US cable companies are nothing more than greedy bastards that gouge exhorbitant monthly rates from their subscribers, additionally nickel-and-dimeing them to death for what the corporation refers to as “extra services” but which are, in fact, services that should be included for free because they cost the company little or nothing. They would be included if service was not sub-par to begin with. Oh, well…at least the equipment and services are the latest in technology. What? It’s not still 1999?

Yes, my cable is down again–has been all morning– and yes, I did just call “tech support” which was, as expected, no help at all, but at least I know they’re aware that there’s a problem because I called. Whether they’ll fix it today, tomorrow or “some time in the unspecified future” remains to be seen.

Now, I guess I get to find out just how “unlimited” ATT’s unlimited data plan actually is. I won’t even get started on wireless providers; if they’re not worse than the cable companies, they’re just as bad, and if I took the time to write about them, I’d be here all day, and I really would go over the “unlimited” data.

I know, I know…if I don’t like the service, then just switch, right? Well, there are no better options available here. Start my own cable or wireless company, then, right? That’s the trouble with the free market, entrepreneurial spirit theory. There isn’t really a free market, and the huge corporations have you fucked before you even get out of the gate because they have money falling out their arses, politicians in their pockets and teams of lawyers on retainer. So just don’t use their service, right? Uh-huh. What the fuck do I look like–Rebekah the Amish butter-maker?

I thought this was in my favourites, but when I looked, I couldn’t find it (no surprise), so I had to search for it again. The Trailer Park Boys’ Bubbles (Mike Smith can’t see a goddamned thing through those glasses), Ed Robertson from Barenaked Ladies, and Rush…does it even get any more Canadian?

Yes! I found it again. I found this page a very, very long time ago, and though I thought I’d bookmarked it, I either had not, or simply couldn’t find it in the mess that constitutes many years’ worth of largely unsorted bookmarks. I couldn’t remember what it was called (and was too lazy to search), but I found it again today. This site is not pretty, but it’s functional, and it makes The Grammar Nazi practically squeal with delight! Thank you, Dr. Paul Brians, Professor of English (retired). 🙂

Common Errors in English

I do think it could use one more: sevent-teen. Oh my GOD, I hate that. If you’d like to sound as if you’d never in your life darkened the doorway of any educational institution, then by all means, pronounce “seventeen” the way people do here. There is one “t”. Just one! It’s a compound word made up of the words “seven” and “teen”, and that’s exactly how it’s pronounced. Seven-teen. I’m working on my tenth year, trying to get P. to stop saying, “sevent-teen” and have even got so frustrated that I actually used the word “illiterate”, but still, no joy. I’d even give him “ruff” (roof) and “wawrsh” (wash) without so much as a whimper if he’d just say “seventeen“.

Goddammit, there! This image has probably been posted on every forum on the entire internet, but nobody seemed to know its origin. It’s been posted as evidence of inbreeding in many US states (including, but not limited to West Virginia, Alabama and Georgia), it’s been posted as evidence of inbreeding in a polygamous FLDS community in southern Utah/northern Arizona, and it’s been posted just for the hell of it. I’d tried to find out whence it originally came, but no one seemed to know. Now, I do, and although it is evidence of inbreeding, it’s not in the US at all; it comes from a book called Platteland: Images From Rural South Africa by a photographer named Roger Ballen. He’s an American, but has lived in South Africa for many years, and I believe the photos in the book come from the Transvaal area. The word “platteland” literally means “flatlands”, but its actual meaning is something like “rural areas”. Apparently, these are the descendants of Dutch, German and French settlers who have fallen from status as the ruling class (because they are white) to lives of poverty, alcoholism and inbreeding. I can see why West Virginia gets the blame so often for this photo, but it was not taken there. These men are twins, called Dresie and Casie.

I was going to post only a thumbnail because anyone who’s been on the internet for more than fifteen minutes has probably already seen the photo, but when I went to Roger Ballen’s site, he’s using Flash (long-suffering sigh), and attempting to keep people from saving photos or even taking screencaps, so I “liberated” the largest version he has on the site. Meh…like I can’t get past Flash if I want something. 😉

Mr. Ballen, I do like your work and I’d buy that book, but it’s apparently out of print, and the prices on Amazon start at $775. You’re good, but not that good, so I’ll just liberate a digital copy and be glad I finally know who those men are. It was driving me batshit to not know the back-story, or even in which country the photo had been taken. West Virginia, you’re off the hook for these two, but you’re still…West Virginia. 🙂

EDIT: Yep, western Transvaal, 1993.

I finally bit the bullet and upgraded the desktop to Intrepid today. I was going to go to the course with P. but the sun wasn’t out by the time he was ready to leave, so I decided to stay here and tidy up a few things that the upgrade hadn’t got. Considering my system was a fair bit away from a standard install, the upgrade went better than expected. I thought it had broken X, but I’d just run into the .dmrc thing again, so it booted into ICE WM instead of my default Gnome. All I had to do was change the permissions on that file and it could save the session type. The only other problems I had were with my custom fstab (expected that), but that was simple to fix, and I had to tell Pulseaudio to do 5.1 sound. I thought that would be a pain in the arse because everyone seems to hate PA, but it wasn’t; I just had to edit the daemon’s config file to change a 2 to a 6. I think there’s a GUI way to do it, but gedit is fast, and I can type a number. I don’t think I’d have recommended that a n00b do an upgrade on a system configured like mine, but they don’t recommend upgrades for n00bs (only clean installs) unless all they’ve done is make a few minor changes, and anyway, I’m not a n00b. 🙂 All I have left to do is remove a few unused mount points, and check some custom shortcuts to make sure they’re pointing where they ought, but I’m currently having an attack of The Tireds, and mount points don’t run away if they’re not in use. They’ll still be there when I wake up, and so will the shortcuts.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. 😀

EDIT: Posted from my iPhone because I can, and also because I’m lazy. Energetic enough to sit up…desktop. Energetic enough to prop myself up in bed…laptop. Too lazy to do more than turn over on one side…iPhone. Hee!

Windows, O Windows! How do I despise thee? Let me count the ways…

Jesus H. tapdancing Christ on a cracker. ALL I wanted to do was finish scanning the last four or five photos, using the same goddamned scanner I’d just used to scan…oh, probably thirty-five photos. Did you “lose” that scanner, Windows? Why, yes…yes, you did. I can understand how you got confused and couldn’t recognise it; I’ve had it for only…oh, probably close to five years. You did even better than that, though, didn’t you, Windows? You sure did! You locked up the mouse and in trying to reset the resolution on one of my monitors (very unfamiliar to you, since I’ve had that for just one year!), when I didn’t tell you to rest anything, you locked up the whole system, forcing me to use the fucking power switch. Now, I can’t even access the fucking scans I did manage to do before you fucked everything up because you’re reporting the file system “in use” (though of course, it is not, because I’m actually able to use my computer), and Linux can’t mount a Windows partition that is in use. No, I’m not going to boot back into you; I’m too pissed off and I have work to do.

You know why I stopped using you as my regular OS, Windows? It’s because I have stuff to do and don’t have time to deal with your bullshit. In short, fuck you, I hate you, and YOU SUCK SWEATY DONKEY BALLS. I don’t use a scanner very often, so it’s not at the top of my list, but eventually, I’m going to replace this one, and if P. buys one for me as a present (as he did this one), I’m going to return it unless it’s a model well-supported under Linux (which this one is not, but it was a present, so…). I may like to have digital copies of old photos, but they’re not important enough to deal with the frustration of using a POS OS.

Since Christmas morning, unless I am actually, physically asleep, my iPhone is probably at least in my hand, if not actually in use. No, I don’t call anyone that often; I’m just playing with cool features. God, this fucking thing is seriously awesome!

At first, I played with settings to see what everything did, and, “Hmmm…what happens if I…” Then, I roamed the App Store, looking for useful or interesting things, and a few just for the hell of it (do I really need Pocket Sounds? No, but it’s fun to make cow and chicken noises at P.!) Bought Bejeweled because I like it and it’s something I can play even if I’m distracted because I’m half-watching for something. I took the phone out to the DG course on…uh…Friday, and bless L.’s ever-patient, iPhone guru heart, he chatted with me on MSN via Fring (which he’d told me about in the first place) so I could test the connection at various points in the woods. Not just so I’ll have something to do besides listen to my iPod if the guys get boring, but for practical purposes, too; it may be winter now, but eventually, it’ll be summer again, and there are lots of bees and wasps, and potentially even a few venomous creatures out there. Part of the purpose of a mobile phone is (ostensibly) for phone service, especially in emergencies, no matter where you are. I’d hate to be out in the middle of the woods, get bitten or stung, start to react badly and discover, “Oops, I have zero bars…better scream loud!” I covered much of the west side, where I most often am when I go bug-hunting, and the worst I got was two bars, which was down in a creek bed surrounded by big trees. Not bad; I guess ATT wasn’t lying when they said they were working on improving their reception in this area, which had historically been nothing short of pathetic. Perhaps there’s a little good in even the lying, gouging bastards that represent US wireless companies. 😉

Before my iPhone guru told me about it, I didn’t know what it meant to “jailbreak” an iPhone. I knew it was some sort of hack because I’d read that in some article a while ago, but at the time, I didn’t have one and didn’t expect to get one, so I didn’t pay too much attention. Once I realised it was a way to have non-Apple-approved apps installed and more control over settings, I was all for it. Anything that allows me to say a little, “F-you!” to a corporation well known for lock-in and “You’ll do it the way we say,” I’m all for it. After I’d ascertained that even if I didn’t like the result, I could just restore the phone to factory with iTunes, I decided to give it a shot. Got a copy of QuickPWN 2.2 (Why, why, why do people still use Rapidshare and Megaupload? No, I’m not paying to download a 16MB file, and the free download makes you wait 45 seconds for barely better than dial-up speed!), ran it and carefully followed the instructions. It took just a few minutes, and everything appeared to have gone exactly according to plan. Well, with one tiny detail…I thought it had somehow killed sound to my external speaker. After a bit of frustrated, “Oh FFS, what did I do wrong?!” I discovered that the JB hadn’t done anything evil, and I hadn’t done anything wrong except for not noticing I’d hit the “silent” switch on the side when I reached up to hold down the power button. Problem solved, but I did feel pretty stupid.

Jailbroken iPhone in hand, I went off to explore the new stuff I had available. I remembered the names of a couple of things L. had told me I might want, like WinterBoard, and Boss Prefs (YAY and goodbye to that goddamned Stocks icon!), a Hello Kitty SMS theme (okay, so he hadn’t suggested that, but he did show it to me once, just for fun, and you bet I remembered it) and I also found Cycorder, which is a free app that allows the iPhone to take video clips. There are others, but this seemed like the best; decent quality video and audio, no time limit for clip length, not trialware. L. also gave me his “must-have” app list last night (he’s been soooooo much help!) and on that list was OpenSSH. I already knew what it is because that’s what I use to communicate between my laptop and desktop (unless the desktop is booted to XP–I just use Samba for that), and I wasn’t really certain for what purposes I might find it useful, but it’s small, and if there are people willing to devote 24MB to a Jonas Brothers wallpaper pack, I can devote a few MB to something powerful and potentially very useful.

I installed OpenSSH and Mobile Terminal, changed the password, and then decided to try using Nautilus over SSH, to have a look at what lives on the iPhone, as I do between computers. It worked, but just for the hell of it, I decided to see whether someone had come up with anything better, like a two-way sync. A quick Google turned up instructions for two-way wireless sync that works with almost any music app, and also with the ordinary file browser, using SSH. Cool! I needed a package called ipod-convenience, but that was as simple as a line in the terminal, and whilst it was installing, it asked for the IP of the phone (when I forget, I had to delete known_hosts from my .ssh folder before I could connect because the iPhone “stole” the laptop’s IP) and a mount point that I was supposed to leave at the default /media/ipod, but couldn’t because that’s where my iPod mounts, and don’t want Rhythmbox to get “confused”. It didn’t care that I created a new mountpoint at /media/iphone, though, so I guess telling people to leave the default was just to make it easier for n00bs.

Once I had that installed, I did have to plug in the iPhone’s USB cord, but that’s only for setup; afterwards, I can do it wireless. Then, all I had to do was fire up a terminal and type iphone-mount. It was supposed to take a while, but since I’d already set up SSH, it didn’t need to generate any keys, and took me right to a password prompt. Just iphone-mount, enter the password I set for the iPhone, and I was all set. The iPhone shows up under Devices in Rhythmbox, and even under Places in Nautilus. Since I can do it in Rhythmbox, I don’t need to boot to XP to sync the iPod, and I don’t even need the USB cable. YAY! There’s a way to set it so that you don’t have to enter the password twice, but I’m too lazy to do that ATM, and maybe never will. 🙂

My pretty screen, without boring black background, with five icons in the dock, and including a cute little Terminal icon that makes me look like I know what the hell I’m doing, even if I don’t at least 60% of the time. 😀

Nautilus with iPhone showing up in Places so I don’t even have to browse to /media/iphone

Rhythmbox playing a track on the iPhone. Look ma–no wires!

Now that I have a terminal, I can probably even figure out how to break something; I’m really quite good at that. 😛

I managed to jailbreak my iPhone without fucking it up…yay, me! Now I have to figure out exactly what I just did, or more to the point, what it means. 😛

Oh yes, the iPhone roolz. Blogging from my iPhone. Why? Because I can! Muahahaha!!!

This is why I avoid mainstream news. If this is MSNBC’s idea of something important enough to poll, then I have absolutely nothing in common with their target audience. Angels? Angels? Come on…seriously? Kids outgrow the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny, and Santa…why do so many adults not outgrow the belief that invisible, mystical beings are roaming about the earth, doing shit for people? Oh, wait–it’s because a heavily edited version of stories written by ignorant Bronze Age desert tribesmen says it’s so.

I understand the whys of religion; why they still exist. Religions are a way to believe that our lives are “special” and serve a purpose greater than whatever we believe our purpose may be on earth. They’re a way to absolve ourselves of responsibility for our own actions because when we fuck up, we can say it’s because Eve ate the fruit and Invisible Sky Daddy got pissed, so we’re all sinners now. It’s a way to make sense out of bad things happening to good people (“It’s part of god’s plan, but we’re human, so we can’t understand”), and a way to feel like we have some control over what kind of things happen to us. If we please Invisible Sky Daddy and do what he told us to do, we’ll be rewarded; if not here on earth, then in heaven. It’s a way to hold onto the hope that things can get better when they’re very, very bad (there’s a reason that gospel was so popular with slaves in the south). It’s also a way to satisfy the need to “belong” to a group. If you think about it, there’s really not too much difference between two troops of monkeys and two different religions. Troop A will protect its territory and its members, and fight with Troop B for dominance. So will Christianity, and Judaism, and Islam, and…there’s really not that much difference. What I don’t understand is…why? Why does a human life have to serve a greater purpose than simply living ours the best way we can? I’m a biological accident (ask my parents…heh), and I’m one among something like 6.4 billion, but that doesn’t mean my life isn’t important, or that it doesn’t mean anything. In the grand scheme of things, it’s entirely insignificant, but to the people in my life, it is important, just as their lives are important to me. I have a moral compass and don’t need the fear of reprisal from some invisible being to make me behave. Nobody needs to tell me “Thou shalt not kill,” because I already know I don’t have the right to take someone else’s life, any more than someone else has the right to take mine. I figured out as a young child that stealing was wrong, and I wasn’t afraid of $deity’s wrath, either. I figured it out because when Kelly and Darrin took my toys and wouldn’t give them back, that sucked, so it wasn’t a great intellectual leap to decide that maybe it would suck for someone else if I took their stuff. Didn’t hurt that the time I was five or six and stuck a colouring book in the bag as we left the store, Dad found it when we got home and made sure I’d never do it again by packing me and said colouring book into the car, driving all the way back to the store and making me tell the manager that I’d taken it. That was far, far worse than any spanking he could have given me. A spanking…I’d have forgot that in time, but having to look up at the store manager and say, “I stole this”…that, I’ll remember my whole life. Dad wouldn’t even pave the way for me, either; he got the manager and made me tell him what I’d done. I don’t remember what the manager said to me, only how hard it was for me to say the words. I suppose there are people who’d say Dad was cruel for doing that, but I learned that first time, and I learned for life. When John was around that age, he stole money from his brother’s piggy bank and spent it on (something she didn’t remember). His mother gave him hell, but replaced Terry’s money herself and didn’t tell Terry. Mistake. He was a little kid, sure, but old enough to learn. John was killed when we were 28, but in all those years, he never learned that if it isn’t yours, you mustn’t take it.

Anyway, I digress (as I am wont to do). My point is that in order for (e.g. Christianity) to be do-able in the 21st century, one must cherry-pick the bits that still apply. Interpret the Bible literally, and we wouldn’t be wearing easy care poly-cotton blends, I wouldn’t be looking forward to the lobster, shrimp and scallops (and smoked salmon, though that’s not a shellfish) that came all the way from Nova Scotia yesterday (and oh, I am looking forward to NOM-ing all of it!), I’d have slaves, and co-wives, and I’d have to marry Pete if anything happened to Patrick. This is not the desert 2000 years ago, and we know so much more than they did back then. It’s time to grow up…we don’t need angels anymore, or $deity, or fear of retribution to make us behave. I don’t, at least, but I surely do wish the rest would catch up with those of us who outgrew obedience to daddy by the time we were adults. Sure, I love my dad, but I have my own mind and my own morals, and I’m an adult, capable of logic and reason, and of understanding that it’s okay if human society doesn’t know everything yet. Five hundred years ago, if you went to a doctor for a headache, chances were pretty good that he’d prescribe leeches, since it was probably that you had too much blood in your head. Now, we have aspirin and Tylenol for minor headaches, CAT scans and MRIs if doctors suspect it’s something serious, and lots of options in between. It doesn’t have to be a choice between “an explanation for everything” and “we know nothing”; it’s okay if we know some stuff, but haven’t figured it all out yet. “We don’t know why” doesn’t have to be “God did it,” and if a child recovers in a hospital and doctors can’t figure out why, that doesn’t mean we should be looking for angels in the corridors. It just means we don’t know…yet.