While some of the rare to find readers of this may have noticed that I am following more or less loosely other blogs, too, there is one among the crowd where the following is an appreciated task for a great variety of reasons. It's this one, The Barreness.
While reading it I've actually discovered that, contrary to former belief, there is an archetype of women that makes me wiggle in my seat, less for the optics and more for the mind, though. Interestingly enough they all have an obsession for cats and seem to have an education and interests not really related to technology. That's kind of a shame as I think that mathematics and informatics bare a huge connection to the less applicable sciences on a meta level. Understanding e. g. the concept of communication Luhmann outlines in his works is way easier if you know the concepts of communication existing in the field of informatics and vice versa. And especially the recent developments, meaning the last couple of centuries and especially decades and years, in the way society works and changes can, in my opinion, not be understood without understanding the impact of technology. And I so love (mean hate) it when people talk about the advent of the internet as a caesura and a paradigm shift when all they know is browsers, email and twitter. But I didn't want to rant about (that kind) of ignorant folk, there's something better to waste words on today!
Follow the link above, read and figuratively stroke your genitals in a sense of wellbeing. If you follow the the first link in her posting you can read that other people find the style of writing as good and intriguing as I do myself, which is sparing you a lot of drivel from my end as I just second what's written there. Especially the part about having read a lot of books and also posts, be it from blogs or boards, and still thinking that the Barreness' blog's damn well written. Did I type still? I meant because of that!
The general topic of the post is the connection between appearance and inner state as much as the question what forms the appearance. That's a topic that has attracted the thoughts of many great minds, even back in ancient Greek where Diogenes is said to have lived in barrel, although this is likely the result of a mistranslation. I personally can relate to the idea of such a live a lot. Due to reasons in my own personal history I am greedy for any kind of profane treasuries like money an possessions, but the only things I really value are immaterial and can only be gotten by using one's own mind and brain. While you may get a nice car and a big house by inheritance or the lottery, true understanding of anything cannot be gained in such a way. Even money in vast quantities and wise men as a surrounding won't teach a fool the merest insight. Character and culture, which I, unlike Diogenes, regard highly, are also things that can only be achieved actively by usage of your brain in various ways. I say mainly because e. g. proper manners of eating can be learned on a purely phenomenological level by imitation and seem to be learned this way mainly today, completely ignoring that these weren't habitus of the fine men in older days, but instead developed out of practical reasons mainly.
There's another old quote from, iirc, Iuvenal, a Roman writer, from, iirc again, his satires that says a sane mind lives in a healthy body. It's an idiom in Germany, but as often the source has been misinterpreted. But let's take a look on this postulated coherence between body and mind. Science says it's true and there's many studies that have shown a clear connection between mental health, the subjective content with oneself and one's situation in general and physical health, interestingly enough from both sides you approach this. E.g. people with depression have not only a severely reduced rate of especially facial movement and expressions and at the same time a lot of physical conditions. On the other hand people who described their mental state as balanced and overall happy had way less (especially severe) medical conditions than expected by the statistics. Of course we get no answer for the question what is cause and what is result, but we only asked for coherence and that's definitely there. But actually this complete paragraph is a digression...
The counterpart of a life philosophy inspired by Diogenes and a life in a barrel, valuing the ideas of insight, understanding and wisdom above all physical goods, has maybe been established by the rise of the it girls. And as I have kind of a history as a type setter I have to congratulate the Barreness on the layout of her post. Having the line "the pathetic wastes of space" appear just under the image of Paris Hilton might be coincidental, but I couldn't have done it any better! The exclusive group of it girl's is in no way self defined, as girls having earned their money themselves are already excluded from being part of this phenomenon. If not directly, then indirectly by not being able to reach the state of mind of a suckling, lacking all the accomplishments in human development that Freud describes as "Ich" and "Über Ich", again. The decision whether you are an it girl or not is one not made by yourself, but by your reception of other people. Deciding that yourself would require a level of reflection that needs to be missing to become one.
And yes, by my own set of morals people are not equal in any way, but equivalent at best. Whether there's a worth to your life or not is a difference everyone makes through thinking and acting. While I'm not sure whether there's a proper scale to determine the absolute worth of a person and how the the things to be factored in should be ranked in their importance, I am absolutely positive that there's people whose life has no worth in any way. But I'm digressing again!
Let's think a second about morals, demands and roles that society has been passing on as traditions since ages. While tradition has been a good mechanism to pass on knowledge and morals in the long gone past, this is starting to get a problem in the last decades, where basically every part of everyday life has been changing or is still changing. If you need an example think about traveling. For hundreds of years the speed of travel was limited by the speed of a horse. At the beginning this was a rare privilege and it got more common later, but for hundreds of years no good or information could travel significantly faster than a horse could run. How unimaginable this is today gets clear if you read what kinds of reservations were mentioned when the first trains emerged. It was seriously questioned whether the human body would really be unharmed traveling at such crazy speeds. That was just 150 years ago and we are now close to making space travel a tourist attraction and the idea to not leave one's hometown ever sounds silly and retarded. So while your grandparents might have been struck with awe when someone arrived with a car in their childhood, the closest thing to that today is maybe picking up trampy High School girls in a used Seven Series to fuck them on the backseat later.
Under such circumstances the step of a single generation is fucking huge and if that certain one of my neighbors would pass on his attitude towards the internet to his son he would make an imbecile out him, too!
Of course tradition doesn't strike as hard in that areas as the realization of the changing circumstances does not need abstraction. And that's where women are actually boned, and not the good way of boned that you should enjoy, but the bad one, that some enjoy none the less. In older times the weak social role of women was not really justified either, but at least the existing differences in physical strength for example did matter. In most cases that's not the case any more, but the still passed on role model is way behind with reflecting that and hence are most women. And that brings us in the middle of the situation described in the post mentioned above, where a literally retarded (as in delayed, slowed down) and obese woman starts attacking one that is none of that - and is able to do so with moral superiority!
The traditional womanly value of giving birth has lost a lot of its worth to me in a society like the current one, where individuals pursue their own freedom and happiness instead of living to serve society and the currency of power has shifted from food and weapons to information. Giving birth to a child is something basically every woman can do without putting effort into it, which does cohere to the fact that the group of individually successful women tends to lose something worth being called birth rate. While moralist bitches might be raging now I'm rather sure that all kinds of feminists would be willing to give a leg for a world in which women aren't limited to and judged by their bodily functions, but instead have the chance, as much as the burden, to prove themselves with more than breasts and their choice of men. I personally highly endorse the ideal of women being equivalent to men. Why exactly is a good question, but in the worst case it's because my role model wants me to conquest a woman and that's a boring a game if you can get submission by simply providing better food and shelter in exchange for doing the nasty. It's also adding a moral dimension to relationships that I don't like. If the oven of love has lost its fire (or to add some bad machismo: tightness) I don't want to think whether to break up or not because someone I still like is financially dependent on me and would have to suffer from this. I'm not cold hearted enough to simply tell myself "she could've chosen otherwise" and way too less altruistic to not keep my money and possessions for myself.
I'd go as far as to say a good relationship that provides freedom to both partners needs to be made of partners that are off as good alone except for the relationship. Otherwise it will end more or less like with my aunt who's been chained to the son of the village's drunken bum in the older days - or my grandfather who couldn't ditch his stupid and lazy wife because a divorce would have become a social problem.
So that's basically a public thumbs up from my end for slapping the fat cunt right to the face, dear Barreness. Keep them bitchslaps coming ;-)
Monday, February 7, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Is it hard to use your brain?
Whenever someone asks me for an opinion on some computer he or she wants to build or buy, I am sighing and laughing at the same time. I have rarely seen any configuration or offer that was not against the laws of common sense to use for the intended purpose. If that was the case, though, the system was often dimensioned too big or too small.
My absolute favorite are systems intended for what I call general bullshit. The things normal people do with their computers, mostly running some browser, running an office suite and installing some software for this and that, like their camera or cell phone. Not that a camera should need software, but the too small and light kind of camera often comes with it and people open their disc tray faster than their mind, so...
Usually some co-worker or not too close acquaintance comes up with some current leaflet of the next best electronics discount and asks me if some of the crap in there would be a good deal. After the usual interview (what'cha gonna torture it with, how long should it be usable for the intended purpose and got money?) I usually reply with "nobody can really tell you". The baffled look usually turns into a disappointed one when I go with something like "there's no real information about the hardware, so how could I tell you more than maybe?".
The problem with almost all the discount offers is that they are horribly misconfigured for almost all customers, but at least sometimes equally for all of them. Since the Intel GMA HD nobody who does not distinctively run 3D crap needs discrete graphics. They just cost money and use power for no good reason. I agree, for some HTPC or an older box some used low end card off ebay might make a good addition to accelerate video stuff, but buying that after two years is a guaranteed money saver for the not wasted power alone.
What in almost all cases is the best part relative to what's available is the CPU. But have you ever really monitored your system for bottlenecks in the situations where you feel them? If yes, you likely do not want to exchange your CPU. And almost all the preconfigured systems would benefit if you'd take a slightly cheaper CPU and put the saved money into a better disk. Or more memory.
There is a couple of weird motherboards for special purposes that eat the expensive mobile CPUs and use mobile chipsets. So you have all the limits and the price tag of a laptop without the mobility. But if you take such a thing with one of the last Pentium M CPUs and attach some good disk, I had a SpinPoint F1 at hand, go for 3GB or more memory and try to use it, you will be amazed how usable such a thing can actually be. Of course, compiling code is as bad an idea as playing 3D games, but for the usual web browsing and office work the difference to a quad core with way faster memory and eight times the GFlops is not too big. If you put the old 250GB IDE disk into the powerhouse you might even see it lose against what is basically an old laptop with a good disk.
The price range of 1TB 3.5" disks is basically 50 to 120 bucks at the moment. The really expensive ones are with longer warranty and capable of running non stop for this time. If you see some system with an expensive CPU and a low price tag, expect that everything else is as cheap as possible. Better add another 25 bucks to get a decent disk.
What else could be cheap?
Sure, the PSU will be. And if you really use your rig, you will pay for that. Let's say the box sucks down a 100W while running in average. With a 65% efficiency this means you suck a 154W out of the outlet. With an 85% efficiency this lowers to 118W. You might say the relative efficiency I quote is too bad even for cheap PSUs, but go measure yourself. And take into account that they most often are not dimensioned accordingly to the used components. And those 36W of difference mean one kWh every 30 hours of use. Yes, this might seem like not much and it is not, but proper PSUs can be gotten for less than 40 bucks with proper efficiency and you get the usually way better quality of the brand stuff for free.
The memory will likely also be. Either you get all slots full with small modules and will have to ditch them once you wanna upgrade or the only good thing about the memory will be the size, while the timings are ass. Yeah, sure, you now say a difference in memory speed does not make too much of a difference, but if you consciously choose a slower CPU and think about the fact that the older the system gets, the more CPU bound it will be in most cases, the five bucks more to get memory with good timings you spent will have been worth it.
Something you almost never can tell from some newspaper ad and in most cases not even at the store is the mainboard, especially the chipset. While this is a completely different case in the AMD world, in Intel's domain you do not want anything else than an Intel chipset as a generic user. Not only because they usually perform faster but cause less trouble. Whether the low end chipset line is enough or if you should add some bucks to get something more mid end has changed relatively often from generation to generation. Just making sure the brand is not something you would mistake for an STD. My personal experience is that Asrock often delivers something well worth your money but your mileage may vary.
For the Core 2 line I have never seen current or better chipsets in seemingly cheap offers. At the time the 965 Express long had found successors it was put into a lot of the discounters' systems, simply just because it was old and this is always very bad for computer stuff. That you would never be able to experience the benefits of a newer CPU (FSB!), certain memory modules or nice and fast PCIe 2.0 lanes is not their problem.
If you really want to have a snappy and responsive system it might be worth thinking about getting an SSD as the primary disk for the OS and software. The 64GB models suffice for that easily and are nearing the 100 bucks rapidly.
The most important focus, though, is to put the focus on the area causing the most annoying delays for what you really do with your system. The exchange server with a quadcore but only two disks is a bright example of something gone horribly wrong, but that's stuff for another post.
My absolute favorite are systems intended for what I call general bullshit. The things normal people do with their computers, mostly running some browser, running an office suite and installing some software for this and that, like their camera or cell phone. Not that a camera should need software, but the too small and light kind of camera often comes with it and people open their disc tray faster than their mind, so...
Usually some co-worker or not too close acquaintance comes up with some current leaflet of the next best electronics discount and asks me if some of the crap in there would be a good deal. After the usual interview (what'cha gonna torture it with, how long should it be usable for the intended purpose and got money?) I usually reply with "nobody can really tell you". The baffled look usually turns into a disappointed one when I go with something like "there's no real information about the hardware, so how could I tell you more than maybe?".
The problem with almost all the discount offers is that they are horribly misconfigured for almost all customers, but at least sometimes equally for all of them. Since the Intel GMA HD nobody who does not distinctively run 3D crap needs discrete graphics. They just cost money and use power for no good reason. I agree, for some HTPC or an older box some used low end card off ebay might make a good addition to accelerate video stuff, but buying that after two years is a guaranteed money saver for the not wasted power alone.
What in almost all cases is the best part relative to what's available is the CPU. But have you ever really monitored your system for bottlenecks in the situations where you feel them? If yes, you likely do not want to exchange your CPU. And almost all the preconfigured systems would benefit if you'd take a slightly cheaper CPU and put the saved money into a better disk. Or more memory.
There is a couple of weird motherboards for special purposes that eat the expensive mobile CPUs and use mobile chipsets. So you have all the limits and the price tag of a laptop without the mobility. But if you take such a thing with one of the last Pentium M CPUs and attach some good disk, I had a SpinPoint F1 at hand, go for 3GB or more memory and try to use it, you will be amazed how usable such a thing can actually be. Of course, compiling code is as bad an idea as playing 3D games, but for the usual web browsing and office work the difference to a quad core with way faster memory and eight times the GFlops is not too big. If you put the old 250GB IDE disk into the powerhouse you might even see it lose against what is basically an old laptop with a good disk.
The price range of 1TB 3.5" disks is basically 50 to 120 bucks at the moment. The really expensive ones are with longer warranty and capable of running non stop for this time. If you see some system with an expensive CPU and a low price tag, expect that everything else is as cheap as possible. Better add another 25 bucks to get a decent disk.
What else could be cheap?
Sure, the PSU will be. And if you really use your rig, you will pay for that. Let's say the box sucks down a 100W while running in average. With a 65% efficiency this means you suck a 154W out of the outlet. With an 85% efficiency this lowers to 118W. You might say the relative efficiency I quote is too bad even for cheap PSUs, but go measure yourself. And take into account that they most often are not dimensioned accordingly to the used components. And those 36W of difference mean one kWh every 30 hours of use. Yes, this might seem like not much and it is not, but proper PSUs can be gotten for less than 40 bucks with proper efficiency and you get the usually way better quality of the brand stuff for free.
The memory will likely also be. Either you get all slots full with small modules and will have to ditch them once you wanna upgrade or the only good thing about the memory will be the size, while the timings are ass. Yeah, sure, you now say a difference in memory speed does not make too much of a difference, but if you consciously choose a slower CPU and think about the fact that the older the system gets, the more CPU bound it will be in most cases, the five bucks more to get memory with good timings you spent will have been worth it.
Something you almost never can tell from some newspaper ad and in most cases not even at the store is the mainboard, especially the chipset. While this is a completely different case in the AMD world, in Intel's domain you do not want anything else than an Intel chipset as a generic user. Not only because they usually perform faster but cause less trouble. Whether the low end chipset line is enough or if you should add some bucks to get something more mid end has changed relatively often from generation to generation. Just making sure the brand is not something you would mistake for an STD. My personal experience is that Asrock often delivers something well worth your money but your mileage may vary.
For the Core 2 line I have never seen current or better chipsets in seemingly cheap offers. At the time the 965 Express long had found successors it was put into a lot of the discounters' systems, simply just because it was old and this is always very bad for computer stuff. That you would never be able to experience the benefits of a newer CPU (FSB!), certain memory modules or nice and fast PCIe 2.0 lanes is not their problem.
If you really want to have a snappy and responsive system it might be worth thinking about getting an SSD as the primary disk for the OS and software. The 64GB models suffice for that easily and are nearing the 100 bucks rapidly.
The most important focus, though, is to put the focus on the area causing the most annoying delays for what you really do with your system. The exchange server with a quadcore but only two disks is a bright example of something gone horribly wrong, but that's stuff for another post.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Helplessness, pity and kindness
Despite being partly a sociopath, a lunatic, misogynistic, a gloating bastard and a cynic that cannot hold back his happiness when the office is losing a valuable workday again for some reason I predicted, there is also a kind, loving and caring part of me that does all that for no reason but to know that someone was happy because of it.
Some time ago the doorbell rang and I expected some literally childish nuisance that needed PC related advice. Instead it was the female part of one of our neighbours. It's easy to make a list containing 20 items that each would qualify as a flaw in character about her. And although my girlfriend agrees she likes her to a good extent, which I only do to a rather small extend. When she told me, though, that they have pulled out their dishwasher to check if it does not work for the same reason as a year before, I saw a chance to support my reputation as a universal genius around the neighborhood in a quick and easy manner. And most of our neighbours are quite nice and you can always use a trump card if you need some good tools or a hand. Or a car with tow hitch.
The problem was soon analyzed and solved. The feet of the dishwasher weren't adjusted properly and pushing it back in this way was indeed impossible. Four minutes later it was screwed in its place again and I got big thanks and told what the problem was. What really made me pity her husband is the way she talks about him. I agree that he is the kind of guy that might have his best match with a rather dominant woman, but if my GF would talk about me in this way, especially when I was around, I'd give her a good amount of verbal backslaps. She described him as pretty much completely unhandy, incapable of solving the tiniest mechanical problems around the house and as acting impatient and dumb. ("When it doesn't work in a way he gets he tends to use force and break things.") Is there much more humiliating you can tell your neighbour about your husband when said neighbour obviously is, on top of everything else, the more intellectual, nerdy type and not your common handy man and of an age you'd expect a man of his age to act belittling towards his experience and skills just because of the age difference alone? I also bet this guy could achieve twice as much as he does now if he had his wife supporting him instead of dooming what he starts as a failure before he even moves his hand.
When I got told what the initial problem was they pulled the dishwasher out for, my greedy self was cringing. They had the same problem a year ago and paid the worth of a new machine for the repair. Now they wanted to exchange the same part and at least just pay the part's price, which would be acceptable. I told them that their problem is easily fixable for less than five bucks.
So soon the machine was back out again and she insisted to show me the instructions to disassemble the part . That gave me the chance to travel back in the early years of the century, with XGA flatscreens, something that seemed to be a slow Pentium IV and Windows XP running with way too less memory. Switching back to the Internet Explorer took the machine half a minute in which you could watch the GDI subsystem draw the window line by line. Of course the disk was rattling madly during swap file access and after maybe 15 seconds the fan started notably blowing. Netburst architecture at its best. The really sad part is that she uses this machine in her office and really works on it on a daily basis. If I would give such a thing to my GF to work with I would consider leaving her if she wouldn't slap me in the face immediately. And no, I do know money is not the issue.
After the half hour in her office was over, 5 minutes were scrolling to the line by line rendered PDF, 30 seconds contained possibly noteworthy information I wouldn't have minded being given, I took the machine apart and decided to also take off some dirty parts not mentioned in the instructions. An hour later everything except the one big part that needed inner cleaning with mild acid or vinegar was disassembled, cleaned and reassembled. In the meantime I heard not only more thanks than I had already gotten while being there, but also that the machines works like new again.
I tried to imagine how I would feel in such a situation if I would be unable to just take out some machine, take a close look to identify at least basic problems and disassemble easy mechanics. Of course, stuff like installing cables and wiring ethernet is not everybody's piece of cake and hardware diagnosis on laptops also is not something one must be able to do. Let alone resolder BGA chips with basic household tools on a two sided PCB. But how can you call yourself a man if a screwdriver and some tweezers are beyond what you can operate?
Yes, what makes a man manly has been defined quite differently during the last centuries and still is seemingly judged differently between men and women, but... WTF?
The lesson I learned from that is that I should be glad that I have two hands and am not just able to move them consciously, but also some mind that is able to transform eyesight into abstraction, apply transformations to abstractions and output the result as a series of hand movements.
Some time ago the doorbell rang and I expected some literally childish nuisance that needed PC related advice. Instead it was the female part of one of our neighbours. It's easy to make a list containing 20 items that each would qualify as a flaw in character about her. And although my girlfriend agrees she likes her to a good extent, which I only do to a rather small extend. When she told me, though, that they have pulled out their dishwasher to check if it does not work for the same reason as a year before, I saw a chance to support my reputation as a universal genius around the neighborhood in a quick and easy manner. And most of our neighbours are quite nice and you can always use a trump card if you need some good tools or a hand. Or a car with tow hitch.
The problem was soon analyzed and solved. The feet of the dishwasher weren't adjusted properly and pushing it back in this way was indeed impossible. Four minutes later it was screwed in its place again and I got big thanks and told what the problem was. What really made me pity her husband is the way she talks about him. I agree that he is the kind of guy that might have his best match with a rather dominant woman, but if my GF would talk about me in this way, especially when I was around, I'd give her a good amount of verbal backslaps. She described him as pretty much completely unhandy, incapable of solving the tiniest mechanical problems around the house and as acting impatient and dumb. ("When it doesn't work in a way he gets he tends to use force and break things.") Is there much more humiliating you can tell your neighbour about your husband when said neighbour obviously is, on top of everything else, the more intellectual, nerdy type and not your common handy man and of an age you'd expect a man of his age to act belittling towards his experience and skills just because of the age difference alone? I also bet this guy could achieve twice as much as he does now if he had his wife supporting him instead of dooming what he starts as a failure before he even moves his hand.
When I got told what the initial problem was they pulled the dishwasher out for, my greedy self was cringing. They had the same problem a year ago and paid the worth of a new machine for the repair. Now they wanted to exchange the same part and at least just pay the part's price, which would be acceptable. I told them that their problem is easily fixable for less than five bucks.
So soon the machine was back out again and she insisted to show me the instructions to disassemble the part . That gave me the chance to travel back in the early years of the century, with XGA flatscreens, something that seemed to be a slow Pentium IV and Windows XP running with way too less memory. Switching back to the Internet Explorer took the machine half a minute in which you could watch the GDI subsystem draw the window line by line. Of course the disk was rattling madly during swap file access and after maybe 15 seconds the fan started notably blowing. Netburst architecture at its best. The really sad part is that she uses this machine in her office and really works on it on a daily basis. If I would give such a thing to my GF to work with I would consider leaving her if she wouldn't slap me in the face immediately. And no, I do know money is not the issue.
After the half hour in her office was over, 5 minutes were scrolling to the line by line rendered PDF, 30 seconds contained possibly noteworthy information I wouldn't have minded being given, I took the machine apart and decided to also take off some dirty parts not mentioned in the instructions. An hour later everything except the one big part that needed inner cleaning with mild acid or vinegar was disassembled, cleaned and reassembled. In the meantime I heard not only more thanks than I had already gotten while being there, but also that the machines works like new again.
I tried to imagine how I would feel in such a situation if I would be unable to just take out some machine, take a close look to identify at least basic problems and disassemble easy mechanics. Of course, stuff like installing cables and wiring ethernet is not everybody's piece of cake and hardware diagnosis on laptops also is not something one must be able to do. Let alone resolder BGA chips with basic household tools on a two sided PCB. But how can you call yourself a man if a screwdriver and some tweezers are beyond what you can operate?
Yes, what makes a man manly has been defined quite differently during the last centuries and still is seemingly judged differently between men and women, but... WTF?
The lesson I learned from that is that I should be glad that I have two hands and am not just able to move them consciously, but also some mind that is able to transform eyesight into abstraction, apply transformations to abstractions and output the result as a series of hand movements.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Folding paper can cost you money
I just got an email that's been directed to all local employees. Our printer park consists of several rather monstrous units that are made to put through several million pages per month. One had a serious problem yesterday I couldn't look after due to time constraints which has now been solved by the technician from the company the printers are leased from.
Someone did actually put paper in A3 size in the compartment for A4. A3 is exactly twice as big as A4. The paper was folded in half. How does one get such ideas?
Someone did actually put paper in A3 size in the compartment for A4. A3 is exactly twice as big as A4. The paper was folded in half. How does one get such ideas?
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The 400GB USB Stick
At work the lecturers have a widely varying range of computer and IT knowledge. Some teach programming and one guy doesn't even just look like a complete uber-nerd, he indeed replied with "250 dash <complete name> Hello" when I greeted him with "EHLO". If this just makes you think "WTF", google for SMTP and telnet client or console. SMTP is still the standard protocol to send email and the commands are in plain text.
Of course there's also the direct opposite of such people. The kind that does have no idea at all and needs help connecting a projector or playing a DVD. The worst kind of all is none of that, but has instead a very thin and scattered knowledge, yet thinks to have the skills of a professional. When something does not work as they expect it, it is obviously defective, because they already tried "fixing" it. Fixing here just means to change anything they can without paying attention to labeling and common sense. The result of that is of course simply more work for anyone who was basic knowledge about technology and also the slightest bit of common sense. Having to select the right input for the projector again after telling that you have to activate your VGA out to see a picture is harmless, I expect at least completely fucked up picture settings. "No signal" obviously means you might have the wrong color balance or contrast selected, doesn't it?
Of course the list of those kind of people is widely known among staff and from all of those there is one guy that stands out even from those. Let's call him Schnitzer here. We have some connections to China and he was taking part in an exchange. Clever as he was, he did some shopping there because tech stuff is cheap in China...
When my lovely co-worker called me for help because she had trouble with a thumbdrive, I wasn't expecting to get a good laugh soon. When I saw that Schnitzer was standing besides her I expected some fuck up from him, like saving something in a format that I have never heard of. The drive was shown as being completely empty, but with a filesystem and after silently sighing, I asked him to come with me and see if a real PC does read it properly. The girls nearly all only have thin clients and USB redirection has never worked properly with those.
When I looked at the drive I was getting suspicious. It said it would be a 400GB model. Not 256, not 512, not even 384, but exactly 400. And the last I heard of was something way smaller that also cost a fortune.
Me: Wow, 400 gigs, that thing must have been quite expensive.
Schnitzer: Actually not. I bought it in China.
*Alarm bell rings widly*
Schnitzer: The seller initially wanted 80 bucks for it, but I got him down to 20.
Me: Well, then you have been ripped off because this thing is just a scam.
Schnitzer: No, I tested it, this thing is totally OK.
Sure. Somebody sold you flash memory worth a hundred bucks for twenty. And also packed it on a PCB with a controller chip and into some housing. Someone here is an imbecile and despite the education standards I have the feeling the Chinese guy is not it.
Me: I'm willing to bet half a month's income that this thing does not have 400GB. If you don't take that bet, I offer you to bet about a beer it does not even have 4GB.
Schnitzer: Seriously, plug it in and you will see that it has 400GB.
I did, could read the filesystem and yes, it of course said 400GB. His data just weren't lost because there only were a mere 5MB on it.
Me: So I guess you are not aware of the fact that the capacity information is provided by the controller chip, not the actual data storage. That chip likely just writes over the same dozen megabytes again and again if you put more on it than the maybe 512MB it really has.
Schnitzer: How is this possible?
Me: USB controller chips are often programmable.
Schnitzer: I mean how can it store 400 gig in a dozen megabytes.
Me: It cannot. Your data goes to hell.
To make this shorter, he was absolutely convinced that this thing was not fake but a thumbdrive as big as a laptpop hard drive for a price lower than a bad blowjob. I offered him to demonstrate it, copied his files to somewhere else and started to put a complete DVD on it. Of course the cheap controller was slow, so we decided he should come back after holding his lecture. He did and of course neither any of his files were readable nor any of the ones from the DVD.
He was totally breathless and just wouldn't want to believe he had been ripped off like the dumbest jerk ever. When he then started whining about his lost money, I told him that I'd have to go to the server room for something and he should just write it off as an educational expense and get a real one. After the door behind me shut I turned up the AC to maximum load and laughed dementedly for at least 5 minutes.
Of course there's also the direct opposite of such people. The kind that does have no idea at all and needs help connecting a projector or playing a DVD. The worst kind of all is none of that, but has instead a very thin and scattered knowledge, yet thinks to have the skills of a professional. When something does not work as they expect it, it is obviously defective, because they already tried "fixing" it. Fixing here just means to change anything they can without paying attention to labeling and common sense. The result of that is of course simply more work for anyone who was basic knowledge about technology and also the slightest bit of common sense. Having to select the right input for the projector again after telling that you have to activate your VGA out to see a picture is harmless, I expect at least completely fucked up picture settings. "No signal" obviously means you might have the wrong color balance or contrast selected, doesn't it?
Of course the list of those kind of people is widely known among staff and from all of those there is one guy that stands out even from those. Let's call him Schnitzer here. We have some connections to China and he was taking part in an exchange. Clever as he was, he did some shopping there because tech stuff is cheap in China...
When my lovely co-worker called me for help because she had trouble with a thumbdrive, I wasn't expecting to get a good laugh soon. When I saw that Schnitzer was standing besides her I expected some fuck up from him, like saving something in a format that I have never heard of. The drive was shown as being completely empty, but with a filesystem and after silently sighing, I asked him to come with me and see if a real PC does read it properly. The girls nearly all only have thin clients and USB redirection has never worked properly with those.
When I looked at the drive I was getting suspicious. It said it would be a 400GB model. Not 256, not 512, not even 384, but exactly 400. And the last I heard of was something way smaller that also cost a fortune.
Me: Wow, 400 gigs, that thing must have been quite expensive.
Schnitzer: Actually not. I bought it in China.
*Alarm bell rings widly*
Schnitzer: The seller initially wanted 80 bucks for it, but I got him down to 20.
Me: Well, then you have been ripped off because this thing is just a scam.
Schnitzer: No, I tested it, this thing is totally OK.
Sure. Somebody sold you flash memory worth a hundred bucks for twenty. And also packed it on a PCB with a controller chip and into some housing. Someone here is an imbecile and despite the education standards I have the feeling the Chinese guy is not it.
Me: I'm willing to bet half a month's income that this thing does not have 400GB. If you don't take that bet, I offer you to bet about a beer it does not even have 4GB.
Schnitzer: Seriously, plug it in and you will see that it has 400GB.
I did, could read the filesystem and yes, it of course said 400GB. His data just weren't lost because there only were a mere 5MB on it.
Me: So I guess you are not aware of the fact that the capacity information is provided by the controller chip, not the actual data storage. That chip likely just writes over the same dozen megabytes again and again if you put more on it than the maybe 512MB it really has.
Schnitzer: How is this possible?
Me: USB controller chips are often programmable.
Schnitzer: I mean how can it store 400 gig in a dozen megabytes.
Me: It cannot. Your data goes to hell.
To make this shorter, he was absolutely convinced that this thing was not fake but a thumbdrive as big as a laptpop hard drive for a price lower than a bad blowjob. I offered him to demonstrate it, copied his files to somewhere else and started to put a complete DVD on it. Of course the cheap controller was slow, so we decided he should come back after holding his lecture. He did and of course neither any of his files were readable nor any of the ones from the DVD.
He was totally breathless and just wouldn't want to believe he had been ripped off like the dumbest jerk ever. When he then started whining about his lost money, I told him that I'd have to go to the server room for something and he should just write it off as an educational expense and get a real one. After the door behind me shut I turned up the AC to maximum load and laughed dementedly for at least 5 minutes.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
A surprise visit by a temporary pet
When you got a tomcat in your house, no matter if he has balls anymore or not, he will sooner or later bring you dead mice. Ok, that’s fine. You show him your appreciation of how he tries to take care for you and dispose of the mice when he doesn’t see it. But once in a while he will be dragging half dead prey into your house. You can try to not let this happen be paying attention to whether he has something in his mouth or not, but sooner or later you will misjudge that. Or it’s just summer and the door to the terrace is open anyways and you won’t be around.
So one day the cat stormed in through the front door unexpectedly and filled with joy and happiness. The attempt to tell us about his findings made them drop from his mouth and so he chased down the mouse fallen out of there. He got a good hit and so she flew over the stairs to the basement, with an audible impact on the wall. He couldn’t see her anymore, searched around a bit and then lost interest. So now there was a mouse sitting on our basement stairs, not moving, but heavily breathing and seemingly not too harmed. I took the poor being and saw it was actually not visibly hurt, but of course frightened as hell. I took her with me on the terrace, where the one who brought it was sleeping already. Yeah, so you have a half dead half alive mouse now and what’cha gonna do?
The options were clear. He was asleep, the female cat would have been unable to kill it. I could finish it off to end her suffering, take it to a vet, lay it don outside and let nature be nature or try to nurse it back to health. Of course there’s lots of ethical questions arising if you are about to decide over life and death of a being, especially if it has a spine. I am too much a pussy to kill an animal that still seems quite alive and as it started to move around a bit in my hand while I was considering options, I decided to try nursing it back to a proper condition, even if it might be painfully prolonging the inevitable.
After another minute it was another bit more lively and so I fetched a not too small box to put it in so it couldn’t flee and hide in some inaccessible place to die. Some ripped cloth gave it the option to hide while my GF and I were considering what kind of food we should offer it. It got corn, wheat and cat food to choose from, along with some water, but decided to stay on its not too healthy diet of eating nothing at all.
During the evening I looked after it from time to time and noticed its body temperature had been declining quite a bit and it also had a stain of blood at its rear end. My inital thought was that the mouse has suffered from some form of inner damage while being dragged around in the tomcat’s mouth, but that was later proven wrong. I decided to keep her warm in my hand and additionally warm her a bit with my breath. She at least stayed alive until I decided that sleep’s not just good for the mouse, but also for me.
The next morning it was not in its box anymore and I was wondering how the heck it has gotten out of there. But obviously that was a good sign as a dead mouse would have not gotten out. I soon saw that it was sitting on my Airtport Extreme base and had taking a good crap on it, too. I liked its attitude to poop on the only Apple device and finally grabbed her after some chasing over my table. She got a bigger box and a fresh buffet. Over the night she must have by the way eaten some of the cat food and also some of the corn.
Later that day I wasn’t attentive enough when my GF entered the room and left the door open. If you have ever lived with a cat you know how they react to boxes. And of course the harmless female one jumped inside the box and just enjoyed sitting there, unaware of the fact that she was not alone there. After getting the cat out I saw quite some bloody mess before I found the mouse in the box. Obviously it was a she and she has been pregnant. The presence of the cat has likely induced quite a lot of stress and the bloody mess was the early end of her pregnancy.
After that she was soon coming back to be as lively as you would suspect it from a wild mouse, though. She ate quite a bit and started to not act too shy anymore. At the end of the day I could just sit her on my hand and pet her a bit without her trying to flee. That’s obviously been a privilege though, as the mere presence of my GF still frightened her. After another night in the bigger box and finding her running around my room fast and happily the morning after we decided she should be fit enough to be sat outside again.
I of course thought of keeping her for a moment, but it was obviously not really possible. For one the presence of the cats in the house would have likely been too stressful for her and at least the tomcat. Separating them would have meant that I would have to give up the tomcat as a lap warmer. Also, a mouse that’s been living in the wild does never really adapt to being caged. If you want to keep it under conditions that are not rather torturous, you should have a cage of at least some dozen square meters. We don’t even have several dozens for ourselves and call it our house none the less.
The next evening I pet the mouse good bye and sat her in our garden, while the cats were secured in their room. After a minute she started to move around and explore her surroundings. After another minute she was somewhere under some bushes in an edge of the garden.
I would love to know what happened to her but as so often in live, that’s an answer I won’t get.
So one day the cat stormed in through the front door unexpectedly and filled with joy and happiness. The attempt to tell us about his findings made them drop from his mouth and so he chased down the mouse fallen out of there. He got a good hit and so she flew over the stairs to the basement, with an audible impact on the wall. He couldn’t see her anymore, searched around a bit and then lost interest. So now there was a mouse sitting on our basement stairs, not moving, but heavily breathing and seemingly not too harmed. I took the poor being and saw it was actually not visibly hurt, but of course frightened as hell. I took her with me on the terrace, where the one who brought it was sleeping already. Yeah, so you have a half dead half alive mouse now and what’cha gonna do?
The options were clear. He was asleep, the female cat would have been unable to kill it. I could finish it off to end her suffering, take it to a vet, lay it don outside and let nature be nature or try to nurse it back to health. Of course there’s lots of ethical questions arising if you are about to decide over life and death of a being, especially if it has a spine. I am too much a pussy to kill an animal that still seems quite alive and as it started to move around a bit in my hand while I was considering options, I decided to try nursing it back to a proper condition, even if it might be painfully prolonging the inevitable.
After another minute it was another bit more lively and so I fetched a not too small box to put it in so it couldn’t flee and hide in some inaccessible place to die. Some ripped cloth gave it the option to hide while my GF and I were considering what kind of food we should offer it. It got corn, wheat and cat food to choose from, along with some water, but decided to stay on its not too healthy diet of eating nothing at all.
During the evening I looked after it from time to time and noticed its body temperature had been declining quite a bit and it also had a stain of blood at its rear end. My inital thought was that the mouse has suffered from some form of inner damage while being dragged around in the tomcat’s mouth, but that was later proven wrong. I decided to keep her warm in my hand and additionally warm her a bit with my breath. She at least stayed alive until I decided that sleep’s not just good for the mouse, but also for me.
The next morning it was not in its box anymore and I was wondering how the heck it has gotten out of there. But obviously that was a good sign as a dead mouse would have not gotten out. I soon saw that it was sitting on my Airtport Extreme base and had taking a good crap on it, too. I liked its attitude to poop on the only Apple device and finally grabbed her after some chasing over my table. She got a bigger box and a fresh buffet. Over the night she must have by the way eaten some of the cat food and also some of the corn.
Later that day I wasn’t attentive enough when my GF entered the room and left the door open. If you have ever lived with a cat you know how they react to boxes. And of course the harmless female one jumped inside the box and just enjoyed sitting there, unaware of the fact that she was not alone there. After getting the cat out I saw quite some bloody mess before I found the mouse in the box. Obviously it was a she and she has been pregnant. The presence of the cat has likely induced quite a lot of stress and the bloody mess was the early end of her pregnancy.
After that she was soon coming back to be as lively as you would suspect it from a wild mouse, though. She ate quite a bit and started to not act too shy anymore. At the end of the day I could just sit her on my hand and pet her a bit without her trying to flee. That’s obviously been a privilege though, as the mere presence of my GF still frightened her. After another night in the bigger box and finding her running around my room fast and happily the morning after we decided she should be fit enough to be sat outside again.
I of course thought of keeping her for a moment, but it was obviously not really possible. For one the presence of the cats in the house would have likely been too stressful for her and at least the tomcat. Separating them would have meant that I would have to give up the tomcat as a lap warmer. Also, a mouse that’s been living in the wild does never really adapt to being caged. If you want to keep it under conditions that are not rather torturous, you should have a cage of at least some dozen square meters. We don’t even have several dozens for ourselves and call it our house none the less.
The next evening I pet the mouse good bye and sat her in our garden, while the cats were secured in their room. After a minute she started to move around and explore her surroundings. After another minute she was somewhere under some bushes in an edge of the garden.
I would love to know what happened to her but as so often in live, that’s an answer I won’t get.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Cat content
I just had a short phone call with a good friend some minutes ago. When I told him that I actually started a blog, he cracked up and told me I should post pictures of our cats. Of course I sensed he was mocking on something and so he told me that "cat content" is used to describe the typical, crappy blog content of people that post pictures of their pets and tell you how lovely they look and are. Something the world needs to know, especially from strangers.
I promised him to add some cat content and here we go!
This is what a former neighbour, aka the hysteric housewife, called the "grey panther". He is now about 12 years old and still manages to catch adult, seemingly healthy birds. Cats are often accused of being a threat to birds, but a healthy adult bird usually is way too attentive to get caught by a cat, hence most birds caught by cats were going to die anyway or are rather young. And I do agree the latter case is a problem, as much as nest robbery by cats.
He was supposedly abandoned by a chartreux breeder. What really happened we don't know, but he perfectly matches the description of a chartreux in looks and behavior, except for some impurities like slight rings on his tail and the eye color. After straying around in the same area for some time he ended in the animal shelter and after some time in quarantine had the pleasure to be taken home by my girlfriend. He must have really suffered hunger throughout his first 5-6 months, as he jumped on anything eatable in the beginning. Letting the eye slip off him ended in stolen eggs, the funny image of a tomcat carrying a pack of toast in his mouth that's been broader than he was long and stolen potato peel. Yes, he ate potato peel and sometimes even flower soil. When he stole a pack of coffee the hissing sound of the air flowing back into the evacuated package was likely the only thing keeping him from eating that, too. Over time his eager assaults towards anything eatable wore off, though given a good chance he was still a threat to a tasty plate with meat on it.
The only things that make him lose his worldly-wise aura are vacuum cleaners. His preferred places are the bedroom, which is locked because he can open doors if he feels the need for it, my seat in front of the PC and my lap, likely in this order. While he fled at the slightest movement in the beginning he has grown enough trust over the last three years that I now can even pet his belly without him retreating immediately.
His "official" name is Lupo, because he often has the typical look of a wolf, head faced towards the ground while looking forward. He is often referred to as Doctor Katz, though, since I could persuade him to stop hiding in the bookshelf by telling him that he was hiding behind the row with the most trivial literature in the house and that this should be below his standards.
He weighs about six metric pounds and tends to drool quite intensively when he is petted and enjoying it.
This little girl has refused to be called Gizmo and chose to only listen to the name "Mogli", despite being a female. Also coming from the girly side of the household, she was found the best of all women's ex BF lying in the bushes, just some weeks old, after falling down from a balcony on the fourth floor. Being rather shy in general, she immediately crawled from under the sofa and meowed loudly when the best of all women entered the room. This was the start of a life long, intense relationship. She's mommy's cat. Even after I took care of her for three months while the best of all women's household had moved without the woman, she immediately was joyfully running around mommy's feet when she saw her. Say again cats would be just focused on places and not people...
She's now 20, completely deaf since a year and needs a slight bit of heart medication. Recently she stopped taking car of her hair which leaves this unenjoyable task for her to me. Despite that you couldn't tell her age, not even from her still complete teeth. She never really hunted anything, likely because she never needed to and her ancestry is made of indoor cats only. Unlike the tomcat vacuum cleaners never scared her, but instead anything with a small electric motor. The electric toothbrush was an agonizing threat back when she could hear.
After going deaf she really amazed me by learning to decide whether mommy follows her by looking into the mirroring windows in the evening. She might not have any idea that she sees a reflection of herself and who walks behind her, but depending on what she sees or sees not, she is able to decide whether to turn around and meow or not. Believe me, I tried to find better explanations, but after witnessing this more than a dozen times I am sure that she really judes by the window reflection. And she's learned that at the age of 19.
I promised him to add some cat content and here we go!
He was supposedly abandoned by a chartreux breeder. What really happened we don't know, but he perfectly matches the description of a chartreux in looks and behavior, except for some impurities like slight rings on his tail and the eye color. After straying around in the same area for some time he ended in the animal shelter and after some time in quarantine had the pleasure to be taken home by my girlfriend. He must have really suffered hunger throughout his first 5-6 months, as he jumped on anything eatable in the beginning. Letting the eye slip off him ended in stolen eggs, the funny image of a tomcat carrying a pack of toast in his mouth that's been broader than he was long and stolen potato peel. Yes, he ate potato peel and sometimes even flower soil. When he stole a pack of coffee the hissing sound of the air flowing back into the evacuated package was likely the only thing keeping him from eating that, too. Over time his eager assaults towards anything eatable wore off, though given a good chance he was still a threat to a tasty plate with meat on it.
The only things that make him lose his worldly-wise aura are vacuum cleaners. His preferred places are the bedroom, which is locked because he can open doors if he feels the need for it, my seat in front of the PC and my lap, likely in this order. While he fled at the slightest movement in the beginning he has grown enough trust over the last three years that I now can even pet his belly without him retreating immediately.
His "official" name is Lupo, because he often has the typical look of a wolf, head faced towards the ground while looking forward. He is often referred to as Doctor Katz, though, since I could persuade him to stop hiding in the bookshelf by telling him that he was hiding behind the row with the most trivial literature in the house and that this should be below his standards.
He weighs about six metric pounds and tends to drool quite intensively when he is petted and enjoying it.
She's now 20, completely deaf since a year and needs a slight bit of heart medication. Recently she stopped taking car of her hair which leaves this unenjoyable task for her to me. Despite that you couldn't tell her age, not even from her still complete teeth. She never really hunted anything, likely because she never needed to and her ancestry is made of indoor cats only. Unlike the tomcat vacuum cleaners never scared her, but instead anything with a small electric motor. The electric toothbrush was an agonizing threat back when she could hear.
After going deaf she really amazed me by learning to decide whether mommy follows her by looking into the mirroring windows in the evening. She might not have any idea that she sees a reflection of herself and who walks behind her, but depending on what she sees or sees not, she is able to decide whether to turn around and meow or not. Believe me, I tried to find better explanations, but after witnessing this more than a dozen times I am sure that she really judes by the window reflection. And she's learned that at the age of 19.
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