(Sunday 4/7/24 4:50 pm)


Rants & ...

... But when I couldn’t get to the BIOS on a 2014 Windows 8 Asus the repeated ESC way, the web said “press ESC, F2, Insert one after another repeatedly while booting” and that worked....

Or at 10/8/17 on an asus ux31a “ZenBook” Windows 7 laptop: repeated F2s gets into the bios. BUT instead, doing repeated F11s got into the windows something menu, whereupon an F8 got me to a screen of choices, one of which was SAFE MODE. ... Sadly, the thing itself went bonkers shortly afterwards, and while F2 and F11 still coax it into various states of psychotic revery, it will most likely window no more forever....

... And Apple ithing VLC won’t repeat, no doubt some careful enhancement added at Apple’s twice-weekly upf--ks. This and many other experiences suggest VLC is no longer supported by the heroic charitable super-geek open source FOSS community.

... But then, at least at Tuesday, October 4, 2022 10:39 am, the apple iphone repeats like a champ, and plays the file better than my pixel, where VLC is still basically non-operable.

The Woke & the Dead

And here is a moment of silence for the Victorian Trading Company, which has apparently passed beyond our mortal ken sometime around 1/1/23, at least they’re no longer at https://www.victoriantradingco.com. They sent their lovely catalog to me several times a year, filled with dubious junk, much of which I bought, the worst of which I returned once or twice — but now they are no more. ... They do not google; they do not load. ... Well actually there seem to be traces at ebay (https://www.ebay.com/str/victoriantradingcompany) what still (1/8/23) shows some typical merchandise. The picture over there was a typical victorian print they peddled, many of which I screen-scraped for my pitiful delight, but it was the strange bits of plastic and metal <= I sometimes bought. ... & I will miss them.

... While I’m at it, I will commemorate a few more fallen/falling:

Both these stores, as part of their death throes, have indulged in pitiful bits of woke perversion promotion, taking their place in the great mandala of communist fronts which so enlivens our national scene. Those of us of the hideous despised Republican persuasion have sometimes concluded it’s the wokiness that brings them down — Target’s “perversion for children campaign” still underway even as I drivel, in honor of National Perversion Month — but my subtle analysis is they first get stupid, then a corporate power vacuum lets the innocent mice play, symptom of decay and inevitable doom....

... scurrilous whines

... That’s right! For a few months before 12/21 I’ve been trying to buy things at my beloved trashy merchants with paypal, and it would fail with the usual incomprehensible error messages — but of course they couldn’t just say “we haven’t extorted your cellphone # yet, you pitiful craven shopping addict”. ... And I actually thought it was the fly-by-night merchants duplicitously trying to evade the paypal percentage! ... But in my childish ignorance I picked the wrong thieves. ... Oh what a tangled web....

Sun 8/14/22. And some of the usual merry criminals are doing some kind of “man-in-the-middle” paypal scam, where they entice you to sign-in to your account because of a dire obviously false charge, so they can steal your password. Probably wouldn’t work with me anyway, but it shows how paypal is getting on....

10/20/22. And then in the last few weeks paypal boasted they’d fine people $2,500 if they committed various woke-offensive speech crimes — the weird rule rescinded in a little while, maybe, or who knows. Obviously a fine reliable service to use for your payments....

Friday, July 1, 2022 1:11 pm. Google-around for “uninstall dropbox smartsync” and find many web authorities complaining about it, and add me to the list. ... Dropbox of course started doing it without asking, and what it does is let me have enormous giant files seemingly in my dropbox directory — but they’re not actually there! ... Wunnerful isn’t it? But if you stupidly have the dropbox directory in your backup path, as I stupidly did, then the backup will hang-up for varying lengths, and sometimes forever, if the internet’s a little flaky — which of course, it never is. ... And what’s good about it, like a lot of these scammy cloud “backup” schemes, is if you’re actually so stupid as to let dropbox have its way, whenever you want to finally uninstall dropbox for some unimaginable reason — they got your enormous giant files which, even if they’re cooperating, will take forever to actually download — if you can actually do that. ... So vaya con dios ... and excellent scammery, Dropbox!

I reinstalled Dropbox in a place outside my backup, hoping that someone at dropbox central had realized what a collosal upf--k this stupid sync thing is and took it out of the default install. ... But that’d make sense — and that is not the way of modern software....

Never Mind

Oh ... See ... I just didn’t understand! It’s the easiest thing on earth; you just EDIT the stupid screen, by holding one of the repulsive items on it until it wiggles, and then you can move it, or off it, or as I did, off EVERY STUPID F--KING thing, until waving my finger at the lock screen SHOWS NOTHING!!!!! ... Of course I googled 5 million times to “get rid of news on iphone lock screen” and got many amusing instructions from the crustaceans who inhabit the internet, none of course of any value.

And no doubt the super-expensive iphone gets a more tasteful default set, not including democrat talking points. ... Ahhh, so serene....

The last troubleshooting step when your iPad is not connecting to Wi-Fi is to reset its network settings. ... Open Settings and tap General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings. Enter your iPad passcode, then tap Reset Network Settings to confirm. Your iPad will turn off, perform the reset, then turn back on.

... Of course that should be your FIRST stupid f----g stupid piece of s---t stupid.

... And then again, a month later, the same thing worked in our innocent woodland cabin what was the mini’s place of exile. So I guess the real rule is, any adequately old apple product — more than 15 minutes will usually be about right — ALWAYS reset the network settings if you have the strange exotic desire for the network to actually work.

At the 35 minute mark, still restoring the registry. Incidentally, many computers have an LED that flickers to show disc activity, and I, perhaps foolishly, assume that as long as it flickers, the reliable carefully-contrived usux™ software wasn’t hung-up....

... But I will not rend my garments in despair; I could always buy a $3K computer, except I don’t want one. (Actually this puff claims they’re more like a $1K-2K.) So I’ll be stuck with “good old games”, a much lower-rent outfit which deals in the games of yesteryear, which I never played, although I purchased many colorful boxes. Gog didn’t actually work this week — I had to scurry around the web to find an actual downloadable gog, which I couldn’t get from their site, after they warned me that my old copy was hideously malformed — but of course your mileage etc. ... But ubisoft is definitely gershtunk, on my otherwise admirable cheap-junk desktop. ... And I never actually played games anyway, because I found the silly puzzles annoying. And still do. Thus my controlled grief.

... And of course, there couldn’t possibly be any kind of collusion between the ridiculou$ hardware manufactures and the ridiculous game requirement$ ... oh how could I imagine such thing!?!...

But in the fullness of time & meaningless tides, it was $6.85 including shipping @ ebay / “totalsoftwarecorp” (maybe?; softwaretotalpc? names are obscure there) which finally brought my pitiful antique laptop back to life. Along with the microsoft XP home disc they sold me was another DVD with, I guess, various popular device drivers, which I used, and thus enabled the all-important ethernet, as well as sound and I guess USB.

... You understand, this without any stinking windows code — the witless Windows Authenticity Tripe sticker on the bottom of the laptop had a code, and I scanned it and printed it out, so I could actually use it, and it worked! — after which I had to go through the endless telephone robot-vital-intellectual-fluids exchange to “activate” Windows the all towering stupid & remorseless....

... So I guess google’s too busy stealing your personal data to bother with this crustacean stealing your computer....

... And in our up-to-date times, Adobe has taken up the challenge of scammy malware copy-extortion pretend-graphix software....

The rant pages: Rant. Rant2. Rant3. Rant4 (beautiful organs). Rant5. Rant6. Rant7. Rant8. Rant9 (silly cameras). Rant10. Rant11. Rant12. Rant13. Rant14. Rant15. Rant16. Rant17. Rant18 (Computerdammerung). Rant19. Rant20. Rant21. Rant22. Rant23 (more silly cameras), & Rant24, Rant25, Rant26, Rant27, Rant28, Rant29, Rant30.

(www.xara.com)



— xkcd