Posts filed under 'Mumblings'
Recently I had the privilege to visit a “friend of a friend of a friend” in order to sort out his local home network. His name will remain undisclosed, and I can shamefully admit that I don’t even remember it, so I will refer to him as “HE” or “Big Kahuna” 
Moving on… As with every networking problem, small talk is compulsory, but this guy talked BIG, and I mean really big. If I may quote - “Sure will be glad to get this fixed. Every time my network acts up, I lose about 400$ daily.” It really was strange for someone to be revealing his daily earnings in a country with an average monthly salary of 200-400$, but I just kept on moving my head in an up-down acknowledging motion, confirming his claims and letting him have his daily shot of satisfaction, since he obviously liked the idea of being a rich yuppie.
Soon after, boredom kicked in and he quickly tried to sell me 5$ VoIP prepaid cards while I was meddling with his cabling. As a pathetic pleasant person I am, I mumbled quietly that I don’t have a need for VoIP services although I proceeded to give praise to his prepaid card distribution business, calling it “innovative” and “it’s what people want, compared to the current high long distance prices” just to get him off my back, and completely ignoring the fact that a “400$ per day big kahuna” just tried to sell me a 5$ product.
As I was finishing up with all the cables, I sat down with his 300$ laptop to configure everything (trust me, I know it’s value). As if I wasn’t surprised already, the keyboard did not work. Noticing that, mr. Big Shot quickly pulled up an already connected USB keyboard for me to type on, while claiming boldly that he accidentally spilled coffee on his laptop keyboard and was unable to fix it. (ugh) By the way, here is the keyboard I was using, the keys had to be literally stomped on to work properly.
Finally, everything was done. His home network started working properly, and he was online again. Before uttering anything related to “thanks” or “how much?”, he quickly sat down and said “There’s something I quickly have to do, I’ll be with you in a moment.” From the other end of the room, my fairly decent vision came into play… I saw him opening several Wordpress and Blogger blogs, scrolling down to the comments section and pasting 3-5 links with a message below - “Hi! I saw your website, and I thought you would be interested in some of my links too!”… He carefully entered some required captcha information, and pushed “Submit”.
Now that I knew he was a die-hard spammer, I asked innocently - “What do you do for a living?”… “Advertising and promotion” – he replied fairly quickly. “Here, here’s my card!”, he said with a retarded grin, and invited me to a promotion of a new DVD in a local town hall (that is usually rented for low-grade book promotions and cult gatherings).
Needless to say, he never saw me again.
So, what do I know about one spammer that may have even visited my own blog? Not much, except that he has a family, that he “earns 400$ per day” and still lives in his mother’s apartment with his wife and kid, and that he is an annoying, cheating, lying, conning bastard with no values whatsoever. That should cover it. Good riddance.
February 20th, 2009
Tis' Christmas eve y'all! No snow around here, but the usual atmosphere is kicking in... The state wide TV stations aren't broadcasting anything interesting since they're clamped on the orthodox calendar, and according to it, Christmas is somewhere in January... The neighboring predominantly catholic country of Croatia *is* in the Christmas spirit, but for some reason, I just can't watch 40 oltar boys singing about "thy Lord" over and over again. So that settles the public entertainment factor for this season...
This year's official xmas eve dinner made me get sleepy at 8PM, which is pathetic, at least for the guy who usually goes to bed at 4-5AM, so I'll hold up at least for an hour or so until I crash like a drunk chipmunk...
To make this semi-sleepy post at least a little bit entertaining, here's a LightScribe DVD I made with my new laptop:
Ba da bum - tiss... Yes, it’s the man - himself. If you speak his name, you won’t be getting your Christmas presents tomorrow…
December 24th, 2008
I remember the old days when NiMH batteries powered my, now obsolete, devices... Proper battery care was essential, and even the most non-tech savvy users were quite knowlidgeable about this topic. The rules were simple - charge a new battery for 12 hours, drain completely, and make sure that any future charging was done only when the battery was nearly depleted. Simple. Even my old Siemens C35 mobile had a "battery care" option that depleted it completely and recharged it back.
And then "it" happened... Even though 6-8 hours was pretty much an adeqate time for the battery to charge and fully form, phone & gadget dealers kept increasing that period to 12 and up to 24 hours - freakishly insane! The fact that I had to wait that long when I was eager to engage in some gadget clicking with my new device was very frustrating, and yet the bar was still being raised...
Soon after LiIon battery packs were introduced, I thought that this waiting nightmare and memory effect problems were destined to get pushed in the history books. Unfortunately, even with today's LiIon batteries, that can be charged at any time and at any charge level, every store in my surrounding area almost orders me to pre-charge my gadgets for at least 12hrs before use. As an old Spartan used to say - "this is madness!"
What got me to write this thing is my friend's recent notebook purchase. Even if the battery that came with it is an Lithium one, the store clerk assured him that it is absolutely mandatory to charge the whole thing for 12hrs... THREE TIMES!
Pathetic. The pain won't obviously end soon...
October 13th, 2008
Back in the days where I would beg on my knees all day - every day in front of my dad to buy me a Sega - Mega Drive 2 game console, it would be quite a weird thing to hear that today I would be able to play that very same game console on a computer that has a great screen and huge processing power (along with everything else that comes along with owning a x86 PC ). Even though I have hundreds of great advanced 3D games to choose from, there's something really special when playing Sonic in all it's glory... To achieve this, I use Gens, but there are many others to choose from. Sadly, Aero and Windows Vista DreamScene get broken when running it, but still, it's pretty much worth the hassle...
May 12th, 2008
How to be cool online – a short guide
1. Make sure everybody knows you use Firefox, Safari, Opera or even Omniweb instead of IE. IE is the devil – repeat – “IE is the devil”. Get bonus points for claiming you use Lynx and by posting “IE sucks” banners on your blog/website.
2. Advocate Linux. No matter if your Linux experience is limited to booting an Ubuntu DVD and then hitting the reset button because you panicked when you saw the command line interface - Linux rules, or better yet – “Linux r00Lz0r!!!11 one”. Make sure everybody knows that Linux is stable, easy to use and perfect in every way by engaging in YouTube comment flame wars or any other flame wars such as the ones on Digg, online communities, or blogs.
3. Hate Microsoft. As much as IE is the devil, Windows and just about any other Microsoft product comes with a 666 sticker on it. “Closed source sucks”, “proprietary software deserves to die”, “enjoy your blue screens lolz”, “windows is teh suxx0r” and just about any other blurb you post online about the eternal corporate damnation that Microsoft has thrown upon us is a great contribution. Bonus points: if you do all of the above and still use Windows.
4. “Testing, testing, 123”? It’s the new thing, it’s “hip”! It’s the beta button! Hey, if Google can use it, why can’t you, right? Stick a “BETA” sticker on your website/blog and enjoy the visitors thinking that you are a developer that, for some reason, has a beta sticker on his/hers website for years while using online blogging services such as Blogger that you can’t even customize properly. Want bonus points? Hell yeah! Place a “web 2.0” banner next to the beta one!
5. Use massive signatures. Make sure everybody sees your forum signature, along with about 300 userbars (bonus points for: “Toilet user”) and the lyrics for your favorite song. If you really want to go extreme, use a glitter generated sig. Remember – if it’s not the same size as the screen height of a 20” monitor, it’s no good!
6. Post comments on YouTube for every video you view with the following contents “This is so scary don’t read this your mother will die if you don’t post this comment on 20 youtube videos oh my god omfg…J*(@!”. Get unlimited points for actually believing in that.
7. Use a Mac like a pro – be smug about it. You DID spend a grand of two of $ for it, so why not show it around like it’s a Rolex? Be sure to let everybody know you use the great apple, and that, obviously, any other product that does not come from Apple is blasphemy.
8. Intel vs AMD? Advocate the one you use, not the one that has better benchmark scores. (and let’s face it… both are pretty equal in the end, but who cares when you can claim that you are better than somebody just for owning a piece of silicon!)
9. Make sure your blog tagline contains one of the following words: “Scribbles, Ramblings, Thoughts” (check! 
)
10. There is no number ten, otherwise, this would be just another top 10 blurb. Sorry.
April 23rd, 2008
I've got a "neat" exam in Unix shell commands next week (and it's not the only one too), so I'm kind of obligated to use my Ubuntu Linux or MacOS installation to do the needed exercises... Seeing that Ubuntu refuses to work with TeamSpeak and XMMS together (it's actually TeamSpeak's fault - it grabs the default ALSA sound output and no other app can access it), I had to settle with MacOS. No tunes - no dice. Fortunately, the guys from Cupertino managed to squeeze in the BASH shell, so I'm good to go. It's still very boring to use today's modern GUI OSes to execute huge shell text commands with a few folders and files as an end result.
One of the most complicated tasks I need to do is to manage to use pipes along with regex-based searching, which looks very cryptic and leaves me with a "did I type that?" grin in the end... But hey, it's not as hard as it is boring, so I think I'll manage... Hopefully. (Must... resist... from... watching... retarded... 4'o clock... TV shows...)
March 24th, 2008
For the past month, I can't make myself go to bed earlier than at least 2-3AM for some reason... This weird sleep regime is kind of harsh since I often find myself falling asleep during daytime, but I still persist on functioning like this. What I, personally, can conclude is that it's very relaxing and productive to work without all the noise that usually plagues my surroundings. Without cars, mentally ill people passing by on the street making all sorts of noises and producing weird howls, strain dogs and tuned up motorcycles (more like gearbox smashed, exhaust pipe pierced, engine boiling scooters that are only good for getting bugs in your teeth and blood in your kidneys), the only thing that I need to worry about is the noise that my CPU cooler makes. I often find myself listening to music on a really low volume level with an impression that it's pretty loud, which is very weird, but also strangely relaxing (even when listening to not so relaxed songs), seeing that I don't have to bring my ears close to destruction in order to get my daily dosage of tunes. Also, most would argue that "night birds" like me never hear the birds singing in the morning, but I beg to differ... I have no idea why, but birds around my place start singing as early as 2:30AM! The sun isn't even close to the horizon, and yet the night sky echoes with "cheeps"! How weird is that? Meh... I still have to close the window to avoid their decibel peak at 4:30AM, so I'm not planning on being a bird lover anytime soon (excluding owls, they keep their mouths shut - just the way I like 'em).
How long will I continue like this? Don't know, but it usually lasts a month or two until I get back to the real world sleeping/working hours norm. (I'm sure those nasty birds will get to me sooner or later) Until then - hoo, hoo!
March 5th, 2008
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