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From: Timothy Knox Date: 01:41 on 11 Apr 2008 Subject: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless WinXP Monitor Drivers So unfortunately, for divers and sundry reason, I am forced to run Windows XP Professional at work. That is in and of itself monumentally hate-worthy. But today's specific hatred is for the part of Windows that decides, periodically, that I don't have a Dell2001FP monitor attached, but just a generic monitor only capable of 1024x768. So about once per week, I am forced to "Add New Hardware" and re-add my my monitor driver. Come on, Windows, I know you have a lot to remember, but can't you find a few bytes on your disk somewhere to remember what sort of monitor I have? I don't really ask you to do much, I know, and perhaps you do this as a form of retaliation, but keep it up, and I shall banish you to to the Hell of Being Skinned Alive*. * http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090728
From: Timothy Knox Date: 01:27 on 19 Mar 2008 Subject: When sync-mailbox doesn't really mean sync-mailbox Ah, mutt. The mail client with the refreshing motto: All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less. One of the myriad ways mutt still manages to suck is the '$' key (bound in index mode to sync-mailbox). This is supposed to delete any messages marked for deletion, get any new messages in your inbox, and probably floss your teeth for you, too! So I go in, delete a bunch of spam, save some list traffic (which also marks it for deletion from my main mailbox), and hit '$'. Theoretically, all the deleted mail will just disappear, like in _The Usual Suspects_. Stop laughing, I can hear your derisive snorts from clear across the internet! No, '$' only deletes all the deleted mail *if there's no new mail*. If not, too bad, so sad, you couldn't possibly have wanted to deleted your email marked for deletion if there was new mail to see, now could you? Of course not! If there is new mail, '$' only adds the new mail to my mailbox. SO I have gotten into the habit of hitting '$' at least four times in a row (yes, I count), hoping that at least one of them will actually SYNC MY D*MN MAILBOX!!! Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggggh!!!
From: Timothy Knox Date: 03:11 on 12 Mar 2008 Subject: Firefox, we're not going steady... I don't remember when, but somewhere in the last year or so, Firefox has started to want the focus, ALWAYS! Firefox, I clicked on another app! Just because some d*mn web page you are trying to render wants to set a d*mn cookie does NOT give you the right to pop back in to the front and steal my d*mn focus. You are *NOT* the center of my d*mn computing experience! We are not in a monogamous, or even serially monogamous, relationship. I will continue to see other programs, and you need to stop calling all the time, and following me around. Just wait your d*mn turn! You fetid pile of horse dung! ;-)
From: Timothy Knox Date: 21:20 on 25 Feb 2008 Subject: unrar is hateful Okay, for those of you for whom the above is not sufficient, let me elaborate: I use the following idiom to expand archives of various sorts: $ unzip archive.zip && rm archive.zip $ gunzip archive.gz && rm archive.gz $ bunzip2 archive.bz2 && rm archive.bz2 So good, so far. However, unrar, in its transcendent hatefulness, doesn't work that way. Oh no, of course not! No, the magic invocation is: $ unrar x archive.rar && rm archive.rar Fine, I generally remember to type the extra 'x', but what happens when I omit it? unrar helpfully prints out an error/usage message. That's nice. Helpful, even. But then it returns a 0 status code. That's not so NICE! You didn't succeed, you moronic program! You FAILED to do what I asked! And thanks to your deceitful ways, I've just wiped out the archive, and now must re-download it! AARGH!
From: Timothy Knox Date: 21:47 on 20 Feb 2008 Subject: Hating firefox and remote I spend my days in heavily Linux-y environment. My main machine is a Linux box, my dev box is Linux, my client-test box and my server-test box are all Linux boxes. Woo-hoo! I can run firefox on any of my boxes...or can I? Those of you who like to skip ahead to the end know the answer to this: Of course not! If I am running firefox on my main box, and am ssh-ed in to (for example) my client-text box, and try to run firefox there, surprise! Firefox, in its infinite hatefulness, decides that I must really want to run a firefox remote window in the firefox back on my main box. I couldn't possibly want to have a distinct instance of firefox on my client-test box, now could I? If, for example, my client-test box has TWO NICs, and one of them connects (via another box) to my server box, and I want to access my server box via the client box? Without all that tedious mucking about with routing tables (which is a hate all its own)? If, for example, the client-test, server-test, and intermediary box are all on a private subnet that I cannot reach from my main box? GRRRRR! Fortunately, the hatefulness is only about 99%, because the firefox command exposed on the command line is really a shell script that wraps around the REAL firefox command, and does the evil remote thing. So it was not too painful to hack it up to allow me to opt out of the whole evil remote thing, but: 1. What a pian! 2. The next time I upgrade I will need to reapply this fix. Grrr! Why can't firefox support this behaviour? I can understand not having it on by default, as I assume the thinking was that this behaviour would confuse the fewest number of people, but come on! Firefox is all about customisability, and yet there is no convenient hook for disabling this behaviour that I could find. It took me all of five lines of shell hacking to add it in, so we are not talking rocket science here. Firefox, burn in hell forever!
From: Timothy Knox Date: 00:03 on 22 Jan 2008 Subject: Hating all web browsers Okay, this is almost too easy. ;-) But here goes: Dear Web Browser (aka Firefox, IE, Safari, and probably all the rest): When the web page you are rendering for me has some ridiculously oversized diagram in it (like, say, a product architecture diagram), I know I will have to scroll to see the whole thing (though it would be nice if you would scale it to fit, with a "click for full-size" option). But why, for the love of Mike, must you assume I want to read all text that wide, too? Do I have "Please abuse me with the horizontal scroll bar" tattooed in invisible ink on my forehead? Why can't you render the text (that is not already constrained by some other HTML/CSS unholiness to a fixed width) to the width of my window? Is that *really* so much to ask? If so, WHY?! May you all burn in the Eighth Circle of Hell <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Divine_Comedy>.
From: Timothy Knox Date: 07:50 on 21 Jan 2008 Subject: Stuffit Expander, get stuffed! Breaking news: Stuffit Expander is hateful!* Stuffit Expander, my hate for you is exceeded only by my hatred for ... well, okay, by my hatred for *most* software. But today, we are turning the HateCam (TM) squarely in YOUR direction. First, why do you crash (sorry, sorry, "quit unexpectedly") so d*mn often? And why can't you handle a command line invocation with a dozen or so files to open? Why, even when (to work around your utter and complete brain-damage) I write a shell loop that opens each file, sleeps for 5 seconds, and opens the next, must you crash two or three times at the least? But most hateful of all, why do you think you are so fscking important that when I ask you to expand a file, you feel the need to bring yourself to the front and steal my d*mn focus, just to show me that never-to-be-sufficiently d*mned little progress dialog? Why, you festering pile of bilious hate, WHY? Why can't you just expand my file, and mind your own business? Just expand them, and SHUT THE FSCK UP! We now return you to your regular hate, already in progress. * Okay, it's only breaking news if you have been in a coma for the last twenty years.
From: Timothy Knox Date: 07:43 on 13 Nov 2007 Subject: Firefox updater hate Dear Firefox updater, Thank you so much for keeping my copy of Firefox, and my Firefox extensions, up to date. I really appreciate that, truly I do. But let me clue you in on how GUIs work in the 21st century. Nowadays, when an application highlights a button as a default, hitting return is normally interpreted as though the user had pressed that button. I can understand your confusion, after all, it's only been standard behaviour for at least the last twenty years or so, so maybe you haven't quite caught up yet. So consider this just a little FYI: When I hit the triply-accursed enter key, and you have a fscking button highlighted, I want you to act as though I had personally moved the mouse over the d*mned button and mother-fscking clicked it! AAAAAARRRGGH! You filth-encrusted slimy turd! May you suffer a terminal case of licky-end, or something even more horrific!
From: Timothy Knox Date: 03:36 on 28 Sep 2007 Subject: Hating fink (fish. barrel. gun.) Fink is a wonderful idea for software. Let's take the debian package installation experience, and adopt it to work on Mac OS X. Nice idea. Really. I mean it. ;-) It's the execution where it leads to hatefulness, weeping & wailing, & gnashing of teeth. So I'm doing one of my periodic "fink selfupdate" runs[1]. So good, so far. I get to "fink update-all". It gives me a list of packages it wants to update. It's a good sized list, 'cause it's been a few months since last I updated. Fine, I can live with that, I'm at the office, and if it wants to run updates all day, more power to it. ;-) It starts fetching, and for some package, it tells me that <mirror-site1> has returned a 404. What would I like to do? Hatefulness number one: 99.9999% of the time, I am going to take the default option, so why not accept that for me after a reasonable timeout period (say, sixty seconds)? I know fink is capable of such a feat, as it does it when I am running "fink selfupdate". The default is generally, "Try another mirror (somewhere)". Good enough. Don't ask me, or at least, don't wait FOREVER for me to respond. Just go ahead. I trust you. REALLY! Hatefulness number two: On a subsequent package, it tries again at <mirror-site1>, and by d*mn, it returns another 404. Any reasonable person would guess that the site is probably down, and GIVE UP ON IT (at least, for this session). Far be it from me to call fink unreasonable, but every five minutes, I've got to pop back in, see that it tried (and failed) to get a package from <mirror-site1>, and tell it to try another site. AGAIN! AND AGAIN! AND FSCKING AGAIN! AAAAAARGH! This is totally asinine. Really, folks, this is the twenty-first century. Software should be smarter than that. Of course, I know what the problem is: The developers test against sites that are always up, so they never run into this particular bit of hatefulness. I've got a nice brick wall I'd like them to run into. Pfui! [1]Bonus hate: It is "fink selfupdate" but "fink update-all". Why can't it (also) accept "fink self-update"? I always forget which of the two options takes the d*mn hyphen and which does not!
From: Timothy Knox Date: 03:40 on 07 Sep 2007 Subject: Hating Zinio Sometime back, I signed up to receive some "free" computer weekly. When they offered me a choice of subscription methods, physical or electronic, being a nice guy, I opted for electronic. Electronic, in this case, doesn't mean some slightly retarded but not entirely hateful format like (and I can't believe I'm writing this) PDF, but a completely and utterly hate-worthy one from Zinio. Gah! Their reader is totally hateful. I used it for about three minutes, then said, "Bugger this for a game of soldiers!" and deleted it, never to run again. However, the Zinio website, which manages your Zinio subscriptions, as well as makes the Zinio reader available, HAS NO WAY TO UNSUBSCRIBE. None! I can set my email preferences to "Only send me notices of when my new issue is available" but not, "Never darken my inbox again." So, after much further digging around the Zinio website, accompanied by a great deal of cursing, I find an FAQ section, but while it mentions (as an example topic) "Requests or Cancellations", that is *not* a clickable link. Finally, in desparation, I click on the name of the magazine. Success?! Not exactly. It takes me to a page from the magazine's publisher, inviting me to login: At last! Okay, not exactly. You see, to login, you need 1) Your first and last name 2) Your state (good thing I'm in the USA) and 3) Your ZIP code. While you can enter an email address, it IS NOT REQUIRED (read, NOT PART OF THE SEARCH KEY). You veteran haters can already see where this is headed. No combination of first name, last name, state, or zip worked. And NO, you CAN'T search by E-MAIL address. If you can't be found via the crap already requested, your options are: 1. Supply your address and city from your mailing label or invoice. Since I never received a mailing label, being a nice green reader and all, and since I got a free subscription I never received an invoice, that option is no good to me. Never fear, there is always: 2. Enter your subscriber number. Aha! And how do I get my subscriber number? I clicked on the helpful link "Click here to learn how to find your subscriber number", and got the following priceless wisdom: "How to find your Subscriber # * locate a copy of your magazine * find the mailing label * look for the sequence of numbers in the same position as those boxed in green below * enter all 11 digits with no spaces in the box labeled" That's right, boys and girls! If you subscribe digitally, and don't keep the original email they send you giving you all these delicious details, you are hosed! FOREVER! BWAAAA-HAA-HAA-HAA! Never again! Fsck the environment! Give me my accursed print copy! AAARGH!
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