daily shriek

Video with audio on web pages that starts playing automatically when those pages load is presumptuous, intrusive, loathsome and horrible. Please knock it off.

You just interrupted LL Cool J with some inane drivel about AJAX that was saved out with such a low bitrate that it may as well just have been radio static and the volume was jacked up so loud it scared me half to death. Do ya feel me?

The computer may look like TV and may one day replace TV but right now, I’m not watching TV. I’m working, writing code, and was looking for information on your product and frankly I have no desire to listen to some generic-sounding voice-over artist your tragically-hip marketing person hired read some cliche, second rate ad copy that is so clogged with worn-out buzzwords and smarmy lukewarm hype that given its poor recording quality is really just vocal vomit.

That insipid little aural stunt just made me hate your company. I just closed your web page and will never visit it again.

i’m drinkin homemade wine outta south philly and thinking about how much i hate nVidia — it would see that they cannot make a product that simply works. every time i get stuck using one of their products there are issues. my ati cards never give me grief like this.

i put one of their cards in my desktop and windows won’t even see it, their tech support informs me that they cannot help me and to return the product. my laptop comes with an nvidia graphics and it can’t change resolution of the external monitor.

i dunno, seems to me that if you’re in the biz as long as they have been, i’d expect better, ya know?

eh — fuck’em

dude, all i need is access to one database on one server for like 10 minutes just to grok and duplicate the contents of one single DTS package so that i can replicate its functionality in a shiny new ssis package and web-enable it.

how freakin’ long could it possibly take to add my user account to the group that has access to the server?

from experience, i’d bet 10 minutes tops — 9:00 to verify which group to add me to,  1:00 to login and add me.

so why have i been waiting for two days? this is something that could be done while waiting for long job to run.

whatever.

the russian govn’t shut down allofmp3.com, a popular site that was selling mp3s for about 20-cent a pop.

the thing about this that stands out most to me is how ironic it is that a company in the former bulwark of global communism is beating an entire american industry at its own game

this little russian firm is creating its own wal-mart effect, wherein the company exploits a unique ability to offer lower prices than any of their competition, and in the process is disrupting an entire industry

not terribly different, either, from how the japanese clobbered detroit, only few americans would not mourn were the riaa to go down for a dirt nap

however what makes this victory by the riaa most hollow of all is the fact that allOfMp3 folks have already started up a new firm Mp3Sparks.com and users report that their accounts, balance and all have been migrated over for them, which is kind of creepy

what the riaa has been completely blinded to by greed is that the success of allOfMp3 proves that if you price it right, the people will buy, and buy a lot

they could, if they wanted to, set up their own music store to compete on price with these knuckleheads and cut out all the middlemen — itunes, the lawyers, amazon –EVERYONE.

but they apparently would prefer to  make their money by litigation, pity

links

bbc,
the guardian
mp3Sparks

    so my wife tells me that the reason i lost my shirt in atlantic city playing poker this weekend was the endless amount of whiskey i imbibed all day sunday, but i dunno

my brother-in-law tells me i played well. the hands i won, i got paid off on really well, but i kept getting suckered into hands like a-10, a-q, a-k that never hit, it was freakin brutal

i couldn’t win a hand for hours at a stretch and that’s what really killed me. oh well, so much for the dream of going pro.

hahahahahahahahahhahaha, i hate poker

but, there’s always next time… heh

i don’t want your fucking gold services whatever the fuck that shiny turd is, and i really don’t wanna listen to you blather on about how to buy a house — i’m by no means an expert, but i’ve done it before.

i want you to shut the fuck up until i see the house.

you see, i’m not going to bother getting pre-approved until i see the house — moving sucks all ass, and the idea of having to sell my house scares the shit out of me and you going on about “we like to offer all our customers our gold services…” really just fucking irritates me.

and btw, “gold services”? are you fucking kidding me? what the fuck is that kind of name is that? sounds totally weak.

i mean, i’m not completely stupid, i know you only named it that to make it sound spiffy, and you’ve already told me that you offer it to everyone, which means it’s nothing special, and if it were so fucking special, why are you working so fucking hard to sell me on it?

for crap’s sake, don’t insult me so blatantly if you want me to use you to buy a house.

if i want that house, i’m gonna make you work plenty hard for your commission, sparky, don’t you worry — but for now, fuck off.

that kid in grade school, who shall remain nameless herein, who bullied me mercilessly for the entirety of my fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade, and basically stole my childhood.

to this day i have the fear that a dirty look is going to bring violence, i fear that i am a target as i walk down the street.

i’ve been in fights since then, stood my ground, etc. but there’s no replacing those moments in my youth when i let myself be bullied — what did i know? i was a fucking kid.

i have fantasized plenty about the time i found a .22 cal pistol at the flea market when i was in 9th grade for only $100 and how different my life could have been, or sneaking up on him now and beating him senseless. i’m not a scrawny kid anymore — i could do it.

there are times i have sympathy for the kids that take guns to school and in a twisted way mete out justice. oh, were it only that simple, oh were it only the bullies that were killed.

well fuck it, there’s nothing i can do about it now, but i know for the rest of my life, i’ll remember that time in hell, how everyday was worse the one before.

he was a fat, ugly kid, and so by abusing me, he got to feel a little better about himself, felt like he was one of the guys maybe. i was hyperactive geek who could never fit in anywhere and could never shut up; maybe a smack-down should have been a good thing for me.

but the systematic abuse i endured in silence — i never once told my family the extent of it — simply cannot be justified for any reason. i suspect now that he laughs about that dork he used to beat up on — he probably thinks i deserved it somehow.

every now and again if i find myself googling his name to try and find him, but deep down i fear what i would do if i indeed did find him. i’m sure i would not visit violence upon him, but the lust for vengeance is strong. i would like him to know that one summer i almost bought that gun. better to never let our paths cross…

anyway, i doubt that i will ever be able to forgive him, and i will have to answer for that one day — i will tell you this: my kids are going to learn karate so that they don’t have tolerate that kind of crap.

so i had an interview yesterday for a job at an insurance company that is currently in liquidation.

the job was a full-time w2 job, which i have avoided like the plague since 2001.

but this job was bankers’ hours, working on a fully-funded, well-defined project, with an easy commute, in a cool building, benefits, with no threat of underbidding sales reps!

they coaxed me out of my inherent loathing of all jobs requiring my social security number and interaction with human resources.

i agonized over it, and in the end, i gave in to the promise of stable income, steady work, actually getting to know my coworkers, happy hours, that kinda shit you don’t get as a contractor.

i prepped for the interview, ironed a shirt, boned up on my code knowledge.

i thought i managed my own expectations, i didn’t really go on about the job to any one, but i guess i really had my hopes up

they fucked with my dreams, made me think long and hard about what i wanna be when i grow up.

then they just said “we’re going to take a pass, you’re a little light in some of the skill sets we’re looking for”

yeah well fuck you asshole, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

holy fuck, i actually feel depressed — how fucking dare you pieces of fucking shit, you have no idea how much you just ruined my whole perspective

hate *looks away, might just fucking sob* hate, true seething hate

preachers have a way of turning into perverts

here’s the latest example

A Fort Worth pastor accused of paddling and raping women under the guise of scriptural teaching has been suspended by the national body of the Church of God in Christ.

people’s unquestioning faith in god is especially powerful when wielded by preachers, and that power so easily corrupts those who would minister the words of their god to their congregations.
it’s a shame, but i don’t feel i can trust any man (or woman) of the cloth anymore.

am hating the code i have to write/debug, can’t bear to look, why? why can’t i just slog through it and be done with it?