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http://rivalarrival.stumbleupon.com/review/14315792/

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 07:36:39 -0800

Fucking GM...

So get this: The ignition switch in my roommates '03 Grand Am stops turning. Like COMPLETELY locked up. AAA RULES. They had it towed around the block back to our house, free of charge.

Anyway, since it's out of warranty, I figure I'll try to save a few bucks and pull the ignition switch, get the whole thing rekeyed, and should be golden. Well, that was the plan, at least.

Actually, disassembly went pretty easy - pull the radio, pull 2 bolts, and the switch (a baseball sized device) is free from the dash. Simple matter of pulling three wiring harnesses and the transmission lock cable, and we're good to go.

The harnesses pop off easily, but unfortunately, the key has to be switched on in order to remove the transmission lock cable. But the key can't be switched on. Fuck.

The switch housing is three parts that are assembled with a dozen cheap plastic tabs on one piece that lock to corresponding cams (cams? hooks? I dunno what you'd call them) on the other piece. So, I figure I can just separate the switch in the middle and I'd be able to pull the transmission lock cable.

which worked.

Except separating the switch releases at least 5 brass pins, 5 brass springs, and the cam that pushes on those pins to engage the switch. But, I don't realize this at the time - I've been working on this car about 4 hours now, in the cold and rain (including the wait time for the tow truck)

Fucking GM.

Anyway, I take the front of that housing to the GM dealership - he smacks it with a hammer. (WHAT??? I mean, beating on shit is normally MY first method of trying to repair it, but a dealer?) He hits it with a hammer and the damn thing starts working again. Good thing, too, because you can't remove the lock cylinder unless you can turn it with the key, meaning that if it doesn't work, you have to replace the cylinder ($212), rekey the new cylinder to the old key ($50) and replace the switch ($140).

So, now that it's working again, I take it back home and try to reassemble it. Which is when I realize that the switch cam, and 10 tiny brass pieces are missing, and reassembly is basically impossible.

Fucking GM.

So, I call the GM dealership back. Fortunately, they only want $140 for the switch itself.

I'll let you know later, but I'm pretty damn sure the transmission lockout cable won't go into the new housing.

Fucking GM.

I want a "Mechanics Special" vehicle. One that was designed by maintenance people, not by some goddamned white-collar engineer fuck who has never even looked under the hood of a car. One that can be disassembled easily and intuitively, and doesn't require an associates degree to find the fucking hood latch.

http://rivalarrival.stumbleupon.com/review/12997306/

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:52:26 -0700

Spam/Freebie/Telemarketer tricks

I hate spam.

1. mytrashmail.com gives you a disposable, insecure email account. When a page asks for an email address, simply give any name@mytrashmail.com... Visit mytrashmail.com with a web browser to fetch e-mail confirmation information for these websites.

2. Hotmail can be used as a semi-secure, anonymous email. I've got an account that I use for responding anonymously - my personal information will never be disclosed with that account, and I'll never disclose that account in my public profile. I use it rarely, and usually just to reply to flamers on anonymous sites.

3. Thunderbird has a pretty good organic spam filter.

I like freebies, but they need to be delivered to a real address.

Simple! I have a street address, and every address form has room for an optional second line. Use it! Insert a suite number and a pseudonym for the name. If you keep track of the address/name combinations you submit, you'll know exactly who released your information and you can go fuck with them.

Telemarketers are a bane on existence, but there are several ways to deal with them.

1. Only use your real phone number on trusted sites - there are several sites that will give you a free voicemail box. Personally, I don't like to use this, I've found something that gives me the upper hand when dealing with telemarketers...

2. National do-not-call list. Sign yourself up. While you're at it, sign up all your friends, family, and every other phone number you can think of. This blocks a good chunk of telemarketing calls, but they are allowed to slip up at least once in a 12-month period...

3. My personal favorite: On every untrusted form that asks for your name, give an altered version of your name. If your name is John Doe, give them James Day. Anyone who calls now, asking for James or Mr. Day is automatically a telemarketer - immediately respond with "You are a telemarketer, I am on the do-not-call registry, put my number on your do-not-call list" I've got several pseudonyms, and I add new ones every couple of months.

Alternatively, you can start fucking with them hardcore, without worrying too much about the repercussions.

4. If they are stupid enough not to block their caller ID information, add their number to a contact in your phone. You'll be warned when the phone rings - answer with a blood curdling yell, your favorite porno, "Detective Johnson, Homicide Division", or (my favorite) the insane, third-shift insomniac who has just fallen asleep for the first time in three days.

Fuck, they are getting crafty too... I had one who asked for my spam pseudonym and acted like she was a collection agency. She was selling some kind of credit protection plan, but her script made it sound like she was associated with the bank that issued my credit card.

http://rivalarrival.stumbleupon.com/review/11768841/

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 10:51:34 -0700

I just saw a microsoft "We've convinced people not to trust linux" advertisement on an article that basically said "Vista Sucks"

I see Christian Industry advertisements on Atheist blogs.

And I know that the site owner gets paid by the advertiser for click-thru.

Support your favorite bloggers at the expense of his detractors. Click through in the advertisements that go against his message!

http://rivalarrival.stumbleupon.com/review/11189127/

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:28:08 -0700

Gmail only works when I'm behind a firewall? Really?

So, I'm at my wits end here.

I've finally made the switch to Linux. Completely. (Ok, there is one website that doesn't like ies4linux that I must have for work... Fucking pains in the ass...)

Anyway, I just set up Thunderbird. Awesome program. I have a couple gmail accounts, a personal one, and one with thejesusmyth.com (In addition to my ISP's, and a couple of hotmail accounts for spam)

(BTW, the webmail plugin for thunderbird kicks ass... Hotmail used to offer pop access, and I stopped using it when they dumped it.)

Anyway, I kept running into problems with the gmail accounts. For some reason, I wasn't able to reach the pop.gmail.com server. At all. Thunderbird would time out, pinging did nothing. The DNS resolved OK, but no access at all to the server. I'm completely at a loss.

So I look around for awhile, and I see a LOT of information about pop.gmail.com timing out. A god-awful lot. And mysteriously, these problems all seem to correct themselves.

My windows box has no problems seeing pop.gmail.com. I can ping it, get mail, everything is freaking great. So I know this isn't an ISP problem, nor is it a Google problem.

Well, I'm talking with a friend about this, and he tells me that he's never had a problem, he never even had to configure his firewall. I'm like "Well, I don't even have a firewall up, so that can't be it, there's got to be something else going on.

But he's got a pretty basic ubuntu install, nothing fancy.

Apparently, though, there is SOMETHING different, because he's never had the problem I have.

I found a solution, or at least a workaround for a problem I don't fully understand.

for shits and giggles, I installed Firestarter, mostly out of curiosity. I mean, I want a firewall. The only reason I didn't have one until that point was that I wanted to see Ubuntu operate unprotected. I wanted to see if the hype was true. (And to make network diagnosis a bit easier on my n00b brain)

So it's installed and running. I check my mail. 2 years of gmail starts pouring into my account.

Now, this goes COMPLETELY against everything I have ever learned. You put up a firewall to RESTRICT network accessibility. If it breaks things, you relax the restrictions on the firewall to specifically allow that broken thing.

In this case, though, WITHOUT the firewall, gmail is broken. With the firewall, gmail is fixed. What the fuck is going on here?

No, seriously. What the fuck is going on here?

http://rivalarrival.stumbleupon.com/review/10965556/

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 04:13:06 -0700

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=234700

http://rivalarrival.stumbleupon.com/review/10728152/

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:39:07 -0700

Hey, all. I'm sorry I haven't been around lately. I guess I've been taking a leave of absence from my virtual life to go deal with a few shit storms IRL.

Fortunately, I think most everything is back under control, and I should be back online in the next week or so.

http://rivalarrival.stumbleupon.com/review/10729637/

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:15:57 -0700

I'm all about personal responsibility. I believe that the vast majority of a person's actions are their sole responsibility, and most financial transaction fall into that category as well.

I also believe in corporate responsibility. Corporations have many of the same rights as people, and along with those rights come certain responsibilities. Just because they are "faceless" doesn't mean they are exempt from morality.

Morality is a subjective issue. What I find to be morally acceptable you might not. When a great majority of people agree on a morally acceptable standard of behavior, it is often codified into law, and all people (and corporate entities) are held to this standard, and punished for not meeting it.

If I violate the law for personal profit, I do so with the understanding the others can come back and enforce those laws. I have no right to complain when a jury of my peers locks me away for theft.

On a moral basis, I feel it is unfair for me to profit from the mistakes of others, especially when those profits come at the expense of people who cannot afford to make them.

Apparently, I am not alone in this thinking, as law has been codified stating that such behavior is unlawful, including the exact definition of how much profit is unfair to collect from a needy individual. These are called "Usury" laws. These laws say no matter what the borrower is willing to pay for a loan, the lender cannot accept more than a certain amount for his services. In the US, the maximum amount of interest a lender can charge is between 6% and 30% annually. If I lend you money and ask for you to double it in a week, I am breaking the law.

Now, I said before I'm all about personal responsibility. When I make a mistake, I expect to pay for that mistake. When other people make mistakes, I expect them to pay for their mistakes. But we already discussed profiting from other people's mistakes.

So, the cost of a mistake must be commensurate with the severity of the mistake. If your mistake causes me a slight amount of harm, I expect you to provide me a slight amount of consideration for that harm. If your mistake costs me a great loss of property, I expect you to provide a large amount of consideration.

So, if I put you out for $20, I expect to reimburse you for that amount, and provide you adequate compensation for my mistake. How much do you think is fair? How about an additional 5 bucks at the end of the week? That fair? Oh you don't? How much do YOU think is fair? $200 at the end of the week? And if I can't meet that, an additional $40 a day after the first week?

When we talk about it on this scale, of course it is clearly illegal, immoral, unethical, and downright WRONG.

Today, though, this particular practice is semi-legal in the "Overdraft" exceptions to Usury law. A bank can charge a fairly large fee (which is usually capped) for each draft you make on a checking account in excess of your account balance.

That's fine: the account holder is responsible for his account, and as long as the bank is not even aware of your transactions, you are the only one who could POSSIBLY be responsible for your account.

Today, though, the bank has inserted itself between you and the merchant. When you go to pay for your Big Mac, a bag of concrete, bucket of screws, a new purse, DVD rental, doctor's visit... Chances are good that you swipe a plastic card with a magnetic strip through an electronic device, and you probably used a debit card, withdrawing money directly from your checking account.

When the "overdraft" laws were written, debit cards had yet to be invented, and credit cards were a rarity.

When overdraft laws were written, you overdrew your account by writing a check for more than you had, and not depositing additional cash before the check got back to your bank. The bank didn't find out that you wrote a check for up to a week after your transaction. (continued later)

http://rivalarrival.stumbleupon.com/review/9199083/

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 10:20:14 -0700

These are Contrails

This is Aerial Spraying

Key Differences: Contrails do not originate from the body of the plane itself, they form several yards behind the plane. Contrails only form at high altitude. If they WERE aerial spray, the chemicals would be drastically dispersed at best, but would probably be blown wherever the prevailing winds carried them - hundreds or thousands of miles from where they were alledgedly released.

Aerial Spraying originates from nozzles, and disperses quickly. The spray is visible all the way to the nozzles.

Now, can we kindly dispense with the conspiracy theories about chemical spray programs? If you are feeling any effects, it is entirely psychosomatic.

http://rivalarrival.stumbleupon.com/review/8772505/

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 18:16:45 -0700

Every proselytizer has a secret lair, where they spawn and grow demons. They use these demons to terrorize the countryside into agreeing with them. But, their dragons have no teeth, and breath no fire. They only sit outside your window and snarl every once in awhile.

http://rivalarrival.stumbleupon.com/review/8325239/

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 18:07:17 -0700

Edit: Tikkyfare has pointed me towards a project that is doing this already, let's see if we can give it some support:

OpenStreetMap looks like it's doing just about everything I outlined earlier, although it seems focused primarily on Europe at the time being.

I've got this idea for an ultimately open-source software project.
Every GPS mapping software I have ever used has had some MAJOR flaws. When I used Pharos Ostia back in 2002, it would plot a 70 mile circuitous route for me to travel the 6 miles from my home to my office. (It had problems plotting routes across multiple maps, my home was on one, and my office on the other)

TomTom occasionally tries to take me the wrong way on exit and entrance ramps, and fouls up the intersection closest to my current office. All of the maps - regardless of the system - go out of date with every construction project, new road, or road closure. Every system I've used includes roads that don't exist - dead end roads supposedly go through, shortcuts are really private driveways. No new housing allotment is accurately mapped for whatever reason.

How can we solve these problems?

These roads are traveled by individuals every day. Individuals with sophisticated, untapped mapping technology. Individual users COULD submit accurate corrections to map data simply by driving around town.

We start with proprietary maps, such as those used by TomTom, Ostia, Google, Mapquest, Streets and Trips, or any number of other systems. We build an open source interface that can read those maps, and project their streets in, say, Red. Then we go for a drive, and have the locational data for our route displayed in Green. On subsequent trips, the interface uses the Blue routes wherevever possible, and the Red routes where they are not.

When we connect to the internet, the Green maps are sent back to project headquarters and analyzed to produce Blue maps.

Initial adopters would have to use their own maps (Red Maps) to help produce the project's Blue maps.

Later adopters will download free blue maps and upload new green maps.