Time Unknown - Annoyances

Thunderstorm

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 20:09:37 +0200

Out of the Demeter scents I've tried so far, Thunderstorm is most suitable for daily wear by me... alas, Richard hates it just like he hates most fragrances. Ironically it's also the first Demeter fragrance that he dislikes.

Thunderstorm smells a bit like a summer thunderstorm, though with different vegetation than what we have here in Finland. Still it reminds me of a childhood summer in Kuivaniemi, lots of thunderstorms then.

The siren song of closed formats

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:19:13 +0200

LifeBalance seems like a really great Palm GTD application. Really yummy and pretty much perfect for my needs. It even has the nice nested places that I have been wanting to see in a Getting Things Done app. However, LifeBalance is proprietary software and does not seem to allow exporting of any kind, at all. That means, once you are in, you are really in, probably fenced in and stuck. Damn you pretty LifeBalance.

Facebook catch22

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 12:18:39 +0200

Facebook does not allow fake users except as test users.
Test users, being fake, are not allowed to be friends with real users.
Only real users can create new apps.
Real users can add their friends as other developers of the app.
There is a Developer Mode, that limits adding the app only to the developers of the app.

All these things make sense, but alas, it means you cannot test a Facebook app with a test user without publishing the app to everyone and some poor real person will have to publish the unfinished piece of crap and seem like an incompetent fool doing it.

Why does Facebook have test users when they are so useless?

Picasa EULA

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:33:11 +0300

When Chrome came out, there was a huge outcry about the EULA. Now Picasa 3 has pretty much the same evilness in the EULA, but no outcry is happening. Bizarre. One would have expected people to care more about their own photos.

Versalaser Linux driver not planned

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:52:02 +0300

According to the answer I got from Universal Laser Systems, the makers of Versalaser, they have no plans to release a Linux driver for the device and zero plans to ever release specs so that an open source driver could be developed.

There seems to be other Windows-only laser engravers/cutters out there, I wonder if some of them might be a bit more Linux friendly. I'd assume tech geeks to be a non-tiny potential market.

My next targets for inquiry are IEHK, Epilog and GCC. Feel free to point me to another companies too, or let me know if you know any to be Linux friendly.

How to annoy most people visiting your site

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:25:43 +0300

Today I visited Wowio, a site that offers DRM-free PDFs of books. Real books. I spend an hour on the site ooh-ing over the books and adding gazillion of them into my queue. When I was finally done, I went to the queue section to download. I was asked to register. That's ok, they have to form some sort of idea who visits the site if they ever want to have any revenue.

However, they did not let me register. The site told me it's currently only for people in USA, and cannot serve me. I did not even get access to my queue listing, so I could not even take the list and go buy the books. What a waste of time! Why couldn't they let me know of this limitation when I first entered the site?

So, if you really want to annoy people visiting your site, make them jump through hoops and then tell them 'gotcha' and deny them the service.

Audible billing me despite my cancellation

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 08:11:08 +0200

Today there was an unpleasant surprise from the audiobook seller Audible in my inbox. They wanted to bill me for membership renewal despite the fact I had cancelled it online according to their instructions last year. I went to cancel it again, but the cancellation link was not there. Their support section said that if I have already cancelled, the link will no longer be there and in that case I should call them to some exotic foreign number during exotic foreign hours to sort it out.

Damn, that could easily cost more than the yearly membership! I emailed them instead through their customer service loops. Wish me luck.

I'm so disappointed in Audible turning evil this way. I liked them still before, despite the fact I could no longer listen to their products (no support for Linux or for my digital audioplayer).

Stuck with my Treo650

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:14:29 +0200

I'm itching to move to 3G phones and to start using my Internet Tablet N800 with one of those. However I feel stuck with Palm Treo 750 because the Palm apps I use (DateBk, Todo, Progect, MegaClock and SplashMoney) are just too good and there is not really anything to replace then on 3G phones or IT OS2008. Garnet VM does not seem like the solution as it is a bit slow and lacking alarmwise. I certainly do not want have one more device I want to carry with me. Stuck.

The folder you don't want

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:47:22 +0200

When revamping my GTD setup last week, I discovered a monster. The scary creature in question was a folder titled 'Other actionable' and it was full of stuff. When I looked at the contents, my fears turned out to be true: it was stuff I hadn't looked at since filing it into that folder. Uh oh.

Luckily none of the contents were really important, but now I am a less-than-proud owner of 15 4 euro exercise coupons that will expire on Monday. I'm considering getting a 10 session gym card to Motivus with them.

n+w is not nw

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 15:28:47 +0200

When troubleshooting dhcp on a remote network with dhclient, do remember that while -n is usually used with -w, those two together is not -nw, which is something else altogether and can mess up the ip settings of the remote system you are testing on.

Hopefully this reminder saves someone from pointless suffering.

Spit and piss

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:22:38 +0200

Walking to a bus stop in Helsinki center today I noticed just how many spit blots there were on the sidewalk. A truly appalling amount of bodily fluids. I notice that there was no place where I could really put my bag if I needed to, the spit was literally everywhere. Gah. It was not this way when I was a kid. Is it my generation that is doing this and peeing the the corners like dogs on weekends?

Dappling in music on Linux?

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:48:12 +0200

I would want to dapple in music but my efforts today were not very fruitful and resulted mostly in crashing applications and people telling me I need a real-time kernel. As the result I found myself pondering booting into Microsoft Windows in order to try that there. It was the first time for ages I wanted MS Win for something else than games. Certainty there must be something I can do on Linux to find out if I want to try dabbling in music more? Currently it feels Linux is less suited for making music than Commodore 64 was, and that cannot be, right?

Disgusted by Facebook

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 06:53:56 +0300

I just joined Facebook but I'm so disgusted about their "give us your email password" evilness that I kind of instantly want to leave.

I was expecting that to annoy me just in the registration, but no, there it is, in the end of my (still short) friendslist. And there seems to be no way to get rid of it! Argh!

Eating alone

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:26:23 +0300

Those who know me well, know that I hate eating meals alone. When there is no one to share the meal with me, I'll eat in front of IRC, or munch an bread while working, or as last resort, listen to a podcast while I eat.

I was not supposed to eat alone today. In fact, I was supposed to meet someone and brought a book with me to lend to them. I was there, in the right place, on the right time and day, waiting. 15 minutes later, after emailing the person, as I did not have their phone number, I went and ate alone. Even with headphones it was unpleasant.

I wonder if the next time I'll have the courage to invite a fellow lone eater to join me, even if the person is a total stranger to me. This time I just asked one of them, who looked somewhat right, if he was the person I was supposed to meet, then went back to finish my meal.

Squirt

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 21:15:52 +0300

Today some hours after using the shower I noticed that if I press on the slightly raised tile, some water squirts from under it. Squirt. Uh oh. I hope the janitor comes look at the shower soon.