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From: Michael G Schwern Date: 01:16 on 19 Nov 2007 Subject: Don't fancify my man pages! Lately I've been noticing that less has been subtly choking on perldoc pages. Lines might appear and disappear as I scrolled up and down. I figured it was a bug in less, but no. It is far more evil. Today I pasted some example code from "perldoc Attribute::Handlers" into a text file to write up a test based on it. The test was failing in mysterious ways. I finally figured out why. nroff (or rather groff) replaced all the ASCII single quotes in the file with fancy Unicode x2019 quotes. What?! Who thought this was a good idea?! Even if my CTYPE is set to UTF-8, NO! "Smart quote" stupidity should not leak into roff, the final bastion of the most Unixy of all Unix formatting tools! Ok, maybe this is some sort of OS X brain rot. Maybe the curvy corner, pointy-clicky heads somehow infected groff. But no! There it is, right in the pristine GNU roff source. $ grep 2019 groff-1.19.2/font/devutf8/R.proto ' 24 0 0x2019 WHY, GNU, WHY!?! To add insult to injury, the nroff TYPESETTER environment variable which can be used to override this madness isn't implemented in groff's nroff wrapper. Smart quotes in man pages. What's next? Turn ... into HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS? Turn all my math functions into DIVISION SLASH? Will the next version of groff include a clippy helper or maybe a little dog to help me? How about putting google ads at the bottom of my man pages, wouldn't that be nice.
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 23:03 on 01 Nov 2007 Subject: find . -print0 -name 'foo' | xargs rm I want to delete a bunch of unnecessary text files in a pile of NOVA episodes I have archived. Ok, no problem... $ cd ~/Movies/NOVA/ $ find . -name '*.txt' | xargs rm rm: cannot remove `./NOVA': No such file or directory rm: cannot remove `-': No such file or directory rm: cannot remove `Search': No such file or directory rm: cannot remove `For': No such file or directory rm: cannot remove `A': No such file or directory rm: cannot remove `Safer': No such file or directory rm: cannot remove `Cigarette': No such file or directory Oh that's right, in Unix nobody would ever possibly put a space in a filename (a hate for later). So I need to separate things with a null byte, ok... $ find . -print0 -name '*.txt' | xargs -0 rm Whoopsie, everything's deleted. 10 gigs of fine public educational video, gone. Turns out putting -print0 first instead of last causes some sort of crazy find switch boolean madness to short circuit and everything becomes true. I'm sure there's some perfectly self-consistent, logical and yet still TOTALLY INSANE reason why this is so making find the well-dressed, but completely off his rocker guy on the bus trying to convince you to remove the plastic border from around your license plate. To save fuel. Because your car will weigh less. [1] Makes perfect sense, right? Hate. [1] No joke, he had little pamphlets with the math and everything.
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 17:22 on 21 Oct 2007 Subject: Cancel or Skip? My bank has instituted a new "security code" they're supposed to have mailed to me. As bone headed as that is (because NOBODY steals mail) at least they provided a way for me to skip it... for now. Then a big blank-out dialog comes up (from memory)... A log in security code will be sent to you in the mail for account # xxx-xxx-xxxxx-xxxx. You will be allowed to log in two more times without it. [Cancel] [Skip] Canel or skip... what does that MEAN?! It didn't even ask a question! It's a totally custom dialog window so they don't even have the excuse of the hard-wired ok/cancel buttons in the default Javascript dialog.
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 00:11 on 16 Oct 2007 Subject: Numbers doesn't do ODF Apple's new whizz-bang Spreadsheet application, Numbers, which comes with iWork 08 does not support Open Document Format. My choices for exporting are: PDF, which retains my pretty graphs but has no value as a spreadsheet Excel, which is just moving to another proprietary format CVS, which loses my pretty graphs and formulas Grrrrrrr. Just like Quicktime still won't do Ogg and you have to actively fight iTunes to recognize it. Grrrrrrr. And as long as I'm bitching about iWork, I purchased iWork 06 in July. iWork 08 with Numbers comes out in August. Do they offer an upgrade price? Nope.
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 09:09 on 19 Sep 2007 Subject: iAlertU iAlertU is actually an awesome piece of software. It's a *software* alarm for Mac laptops. It uses, amongst other things, the built-in Sudden Motion Sensor to detect if the laptop has moved, it can notice if the AC adaptor has been pulled, the keyboard typed on, the touch pad touched or the screen closed. Once it's been armed, if it detects any of that, it takes a picture with the built-in camera and mails it out. It then sets off a wailing alarm. This is all very handy as it solves the conundrum of working at a coffee shop and have to go to the bathroom. Do I take the laptop with me and look like a dork or do I risk it being stolen? And the coolest part of all? You can arm and disarm it with the remote control that comes with your Mac. Well, that remote is really small and easily lost. What if you don't have it with you? That's ok, you can arm it via a menu option. But to disarm it you need that remote. Whoops.
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 09:25 on 04 Sep 2007 Subject: Login... who are you again? threadless.com is having a sale! $10 each for the awesomest t-shirts out there. Great! I spend lots of time going through their large catalog picking out shirts. Fill up my cart with shirts for myself and get gifts for my friends. 12 shirts. Go to checkout... hmm, maybe I should register and log in. *Tappity tappity* *click*. Ok, logged in and... where's my shirts?! My cart's empty! All that shopping lost! They empty my cart when I register?! It's not quite that bad, logging out restored my account. So your cart when you're not logged in is different from the cart when you're logged in. Hate. You've already given me a cookie when I first hit the site, use it!
From: Michael G Schwern
Date: 08:09 on 30 Aug 2007
Subject: SATA drive + Windows == hate
I got sick of scrounging around for drive space for all my various media WHICH
I ASSURE YOU IS ALL LEGITIMATELY PURCHASED COMPLETE WITH RECEIPTS (ok, is the
RIAA goon gone) and when my 200gig external drive finally kicked the bucket I
decided to go on a drive buying spree.
500 gig external USB 2 drive from Dell, $103
160 gig notebook drive from Newegg, $100
400 gig internal drive from Newegg, $85.
Not having to burn my porn to DVDs: priceless.
The external drive for media and backup, the notebook drive for my Macbook and
the internal drive for my Windows gaming PC. Great! They all arrive...
Hmm... what's this funny lookin connector on the internal drive? Oh, its a
SATA drive! Sure, my motherboard does SATA, cool. Ok, now to find a SATA
cable... SATA cable... hmmm...
They didn't include a cable.
Call around, find out Free Geek sells SATA cables for a $1, bike over, buy a
couple of those and a VGA extender (cuz they're handy).
Ok, ready. Plug it in. Boot up the PC. Aaaaaaand...
"Windows has discovered a Mass Storage Device it does not recognize".
Mass Storage Device? Ok, whatever crazy thing you want to call it, Windows.
Pop in the Windows CD and let it find the driver... no driver found. *sigh*
*grumble* Dig up the motherboard user manual online... SATA RAID mode... oh,
so by default the motherboard turns any SATA drives into a RAID. Kinda neat,
but, of course, now I need to find drivers...
Dig around on the motherboard's web site... find the drivers and to install
them... what?! I need a FLOPPY DISK?! Who in the hell has a floppy disk
anymore?! Back to the motherboard manual. Figure out how to turn off RAID
mode. Reboot. BIOS. Save. Boot again.
Now Windows doesn't see ANY new hardware! Grrr. Back to the motherboard
page... dig around, find the Windows XP non-RAID SATA drivers, download,
install, reboot.
Still doesn't detect any new hardware. ARGH!!! Google for instructions about
installing a new hard drive. Learn the archaic command I have to type into
"run" to bring up the drive manager. Initialize the drive. Ok, format it as
FAT32...
It only offers NTFS. *thud* No, I don't want to use a disk format that can
only be written to by Windows. Why the hell aren't you offering me FAT32?!
Maybe the drive is too big, FAT32 is pretty old... wikipedia... no, FAT32
supports up to 8 Tb. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!
More wikipedia reading... oh, surprise, its just Microsoft's formatting tool
that's crap! It won't format anything over 32 gigs. Must be forcing everyone
to use NTFS (remember, the one only Microsoft operating systems can write to).
More wikipedia... find a link to fat32format to solve this. Download, install.
Initialize the drive with the Drive Manager. Give it a drive letter. Run
fat32format. FINALLY A WORKING DRIVE! HALLE-FUCKING-LUYA!
Now to move the contents of my C: drive onto it in such a way that it will not
cripple the operating system. Oh that will be fun.
For comparison, installing my new drive into OS X was much less hateful.
1) Plug in external drive.
2) Use Disk Utility's nice, graphical partitioner to make an HFS+ partition
(ironically, it had no trouble making a 400 gig FAT32 partition)
3) Use rsyncx's somewhat clunky GUI to backup my drive and make the new
one bootable. (iBackup would have been easier, but old habits die hard.
About as hard as I want those eggs. [nevermind])
4) Shutdown.
5) Remove old drive via the battery bay.
6) Plug in new drive.
7) Boot from external drive.
8) OS X says "hey, I found an unformatted drive! Do you want to format it?"
Why yes I would!
9) rsyncx from external drive to new internal drive.
10) Reboot.
11) Consider what to do with all the free space.
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 16:11 on 14 Aug 2007 Subject: Argument list too long... again. Oh look .ccache has gotten confused and filled up with tmp files and disk space is running low. That's ok, I'll just delete them. 0 windhund ~/.ccache$ rm tmp.* -bash: /sw/bin/rm: Argument list too long Hate. Anyone who tells me I should be piping or some shit to justify this will be destroyed.
From: Michael G Schwern
Date: 17:36 on 02 Apr 2007
Subject: Whatsinaname
World of Warcraft, that exquisitely designed casino with elves sucking in
billions of man-hours from all across the globe. And they deserve it. If
you've never played it, I'd suggest getting yourself a 10 day trial just to
see what a really well designed and easy to learn interface is.
Except...
The character creation provides you with simple, graphical options. Buttons
for race and class. A few selectors to determine what your character looks
like. A representation of what your potentially fearsome character will look
like. Some handy helpful text explaining the consequences of your choices.
And a text box to type in your name.
What's in a name? In WoW everything. There's so little to customize about
your character that the only thing which sets you apart from others is your
nome de slash. Maybe it will be "Fire Tosser" the gnomish wizard. "Rick
Drywall" the beefy human warrior. Or maybe the stalwart paladin, "Lancelot de
Loot".
Names. People have several names. A first, a last, maybe a middle. Maybe
more if you're spanish. You innocently type in "Hiro Protagonist" and click
"Create" only to find your new creation to have the name "Hiroprotagonist".
Shit, toss him in the bin and start the process over again.
Yes, in WoW you're not allowed any spaces or non-alphanumerics in your name.
There's perfectly good reasons for this restriction, but they fail to mention
it in character creation. Worse, they don't stop you when you do type a bad
name, it just silently "corrects" your "mistake". In such a wonderfully
designed game with over 3 years of continual development and upgrades you'd
really think they could put in:
warn_user "Sorry, no spaces allowed in names" if /\s+/;
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 01:05 on 20 Sep 2005 Subject: eBay email: 1 pound of content, 500 tons of legal This email from eBay really says it all. Note that in all that crap they didn't think to quote my original question back to me. ----- Forwarded message from "eBay Member: etrade168" <member@xxxx.xxx> ----- From: "eBay Member: etrade168" <member@xxxx.xxx> Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 06:43:58 -0700 To: stupid@xxxxx.xxx Subject: Re: Question for item #8219304226 - PS2 REZ Trance Vibrator import Japanese 2 New Reply-To: etrade168@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx ---------------------------------------------------------------------- eBay sent this message to Michael?Schwern?(schwern). Your registered name is included to show this message originated from eBay. Learn more: http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/name-userid-emails.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- eBay sent this message on behalf of an eBay member via My Messages. Responses sent using email will go to the eBay member directly and will include your email address. Use the Respond link below to send your response via My Messages (your email address will not be included). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Important Marketplace Safety Tip: http://pages.ebay.com/securitycenter --------------------------------------- Always remember to complete your transaction on eBay -- it's the safer way to buy. Please do not offer to buy or sell this item through this form without completing the transaction on eBay. If you receive a response inviting you to transact outside of eBay, you should decline -- such transactions may be unsafe and are against eBay policy. ====================================================================== Response to Question about Item -- Respond Now ====================================================================== Response from etrade168 Item: PS2 REZ Trance Vibrator import Japanese 2 New (8219304226) This message was sent while the listing was active. etrade168 is the seller. --------------------------------------- vibrator only ====================================================================== Respond to this question in My Messages: http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?M2MContact&item=8219304226&requested=etrade168&qid=1250502888&redirect=0 ====================================================================== Item Details --------------------------------------- Item name: PS2 REZ Trance Vibrator import Japanese 2 New Item number: 8219304226 End date: Sep-21-05?22:37:05 PDT View the item description here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8219304226&sspagename=ADME:L:RTQ:US:1 --------------------------------------- Is this email inappropriate? Does it violate eBay policy? Help protect the community by reporting it. -- eBay policy: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/rfe-unwelcome-email-misuse.html -- Report URL: http://cgi1.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ReportEmailAbuseshow&emaildate=2005/09/17:06:43:58&emailtype=3&trackId=1250502888 Thank you for using eBay! http://www.ebay.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Learn how you can protect yourself from spoof (fake) emails at: http://pages.ebay.com/education/spooftutorial This eBay notice was sent to stupid@xxxxx.xxx on behalf of another eBay member through the eBay platform and in accordance with our Privacy Policy. If you would like to receive this email as HTML, change your notification preferences at: http://cgi4.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?OptinLoginShow See our Privacy Policy and User Agreement if you have questions about eBay's communication policies. Privacy Policy: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/privacy-policy.html User Agreement: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/user-agreement.html Copyright ??2005 eBay, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners. eBay and the eBay logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of eBay, Inc. eBay is located at 2145 Hamilton Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125. ----- End forwarded message -----
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