cobolhacker.com

I’ve been sort of busy.

I’ll share another cute photograph before I move on to something different. Enjoy!

A boy actually, born surgically at around 6:30 in the morning at the Stratford General Hospital!

Unable to wait for his scheduled appointment at 9:30, Wilhem Edward began day zero as happy and relaxed as one could imagine. He’s healthy and happy, and mom is pretty good too, though sore and doped up to the eyeballs.

This is our second broodling (the first being Erik Alexander), and he represents the continuation of my not so well conceived plan to breed an army of superior technology workers, able to control any computer system. By 2015 my offspring may well be instrumental in bringing to fruition my cunning scheme to become Emperor of the World.

Or not. Maybe my hair will simply go grey, and I will be told as much by the other parents as we watch our children bounce around on the hockey ice. ;)

There is apparently a sequel to the dreadful TripleX. This silly film worked not because of the story, which was painfully dumb, but because Vin Diesel has a hell of a personality.

Even though Vin Diesel wisely said “no” to this sequel (Ice Cube takes the lead instead), they somehow decided to film it anyway, and incredibly, they conned Willem Dafoe into playing the lead bad guy. This is a guy who played Jesus, for Heaven’s sake. *ahem*

This time around I can well assure you that once again, things blow up. There is some kind of plot — I think it involves killing the U.S. President — but you might not catch it what for all of the exploding stuff. Just like so many of the movies on the screen today.

Why is it so hard to write interesting movies?

i had a conversation with a customer recently about the usual things, computer related stuff, etcetera.

waiting for some install to finish, it somehow got on to the subject of job virtue. his job is to help heal people. he has a job of great virtue.

i told him the truth about my line of work: “i like to think i’m good people, but i’m not a virtuous person. i don’t really lead a virtuous life. i certainly don’t have a virtuous job.”

“how’s that?”

“think about what i have to do. my job is to keep the information machines working for their users, no matter what their purpose. this means that i spend a fair bit of time making personal computers do the things that people want, regardless of what i think of it.”

so they can play anonymous pranks on their friends.

so that they can pirate music, books, movies, and software faster than ever before.

so they can more efficiently cheat on their spouses.

so they can find porn.

so they’ll have a good spellchecker when they write their hate.

“oh”, he said.

oh is right. i love my job, but to satisfy the end user it is grey morality at the best. so alas, there is little virtue to my job. i keep the computers running, whether it is virtuous or not.

It’s April Twentieth! And you know what that means!

Politics these days just brings out the inner monkey in people. You pick any issue and I guarantee that there will be Liberals and Conservatives there throwing shit at each other.

But after a while, you just get tired of watching the shuffle. Really sick and tired.

I long ago tuned out the Gomery inquiry. I don’t watch it. I don’t read about it. I don’t talk about it. I hate hearing about it. I hate it so much because it has evolved from a simple corruption inquiry (don’t make that face) into this hysterical thing that every politician, journalist and blogger alike must somehow find a way to advance his politics with. They should have made it secret until it was over, so the process would at least retain some dignity.

Oh, but what about transparency? Fuck that. Where in the Constitution does it say you have a right to watch a inquiry as it happens on the television? If I was Gomery, and I knew that my fellow Canadians were going to get inundated with this puerile shit day after day, I would have held the entire inquiry behind closed doors at the bottom of a Sudbury mine shaft. Anything to avoid the endless nightly wittering of every news anchor in the country about it. Oh, and the blogs. Don’t even get me started on the inane blogging.

Oh, but the Liberals are like soooo corrupt. Yeah, they are as crooked as they come. Are there still people left who have deluded themselves into thinking that a Western government operates on it’s integrity? To politicians integrity is marketing, pure and simple. Who really thinks the New Conservative Party would have done any better? The old Conservatives? The NDP? Oh please!

And I have to say, the Canadian Right (I mean, what else do you call it?) just has an absolute army of people blogging for it, all linking to each other’s blogs, all writing the same kinds of things, all yelling out their message to the world: We have to bring down those Liberals down ’cause they’re all crooks and dopesmoking hippies oughta be in jail and we’ll die before fags get the bells on our watch! We are told that North American Missile defence will work and we’ll have the aircraft carriers to back it all up, just you watch! And the New Conservatives wonder why people don’t want to vote for them either.

See! Look at this, a half-dozen paragraphs and I’m already ranting like a monkey in a shitfight. This is what poli-blogging will do to you, folks. Madness sugar-coated with a bit of reason. Reaction only, no depth, and it solves absolutely nothing. Shit, now I feel lower for even writing this.

Focusing on the issue and less on the resolution does exactly this to any group of people. In the end, it always turns into name-calling and shouting. Way more dangerous any crooked former Prime Minister, it is the “us” versus “them” reaction that has turned America into the basket case that it is, and it will happen to us too if we are not careful. Methinks it is time for everyone involved to enjoy a big cup of shut-the-fuck-up so those checks and balances that everyone is so fond of going on about can actually get on with it.

I absolutely hate spyware.

I hate it more when I have to clean it from my own machines.

grrrr!! The horrid thing has just pooed a whole bunch of it’s filthy shit into my system32 directory. Right while I was watching.

This is the second time in as many days I’ve had to do this to a computer under my direct care.

Serves me right, checking out torrent sites with internet exploder. shoulda followed my own advice and not gone there when firefox didn’t render it right. Serves me right for using Windows lol.

I’m think I’m going to need a beer for this one.

This is one of those little bastards that attaches itself as a module to running process. you kill the process and it jumps to another one. hate those. it’s clever, but not clever enough to change it’s name like some I’ve seen.

Oh yeah. and i’ve left my my copy of the Ultimate Boot CD at the office.

OK so now I’ve got the DOS boot cd out. Thats right. my home box is so old and technologically backward that I still run fat32. just like the Battlestar Galactica, baby! other suckers running NTFS would have to go scrambling for their bootleg of ERD Commander or something like that.

I find every file I don’t like in the system directories and I erase it. stupid assholes were even kind enough to use 8 and 3 filenames for me so i don’t have to play ‘find the tilde’.

I am cleansing the system with repeated spyware scans.

ohhh do I hate spyware…

If I only had a ten thousand node botnet at my command. I could bring that site to its knees and really make em pay. wonder how much it would cost to rent goooogle out for that. Oh man, shouldn’t even joke about that.

I remember watching Doctor Who when I was a little kid. It was years ago, but I still remember hiding under the quilt on the couch watching “Planet of Evil”. The red outlined antimatter creatures scared the crap out of me. Even the opening music scared me. But I’d hold my ground and watch because the stories were really great — some of the most innovative science fiction ever on the television.

Although I wouldn’t classify myself as a hardcore fan, I’ve been watching Doctor Who for a long time. It was one of the original three sci-fi shows that got me hooked on the genre (the others being “Star Trek” and “Battlestar Galactica”). As television shows go, Doctor Who was somewhat ahead of it’s time, with strange stories about robots and aliens at a time when most fans still got their science fiction fix from cheap paperbacks and comics. The Classic Series became a cult hit after a while and ultimately played for a whopping 26 seasons.

Since I was totally into the creepy stories, I didn’t really notice at first the episodes I was watching were already some ten years old and the special effects were. . . well. . . kinda old. Lots of cheesy Chromakey stuff and guys in rubber suits. Pretty typical of British sci-fi and horror from that era I suppose.

Doctor Who had been off the air for around fifteen years and I had fairly low expectations of the new stuff, especially after seeing some of the saucy promotions. I’m not even sure why I formulated that opinion, since Russell T. Davies was responsible for the outstanding series “Queer as Folk”. Guess I figured that he was too much of a contemporary writer for sci-fi. And I must admit, another thing that crossed my mind was: Wow. Billie Piper. Kind of like a British Britney Spears. They must have hired her ’cause she’s easy on the eyes. Christopher Eccleston got my interest up though — he’s a well known, serious actor. The last thing I saw him in was “28 Days Later…”, where he did an outstanding job as the slightly crazy Major West.

Rose
Unlike the new Battlestar Galactica, which got to build up its season with a mini-series, the new Doctor Who must rely on its first episode, “Rose”, to serve as the introduction for the entire new series. In the minds of the audience, it sets the tone for the rest of the series and it will be the episode that hopefully brings in the viewers for more. And if that’s not enough, it has 26 years of previous material to live up to.

While it’s not perfect, I was surprised with just well “Rose” succeeded in introducing the new series. Pilot episodes are usually kind of boring, but “Rose” was actually quite entertaining. The storytelling is contemporary, light and fast, and it does a competent job of presenting the new versions of the main characters. The monsters in this one — it isn’t Doctor Who without monsters — are none other than the Autons, the animated mannequins featured in the classic episode “Spearhead From Space”. This tip of the hat to the classic series amused me greatly.

We now have a contemporary, modern Doctor Who. Although I don’t have a good frame of reference for it, I never got the impression that previous Doctor Who seasons really cared if they were contemporary or not. This Doctor Who is very preoccupied with being current, from the way it is shot, to the curious, peppy music, to the snappy way that dialog is delivered. This is modern television, and every attempt has been made to make it accessible to new fans, something which will no doubt anger the hardcore ones. The half-hour multi-part cliffhangers are now replaced with one hour stories (though apparently there will be multi-part ones).

Even though I suspect the producers knew it was going to be widely distributed outside of Britain, every attempt seems to have been made to deliver contemporary, almost trendy, British language and humour. North Americans like me are left to figure out the odd bit of it on our own, and that’s the way it should be. Doctor Who is a British hero, after all.

Unlike previous seasons, this new Doctor Who is a lot lighter in tone and this doesn’t come without a price. Certain technical details are overlooked in favour of this lightness, such as Rose’s inability to notice that her boyfriend is all of a sudden acting funny and looks kind of plastic. About half-way in I was reminded of “Shaun of the Dead”. Adopting this levity is to no doubt soften up the image of the show and appeal to a greater audience. Some of the humour is pretty silly, like the Doctor’s explanation that a deactivated Auton arm is now “armless”, but some of it is downright hysterical. They even fancifully explain Eccleston’s Lancashire accent:

Rose: So if you are an Alien, how come you sound like you come from the North?
Doctor: Lots of planets have a North.

Eccleston plays a more modern Doctor Who in this more modern show. Unlike Doctors before him, the Ninth Doctor has no long scarf, no funny hat, no question marks, and no velvet jacket. He’s got a black leather car-coat, Doc Martens and a buzzcut. In “Rose”, he’s energetic, almost manic. If anything, Eccleston plays it too manic. I’ll only be able to stand him saying, “Fantastic!” once per show. The Doctors before him tended to be whimsical, aloof, stiff upper lip and all that. This Doctor is in your face. He’s a man of ACTION. He doesn’t just walk places, he runs.

In fact, all of the supporting characters are a bit on the wacky side, almost like they were caricatures. On comedic characters like Rose’s useless boyfriend Mickey, or her scatty mum, this works. Mickey annoyed the hell out me, just as the writer had hoped. But for some reason I found that this didn’t translate quite as well to the Doctor himself. I wanted more from Eccleston’s performance, like he was holding back or something. You get little bits of it here or there. His frustrations with humanity’s lack of awareness brim over occasionally. He snaps at Rose: “If I did forgot some kid called Mickey it’s because I’m trying to save the life of every stupid ape blundering about on top of this planet, alright?” He insults humans a lot, actually.

And despite the manicness, every now and again there is an earnesty to Eccleston’s performance. He pleads with the Nestene Consciousness to do the right thing: “That’s not true. I should know, I was there. I fought in the War. I wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t save your world, I couldn’t save any of them!” He’s forcing it out a bit, to be sure, but I’m not cringing, either. There’s some interesting history to this character.

But the real story here is Billie Piper. Her performance as Rose is, frankly, brilliant. I expected so little from the companion character but was given so much more. Of all the characters hers is the most normal, yet the most interesting. She completely nails the twenty-year-old, directionless working girl. Her bored, post high school look barely conceals a curiosity and intelligence on par with the Doctor’s. The wackiness of the rest of the supporting cast plays well against her straightforward, honest portrayal.

Never once during the show did I not buy into her performance. When called upon, her comedic timing is right on, and her grasp of her character is clearly evident. She even gets to be smug:

Rose: You were useless in there! You’d be dead if it weren’t for me.
Doctor: Yes, I would. Thank you.

Really, Piper steals nearly every scene that she’s in. And, well. . . she is easy on the eyes, too.

So I’m thinking that the hardcore fans aren’t going to be all that impressed because the pace, the tone and the characters deviate somewhat from the classic series. But these are the same folks who filled the forums with jive when they found out that the new Starbuck in the new Battlestar Galactica was going to be a girl. But all of the basic Doctor Who elements are still there: The Doctor is still odd, the companion is still down to earth, the monsters are still weird, and the TARDIS is still bigger on the inside, than it is on the outside. So the rest of us more “casual” fans can relax and enjoy Russell T. Davies’ modern, fast, humorous and thoroughly entertaining take on a classic British science fiction series.

Come visit London: capital city of excitement, adventure and aliens!

Like fast-food restaurants and children, you have to get to the programmers early.

I looked at this propaganda for Visual Studio 2005 and the first thing that I thought was, What a great ad. You look at the actors in it and I have no trouble believing in their choice of development languages. You’ve got the young, petulant VB coder looking for some quick hack on the run. The confident, forward-looking C-Sharp developer. The intense, focused stare of the C++ hacker; he knows his kung-fu is great. The happy DBA, now armed with an improved SQL back-end, knows he’ll be home with the wife and kids by six.

This is the page for GCC.

This is not a intended to be a cheap shot — I use Linux too — but this is what free open source software is up against. FOSS produces some of the best code in the world, but it just doesn’t do marketing.

I’m not even sure what to call this, but it’s just funny.

I call up a manufacturer to get me some warranty on a malfunctioning product.

They were pretty good about it. Name, address, phone number and the like, were given with no hassles. I tell them that the memory module in question failed a Memtest86 test twice on two different boards. Unacceptable; the module is broke.

“Alright, sounds like warranty to me”, said the helpful customer support person. “We’ll get an RMA started for that. What’s the part number? It’s on a big white sticker on one side of the module.”

“Kilo Victor Romeo Four Zero Zero X-ray Six Four Charlie Three Alfa Slash Five One Two.”

“Say what?”

*sigh*

I mean the part number is KVR400X64C3A/512.

I’ve been teaching myself the NATO phonetic alphabet. Militaries have been using this system of transcription to accurately transmit codes and coordinates for years. If it works for them, it can work for me. It is incredibly useful in improving the recognition of spoken groups of random alpha-numeric characters — just like computer part product codes!

Some of my suppliers totally get it. All the guys at the used laptop place do. Getting refurbs from them is like calling in an airstrike. But alas, most of the people in the RMA departments don’t. And until they do, I’m left saying to them:

“N as in Nancy, Five, A as in Apple, Three, H as in, ummm. . . Horny. . . One.

Yeah, that’s it.