I wouldnt count on it.
And an update! T'was a hassle, but I managed to re-import the stories with their proper times. Chronology restored!
Dem Annoying Upgrade Blues
So last week, I took the plunge and upgraded the venerable Sardonicus
to Kubuntu Jaunty Jackalope. Overall, it seems fairly stable. KDE4
has a few differences that produce a bit of cognitave dissonance.
The biggest problem I have is that some applications I'd come to
rely on have simply dissappeared.
A note on the economy
I had to talk to a representative of a Large Financial Institution today about rolling an old IRA into
my current one. During the process, he asked why I was moving my funds and I explained that I was
consolidating several accounts and "getting them out of the market."
I could swear I hear a sotto voce "Ah."
A Starbucks value menu?
There can be no more certain evidence of the utter collapse of civilization than
hearing that Starbucks has introduced a value menu (but they don't call it that) which includes...
Wait for it....
Instant coffee! I just caught that detail on the morning TV news. The instant offering will sell for under a dollar. No word on the source of the instant. Wouldn't it be a kick to find out they've been serving Folger's Crystals all along?
Microsoft touts "Life Without Walls"... again
Don't they ever learn? Microsoft's latest marketing pitch, "Life Without Walls",
pushes seamless integration between the desktop, the laptop, the handheld/smartphone
and... the web. That's just the wrong idea.
The Forever Scan
I have to remember to update and scan my laptop more often. When it's been a few months,
the reboots and scan take forever! Note to self: clean out the Cygwin download cache
first. AVG takes a looong time to scan all those .tgz files!
What's the deal with ABC's HD feed?
I cannot believe I'm the only one seeing this. When watching ABC's HD programs (primarily news
broadcasts), some of the commercials are missing a part of the soundtrack. The background
sounds and music are there, but the primary vocal is gone. It's not my TV. I hear
the same problem in the digital audio output directly from the cable box. And if I
switch to the analog channel, the soundtrack is normal.
I've tried Googling and come up empty. It appears as though the center channel has been stripped from the 5.1 audio track. Annoying as hell, and curiously it was mostly pharmaceutical ads that were affected. Now today, it's over half the spots broadcast. Hasn't anyone else noticed this?
In case you didn't notice, this economy sucks!
OK, I'm pissed off! After damn near 20 years of a fairly successful career in programming, two weeks ago I felt the cruel edge of the economic blade and got laid off my job of 3 years. I am not used to being unemployed. Now, I have to come to terms with just what the fsck is going on.
Don't Look Now
I might have suddenly remembered that this site exists. Maybe I'll even do
something about that.
Keeping it simple, stupid!
The KISS rule has been around for longer than we can remember. Some would say
it was the basis of Apple's 'It Just Works' philosophy. And it was certainly
on my mind when I decided to heat Rant Central back up. That's why we're now
running on Blosxom.
Better look out!
The Thanksgiving Day pissy attitude may have passed, and new things are likely to appear. Stay tuned, if that's the kind of thing you like to do.
