Mark
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| Frustration |
[Jun. 12th, 2009|12:20 am] |
Q: Where is the one place you can consistently find a trash can in London?
A: A public restroom.
Q: What's the one thing you can never find in a public restroom in London?
A: Paper towels.
What's the point of a trash can in the men's restroom?
Oh yeah, just got back from a bidness trip to London.... if that weren't wet-hands-and-dunno-what-to-do frustratingly obvious.
What's the point of a sign that says "this location under 24 hour surveillance"? Wouldn't it be kind of pointless to post the hours that the cameras are actually monitored? As I've said before, but don't make me find the LJ entry, it would be easier and cheaper to put signs up in the places that are NOT monitored by CCTV. I've only ever been to London in the UK, and all the things you hear or read about security cameras being omnipresent are absolutely true - if not more so.
The "Caution - water is hot" sign over the hot water tap still baffles me.
Warning me three times before elevator doors close is a bit excessive. |
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| indian fast food on demand |
[Jun. 6th, 2009|03:09 am] |
So, there's this phenomena in Germany where some guy comes around to bars carrying a basket of pretzels or whatever other baked goods.
The pretzel guy came around, but by the time he was about to leave he hadn't yet visited our table... and for once, at least two of us wanted something to eat. I had already dug the change out of my pocket, so I picked a five cent piece and threw it at him. He didn't quite realize what happened, but did turn around to see us waving at him.
He came over. All he had left were sweet things... nothing anyone wanted.
We said "thanks, but no thanks" and let him go.
Another round of beers later another basket wielding vendor wandered in.... oh great, same problem. Oops, NO! This was some Indian/Pakistani dude carrying a baskest of vegetarian samosas!
This was perhaps about a thousand percent better than the pretzel guy. I mean, we just wanted something filling to pad the alcohol, but then this guy comes along with something that actually TASTES good (though cold). Of course these samosas would probably be substandard if our taste buds hadn't been handicapped by lots of beer and some mystery schnapps, but it was definitely a step up from the stale brezeln the first vendor could have offered. |
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| It's June and I'm wearing my goddamned long johns |
[Jun. 3rd, 2009|07:45 pm] |
WTF?! There's a frost warning for tomorrow morning here.
My landlord is bitching about how much heating I use in the winter, now the heaters aren't even enabled.... I know, I just tried to turn one on... oops, it had never been turned off, just the heating oil stopped flowing at some point when the landlord considered "winter" to be over. |
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| WoW |
[May. 7th, 2009|03:52 am] |
I finally managed to grind/quest my way to level 79... and now I seem to have stopped... refusing to go to level 80. I've just been doing low level quests and achievements for now and still I've managed to get one tenth of the XP required for level 80. I like the game a lot, but I just can't imagine playing any more once I've reached the current level cap.... so I'm artificially holding myself back. Besides, there are hardly any level 79 characters on my server... everyone is either 78 or below or blazes their way to level 80.
My guild (who I don't really interact with any more) is losing members constantly.... and I'm seriously considering a server transfer over to one of the English speaking realms here in Europe. I've basically solo'd my way up to this point and if I want to get into any dungeons or raids, I'll have to find a guild that can put up with the English language and my general lack of experience working in any sort of group. Until I did a bit of research into it, I hadn't realized that there were lots of different countries/languages represented on the UK servers and some English speaking players are actually annoyed by the amount of non-English speaking players on those servers. |
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| The new Trek movie |
[May. 7th, 2009|02:11 am] |
Wow, I really liked it. I hadn't read any spoilers online and had zero expectations, but it was really good.
I do consider myself an old school trekkie with autographs, convention attendance, and TOS quoting ability.... but one really has to be a harder-core, mom's basement dwelling Herbert actively trying not to enjoy this movie to hate it.
Ok, so the old-Spock scenes were pushing it just a tiny bit - but they needed some kind of handover, right? |
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| random nostalgia - history of the computers I've had |
[May. 3rd, 2009|09:42 pm] |
Timex Sinclair 1000 3.25MHz 2KB RAM - I had no storage, so anything I wanted to run, I had to type into Timex's version of BASIC manually and then run it - despite this, to this day, I never actually learned BASIC.
Coleco Adam 3.58MHz 64KB RAM - storage was on data cassette tapes (read-write) and Colecovision cartridges (just games really and read-only) - I did find a really cheap copy of Logo for this system and taught myself to program on it, including mind bending stuff like recursion.
Tandy 1000 HX 7.16 / 4.77 MHz 640KB RAM - no harddrive, but DOS 2.11 was located in a firmware chip and the computer booted in about three seconds.
80286 20MHz 1MB RAM - finally got a harddrive - 40MB! (MFM, full height, and rattled constantly as if in constant death throes) One kid in school teased me so much about how slow my computer was that I nearly get into a fight with him about it - he annoyed the fuck out of me anyway and he certainly didn't have to pay for any of his computers himself; which made it extra aggravating. (though the Alpha Amiga nut and the Alpha PC nut - not me! - did actually come to blows over which system was better) This is also the first computer that the BBS Praxis ran on when I wasn't playing games or programming in Pascal. (after this point, I used spare parts, old computers, or whatever to run the BBS on it's own computer so that my loyal users wouldn't be left out in the cold while I whiled away my time honing my geek skills)
80386SX + math coprocessor 40MHz (the coprocessor basically made this a 80386DX, but it was a later upgrade I made to squeeze a bit more power out of this outdated system when my budget was near $0) It's also at this point that I switch from DOS to OS/2... eventually bypassing Window 3.x completely.
80486DX4 100MHz - here I thought that VLB would be the future of frame buffer hardwar, so I obviously bought the wrong motherboard and ended up having to get a whole new video card along with my next upgrade - I think it was at this point I got a "massive" 512MB harddrive (IDE). Also, I had ordered the 80486DX2 66MHz, but they somehow sent me the wrong CPU - oh what a happy day that was! I move from OS/2 to Linux - but never bother using xwindows because I can't really afford a mouse... so it's console only.
Pentium 60MHz - a hand me down from Flood after he "liberated" a Pentium 90MHz from work.
6x86 150MHz (actual, the marketing material said 200MHz or something, if I recall correctly) I think I can finally afford a mouse and try out Windows 95 and Linux with dual boot; most of my time is spent using Linux - I learn the futility of dual boot systems.
... can't remember exactly, but after the 6x86 hassles, I switched permanently to Intel processors, maybe it was a real P-2 200MHz
P-III 600MHz - this is what I was using up until moving to Germany
P-III 600MHz - basically rebuilt the last computer I had in the US - and I still use it today! I'm using Windows 2000 because I want to play games, damnit. Everything else I do with a computer for work from this point on doesn't really depend on the host OS
Sony Vaio P-4 2.0GHz - retired about a year and a half ago, but I don't find much use for it due to it's lack of expandability (noticing an unintentional pattern- at this point I decide not to bother upgrading my computer until I can get a new CPU/mobo combo which is at least three times the speed of my current computer at a reasonable price). Also, this computer came preinstalled with Windows XP.
Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz 4GB RAM - my current box, built from parts like the others without a specific brand name mentioned. I'm running Windows XP 64 bit (to make proper use of the multiple cores and shitload of memory) which seems to be the most neglected OS since OS/2 (most drivers work, but iTunes only supports XP 32 bit and Vista - which is 64 bit only).
Not mentioned at all are my work provided laptops - they've been Dell, VAIO, or Toshiba and have run whatever the current version of Windows was or Linux. |
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| Frankfurt Slam |
[Apr. 29th, 2009|10:28 pm] |
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Wow, the Frankfurt Slam has modified their rules.... now each poet is restricted to SEVEN minutes - down from TEN. |
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| New phone |
[Apr. 17th, 2009|01:15 am] |
First of all, I've got a phone that works perfectly fine. It works. It makes and receives calls and SMS's. It doesn't play MP3's, it doesn't have a camera, it doesn't even have a color display. It saves all the details I could want for any contact in the address book, button presses are immediately responsive, the menus are all text, and best of all it came preloaded with the awesome sequel to "Snake." (Snake II)
The problem is: recently I was informed by my mobile phone provider (Vodafone) that I should get my ass into one of their retail outlets and pick out a new phone. It appears that it's a standard clause of most cell phone contracts (here in Germany anyway) that you get a new phone every two years (I've had my contract since about a week after moving here - nine years - and have never bothered to take them up on this).
Now I've already gone down to the big box store where they've got display models actually hooked up to power so you can play with them and I was less than thrilled with all of them. Sure, some models look good on paper, but once I get my grubby fingers on them and start pushing buttons I'm immediately disappointed. I guess I'm a Nokia fanboy, but since they ditched monochrome and the simple text menus, that doesn't really count for much any more.
I don't need a camera - but this doesn't seem to be an "option" any more.
I hate touch screens (and styluses) - so don't tell me the iPhone is the way to go (I even refuse to buy Nintendo DS games that require intensive touch screen input).
Siemens and Motorola seem to be the only other two major players in this market - and I've got bad past experiences with both (Siemens - convoluted, counterintuitive menus; Motorola - battery life) Maybe LG and Sony too, not sure.
I don't need MP3, video playback, or a camera - I've got an iPod for media and if I can finally get around to finding a suitable replacement for my compact digital camera (that would be another rambling post about feature disparity between the Olden Days and now) I'd carry that instead.
In any case, picking it up from one of the mobile provider's retail outlets will probably result in a locked phone - though I could still just ebay it if I can't find anything worthy of replacing my dinosaur (the provider is probably #2 here behind - obviously - T-Mobile).
So, any recommendations? |
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For ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rach_el, because you heart my geekiness |
[Apr. 10th, 2009|03:14 am] |
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| DSi |
[Apr. 4th, 2009|11:12 pm] |
Well, I finally got my ass down to Saturn (German big box store chain a la Best Buy), turned in the film from my vacation, and picked up the Nintendo DSi.
I skipped the "DS Lite" (didn't see the point) and OH MAH GAWD the screens on the DSi are so much bigger and brighter than the original DS. |
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| Bookstore analogies |
[Mar. 19th, 2009|09:32 pm] |
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Now I've heard this same story from two book store employees across two distinct decades and continents (so Oprah cannot be fully to blame for the first incident)..... "I dunno the author, the name of the book, or where I heard about it, but the cover is colored <XXXXX>." |
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| WoW |
[Mar. 18th, 2009|12:24 am] |
Two years and finally I can get into the Burning Crusade content I paid for when I first signed up. Yeah, I finally reached level 60 (the original non-expansion level limit). Now I just need a bazillion more gold to get the faster horsey.
Still, I've been doing about a level a day since grinding and questing pretty hardcore since I got back from vacation.... if I keep that up, it shouldn't be long before I can reasonably attempt entry into the latest expansion (level 68 supposedly, though BC is accessible from level 58 it wasn't exactly a cakewalk - so I'll probably try to get to level 70 before any serious attempt to get anywhere in Northrend).
Speaking of the latest expansion, I bought and installed it (and it took what seemed like HOURS) and it furiously tried to convert my entire installation to German (because I bought the German retail version)... despite my language preference at every query (which it did ask before installing a single file on my computer), the game was still spouting Kraut at me until I found a well concealed preference within the game (as in: load the launcher, load the game, log in, pick your realm, pick your character, and get all the way into the game itself) to change it all back to Limey. |
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| I have returned! |
[Mar. 8th, 2009|05:52 pm] |
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... to Germany. My vacation is over. Work starts again tomorrow. More details later. |
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| rain and wind |
[Feb. 10th, 2009|08:25 pm] |
Today it was windy, cold, and ever so slightly rainy - in that order of severity. The rain was barely a drizzle... but everyone whips out their umbrellas anyway. The end result? Every damned public trash can was overflowing with broken umbrellas! hahahahah.
Sure, I brought my umbrella with me, but at no point did it even get close enough to raining enough for me to use it... I was basically trying to be prepared for an unrelenting torrential downpour that might leave me stranded at work or worse under some random shop's overhang.
Shit, I was SMOKING in the "rain" looking at people with umbrellas sideways like they were retarded.... especially so at the two banker types (they were wearing suits and it was that part of town) after they too ended up with a broken umbrella while waiting with me at a crosswalk. |
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| My ISP called me up to upsell me to a new product... |
[Jan. 27th, 2009|11:44 pm] |
The new product is a 25 megabit service... with video on demand and VOIP lumped in.
Thing is, I already subscribe to the flat rate 16 megabit service... no extras, and they can't even deliver 16 megabits.... I "only" get 12 because of the line quality, distance from the DSLAM, or whatever... it doesn't really bother me... it's hard to reach 12 megabit download speeds for any sustained period of time anyway (either things download so fast they're finished in a few seconds or the far end is rate limiting me to something much slower than that anyway).
So, if they want to offer me the 25 megabit service with all the bells and whistles, shouldn't they at least provide the no frills 16 megabit/sec I'm paying for now first?
I've already poked around in my ISP provided router's text file configuration backup and already noted that it's set up for VOIP and VOD QOS - to allow this traffic higher priority than regular "surfing." I'm pretty sure that 12mbps is enough for these things along with regular browsing - it seems a bit dubious that they'd like to upsell me to a higher level of service, which I obviously can't fully take advantage of. |
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| obviously |
[Jan. 9th, 2009|01:16 am] |
Like most people, apparently, I'm considering a change of venue... LJ just doesn't seem stable for the long term.
I don't like myspace and I have no idea what facebook is about, so ... suggestions? |
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