Yay, me. I finally got around to fixing it so I can get the messages from my Charter account without getting piles of crappy spam. I’ve had the Charter address for eight years, and although I’d never give it out on any web site or to anyone I don’t know all that well, the combination of clueless people forwarding messages to god-knows-who without stripping addresses, clueless people emailing every Yahoo! and Hotmail address in their goddamned address books by using “To” for the whole works instead of “To” themselves and “Bcc” for everyone else, those idiots with a very similar address giving mine out to their equally idiotic friends and using it to sign up for what might possibly be every promotion available on the Internet, and the fact that Charter farmed out their spam filtering to whatever company was cheapest means I do get a fair amount of spam. Charter still claims that messages are filtered, but IMHO, if anything with a link and the word “Viagra” gets through in any form–even leetspeak spelling–then…well, your spam filters are not doing their fucking job.

I use my Gmail much more than my Charter, but P. still uses my Charter address because that’s what he’s got for me in his address books at home and at work, and my family uses that address for me, too. I wanted Charter on my phone mostly for P., because he doesn’t have IM at work (I think their sysadmin disabled it), can’t figure out why it’s not working on his phone at the moment, and “the powers that be” don’t allow texting on employee accounts. That leaves him to email me for anything that’s not time-critical enough for a call. I did finally figure out why the Charter account wasn’t working on my phone, but it wasn’t more than a day after I did that I turned it off…couldn’t stand the spam. I have sounds enabled, and data pushes to my phone every 15 minutes if I’m home or not far away, and every hour or half hour if I’m away (depending on how long I need the battery to last). My phone is never far from me, and when I hear the new mail sound (and the vibration, if it’s on silent), I usually pick it right up, or at least within a few minutes. I don’t need want to hear the new mail sound every time data gets pushed, then pick up the phone to see it’s only an offer to check my credit score or enlarge a body part that I don’t even have. There is no spam filter for the iPhone (why, I don’t know), and Charter just declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, so I’m pretty sure that customer service is even lower than usual on their list of priorities (not that it was ever high, mind you, but their “Don’t worry–everything will be fine. We’re bankrupt, but not going out of business and we still care about our customers!” advertising is pretty funny), so calling to complain about their crappy filtering would just be a waste of time and an exercise in frustration as I attempted to force The Gauntlet (my name for their automated menu system, since getting through it is like “running the gauntlet”) to give me an actual, live human…who would then note my complaint and…nothing. Enter Gmail.

Whatever people have to say about it, I like Google. They’re a business, and they’re in business to make money, but they manage to do it in such a manner that they don’t annoy me too much with advertising, they aren’t too invasive and offer options to turn off stuff like web history in email, and they provide useful services for free. I think I’ve had Gmail since you still needed an invitation, and I like it. I’m not in love with the web interface because if I’m on my laptop, I always manage to hit some weird key combination (touch-typing on a smaller keyboard) that sends the cursor where I didn’t want it to go, but I can use it with Thunderbird, and I can have it on my phone. Best of all, Gmail has some of the best goddamned spam filters I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. I set up Gmail on my phone the day I got it, and have never had one bit of spam in my Inbox. Today, I used Gmail to keep Charter spam off my iPhone. I don’t care about Thunderbird because I’ve trained the filters so well over the years that anything even remotely resembling spam gets automatically marked read and dumped in the Trash (emptied on exit) unless it’s from someone on my whitelist, but I had to use “creative filtering” for the phone. I created a Gmail address with an odd, nonsense name (reducing overall spam because it’s not “guessable” to spammers who blast a domain with dictionary attacks) then went to Charter’s web mail options and told it to forward all of my messages to the Gmail address, but leave copies on the server. The phone is configured to pick up messages from that account instead of Charter’s POP server, and they remain on the server as well. That way, I can get the messages on my phone, after they’ve gone through Google’s powerful spam filters, and then when I get messages with Thunderbird, they’re downloaded (deleting from the server, since Charter’s mailbox space is laughable even by 90s standards), and filtered through my own (draconian) spam rules. Perfect solution. P. can still email and ask me for the text of a reminder note that he forgot on his desk that morning, and I’ll get the message right away, but I won’t be annoyed with spam. Now I ♥ my iPhone all over again. 🙂

I finally got up the nerve to change some of the default iPhone and installed app icons that I didn’t like. I’d seen themes and knew I could change those, but there was always something about a theme that I didn’t like, and since it was usually some of the icons, it made just as much sense to change the defaults (and get to use my own wallpaper, regardless of whether a theme had included wallpaper or not), so that’s what I did. I was reluctant at first because when I ssh’ed into the phone and copied the default icons, they were PNG by file extension, but not “ordinary” PNG because I couldn’t open them, so it was obvious that Apple had added a little extra “love” to them, and I wasn’t sure whether the app might complain if the fie size was wrong, or the “Apple love” was missing. I tested the YouTube icon first (don’t care much about that) and it was fine, so I did the rest. For now, I decided to leave the iPod icon alone (it wouldn’t change, presumably because it lives on the dock), but if it bothers me, I’ll change it, too. This is only my first page, but I replaced the ones I didn’t like on all pages. Yay for a non-ugly Contacts icon, a non-boring Phone icon, and a non-lame Darkroom icon! I love messing with stuff like this! 🙂

I have a Facebook account. I don’t use it, and indeed, it was created in a moment of semi-drunken weakness, years after L. told me I should have a Facebook. I’d known about Facebook since it was available only to students, but never saw the need to create an account. One night when I was half-drunk and couldn’t sleep, I got curious, and created one. I used my real name and a valid email, and the correct country of residence but no photos, and the rest of the information was either left blank or deliberately incorrect. In the light of morning, I remembered creating it, knew I didn’t really want it and would never use it, so I deactivated it. That’s one reason I’d never created an account in the first place; there’s no option to delete, only to deactivate…or so I’d thought until this morning. I don’t know whether it’s a result of their having come under fire over privacy concerns and making user information available to advertisers, or whether the option has always existed but was “hidden” enough that users would have difficulty finding it, but there is a way to permanently delete a Facebook account. Yay! There was nothing in mine that really mattered, and I never logged in after creating it (until I logged in a few minutes ago to delete it), but it kind of bothered me that it existed. In the event that I ever again become intoxicated enough to think I need a Facebook account and think better of it in the morning:

http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account

It takes up to two weeks, but everything is deleted and the account is gone. I don’t have Twitter, either. I don’t think I’ve ever been that drunk. I can sort of understand Facebook, and even (shudder) MySpace for people who need more tasteless glitter graphics than Facebook provides, but Twitter is entirely beyond my comprehension. I suppose my mother would care what I had for breakfast, and maybe someone cares that I forgot to reset the password on that laptop yesterday, but most stuff…nobody cares, and that’s true of everyone, not just because I’m particularly boring. I guess, though, that we’ve evolved into such a “me me me” society that people really do want their own personal “internet channel” because they think other people actually give a rat’s arse.

All wireless companies arse-rape their customers, but only in North America do they do it without even giving us a drop of Astroglide.

When P. set my phone plan up for me, he knew exactly how I’d use an iPhone. He put limited minutes, unlimited data, and and a reasonable SMS plan on, knowing that I’d rarely call with it, but would absolutely use its Internet capabilities whether I was within Wifi range or not, and that I’d want to text a few family members and friends without having to keep a running tab of the cost in my head.  In fact, the second thing I did with the phone after poking about to see what was what, and answering one call from him (he called me from the kitchen) was…send SMS to people in Canada and in Sweden because I was excited about having an iPhone. I think I had a 250 texts per month plan, which, considering I use IM and email a lot as well, should have been adequate, and he said that if I found it wasn’t enough, we’d upgrade to whatever I actually needed.

After I finally set up the online account a few weeks later, I logged in to poke around. I looked at my minutes usage and thought, “Yeah, an ordinary mobile wouldn’t have been much use to me,” because I’d used less than fifteen minutes of my “anytime minutes”. Meh…at least you get to keep rollover minutes for 12 months. I checked data usage, and although I have unlimited, I probably don’t need it; I think he got it because it was included in the most appropriate of AT&T’s iPhone plans. Still, nice to not worry about every advert or image downloading on a web page. Then, I looked at my SMS. I had a little green bar showing (some number) used of 250. Okay, fine. Below that, though, there was a red bar showing (some number) of pay-per-use texts. I thought, “Hang on…I’m not texing for stupid ringtone stuff, or voting for my favourite American Idol contestant, or receiving any ‘text dirty to me’ services, so WTF are ‘pay-per-use’ texts doing on my account?” I called AT&T, navigated through their automated menu (which, to be fair, isn’t bad at all, unlike fucking Charter’s), and got a human being. I asked what was going on, and she told me that the text plan I had covered only texting within the US, and that outside the US, I was being billed $0.25 per message. I didn’t get pissed off at her because it wasn’t her fault, but I’d looked on their web site the day after Christmas and found absolutely no reference to the fact that it was US-only. I read pretty much everything I could find there that referred to SMS plans, and didn’t see that there even existed an “international plan”. I told the rep that a domestic plan was of absolutely no use to me because there’s no one in the US to whom I’d send more than half a dozen texts, and even then, only very seldom, so it would make more sense to pay per message for that. No point in paying even $5.00/month for what might amount to $1.00 worth of messages, or perhaps none at all. I told her to take off the domestic texting and give me international; 100 messages per month for $9.99. Still too expensive (texting costs the company nearly nothing), but better than $25.00 per month for 100 per-use international messages.

I asked her twice whether that meant if I sent a message or received one, it would just apply to my limit, and I would not be charged extra unless I went over the 100 messages. She assured me that was the case, and although I did think they were gouging bastards, that’s because I think they’re all gouging bastards; I believe Canada is the only other country in the civilised world that makes you pay for receiving messages (which is something out of your control, and yes, if it’s spam, you still pay), and they do that because the US gets away with it, so customers don’t know any better. I thanked her for her help and thought I was good to go. I text people in Canada and in Sweden, and nowhere else, and 100 should have been at least “enough”, if not exactly freedom to text any time I wanted.

The next time I logged into my account, I noticed that there were 5 SMS on the red pay-per-use bar. I thought, “Oh, those must be ‘leftovers’ from the time before I switched to the international plan.” I didn’t worry about it; thinking we’d just suck it up, pay for the ones I’d used when I had only a domestic plan, and be done with it. Then, the day my voice mail started to get “jealous” and would let me have only about 1/3 of my incoming calls–the rest went to voice mail on the first ring and I’d never hear a thing–I logged in to get the customer service number. Just to make sure, I looked at my data usage. Goddamn…now I have more pay-per-use messages! When I talked to the rep about my voice mail, I asked her about the text message. I told her what had happened, and she asked me whether I’d texted anyone anywhere in the US (I hadn’t). She went to check, then came back and told me those were just more “leftovers” from the pre-international plan days. That didn’t sound quite right to me–I switched to international in January–but I figured an AT&T rep would know more about their billing cycles than I would, so I let it go. Still, I was a bit suspicious, so I logged in the next day. This time, I saw 16 messages, and although I wasn’t sure, I thought I’d had only 14 the day before. Hmmm…

I sent a couple of texts to B. last night. I’m sure he was greatly amused, since they were half in drunken (bad) Swedish and half in English, but they very definitely were sent to a number in Sweden. I logged into my account this morning to check; lo and behold, I now had 18 pay-per-use messages. I thought, “What the fuck are they doing?!? What part of ‘Sweden is not in the US’ did these dumbasses miss?” I thought it must be some kind of mistake, so I called customer support and told my story to the lovely young lady. She asked whether I’d hold for her to check, and I thought it was probably just some little mistake and we’d have it all cleared up in a few minutes. Not quite. She returned to tell me that the international plan applied only to outgoing messages–those I’d send outside the US–but messages sent to me were considered “domestic”, regardless of their country of origin. At that point, I got pissed. I know that wireless companies are professionals at finding ways to milk additional nickels and dimes out of their customers over and above their advertised rates, and that’s why I’d asked twice about the texting plan. Twice, she told me it worked just like the domestic plan–incoming and outgoing both get deducted from the total message count–but that was apparently not the case. I usually don’t get upset with front-line reps because they’re just drones, but I did lose it a little. I said, “So you are telling me that every time my brother feels like saying, “Hey, whatcha doin’?”, you are billing me one quarter of a dollar? She said that was so, and I replied, “Well, what possible use could your international plan be to anyone, then? Who the hell sends SMS and never receives any?!” I’m sure she was thinking I’d lost my mind, but she calmly said, “I would recommend you put a $5 domestic plan on your account. That way, incoming messages would be covered by that.” I said, “Oh, you would recommend that, would you? Why, exactly, are you the only one there who seems to know I needed to do that? I’ve talked to two of your reps, asking very specifically how the international SMS plan works, and although both of them put me on hold to check, they still didn’t know. Are you hiding that information–is it classified or something?” I know it wasn’t right to go off on her over a few dollars’ worth of SMS, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I’d been billed for something after asking twice to make sure I understood exactly what I was getting for my $9.99 a month.

I was pretty pissed, and since P. was within earshot, I told him what the rep had just told me. I said I wasn’t sure whether I should just pay the extra $5 a month for a 250 message domestic plan, or whether I should just say to hell with the works and cut everything down to the lowest possible number of minutes and no data or SMS plans at all. P said to just get the domestic plan, but as he was saying that, the rep said, “Okay…since you were misinformed, I’ll put a $15 credit on your account, and that will cover the messages you were charged for.” (Grammatically incorrect, but that’s what she said.) I thanked her, and although I’m still resentful about having to pay for incoming messages, since I have so little control about who texts me, I told her to go ahead and put on a domestic plan to cover the messages I’m sending…to Canada and Sweden…or the ones coming to me from Canada and Sweden. I still don’t know for sure which isn’t covered by the plan. I’d imagine I pissed her off because it was such a small amount of money to complain about, but I don’t care; they pissed me off by creating an utterly useless SMS plan and not educating the very people to whom customer inquiries are directed. Besides, any few cents I can get out of the fuckers who price-fix, gouge us for barely adequate service and nickel-and-dime us for shit that should be free with the account…well, so much the better for me. I’ll put the $15 toward my next bottle of Absolut and keep those drunk-texts going! 😛

For the love of $deity, people–read, or I’m going to start billing you for the inhalers I need when your ridiculous mistakes cause a laughing fit that gives me trouble breathing.

You might want to stop for a moment and think about, or perhaps do some research into, how diseases have ravished human populations for years.

Jesus…that’s quite a mental image! 😆 My mind made “diseases” look like the Ring-wraiths from LOTR, mounted on black horses, cackling evilly; shrieking victims draped across silver-trimmed saddles. You’re an idiot. I laughed and I laughed, then I gasped and laughed some more. In fairness, I know that “ravished” and “ravaged” sound similar, but if you’d ever taken the trouble to pick up something with more letters in it than a comic  book, you’d know that they’re two very different words. It’s abundantly clear that you think they’re the same one…much to my amusement.

Ravish means to rape or violate, or to take by force and carry away, but even for the second meaning, it’s usually the womenfolk who are being carried away, whether by pirates or soldiers, or…well, someone who’s got designs upon their feminine nether regions. It’s a word often found in the “bodice-ripper” romance novels, but not in a medical journal.

Ravage means to destroy or devastate, and one of its most common uses is to describe the effects of a disease. The Black Plague ravaged the population of Europe in the 14th century. His body was ravaged by advanced-stage stomach cancer. It can also mean to pillage; as an invading army might do to a city.

Diseases never ravish, and although soldiers or pirates might, they wouldn’t ravish the population, only the women (my hypothetical soldiers and pirates are all heterosexual).

I was a little concerned when I realised at 1815h that P. still hadn’t called to tell me he was on his way home. He always does that because we play a game with the cat. The cat loves daddy, so P. calls to tell me he’s on his way, then calls again just as he’s pulling into the alley beside the house (less than one minute to his parking spot), except I don’t answer the second call because it’s only a signal. I taught the cat that when I say, “It’s daddy time!” he should be excited because his beloved daddy will be home almost immediately. When I say that, the cat comes running from wherever he was (assuming he wasn’t on the floor next to my chair, annoying me with persistent and pathetic pleas for attention), then jumps up and into his window-mounted “cat veranda” to watch for the car. When P. gets out of the car, he comes to the window and gives the cat scritchies through the bars. Cat is happy and thinks I’ve somehow magically produced his favourite human on the planet. Yeah, it’s kind of a dumb thing to do, but P. likes it and the cat thinks it’s fun (must, or he wouldn’t do it), plus it’s kind of cool to teach commands to a cat; a creature notorious for being uninterested in obedience. Even I get a kick out of the cat’s reaction to, “Look–window!” because that’s what I taught him to mean, “I have opened this window, so you have a new place to park your hairy, lazy arse and watch what’s going on outside.” Anyway, that’s why the calls from P. every day. Well, that and we’re married, and we sort of like each other most of the time, plus he has a fair distance to drive to get home. Although I trust his driving, I also happen to know the Interstate is full of the people to whom the state gave driver’s licences by virtue of the fact that they were still breathing, could see to at least peer through the steering wheel, and could manage to put an automatic into a forward gear for the road test (don’t laugh–I personally witnessed someone taking a driving test who did not remember she had to put a standard in gear to go forward. The examiner went back in the building to “give you some time to think”). Unfortunately, those would often be the people operating two-ton SUVs at 75 mph with one hand on a cell phone and the other changing CDs, steering with one knee.

I tried to call P.’s mobile, but it got sent straight to his voice mail. I left an annoyed message (fuckin’ voice mail), but decided to keep trying. My beloved iPhone doesn’t fit nicely between my ear and shoulder, and since I was ironing, I needed both hands (couldn’t be arsed to get a headset), so I switched to the landline phone to call again. It kept going to voice mail, and then I happened to glance over at the modem, which sits on the side of my desk. Power light was on, but the rest weren’t, and the “Receive” light was flashing. Fuck. Internet’s down. Fabulous. I put the house phone down to go unplug the modem for a reset, then came back in and tried again to call P. No dial tone. Great–the phone is down, too. I tried again from my mobile, and managed to get him this time. He was at the store, and had tried to call several times, but kept getting my voice mail. Another issue entirely, but I regret setting up voice mail because it seems to be jealous and wants me all to itself, so it is letting about 1/3 of my calls through, whether they come from mobile or landline, in the US or in Canada. Anyway, the cable and phone are down, so I go out to check the TV. Nothing on any channel. Crap…that means something bad must have happened because if there’s one thing at which Charter is very, very good, it’s keeping the masses happy with their sports and shitty reality shows. We’ve had them for eight years now, and if the cable TV’s been down more than a few times (once was because a tornado hit this town), I’m not aware of it. Internet goes down often, but TV and phone…no. I knew why–tornado season doesn’t “officially” start until March, but we did have some bad electrical storms in the area–but knowing why doesn’t restore connectivity.

When P. got home (he brought me a Wendy’s “homestyle chicken” salad, which is awesome-filled awesome, covered with awesome…and bacon, or at least Bac-Os), I told him all Charter services were down. He said, “Everything? We’re like savages!” I told him that he might be, but I wasn’t because I have my iPhone. Heh. There’s no 3G coverage in this area, but Edge is better than nothing, and although it was painfully slow at first (some sites even timed out), after half an hour or so, it got better and became at least useable, if not exactly blazing fast. Yeah, I could’ve played my little PopCap time-waster games, or read a book, or ($deity forbid) actually talked to my husband, but you never want to do any of those things when there aren’t other options. I’m absolutely an Internet addict; it takes about an hour without service before I start to get irritable, and yes, that applies even if I’m watching TV because I take my laptop with me so I have something to do during the 10 minutes of commercials in every half hour of programming. Yes, I know I’m pathetic. No, I don’t care.

Everything was back up and running this morning (well, I’ll assume the TV is–didn’t check) but last night, I was very grateful for my little friend the iPhone. No, it didn’t have to be an iPhone to be internet-capable, but…meh, if you’re gonna do it, do it right. 😉

P.S. Yay for jeans that fit properly again, too, and good riddance, holiday fat arse. Why I do that to myself every year, I’ll never understand, and how much longer I’ll get away without having to actually diet or exercise to correct it, I don’t know, but it’s good to feel human again!

I feel sorry for the English language, since there is apparently no end to the ways that illiterate idiots are willing to assault it. The phrase is, “by accident,” you fools! “On accident” is something that little kids say when they’re trying to explain why the cupboard door is open and the kitchen floor is covered with Cocoa Puffs.

By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident. By accident.

Get it? Something that happened inadvertently isn’t sitting on an accident, looking smug; it happened “by way of an accident”, which is precisely what “by accident” means. God, people are mind-bogglingly stupid.

EDIT: Stupider than I first thought. This is the second time in less than two weeks that I have read a reference to Anna Swan as having been that incredibly tall woman from Scotland. Now, I know they’re probably too stupid to understand that “Nova Scotia” is Latin for “New Scotland”,  and isn’t actually Scotland, or in Scotland, or near Scotland, or even on the same goddamned continent as Scotland, but I learned in elementary school that Anna Swan was born near what is now Tatamagouche (we actually had to write an essay about her), and unless somebody moved it whilst I wasn’t looking, Tatamagouche is still in northwest Nova Scotia, Canada. There isn’t even the confusion of more than one place called Tatamagouche; if you Google it, you’ll come up with Nova Scotia and nowhere else. The name comes from a Mi’kmaq word that I don’t remember, but it means “where waters meet” or something like that. The Mi’kmaq are indigenous to northeastern North America; nowhere near Scotland. In fact, two of my cousins are married to Mi’kmaq (Mohawks are much more attractive, and we have better cheekbones…hee!) Anna Swan’s parents were Scottish immigrants–lots of those in “New Scotland” then–but she was herself Canadian-born, and married an American who was also a giant. Jesus, have you dumbasses never heard of Google or even Wiki-fucking-pedia? I can’t read any more today…de stupid, eet ees too mosh.

Really, really tall, and not from Scotland, though she did visit there once, I think, when she was on tour with the circus freak show. Not many job opportunities for women nearly eight feet tall back then.

I’d had a kernel update, but hadn’t enabled Sun’s Virtualbox repos, so VB didn’t automatically update with the kernel. I forgot about it until I tried to use it, and it said it needed to be updated. Dutifully, I followed the instructions and went to the download page, but for some reason, it would give me only the Hardy version, and I’m running Intrepid (upgraded from Hardy). I thought, “Meh, most Hardy stuff works,” and attempted to install it, but it failed partway through the install. I had neither the time nor the inclination to fuss with it then, so I just left it alone.

My old phone was at the IP …102, and that’s where ipod-convenience was looking for it in order to mount it, but the new one is at …103, so I couldn’t mount it. I could still use SSH, and I could still use sftp, but if I just wanted to quickly mount it to grab videos/photos off it, I couldn’t connect because the IP was incorrect. I configured ipod-convenience when I installed it, and couldn’t find anywhere that would allow me to change the IP to reflect that of the new phone. I thought, “Oh, that’s simple. I’ll just uninstall it and purge the config files, then reinstall it with the new IP. No problem–won’t take but a minute or two!”

Problem. The incomplete update to VB had confused dpkg, and I was getting a message, “dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run ‘dpkg –configure -a’ to correct the problem. Second problem. When I tried that, I’d get a message that the group “vboxusers” already existed as a system group, then dpkg would just sort of sit there and do nothing. I had the brilliant idea that if I could install the correct version (for Intrepid) with Gdebi, it might un-confuse dpkg, or at least give me an error that would give me a better idea of how to fix it, but it claimed to be unable to install it. Fuck. I was drinking a little too much last night to feel comfortable invoking the word “sudo” too often (heh), so I just set up ipod-convenience on my laptop and used that for the time being, and thought I’d try to fix it today. After a couple of tries that succeeded in doing nothing but rebooting my system and getting it “stuck” on something called “checking battery state” (it’s a desktop), forcing me to manually reset it (not good for the file system), I finally stopped and thought.

Okay…so it’s telling me to execute a command that I can’t execute because Virtualbox is fuXX0red. What I need to do, then, is remove VB. Not just the application, but all of the config files, too. Excise it like it’s a cancerous tumour. It’s not like I use it often anyway, but once I fix dpkg, I can install VB again if I want to. I know I’ll forget what I did to fix dpkg, so…

To list the broken packages:

dpkg -l | grep -v ^ii

There was one “virtualbox”, one “virtualbox-2.0” and one “virtualbox-2.1”. It was 2.1 that had been interrupted, so I probably could have got away with removing only that, but I said hell on it and nuked all three of them with:

dpkg –purge (name of application).

Once I finished that, I fired up Synaptic, and it all works fine now. I have the Intrepid package for Virtualbox, but the next time I get the brilliant idea that I need a VM environment (which will probably be soon), I’m installing VMWare. Not that I didn’t like VB–it was okay–but it annoyed me and interfered with what I wanted to do with my iPhone, so Sun can fuck off. 🙂

Shiny new, all updated to the latest firmware and newly freed from its prison! 🙂 I was even able to reuse the Gelaskin, though I did put on a new screen protector because those don’t take too well to re-application.

Blogged from my iPhone. Hehe.

…because it amuses me. Normally, I don’t pay too much attention to these things because for the most part, they’re kinda lame, but the expression on this guy’s face just fucking cracks me up. 😆

Oh yeah…I need to remember to ask L. about the Uillean pipes. 😛