Me and my Mac

Posts Tagged ‘random’

The never ending story…

So recently on a clients computer i found this great game, or so i was told by a colleague.
Since it was freeware we copied it and now i’m hooked. I started a new game that day and am still playing that very same game. We’re over 6 weeks past and i’ve been playing regularly with a 2-4 hour per day average.

Amazing isn’t it? Which game you ask? Transport Tycoon Deluxe. What? yea a 14 year old game. And it rocks!! It’s one of those gems that just won’t bore as there is always something to do, expand or improve. New business opportunities are common and it’s just fun to toy with trains, planes, boats and vehicles and their infrastructure.

Here is just a minor screenshot from what i’ve built over the past weeks. It’s a somewhat complex set of tracks around a train station. Over 20 trains race in, out and through it every couple of minutes going to more than 10 surrounding stations delivering goods to a factory there, or just bringing coal for the cities or passengers, mail, steel, livestock or grain to and from the various stations. To accommodate the city growth i’ve built bus stops all over the bigger cities from which people can easily move to and from a lot of places. Just to give you a slight idea.

The most fun about this game is that it just never stops. As noted above there is always something to do. With games like Sim City, the map gets full after a while. Or it just gets boring once you’ve got all things set up. All games have limitations and so does Transport tycoon ofcourse, but the map for one is so immensely huge that even on a medium sized map i’ve been busy for 6 weeks. Imagine if the map was 4 times larger how small a portion i would use. I think if i would cram everything into a corner i would use one quarter of the map now! Another great thing is the diversity, scattered over the map are autonomous towns and many many industries of all kinds. And your task is to make money of that. So you can deliver over 20 types or materials/goods to various industries or set up a supply chain to a city. Say, iron ore to a steel mill which produces goods from that which you can then deliver to a city. The city grows because of that and thus eventually will need a bus system, or connections to another city and so on.

So! Get it, play it… Get addicted!

Where is WordPress heading? Idiocy to the max!

The devs have some weird ideas lately. And to be honest, while they do a great job, i like Wordpress less and less ever since 2.5 was introduced. Too much automation going on in there. Bah

What the hell is up with autosaving and revisions of posts. Not a bad feature per se, but make it optional please! It clogs up the database making it expand exponentially if you leave the browser open for a while.

And which idiot thought up that plugins should be automatically updated. But didn’t think about the problems it would bring. Many plugins are poorly written. Even more plugins require database additions from time to time. And NO plugin i ever seen has had a proper upgrade script or routine. It has to be done by hand. So, a few months ago when i released Events nearly every week and it required a bunch of new fields for storing that stuff. An automatic update would have been disasterous. As some of my users found out. Obviously because the database didn’t get updated. It had to be done manually. And as many of us know. Adding fields to a database is harder than uploading a few damn files. So while we’re at it. Just upload them your self and use the upgrade instructions the plugin maker provides. It’s makes your life just less annoying.

Another thing. Why can’t Wordpress show proper errors. Sometimes i encounter a plugin that won’t activate. Sometimes i screw up and break my own plugin. All fine. But with the error “A fatal error occured” i don’t know where to look. Give me the original PHP error dammit. And no WP_DEBUG does not work. I tried that and it made apache cry and me frustrated because it generated so much errors i couldn’t even find my own anymore. So no… Just provide proper errors.

Why is the Richtext editor still acting up. It has been around for years. It has been used by millions and still it’s stripped down, broken and useless for anything else than dumb typing of text. most plugins break because of it stripping out tags and stuff. We cannot add forms, we cannot add tables or anything else that requires more than bold or italic text formatting. It sucks!

Why the assumption that we need Windows Livewriter support. Make it optional! I don’t even use Windows. Why include a link to use Turbo on every dashboard page. What is Turbo anyway. Useless, no one uses Google Gears. I much rather have that option in Settings > Misc where i don’t see it.

Blah!

All in all Wordpress isn’t that bad. Truth be told… I still enjoy using Wordpress, most of the time. But some things just piss me off. Especially if they do not work right or make no sense. It’s becoming a fool proof system, which for me, a sort-off nerd, is crazy. I like some things to be done manually, i like to be in control of my own website. It’s getting less and less of that. Even at the point that i need to write plugins to disable the new automated stuff and hack things out to make it work as i like it. Yuk.

Wth is wrong with youngsters these days

Are they just getting more stupid? Twice in a day a dumbfounding encounter is not nothing… It’s amazing really. That such people can get away with it. I mean, come on. Read the following and think by yourself, are they that dumb? Or is there some hint of smartness in me after all. I think what i did today was nothing special yet none of the people helping me today, things they do all day long, did get it right…

Today i want to town to get some things, batteries for a labelwriter and some groceries.

At the first shop the girls at the register asked me what kind of batteries i wanted. So i told her “i need those thin-penlight-ones, called AAA”. Calculating that she might not know what AAA batteries are. She then turned around to the rack of batteries, discovered there were like 4 brands selling the same thing and asked me which brand. I said “whatever is cheap, i need 6 of them” i thought this to be enough information for her to get me the cheapest ones she sells. Varta which come in 6 packs, all other brand were either highly expensive or packed per 4. She then proceeded to grab Duracell batteries, which were more expensive then Varta ones and were in a 4-pack. I frowned and asked what was wrong with the Varta brand. “oh nothing” she said “but you asked for cheap ones”. I then pointed at the price. Varta ones were 4.99 for 6 +2 free (8 in total) and the Duracell ones were 5.89 for 4. She didn’t really get it.

I sighed and told her to get the Varta ones. After the checkout she still had that wondrous look on her face as if she had no clue what just happened. Her co-worker didn’t look to bright either, but atleast she smiled nicely

10 minutes later i was at the supermarket, grabbed the things i needed, went to the checkout, payed and noticed that the wrapping of the meat i bought was torn. I went to the customer service thing and told the girl what was wrong and asked for a new pack of meat. She then looked puzzled at me. I told her again, pointing at the hole in the packaging, that i wanted another pack of meat because this one was broken. “ah, ok, one moment” she replied and went on to give me my money back. While doing that i told her a replacement was fine also since i needed the product later today. I think she didn’t hear me because she was too busy figuring out how the cash register worked. It took 3 of them to figure it out and i got my money back. She handed me a few euros and looked happy with it. I asked her if i could not just get a replacement. Thinking of the mayhem caused if i were to go into the supermarket again and having to explain that everything in my bag was already paid for. She then exclaimed “Ooooh you want another one, i thought you just wanted your money back!” On which i replied; “Ofcourse i want a new one. This one is no good! Why else would i buy it and instantly return the thing.”

She set of to get me a new pack leaving me waiting with the returned money and it took her 10 whole minutes to return. She kindly explained to me she didn’t find one with the same exact price. Which i think is actually nice of her for trying, but if she knew about pricing she would know that that was not gonna work since the meat is priced per kilogram and thus none of the packs have the exact same price. She continued to explain me that the new pack required additional payment of 10 cents and billed me 10 cents. I looked at her puzzled and paid 10 cents. She went on to wrap up the transaction said goodbye and continued to help other customers. I stood there for almost a minute thinking if she really was that dumb then thought “Fuck all” and walked out. So i will be dining cheap tonight! 5 euros worth of meat for 10 cents… not a bad deal after all!

What is the world going to? We’re certainly doomed if this is not getting any better!

acknowledgement!

From #wordpress

jeremyclarke: italia321: try the wp-pro list
zhrance: don’t know SHRIKEE you seems to be some kinda wordpress pro
SHRIKEE: zhrance: heh
SHRIKEE: thanks
italia321: SHRIKEE: interested?
SHRIKEE: no, just curious

I guess i am a bit of a pro, in some sense… But not really, i think… Just someone making plugins.

While cleaning some stuff…

I have this closet, it’s full of computer stuff, tools, materials, pens, cables and other computer/electronics related stuff. Today things started to fall out when i opened the door. So i decided to clean some stuff, throw away some things…

I found some things i thought i didn’t have them anymore or simply can’t remember i still had it…
Also some things that should have put to work or i’m not using anymore.

I found:

• A brand new Sony Ericsson W850i Mobile phone
• A EdiMax SoHo Print server for USB printers
• A Speedtouch Home DSL Modem from the time when 256Kbit DSL was lightning fast
• A Siemens SX551 DSL Home gateway
• 4x 3Com 10/100 Network cards
• A Guillemot Maxi Gamer 32MB TNT2 Video card
• A Voodoo 3 2000 16MB Video card From 3DFX
• A set of Floppy disks labelled “Windows 3.11 for Workgroups”
• A 32 speed CD-Rom drive
• A Floppy drive
• A Newstar NS211micro KVM Switch
• A Harddisk platter (without the rest)
• 2x 4MB EDO ram sticks
• 4x 1MB EDO ram sticks
• 2x 8MB EDO ram sticks
• 3x 1MB of just ram… EDOs predecessor i think…
• 12x 256KB (?) of another undefinable type of ram
• 6x 16MB/32MB 66Mhz SD-ram (some are labelled 16MB some others are 32MB and some look exactly like the labelled ones but have no label)
• Maybe a million sorts of cables/connectors/plugs/couplers/converters for audio, video, phone, peripherals, power, networking and whatever else cables can be used for
• Screws, hundreds of them
• An ECS K7S5A Mainboard with CPU still on it. Its a AMD Duron 1500 i think
• Jabra Stereo Bluetooth headset for mobile phones or Bt enabled A2DP devices
• 2 harddrives, a 2GB SCSI drive and a 525MB IDE ATA-33/66 disk
• A bunch of keys from various security systems, ethernet closets (the cases which hold 19″ panels and switches)

And a bunch of power adapters and other rubbish…

And some images:

Bots are dumb…

Thus reproductive features must not be activated. This one has none what-so-ever.

Vincent: SHRIKEE: Error: "fucking" is not a valid command.
jinsgirl4eva: rofl
danhm: haha
SHRIKEE: LOL
nutelLA: haha
Trevpotle: hahaa
Kadaj: hahahhaa
bit: hahahhaha
SHRIKEE: he cannot fornicate
SHRIKEE: OWNED
* jinsgirl4eva high fives vincent

Which is good. Since it’s quite stupid

Seriously… Mac users can be weirdos too!

Look at the blue shapes. Almost every day for the past month people have been coming in with that exact search phrase. I’m pretty sure they are not looking for my website but why would people look for “me and my mac”. ha!

Also, the red area’s. What are they expecting to find? Mac’s are awesome yes! And also macs need to be taken care off. But you also need to take care of your PC. I’m thinking cleaning it, keeping the software healthy (trying to anyway) and so on. And the awesomeness? Well, PC’s not so much. Macs by default. No need to search for that.

Wth is up with this?!?

If you’re gonna send me spam at least make sure it’s readable… Stupid noobs! Or better yet, don’t send me spam at all! Get it through your head… I don’t want your pills, cheap software or other rubbish!

Invasion of the idiots… A true story!

As you might know i work for Technical Support by phone for an AASP. Some days the phone is full of idiots and total brainfucks.

Varying from:
“my computer makes a ticking noise” (while its the enter key being stuck and the computer chimes, and thus doesn’t tick) to “my new wireless keyboard has no ‘return’ key” to “what’s the area code i have to fill in at registration”

It’s getting worse and worse…. Clueless sheep! That’s what they are!

People calling me having no clue what to do or why but won’t believe me when i say they never configured their Airport base stations and thus could never have used it. While they just saw they were on the wrong wifi network maybe for weeks and had to switch to “another” [their own] network in order to configure their airport… They say it’s impossible that they were on the wrong network all this time “because it always worked fine”. Meanwhile the settings clearly indicate the device wasn’t working. Don’t call me if you don’t believe me!

Why are people so hardheaded and thick that they cannot be a little more creative so that when at registration it says “i don’t want to try .Mac now” they know that if they click that they do not get .Mac. There is no need to call me to ask what that means…
Also when you are setting up your email address and it asks for an optional description. Why is it so hard to understand that you can leave it empty and if not, that it is a description and thus not important what you fill in there. Just something to recognize the thing by.

Get a GameBoy, it’s real easy, and go play Mario or something….

While i understand that people new to computers or Macs do not know what they are doing or not fully understand each option. Perfectly fine, thats why i have this job. But this is ridiculous!

blog promotion…

My girlfriend has a subdomain on this domain and she claims that no one ever goes there. Everyone who reads this. Please click this link to proove her wrong. but don’t tell her i sent ya please… Or that will be the next story.

Anyway, while we’re at it. Also promote my blog. So please click here.

Kthxbai!