Archive for the ‘Boneheaded’ Category
Updates – Strange Days.
I’ve been mulling over even mentioning this, however someone reminded me that I sort of asked for this junk to happen by getting involved. The problem with me is, If I see someone in trouble, if I see a crime being committed or somebody doing stuff they simply should not be. I have a tenancy of getting involved. There are people out there who don’t want me involved, they don’t want you involved. So they attack people like me to frighten and drive away. I’ve seen some evidence of this happening, especially lately.
I cannot keep quiet about this stuff, because if you keep quiet, it gets worse, if you keep quiet, they win. The people who are doing this are bullies and if you allow bullies to win even a little bit they become bigger bullies. We all lose when that happens. You – me - everybody.
Last week I went to the regular Scientology protest in Downtown Clearwater. Clearwater is a special place to Scientology, it’s a place they make a majority of their income and even in these tough economic times (I believe) they are making a profit in Clearwater. Things to remember about Scientology, it’s not about religion or freedom to them, it’s all about the money.
Protests in Clearwater are boring for the most part. We don’t have people running out and randomly assaulting protesters like in other places. We don’t seem to have the viscously rude bull baiters (bull baiting is a Scientology skill where they make people sit around and insult each other. It’s startling when you first see it, then when you find out that they actually go to school to LEARN how to insult people it’s kind of sad.)
Last week was different. We had (what I believe) were at least four “operations” running against the protesters. I’ll describe a couple of them. We had anomalous cars with Scientology bumper stickers slowly cruising around, there were several people walking by who stopped, pulled expensive SLR type cameras out and made a big deal about photographing the protesters. A couple of bikini clad girls alternately rode bikes and strolled past the protest – like five times. It was all noticeable and rather unusual.
And the one which really burns me up, towards the end the protesters were camped out at Cort and Ft Harrison, this is the main drag to the beaches and there is always lots of traffic on weekends. I observed a car pull in across the street from us, a small boy of no more than nine or ten got out. He started walking towards us, then turned around and got back into the car. He did this several times until finally “mom,” the driver of the car got out and fairly pushes the kid across the street. He came over to us and started talking about porn site he visits, all they while recording us on his cell phone.
That’s just too much! I mean, you have got to be freaking kidding me!
This could all be a coincidence. The kid, the bikini girls and the other things I didn’t mention might all be just random occurrences, but I don’t belive so. Because another thing happed much closer to home.
I had an incident from one of my co-workers. He’s a fellow we hired some years ago, a pretty smart guy to tell the truth. A bit reckless, but he knows his stuff.
I tend to keep work separate from the protest thing (other than I’ve made my employers aware of it.) I don’t as a rule bring it up unless other people do first (which they do from time to time.)
This guy has always seemed a bit, I don’t know; odd to me. He seems to know his stuff but there are strange gaps in his knowledge. Like he seemed unaware of a lot of popular “geek” culture that several of my collages and I enjoy.
He’s also constantly trying to sell something, you can hear it the way he pitches his voice. He brags about how good at selling he is. He also regularity comes into my office to tell me about some new hacking tool or whatever. I’m polite to him, but really – I’m not into breaking into computer systems.
The other day, he walked by my office and said in a loud voice “How’s project Titstorm going?”
“Titstorm” was some thing regarding an on line. protest against Australian Government web pages. I’d heard about it but I was not otherwise involved. I tend to shy away from illegal activity as a rule. (Duh!)
Well I approached this gentleman and asked “why do you think I wold have anything to do with that?”
He said, “because you run proxy servers in your office!”
“I certainty do not” I said. (which is absoulutly true.)
He said “you are blatantly lying - you always do that!”
The conversation went downhill from there. We were in front of our immediate supervisor who eventually put a stop tot he whole thing. I spoke to the supervisor about this and how upsetting that line of questioning was to me. You see, among other things I do computer security work and accusing me of such a thing is like asking a police officer how his bank holdup went last night.
Work handled the thing to my satisfaction, but I’m a bit disturbed about the larger aspects of the issue.
I don’t know if my colleague is a member of Scientology and frankly I don’t give a flaying damn. He urged us to buy products from Sunbelt Software once (a Scientology company,) but otherwise he has not attempted to bring his personal crapola to work. (until now.) The fact that he’s running scans on me is troublesome, the idea that ‘somebody’ at work has been putting pressure on my bosses has been in the back of my mind, but I don’t like to be paranoid.
So anyway, here is how it’s going to work. I’m not doing anything illegal. If somebody think s I am, that’s their problem – not mine. Take it to the authorities. Stop playing little kids games.
As for Scientology. your reputations(s) proceed you. If you get me fired from my job, I’ll get a nice vacation where I can document and ‘publish’ the bulls&%t you people pull, not just on me, on everyone around this community since the mid 1970s. Then I’ll get a better job. You get me arrested on some bogus crap, I’ll let my record speak for me. You try to mess with my reputation? People will know what you are up to, lots of people. My reputation is for me to create, not for you idiots to mess around with. You create your own flaps.
You’d better worry about your own reputation for a change.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Avatar – it Might not Suck!
That new Tarzan flick – what’s it called again?
Avatar – now I remember!
Firstly; I know Hollywood really can’t stand James Cameron – at least the working stiffs in Hollywood can’t stand him. “Cameron – he freaking drowns people” they say.
He brings in the bucks though – the bean- counters and the suits like him.
So he did Piranha 2 which had some cute chicks in bikinis, some pretty good cinematography (really!) It didn’t completely suck even as a grade B monster flick, or was it grade C?
He did Terminator which was an awesome low budget Science Fiction flick, Terminator Two which was a pretty good big budget action flick. He did Aliens which was pretty cool for a grade A Monster flick, then the Abyss, Titanic and a host of others that made da bucks. If he wanted to film Jesus Christ getting whipped until we all feel sick to our stomachs, the suits would let him.
Oops! Someone else already did that (my-bad!)
OK so he wants to do an animated feature that mixes live action with CGI, but seamlessly. He wants monsters as characters but they have to be utterly inhuman and be computer animated, but based on real actors. He wants to, not only scratch design every artifact shown on the screen, he wants to design a whole new camera technology. He wants to do this in 3D, he wants to film actors and have a computer translate them into his monsters in real time. He wants to design a realistic alien biosphere – realistic aliens and all that junk.
And he want a pony!
The suits say “OK, just bring us the bucks!”
So he makes Avatar which is concocted from every Science Fiction book or movie he’s ever heard of. It’s going to be fresh and original….. Hu- what?
The movie is also the most expensive in history – and it’s a Tarzan flick!
Basic Tarzan movie is – white guy gets left with savages, they freak him out for a while, he starts grooving with them. Since he’s a white guy and we “know” he’s better than they are he ultimately out-savages the savages. This is a trope and it’s been done by everyone from ERB (Tarzan – John Carter and all those Pellucidar books.) it’s been done as a Western (Dances With Wolves.) It’s been done in several Japanese novels and movies (Shogun and “The Bushido Blade”come to mind.) It’;s been done in countless comic books etc. Basically it’s been done to death.
It was even done n a little movie called “My tasty Frenchman” – but the protagonist gets eaten in the end.
So let’s see if I understand this, Cameron just made a movie that’s the biggest worn out plot evah! The only one that even comes close is “boy meets girl.” And guess what sports fans! Plot for Avatar is;
White guy becomes doe-eyed ten foot tall blue monster on distant planet that humans want to rape. White guy finds that he likes being blue-furry critter, a lot! (big surprise his life sucked anyway.) He meets naked blue furry, doe-eyed SHE monster and they do the nasty under a rainbow waterfall or something. He finds out that humans are going to strip-mine the whole place and build the biggest WalMArt ever, white guy decides blue furry monsters are people too, even if they don’t have WalMarts and big honking guns. White guy fights back for what it right and just. Only he uses bows and arrows while the humans use their big honking guns.
White guy gets his blue furry ass blown off and wakes up in his human body again. Gets docked for the time he went native.
OK; perhaps Cameron can pull this thing off, the film LOOKS fabulous, what I’ve seen of it (which is darn little.)
I mean, why is it 3D? I have never seen a 3D movie that was really enhanced by the process. Basically, I can’t tell if stuff is 3D unless it’s right in front of me anyway. My eyes are too close together and so are yours. Why do you think marksmen close one of their eyes?
Also, there are a buttload of out of work Science fiction writers out there who would kill to get involved in a flick with a tenth of the budget of Avatar. Can we get some real writers for a change? I’ve seen Hamlet done with no set and almost no props, it was still Hamlet. You can spend a billion dollars to dress up a pig – get ghost writers and do a big book deal, and it’s still Sarah Pailn.
Avatar might be a very enjoyable story, but so far all they publicists have been saying is “ooooh look at the pretty lights!”
It might not suck, but so far it’s hard to tell! I hope it doesn’t suck. Then again, I’m too poor to see it in the theaters anyway. Sorry James!
Popularity: 1% [?]
The Hard Drive Is Inside the Computer
Via Shashdot
“Those of us who work in technology have a jargon all of our very own. We know the difference between CPUs and GPUs, between SSD and HD, let alone HD and SDTV! Yet, our users are flat out calling everything ‘the hard drive.’ Why is it so?”
From ...here
Popularity: 1% [?]
Now that’s Strange!
Sign!
Someone swiped my Obama for Pres sign!
Sign gone!
In fact they swiped all the political signage on my street!
Once about three or four Obama signs.
With one exception!
Blatant thieves are blatant.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Insanity can be defined as….
Just goes to show you how some people do the same things over and over again expecting different results. I know a teacher with a sign on her wall that defines this behavior as insanity.
A few years ago Mark Bunker was filming the Scientology Celebrity center and one of their big young goons quietly walked up behind him and they *bumped.* This resulted in the police being called for an alleged assault charge, the whole absurd thing was caught on camera. It came to nothing, the police were scratching their heads at a young fit man claiming that he was injured after Mark accidentally bumped him and apologized.
The other day, Stu “Killdozer,” Wyatt, a scooter-bound protester in Plymouth England allegedly ran over the toe one of the local Scientologists and was arrested for assault. From what I saw on the video, the Scientologist was deliberately sticking her feet under his scooter, something that he warned her about.
Not that this means anything, if Scientology thinks you are an SP they can use whatever means necessary to have you arrested for “crimes.” Hubbard told them that anyone who does not like Scientology is a criminal and guilty of murder and other capital offenses.
It’s right out of the old script. Bump them, cry havoc and call the cops. Say how threataned you felt, from the fellow in the wheelchair.
They have managed to shake up a flagging hive of Anons once again (good move guys! ) Stu is incognito and for some reason his PC and video equipment was confiscated. It’s going to be interesting to see how far this goes.
One thing for sure, this time it is going to be *far* more public and immediate.
The main Enturbulation thread is here.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Signs and Portents in Clearwater 3.0
Some of you may have read my previous post about Scientology businesses putting up lots of identical “No Anonymous will be served” signs back in April.
A few days ago, just before the last “World against Scientology” picket, a petition circulated around downtown Clearwater by some of the Clearwater merchants.
Can you guess what it says?
“Dear Mayor Hibbard;
We, the merchants of the Cleveland Street District, are writing to you to ask for your help.
In the last months, a group of masked protesters have come into downtown Clearwater to demonstrate. They have told the media and the City that they are peacefully protesting. This is far from the truth and their actions are detrimental to the conduct of business in downtown. There have been three protests, and in each they have walked through the downtown area yelling and screaming.
Their actions have prevented customers from coming into our stores. Saturday is a very busy day for us commerce-wise and having literally no sales for those three days hurts our economy and not just our personal economies. We have employees that need to be paid. We charge sales tax. These people are making it difficult for us to attract customers downtown.
The City of Clearwater is putting a lot of effort into revitalizing downtown and we hate to see it wasted due to a group of kids who should be using their time to build the community , not trying to tear it down. We do not like having to be here and they, with their masks, odd costumes , chanting and yelling, are not welcome. I do not know if the City has a law to prevent people such as this from stopping commerce as they have been doing. They do have the right to peacefully protest, but they are in no way peaceful. They are intimidating our customers (both non-Scientologists and Scientologists alike.) and we do not appreciate it.
We ask you for your assistance in this matter. We know that you have a whole city to contend with, but downtown has been in the focus of so much of your hard work.
We thank you for your attention and we look forward to helping you create a truly great downtown.
Sincerely ;
(List of 30 odd signatures.)”
I can sympathize with the merchants who signed this thing. Clearwater is nothing short of a dead-zone in Pinellas County. I live relatively close to there and seldom go Downtown (other than to patronize the Starbuck’ or go to a protest. )
But to suggest that the protests are somehow effecting downtown businesses is beyond silly. I’ve been living around here (other than a few years in the military) since 1974. I know how Clearwater has changed, I know how Sparkling Downtown Clearwater has become a tense demilitarized zone, I literally breath a sigh of relief when I leave that place and come back to the real world. This is nothing new, this did not start in January, this did not begin with some stupid Tom Cruise vidio leaked to the Internet. It started long ago. Back in 1975, when Hubbard’s Sea Org landed and began “Project Normandy.”
Why don’t I go downtown to do business in Clearwater?
- There is little going on there that I wish to take part in.I have absolutely no interests to learn more about L. Ron Hubbard or get my brain re-programmed by his followers.
- I have no desire to be photographed by strange people and sneered at by the dwindling number of business owners.
- I have little need to get my plates run for no reason and get accused of being a murderer.
The TL;DR reason, (besides the obvious.) is, downtown Clearwater is a creepy place where nothing happens, except Scientology.
To the west of Downtown Clearwater is one of the best beaches on the Suncoast. To the north, the towns of Dunedin with its art district, Palm Harbor with its curio shops and Tarpon Springs with its splendid history and sponge docks. To the East, the sprawling Hwy 19 corridor, full of shopping malls and other businesses. To the South, Largo, a growing suburb of Tampa , Bellaire, a charming little place with some great restaurants, Pinellas Park, has some large shopping/entertainment districts, there is the town of Seminole and then, Saint Petersburg with Baywalk, Janus Landing, the Grand Prix, great museums and I think they have a baseball team. Tampa bay is one of the top ten media markets in the US, it has a similar population and demographics as the Seattle/Tacoma Washington area.
Now, Clearwater has many things to offer — in East Clearwater that is. The downtown district and the East Clearwater Hwy 19 corridor are very different, it’s like two different planets. The Beaches resemble Downtown Clearwater like LA resembles …ahh I don’t know, Mudville? You just don’t see row after row of closed, abandoned shops anywhere else in Pinellas County like you do in Clearwater. You don’t see shops with Hubbard’s tone scale in the window or uniformed people marching back and fourth all day and night.
These cities are in no way perfect, they all have their share of problems. But all of those towns have two things in common.
- Their economies have been pretty good in the last ten years or so.
- Some are thriving.
- They do not have a strong presence of Scientology.
- They are WAY less creepy.
- They are not dominated by a single agenda, people work FOR these cities, not exclusively to get people onto Hubbard’s bridge.
Downtown Clearwater even had a nightclub, a few years ago….
http://tampabay.citysearch.com/profile/2702089/clearwater_fl/liquid_blue.html
It was closed and reopened as “The Majestic,” (with a nice lion mascot, three guesses who owned it?”)
A non-profit organization I belong to used to have meetings in a nice Mediterranean style restaurant downtown, it’s been closed for the last few years, people are using it now but the windows are frosted out, like many other businesses. There are a couple of gas stations, a Publix and a Checkers . The only business I frequent is Starbuck’s. Clearwater does have a nice library however.
Clearwater is a place people drive through to go elsewhere in Pinellas County. Which is strange because Clearwater is the second largest town in Pinellas County. It’s the county seat for crying out loud. Clearwater experienced a building boom in the past few years, just like the rest of Pinellas County. Few houses are getting built, a large high-rise apartment complex is under construction downtown with more on the way. There are a number of huge brand new complexes just south of downtown, they tore down a shopping center on the west side of Pinellas county to build it. Additionally there are lots of strange condos, all piled on top of each other. Clearwater is simply not like any other community in Pinellas County Florida.
When the merchants of Clearwater say “masked protesters are not welcome in Clearwater,” they are really saying “anonymous” Is not welcome. When they say anonymous (which is an adjective, not a noun BTW” ) they are in effect saying “People who are not of us, people we cannot identify, people who are not Scientologists, are not welcome.”
True story; I was in Starbuck’s one night last Febuary, around 9 PM and a little girl approached me, she told me that she was getting donations for the Delphi School and demanded that I put my name, address and phone number on a form. She was all of 7 or 8 years old. It was kind of odd that she only asked a few people, then her parents hustled her out. (not to mention that my 10 year old goes to bed at 9 PM but that’s quite a different rant.)
People In Clearwater are VERY interested in finding out who strangers are. When they say Anonymous (strangers) are not welcome, It is very likely talking about me, they are very likely talking about you. There are approximately 1,000,000 people living in Pinellas County, around 100,000 of them live in Clearwater. 10% of the Clearwater residents might be Scientologists. The rest are… all of us!
So, what is the message that the merchants in Cleveland Street district are communicating to the rest of us with this petition?
“Stay out of Downtown Clearwater unless you support Scientology, unless we can identify you and your intentions. Unless we can identify how you feel about our religion, stay away, don’t come here. We can and we will find who you are, we can and we will run your license, we can and we will discover your name and accuse you of crimes if we do not like you. For anyone with bad thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard is a criminal! He said so and WE believe it! We will find your crimes or we will make some up if we have to!
Do not come here, do not come here because a few people wearing masks and shouting slogans were here. THEY did not like our religion. They are criminals, they are bigots, and they are Nazis. They have bad intentions , they disrespect L. Ron Hubbard and he said, anyone who said bad things about him was a criminal, and I believe that.
Do not come here, you upset me. I have the right not to be upset by you. Even if you are doing something that is sanctioned by wog law, it is NOT sanctioned by Hubbard Law and it is not sanctioned by us! we have a right to decide what is upsetting and YOU must abide by our rules in this matter.
You; the other 90% of Clearwater residents and 99% of Pinellas county residents are NOT welcome downtown unless you have good feelings for L. Ron Hubbard and our religion. If you do not conform to our rules, we don’t want your business, we don’t want you.
Stay away… or else!
This is the climate in and around Downtown Clearwater. This is how people feel about 90% of their neighbors and 99% of the other people living in Pinellas County. I don’t know about you but, it does not matter much to me what a person’s feelings about me are, or if they have bad intentions towards my “religion.” My religion and my beliefs are none of their business and have no right to treat me like a criminal because of them. My town has a HUGE Baptist chapel, anyone protesting them? No? Why? Because they are are not trying to push things at me. They don’t usually engage in socially obnoxious behavior.
But what often happens with strong religious belief is this “feeling offended thing.” When people make arbitrary rules and attempt to push these on others, there will always be conflict. One of the “unwritten rules” in Clearwater is “thou shalt not make light of L. Ron Hubbard or the beliefs of Scientology. Thou shalt not speak of such things for they are only revealed to those who pay in advance.”
The Anons have trampled on this rule, they have killed the sacred cow, THAT is the core of all this, why? Because; those rules do not exist outside of Scientology. Because; the rest of the world does not follow laws laid down by L. Ron Hubbard. Because the rest of the world does not particularly care about L. Ron Hubbard. Because the rest of the world is not even very fond of L. Ron Hubbard. Because the powers that be in Scientology are pushing their rules into places and on people who don’t want them. Because the powers that be in Scientology have laid down their own standards, their own ethics on you and me. They expect us to be good little wogs and just follow the program.
The Anons have violated the rules of Scientology because they are free to do so. Because the constitutions in whatever country they live in is NOT superseded by Hubbard’s laws.
I’m sorry! That’s just the way it is!
Kudos to the Clearwater City Counsel for refusing to hear the request. Their comment was (paraphrased.) “We don’t need to spend very much time ruling on First Amendment issues.” That is spot on! It’s exactly correct, you folks got it in one!
This is something that “the merchants of the Cleveland Street District,” have evidently forgotten.
Why have they forgotten? Because (IMO) L. Ron Hubbard has told them to forget it!
And they believe him.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/localgovernment/article503671.ece
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/article506348.ece
Popularity: 1% [?]
Idiocracy
I have a good friend who’s been touting this film. “Go see Idiocracy,” he says over and over again.
“I think we should lower taxes AGAIN” I say, “then invade Iran, why spread the fall of the US over the next few decades when we can do it right now! ”
“Go see Idiocracy,” he says.
“Did you see the paper?” I say. “The local ball club wants to build another expensive sports venue in a worse location than their other one at taxpayers expense. And the state and local government is considering it!”
“Go see Idiocracy,” he says.
“There was something on Fox News today where some talking head was trying to tell us that our President is not really a blithering idiot,” I tell my freind, “they said he’s just communicably challenged. ”
“Go see Idiocracy,” he says.
Well I finally saw Idiocracy. It’s likely the best movie I didn’t see in 2006. Have you seen it? I sincerely doubt it. Idiocrasy is a production of Mike Judge al-la office Space, King of the Hill, Bevis and Butthead. It’s a very strange dystopian view of US culture that starts off with the premise, “humanity is evolving, US society is encouraging us to evolve less intelligent as a whole.”
In the future world of Idoocrasy, an average twenty-first century man will seem like a genius. It goes on from there as a pretty good parody of many aspects of our society. Our penchant for bigger and louder, the inclusion of nonsense words into language and our tendency to view learning and academics as “fagotry.” All of this with pointed satire aimed at some of our most beloved corporations.
It’s no wonder that Fox sat on this film, they know how close to the mark it is!
Popularity: unranked [?]
Louis –
Deb’s brother passed away on Tuesday night. He had been fighting cancer for something over a year now and we heard Monday afternoon that he was in hospice and that he was getting last-rights. We immediately made plans to go up to Newport Richey and visit him but Deb’s Mom called later informing us that he had passed away. He’s survived by his daughter and significant other (GF or whatever.) He was attended by his GF and Mother, memorial arrangements are unknown as GF and Mother wish to keep drama levels as high as possible.
Popularity: unranked [?]
May 8th
Back in -79 we had this big flood on May 8th. Not this year! I think we got about ¼ an inch of rain last weekend. That’s been about all the rain we have had all month!
I got the passport stuff straightened out. Faxed a new birth certificate application, received certificate a day later, marched into the county licensing office, handed them about $200 bucks and we should hear back from them just in time! I think we are going to get E his own passport this summer when we have a moment.
My exams came back, I passed (with a much higher grade than I would have guessed.) Now I just have some finish-up work to do. I’ve got some final grades that have not shown up yet (probably because they haven’t been entered.)
Deb did prom last weekend, I stayed home PLANNING to take E to Spiderman III but one of the Neighbors asked if E could accompany their son to Chucky-Cheeses instead. So the Chuckster won out, I took the night off and watched Fast and the Furious–Tokyo Drift (a terminally dumb “Tarzan” flick. I.E.”White-man go to jungle and out native the natives.” And I played EVE. Or EVE-the-current-bane-of-my-existence. EVE is an MMOG, - a massive multiplayer online game.
The most popular ones are World of Warcraft and Everquest ; two fantasy titles with millions of players. I tried Everquest once, didn’; really like it very much. I like this one.
– EVE;
- a massive multiplayer online game (MMOG) set in a science-fiction based, persistent world. Players take the role of spaceship pilots seeking fame, fortune, and adventure in a huge, complex, exciting, and sometimes hostile galaxy.
This is almost identical to an old video game called ELITE although many of the people one encounters in EVE are real and not some badly written AI. Also, change the “sometimes hostile” to “almost always hostile.”
You don’t have to let people kill you and take your stuff. New players start in a high security sandbox where they can learn the ins and outs of the very complex game play without worrying about someone warping a battleship out 25 kilometers away and blowing them to smithereens. The entire economy of the game is player run too. The artifacts, weapons, ship fittings (thousands of those) and everything else is generated by the players themselves via manufacturing rules. I don’t know how deep this goes. I suspect even the stuff the AI pirates use is character generated. A shortage on one side of the EVE cluster can bring big profits to some courageous cargo pilot. If the route takes him or her into low security space than they better have an escort!
In 0-0 space there are no laws. Rule of force reigns supreme and space belongs to the corporation that is strong enough to hold it. Your reputation will is displayed for all to see and if you go around blowing up other players, you can get a really poor security rating and even a bounty, allowing others to freely kill you and take your stuff.
This is of course only a very brief overview of EVE. It’s extremely complex with many paths and layers. What they have created there is a virtual reality universe with almost unlimited potential game play. It’s a freaking geek trap. If you like this kind of bottomless open ended stuff (and I certainly do, look how long I have been in the SCA!) you are really going to like EVE.
But, if you do not want to waste in incredible amount of time, DO NOT under any circumstances download the EVE client. (It’s free too, that should be a clue!) If you do find yourself running the EVE client, email me and we can talk about 12-step programs.
It is really smoky outside today, we have wildfires all over the place and smoke has been coming from as far away as
Popularity: unranked [?]
One morning.
Get a call just as I pull in the office, some presentation in Fox hall is not going well and the Media Guy on duty has Western Heritage going down this morning so he does not have time. Can you go over there and see what’s happening?
So I amble over to Fox hall, there’s some community service thing going on and a frantic presenter trying to get her PowerPoint presentation working. Media Service just had her restart her laptop because it just locked up. He explains that Presenter needs to transfer her presentation to one of our laptops because we have a remote clicker but it’s locked up twice on her machine and she’s running out of time. Media Service guy leaves and I begin with Presenter, a frantic—middle aged woman.
She babbles at be about how this has never happened before—yada-yada. Her machine starts up and she’s going to show me how it’s locking up and it shouldn’t be, she’s done this a hundred times and it’s never locked up before !
I ask her to please, don’t bring up PowerPoint just yet. She looks confused but complies. I ask her if she knows where her presentation is, she does and she proceeds to plug in a 2GB thumb drive.
“I don’t understand, it’s not coming up!’ she says. “here let me try one of the other ports.â€
“How about we try something else,†I say gently.†She’s busy trying to jam her thumb drive into one of the back pots.
“You don’t understand.†She says, “I’m in a big hurry.â€
“Ok,†I say. “To save time, how about we try to figure out what’s preventing your thumbdrive from mounting properly, (that certainly won’t work!)
She gets more frustrated but hands the box over to me, our people are starting a warm-up for her and time is really running short.
She has an external DVD burner listed in the USB device stack that was removed improperly. I tell the system to stop the device, plug in the USB drive and it comes right up. Most of the time it’s OK to just unplug a USB device but most of the time means not always.
So we get around to transferring her PowerPoint presentation, all 300 MB of it. So the problem was twofold. She was trying to use PP as a file management tool, he USB stack was gummed up by a DVD device, still searching for it. I suspect her systems didn’t lock up but searching for an errant USB device and pulling starting up PP by double-clicking on the 300MB ‘file’ is a no good way for a laptop to wake up in the morning. It was also running on batteries so the CPU was probably stepped down 50%.. If you looked at Task manager (cctro/alt/del – Task List) you would see the CPU maxed out , explorer.exe and POWERPNT.exe fighting for cycles. If the machine were left alone long enough (like five minutes) the problem(s) would have sorted themselves out.
What fixes stuff like this?
Don’t use bloated MS Applications as file management systems. They are not suited for the job (a vast understatement.) Your files are not ‘in’ an application, they are opened ‘by’ an application. This is a distinction that I run into daily and it causes lots of confusion. It’s like saying “the milk is in my car†when, the milk is really at the 7-11 and you only use your car to get there.
Power point presentations should never be 300 MB unless they have about 10000 slides. A basic PP file with one slide is 8kb. Even if you have a bunch of high resolution photos you need to render those down to reflect well in a 1280 by 1024 display. No matter how large you blow the image up it’s still going to be 1280 by 1024.
Freaking rehearse! I can’t say that strong enough. Doing a presentation should never be about solving hardware problems, hardware is patient and you can practice as long as you like. But if you don’t practice, hardware can behave in unexpected ways only if you don’t practice. The more complex the system the larger the imperitive to work out problems by practicing.
Have a backup, what would happen if your presentation was not available and all you had was a whiteboard?
Relax!
So, how was your morning?
Popularity: 1% [?]
