kasia in a nutshell

It could be for a similar reason. I receive many emails from people asking me questions about something they found on my weblog.. or for help with various configuration issues.. I try to answer most of them, but sometimes I'm just too busy and sometimes the author is rude or didn't make the slightest effort to answer the question for himself.

I don't mind helping people.. and I'm always greatful to get a note thanking me for something I wrote, but I am a busy person and don't have the time (or inclination, really) to fix something for someone who isn't willing to at least learn.

So if you emailed me and haven't heard back, sorry, use google, or post a question in a forum.. someone there may have more time and patience than I.

Posted by kasia at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

Matt writes:

I'm in the process of learning to do everything I do on the computer without touching my mouse.

I love it when I'm good influence on my friends. I've been 'mouse-free' for years.. almost, technically I do use the mouse whenever I need to attack a ton of popping up aim windows at the most inopportune moments.. Say, when my laptop is hooked up to a projector and half the company is watching, that's usually a good time for a friend to take advantage of my forgetfulness (no aim when laptop in view of large groups of people on a large screen!) and practice better sexual harassment techniques on me.

Seriously, mouse decreases productivity.. if you can learn keyboard shortcuts (better yet, just use emacs, dude) you'll find you can work faster, easier and amaze local chicks with your leet text editing skills without touching a rodent.

While I'm talking about mice (mouses?).. point-and-click programming should be banned.. visual editors are horrible, horrifying and petrifying.

Posted by kasia at 09:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (4)

Updates every 5min.

Posted by kasia at 01:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

The woman behind it died. It's odd, never met her, of course, but now those voicemail menus will never sound the same knowing she's gone.

Posted by kasia at 12:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nevermind.. got an apology so will just leave the skeletons listed :)

The most embarassing thing you'll find on me is this 5 year old windows-related post. .. well, okay, maybe the reply too.

Oh, fine, I'll be honest this race result is pretty damn embarassing as well.

Posted by kasia at 09:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1)

As I noted in the previous entry I went hiking today.. It was really hot, really humid, visibility was really poor, and there were no people anywhere as I'm the only one stupid enough to go hiking in this weather. It was great! I took some pictures, but they mostly suffer from the "not enough lighting and no tripod" syndrome.. nonetheless.. here you go..

Posted by kasia at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last time it went down, I was out white water rafting.. this time I was hiking..

Maybe it's a hint.. stop all this exercise crap and be a proper geek. Where are my potato chips..

Posted by kasia at 08:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Spotted in my logs..

12.221.111.178 - - [27/Jul/2003:13:15:41 -0700] "HEAD /logs/access_log?hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello HTTP/1.0" 404 0 "-" "-" 12.221.111.178 - - [27/Jul/2003:13:15:41 -0700] "HEAD /logs/active/access_log?hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello HTTP/1.0" 404 0 "-" "-" 12.221.111.178 - - [27/Jul/2003:13:15:41 -0700] "HEAD /access_log?hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohello HTTP/1.0" 404 0 "-" "-"

Posted by kasia at 04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

As of today I am an (un)happy owner of a new windows box at work. That's right.. windows.. Thankfuly I don't have to give away my trusted linux box on which I do all my work currently..

So now I have to learn how to use windows all over again (it's been a while) and I get to re-learn Delphi (I haven't used it since version 3.0 and that was a long time ago). What was that? No ; before an else? Who designs a language like that!

It could have been worse.. it could have been Visual Basic.. the horror of horrors.

Oh, don't worry, I'm still a Java programmer, this is just a side trip.

Posted by kasia at 09:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (2)

It's an interesting concept.. Blogathon. I'm always happy to help out with charity work, but I have enough problems writing interesting content sparingly as I do now.

Now if you'll ask me to half-kill myself by running on a hot day in 90 percent humidity on an unshaded asphalt road.. I'm there!

Posted by kasia at 09:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I don't normally blog about non-geek current news events.. but Brandt is right on about this issue.

the point is that the way all rape cases are handled by the press are abhorent. but because most people have to have that fucking rolling bar running across the bottom of the screen during sportscenter and fox news in an attempt to be "informed" (although anyone who watches fox news (aka the Two Minutes Hate) has to be one of the least informed people on earth) this is the way cases like this are going to be handled.

and that's sick.

Until our society stops treating sex as something dirty and shameful.. I'm afraid this is going to be it.

Posted by kasia at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Actually, I'm just reposting same article I wrote for dslr today..

MSNBC reports that according to a survey of some 1,200 Internet users conducted by ePrivacy Group "Three out of four Americans favor a 'Do not spam' registry".

Modeled after the Federal Trade Commission's "Do not call" registry, it appears on the surface to be a good idea. That is until one realizes that a large percentage of spam comes from outside of the US and it would, of course, be impossible to enforce. Given this little tidbit one may go as far as saying that a "Do not spam" list would instead become a "Please spam me" one as enterprising spammers worldwide would gain access to a nicely formatted, easily accessible list of real e-mail addresses. Did I mention free?

Fear not, despite this grim prediction, such a list will probably not come to life thanks to practically zero support for any anti-spam legislature in the Congress. So though the survey states what we already know -- people do not want spam -- the government is not exactly listening. Senator Charles Schumer of New York is creating warm and fuzzy feelings by supporting this idea but his efforts may perhaps be better served supporting something more definite and enforceable. One idea that comes to mind is enforcing the rules at the level of the ultimate seller, not just the spammer himself. Not only would this prevent companies from hiding behind contracted mailers it would bring these (mainly US-based) businesses under the control of US law and hit them where it hurts the most: in the pocket.

Any anti-spam legislature whose basis is an opt-out type list is a black hole of wasted effort and will only appease the news media while providing little to no relief for those whose mailboxes are under deluge.

Originally posted at dslreports.

Posted by kasia at 09:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm a bit out of it these days.. so instead of original content I'll let others speak for me.. a nice little selection from my blogroll

• Jeremy's book has a cover.
• Matt is having fun with nouns.
• tablet, tablet, microsoft, tablet, microsoft, tablet, tablet.
• Mark: Aggregator HTTP tests -- and really, thanks for that!
• Karl's Kellyism.
• John tells us how to fire employees.
• Dan has nothing really interesting but he does have the cutest baby pictures up.
• My co-worker Arne is a daddy.
• Scott is just all feedster all the time.
• Steve likes to toot his own horn -- and it's not as dirty as it sounds although I bet he compiles under windows.

Anyone else notice how quickly you get to know the first names of the people whose blogs you read?

Posted by kasia at 08:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (2)

My father whom I last saw when I was 15 died last night in Poland.

I have a half sister, I never met her all I know is her first name, date of birth and where she was born.. Her father died too yet I doubt she'll know if I can't find her.

Posted by kasia at 04:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I'm not exactly a JSP veteran so this may sound like a very stupid question.. but how do other, more experienced developers deal with common JavaScript methods?

Now with JavaScript being object oriented it makes it relatively simple to write common functions.. and so far my solution has been to simply put them in includes files that get included in the JSPs themselves.. There has to be a better solution..

I searched and searched and searched and nothing jumped out at me that would solve this in a more elegant manner.. so I pose this question to the Java folks in the blog land out there.. how do you do it?

And uh.. thanks for reading this completely useless blog post :)

Posted by kasia at 09:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

A french language forum linked to me and I ran the pertinent post through babelfish.. results were rather amusing..

Attract its glance by the interlaced binary ones of satin and lace. Unroll a page HTML slowly delicately coded. Become the one evening hacktrice thanks to our secrecies of seduction. And do the cries of nail varnish you know? 8)

Anyone who speaks French.. was that even close? Heh.

Posted by kasia at 07:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I went white water rafting today.. a 4 hour drive to Pennsylvania.. (it was a ton of fun and sunburn). I had a feeling before I left that I should bring my laptop.. (I've 128K internet access through my cell phone, it rocks) but decided that's just too geeky..

So what happens? The nice server that's been working perfectly fine for months decides to go down causing several hours of site downtime.. and a whole lot of unhappy people trying to page me and failing (I was in the middle of a river trying to not fall out of the raft).. Couldn't have picked any better time but when the only two admins are both away..

I swear, the machines know something.. they spy on us.. how am I supposed to have a life when the computers are out to get me?

Posted by kasia at 08:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (4)

I was chatting with a friend, as I tend to do, and for one reason or another we started to talk about Delphi.. you bring up Delphi, of course Pascal comes to mind.. and Pascal was my first programming language in college (yes, I'm old). An old story came to my mind (as it tends to in my old age) and I remembered the very first computer I ever used.. I wish I could remember the model (does anyone recognize it?) This was back in Poland and I was 12 or so.. the year would have been probably 1985 (remember however, Poland in 80s was far behind on technology). A friend's father bought him an Atari computer. This thing had no hard drive or even a disk drive.. had to hook up a cassette player to load programs from .. and it had no operating system. What it did have was a pascal interpreter on an eeprom.. and that was my very first exposure to computer programming.

That's when I knew.. "this is what I want to do". Computer programming.. computer.. well.. something to do with computers. Of course, as a child back then it never occurred to me that people got paid to just, well, take care of computers and their users (it would seem as too much fun to be paid for!) so system administration didn't even occur to me. Programming.. however.. such fun! Needless to say I practically took up residence in my friend's house.. down to the point that our mothers became best friends out of pure necessity of talking about 'us kids'.

So what was your beginning in computers? If in fact you are someone who does something with computers.. I'm one of the lucky few to do what I always dreamed about.. how about everyone else? Is this something you always wanted? Was it accidental? Necessity? What, why and when?

It'll be interesting to see what others have to say.. here or in their blogs, I'm not picky, that's what trackback is for :)

Posted by kasia at 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (7)

ACLU policy white paper:

The Internet as we have known it is going to change -- the only question is how. There’s a fight going on over that question, and at stake is nothing less than the Internet’s potential as a medium for free expression, civic involvement and economic innovation.

[via: dslr]

Posted by kasia at 09:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I would say this is the best game review I read to date.. of course I don't read many.

I'll agree with most of it, except I don't like the lack of control sometimes..

Posted by kasia at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (1)

so true.. so true..

Posted by kasia at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Considering that I am in Connecticut (but no job leads sorry, and I'm sort of attached to mine) I thought a link to this posting might be a good idea.. I do have some readers from this hellhole of a state.

Find Ron a job - get a game system to waste your time with.. or just give him your job and play games all day, whichever.

[via: Dan]

Posted by kasia at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (1)

Every now and then slashdot links to a story on dslreports.. this time around they linked to a very busy and long thread in the forums.. News stories are easy, threads are worse (much more heavy-weight and intensive on servers).. so it bogged down the servers a tad requiring me to balance traffic around and such..

Interesting tidbit.. A large percentage of the hits were IE users.. A very large percentage..

So.. uh.. slashdot users? IE? Come-on guys! So why all the Microsoft bashing?

Posted by kasia at 08:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I completely missed it.. It's been a year since I started my weblog..

First entry.. with a comment by Justin who thinks he's funny..

I should do some sort of statistic round up.. but not today!

Have a happy Saturday.

Posted by kasia at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

.. and kasia has a new domain name..

As of today this site will be available at both unix-girl.com and unixchick.com.

This must be a good time to buy domains.. I was able to aquire a decent .com name without a hyphen and my friend Karl got even more lucky with a pretty damn nice domain name just a month ago..

Posted by kasia at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My friend from the two previous entries (1, 2) saw the light..

Ok im sorry, you win. I acted like a moron and I will admit it. Please accept my apology I shouldn't have acted that way towards you about dslr username.

Take care.

Thank you, that shows some level of maturity and ability to learn. Apology accepted.

Posted by kasia at 09:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

If you thought I was good at pissing contests you haven't seen anything yet. It seems I can't even begin to compete with Dave and Mark.

Others already summarized it rather well so no need to repeat the long, boring story here..

If I were Dave (obviously, I'm not, thank [insert your favorite deity]) I would certainly make sure Mark's Winer Watch is ineffective at best.. Tons of ways to do that.. for instance a script that randomly re-generates the RSS feed by re-arranging entries.. Of course that's just as easy to get around by building a checksum for each entry. I didn't say I thought about this too much!

I guess I had a point here.. oh yes.. This is all horribly immature.. from both sides... In the long run nobody will remember who was right or wrong but plenty will remember the roads that were chosen.

The entry title? Totally unrelated.. I just always wanted to use it and a self-righteous criticism of people I don't know in a situation I have no clue about is just as good as any entry to attach it to.

Posted by kasia at 07:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (2)

The ever clever, personable and bright hero of my previous entry decided to complain to my web-hosting provider.. Apparently my entry is abuse!

I have a feeling this lovely young fellow might keep providing me with amusement for a while..

From: admin@**nyc.com
To: support list at peakwebhosting
Subject: Abuse
Date: 11 Jul 2003 06:06:57 -0700

I'm writing regarding following article on http://unix-girl.com domain name:
http://www.unix-girl.com/blog/archives/001001.html#001001”.
The e-mails were edited and now our website had to be locked because of numerous port scans and ddos attacks.
This is direct flaming of ** Network NYC, not only it makes our company look bad it also forwards attacks to our main site affecting customers and staff members.

Thank you.

Reply:

From: Tech Support at peakwebhosting
To: abuse@**nyc.com
Subject: Re: Abuse
Date: 11 Jul 2003 07:35:18 -0700

We've reviewed the content you referenced, but there's not really anything we can do. We don't monitor the content of our customer websites unless it's clearly illegal: hers isn't even close to qualifying on that grounds. It's certainly an embarrasment - as it would be if one of our staff wrote something like that - but this is something you'll need to take up with Ms. Trapszo. Feel free to post in her weblog if you feel you have an alternate view.

But a number of our staff have met Kasia, and she's neither fat, ugly, nor an idiot.

Now, see, that's a good webhosting company.. standing by your errr, customers :) Thanks guys! (peakwebhosting.com).

Posted by kasia at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBacks (4)

Running a website with many regular users is fun.. sometimes too much fun. Particularly when one of those users threatens to hack said website (it actually happens fairly often.. but not always with such hilarious results (not the hacking mind you, the threats)).

Little background first..

Users are able to 'remove' their account by using a 'remove me' button.. which essentially disables the account from further use.. it's not actually deleted to preserve posts and history (although I could be persuaded to hit the magic button and nuke the whole thing given it doesn't disrupt much).

This particular user has done as much.. Disabled his account, which was a 'premium' account ($10 purchase and they're given $10 in 'points' that can be used for site tools.. support the site and all that happy stuff).. I'm actually half certain that in this case the premium status was donated by someone else anyway but I don't feel like digging through a large database just to prove such minor point.

So he removed his account.. on his own.. probably to be a drama queen, that's always been popular. Now he has a new account but decided he wants the old one back. We said "no". Too many people have done as much.. disabled an account just to create drama and then want it back.. Enough is enough and we put a stop to that..

This e-mail exchange ensues.. you probably don't want to read further.. but if you do.. go on!

From: admin@**nyc.com

ME BEING AN ASS? That fuck face is too lazy to give me old account back I keep asking him for weeks now that little bitch wont even give me refund and IM BEING AN ASS? [this is about another site admin able to restore accounts]

To: admin@**nyc.com
He's not too lazy.. we've made a policy of not returning accounts to members as it leads to 'dramacides' and constant problems.

You terminated your account now live with the choice.

And fuck-face should be hyphenated.

From: admin@**nyc.com
No you all will pay tomorrow I will own dslr

To: admin@**nyc.com
Whatever.. like you're the first 15 year old to threaten us.

From: admin@**nyc.com
Whatever I will own you for my $10 thieves

To: admin@**nyc.com
You're cheap.. a hacker for hire for mere $10?

What are you going to do make us use windows? Seriously.. we're not complete idiots...

X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165

I don't feel very threatened.

From: admin@**nyc.com
[root@nick root]# uptime
22:36:36 up 40 days, 1:40, 4 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
[root@nyc root]# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root)
groups=0(root),1(bin),2(daemon),3(sys),4(adm),6(disk),10(wheel)
[root@nyc root]#

I got rh and slack too booya! And over 10 .PL 100Mbps owned WINNT machines.

To: admin@**nyc.com
Nice load average.. 40 days? Am I supposed to be impressed? ..

[root@geddy /root]# uptime
10:29pm up 164 days, 17:45, 15 users, load average: 0.08, 0.08, 0.08

+497 days.. older kernels maxed out at that..

.. solaris..

# uptime
10:45pm up 204 day(s), 21:34, 20 users, load average: 0.29, 0.25,
0.26

Note real load averages.. and user count.. as in boxes in real use.. Seriously, take some advice, if you're trying to impress someone, particularly someone who has been a unix sysadmin professionally for years (like, say, me) don't show off your redhat box. That's just sad.

From: admin@**nyc.com
*flexes*
Imfao my system passed that kernel limit like 3 times now.. ha ha on you. And its not about uptime sweetie you just said i have no *nix you dumb bitch. "who has been a unix sysadmin professionally for years (like say, me) don't show off your redhat box." Omg should i bow down to you? Get some knee pads and start working.

To: admin@**nyc.com
Really? 3 times? So huh.. which redhat version is it that you're running again? Those older kernels have horrible security issues..

I didn't say you didn't have access to unix.. I made fun of you using outlook. Not quite the same but I see it's a sensitive topic?

From: admin@**nyc.com
Fat bitch

How do you explain that FAT ASS BUTTER FACE of yours?!.

I use windows because i need it for design okie? You stupid bitch. I run slackware 8. I dont give a fuck you owe me $10.

To: admin@**nyc.com
4 years of uptime on slackware 8? You either got the developers beat on the release or you're really bad at math..

I don't owe you $10.. you closed your account of your own volition (http://www.m-w.com/ in case you need to look up the big words).

.. but if your business is doing so poorly (based on your load average I'd say it is) I'll give you the 10 toolpoints.. see, because I'm a nice person.. well, that and all fat people are jolly.

From: admin@**nyc.com
Did i hurt your feelings :\ AWWW.. SHUT THE FUCK UP

From: admin@**nyc.com
Its not about $10 its about my account date and principle. I saw many people who dolalrcided "to try it" to be back on same account there even fucking thread about it on dslra dn one guy just did it for fun. But when I need to get it back NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO im too fucking fat to type restore account command my fingers press 2 keys and its really hard omg omg. Oh and stfu thats my free server for people who cant afford to buy hosting you stupid bitch atleast im not a greedy fuck like whole DSLR is fuckign money eaters

To: admin@**nyc.com
Oh, stop flattering me so.. gosh.. you're making me blush!

It had to stop somewhere.. well, gee, guess you should have been nicer to us mods huh?

You can't even get a decent amount of load when giving away hosting for free? Now that's sad :)

Good luck kiddo

From: admin@**nyc.com
I was ncie to FATTY but that fat fuck is a shit head. ANd fuck you fat bitch.
[Once again, he means another site admin]

To: admin@**nyc.com
Isn't it past your bedtime?

G'night, I'll wait for the hacking tomorrow.

From: admin@**nyc.com
FAt people like to sleep ?! Oh no? You dont have to go to work in the morning cuz you got my money i forgot fuciking theives!

From: admin@**nyc.com
THIEVES!

[The one's below are from today..]

From: admin@**nyc.com
Slut

To: admin@**nyc.com
Hey, shouldn't you be 'owning' dslr by now? I cancelled my evening plans just for the occasion!

you disappoint me.

From: admin@**nyc.com
I decided not to own dslr because im afraid you going to sue me for every penny i got so youc an eat more junk food.

From: admin@**nyc.com
Fat fucks

[I decided to end it there :) ]

Posted by kasia at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBacks (7)

There it is.. Just received spam in my weblog (it's deleted already)

IP: 144.13.106.164 and ironically enough came to my weblog via a Yahoo Search for "easy forum posting"..

I guess that was too easy.. time to input some comment filtering.

Posted by kasia at 07:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

New milestone in my Internet life -- I have just received my very first piece of spam in Spanish.. After the initial chuckle and lame jokes shared with various buddies I realized the real problem.

Spam assassin completely missed it..

X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.0 required=5.0

Nada! Not even half a point!

Why?

It's a plain text email without obviously forged headers and spam assassin relies heavily on commonly used phrases..

This is going to be a nightmare if this first e-mail indicates that I've gotten on some foreign-based spam lists... Unless of course foreign-language support is built into spamassassin.. Once again, we rely too heavily on the whole world speaking English.

Oy

Posted by kasia at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

As many companies do, ours has an internal engineering list to which random co-workers submit random messages with random geeky-urls..

Lately, every single article submitted has been one I've read on another weblog days before.. So in theory I could make a list from my blog-reading list, submit that once a week and beat my co-workers to it..

.. but that's too easy.... fun to think about though.

While I'm on the topic of work.

I work for Tickets.com -- that's the actual company name - Tickets.com. Snail mail is always fun.. today I got one addressed to..

Kasia Trapszo
Tickets Dot Com

I remember seeing one from Network Solutions that proclaimed we can put Tickets.com.com on the web today! One would think a registrar would know better.. particularly our own.

Tickets.com.. it's dot com. (Cookie for the one who gets this).

Posted by kasia at 07:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I wanted to setup a simple cron job that would send an output of a simple file to a simple e-mail address.. something like..

tail -10 whatever.txt | mail -s "here's whatever" whomever@spamme.com

No, of course that's too easy.. when you use a picky postfix server that rejects addresses like, say root@hostname as invalid..

Back to the drawing board... Write a complex perl script or see if there's any way of doing this with a shell one-liner.. and this is where postfix compatibility with sendmail really pays off..

tail -10 whatever.txt | sendmail -f dumbass@localhost.com -s "here's whatever" whomever@spamme.com

Voila.. Reply-to is set, postifx is happy.. a one liner after all.

I'm a bit annoyed that I couldn't find a way of doing this with mail though.. Google failed me..

(yes, save your "reconfigure postifx" comments.. that's unnecessary and too much work)

Posted by kasia at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A site I help administer gets many, many complaints.. that's normal, it will happen whenever you have more than 2 users.. This one beats them all though.. Ready for this? Using the image of a can of spam in relation to spam (as in UCE) is offensive because "spam is the official food of Hawaii"... and "it could be considered a direct insult to all citizens of Hawaii". I'm still laughing..

Posted by kasia at 07:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Maybe that's not such a great idea..

Went for a drive tonight and got stuck at a traffic light behind one of those big SUVs with a built-in tv... and apparently a built-in DVD player.. either that or a subscription to a satellite porno channel.. that's right.. they were watching porno..

I couldn't miss it, dark, screen clear as day..

I can imagine the questions they must have caused along their road trip "what's that man doing mommie?".

People either don't think others can view their screen or have a really disgusting idea of what is entertainment... Which begs for the question.. is what they were doing legal? If it wasn't.. what would it fall under? *They* weren't naked and having sex.. the actors on the screen were.. and technically they were inside a private vehicle, so not in the middle of a church yard setup with a big screen either..

Guess it's time to arm our cars with dark glasses for children for those inopportune moments.. or work on creative answers.

"Yoga, honey.. it's yoga".

Posted by kasia at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

Yahoo News:

According to the Web site, which had been taken off the Internet by Wednesday afternoon, hackers were urged to prove their skills by defacing as many Web sites as they could during a six-hour period on Sunday morning, Allor said.

Skills? What skills? Ability to run a script written by someone else? Give me a break..

Posted by kasia at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I think it's about time!

Weblogs can be wonderful campaign tools if done correctly.. and they're practically free to run..
Would be funny if he actually got elected (although not very likely).. "Movable Type - the choice of presidents".. Although he didn't bother donating. What a cheapskate :)

Posted by kasia at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (2)

Karl has a weblog and Karl just said what I've been thinking for a while.. go Karl.

Posted by kasia at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

.. perfectly rational people (well, seemingly anyway.. I don't know them in person) behave in completely irrational manner.. that makes me skip their weblogs for a while.. unfortunately then they go and do that in other weblogs' comments.. for no reason.. on unrelated topics..

Can't we all just be adults for once?

Please?

Pretty please with sprinkles on top?

(no, no, I don't want to get into the debate so no links.. I'm just venting to someone that understands.. my cute little linux server.. ain't it pretty?)

Posted by kasia at 09:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Using linux on your desktop can sometimes be a lot like playing the lottery.. and for once, linux isn't at blame. This is about web browsing.

I use two browsers on regular basis

• opera - which I simply adore


• mozilla - I don't have too many complaints about it other than the fact that it's a memory hog (at the moment opera is using 23MB and mozilla over 70, I have more pages open in opera than mozilla)

Why am I using two browsers? Some sites refuse to work in opera, some in mozilla.. but typically I can get them to work in one or the other.. and half the time the only reason I can make them work in opera is because it can pretend to be IE.

I don't blame the browsers.. I blame IE (in other words, Microsoft) and lazy programmers.

Why Internet Explorer?

IE is very, very lose about html and JavaScript syntax. It will allow for all sorts of problems (missing </td> tags for instance) and JavaScript which is not formatted properly and shouldn't work does indeed work in IE. IE is also very good at hiding JavaScript and HTML issues from the user.

It can be argued that this is a good thing.. that may very well be true, but it is not a good thing when programmers and web designers only test their sites in IE.. unfortunately many do. So perhaps this is more of a programmer problem than an IE problem.. Microsoft is just an enabler.. sort of a broken-HTML-dealer.

Those pesky, lazy programmers.. I've seen plenty of sites that check a browser version and serve different pages to avoid those compatibility issues.. which is great, I suppose.. except half the time they only check for IE and netscape.. Hello.. there are other browsers in the world!

Then there are websites that proclaim "we only work in IE" and will not allow another browser to even view the site. Half the time those sites work just fine in Opera! One must wonder if those programmers are too dumb to test with other browsers or if they're getting paid to shun the linux and netscape users.

So, given that the conclusion of this little tirade is that many programmers are simply lazy or stupid I think someone ought to start a hall of shame for those websites that promote any of the above mentioned behavior.. I would but I'm too busy switching between browsers.

Posted by kasia at 04:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (2)

To quote from an eloquent entry:

I've said it before, and I'll say it 'till I loose my voice: I fucking hate Java I/O. All I want to do is get all the contents of whatever's in a stream, a reader, buffer, or whatever the hell else I have a handle on. Can I just call something like the below:

String contents = new File("somefile.txt").getAllMyShit();

Of course the fuck not! I have to keep track of byte arrays, char arrays, or some stupid ass shit in a while block. I just want the God damned content, I don't care how the JDK gets it out of there.

I always thought there should be a method on StringBuffer, perhaps called loadFromFile(), that takes a File object.

Posted by kasia at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (1)

John Mitchell writes:

As I've been walking around, sitting in sessions, and generally being a nuisance, I've been struck by the fact that there seems to be a noticeably larger percentage of female developers at the show than in previous years.

Yes, this could be explained by the fact that there are fewer total people here this year so perhaps it's just more striking to my less saturated brain but.... What about in the overall technology world? Given the relatively small percentage of female developers floating around, are they getting laid off less than male developers?

No, John, there is no gender bias.. it's all very logical. See, women typically have to work a lot harder and be a lot smarter to get where men are in IT.. that means they're less likely to be laid off when times hit hard. I know only a few female programmers but all but one I know are simply very good or excellent.

I would have posted this as a comment in your weblog but you have a requirement for registration just to post a comment. That's cumbersome and silly... particularly for someone like me who is not a regular reader There are enough useless accounts of mine floating around the web as is.

Posted by kasia at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (2)

Yahoo news:

The Pentagon is developing an urban surveillance system that would use computers and thousands of cameras to track, record and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a foreign city.

If news says "developing" that probably means it's already in place.. ain't our government grand.

Posted by kasia at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)