Category Archives: Rants

Annoying Valentine’s Day radio ads

Every year I get sick of hearing Valentine’s Day radio ads for jewelry stores. I’m sick of being told that if I don’t buy my sweetheart a diamond, I’m a despicable lowlife schmuck. A few days ago I heard an … Continue reading

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Screwed by Windows again!

I’m trying to copy an NTFS partition from an external USB drive to a spare partition on the internal IDE drive of my laptop.  In the process, before I’d even so much as gotten Ghost to start doing anything, Windows … Continue reading

Posted in Disaster recovery, Rants | Leave a comment

How to fight terrorism

Several people have observed that I am opposed to nearly all of the supposed anti-terrorism measures taken by the Bush administration, and sometimes ask me if I have a better idea as to how to fight terrorism. A few people … Continue reading

Posted in Freedom and liberty, Rants, Travel | Leave a comment

That giant flushing sound…

is the sound of NASA pouring another $318 million down the ISS rathole. While I’m actually an advocate of manned space exploration, the ISS is nearly completely useless, and there’s no good reason to waste even more money on it. … Continue reading

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Monitor power-save aggravation

I have a server machine in a colo facility. The facility provides carts with monitors, keyboards, and mice. The monitors are CRTs. Last night I changed the hardware configuration of a machine, and since I was having problems I needed … Continue reading

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General-purpose warnings

Seen in a manual for a consumer electronic device: Do not connect incompatible products. Wow, it never would have occurred to me that incompatible products might be… well … uh… incompatible! I’ve always been amused by the airbag warnings on … Continue reading

Posted in Computing, Humor, Rants | Leave a comment

Economic growth vs. poverty relief

Yesterday on BBC World Service (one of the few worthwhile channels on XM satellite radio), there was a brief news item about some organization whose name I don’t recall issuing a report stating that economic growth is not an efficient … Continue reading

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I have a dream…

That one day, we will all be able to work together free of the tyranny of disgusting coffee spills in the kitchen… Of other people’s messes that they failed to clean up for the their fellow compatriots as we barge … Continue reading

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Adorable is in the eye of the beholder, apparently

Boing Boing ran a story titled Adorable cyclops kitten. I think they’ve confused the adjective “adorable” with “disturbing and sad”. At least the poor thing’s littermate is reported to be healthy.

Posted in Blog/website/news comments, Rants | 3 Comments

Volume controls

I’m really annoyed by electronic devices with digital volume controls that are only adjustible in coarse increments. I frequently find that one setting is too quiet, and the next higher setting is too loud. I long for baby bear’s “just … Continue reading

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