My Slice of Reality,

More a note to myself than anything else but Lifehacker linked to YouTorrent today which looks to be a pretty sweet bittorrent search site. Similar in a sense to torrentz.com I suppose. Have to check it out later.

BitTorrent: YouTorrent, Your New Favorite BitTorrent Site

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Well as tycho said the other day I was going to start a new series this thursday dealing with technology but I was delayed and really, this time it wasn’t my fault but rather that of life itself. All of a sudden I have half a dozen things requiring my attention and focus and I wouldn’t be lying if I said it was stressful.

The good news is that in the next two weeks I’ll be starting a new job; one thats not based on retail sales. Instead, I’ll be doing contracted support for Sun Microsystems. It’ll mainly deal with Solaris support but could also be Linux/Windows based as well since they’re allowing that to be installed on their servers. I honestly can’t wait. So, yes, its delayed my article a tad but I hope to have the first part of the series online tomorrrow.

Didn’t help that my damn screenshot application wasn’t working either. Silly Microsoft for not having anything better than “PrintScrn” built into XP in the first place. Bah.

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It’s been two days now since Virgina Tech was tarnished by tragedy and beyond the wounds that will never heal lie quite a few questions. Foremost among them, why? Why did Cho Seung-Hui do what he did? Why wasn’t he monitored more closely after his disturbing actions of the past? Why was the response of the authorities so slow after the first two murders in the dorms? Most of all, just plain why. Why did this happen, why does it continue to happen to innocents who’ve done nothing to effect their murderers. I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like for the families, for the friends, for the community itself. Its a life changing experience and the shocks that will radiate out from it for months and years to come will be groundbreaking.

We thought our society would change after Columbine and it did. We witnessed a crackdown on school security, the eroding of student rights even further and a rentless assault on video games and music which some think are to blame. I cant help but wonder what the changes will be that result from the dark day that was Monday. Who and what will be blamed now?

One result of the shooting that has infuriated me was the literal frenzy the media went into just hour afterwards. The press conference held around 4 p.m. Monday was an embarassment. The questions asked of the schools police chief were ridiculus and harmful. Many questioned why the school waited so long to send out a warning; many asked why the school wasn’t on lock down. The answer is simple: size. Virginia Tech is an institution that sprawls over 2,600 acres, has more than a hundred seperate buildings and a student body of over 26,000 people (roughly 9,000 live on campus).

You have a population of a small town, widely scattered, with varying primary methods of communication. The one method the schools have that scale well is email, which is how they first responded. Two hours after the first shooting. Some say that if an email had been sent early and the school locked down the second shooting might have not taken place. Thats bullocks. Even if the email had been sent minutes after the first shooting the likelihood of the majority of students seeing it before arriving on campus is minuscule. If the school was then placed into lockdown, you would have students milling around on campus before slowly leaving. What would be created is a target rich environment. Instead of groups of students in known locations they’d be scattered over those 2,600 acres. An impossible to defend target. Having said that, the school should have responded earlier but as they say, “hindsight is 20/20.”

One final thought that I can’t help but ponder, is what the effect would have been in just one of those students or teachers had been armed. If just one had carried a concealed handgun the entire chain of events could have been different. The key point is could have been different. The person would have to be trained, unlikely to freeze, and in the right place at the right time.

I’ll close this post with my prayers reaching out to those affected; the families and friends. Tragedy affects us the world over even if our eyes are too closed to witness. Here are the closing words of Nikki Giovanni’s speech, preaching defiance in the face of pain:

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness. We are the Hokies.

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This is a list of the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club. Bold the ones you’ve read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien 2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov 3. Dune, Frank Herbert* 4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein* 5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin 6. Neuromancer, William Gibson* 7. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke[1] 8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick 9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley 10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury 11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe 12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. 13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov 14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras 15. Cities in Flight, James Blish 16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett 17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison 18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison 19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester 20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany 21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey 22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card 23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson 24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman 25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl 26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling 27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams 28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson 29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice 30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin 31. Little, Big, John Crowley 32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny 33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick 34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement 35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon 36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith 37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute 38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke 39. Ringworld, Larry Niven 40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys 41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien 42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut 43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson 44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner 45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester 46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein 47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock 48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks 49. Timescape, Gregory Benford 50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

[1] One of the best sci-fi books I’ve never heard talked about. Bought it second hand at a book far and have loved it on each read through. One of the few my father actually hasn’t read before.

Tags: Meme

Tags: Books, Fantasy, Geek, Sci-fi

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I’ve had this issue pop up a few times now on machines where, when you attempt to install a program you will get a “blah blah is missing MSVCR80.dll file” and the install will fail out. It was a vexxing problem because these were fresh Windows installations, completely patched and up to date. Nothing was running in the background.

Finally, doing some google search on revealed something interesting. Windows Defender sometimes breaks Net 2.0. Atleast, thats how it appears. If a machine has Defender installed, and you get said error, uninstall Defender. Disabling it doesnt fix the issue, but uninstalling will.

Good job Microsoft. Funny how this problem didn’t exist in the betas.

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Things might be changing again behind the scenes with Tealart in the next few days. Apparently, Wordpress will be releasing 2.1 in the next few days. It’s supposed to have quite a few niceties (is that a word?) included within but, since I have no idea how it’ll work with the plugins or themes (been way too busy to research and didnt even know it was upcoming) I’m not sure if I’ll upgrade on my day off or not.

I do find it interesting however the difference between Sam and I in regards to this site. He does much of the content updates and the design (I used to though!) but I mainly do the backend upgrades. Funny how our positions have reversed

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It won’t really be noticeable but I did some winter cleaning and updated our wordpress setup from 2.0 to 2.0.6 and also updated some plugins. At this point I’m not sure what all sam wants enabled in that respect, so there might be some missing functionality until he re-sets things up. Until then, enjoy

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I’ve always wanted to throw a New Years Eve party and come Sunday night I will be doing so - sorta. You see, Laura (my g/f) has her own apartment so we’re going to be chilling there for the night getting good and fun but some of my co-workers will be joining us. Could be fun, maybe. Hopefully.

No idea what we’re gonna do though. Hopefully my xbox, computer, monitor, speakers, and random games will provide some enjoyment. Otherwise we might just go tip cows. Anyone got any suggestions?

Maybe I’ll do a live blog (with photos!) of the festivities

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People who shop on black friday really irk me. They have concepts of what should be a perfect shopping experience on the busiest day of the year, that are lightyears away from reality. They expect stock of a sales item hours after a store has opened. They expect rain checks on items that are clearly 100% margin loss, days later. Most of all, they expect to be treated like gods.

I’m sorry, when you treat me decently, then I’ll treat you like a god. Until then, go shop at Circuit City, they have great customer service (yea ok).

So, other than having just worked black friday morning where we did more than a normals day’s business in 45mins of opening, browsing the web I find this article about a guys experience shopping at a Staples. On Black Friday. I feel like I must take the article to task piece by piece, for the simple fact that its just plain wrong and it does harm to Staples for no real reason.

To begin with, he states that he was attempting to buy the Samsung 2010 laser printer that some stores were carrying as a promotional item. It’s a pretty we’ve been carrying for months, and in general stores don’t stock except for special occasions (ie, sales). His store was carrying it for $139 (ours for example, is $129 but we were selling a different model for the same sales price) with a massive $100 rebate. Pretty good price, in fact, I bought one a few months ago for that price myself.

Thing is though, he’s under the impression that no ones going to buy it because of the initial price, and the rebate amount. Wrong, they sell like hotcakes. Whether its the Lexmark, Konica Minolta, Samsung, or HP entry-level laser on sale, they will sell very quickly at that price; we sold seven within an hour of opening.

His comment about not being able to find the page on Staples website, whether sales flyer or that particular printer isn’t clearly defined but both are explainable. The Samsung 2010 is typically in store only. There are quite a few items that arent listed online but, for promotions, we carry in store. The flyer itself wasn’t released until wed. evening though it was accessible in other locations.

In regards to stock of the item, if a store had seven units to sell, thats all they had. Black Friday specials we are not allowed to transfer, or even attempt to contact other stores. The simple reason is volume. We get slammed, even with all the stores employees on the floor and the inventory system can’t track sales updates from other stores that quickly. If you show up 20 minutes after the stores open, its pretty damn likely that all the good items are gone. Its not because we didnt stock “enough,” but because those people at the doors at 4 a.m. (15 at our store, and by 5:30 there was over 100) bought everything. The flyers clearly list “limited stock.” Hell, two stores in the same district might not even carry the same items. Carlisle and Camp Hill had two different monitors on sale, for two different prices.

As to the associate being rude, I’m sorry, but on black friday there are few “happy” associates. We’re slammed, dealing with as many as 1,500 customers when stores might normally only get 500 in a day.  We have people trying to cheat the system, steal (we had three attempted thefts on FREE items by 7 a.m.!), and treating us like shit. Do you really expect us to dive to the floor and give you phone numbers when they’re listed in the phone book, or under the #411 system when we have so many other people to service? Come on a regular day, and see how we do. There’s a reason why we’re the number one Office Supply company and it’s because of our customer service.

In closing, there’s no conspiracy. There’s no bait-and-switch. You tried to buy a hot item on a massive sales day. Don’t try and get up page hits by inflammatory articles.

This might not be the most well written article in the world, but I was up at 4 a.m. and gotta be back at 2. So there it is. Jonas, if you read this and have any questions about staples, feel free to comment back

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