Category: English

This has gone too far

You know the little bits of transparent (and sometimes but usually not colored) cling film they put on glossy surfaces on electronic gadgets so they don’t get scratched during packaging or shipping, so your technologically challenged parental units complain that the display on their new CD player is blurry because they didn’t realize they were supposed to remove it?

I just unpacked a brand new HP 22″ monitor. The stand has a tiny HP logo embossed on the head—the swiveling bit where you actually attach the panel. A normal user will see that logo for about 30 seconds between unpacking the monitor and assembling it. She might not even notice it… if it weren’t for the fact that it has a tiny square of cling film stuck to it.

By the way, HP is the company that markets its products with the slogan “The Computer is Personal Again” in a Nightmare-Before-Christmas-ish font, yet the power supply for an HP laptop weighs more than my wife’s MacBook Air. And I’m only exaggerating a little.

Brave new world that has such software in it

First impressions of my new Dell Studio XPS 16 with Windows 7:

The Good
  • It’s fast.
  • The screen is really, really nice.
  • Aero is pretty.
  • Face recognition is neat.
The Bad
  • The screen is a veritable dust & lint magnet
  • No clit, so I’ll have to get used to the trackpad (although 99% of the time I have an external mouse hooked up)
  • I have a strange feeling that the keys are larger than on a regular keyboard, although it only takes five seconds with a ruler to verify that they aren’t.
  • F’ed up keyboard layout. Not MacBook-f’ed up, and not so f’ed up I won’t get used to it, but sufficiently f’ed up that when I do get used to it, I’ll have trouble adjusting when I use other machines / keyboards.
  • Had to resort to Google to figure out where the disk activity indicator is (on the front edge, hidden where you can’t see it without picking up the machine)
The Ugly
  • The camera activity indicator is also hidden where you can’t see it without picking up the machine. Actually, it’s about 1 cm to the left of the lens, right where it’s supposed to be.
  • The exhaust port is located on the rear edge of the machine so the bottom of the screen covers it when the lid is open.
  • Bluetooth didn’t work out of the box. I’m pretty sure I didn’t order the machine without Bluetooth. In fact, I’m pretty sure you can’t even get the machine without Bluetooth even if you wanted to. In fact, I checked.
  • When I rebooted to check that there actually is a Bluetooth radio in the machine (there is) and that it is enabled in BIOS (it is), 7 blue-screened.
  • After rebooting, the Bluetooth radio still doesn’t show up in the device manager, and the driver fails to install.
  • When I rebooted a second time to check the BIOS again, I got a BSoD again. Two for two. Wheee!

Update: three for three; I suspect it may have something to do with my phone, which I have to connect using USB since Bluetooth doesn’t work.

Unimpressed: Drake’s Fortune

Finally got myself a PlayStation 3 (I’d link to the official site, but it’s totally retarded), and bought a bunch of “pre-played” (i.e. what you and I would call “used”) games along with it. One of the games I picked up was Resistance: Fall of Man, but the guy at the store claimed that it wasn’t really all that good, and that if I really wanted to “experience the PS3” I should get Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune instead, and I vaguely recalled reading about it after seeing a Penny Arcade strip about the sequel, so I did.

As you can tell from the title, I was not impressed. Continue reading “Unimpressed: Drake’s Fortune”

I can has ignorance and neglect?

I won’t say “I love cats, therefore I love ICHC”, but I can say “I love cats, and ICHC brightens my day”.

Except when it doesn’t.

There’s the little things, like the sheer inanity of reader comments, which I’ve stopped reading entirely, or referring to tortoiseshell cats using male pronouns, or the videos. Lolpics are funny because they take a single shot out of its context and make it out to be something it isn’t. Videos may be cute, but they aren’t funny, because they just show cats doing what cats do.

Then there’s pictures like this one. Yeah, yeah, the cat ate the pumpkin, very funny, except the gag only works because the cat is morbidly obese, and that’s not funny at all. We’re not talking “a little extra weight around the waist” we’re talking “will die an early death due to a series of complications which may culminate in major heart or liver failure”. For insert your favorite deity‘s sake, people, get a fucking clue. If you’re too thick to understand something unless it’s on YouTube, watch this video, and put your cat on a diet.