Month: October 2006

Ive actually WORKED from home

So, I have honestly spent most of the day working at home. Now, to be fair, that was all spent installing Subversion, Java 1.5, the GWT, and Intellij IDEA, and it’s still not all working, but I’ve been doing things for work since nine this morning. With a quick break to go to the grocery store and then fix lunch.

I’m close to getting something to work, though. So close. Right now, though, I’m going to get up from the computer. I think that will be best for my mental well-being. I might even go for a run, since I haven’t done any physical activity since Friday.

Edit: Good day for a run. Ran past an old coworker I haven’t seen in over a year who now works right around the corner.

Working from home

Our office is all but closed today, and I got permission to work from home (Mostly because I’m pretty sure I’m technically supposed to do the combination lock on the office door every time I go to the bathroom if I’m the only one there).  And what’s even better is that my assignment for the day is to get IntelliJ up and running with the Google Web Toolkit and see if I can get an environment set up to write some web services.  I’m thinking I might try writing a little something for Complaint Hub if I can get it working (And playing nicely with the WordPress php theme that I’m using).  Maybe I’ll put up a little Nano progress bar so you all can yell at me if I start falling behind next month.

Why I dont blog at home

HOWTO: Draft A Good Complaint Letter – Consumerist

The wife is half-looking over my shoulder as we watch some Sunday Night Football, and she saw the headline.

“How to draft a good complaint letter?  What are you doing?”  She says.  And it’s the tone she used that’s important here.  The tone implied that blogging about how to draft a good complaint letter is utterly worthless and ridiculous.

I run a blog called “Complaint Hub”.  Blogging about complaining is what I do.  And Consumerist also does a lot of complaining.  So sometimes I link to their site (Don’t tell them it’s because they pay attention to who links them, and sometimes link back.  Tell them it’s because they’re so witty.  They’ll like that.).

I don’t think that’s ridiculous at all.  I’m here, providing a service to the community by helping to spread the word about how to write a good complaint letter.

So, go out and write a complaint letter to someone who has wronged you.  It will feel good, trust me.

Norton Antivirus kills my processor

I hate my laptop.  It’s a Dell, and I have a Dell desktop that I’ve had since 1998 that I love.  Once it got too old to do much with, I installed Ubuntu Linux on it, and that’s been pretty cool.  But this laptop has been a piece of crap ever since I bought it.  And now I’ve found that maybe I’ve put too much blame on Dell, and not nearly enough on Norton.  My antivirus that came with the computer expired long ago, and I refuse to pay for virus protection.  I’ve never had a virus in my life.  Never.  And I don’t trust Norton to work, anyway.

So, the computer has been running slowly for a while.  Finally I decided to uninstall all the extra junk I’ve gathered along the way.  Soon enough, I got to Norton.  I can’t believe how much faster the computer is running now that Norton is gone.  It’s not just Norton, but that was the only thing I uninstalled where I saw an immediate change in how the computer was running.

I would suggest to all of you that you get rid of Norton, but I don’t know what you should replace it with.  So I won’t recommend that you do that just yet.  It’s one thing for me to go without virus protection, but I’m not going to recommend that you do it.

But I have to say that I’m thrilled with my uninstalling exploits.  I’ll keep you all posted on how it works from here on out.

Guest blogger Gayles bathroom experience

Gayle originally left this as a comment on this post, but I have to share it on the main page.

this guy intrigues me. first, he obviously has a hair dryer at work…but no towel? i would think most guys would have a towel before a hair dryer. of course, i’m a girl and i just blow dryed my hair for the first time in several years the other week (it’s long hair, too).

second, he was drying his body with the dryer? as opposed to his hair or shirt?? i think it’s safe to say that’s a little strange, even in the privacy of your own bathroom.

third, this post prompts me to share a related work bathroom etiquette complaint:

i work in a building with 2 women’s restrooms and maybe 6 women total. each bathroom is a single locking room (no multiple stalls, so one person at a time, technically). one of the women i work with is just coming off maternity leave and has to pump her breast milk every few hours. this takes up about half an hour of single bathroom time. i am completely on board and understanding of that.

the thing that bothers me is, another one of the women in my lab will come in, go into the only other bathroom (while the first is unavailable), and put on make up and do her hair…with a curling iron! this seems a little less pertinent to me than pumping breast milk, especially when i have to use the bathroom for more legitimate reasons. and to add insult to injury, this woman generally doesn’t look any different after all of her primping.

as a result of this whole scenario, i can say i’ve: a. been inconvenienced on more than one occasion, and b. been inside (and used) the men’s room at my work.

Does this cross the line?

I work in a nine-story building, made up of primarily government and military contractors.  As one would expect, there is a men’s room (And a women’s room, though I’ve never been inside) on my floor.  There is currently a man in the men’s room, shirtless, drying himself with a hair dryer.  Let me say again that he is completely shirt-free. I believe this is inappropriate in a semi-public restroom.  There are probably eight offices on my floor, so he probably won’t know most of the people who might come in to the men’s room.  Although knowing them might make it worse.

Anyway, am I being ridiculous?  Is this just an unlucky guy who got rained on while coming to work, and he’s trying to make the best of it?

Children are being exploited, lets punish them

Time.com – Time to Close the Book on Washington Pages?

Some are calling for an end to the page program after Mark Foley’s illegal-no-matter-what-the-FBI-says activities.  This is a truly wonderful idea.  Really great.  They haven’t been punished enough already.  We should also take away this wonderful opportunity for young people to learn about politics just because one jackass can’t control his sexual urges.  Surely Foley’s actions must mean that all pages are being molested by all senators and congressmen, right?

Voters in Maryland – Protest the voting machines

Techdirt: Diebold’s Solution To E-Voting Problems: Beg Poll Workers Not To Touch Touchscreens

The state ran a daylong test, and found plenty of problems still to overcome — including the same problems with the e-poll books that caused all sorts of delays during the election.

For any of you living in Maryland, do not use a Diebold machine to vote this November.  Demand something else.  I don’t know what legal rights you may have, but there must be some alternative voting method for people who can’t use the touchscreen (The blind, for example).  Call your congressperson, your senator, your mayor, governor, whatever you have to do.  Voting is way too important to be left to a company like Diebold that refuses to provide a working product.

OPEC cutting oil production

OPEC to cut 1M bpd oil supply, says OPEC delegate – Oct. 5, 2006

Wow, what a shock.  OPEC is acting to protect their interests.  I haven’t seen a backlash against this yet (And maybe I’m just not paying attention), but the first time I hear someone complain about gas prices because of this, I’m going to smack them.  Let’s see . . . many of these countries get a huge amount of their revenue from the sale of oil.  Oil prices are dropping.  Basic economics says to cut back on the supply to keep the prices up.

It’s nothing personal against the United States.  Well, maybe it is to some extent, but not really.  It’s just business.

Anyway, I want to see gas prices hit $10 a gallon.  Maybe $20.  How long before we’re all driving cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells, or biodiesel hybrids, when it costs $900 to fill up your Escalade?  For the record, I drive a Mazda 3.  I get between 23 and 32 miles per gallon, depending on traffic and amount of highway driving.

Time again for the flu shot controversy

I was listening to NPR this morning, and they were talking about the difficulty we’ve had in distributing flu shots.  The CDC says that 75% of the country should have a flu shot.  Surveys say that 50% are planning to.  But how about the vaccines?  The NPR story didn’t give all the details, but they did say that doctors give out 70% of the vaccines.  But often big companies like WalMart get more of the vaccines.  NPR didn’t come out and say it, but I suspect this is because the drug companies make more money when they sell to big pharmacies.  I doubt that WalMart pays more than the doctors do, but Walmart is also in the position to buy millions of dollars worth, and pledge to buy millions more of other drugs on the condition that they get the flu vaccines.

Anyway, my point here is that these drug companies are, in effect, deciding who gets a flu vaccine.  Never mind that we should have enough for every human being in the country, if not the planet, just because it’s the right thing to do.  Let’s pretend for a minute that there’s a legitimate reason we can’t produce enough that doesn’t involve profitability.  Who, then, should decide where those vaccines should go?  And now we’re back into the argument over health care.  Can we assign responsibility to the government to ensure that the country is as healthy as possible?  Does every American deserve health care?  The answers are “I hope so” and “yes”.

When it comes to health, no one should ever be denied because it’s not profitable.  I don’t know how to overcome the problems with “free” health care.  I don’t know how to minimize abuse of the system.  But we have to figure it out.