Sunday, January 30, 2011

Things which piss me off.

Programs that require an internet connection in order to access the help "feature."
Seriously, what the fuck is with coders who write such shit?  Winamp, I'm looking right at you.  What the fuck makes them think you'll have a connection 24/7? Especially if you're using a laptop.  Not including a help file is just bullshit

Drivers / App installers that again, require the fucking internet to install.
I'd rather download the installer package ONCE, thank you.  Just gimme the
whole package in one fell swoop.  The days of needing a installer to cherry
pick what features to install (so as to save time downloading) are pretty
much done for most folks.  Gimme the option to download the whole damned
thing, that way I can back up the installer and not have to fuck with
finding and downloading it again.


Programs that require that you find/download some obscure fucking .DLL or control.

Programs that automatically add themselves to windows's startup routines, so you get the 'joy' of waiting for the fucking things to load after you log onto windows.....especially when those programs aren't used every time.  One example of such a program is Winamp.  There's also Steam (for games and such) and things like Bittorrent and Emule.  You know what, coders?  If I want your fucking software running all the time, it's trivial for me to get it to do so.  Defaulting to 'start with Windows' is plain fucking bullshit.

Programs that grab practically every file association ever, and then run a shitload slower than the software you were formerly using.  Quicktime, I'm looking at you.

People:

People who post stupid shit on places like Youtube (mostly heavily edited, pointless waste of time videos. )
People who rip off other people's ideas for videos and whatnot.  Seriously, grow the fuck up.  If you can't come up with your own ideas, then fuck off.
Emo people who whine about how unfair life is on the internet and how horrible it is to get old and whatnot.

Seriously, what the fuck are you smoking?  Odds are, since you've got the ability to whine about your bullshit on the internet, your life is a helluva lot better than most other people on this planet.  You have access to:

Computers
The internet
Running (hot and cold) water
electricity
non-contaminated food (and a good variety thereof)
actual police protection without the use of bribes to ensure your own safety.

Sitting there whinging about how life treats you like shit is just absurd, especially considering the horrors other people in the world routinely deal with.  Remember the folks in New Orleans after Katrina?  Remember the folks in Darfur?  Now those are people who could whine about shit all day long and you'd just have to shut the fuck up... because THOSE are folks who got a shitty break in life.

Gangsta wannabes.   Folks, I know real gangsters... the idea that anyone would want to emulate their lifestyles is just insane.  You basically can count the number of years you're likely to survive real gangbanging on the fingers of one hand...and you'll probably have a few fingers left over.  There's all kinds of things that can happen to you as a gangster.  The idea that rich/well off suburbanite teenage white kids actually wanna play at being thugs like this just blows my fucking mind.
Get a clue, you little fucktards.  You think it's cool because some dumbass rap artists sing about 'poppin' caps' and all that horseshit?  It sure as hell wouldn't be so cool if you got your dumb ass shot for infringing on some other gangs territory.
Of course, the ones who DO get shot up and survive try to play it off like they're so hardcore that they survived it, and then go back to the same old shit again... Fucking morons.

Friday, January 28, 2011

For those that aren't familiar with them...

This is Plummet



...And this little ball of fury is Loki.







As you can see, the attitudes of the 2 furballs are quite different.

Getting Old Gracefully

Now, I'm not old (at the ripe old age of 33) as one would normally reckon such things, but I am noticing certain things.  The way my face has changed a bit, I'm not quite as flexible as I used to be, shit like that.

But you know what?  An old fellow I'd met in a bar said the best thing I ever heard in regards to aging:  "Every gray hair is a near-miss."  For those that just went "Huh?" that refers to experience.  Guys (and some gals) in their 20s will do incredibly stupid shit (Trust me, I KNOW this.  Firsthand. ) and not think anything of it.  A decade or two down the line, they'll be doing like I am now and wondering WTF they were thinking at the time.

But stupidity in ones crazier days isn't the point of this (Hey, more blogfodder later!)

I've noticed many people whom attempt to hide the ravages of time on their person.  These folks do things like dye their hair, get facelifts/botox, or cake on the makeup.  The problem with these approaches is the fact that instead of appearing younger, these folks tend to appear embalmed or fake.  I knew an 80 year old woman who constantly kept her hair dyed jet black and caked on the makeup like crazy.  Didn't do a damned thing for the liverspots and the collapsed neck, but she apparently thought it made her look younger.  I just thought it was kind of sad, myself.  People waste millions of dollars every year in a futile attempt to forestall that which cannot be forestalled.  It truly is just sad.

As for me, to hell with that.  Every gray hair *IS* a near miss.  I've survived violence, disease, and accidents all this time and I'm damned proud of it.  I'm pretty lucky to actually be this damned old, why would I want to hide it?  You can't make time go backwards or stop it, so why try? Why worry about it?  Just age gracefully and fuck anyone who doesn't like it.  Denying the fact that time marches on is denying reality, and I for one am not going to fall to such delusions.

But, hey folks, it's your money.  Now, I'm off to invest in Oil of Olay stock...

Think of it as evolution in action

Distracted driving.  We all know someone who just can't seem to put the phone down long enough to take a shit, much less drive or walk.  These folks literally can't stop texting/talking/facebooking long enough to get to where they're going, so they wind up causing problems for those of us who DON'T have that particular monkey on our back. 

Some years back, me and a friend were walking home from a store after a beer run, and we were walking behind a rather attractive young woman wearing tight, revealing jeans.  My friend started commenting quietly (at first) on how she was so busy yakking on the phone, she never noticed the two guys right behind her.  He got louder and more suggestive as to what sort of activities could occur, simply to see if he could get any response out of her.  We finally wound up passing her up (she was pretty much blocking the sidewalk due to bushes and such growing right next to it, so it was either sidewalk or the street,) and she appeared quite startled by out 'sudden' appearence. 

Had we have actually been guys who were contemplating bad things for her, she would never have had a chance to respond in time before she would have been totally within the attacker/attackers power.  Oh, you might say she would have yelled out over the phone for help, but how hard is it to take a phone from a surprised person and shut it off or destroy it?  Even if she called out for help, who could possibly do anything in time to save her from a particularly bad incident?

Given the way these devices have propagated throughout society, I suspect incidents like this happen all the time, and not always with such benign results.  Hopefully, the young woman in question learned something that day about keeping ones eyes and ears open when out on the streets, rather than be absorbed in whatever is going on with her phone.

It's not just crime that poses a threat for those who are constantly obsessing over their mobile devices, normal everyday hazards are taking a toll.  Just on the news as of this writing, I've heard of a man who apparently was backed over by a large truck because he had his iPod turned up too loud to hear the warning beeper.  I've also seen men and women both step out into the street while texting/talking on the phone without looking around first.  This sort of behaviour would normally not be conducive to passing on ones genes, but these same people seem to be hauling around a fuckton of crotch dumplings.

Seriously, people?  I've said it before on other venues, I'll say it here and add something to it: Hang up and drive.  Hang up and walk.  Do your texting/talking when you're in a safe place.  A safe place is not defined as "the middle of the fucking road," you collosal fucktards.

Brushing Loki

Brushing Loki

Given that he's a longhaired mixed breed (long haired alley cat?) Loki requires a fair amount of brushing.  Plummet, his mother, does not seem to mind this at all, she seems to enjoy it.  Loki, however is a moody little bastard at times, and at brushing times it's like rolling dice.  One never knows when snakeeyes is going to come up.

A typical Brushing Loki scene:

Me: Alright, fuzzball, c'mere.
Loki:  (Translated from body language, sounds, ear positions, and looks) Hell with that, I got some prime sleepin' to be doin'.
Me: I'm not giving you any choice here, bub.  I'm the top of the food chain.  So, you're coming with me.  *grabs Loki*
Loki: Alright, you're either gonna let me go or I'mma hafta fuck you up.
Me: This won't take long, you little shit.  *Commences brushing, sometimes he'll relent and even enjoy it... not this last time *
Loki: Converting to Furry Hand Grenade mode in 5...4...3...2...1...
Me: Holy shit! I'm bigger than you, dammit, and you're gonna get brushed!  No matter how many transfusions it requires!
Loki: You didn't learn your lesson? Ok, time to go to Furry Nuke mode in 5...4...3...2...1.

Needless to say, his little ass got brushed.... Anyone reading this have the blood type O-?  I think I could use a top off....

Sunday, January 23, 2011

New beginnings

Well, this is my inaugural post to my new blog.  The old digs at Myspace were just too much of a pain in the ass to deal with, and Facebook certainly is lacking in the blog department, so here we are.

The titile "New Beginnings" does not refer to just changing web addresses, it's kind of a philosophical new beginning, of leaving certain aspects of ones past behind...but not of forgetting them.  No one can ever be entirely free of the past, since to lose ones past is in a real sense to lose oneself.  One is made of the experiences they've survived in the past, and hopefully, one has learned to avoid the rather more unpleasant ones.

Enough with the pretentious bullshit, let's get on with the interesting stuff, shall we?