Consequences of stupid anti-terrorism laws

PER CONSENTIRE a tutti coloro che non riescono a comunicare via cellulare di collegarsi ad internet, molti comuni invitano i cittadini dei paesi colpiti dal terremotori di oggi ad aprire la propria rete wi-fi domestica.

Though some of the idiotic Pisanu anti-terrorism law has been done away with since the first of the year,  the paucity of open WiFi connections here in Italy can be directly traced back to it. ISP's give out routers with passwords already configured and your average user leaves the settings as is.

And thus during an emergency a potential route of communication is far more limited that it should be.

Watch your users run screaming from your site.

I have a client who has suddenly become a web expert and whose latest request is to add three (THREE!!!) pop-up windows to highlight special deals.

Never mind that even motherfucking Internet Explorer now ships with its pop-up blocker enabled.

Never mind that mobile devices by and by large don't even support pop-up windows.

Never mind that it's a now well known given that pop-up windows annoy the fuck out of your users and the vast majority will only click on them to close them.

Never mind that I have shown you the most clicked on areas of your homepage and they certainly weren't the shit-ass in-house graphics (that I've had to correct your English on) you have sent to me to be placed where you designate on the page, in spite of my advice on the subject.

To hell with accessibility. Actually I don't even think they know or care what that means or why it's important, despite my attempts to explain.

What the fuck rock have you been living under that you've suddenly decided to ignore (again) my advice about how to increase your slumping online sales with a more user friendly, cleaner redesign and instead slap one of the most annoying, proven-to-drive-away-potential-clients-in-droves advertising tactics held over from the early Noughties?!

I could even get around this shit request by sticking it in a modal dialog if it was just one pop-up. But THREE?!?!?!?! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!

That rhythmic sound you hear is my head repeatedly smack my desk...

Simon's Cat: Cat & Mouse

I wonder if the minister has a knee boner…

Crossposted from Favoloso Mondo: Redux , my Tumblr.

Adventures in Slipstreaming

Sometimes it just doesn't pay to be a geek.

Being everyone's go-to gal for anything even remotely related to IT sometimes reminds me of just how fast things progress. Case in point: wiping & reinstalling a SATA hard drive on an AMD 2 motherboard.

Ubuntu 10.10? No fucking problem. Easy peasy.

Windows XP Sp3? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Loading the MB drivers asks for a god-damned floppy disk with the drivers on it. This particular machine does not have a floppy drive. I have a floppy drive in my PC, but no floppies lying around. So trying to create a slipstream disk is rapidly becoming a never ending loop of "Slipstream, Burn, Switch Cables (My Country for a KVM Switch), Try Slipstreamed Disk, BSOD or Missing UlSata.sys or no HD to be found, Switch cables back, Find other driver(s), Repeat"

Gah.

Coldfusion SuxxOrs

1995 called; it wants its crufty web application server back.

Unfortunately, I have to work with this POS due to an ongoing project. Not only do I have the unmitigated joy ¹ of having to deal with someone else's slapdash, half-arsed, Dreamweaver crapped-out "code" ² that would make a Coding for Dummies example look like NASA, CERN & MIT had a magical fairy love child, but I have to have this abomination installed on my computer for testing purposes.

Let me interject here that my computer is my baby. Being a huge nerd, I have two different OS's installed with about 12 different browsers installed. Half of those are different major versions of Internet Explorer 6-8, which only get cracked open when I need to see if how badly Bill Gates' satanic afterbirth of a browser mucks up my pretty web-standards compliant XHTML/CSS. I digress...

Having to install Coldfusion App Server reminds me of The Pain from Princess Bride: "Dear God, what is that Thing?!" Every few months I have to reinstall it when it decides it no longer wants to play nice with XAMPP. JRun, well, runs rampant every thrice blue moon, eating up memory until I kill & restart. And CFML? Puh-lease. I have no respect for any so-called language that ignores variable name case.

GRAR! HULK SMASH! *pant pant* ³

Geek rant over.


¹Why yes, that is heavy sarcasm. Why do you ask?
²Picture me making finger air quotes around the word "code"
³Now that I've gotten that out of my system, I shall now commence randomly spouting "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die" for the next 3 days.

Wanted: Stable Web Hosting

I finally have my appointment at the questura to get fingerprinted & whatnot for my permesso renewal tomorrow. I was neatly informed of this via SMS, which was a pleasant "Hey, nifty!" moment, seeing as the online webportal for seeing at what point your renewal request was at has gone tits up at various times.

I should note that the tits up moments were usually panic inducing errors that said "Invalid User Number" or the like. Calling the info line during those times got one a busy signal 9 times out of ten, and I usually resorted to Googling & scanning various expat forums to see if there was news of problems. So the SMS and the corresponding entry on the webportal was cheering in the thought that maybe the tech problems were getting sorted out.

Today I was putting together all the various copies of docs that I need to take with me tomorrow. Since the registered letter informing me of the appointment has yet to arrive, my plan was to print out the webportal notification to show alongside the SMS.

Good ol' Murphy's Law: the portal has been tits up all day. And this time, tits up means TITS UP. Nothing was coming up, and a traceroute showed an unreachable destination in the Poste's servers. Oh joy.

I just now managed to pull the site up, and I've gotta laugh.



The immediate, facile snark would incorporate Microsoft (the portal is ASP), the Poste and 'recipe for disaster'. But really? I get the feeling that the massive infrastructure needed for this 'new' procedure was either poorly thought out, executed poorly, not tested enough, or all of the above. And when one of those options happens, somebody's going to be frantically patching holes 'till the cows come home. You'd almost feel sorry for whomever's doing the patching, until you think about how much money the government's tossing at tech. (article is in Italian by noted comic-cum-activist Beppe Grillo)

Surely there's enough money somewhere in there to buy a few more hard disks for the webservers, n'est pas?

Kitchen Geek

One of the coolest things my mom ever did was make a family cookbook for her daughters. She printed up or scanned the handwritten index card of favorite family recipes, put a photo of the relative above the recipe, and slapped 'em into a type of photo album-cum-binder with plastic covered pages.

And today, prompted by a metafilter post about various foodstuffs, I've got another 20 bookmarks of recipes I'd like to try out. Which prompted me to search for recipe management software as the recipe folder of my bookmarks is getting unwieldy.

Recipe software recommendation have been requested numerous times on ask.metafilter. Problem is, I don't want to download and assload of free-trials to see if they that special feature I'm looking for:

Conversion between American & metric measurements.

Every time I'm cooking from a recipe, I have to hit GourmetSleuth and 'translate' each ingredient and temperature. Pain. in. the. ass. Sometimes I can 'eyeball' it, but I only do that when making stuff I know by heart, like Grandma's ragu. Anything involving baking or dough from scratch, I need measurements.

A bonus feature for this dream software would pull info from the Cooks Thesaurus - because buttermilk & cheddar cheese can be neigh impossible to find here.

So, for all five of you who still read this blog, know of any decent recipe software?

I'm not really limited to a specific OS, as I have Linux & WinXP, while the Fiancee's laptop is a Mac. But I would like to avoid the latter as I don't want to have to steal his laptop every time I want to stick in or look up a recipe.

Not Fair

I don't usually get gadget envy, but this has me madly Googling for suppliers who ship internationally, preferably located in a country with a favourable currency-to-Euro conversion rate. (Not that I can afford it right now, but ooo a girl can dream, n'est pas?)



*drool*

The Samsung Q35. Though I usually prefer AMD to Intel processors, the SO's MacBook Pro has nicely impressed me. So we have here a Core Duo processor, about a gig of RAM, a DVD Multi drive, WiFI, Bluetooth, Firewire port, 6-in-one card reader, PCI slot, and up to 120 GB hard drive.

All in a 12.1 inch notebook that weighs under 2 kilos.

And it comes in Red.

*drools more*

Of course, it's not available in Italy or the States/Canada. That would just be too easy. Finding the red one on websites that ship internationally is difficult to say the least; UK is easiest, but pounds to Euro = wallet rape. France, Germany & Spain I can't find the red one. Looking to the Aussies now...

Sesso e la Città Eternà - Nerd Porn vs. The SO

So my dad finally sent me my computer parts that Middle Sis & he had purchased for my birthday/Christmas present.

(Yes, we're talking about Xmas 04. Yes, my birthday was in January. Yes, I probably should have told him to include this year's presents at the same time.)

And despite the fact that my checking account is on the broker side of being in the black, I purchased the other main parts necessary to build meself a wee monster. Nothing super h4Rdc0R3, but powerful enough for now with plenty of room to upgrade in the future.

And of course it matches my room's decor. Just for you fellow nerds:

Case
A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ CPU (Venice core)
Kingston memroy 512mb 400MHz DDR
ATI Raedon Sapphire X300 SE 128MB DDR PCI-E TV
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200GB Serial ATA Hard Drive
Black floppy drive
DVD Burner
CD Combo Drive
Black 17" LDC monitor

(To buy is a 500W power supply, 512MB more RAM, 5.1 speaker set, extra case fan, black eyboard & mouse set, wifi PCI card & Netgear Wifi router/firewall. And a bloody computer desk to put it all on. IKEA, unfortunately, has zilch.)

So I'm going to build my first computer. Just thinking about it makes me all fluttery & sweaty & breathless.

It's nerd porn, baby. Pure nerd porn.

Or maybe it's more like popping my nerd hardware cherry. I've swapped out hard drives & pci cards & such but I've never built a full system.

Anyway I find it strangely kinky. Yet the parts are still sitting around my room. Why?

Because the SO distracted me.

Thought for the Day

I hate Windows documentation. Can we say obtuse, buzzword jargon padded crap? Get to the fucking point already.

File Under: Idle Musings

Wonder how many people are gonna sign up for blogger & blogspot when they find out Google's new email service Gmail has opened up their beta testing to users of blogger.com.

Hey, does this finally mean I'm one of the cool kids now? I've got Gmail and you don't. Neener neener.

Gmail. It sounds vauguely pornographic, no?

"And he just kept hitting that button, over and over, driving my Gmail crazy. He wouldn't let up and I thought I'd go mad. My knees were shaking, fingernails were digging into my palms as he continued his relentless onslaught. Over and over and over again, a haze of obscene words and promises filling any empty space. I bit my lip bloody from the sheer frustration."

"Fucking spammers."

Trials and tribulations of a Web Slut

And no, I ain't talking about that search engine referral for 'anal camwhore'

I'm trying to be a conscientious little Web Slut and redo layouts on the work websites strictly in XHTML and CSS. It's the later that is giving me headaches. Fix it in one browser, breaks in another.

This bug was planted up my ass when a friend downloaded the main site to his cellphone. With the liquid table layout, 'twas mighty ugly.

Floats and Margins and ems, oh my!

Make it stop mommy, make it stop.....

Fuck me upside down with a chainsaw three ways 'till Sunday

I
Hate
Compiling.*

*weeps quietly while banging head against new keyboard*

Geek Woes

Warning: Extremely boring geek bitching ahead.

So sometime later this week our new office should be done. Which is good news for the pigeon allergy, but really annoying news for the webgeek in me.

Snippets

*I want a soundtrack to my life. Barring that a big strapping Negro fellow following me around with boom box. Or an iPod with speakers. Whatever. I just want music following my every move, so that I won't just be some spaz who starts waltzing down the street to the music in my head.

*Why a big strapping Negro fellow? Well, are you going to fuck with a chick who has a big strapping Negro fellow following her around with a boom box? I thought not.

*I hate the Euro. Everything has doubled in price. Excepting of course, my salary.

*Above thought prompted by the discovery that floor tickets for Ani Di Franco tomorrow night are 30 fucking Euros. 60,000 Lire. 60 bucks old skool money for Ani Di.

*And I'm going anyway. By myself. How's that for loserville?

*The sector of tourism that I work in is not only fucking incestuous in terms of competition, it's also rife with copycats. Case in point? The new websites I did. There are already three -count 'em - THREE other places that have flat out stolen the text I did for our sites. Can we say "copyright infringement notice"? I thought we could.

*In other Evil Webmistress related news, I take perverse pleasure in redirecting certain people *cough*oldwebmasters*cough* to a special 404 page when they try to look for a way in to the admin side. One that says "The page you are looking for IS NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS. Thanks for logging your IP with us. Have a Nice Day."

That's fairly nice. Little script kiddies and spammers looking to exploit formmail get sent to Tubgirl (don't go googling for that unless you really really really feel the urge to scrub your eyeballs with steel wool and Clorox.)

Cross Platform Coding My Aunt Fanny

Girl geek rant.