Dirkus Maximus

Dearest Stevie,

You should really look into this newfangled concept known as “strain releif” for the cables in your future products. It’s an idea where you put graduated thicknesses of material around a cable at the point where it enters a device or plug. It reduces the strain on the outer jacket and the conductors inside so that they don’t break and create problems, such as open circuits and short circuits. Go take a look at the cord on a vaccuum cleaner or something for inspiration. For an example of how this is not done right, LOOK AT ANY APPLE PRODUCT EVER MADE.

Seriously though, the cable with my iPhone should have lasted longer than a month before the cable started fraying. Strain releif on cables may not be pretty, but neither are broken, frayed, non-working or melted cables. Go google “apple MagSafe short strain releif” if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

You know what really grinds my gears? Stupid mobile IM software that leaves you “logged in” for some obscene amount of time after you’ve closed the program and put your device to sleep.

Here’s a tip, app developers; if people want to send me a message regardless of my online status, there’s already a facility for doing that called “e-mail.” It’s been around for a while now. You should look into it.

If someone sends me an “instant message”, it’s under the assumption that I’m online and will be able to answer them right then. They don’t want to have to guess wether or not I’m actually online like the app says, or if my account has been hijacked by some stupid zombie IM app.

Long rant made short: when I close an IM app, log me the hell out, don’t keep me online in zombie status for 30 minutes. Ass.

Wes’ Valentines day gift was never “picked up”, it just magically appeared at the FedEx facility in Sacramento 2 days after it was shipped. Now it’s been “in transit” in Reno NV for over 36 hours. Seriously, I don’t think they know where the package is, where it came from, and may not know where it’s going. Hopefully they’ll hire a supersonic jet to get it here by the estimated delivery time tomorrow. I’ve never had this much difficulty tracking a UPS package. This is the last time I ship with FedEx.

Update: They have failed me for the last time. The package has not arrived. I called their 800 number, and the automated system said that the package was still in transit to the FedEx facility in zip code “233200″ [sic]. Yeah, last I checked US zip codes were 5 digits, not 6. I think it speaks volumes of a shipping company when they can’t even get something like the number of digits in a ZIP code right. I’m not sure if I’ll ever receive my order.

Back in October and November of ‘08, the Srizbi and Rustock Spammer botnets were seriously wounded by a series of actions by administrators around the world. Most notably, the folks at Hurricane Electric. Hurricane provided Internet backbone connectivity to a shady server farm business called “McColo” who’s client base used their collocated servers as the command center for hundreds of thousands of PC’s infected with malicious software.  These zombie PC’s would “call home” at regular intervals, download templates and address lists, and then spew Spam onto the Internet in massive quantities. Hurricane was presented with some rather compelling evidence about it’s downstream client’s bad behavior, and subsequently pulled the plug on their part of their internet connectivity, in a coordinated move with the other telecommunications companies that were selling connections to Mc Colo. The decapitation of these botnets resulted in a roughly 40% drop in the amount of email spam worldwide. So, did anyone actually notice that drop? Did it change the rate of any other types of Spam?

Yeah. That's a significant drop.

How about “HELL YEAH.” At one point, my blog had to filter out 237 spam comments in one day, though the average was closer to 100. Lately, nine spams a day is a “bad day.” I can’t even begin to imagine the processing overhead that was freed up on the world’s mail and website servers the day those bots died.

So, what can John Q. Public do to prevent another outbreak of zombified, spam-spewing PC’s clogging up the Internet? It’s quite simple really, let me break this down into a four-point-plan for you after the link: (more…)

This grill/smoker/turkey fryer all-in-one combo was supposed to be my 5 year anniversary gift from Canon. I think UPS took one look at this package, and decided to run it over repeatedly with a small herd of elephants. The box was demolished, parts were dented, the paint was chipped off, there’s water and rust streaks, the lava rocks were crushed into a fine powder and were pouring out of the box and coating everything inside, most of the assembly hardware was missing, the handles were missing, and someone decided to toss in three random pieces of wood that aren’t even supposed to BE in the kit. I’m guessing someone else’s smoker/grill is in similar condition, and they’re missing some of the wood they were supposed to get. This is my ANGRY DIRK FACE: >:-( Click the thumbnails to see the images full size.