Fek'Lar
(The Last Honest Geek)
The Crapolla According to Fek'Lar
You Know You're DOOMED When...
you get that creepie feeling when you leave a shopping mall and find your boss has parked right next to your car.
You've stumbled onto another issue of The Crapolla, a journal written for software professionals. No not the managers; I mean the people who do the work.
This Crapolla is sponsored by...
In This Issue...
Representation Without Disc Verification
Are you religious? Have you found some sort of answer for why we're here? I think that's great. Now do you mind if I ask favor? Would you mind keeping it to yourself?
Saturday afternoon at the Casa de Fek: Mrs. Fek'Lar and I are watching The Matrix for the nine millionth time. We're discussing the hidden meanings in the choices of red and blue for the colors of the pills when the doorbell rings.
Casa de Fek faces west, so as I set down my Diet Coke and open the door I'm caught by the blinding light of the sun. Through my squinted eyelids I see two women.
Woman #1: "Hello, I'm Sister So-and-so and this is Sister Blah-blah-blah. We represent Jesus Christ."
My irises were beginning to close down which also helped with focus. I saw a name tag. Sister So-and-so, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. A treat for me.
Me: "You actually represent Jesus Christ?"
Sister So-and-so: "Yes, we'd like to come in and bless your home."
Me: "Now hold on, Sister. Last I checked, the Pope had a counter-claim to representation of the Holy Trinity. May I please see proof of your franchise?"
Sister So-and-so: "We believe in the teachings contained in the Book of Mormon."
Me: "Well that's lovely, but it isn't proof that you personally represent Jesus Christ. Quite frankly, I'm a little shocked by your arrogant claim, and believe God has a legitimate beef with you. You're not vegetarians, are you?"
Their eyes went wide, but they could only shake their heads, "no."
Me: "You want to come in and bless my house?"
They nodded in the affirmative; and even made a motion to step forward.
Me: "As if God listens to you and based on your say so, decides if I get fingered in the next earthquake?"
Now they stepped back, hoping for a quick end so they could just get off my porch.
Me: "Oh that thing about God having a beef with you... allow me to introduce myself. My name's Fek'Lar (that's with an apostrophe and a capital L.) I'm a Buddhist. One of our beliefs is that we all are God. So as God, I hereby invalidate all claims you have to represent me, or anyone in my family. If you wish to be forgiven for this trespass, you will go to all the homes you visited today and explain to the good people who live there, that you no longer represent anyone but yourselves."
As if a gift from above, Sister Blah-blah-blah sneezed.
Me: "Bless you."
And I closed the door.
I mentioned in crap200208 that I had bought an iBook. As I started to play with all the bells and whistles, I noticed that I was getting about a 50 percent failure rate on discs I was burning. It didn't matter if I was burning data, audio CDs, or doing a volume copy. I had also used three different methods to burn the CD's, so my software probably wasn't the problem.
I was getting a 100 percent success rate with my old burner, but I have to boot into System 9 to use it. (No O.S. X drivers)
I dropped past the Apple store to discuss the problem. The person at the expert desk asked me what brand of discs I was using. I use the cheapest discs available. They cost about seven bucks for fifty. The Apple guy jumped on this like a CEO on the fifth amendment.
"There's your trouble. Cheap discs will give you cheap results," he said.
But the cheap discs work great on my old burner, besides this guy was equating cost with quality. Aren't these discs made to a standard? They claimed to be rated to burn up to 32X and I only have an 8X burner.
I asked the Apple guy which discs were approved. He said they didn't have an approved list, but he would suggest I try Verbatim. This was an interesting cop-out. Apple is trying like hell to sell computers to the non-technical. How are they to know which discs to buy since there's nothing in the box with your shiny new computer that tells you what to buy? The Apple guy didn't have a great answer for any of my "yes buts".
I figured I would probably have to send the machine to Texas for testing and a replacement drive. The trouble is I do so much work on this machine daily, the down time has to be carefully scheduled. I might as well test out Apple's suggestion.
I hate to say this, but he was right. I bought a core of fifty Verbatim blank CDs. I haven't had one fail yet.
The only thing I can guess is the color of the blank may be important. The CDs that fail are a blue-green and the ones that work are more silver. Perhaps this is all about laser color and the sensor's ability to see contrast.
No more bargain bin CDs for me.
I've been beta testing a new video game. It's called Capture the CEO. You play a S.E.C. agent. It's like a first person shooter except you have a big butterfly net instead of a gun. You run around capturing CEOs who have big wads of cash bulging from their pockets and drag them off to jail, where they are soldomized by the unemployed. Sometimes the CEOs gang up with their lawyers. At that point you push the panic button and deploy Alan Greenspan. But you only get to do that three times.
Fun game. But will the CEO of the game company allow it be released?
This Issue's Headline submission to the National Daily World Enquiring Globe.
Jacko Plays Race Card!
It's Official! The Pot is Finally Calling the Kettle White!
Let's play, "Who said this?"
Heard in the halls of various software companies.
"When you have a CD burning mounted in your car's dash, you've gone too far."
"The fact that I will die isn't what bugs me. Or even that the sun is going to expand and incinerate the earth. Or that the Andromeda galaxy is going to colide with the Milky Way. Or that there are super-massive black holes at the center of the galaxies which will combine when the galaxies collide. What bugs me is that black holes evaporate. Eventually, there will be nothing."
"Dude, try a Zoloft!"
"I do hold a grudge!"
"I've got a great idea. Let's give all the work to the new guy!"
"My sprinkler system short circuited, and my server room in under water. What do I do next?"
"Eh... Polish the resume?"
"If you're really nice to me, I'll let you nickname the new guy."
"Whatever doesn't kill me, will make me fatter."
Excuse Me
I need to hang shinney worthless CDs in my grape vines to keep the birds away.
Fek'Lar
(The Last Honest Geek)
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EOJ
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