Take VMware…the concept is that you have a VM that’s created in whatever product (Server, Workstation, ESX, etc.), and that VM will run on any of the others.

Nope. No such luck.

I’ve just spent like 70-hundred hours uploading VMs to ESX 3.5 that were created in Workstation and Server, only to have them fail to start and/or fail to display in the console.

So then I switch over to the VMware Converter, which will definitely work, right? Nope. Failed uploads. Lack of console access.

It’s 3:30am. I’m going to bed. Hopefully my brain will find a solution while I’m sleeping. ::

Outside the classroom was a poster where a bunch of the children had written a collection of facts that they’d learned, and there were a few main points that the teacher put there herself.

Of those were two important facts that many aren’t aware of:

1. The sun is the center of the universe.
2. The sun is the hottest star in the universe.

The teacher wrote these things down. She thinks our sun is the center of the universe, and she’s teaching human children about science in the United States of America in the year 2007.

WTF.

[ More to follow: My friend is going to write an essay on other things he's seen, and he's going to name the school so we can voice our concern. I'm going to link to it here. ]

As such, I don’t want to talk to someone behind the counter who has their hat to the side, pants too low, refuses to smile, and speaks in mumbled single-syllables because that’s how “ganstas” talk. These people convey one message with every action:

I don’t like this place, I don’t like this job, and I don’t like you. I tolerate you because I need money in order to pretend to be something I’m not. I’m not playing your stupid “act nice” game. I don’t jump through hoops for nobody. I’m a (gangster|player) and I’m proud of it.

Well, from now on my answer to that is going to be to ask for the manager and see if I can get the person disciplined. If I get an adverse reaction from the manager, I’ll call corporate and let them know that they’ve got a branch that’s not supporting their image.

Culture, Not Race

And before someone goes off on some race tangent, let me assure you — this is about behavior, not skin color. A good example of “Starbucks culture”, in my view, would be a recent experience I had. I came up and ordered a ” ‘medium’ …er….grande mocha.” The guy behind the counter (Mexican, according to a conversation I heard him having earlier) jumped on the opportunity in a typical geek fashion.

Him: Ah, yeah…we don’t have “mediums” here… (beaming a large playful smile) Me: Oh, damn…I’m probably going to get put on some kind of list now… Him: Actually, you’re already on the list; I’m just going to move your name closer to the top now…

This is the type of banter you expect from a place that caters to students and business people. And I don’t expect that from everyone, of course, but that same branch has multiple people there (of many races) that consistently smile and laugh and generally have a good time. Race is a non-issue.

This is what I expect — no, demand from a business trying to impart a positive experience onto me. I don’t want to see Eminem or R’Kelly trying to be players or gangsters while in a customer service role. It’s incongruent. It’s the same reason I wouldn’t buy rap albums from Erkel.

Bottom line: If you don’t subscribe to the culture of the place you’re working, and it’s a place that requires a public-facing role –don’t work there. And I ask you to join me in calling these people out when you see them instead of just getting pissed about it.:

Then there’s the whole list of people who’s addresses are invalid for whatever reason. God I hate this medium. It’s time for it to phase out. I love the interaction, but for the love of God let’s modernize the implementation.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to implement something better all day, but I already have a project going on (and another in the queue), so I don’t see any interesting thought progress made in that direction any time soon.

Oh well…

The only thing I’ve ever touched that uses an SSH version from the 1940′s, and it’s a Cisco PIX. Fitting.

OpenSSH doesn’t even support it by default; I had to create an ~/.ssh/config file and explicitly tell it to use DES. My local SSH install did everything but spit on me to keep me from doing so.

It’s saved me from numerous tickets during my time with it, but a few weeks ago it started acting kooky — telling me it was “calibrating”, and then demanding to be serviced. Of course, you don’t service radar detectors — you replace them.

So, like a dumbass, I ignored it. And last weekend I drove through some cop’s speed trap. He was right in the middle of the road no doubt spraying radar down the road for miles. My trusty detection device remained silent, however, and I got what’s commonly referred to as a “citation”.

Bastards.

So I’ve rectified that situation with the new BEL STI Driver. Turns out the Escorts are renowned for being excellent detectors with serious stability problems. I wish I had known this. When it comes to both radar detection and IDS, nothing’s worse than a false negative. Oh well, lesson learned — stick with BEL, they’re solid.

I got to thinking about what makes it so great, though, and my conclusion was startling. Evidently, the entire reason the Valentine is supposed to be so good is because it can show you whether a cop is in front of you or behind you. The entire idea is to have the ability to respond differently based on where the radar is coming from. What?

Who in their right mind is going to respond differently based on the direction radar is coming from?

Seriously, what are the options here? You’re going down a road listening to some music and all of a sudden you get hit with radar from the front. What do you do? Yeah, slow down.

Ok, so now you’re on the same road and you get hit with radar from the rear. Now what? Is this the Dukes of Hazzard? Cannonball Run? You’re still going to slow down unless you participate in an alternate reality.

I fail to see how showing you the direction of the radar helps *anything* for someone not wanting to get tickets in the real world. The prospect of accelerating if you know a cop is behind you is just asinine in the extreme.

So sell me on better detection. Sell me on less false positives. But don’t put a big ugly arrow on the front and tell me that knowing where the radar is coming from matters. It doesn’t. If I’m speeding and I get hit by radar — I’m slowing down.

Not only does this seem horrible for the user experience (goodbye proper CSS, etc), but they actually named security as one of the reasons for this choice. Security? So let me get this straight — you go around the country touting the security of IE7, but you’re not going to use it render web content in your mail client because you don’t trust it?

I’m emotional right now.

The moment I step outside the apartment the smell hits me because someone just walked by smoking, or is smoking a few feet away. And this pretty much continues unless I’m inside somewhere (away from the door). Oh, and in front of our place of business you pretty much have to hold your breath as you approach. There are always like 10 people directly in front of the doors polluting the air at any given time.

It’s very annoying to be constantly accosted like this, and I honestly can’t wait until laws get passed that say you can’t do this in public anymore. I mean, here I am on public property being forced to breath known carcinogenic material. Constantly. Day in, day out. It stinks, it’s known to kill on a regular basis — it’s just not positive in any way. I really don’t understand why it’s permissible to expose others to this poison, and I look forward to when it no longer is.

I just tried going to a couple of wallpaper sites as a test of the next generation of Microsoft’s browser. Guess what I was greeted with? A Windows dialogue box telling me that it’s “preparing to install”. Excellent. Any chance we can discuss what exactly you’re installing?

Then, of course, I’m taken to like 4 sites via popups that are doing god knows what to this VMWare session. I finally got tired of dealing with it and opened the URL in Firefox. Guess what? No popups, no software installations — just wallpaper. Interesting concept.

It appears that, just as with Vista, the IE project has had a lifetime to get where it needs to be but has utterly failed to do so. Why is this? I refuse to believe the programmers are inept; I’ve heard too much to the contrary. So the question remains: what’s making Microsoft so impotent? Why does IE continue to suck so horribly? Let’s see:

1. The interface is crap. It’s not consistent, it’s not intuitive, and it even looks lame.
2. Rumor is that they’ll continue to not support web standards.
3. I’m using a relatively late beta and still can’t safely navigate a goddam wallpaper site due to on-the-fly software installs. They could get away with this being “a feature” in 2000, but today it’s just inexcusable.

Seriously, why can’t these people get their act together? Is it management? No leadership? Resting on laurels? I’m really curious. It’s just a sad joke at this point.

What I really want to hear is that they’re going to fix Finder. It’s horrible. It’s a sad day when Windows Explorer, Nautilus, and Konqueror are all better file managers than OS X’s offering. Seriously, they have to do something.

It sounds strange to say it, but I want the basic “Windows” functionality, e.g. to be able to highlight something, cmd-c, go to the desired destination, and then press cmd-v to paste it there. That’s not too much to ask. Or to be able to press return to open something that’s been highlighted. Basic stuff.

Please, Apple…fix Finder.

Is it called a diary?

No.

It’s not called a diary. The diary is the entire book. You don’t go and write a diary when your best friend goes away to camp and leaves you alone. That’s called a diary entry.

Similarly, a blog is a “web log”, meaning it’s a log on the web. And just as one doesn’t write logs when something happens, you don’t write blogs either. Once again, blogs are the entire website — not individual posts. This isn’t difficult, folks.

Anyway, I blame MySpace. You should too.

I hate when I go to a training session where the instructor has a 500×400 foot screen that they’re showing content off of, and then they proceed to hand out that same content in a workbook and expect you to follow along as they change slides.

(long sentence)

Ok, so the content is the same, right? And you have a giant phucking screen with the content on it, right? So why in the hell are you so preoccupied with whether or not I’m following along in my book? I can’t look both places at once, and if it’s going to be one or the other I’d prefer the one that has lowercase letters the size of a sheet of printer paper.

Sheesh…

Don’t get me wrong, when there’s a brilliant drive that comes screaming down the field, and it culminates with a powerful strike on goal (even if it misses or is blocked) — that’s exciting. My problem is that this constitutes like .07% of games I watch. I watched like 10 games during the World Cup and it was mostly an exercise in frustration.

Of course, I am into MMA, so maybe my standard for action is a bit too high.

When I try and open one of the affected songs or videos I am told that I need to authorize the computer to play the content. When I do so I am told that I already have 5 computers authorized, and that I will need to de-authorize one in order to continue.

Fair enough, but not really, since I only have 1 computer authorized. I figure the answer’s simple and I call my buddy Ken who explains that I simply need to reset my counter — a fact that doesn’t really bother me. So I go and sign into my account to do the reset, and guess what?

My account says I only have 3 computers registered.

Three? As in 5 minus 2? So, just to be clear, the real number is of registered computers is 1. My account thinks there are 3. And iTunes thinks there are 5. Now here’s the beauty of the situation: since I am not up to the limit of 5, I can’t reset the count and get my content to play. WTF. Seriously.

DRM becomes lame at a very specific and tangible piont, i.e. when it interferes with the ability of a legitimate user to use their content in a legitimate way. Well, Apple just hit that point. Only they didn’t just hit it; they trampled it with impunity and ridiculed its heritage.

It’s ironic that after dumping thousands of dollars into iTunes over the last couple of years and using Apple as my shining debate example of correctly implemented DRM, that I am now unable to partake of my legitmately purchased iTunes content.

And it doesn’t seem to be just me; there is a whole lot of buzz right now about ditching OS X for Ubuntu. Did stuff this just happen to a bunch of people at the same time? Did the evil of DRM just catch up with a whole group of us? WTF, Apple. WTF.

“Expect a phone call”, says Daniel, who knows that nobody at Apple is likely to ever see this post, “Expect a not-so-pleasant phone call.”

I have to say that I’ve also found this to be true, but not for the reasons I thought. I thought it was an issue with technical ability, but it’s not. It’s not that the consultants I’ve seen are weak technically; their problem is that they seem to have very little regard for what clients want and need, which, if I were to nitpick, is of at least moderate interest.

I’ve seen on a number of occasions where the consultant comes in and essentially starts preaching to his flock. This is how it’s going to be, we know what’s best for you, etc. They simply fail to listen, and what makes it worse is that they seem to favor pre-packaged solutions over those that are customized. Of course, in order to customize a solution they’d have to listen to the client, which could be part of the problem.

At any rate, while it’s bad for most clients (since they’re dealing, by definition, with most consultants), it’s actually quite positive for me. I’m coming to realize that I can be at a major disadvantage technically, i.e. not even in my area, and still offer far more to the client than a so-called expert. The reason for this is simply the willingness to truly listen to the problems that a client is facing, and then follow-up with efficient, customized solutions.

Perhaps it’s bad business to do this; perhaps I’m being naiive about how consulting works. I’m willing to accept that as a possibility. I do know, however, that it’s not possible to make money doing using my approach then I will simply move on to something else. I refuse to become what I see in these others. For the time being, though, I’m going to continue with my theory that you can make money consulting in this ideal, enjoyable way.

We shall see.

Today my fears were justified. I decided to go ahead and do it and was soon prompted to reboot my system. Bastards.

But that’s not the bad part. I begrudgingly rebooted and went to lunch. When I got back and logged in, I was immediately presented with a friendly dialogue box from Adobe. It told me I needed to reboot to finish the install of the Adobe Reader update.

Bastards².

Perhaps it’s my machine; I am only running a dual-core 2.0 Ghz Intel with 2GB of memory. Or maybe my bandwidth? I’m admitedly limping along at around 8Mb/second.

What exactly is the problem here? I’m starting to get a bit pissed about it. I don’t see how I can be getting this sort of delay on top of the line hardware and sick bandwidth. Oh, and it does it all night long, too. It’s not just during peak hours.

Anyone have any ideas?

The number of coffee shops that fail to perform this very simple check is staggering. It’s not a complex idea, folks: the seam is imperfect and doesn’t allow a perfect seal with the lid. As such, if someone pours coffee in the direction of the opening, it’ll leak.

I have actually found that many actually (either purposely or without even knowing it) line up the seal and the opening almost perfectly. It’s insane. So what I end up having to do, almost every single time I get a coffee, is rotating the thing back around so that they are opposite each other.

How this issue isn’t common knowledge among coffee shop traning programs is beyond me.