Tag: technology

One point, for SkyNet

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite my paranoia that SkyNet will eventually take over the planet, I have to admit that SkyNet has its merits from time to time, in the present.  In recent travels, the hour change of daylight savings, combined with a slight hangover resulted in me missing a flight outright, to get back to Atlanta, from Charlotte.  No problem, all I had to do was speak to someone, and re-list for the next flight out, bing, bang, boom.

I get to the airport, and since everything is pretty much kiosk-based these days, I have to go to the “special services” desk, since re-listing and outside of conventional circumstances still require human assistance.  There’s an elderly couple being helped ahead of me, so I’m feeling good that I’m not in the 24-persons deep line for the luggage-checking kiosks.  After the first five minutes, with absolutely no progress, I begin to ponder what could possibly be the delay.  I glance up at the couple, and the body language being exhibited by the female is not positive; she is looking off, and shaking her head in agitation.  Hubby appears to be holding an envelope from another airline; I’m guessing that there’s a co-op/affiliate flight swap going on – in other words, not an easy task, and necessitating various checks, steps outside of protocol, and likely authorizations.  The sole employee handling this task looks absolutely none too pleased herself, and it’s written all over her body language.  Sour expression, slight sneer, lethargic body movements, hating the world.

At this point, I realize that I had a choice to make – stay and wait for Grumpquisha De’Grumperton to do her job in a timely manner, and hope for friendly customer service when it’s finally my turn, or remove people out of the equation entirely, get on my phone, and front the cost for a one-way ticket, and then deal with the refund process of my missed flight, from the convenience of my own home, at a later time, but, get a confirmation right then and there, and allow me to get my boarding pass from one of the carry-on only kiosks instead.

Needless to say, I stayed in line, and proceeded to purchase my one-way ticket, hoping that the couple in front of me would finish up before I did.  But when it didn’t, as soon as the confirmation code generated on my phone, I ditched the line, and went to the kiosks, got my boarding pass, and was on my merry way.  Removing humans from the equation altogether made life expediently better, rather than dealing with a disgruntled employee.

Random thoughts

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

~Wordpress app does not appear to have bulleted list option.
~The place I’m working at now, where I park my car is directly across the street from the Cheetah, which is like the “classiest” (read: best) strip club in the city of Atlanta.
~Some bathrooms, are just so suitable to just play Angry Birds for good chunks of time.
~The work I’m doing is boring as fuck, but the pay is great. I’m not really complaining.
~There are a noticeable amount of Koreans around here, from the deli I went to yesterday and an actual Korean colleague in my remote department. It’s kind of an alien feeling to me, to be perfectly honest.
~I’m also the youngest person in this office, I’m pretty sure. I haven’t been the youngest designer in any place for a few years, and I have to admit this too is also an odd feeling for me again. There simply aren’t really any cool people here, as nice as everyone else seems to be.

Well, ain’t that just peachy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As I mentioned, I recently just “upgraded” my primary machine to Windows 7, since my netbook is running it, I like it, and want to be running it on my PC.  I guess it’s supposedly a little safer to be running, since as it was so astutely pointed out to me, Windows XP has been around so long that there are fucking Shaolin Jedi Hacking Masters who have perfected the art of fucking up XP users with their clever trojans, viruses, malwares, and in my case, rootkits.  Anyway, the sheer volume of time consumed to backing all my shit up, auditing my entire system of needs, wants, and can go’s, and loading up the new operating system, the last thing I ever thought was going to give me any issues was integration of my monitor to the new OS.

It turns out that despite being less than five years old, my model of Samsung monitor is apparently no longer supported by Samsung itself.  They do not have any drivers available for this monitor beyond Windows XP.  So for the longest time, I was running my machine in a bastardized stretched to 16:9 version of 1298 x 1024, which was absolutely horrendous.  I’ve called Samsung and just recently sent them an informative e-mail describing my plight, but the bottom line is that neither is going to get any drivers magically whipped up for me in the next 24 hours.

My brother then pointed out that I probably had an incorrect VGA adapter, and lo and behold, it’s the generic old Standard Graphics VGA Driver; supposedly tracking down the original graphics adapters should alleviate the meat of the problem, and at least allow me to get back to the 1680 x 1050 I’ve grown so accustomed to running.  So I track down the old graphics drivers, download, and install them.  An error hits immediately, but hey, Windows 7 is all friendly and shit, and re-installs it “with recommended settings,” and bam, the drivers are installed.  Restart and reconfigure later, and now I’m allowed to use a 1600 x 1200 resolution.  Not quite correct, but it’s slightly better, I’m sure there’s just an issue with integration between VGA and monitor.

Long story short, Sony’s own website states that my machine just wasn’t made to run Windows 7 or Vista, and subsequently there are no drivers available for anything not running XP.  So now, even if I did go out and get a new monitor, it apparently wouldn’t have mattered, because there are no legitimate drivers out there that would support it, because I’m now running Windows 7.

I thought Windows 7 was supposed to be the seamless pinnacle of Windows operating systems.  Considering it loaded effortlessly onto my netbook, my much older laptop, as well as Jen’s laptop, I didn’t realize it was going to give me as much grief as if I were trying to be running fucking Ubuntu here.  Seriously, at this point, I’m pretty much at a complete loss.  I’d rather not have to start all over again, and go back to Windows XP, but I’m, as hard as it to believe for some nowadays, an artist too, and what I see on the screen is vitally important to my career and livelihood, and XP might be the only chance at salvation.  Man, I fucking hate computers.

I have been put into a foul mood today

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday, my computer was infected with the mother of all AIDS and took me many many hours to alleviate.  Regardless of its supposed cleared status right now, I am contemplating backing all my shit up and completely reloading this machine, this time to Windows 7.  Conclusively, this has laid down the ground work for what’s so far been a lousy weekend.

I have not yet received my copy of the Atlanta Braves annual that I contributed to despite being promised a copy once it hit news stands, which it has today.  Response has been positive from those not cheap enough to talk the talk and actually buy one, and those educated enough to actually want to purchase one.  Given the fact that I’m one of the authors of the book itself, I’m anticipating it greatly, and regardless of the fact that I am going to be getting a free copy … eventually, I’m very tempted to cash in a Borders coupon and going to buy one so I can just have one on my terms.

I have a headache that I can’t seem to shake, even two aspirins and caffeine in.  I’m also in the mindset that is in a state of perpetual agitation, since I haven’t worked in the last three days of the week, and I’m coming to the realization that no matter how hard I try to with my talent agency, without my ace in the hole, I can’t seem to get any gainful work out of them.  Subsequently, as a result of the negative state of mind, I happen to think the world is full of uneducated, ADD-minded simpletons who rather communicate in 140 characters or less about trivial shit, than enlighten and educate themselves on something with substance.

Traveling sounds like it would’ve been a good idea this weekend, but I don’t know where to travel to anymore these days.  I wish I knew more people in places that are easy-to-access Delta hub regions, where I could fly easily and fairly inexpensively to on a whim, because frankly, I just don’t really feel like being home right now, and the lack of working sort of puts the handcuffs on my spending habits to excess.

SkyNet really does exist

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

But it’s not like in Terminator, where they want to end all of humanity.  Instead, SkyNet is content to just make the lives of humankind as miserable and annoyance-filled as possible.  The thing is, nobody knows this, but they don’t really go by the name of “SkyNet.”  They go by “traffic lights,” and their goal in their artificial lives is to piss off humanity as much as they can.  They’re sadistic like that, and it really is much quite worse.  Killing humans at least puts them out of their misery; stopping them at each and every fucking intersection known to man is a much more aggravating and painstaking endeavor.

Suffice to say, nothing sours my mood faster than driving on a country-back road/parkway, that actually has lighted intersections.  Even more so, when the SkyNets at all of them are programmed to be as beneficial as possible to opposing traffic, and as misery-inducing and pain in the ass for major traffic.  I got stopped at eleven out of twelve SkyNets on my way home from running errands.  After a while, I began dreading seeing friendly SkyNets, because that just meant they were going to turn heel on me as I approached.  At least the evil SkyNets, I knew were already on their upswing of turning good again.  Hence, the motivation to vent my frustrations on the internets where nobody is bound to see them.

Seriously though, just having gotten nice, fresh-new tires, and got my brakes all smoothed out and working great again, nothing is more rage producing than having to be on roads that let you get to the vehicul’s top speed, only for you to approach an intersection coming at 55-65 mph, for the light to turn yellow at the precise distance where you know you won’t be able to beat it without triggering any cameras, or command the attention of any police that happen to be present, so you’re left with no alternative but to really work out your brakes and come to a stressful halt, while a single Chevy Lumina chugs through the intersection, with their drivers so oblivious to how much I want them to veer off into a ditch and die for being on the road at the precise moment of least convenience for my ever-so important life.

I know it’s such a trivial, inconsequential thing to get pissed off over, let alone gain the motivation and momentum to segue into a brog post, but that’s what make us humans, we have irrational pet peeves.  Fuck you SkyNet.  May John Connors from all time lines be your eternal downfall.

Never again.

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Will I purchase a used car from anywhere other than certified used. CarFaxes and pre-inspections be damned, far too much bullshit is still capable from indy dealers. The hypothesis with my piece of shit is that the rear axle was changed, likely from an undocumented accident, which explains why no original wheels seems to be able to fit on my piece of shit.

P.S. WordPress app sucks balls.