Applied Indifference

I’ve finally gotten around to putting 7 on the Big Workstation.  Went 64 bit and the whole nine.  Decided to mimic the experience I’m putting my customers through by making it a domain member and working as a limited user.

What a pain in the ass.

Installing software is easier on 7 than XP as a limited user, I’ll grant that.  But this arrangement only points out just how far behind the times software developers are.  I mean, this has been an “official” best practices thing for the better part of a decade now, and software still doesn’t get it.

The big hitters (Office 2007, Visual Studio 2008) work fine when installed as “Administrator” but used as “BrianC”.  In fact, most stuff does.  FOSS like Pidgin and 7-Zip work fine.

But then there’s the exceptions.  Quickbooks itself worked without an issue.  But the Quickbooks Outlook Sync program only works for the user that installed it.  So simply elevating to Administrator doesn’t cut it.  So it’s log out, go back in as admin, bump my domain user to local administrator, go back in as me, and install.

Same thing with the Palm software.  Desktop installed fine, but then started Hotsync in the Administrator context, rendering the first (bluetooth only, no USB drivers for you 64 bit folks!) sync useless.  Where it gets worse is all the related apps.  Documents To Go didn’t install itself properly (since it didn’t see a profile), Smartlist To Go wouldn’t install at all until I was a local administrator myself.

Come on folks, get with the times.  Microsoft is trying to make an operating system that doesn’t get hosed by users running with Administrator privileges because you clowns can’t get your shit together and write software that allows people to run with lower privileges on their machines.

Tags: Computers // Comments Off

So I’ve had the UPS next to the living room PC for a couple weeks.  Cat loves to walk up against that wall.

Today it occurred to me that she could step on the switch and shut the computer off.

So she did.

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That’s what you hear coming from the interim election to replace Senator Edward Kennedy in Massachusetts.

The progressive socialists thought that Obama’s election was a mandate for full-bore socialism in America.

They were wrong.

November’s gonna be a bad time to be a Democrat.

Tags: Politics // Comments Off

2009 is officially in the can.  Off to storage.  Enjoy eternity in the cooler.

2010, here we come!

Tags: Randomness // Comments Off

There’s only one way to stop the government from taking over the entire medical services industry at this point, and that’s to get the greedy craven little cowards in the Senate to blow the thing up in order to protect their phony baloney jobs.

I’ve tried calling Senator Lieberman’s office this morning, but I’m more likely to get through to Rush on Open Line Friday than I am to get through to his office.  Ditto Senator Dodd.  So I’m sending them both a polite e-mail demanding that they withhold their cloture votes unless Connecticut gets the same deal Nebraska got.

If enough states do that, then they either cave in and blow the budget up (although they can strip the Medicaid funds out later, which they’re certain to do to Nelson), or they can kill the deal with Nelson and lose his cloture vote.  Either way, this abomination goes down in flames and America wins.

I encourage you to write your senators today and let them know you won’t stand for just one state getting a free ride on Medicaid.  We’ll either get the bill killed, or force the federal government into receivership.  Either way, they won’t be able to bother us much any more.

Tags: Politics, Society // Comments Off

is it really a federal problem?

I’d like to know just how many lives are being saved and at what cost with these ads warning people about seat belts and drunk driving – and their associated check points.

Specifically, I want to know the marginal cost to save one life versus the marginal cost in lost liberty from enduring East German-style checkpoints.

Because it’s gotta be way more than they intend to spend per person on this new health-care abortion.

Tags: Politics, Society // Comments Off

No more filter bucket for me, thanks.  I got tired of forgetting to fill it, and losing that fridge space.  And the icemaker was useless because the ice tasted and smelled like shit.

So I put in one of those filters that has its own faucet, and I split the output to go to the icemaker.  The water is indistinguishable from what was coming from the Pur filter.

Mating plastic and brass is a TOTAL PAIN IN THE ASS.  You don’t want to over tighten it because you will tear the threads right off the plastic, but you put it all together and it leaks, so you tighten, and tighten, and tighten some more.  Now I’m just hoping nothing goes BANG and sends water all over the house.

Tags: House, Randomness // Comments Off

I know, like I should complain, but…

I’m now watching the Giants in SD because Fox can’t keep the HD feed from dropping.

I would have tweeted about it, but Twitter is down.

Tags: Randomness // Comments Off

Upon advice of a friend, I’ve decided to grant cat a temporary reprieve from exile.

All the catnip toys have been tossed.  Even a little whiff of this stuff is obviously driving my cat insane.

And no more liver in the food, as this apparently makes poo stink horribly.

And we’ll try a different litter and see what happens.

Tags: This is my brain on drugs // Comments Off

I think I can say conclusively that the cat experiment is an absolute failure.  My mental health has been in continuous decline since the cat came in to my life.

I can’t sleep, since the cat keeps crawling on my face to get to the nightstand to either drink out of my water glass or knock everything on the floor.  I can’t work because I’m constantly interrupted by the sound of something else crashing to the floor.

This cat is destroying everything.  I have to keep everything out of her reach, and she’s finding new and interesting ways to get into my shit.

And the smell.  She shits, and the whole house instantly reeks.  Even if I clean the shit out of the box immediately and spray the hell out of the place with lysol, it still reeks of shit for an hour.  Cat shit is possibly the most foul smelling excretion you will ever experience.

So, either she goes or I go.  And since I’m the one paying the mortgage on this place, I’m staying.  By the end of the week, she’ll be Someone Else’s Cat.

Tags: This is my brain on drugs // Comments Off