Apr 14 2010

Low riding pants – time for something else?

Fashions come and go.  In the ’70s, the bell bottom pants and polyester saturday-night-fever suits were king.  Fortunately, that fad has passed.  I’m wondering when the ultra-baggy low-riding pants with underwear sticking out all around the top will go away.  Isn’t it time?  Isn’t it just plain laughable anyway?  I mean, this is popular with young adults who think the whole gangsta thing is wonderful (don’t get me started).  But really, if that is your chosen path, wouldn’t you want to streamline your wardrobe so that you can easily run from the cops, or fight rival gangs without tripping or having to use only one hand while the other holds up your pants?  Wouldn’t it be preferable to strike terror into your victims and opponents, or is the goal to have them disabled by laughing fits?

Skinheads wearing properly fitting jeans and t-shirts are much more intimidating.  Bikers with their custom-tailored leathers are functional, recognizable, and intimidating also.  Dorks with their underwear sticking out just aren’t, no matter how many contorted gang signs they do with their fingers, or how well-rehearsed their scowl is.

I think we could assist this absurd fashion trend into obscurity by laughing and pointing whenever a Dork is present.  If everybody did this, the peer pressure would be phenomenal.  But no, of course we couldn’t do that.  We’re all trying way to hard to be Politically Correct … sigh

Apr 10 2010

Microsoft: complete inability to predict time

It never ceases to amaze me.  In windows XP, it was a common joke that Microsoft couldn’t predict how long something might take.  You’d get “4 minutes, 17 minutes, no wait, 2 minutes, no… 2 days 14 hours, no 30 seconds…”  Their estimates were so wildly off that there was absolutely no point in paying attention to them, unless you wanted a chuckle.

In windows 7, I thought they had addressed this issue, but apparently not.  Today, I got this on my screen.  I’m copying two folders simultaneously to a USB external hard disk.  Look closely at the times:

Microsoft's complete inability to predict task duration

So from this, I am to believe that it’ll take an hour to copy 2GB of data, and 6 hours 30 minutes to copy 193G.  That doesn’t seem very consistent.  A few minutes prior, the top one was indicating 23 hours to do the copy, and the bottom one was about the same.  The top one actually took 11 minutes to complete.

Come ON, guys!  This isn’t rocket science.  It’s a very VERY simple thing to sample how long it’s taking  you to do a task, and knowing how much more you have to do, it’s TRIVIAL to calculate how much time that will take.  Sure, you can make it more clever by doing moving averages and so forth to allow for fluctuations in resource availability or WAN vagarities.  Still, it’s NOT difficult to be somewhat close even if you don’t try to refine estimates in this manner.  Other software manufacturers are able to surmount this seemingly impossible task, as their progress indicators actually seem to be reasonably accurate.

I think that at this point, given years of demonstrated inability to accomplish this absolutely overwhelming programming task, Microsoft should simply remove the time estimates from their products.  They are not useful to the customer, and they are embarrassing for Microsoft.  Isn’t anybody over there even slightly embarrassed?  If it were my company, this would get fixed, or heads would roll.  I know there are a lot of smart people at Microsoft – give the problem to one of them instead of the morons who have been working on it to date.

Apr 9 2010

Signing email with “best” – Best what? Best Fruitcake? Count me out!

People are either becoming more and more lazy, or are losing the ability to type.  What’s with ending emails with “Best, Tim”.  Best what?  Best wishes would be the obvious choice, but are those 7 characters (oh no, 8 including the space) so hard to type?  If you are that lazy, just leave off the entire thing – don’t bother with “best” and don’t put your name (after all, the recipient can look at the “from” address, can’t they?).  In fact, if sending an email is that difficult or bothersome for you, just don’t bother to send it to me at all.

I have actually seen people put this in a signature block in Outlook.  Yes, that means Outlook will automatically type it for you.  How’s that for the ultimate in lazy?  It’s automatic, and still it’s too much trouble.  Feebs!

Oh yea, and for those of you who think it’s “hip” … it’s not.

Take,
Tim

Apr 8 2010

Renaissance Faire starts this weekend

Renaissance Pleasure Faire starts this weekend in sunny California!  Hot tip: They have discounts on their website, with 2-for-one tickets for this Saturday’s opening-day fun.  Faire is in operation every weekend until May 23.  Be sure to bring sunscreen!

If you haven’t ever attended one of these events, you really should.  It’s a lot of fun, although frequently cheesy and campy, and you do have to endure the horrible British accents the actors try to do.

Apr 7 2010

Watches vs cellphones

Since most people carry cell phones these days, and these have a clock on them, the trusty wrist watch has become mostly unnecessary from a functional standpoint.  It is still preferred by some, and others regard it as a fashion accessory, but for the most part I see less people sporting wrist watches.

In looking at the content of SPAM emails, I notice that while the bulk of them are hawking some sex-related product, a high percentage of them are selling wrist watch replicas.  These are cheap knock-offs of brand name, expensive watches.  What perplexes me is that these folks are dumping a ton of effort and money into advertising into what I perceive as a dwindling market!

I did run across something rather spiffy which I would actually carry (I haven’t worn a wrist watch in many years), as is it is both functional and elegant.  This is a digital pocket watch called the Cobalt watch.  It has a touch-screen display, and appears to have an engraved silver-like case.  It doesn’t seem to be available on the market, but there does seem to be a lot of discussion about it, and the pictures, as you can see are gorgeous:

Apr 5 2010

HP Desktop Power button

Generally speaking, I”m a big HP booster.  I really like their servers, and have been using them in datacenters for years.  They usually have really good, well-designed products, and they are reliable.  Give me an HP over a Dell or whatever any day of the week.

Have you seen the new HP desktop computers though?  Here’s what they look like:

This is the Microtower 3000.  Looks nice, has decent specs, so what could be wrong with it?  Look closely at the picture.  Where is the power button?  Can’t find it?  Now that’s odd, isn’t it.  Usually the power button is front and center.  Where is it on this design marvel?  Why, it’s on TOP of the box, upper right in the picture, and as the bezel on top slants back, you can’t see it.

What’s wrong with that you ask?  Have you ever seen anybody put something (a book, a scanner, an external hard drive, etc) on top of a computer?  Of course, you see that all the time.  Well, with this clever design, you put something on top of the computer, or worse still have it sitting there for a while as you are working, and then you nudge it … <poof> the computer gets turned off in the middle of your work because you inadvertantly pushed the power button.

Now, this takes a special kind of brain damage to design a case like this, and have it go through testing, and approvals, and manufacturing.  I am astounded that nobody in the whole arduous process said “um, isn’t that a bad spot for the power button?”.  It’s probably the Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome.  Whatever the reason, I’m sorely disappointed in HP for this horrible blunder.

Apr 2 2010

Sex Sells

In the immortal words of Joe Jackson (singer/songwriter):

“God, if you’re up there, listen to my prayer.  In future man should have a different design.  Give him a switch so he can turn off his libido now, give him a tranquilizer built into his mind”

I always thought that was a great lyric, and it ties in so well with today’s musings.

It’s a common truism that “sex sells”, whether to men or women (though I tend to believe that it’s possibly more effective on men).  We see ads all the time with some scantily clad person cleverly juxtaposed with the product being sold.  Frequently, the person has absolutely nothing to do with the product.  Are we really that easily swayed by these advertising agencies?  One would hope not.  I actually find it irritating when this tact is so blatantly taken, and will click away, or turn the page, or whatever, intentionally not reading the ad copy.  Pttttthhhht! So THERE! :-p

Apr 1 2010

No post today!

April Fools!

Get it?  I did do a post, telling you I wasn’t going to?  It’s funny, right?  Oh okay, never mind.

Mar 31 2010

Mattress doubles in weight in 8 years?

There are a bunch of ads floating around trying to scare consumers into buying vacuum cleaners, mattress treatment products, and new mattresses.  The claim is that your mattress will double in weight in 8 or 10 years, presumably due to skin flakes, bedbugs, dust, and other debris.  Well, that not only sounds disgusting, but … yes! Inane!

Here’s a great article I ran across on it:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2545/does-a-mattress-double-its-weight-due-to-dust-mites-and-their-debris

Be sure to read all the way to the bottom – good advice for scientists there.  But, if you don’t feel like linking over there, the bottom line is: Not true.