Category: WIDLM

What I Don’t Like Monday

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WIDLM: The Rich

Hah! Inflammatory again. I like the rich fine. I’m not a commie or anything. Geez, guys, put down your second amendment protected arms.

What I really don’t like, is when people are so rich that they don’t feel the penalties for doing something wrong. This is most obvious with corporations. They get hit with lawsuits, or even fines for law breaking, but it doesn’t matter cause the fine is a fraction of the money they made doing whatever evil thing they did. A recent example would be Reebok’s EasyTone shoes. You might have heard of them. They are those stupid curved shoes that are supposed to exercise your butt or something, but actually do nothing, except maybe give you back problems. They got slapped for false advertising to the tune of $25M, but they’ve already made $1.1B, so what do they care?

Sometimes individuals are so rich they can do the same thing. The one that has me thinking of this is good ol’… really ol’… Rupert Murdoch. He recently decided to pay out £2M to the family of the girl who died, whose phone his newspaper hacked. He’ll give another £1M to some charities of their choice. Great. That’s a lot of money. Except he’s worth an estimated $7.6B. I’ve done the math for you, that’s .06315% he’s giving away. I know, it’s not really the same thing, since he doesn’t technically have to give anything, but just want to put it into perspective. You giving a bum a couple bucks is probably more generous, from a percentage perspective.

Sometimes the comparison between person and company is better as well. For Murdoch we can’t really know he made more than he’s giving away, since there are so many variables. There are, however, straight up hucksters like Kevin Trudeau, the author of books like, Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About, who makes tons more money lying than he pays for being convicted of lying. When that sort of thing happens, you know the system is broken.

Rich people have it easy, and that’s sorta how capitalism is supposed to work. They can relax and not worry about losing their job or dinging their car door or paying for their kid’s tuition. They should, however, still have to worry about the law. It is pretty impossible to do perfectly, I know. And I’m also aware that they can’t just do anything that they want, hopefully. But I’m still pissed off when the system fails in this regard.

When I’m in charge penalties will be determined based on your assets and income. That goes for companies too.

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WIDLM: Christmas Lights Before Thanksgiving

I’m gonna be ahead of the curve on this one. I don’t really like Christmas lights in general, waste of electricity, but it bugs me way more when people put them up before Thanksgiving. Makes me feel like they’re skipping Thanksgiving, or merging it with Christmas, which I’m not okay with.

Thanksgiving probably means something different to everyone, but what I think it’s supposed to be about is taking of a bit of time to recognize and be thankful for what we’ve got, especially the simple necessities we take for granted (because we have it so good), and to remember how we got here. That’s just a good thing for a holiday to be built around, and way more important than the other popular holidays, I think. It merges European and Native American traditions, one of the few ways we typical modern Americans recognize the Native American contribution to our prosperity. Also, it is a national holiday, with no real tie to religion, one of the few we have, so it’s truly inclusive. I don’t have to buy anyone gifts, which is a plus. Also, I like turkey.

Sure there’s a bit of gluttony involved, but at least it’s real food gluttony. It’s more to do with meat and stuffing and less to do with cookies and candy. Plus, the ability to be occasionally gluttonous is one of the things we’re celebrating and being grateful for. Of course Thanksgiving is being ever more tainted by Black Friday and ridiculous nonsense like that, but some people can ruin anything.

At it’s core Thanksgiving is a better holiday than Christmas, and even if you don’t agree, you should at least agree that Thanksgiving deserves its limited time and should not be skipped over, even symbolically.

Please, think of the children. Wait until December to start wasting electricity.

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WIDLM

WIDLM: Corner Cutting

Again, a misleading and/or vague title. Coming up for titles for these WIDLM things is kinda difficult sometimes. Anyway, I’ll explain.

I actually like corner cutting. That’s sorta the problem, I like it too much. I dislike following procedures and doing everything by the book. Some people are very different, I know. They’re the type that store everything in its proper place and examine every tool for dirt and dings before they begin a project. Those people are not me. I just do stuff, usually without any plan more complicated or long term than what I can hold in my head and have come up with since I started.

Now, I like cutting corners, that’s why I do it. I feel like I’m saving time and avoiding tedium. What I don’t like is when that backfires. It happens somewhat frequently. Frequently enough that sometimes I consider altering my behavior. We’ll see.

The example today was vacuuming. I am home maker since Lauren has a job now. Anyway, I was vacuuming and it wasn’t working very well, so I sorta did absent minded inspection of the vacuum and thought to myself that it was producing very much suction. But there was no crimp in the tube, and I had this stupid carpet cleaning attachment that might have been affecting things, so I just decided I’d do as good a job as I could and maybe the bag needed to be emptied or whatever. Actually, I didn’t really have that much of a thought, I probably mostly thought, “Ehh…, whatev. Vacuums suck.” (No pun intended)

Of course, after I had thoroughly done a poor job with a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner I found this little sliding hatch in the nozzle that revealed a large mass of hair and detritus and pins which I surmised, correctly, was limiting the functionality of the vacuum. I extracted the blockage and then re-vacuumed, although, I doubt I was as thorough the second time around. Against my nature.

Anyway, this issue is about more than just vacuuming. It comes up much more often in coding. Part of the reason I like computers is that they are so forgiving in this aspect. Copy Paste, a little Undo, minimizes the pain caused from these corner cutting backfires. But sometimes in the coding world the problems, even with the labor saving properties of computers, are still very annoying and time consuming to fix.

It’s a little strange. Sometimes I am so very methodical. Some people probably suspect me to be exactly the sort I claim in this post I am the opposite of. But I tend to try and use the methodical approach as a last resort, barring special circumstances. I will just have to keep in mind that maybe the last resort should be tried a little sooner than I would like to admit.

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WIDLM: Dancing

Pat got married, for any of you don’t know, and I was at the wedding. There was no dancing at the wedding. Well, actually, I take that back. There was a little, if you use a broad definition. At the reception afterward, though, there was much dancing. Luckily, I didn’t have to participate hardly at all. Me having to dance is the kind of dancing I most despise. I don’t really care if other people do it. I just don’t really get it.

People say it’s liberating or freeing or whatever, and I can sorta see how that could be true. I don’t think I need to be much more liberated than I am, though. I’m pretty sure I’m immobile in my most perfectly free state. Perhaps that’s not true for everyone. I don’t think it’s really all that liberating anyway. It’s true that you’re not constrained by the normal societal rules, but you enter into a new set of rules. You’re supposed to move much more than normal, but it’s not as though there are no limitations or judgments made. Maybe in modern dance class, but not in the normal world. *shrug*

Personally, I just can’t get into dancing, so I can’t really do it. I can do it for like 5 seconds as a joke, but I’ve got nothing sustaining it. It is an emotion based activity, and my emotions are pretty limited, or absent, or constrained, or something. As a result, when I have to do it, it’s very unpleasant. Hence the WIDLM.

Anyway, I’m glad Lauren didn’t make me dance. That was nice of her. I hope everyone else that was dancing was having fun at it. Seemed like they were. Good party Pat’s wife’s dad.

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WIDLM: Cleaning

I’m feeling very uninspired today, at least in the writing blog post about what I don’t like category, so this is gonna be a short one.

I don’t like cleaning. I find the constant battle with entropy unproductive. Since I know the battle can never be won, I tend to migrate to extremes of the scale. Either I want to do small things all the time to keep things in order, like cleaning ever dish I use, or I want to avoid cleaning as long as possible, like cleaning the toilet when I move out of the apartment… maybe. Those two methods minimize the pain of the endless no win battle with disorder. Even they dismay me, though. I think us normals should just give in and allow those with clean freak mental disorders to clean for us.

I’m also a firm believer in cleaning what I use, and ignoring stuff around me. Like… why does the crack along the wall need to be clean if I walk in the middle of the hall? Heh.

Of course, cleaning comes in many forms, and I think I dislike them all. Personal hygiene is a chore I don’t relish, cleaning laundry the same, lawn mowing… etc. etc. It’s all bad. You all know it. I just know it more than most.

I surrender to your superior power entropy.

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WIDLM

WIDLM: Miro

All I need is for something to take an rss feed and automatically download the audio and video and put them somewhere. Why is that so hard?

Miro does this thing now where it gets stuck part way through checking my podcasts and never finishes, so some of them are not updating at all. Grrr… I rely on Miro to keep track of my media for me so I don’t miss anything and I don’t have to spend half my day keeping up on these things. It’s the perfect job for a computer. Check site, if new, download, else nothing, repeat. They mess it up by adding in all these extra features I don’t want. Featured shows, torrenting, media playback, blah blah blah.

Anyone else have a superior product?

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WIDLM

WIDLM: Reality TV

First, a few updates from WIDLM of the past. My second(?) WIDLM was about WordPress itself and my poor experience with it’s CSS on my monitor. I’m pretty sure that it had fixed that main issue I had with it by the time I posted the next week. I regret that I forgot to mention it until now. Anyway, that’s fixed now. Regarding last weeks WIDLM, I have found an acceptable solution. I have added the shortest “tail” to my cursor with the trailing cursor options available in Windows. I can’t even notice the tail most of the time, and it fixes the glitch. So yay for that. On to the hate.

The inspiration for this WIDLM comes from Pat’s bachelor party, during which one party member went on a somewhat lengthy rant about his distaste for Whale Wars. I don’t think I’ve actually seen Whale Wars, except in parody on Southpark, but I doubt I would enjoy it much. I hate reality TV in all it’s forms… unless you count Mythbusters, which I don’t, but someone somewhere did, so I mention it.

I haven’t watched very much, but that is because they so quickly nauseate me. Oh, I hate them so, let me count a few of the ways.

1) They are not in any way real. It’s edited, prompted, researched, pain-stakingly manipulate in every way. I know everyone knows this, but I dunno how much they know. The people are screened from thousands of candidates by psychologists to make a mixture that will be entertaining on TV, assuming it’s not one of those “celebrity” versions, in which case they’re all trained entertainers anyway. Then the “contestants” or whatever are asked pointed questions and coached on how to respond. Then the answers are edited and deleted to the hearts contents of the soulless producers. Romances are suggested, lies are told, votes are forged, nothing is genuine even slightly. They pull leaves off of trees and spray paint the ground to make it look like time has passed when it hasn’t. Soooooooooo… lame.

2) They pretend to be real. It’s fine to be fake, that’s what TV is, but don’t act like you’re something you’re not. Well, that’s sorta what TV is, too, but, ya know what I mean. Normal TV asks you to willingly suspend your disbelief together with the actors and show creators for fun and frivolity, possibly education and emotional exploration. Reality TV asks you to suspend your disbelief in order that you accept what they shovel at you as true, because if you didn’t, you’d think it was really, really boring TV. Disgusting.

3) It’s bad TV. They’re not even good at what they claim to be good at. Well, I dunno, I’m sure they’re doing the best they can with what they have, but compared to traditional TV production methods, the entertainment value is very, very low. Jokes suck, plot sucks, characters suck, concepts suck, sets suck, everything about the shows suck. Their only appeal is to people who let themselves believe it’s somehow true-ish… which I can’t do, and I think is a mistake.

4) It is irredeemably corrupt. Nothing good can come to society from such a dishonest and manipulative venture. It is like advertising between the advertisements. Even the “positive” reality TV, where they build a house for a poor person, or whatever, is so shallow, disingenuous, and false, that it doesn’t make up for it. They would bulldoze the house as soon as build it, if they thought that would bring in a more lucrative demographic. Instead of spending 1% of the budget on a ridiculous mansion for a few families and 99% on marketing and cameras, they could just build enough homes for the entire countries homeless population. But what would be the fun in that? The corruption will spill into the rest of society as well. A segment of the population will always feel cheated that they aren’t famous just for being their ridiculous self. They’ve been making loud, public, poor decisions their whole lives, and never got anything. How can it be? Think of all the talented people who aren’t acting or writing but are forced to sell their souls and work on the manipulative drivel in order to get a job in TV. Or are waiters… or lawyers. It’s just sad.

In conclusion, only you can prevent reality TV. Stop watching any you find, write your congressmen, and if you’re ever face to face with someone involved, make sure to punch them really hard before and after you explain that you’re doing it so they’ll quit making that crap.

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WIDLM: Dual Monitor Cursor Glitch

This is a minor first world problem, but I don’t feel like coming up with a better one.

ragaragaga

My computer has two monitors. My old one and my huge new one. Sometimes when the cursor moves from the old one back to the new one it get’s all messed up. It depends on what the cursor is

supposed to look like (hand, arrow, bar) but it always looks corrupted. Examples surround. The corruption is only on my new monitor, but that’s the biggest baddest one that I use primarily. It’s so sad. I’ve looked into it a bit, updated drivers and such, and apparently there’s no real fix. Restarting makes it go away for a while, but it very temporary.

I can still operate, although it’s worse in games where precision is needed, and the cursors are often abnormally complex. In the research I did just before the post I heard of a few potential work-arounds I will try out, but I’m not hopeful. Come on computers… do better. I need to play SW:TOR on you soon.

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WIDLM: Sickness

I should specify. Specifically, I mean me being sick. Even more specifically, me being sick while unemployed.

There’s no upside to being sick when you’re unemployed. No rest, or relaxation, just all the downside of not being able to breathe and feeling crappy. I’ve been sick for the last few days. Not super sick, but sick enough that it’s annoying. I’ve been taking care of myself and it still isn’t going away. Almost makes me think all these traditional remedies don’t really work.

Some of the negatives of my illness are self imposed. I’ve been avoiding certain foods in an effort not to coat my throat in sugar, like ice cream. And I’ve been avoiding Lauren, in an effort not to ensicken her. (I know that’s not a word, and that there is a perfectly good word for what I mean, but ensicken sounds like a good word to me)

So far it doesn’t appear that I’ve ensicked anyone around me, so I hope it stays that way and I can get over this soon. I’m planning to go over the mountains in a few days, wouldn’t want to allow this virus/bacteria to spread so far.

Being sick sucks.

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WIDLM: Dogs

What can I say. My life is good and I’m pretty well balanced so not a lot gets to me. I was having trouble coming up with something, so I’m picking something I’ve been disliking my whole life, that most people wouldn’t agree with. Dogs. Never cared for them. They’re loud, stupid, smelly, drooly, hairy, and they poop all over everything. They dig, they chase cars, they bite stuff, they kill bunnies… they’re just kinda awful.

In my day to day life them main thing about dogs that bothers me is their bark, since they’re always doing it at me when I walk by. Soooo… annoying. Shut up. No other pet does such things. I didn’t buy it, I shouldn’t have to hear it. The next annoying this is their crap that’s on the side walk and in every nice piece of grass you might want to venture on. This is a tick against dog owners too, but really, ultimately, if dogs didn’t crap whenever they felt like it, we wouldn’t have to rely on the kindness of strangers to pick it up.

My initial distaste for dogs arose from the way they were sold. Their supposed qualities. Loyalty, unconditional trust and love for their master, man’s best friend. These are things that I just don’t think are very good. I mean, a best friend is good, but a best friend is not unconditionally supportive and trustful. A real friend tells you the hard truths and does what he can to make you a better person. Now, I get that an animal probably can’t do that, but that’s just it, dogs are not man’s best friend. They’re not our friends at all. They’re our pets. Friend are equals, pets are not. Dogs are not our equals. Perhaps you could make some of argument about how dogs throughout human history have aided us and whatnot, which sure, they did, but so did horses and cows and sheep and goats and llamas and I don’t want them around either. That was then, this is now.

The whole unconditional trust and love and loyalty just strikes me a stupid. It’s mindless. The dog doesn’t love you. It just hasn’t the ability to do anything but try and please you (however poorly its attempts). Any faith put in me without cause or thought is not valuable, and that’s all dogs can offer.

And worse, these “qualities” of dogs aren’t even really true. Dogs attack their owners quite frequently. They attack random kids, too. People think they’re cute and happy, but that’s just personification. They’re just dumb animals, and if they get confused into thinking you’re food and an enemy they’ll try and eat you.

I know probably very few dogs actually embody all of these complaints, and yes, a well trained dog could mitigate many of the problems I’ve voiced, and I’m all for that. If you want a dog, train it not to bark at me, and pick up it’s crap. That’s for the best. And there may be some dog out there that doesn’t shed, and doesn’t drool, and doesn’t stink, and could be trained and that would be a great dog. Still, in general, dogs… not worth it. And even if I could find that perfect dog, I doubt I’d like it very much. Maybe I just wouldn’t dislike it.