PeTA is an irritating group of people. To a small degree, some of what they argue for is actually accurate — modern Americans have little to no business running out into the wilderness with guns to “hunt” animals (because we are an advanced, industrialized nation capable of mass-producing healthy foods), being cruel to animals for the “fun” of it is just bad, and we probably should give a more collective rat’s ass than we do about how feed animals are treated during processing. Read the full story...

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There is a common sentiment among PayPal’s detractors: if you haven’t had any problems with the online payment processor yet, just wait awhile, and you will.

Count me among them. I’ve been an account holder since at least 2002 (probably earlier; I don’t recall anymore), and until the beginning of this year, I never once had a problem with the service. Then things turned sour really fast. Read the full story...

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Because of a stupid hoax sent via e-mail over the past few days, idiots all over Florida are clogging lines at the gas pumps fearing a gas shortage. Gas stations all around Tallahassee are out of gas. They created their own outage.

Thanks, morons. I spent half an hour driving around this town to find a station with some fuel in it. I love how the smart ones that don’t fall for this stupid shit (i.e. me) are the ones who get nailed by it anyway. It’s a hoax, until enough of the dolts out there fall for it that they actually do run on all the gas stations and create a shortage.

Bleh. Morons. Oh yeah — you idiots spiked the local gas price average by a good $0.50 per gallon with this stunt, too. Thanks for that, too. Read the full story...

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Once upon a time, humanity’s prevailing belief about the Earth’s geography was that the entire world was flat, and that sailing a ship beyond the borders of the known world meant “falling off” the world, encountering dragons, and an assortment of other painful, invariably lethal oddities.

We know the world is round now, because a few people started using reason instead of fear in their explorations of the world. The first people to suggest the world is round were imprisoned and tortured to try to force them to recant. Naturally it was religious groups that did this — terrified that their “perfect” world view was going to be shattered (and that some dumbass idea from their precious bible was about to be proven wrong), they tried to suppress curiosity, exploration, and scientific endeavor. Read the full story...

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Well, I won’t make that mistake again. Last year I used Skype’s $30-per-year unlimited outbound calling feature (to call regular phones), and didn’t have any problems with it. This year I added a “SkypeIn” number so people could call me. Since I actually tried to start using it, I began to notice some weird problems, including local callers being told they had to dial +1-[areacode]-[my number] instead of just [my number], and other callers automatically getting voicemail even though the client and account are configured to permit all calls.

I sent a support request to Skype on August 10, 2008. Today, September 1, 2008, I finally got a response (and it didn’t help, either — it amounted to “we don’t control any of that” for the long distance thing and “change your settings to something else then change them back” for the voicemail thing — it didn’t help ).

I’ll stick with my new VoIP system, methinks, and let that Skype service lapse instead of renewing. 22 days to respond to a five-minute inquiry is a pretty bad sign. I guess they’re just eager to make sure nobody thinks they’re trying to be a phone company. Even pre-breakup AT&T’s support infrastructure never sucked so bad

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I’m undoubtedly tempting the fates by complaining about the very service that’s hosting this site (heh — especially if any tech or other employee reads this, I’m boned), but it needs to be said anyway. Read the full story...

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Well dammit, I guess my laptop felt left out of the Dead Hardware Parade. I’m posting this via that very laptop, tethered to my cellular phone for internet access, as its built-in wireless card has given up the ghost. According to Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, this laptop apparently has a bit of a “design issue” whereby it damn near melts itself down. The bulletin I linked there offers up a BIOS update that makes the system fan far more aggressive, but apparently it was too little, too late for this crazy little machine.

Wireless works occasionally, but mostly it’s dead. The Wi-Fi card doesn’t even show up in the device list in Vista, and in Linux, lspci -v doesn’t list it either. I actually had to go through the ritual of hard-resetting my cell phone to make its damned “wired tether” mode work again just to get this thing online at all. To their credit, HP are doubling the warranty period (just for this issue) and are sending a box along with a prepaid shipping label so I can send the monster back to them for repair. Given that they know about this specific issue and had trained the phone monkey in India (he had an obvious accent; sorry guys) how to deal with this directly, I suspect they’re just going to ship me a refurbished unit instead of mine back.

But we’ll see; it goes out the door to them Wednesday afternoon. This move coming up (to Tallahassee) is going to make the return shipment rather interesting

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Get ready for a new generation of ijits, courtesy of a redesigned, more efficient, and cheaper milk bottle. It is apparently superior in every respect, from its stackable design to its cheaper manufacturing costs. Apparently, though, some people can’t figure out how to pour milk from the new design.

How fucking stupid do you actually have to be to have trouble with this? Sure, if it’s different and pours differently, you might get hung up the first time. But how can it continue to be an inconvenience after that? What’s your excuse when you’re still spilling this stuff once you get to gallon #10?

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With my friend safely home from her trip to Atlanta, Georgia to participate in the 2008 International Science & Engineering Fair (congratulations to her for winning her seat there, btw! More on that in a subsequent post this weekend ), I am free to rant about the bat-shit insane idiots working for the Transportation Security Administration. Like the “You can’t take pictures here!” crowd demonstrating that sanity has left the security industry behind in public spaces, I am more convinced than ever before that the entire concept of the TSA is fundamentally broken, flawed, and unworkable.

My friend’s luggage, you see, was flagged by the TSA on her flight to Atlanta, and her luggage was detained, screened, and thoroughly searched. She made it to Atlanta. Her luggage didn’t meet her there. It went on to New York (the plane’s next stop) for a thorough examination, then came back to Atlanta where it was eventually delivered to her late that night. So while some unnamed yokels at the TSA in Atlanta and/or New York rummaged through her bags, flipped through her clothes and underwear and all her other possessions that came along on the trip, she spent her first day in Atlanta wearing stuff that didn’t fit her (donated to her by the airline, her friends, and by ISEF sponsors), worrying about whether she’d actually get her bag back (which contained a contact lens case, prescription medication, and other “important” stuff).

What caused them to flag it as “suspicious” you ask? A plastic carrying case designed for, and carrying, eight rechargeable AA batteries. They looked “suspicious” on an X-ray scan, and this was enough for some TSA dickwad to flag the luggage as suspicious, requiring additional screening. How did they accomplish this screening? They put it on the fucking airplane anyway to fly to Atlanta, then put it back in the air again to fly to New York to be examined. Then, having ruled it “safe,” they flew it back to Georgia. Read the full story...

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I’m officially sick of people lording artificial power just because they can. I’m tired of people who aren’t causing harm or even inconvenience being harassed for taking pictures of a public place. Lest a language lawyer pounce on me by pointing out “but, but, but Union Station isn’t a public place, it’s privately owned and operated!” I will explain that when I use the term “public place” in this rant, I refer to the concept of a place wherein random persons can freely enter, mill about, and exit unmolested under most circumstances. This includes places like bus stations, train stations, airport lobbies (the bits where you don’t have to go through security to reach), even 24-hour Wal-Marts. I refer to it as any place where you can walk in without paying an admission fee, goof around harmlessly for awhile, then leave. Read the full story...

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