New stupid tax in force

I have decided I will no longer assist in maintaining cracked versions of software for people.  That includes Windows, Office, you name it.

 

This is because the few remaining people I have been doing this for basically demonstrate zero carefactor about something they’re not paying for, and in my opinion also demonstrate insufficient gratitude about my time taken to fix their gear every time they fuck it up.  It honestly seems to come as a surprise to these people that it’s frustrating doing the same thing over and over again when they won’t learn and don’t care, because they think I’ll happily donate half of my day putting them back on the air.  I also don’t appreciate being guilt-tripped because they’re whining that their business is suffering – if it’s that important to you, either pay someone to turn up on demand, or better yet, LEARN.

 

So here’s the new black:

 

(1)     You will purchase a Windows 7 licence.  Yes, this will cost you money.  I don’t care.  Especially if you have been stupid enough to lose the rebuild disk for the laptop despite me sitting you down and explaining very, very slowly NOT TO LOSE THIS.  I don’t care if you “lent” it to your daughter (who makes more goddamn money than I do) because she liked the look of it and emotionally blackmailed you into doing so by refusing to let you see your granddaughter until you handed it over, then proceeded to lose the box, all the documentation and warranty information (that would have been useful when she fucked the power connector on the thing, wouldn’t it?), and the discs.  Why would she care, she didn’t pay for it.

(2)    You will purchase an Office licence.  See point (1) above re cost and my response to this.  If you don’t like this, try Openoffice.  My assistance will be limited to telling you to go to openoffice.org, and if you’re too dumb to download a single setup file and double-click it then you have no need of an office productivity suite.  Use webmail.  Shout out to my dumb distant relative who actually managed to download and install the Spanish version – despite the fucking installer being in Spanish – Buena suerte, dude.

(3)    If you present me with a piece of hardware, I will plug it in for you.  If it requires drivers, you better have ‘em, or I unplug it and hand it back.  This will be your problem.  I will not spend hours trying to determine what the cheap piece of shit wifi card you bought off eBay is by looking for FCC IDs on the PCB, or staring at "This device cannot start. (Code 10)" in Windows when your Super Happy Fun Time Industries USB barcode scanner is connected.  This means Windows hasn’t got a fucking clue what to do with it, so how am I supposed to know?  See point (1) above.  We have had this discussion enough times that there’s clearly no point in having it again.  You won’t learn, so I am not wasting my time any more.  I’ll waste your cash instead.  Yes, I know it hurts.  It’s supposed to.

(4)    If you don’t have your password to your ISP account, RADIUS authentication, FTP server, web host, mail account, iTunes account etc this is your problem.  You contact them and find it, then call me.  I spent an hour yesterday trying to determine who even hosts someone’s web site that they rely on for a sizeable chunk of their business.  Using that $20 A FUCKING YEAR CheapArse MightWork Webhosting account doesn’t seem like such a good idea does it now?  How long is it costing you in business the $200 you could have gotten reputable hosting with a 24/7 helpdesk for?  Wow, only that long, eh?  Pity their helpdesk is only open business hours… on the west coast of North America.  You should be able to get through to them about 3am, I reckon.  Let me know how much fun it is listening to “Your call is 50^th in the queue.  We thank you for holding, your call IS IMPORTANT TO US!” at international call rates.  Then tell me how much you wish you could still have the VoIP service I set up for you just so you could call suppliers cheaply, but destroyed by insisting on using a $40 ATA and some POS cordless you bought at Aldi, and you won’t fork out for anything better than the last goddamn 512Kbps ADSL service in the country.  The VoIP echoed too much to use?  Wow, I can’t imagine why.  Make sure you say hola to Pablo at the helpdesk when you finally hablo to him.  Don’t get aggro or he’ll drop you back in the queue.

(5)    If it malfunctions after you let someone else touch it, you get them back to fix it.  I’ve had it with repairing other people’s trails of destruction.  It was working when *I* last touched it.

(6)    The two machines I will make conditional exceptions for (because I actually get paid in kind for looking after them) are limited to being rebuilt if you fuck them up due to not caring and just clicking on anything whatsoever that pops up on the screen.  I have fresh images for these machines which I will simply reload, and it’s your problem to reload all of the other crap you’d just die without.  If you’re not keeping everything you want in the ONE directory I warned you I will back up before doing so, you will lose it.  The last time you forgot this, you lost $7,000 in claimable invoices – remember that?  There’s a reason you have a person machine and one for business.  If you trash your personal machine and decide to just keep doing the same damn thing with the business machine because you’d just die if you can’t, it’s going to hurt.  You’ve got an iPad for the precise reason that it’s really, really hard to fuck it up.  Use it.

Sunday news

India will be sending the world's last commercial telegram on July 14.  Apparently nobody is too worried, they have a replacement already - all that ancient 2G AMPS crap everyone else got rid of 15 years ago, plus of course their modern landline PSTN.

 

 

ERMAGERD Real estate agent's account is hacked, HACKED I tell you!

Yeah dude, we believe you.


A pair of poms have reverse-emigrated back to England because they couldn't buy their little snowflake's favourite drink here.  We're crushed.


Irony: it's art only when it's on someone else's property, apparently.


Do you reckon this will strain the friendship?  When exactly does bros before hos kick in, anyway?

Bastards!

Not news:  old dude blows up fibro house due to defective gas heater.

Predicted response of opportunist ambulance chasing scumbag lawyers:  OMFG WE HAVE TO SUE THE SHIAT OUT OF THOSE EVIL BASTARDS AT JAMES HARDIE OVER THE ASBESTOS!!!!

Not news

Not news:  dumbass compter newbie gets PC infected with spyware.

HOLY SHIAT.  What is the world coming to???

P.S. - the mouse thingo goes shiny light down, Ms Technologist.

Saturday morning news from around the world.

Now, with added WTF...

Clearwater, Florida -- Police responded to the scene of a three-vehicle wreck Wednesday afternoon, where one driver reportedly punched a fire inspector and then burned a hole in the pavement trying to get away.  Comes with cool picture of hole.

I see that the airlines in the world have a new challenge in losing your luggage.  Of course, they'll still lose it, it's just gonna be reaaally hard to argue about it when you can prove it.

And, finally, proof that Americans will eat any damn thing as long as it's processed and fattening.  All you really need to know about it is in the last quote:  "The smell is like blue cheese and plastic and smelly feet. The taste is just like sugar and coconut, but THE SMELL IS SO REPULSIVE THAT I CANNOT GET PAST IT."

What more could you possibly want?

Disturbing

I mean seriously, this dude has something wrong with him.

Keep fish, they said. It will be fun, they said.

I keep tropical fish, which have a fairly narrow range of temperature comfort.

 

In this part of the world, that means a tank heater.  This is not a bad thing, because a heater is $70.  You suction cup it to the glass inside in a high-flow water area, set the thermostat dial to what you think is about right, plug it in, and rack off for a couple of hours.  You then return and check against your tank thermometer, tweak as required, and you’re all good.

 

Because of the temperature sensitivity of the animals, I do keep a fairly close eye on the tank temperature, so when I saw it 2° high last week, I turned the thermostat down a little.  And a little more.  And a little more.  When you’ve finally got a tank 4° high and the thermostat is set 10° below that at absolute minimum and the heater still shows as running, a man does have to reluctantly admit to himself that he has a buggered thermostat and a new one will have to be purchased.

 

I installed a new heater on Friday last week and all was good until yesterday morning.  Tank temp a little low, but the LED showed the thermostat had cut in, so all good.  A couple of hours later, the temp is still dropping.  Checked the new heater and it’s got condensation inside the thermostat and about 2” of water inside the heating element, which is not good when you consider the bloody thing is a fully submerged 240v device.

 

Of course, by this time it’s 6pm on a public holiday Monday, I don’t have a spare heater, Calley is away, and I have to go to night shift in a little over 3 hours.  The tank will settle to room temperature over night, well below fish tolerance zone.

 

Shit.

 

Some frantic maths shows that to heat 1 litre of water by 1°C you need around 4,180 joules of energy.  To heat 120 litres, you need  little over 500,000 joules, which is turn around 140Wh.  A 200W heater should therefore raise the temperature of the tank 1°C per hour if running continuously.

 

I extracted last week’s failed heater from the bin and trialled this, and lo and behold my maths is correct.  A simple 240v timer switch set to ‘blip’ the heater on and off overnight saved the day.

 

I now have a bloody expensive Eheim Jager heater installed, and if that fails I am going to be seriously pissed.

Only if they do their hands afterwards too

This one would make your eyes water.

Vaccination objectors - a disgrace to society

I see that parents who wish to opt out of immunising their precious snowflakes will now be termed "vaccine refusers" under proposed legislation, in a name-and-shame attempt to make the current "conscientious objection" tag a little less morally honourable.

Personally, I think they should take the opportunity to go a little further, perhaps to something like "brainwashed moron" or "selfish psychopathic cretin", or perhaps "simpering helicopter parent fuckwit".  Any of those would do me.

Why anyone would not want to immunise their children against a known, preventable disease absolutely confounds me.  Some of the most twisted pseudoscientific babbling "logic" I have ever seen is used by anti-proponents, here's some examples:

Pharmaceutical Companies Can’t Be Trusted
Why, because they're in business to make a profit?  Anyone making this point has just demonstrated they have zero idea how hard it is to get a drug approved for sale, how extensive and rigorous the testing is etc.

ALL Vaccines are Loaded with Chemicals and other Poisons
Chemicals not automatically poisons.  The human body itself is a collection of chemicals.  Do these people grow their own wheat and grind their own flour to avoid preservatives?

Fully Vaccinated Children are the Unhealthiest, Most Chronically Ill Children I Know
And there's no chance at all that other issues like junk food, pollution, radiation etc might be the cause?  Or that the reason that issues like autism might appear to rise in prevalence is that enough children are now no longer dropping dead of preventable disease to allow them to present?  As for ADHD...

Other Countries Are Waking Up to the Dangers of Vaccines
No, they aren't.  They are, in fact, reaping the benefits.  Would you like to go back to polio outbreaks?

 

 

A Number of Vaccines Have Already Had Problems/Been Removed from the Market
So that's a reason to not take advantage of the vast majority that have no problems?  The Chevy Corvair got withdrawn from market due to a design issue, I take it you're wearing your handwoven flax skirt while you walk up to the market to buy your organic vegies for dinner are you?  Or are you driving?

You Can Always Get Vaccinated, But You Can Never Undo a Vaccination
Yes, just like you can't undo dying from a totally preventable disease.


What makes me seethe about these sorts of people is that they think they get to opt out of a societal norm, but then still expect to be able to interact with the rest of society.  Guess what, the rest of us aren't interested in having your whooping couch incubator germbag around, thanks very much.  Or paying the hospital bills for having your snowflakes cervical cancer issues treated, despite significant evidence that immunisation against it works.  Or seeing news articles about infant dying in 24 hours due to pneumococcal disease, despite a 97% improvement due to immunisation.

I couldn't support the position of AMA president more - unvaccinated children should be able to be denied access to school, daycare and other social interaction groups.  If you want to wear Birkenstocks and not have your precious bundle of joy exposed to the nasty chemicals that the rest of society has decided are hugely beneficial, then fine - but you just surrendered the right to have them attend school, because everyone else isn't interested in having your marginalist radical beliefs imposed on them.

Of course, the government had to go and fuck this up as usual by allowing "religious beliefs exemption" from this otherwise good idea, thus allowing the loonies to use it as a loophole.  The useless hippie bitch who founded the misleadingly labelled AVN is now trying to create an artificial religion which is opposed to vaccination just to exploit this point.

At current count, the legitimate religions (as far as arguing over who's got the best imaginary friend can legitimise anything) that oppose vaccination are:

- Muslims and Jews who object on the grounds of animal derivation - and even then they make exemptions if there's no alternative!  (This may be the first time in known history either group has compromised on anything.)
- A few ultra-conservative Christian groups, whose objection actually stems from the concept that immunisation against things HPV and cervical cancer might encourage their children to fornicate.  (Presumably these people think herpes is just great.)

And... that's it.  Even the fucking Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses of all people on earth don't object to vaccination, and these are the groups that will quite happily stand by while they or their family members die for lack of a simple blood transfusion.  If there was ever a bunch of looney nutbags that could be counted on to object to something, they'd be it.

So who are we left with?  The cretins running AVN, and a few middle-class suburbanite conservatives who drive their little germbag to childcare in a new BMW while protesting that it's their right to expose everyone else to preventable disease because they can't differentiate between an organic turnip and a child.

For the common good, the sooner these people are told to fuck right off the better.