Ubuntu after a long time

My brother has gone back to school for the fall, and that means I get my wire back. Since I cannot get Ubuntu to work on wireless, I can only use it when I have the wire. I decided five months was too long and that I had to use Ubuntu again. But with that comes having to update everything, and possibly taking another crack at the wireless and Bluetooth problems. It took about 45 minutes to install all of the updates available. It's been almost an hour and my music collection still isn't updated. I'm pretty sure more problems will come. Considering I still cannot print. Unfortunately getting rid of Windows is not an option yet. But we knew that five months ago.

So, as I said in my previous post, kick back, relax and wait for the stress to set in. If my cortisol levels aren't through the roof, I don't want to know how it feels when they are.

Moving sometime soon, Win XP SP 3

I have concluded as to where I am going for school this year, and therefore am moving sometime in the near future (hopefully next week, when I decide on a place). So, if I seem more frustrated, jaded and pessimistic than usual, you know why it probably is. And with the beginning of school goes my free time, and therefore less updates. Not that I update very often as it is; most people update every day. But the less I update, the longer my entries tend to be. So, it's up to you whether that is a good thing.
Anyway, I am looking at a couple places, one of them I saw yesterday. It was a basement room with nice new hardwood floors and new walls. It's a townhouse I would be sharing with another girl, and it's definitely reasonably sized, although my room wouldn't be huge. I could fit a TV and a bed in there, and I'm almost sure my gargantuous desk would fit in there as well. The only problem would be fitting a couch. I am not playing videogames on my bed. The place is definitely a possibilty. I would be paying like $400.
Another place I am looking at is the basement of a bungalow made into a separate unit. It definitely sounds nice, and the guy who owns the place sounds nice too. I would also absolutely love to not have to share a space, considering how much of a picky person I am. But I also wish for my significant other to move in sometime at a later date.
I got an email from someone today about a 1 bedroom and a 2 bedroom he/she has available, and the possibility of subletting the 2 bedroom, possibly to my significant other. I emailed them back pressing for some details, but haven't received a reply quite yet. I hope whoever it is didn't go away for holidays or anything. That would be annoying, since I want to get this crap done.
There were one or two other places I emailed people about, but I haven't received a response yet, which kind of indicates to me that these people don't really want to sell it. Besides, they aren't the most appealing sounding anyway. One of them, I'm not even sure why I considered it, it's like 5 people in one little house. Fuck that shit.

On another note, why the fuck did Microshaft design the update system the way they did? You cannot dismiss the restart notification if you are opting not to restart, which absolutely infuriates me. I can't type a fucking blog post without getting interrupted by this fucking notification that I need to restart. I am fucking aware that I have to restart! I do not want to restart since I just restarted ten minutes before this update was installed because of another fucking update! Seriously, get your shit together and co-ordinate this crap! I don't want to have to restart every goddamn half hour because Microshaft is too goddamn stupid to do something sensible like maybe sending all the updates at once, or just plain forgoing the useless crap they send.

Service Pack 3 was the second update involved in the above rant. I look online for details of this thing, and cannot find a detailed breakdown of what I am inflicting on my computer by installing this Microshaft update. That seriously pisses me off, why can't I have a changelog? Am I not allowed to know what new bullshit Microshaft is raping my computer with? It's a very common problem with everything but the most l33t software, that I can't find out what's being changed. How am I supposed to enjoy (or possibly hate) the new features if I don't know what they are? Unless it's a security update.

Anyway, I have been interrupted twice in about ten minutes from the window that tells me to restart my computer. I am getting quite sick of it so I am going to stop before I kill something.

Zoo photo inclusion

So, two summers ago, I went to the Toronto Zoo with a couple friends, and took some pictures. I submitted them to my Flickr, and they were just sitting there. I randomly get an email from someone involved in the production of Schmap Guides saying they want to use one of my pictures in one of their guides. So, I let them and now it's been published. This is the picture:

80s and 90s music

Lately I have been on an extreme "retro" music kick (retro for me at least, in my miniscule twenty something years on this earth). Instead of going through headache and irritation trying to download this stuff (some of it is extremely hard to find because the artists have fallen off the planet), I've just been simply looking up these songs on YouTube. In doing so, I have made two playlists, one for the 80s and one for the 90s. Some of the quality of the sound on these songs is pretty shitty, but some of it is really good.

If you would like to visit my YouTube channel (I specialize in ripped biology videos), click here
I always have active sharing on, I always am open to receiving messages and crap, it's fun.
Anyway, here are my playlists so far (I will update slowly). Some of the songs are from the late 70s, but it's close enough:

80s Music

1. Snow - Informer
2. Genesis - That's All
3. Eurythmics - Here Comes The Rain Again
4. Madonna - Material Girl
5. Madonna - Papa Don't Preach
6. Depeche Mode - Personal Jesus
7. Bananarama - Cruel Summer
8. Fleetwood Mac - Big Love
9. Duran Duran - The Chauffeur
10. Billy Ocean - Caribbean Queen
11. Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer
12. Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time
13. Madonna - Into The Groove
14. Police - Message In a Bottle
15. Police - Roxanne
16. Queen - Another One Bites The Dust
17. Sade - Smooth Operator
18. Soft Cell - Tainted Love
19. Donna Summer - Hot Stuff
20. Tears For Fears - Shout
21. Yes - Owner Of A Lonely Heart
22. Depeche Mode - Policy of Truth
23. Michael Jackson - Beat It
24. Michael Jackson - Smooth Criminal
25. Michael Jackson - Dirty Diana



90s Music

1. Ace of Base - All That She Wants
2. Ce Ce Peniston - Finally
3. Savage Garden - Break Me Shake Me
4. Savage Garden - To The Moon And Back
5. La Bouche - Be My Lover
6. Mr. President - Coco Jambo
7. Livin' Joy - Dreamer
8. Gloria Estefan - Turn The Beat Around
9. Madonna - Secret
10. Reel 2 Real - I Like To Move It
11. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
12. Green Day - Longview
13. Smashing Pumpkins - Bullet With Butterfly Wings
14. Sublime - Date Rape
15. Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence
16. Jennifer Lopez - Let's Get Loud
17. Le Click - Tonight Is The Night
18. Fugees - Killing Me Softly
19. Lauren Hill - Doo Wop (That Thing)
20. Ace of Base - Young and Proud (demo version)
21. Ace of Base - Young and Proud (live) - I cannot seem to find the regular album version
22. Savage Garden - Carry On Dancing
23. Rockell - I Fell In Love - the video is kind of crap, but it's one of those rare ones
24. First Base - Can You Keep A Secret - okay, about this one, I couldn't find it on YouTube, so it's not technically in the playlist. But it's definitely an important song in my past, so it belongs here, no matter what form it's in



As you can probably tell, Ace of Base was a fundamental staple in my growing-up diet of pop music. I will freely admit that I still like them a lot. I don't care what anyone thinks. If you agree, all the power to you.

I will not be noting editions when I update this list because that would take way too much space. It would also be extremely annoying for me considering compiling the list after the fact was enough work.

EDIT: Go me. Soon after composing this list, I discovered that you can embed playlists in HTML. Why the hell do I figure these things out after I compose this shit? Well, I'm not erasing my lists. I worked hard on them so enjoy, godammit.
EDIT of an EDIT: Okay well the writing out of the songs is good because they are in order, allowing anyone to know what order the songs are in. Kind of like the track listing on a CD insert, heh

Updates; good or bad?

Here is a list of some programs I use regularly and my opinion of their update frequency. This post was inspired by the incessant and severely annoying updates I receive from Apple about the piece of shit iTunes. I swear to god if they updated anymore it would be a fucking code blog.

- Winamp - updated too often... not much is done each time either. I haven't noticed a difference between the last three or four updates.

- Firefox - not updated enough. You don't need to revamp the entire thing each time.

- iTunes - fuck off Apple! (In other words, updated waaay too often... it almost feels like it's updated every day)

- Soulseek - not often enough! When it is updated, it's way too big of an update and leads to having to completely migrate accounts to new servers

- Windows Live Mail - not enough, and it's a Microshaft product so it inevitably needs improvement

- mIRC - not nearly enough... but considering the guy who makes it expects payment for this thing, the common sense just isn't there

- Adobe Creative Suite - never updated... this is an absolutely terrible example of post-purchase support. Even Microshaft is better...they at least allow you some post-purchase updates. I have not received a single update from Adobe for any of their paid products, and I've had this version of the creative suite for a couple years now.

- BOINC Manager - not nearly enough. I realize there is not much here to have to improve, but still, can we at least have some cosmetic improvements? Or perhaps less jargony menus?

- Miranda IM - JUST RIGHT... although that might be partly because this is a fully customizable application and updating mainly has to do with plugins.

My final phone decision

Okay, so I got a new cell phone today. About time right? Well, it pretty much came down to completely ignoring everything I have posted so far about phone companies and shit, because I didn't go with any of the aforementioned companies. I went with Virgin Mobile. Believe it or not, there is a cell phone company not out there to fill their greedy pockets! I got all of the features I want and don't have to pay any stupid system access crap or anything! Either way, look at the website if you want to know more. I got the myCrew dealy (you get unlimited talk and text with your favourite 5 contacts). $25 is the cheapest, but if you go $35 they make it so you can talk and text nationwide with your contacts. The part that sold me (because other companies offer this) is that if you present a student card, you get 10 contacts. So, $35 a month, plus $10 for voicemail and call display (which are essentials to me) and I get $45 a month. That is $5 less than what Telus was offering. Although Telus offered web browsing, they also still have the $6.95 and 75 cent fees every month. Which means $56.95 a month, plus any running over I might do. And if you do run over with Telus, it's 35 cents a minute (double that for long distance), and only 30 cents for Virgin. Plus, I also really wanted the LG Rumour. Telus offered the LG Keybo, which also cost $50 even with the 3 year plan. I got the Rumour for nothing. So, overall, I'd pay more at Telus. But it was a close second. Rogers, Fido, Bell, and Solo didn't even place within my ranks.

Well, enough rambling about my new cell phone stuff. Let's just say I will continue to be pessimistic about large companies and their motives for doing things. I will never understand though. Why are the largest companies the most money hungry? Don't they have enough goddamn money, or do they have to take more from people who may not have as much? Why do companies like Microshaft who, all over the world, process billions of dollars in primary sales have to go on and rip off their customers? I mean in some cases (eg. video game consoles) they truly are the superior one, but in other cases (eg. operating systems and software) they suck hairy balls. So, why keep trying with the crappy software? Why don't they listen to their customers? You cannot expect me to believe that their (trillions of) loyal Office users asked for the atrocious monstrosity that is Office 2007. It is an absolute piece of garbage. The beginning product was by no means a masterpiece either, but Office 2007 takes the shit cake.

Anyway, maybe some day I will find something besides companies to blog about. But they do really irritate me. Maybe someday I should make my own money whore company and take over the internet or something. Then the fuckers who own and operate Rogers, Microshaft, iTunes, etc. can drain their bank accounts into my pockets.

Bureaucratic phone services

In the age of technology, innovation and progression, how can our governing body continue to be so retarded?

"All our analysts are still unavailable, your call is important to us, someone will be with you as soon as possible."

...that is what is being drilled into my head every 30 seconds or so. I bet you anything they have only one or two operators working the phones. Just like they had a huge ass line at the Ministry of Transportation, yet only two service desks were open. Not only does "instantaneous" services take forever, heaven forbid you should need something sent away. That will take a minimum six weeks. Or at least they say it will. Realistically, it will take about two months. Have they not learned to employ technology to their advantage? Do they send anything digitally?

The conclusion of the above story is that I was told to fax the form in (because someone couldn't have told me that in the first place) and they will review it. Unfortunately for me, I need this issue concluded by September 2nd, and it slowly looks like that will not happen. This is what I get for being honest on this form. Now I am thinking that I should have just lied and made things simple for myself.

The good thing about this is that faxes are almost instantaneous like email. The bad part is that fax machines are so archaic that I don't even know how to use one. I'm sure it's easy to figure out, but the last thing I need is to accidentally send this (sensitive) form to somewhere Joe's Auto Shop, which has one digit different in their fax number than the Ministry of Transportation. But I've never actually had occasion to use a fax machine. Which is fucking weird.

So, off to try and fax this shit. Wish me luck and hope that I don't fail.

My future phone?

Come September, I will be moving for school. And with moving comes a new area code. Which means the possibility of a new phone (I am hoping since I am sick of Rogers' systematic ripping off). I have done some research, and have discovered that owning a smartphone is premature. Prices for data are still astoundingly retarded, and there's no way I can get anything approaching reasonable. So, I have opted for the text message heavy option, which includes a phone with a full QWERTY keyboard (essential). The only cell phone company in this area that has a QWERTY phone that can be obtained without subscribing to a data plan, or selling your children is Bell (which includes Solo Mobile as well). The phone is the LG Rumour (see it here, except obviously remove the Sprint slant to this page). The plan I am looking at is $20 a month, which gives me 50 minutes plus 1000 evenings and weekends, which is more than enough for me. I am also including the "Smartphone" feature pack thing, which is another $15 a month. But you get 2500 text messages, call display, and voicemail, which are all the features that are essential to me. So, all 911 and system access fees plus my charges, I would be paying $44.70. Although it might be better to go with the whole smartphone idea with Fido, because I calculated that I could be paying only $40 a month for all of those things Bell provides, plus unlimited email, browser and 1000 picture/video messages. But that is assuming that that price will be the same when I am ready to get a new phone.



I just wish prices and availability did not change all the fucking time. I could actually be capable of making a decision if everything would stop changing under my nose. Some things change too fast, and some things don't change fast enough. The deals and cheap prices are the things that change way too fast, and you can't decide on it until it is too late. On the other hand, data plan prices, and the prices for the iPhone cannot change fast enough.