RANT

What day and age is it when you live in an apartment complex and experience download rates that are CAPPED at 100KB/s? Obviously it's the 2007's, because I am living that nightmare right now.

I suppose I shouldn't complain too much, seen as how the internet is included in the rent, but I just can't see the justification in capping people at such a low rate...are they paying their ISP by the megabyte? Did they get an internet plan that included JUST enough bandwidth to supply every toom with 100KB/s bandwidth? In this day and age every room should have AT LEAST 300-500KB/s; we're living in the information age, slow internet just isn't going to cut it!

And here's something else that chafes me about the internet around here: any YouTube videos pulled from cache.googlevideo.com DO NOT LOAD. The majority of flash videos seem to be pulled from that site; whenever I want to watch a YouTube video, I'm stuck earmarking it and watching it later at work. Oh the humanity!

By the way, downloading 3.4GB of Painkiller (woo, got it at half price!) at 100KB/s does NOT equal fun. After letting it run overnight (seven hours or so), it's only downloaded ~700MB...*sigh* I suppose I'll just leave my computer running all day until it's downloaded.

Mad snaps, kudos, and props to EER and Danny! That's right, the problem I was having with the admin-side notes textbox was solved by none other than Erik and Danny!

To recap, about 6 months ago I created a textbox on the admin page that I could type up random snippits of my thoughts and ideas for future articles into. Despite the simplicity of such a system, I decided to integrate the note into the MySQL database. After all, how difficult would it be to update the one entry in the notes table every time I clicked a button? Little did I know that I would lose many hours of sleep in an attempt to figure out why something so simple could fail so horribly.

The problem I was having was when I clicked the Submit button, whatever value was in the Notes field would be completely erased. I could put a value into that field via PHPMyAdmin, but whenever I ran my script from my blog, the value would be deleted. At first I thought it might have been a problem with the structure of my MySQL query, so I echoed out the text that was being spit out to the MySQL UPDATE query. Nothing was wrong with my query; I could take it and run it through MySQL Query Browser, and it would work as I intended...so why was the value being deleted?!

For the next six months, I let that feature simmer on the back burner. I ended up sextuple-checking my code for errors, looking for anything that would affect the table, but nothing came up. My code was fine, my SQL query was well-developed...this problem should not have occurred, as it simply defied all programming logic.

Flash to today. A couple co-workers of mine (not Erik or Danny) tried solving the Case of the Mischievous Update and made the interesting discovery that the update query was running twice! Rather than use an UPDATE query, they used an INSERT query and every time they submitted the Notes textbox, two new rows would appear in the Notes table, one with the value in the textbox, and one blank one. Curioue, eh? After a couple hours (divided up over a couple days, yes we do get work done here!) of scouring my code, neither of them could find a reason why the MySQL query would submit twice.

Enter Erik and Danny. I explained to Erik the new findings, that the MySQL query was being run twice. Now, being the curious individual he is (and having an entire copy of my blog's codebase), he took it upon himself to figure out what exactly was causing the problem. Today, he finally figured out what had been causing the problem!

What was it that was messing with my Notes?

Any guesses?

I could give you 10 chances and you would get all of them wrong. Do you know why? Because you would NEVER guess that it was a JAVASCRIPT file causing the problem! Yes, a client-side Javascript file was somehow messing with a server-side MySQL query! Don't ask me how that works, since none of us, myself included, can see the logic behind that. Suffice to say that the site's Lightbox script was causing the problem, and after commenting out that javascript file from the header, the Notes box worked just as I had originally intended!

Thus ends one horrible and confusing chapter to the book that is Unleashed Creativity's Development! Were it not for the ingenuity of Erik and his cohort Danny, I would most likely still be struggling with this problem, but now, I can move onto bigger and better things, like FLAT-FILING THE NOTES INSTEAD OF TAKING UP SPACE IN A MYSQL DATABASE FOR SUCH AN INSIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF INFORMATION!

I like to keep a tight ship with my computers, if only to maximize the amount of time between reinstalls of Windows. Performance on both my tower and my laptop is smooth because I've had quite a bit of time to figure out an exact list of programs I need to install, thus keeping away from any "bloatware".

Being as tech savvy as I am, I like to dabble in new programs that occasionally cross my path, if only to note their merits for future use. I don't mind downloading and installing the program because I know there's something new for me to play with and hey, who doesn't like playing around with free software?

When all the fun to be had has been had, though, THAT'S when I get pissed off. Why would I get angry? Didn't I just sate a bit of curiousity? Sure I did, but after all the fun's done, I have to put up with the bullshit that is FINDING A WAY TO GET THE PROGRAM OFF MY COMPUTER. MOST programs (I'd venture to say 99%) include an entry under All Programs on the Start menu that include links to documentation, the actual program itself, AND THE UNINSTALLER! I don't have a problem with most programs because when the time comes for me to uninstall an application off my machine, I can just look for the program's entry in All Programs and click on the uninstaller. Short, quick, and above all else, INTUITIVE.

"Oh but what about the Add/Remove Programs dialogue?" First off, before I go any further, Microsoft, what's the deal? "Add/Remove"? When was the last time I ADDED a program using that control? Is it even possible? No, its not, thank god you changed it in Vista. How useful is it for removing programs? Its useful alright, if I enjoy WAITING for my computer to compile a list of programs I can uninstall EVERY TIME I RUN IT. How about you have the control generate some kind of flat file that contains all the uninstallers currently on the computer? If you're going to check for EVERY uninstaller on the machine, do you think Windows could stream uninstallers as Windows finds them? That might be a bit quicker. Hell, Spybot compiles a list of programs with uninstallers faster than Add/Remove Programs does. Go figure.

Wow, look how quick this turned into a hate-rant about Windows. I love Windows, though, so let me clarify that my anger is directed to all the application developers who find it best, in their INFINITE WISDOM, to NOT include an uninstaller in their All Programs entry. If you're one of those developers, please, PLEASE, go to Hell and don't come back until you figure out the best interests of the CUSTOMER and not yourself.

ToDo:

- Find out what the hell this is:
<o:p _moz-userdefined="" />

It keeps appearing in source code viewed from Firefox. I can tell that its something Mozilla generates, BUT WHAT DOES IT DO?!

Linux enthusiasts abounded at the news of Windows Vista, because pure speculation tells us that they were pleased to see that all of Window Vista's new features were all possible on their beloved linux distributions. Fancy new search? Beagle has that taken care of. Snazzy new UI and special effects? The Beryl Project has you covered (video of Beryl in action here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZD7QraljRfM). And the "best part" about all of this is, ITS ALL FREE!

In the case of Linux, the old adage "you get what you pay for" is the order of the day.

Its been seven months since my last foray into Linux, and yesterday I found myself sacrificing my laptop to test out Kubuntu 7.04, code-named "Feisty Fawn". For those of you who don't know, Kubuntu is the same OS as Ubuntu, except it uses an alternate desktop environment, KDE (instead of Gnome). Part of my motivation to test out Kubuntu originated from many articles I'd read on Digg.com about how easy Ubuntu is to upgrade to, how much better laptop-hardware support has become, and how nice Ubuntu looks after installing and configuring Beryl/Compiz. With Windows Vista's recent price tag set at around $400 (plus or minus $20), I figured, what the hell, why not see if my less-powerful laptop (compared to my tower) can survive on a steady diet of Linux; if Kubuntu received my seal of approval, then I could save myself $200 (OEM is SO much cheaper than Retail!).

Lets start off with installation. Getting Kubuntu onto my laptop was, for the most part, hassle-free. I hit a couple snags installing from a 6.06 Live CD, but the installer did warn me that I was using a beta Live CD installer, so I worked through it and managed to get the OS installed.

A quick reboot later, and I behold! It booted! I proceed to log in, hooked it up to the internet, and played around with all the shiny (literally, the icons were incredibly reminiscent of any Web2.0 company's logo) programs.

I soon noticed a program telling me that I needed to upgrade, and upon clicking the notification, I proceeded to wade through the > 380 files I was told I needed to download. Not wanting to actually read them all, I just hit update and sat back to watch the magic happen...

...for TWO HOURS...

And that was just to download them all! Needless to say, I didn't sit through the entire upgrade process, but by the third hour, all the updates had installed, and I could move on with the experience.

Now, I'm using a copy of Kubuntu 7.04, the version of Kubuntu that comes out...after...the next version of Kubuntu...which isn't out yet...

Go figure.

To cut this (literally) 12-hour-long story down to size, I'm just going to bullet point everything else. Yes, I know its a lazy means of writing an article, but I'm sure you won't mind saving a few minutes:

> Automatix2 is a program designed to easily install MANY Linux programs, including MP3 SUPPORT and DVD PLAYBACK! I got it installed, but it wouldn't run because I wasn't running Ubuntu...that fact STILL confuses me, because as far as I know, Kubuntu IS Ubuntu with a different desktop environment.

> MP3 support had to be installed! I thought there were some freely-available DLL's that one could install for MP3 support, but are all of those in violation of some kind of patent for the MP3 compression algorithm? That could be the case.

> Wireless support for my laptop was non-existent after installing AND upgrading, which was one of the breaking points for me. If I can't move around with my laptop and still get internet, then I can't use the OS, simple as that.

> There is no safe-mode if you screw up the video driver. I learned that the hard way after installing the proprietary ATI driver. Luckily, I knew my way around the console enough to get back into the config file I modified and remove the modification, thus restoring my desktop.

> I had read an article talking about running Windows applications side-by-side Linux apps, something akin to Parallel's Coherence mode for Apple laptops. This was one of the features of Linux that intrigued me, since it held the promise of being able to work with some of the Windows applications I use on a daily basis (Web coding in Webuilder 2006, for example). Unfortunately, after attempting to set up three different virtual machine programs, Linux freaked out (I am almost certain it was because I canceled an installation script half way through the install procedure) and wouldn't install any other VM program I tried. I could have gone in and fixed the problem, but I was at 12th-hour and was too annoyed to proceed much further.

I'm sure there were a few other things that turned me off of the idea of migrating to Linux, but those were the major annoyances. Perhaps I was simply too spoiled with the ease at which I get things done with Windows, or maybe I went into the whole experience expecting not to get anything done. In any case, I reinstalled Windows, upgraded it, and installed the basic list of programs (Gaim, Windows Live Messenger, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, IZArc, Foxit PDF Reader, Comodo Personal Firewall, AVG Anti-Virus, and some hardware drivers)* in about two hours.

Two hours with Windows[/b] and full hardware usability[/i]...or [b]12 hours with Linux and [i]more time needed to get everything working...

If only I'd know this yesterday! But as those crazy French say, sest la viyay! I mean, c'est la vie!

*All of these programs are freeware, enjoy!

Windows Vista came out, and you know that that means: obsession pondering of whether my laptop will be powerful enough or not to run it!

Enter the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor! This nifty free program from Microsoft scans your computer for hooka-jooks and sprockets that may or may not work with Vista and lets you know if you're ready for the big move. "Oh how handy, this is an awesome program," Microsoft must have been thinking when they released it...

Go jump off a friggin cliff, Microsoft. Your program sucks for one reason: I HAVE TO INSTALL IT!

Programs that are only designed to be used ONCE (for something like upgrade compatibility reports) SHOULD NOT HAVE TO BE INSTALLED! Give it to me in a zip, or if you're so obsessed with offering it as an EXE, make is a self-extracting EXE, unload all the files to a single self-contained folder on the desktop, and let the user run it from the folder! When I'm done with the program, I highlight the folder, right-click, 'Delete', and poof! Done!

But no! You'd rather I install the program, use it, and then go to the Control Panel, run Add/Remove Programs, wait for the list of programs I have installed to appear, scroll through the list of programs while I try to find the program ("is it Microsoft Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor? Just Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor? Give-More-Money-To-Microsoft Upgrade Notification Agent..."), click Remove, and then wait for the program to uninstall!

Once again, something so simple is made complicated because it CAN be made complicated! Next time, Microsoft and other programs I use once, try doing things the UNCOMPLICATED way please 'k thanks!

I've tried to be consistent with my posts, I've tried to come up with interesting material, but its been difficult. What does an eighteen-year-old write about that would interest friends, let alone people who have no idea who the hell he is?

That question plagues me every time I sit down to write a news post. The posts I've made recently have been droll affairs, short and succinct due to a general lack of time. College has been a mixed affair, some of it good, some of it bad...I find myself getting distracted easily in an effort to divert my attention from work and matters that must be taken care of, and in my distraction I fail to make progress on things that would be interesting. The internet is a constant bane to my education, providing boundless expanses of information, and just as many distractions. Unfortunately, I get lost in the distractions and find myself reverting to my old tactics of waiting to the last minute to get things done. Its a nasty habit that I have yet to break, and it frustrates me every time I find myself in the same situations as I did during high school.

Where is my magical transformation into a mature young-adult? College is supposed to be a time of maturation and self-growth, but yet I find myself acting very much like I did last year. Am I wanting things to happen faster than they will happen? Perhaps I'm expecting too much of myself, but then again...bah, I paused mid-rant and lost all the angsty steam that was fueling this rant.

In any case, I'm still alive and bitch-I mean kicking, and it really sucks that the IB-style of learning I experienced during middle- and high-school didn't prepare me for test-taking. End-of-the-year projects and presentations doth not test-preparation strategies make. Now, its back to studying!