kasia in a nutshell

The previews made it look like a good movie to see in a theater.. Not for the story mind you, I didn't expect much there (and I was right), just the special effects. Special effects were very good.. convincing enough to make me wrap my sweater around and dread going out into the expectant snow outside..

There is one word that truly does not describe this movie: subtle. Don't get me wrong, I like a movie with a strong environmental message just as much as the next tree hugger.. but damn.. lighten up on hammering the point in. They give you the moral within about five minutes into the movie.. then they whack you over the head.. then kick you while you're whimpering and bludgeon you to death with the message. Then, as you lie there bleeding and gasping for (clean) air.. they deliver the message a few more times with what feels like a couple Ford Expeditions falling on top of your head.

Special effects were cool though and the wolves in Manhattan midst new ice age were a particularly nice touch.

Posted by kasia at 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (2)

Reading Jeremy's entry about the Orkut newsletter reminded me Orkut exists. I haven't logged into the site in ages -- it fell into the same category as other social networks "I've proven my social worthiness by being linked to a whole bunch of people many of whom I never met, now what?".

This resulted in a discovery of over a 100 unread orkut messages (I'm not stupid enough to have them e-mailed). That resulted in a couple of things..

1. I wasted 15 minutes and removed everyone who was a 'friend' and sent a 'friends-of-friends' message. Fuck you, spam your own goddamn friends.

2. I set my orkut settings to not even show me 'friends of friends' messages. Chrrrrist-on-a-lolly-pop. Don't these people have lives? Who the hell needs an Orkut community for abandoned-former-orphans-who-enjoy-caligraphy-while-pooping?

Maybe I should just remove my Orkut account and be done with it, it's not like I'll login again for another few months.

And their damn newsletter didn't recommend me any new friends. Bastards.

Posted by kasia at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

.. of code.

The code I usually work on has been actively used and developed for the last three years. That's really not unusual for what is essentially a very elaborate website with a massive transactional back-end (all written in Java) that talks to many different ticketing systems. It's a very complex project. I often find myself re-writing code because something has changed that facilitates better, more efficient or just simpler processing -- sometimes that something is my own logic and knowledge padded by the additional experience gained since the last time the code was touched. I often find myself wishing I had the time and schedule flexibility to re-write much larger and more complex parts of the code, but as we all know, wishful thinking is just that and schedules are often unforgiving. Today was one of those days.

A code-base, like the one I just described, is really like a big, elaborate gum ball.. when it first starts out it's all smooth, shiny with an underlying sweetness that just begs to be enjoyed. As time goes.. that changes, it gets chewed up, sweetness goes away and before long it just looks like a chewed up, sticky, used-up piece of gum. Other coders add their own tidbits.. and before you know it you have one, gigantic, messy, sticky ball composed of patched-on pieces that doesn't even remotely resemble the sweet and juicy round thing it once was.

I have a theory.. any project that's been actively developed for more than three years needs to be scrapped and started from scratch using the experience gained in building the original code-base. Much like a stepped-in piece of used gum scraped off the bottom of a shoe.

Now isn't this the stupidest analogy ever? It was so bad I just had to blog it ;)

Posted by kasia at 08:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Did you notice? Gas prices went up! Right... hard not to notice, that's all everyone is talking about. I'm getting quite tired of it.

Yes, gas is over $2.0 a gallon.. big freaking deal. We've been paying the lowest gas prices for years.. about time we start paying a bit more realistic one and maybe, just maybe reconsider the over-consumption of gasoline in this country. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a decent public transportation system that doesn't stop 2miles outside a metropolis and more transportation of goods by methods like trains rather than costly trucks?

Don't like paying so much for gas? Buy a small, fuel-efficient car, share a commute to work, use your bicycle.. but for Allah's sake, stop whining about the price as you fill up your 15-miles-to-the-gallon behemoth. And when November arrives don't forget who cut the funding for alternative fuel research. If you think that not buying gas on one particular day of the year will 'stick it' to the oil companies.. you've the brain reflexes of a pot smoking snail. Not *using* gas on a day a year might.. buying? No.. you'll have to fill up sooner or later, do you think anyone cares that it's not going to be tomorrow?

Posted by kasia at 09:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (1)

It's sad to read articles like this one with quotes like..

TORONTO (Reuters) - A man who used a cellphone to take nude pictures of his girlfriend and then posted them on the Internet has been jailed for distributing child pornography in what officials say is Canada's first criminal conviction involving camera phones. . . "He was obviously very adept at computers and he would have had a bright future ahead of him had he not chosen to use his talent this way."

I thought the press was a bit better about this by now, I mean this is 2004, not 1995. Ability to post pictures on the Internet doesn't exactly require knowledge of computers, heck my mom can do it.

This is obviously one of the symptoms of the computerstupiditis that occurs in a large portion of adult population. In short, they sit in front of a computer screen and their IQ suddenly drops by half or more. Other symptoms include hiring a 9 year old neighbor to fix their dsl problems and opening executable attachments from strangers under the promise of pretty butterflies on their screen.

Posted by kasia at 08:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Cleaning up my CF cards today, I found this image. I forgot I took this picture. This is my boss's solution to the short range of the Linksys wireless router in his office.

Posted by kasia at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Temporarily as it seems someone is having fun blasting me with comments.. 100s of comments from different IPs... so while I come up with a quick solution involving scripting and IP tables comments are off for all entries.

Well, that is except this one.

Update: okay, so much for spammers.. comments back.

Posted by kasia at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Apparently the current value of a gmail invite is around $20.

Darn and I gave mine away for free..

I can only imagine the only reason anyone is paying for a free service is to get a decent username? They won't allow less than six chars though.. so I couldn't get "kasia".. bastards.

Posted by kasia at 07:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This is very amusing, a query from a tech support person working in India about SBC on our very own dslreports.

You have to see the humour in that.. really.

Posted by kasia at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I left office early today (that's 5pm in my world) in search of an experience I've been hearing quite a bit about lately. It appears there is this thing around that provides fresh air, happiness and an overproduction of pheromones in the animal kingdom. They call it "spring". What better way to experience such phenomena than a visit to the local park where squirrels roam trees and birds sing love longs in search of mates. Went home, put on my shorts, a linux t-shirt, my old, tired running shoes and headed for the trails.

I haven't run in far too long. It's been a long winter and even longer start of a baseball season (work, don't ask) so I didn't really look forward to exercise, being out of shape makes it less than fun. I have forgotten how much I enjoyed this.

I ran through the woods taking much needed walking breaks over the particularly muddy or rocky spots. Listened to the birds call out their desires as I jogged. Some unusually brave deer feasted on fresh, green grass by the trail. I tried talking to them, but they weren't particularly responsive. I ran some more. Passed by mountain bikers riding down the muddy trail, a thought of "you shouldn't be riding here, it's too muddy, you're destroying the trails" passed through the more sensible parts of my brain, but I smiled anyway, waved, they didn't. I ran on. Rain sprinkled through the trees and I ran back to the car.

I left drenched in sweat and rain, muscles complaining of being overworked too soon and too much, exhausted but exhilarated, downright inspired.

I'll pay tomorrow.

Posted by kasia at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

For a couple weeks now, I've been dragging my camera to work with me in the hopes of leaving the office before dark and maybe, just maybe actually doing some photography. I'm dreaming. So, today, while it's still spring, I just took a picture that reflects very accurately what spring looks like for me this year. I may just be in software.

Posted by kasia at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

A new workstation recently arrived on my desk and this prompted an experience I have not had in a while. Installing a whole new linux system. Now I'm practically a pro. I've done this dozens of times. I'm very comfortable in unix and can hack my way through most problems. Given that, the installation was a snap despite some problems:

• Burning the cds incorrectly -. I'm an idiot and didn't realize burning them on my powerbook with the default osx tool might cause problems -- eek screwed up file names. Wisely, I also burned just the iso images. Mounted them on my other pc and did a network install.
• The pc not having a floppy drive to boot from (this is tied to the above problem of not having a bootable cd). Lots of old pcs in the office.. So one floppy drive dangling on a cable and propped by a pile of books was the solution.

All things considered, that's an easy install and would have been even easier if I wasn't a dumbo. So what did I have a problem with? The RedHat (I installed Fedora core 1) up2date agent crashing on startup. Once again, I'm a geek, took me 2seconds to find a problem. Missing font! I installed all the default font packages, well it appears I missed some obscure Helvetica size whatever font. Give me a break guys. How do you expect Linux to ever make it as a desktop OS if an entire application silently (to the user not running this from a terminal it just disappears without a trace or an error message) fails because of a lack of a font!

Ludicrous. Stupid. Silly. Amateurish.

This is an application that's part of a RedHat (well, Fedora) distribution, it should be a bit more mature and better than this by now. Especially considering this application is supposed to keep your system up-to-date with all the newest security fixes. Is it a wonder so many new linux users have hacked machines within days of install?

If an application can just silently fail because the system doesn't have whatever font it happens to prefer, then linux has no future on the desktop of your average PC user.

Posted by kasia at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (1)

If you're at an airport that appears to have no wireless and no signs pointing to its existance - head for the nearest Starbucks.

I learned that in Cleveland yesterday.. not one sign about it, but there was wireless at the Starbucks (and nowhere else).

Posted by kasia at 08:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)