Crap and Crapability

My goodness, what a start: I have a several thousand mails to catch up with at work (OWA does a -lousy- job at filtering spam) The Exchange mailbox is full so I can't send mail before I delete some The company I currently work for, IrisCube, has merged with been bought by another company, Reply. This weekend Reply migrated my mailbox created an empty mailbox and pointed the domain iriscube.com at the new server To save money they created a SSL certificate using an internal Certification Authority. This certificate is of course not trusted by Internet Explorer so I get a warning every time I to read mail with OWA. Even worse: ActiveSync on my Pocket PC doesn't ...

There are times I wish StarBucks caught on in Italy as well. Not for the coffee though as nothing beats a real Italian cappuccino! No, I wish I could find a StarBucks in Italy as well so I could get WiFi access for a decent price 'anywhere'. Seriously: who in their right mind (that pay their own phone bill) spends 6 euro for 1mb of traffic? And that is with my mobile carrier! The costs just skyrockets if you try to use GPRS in roaming. All this to say that there will be no posts for a week or so unless I find cheap WiFi or an internet cafe. Maybe I should do some WiFi war driving using Mini Stumbler instead:-? Not sure what the Italian laws is on this. Hope I don't ...

What I want to know is; who the heck wrote this book? The book covers the early CIA days of Jack Ryan and takes place been the Patriot Games and The Hunt for Red October books. The plot is very much Tom Clancy like but it looks to me like he wrote a 15 page summary that was given to a copy writer. The human aspect of the book is not bad but it is very weak in the area that has been the strength of Tom Clancy in the past: technical detail. Several of the characters also behave differently compared to the other books: Greer for example constantly repeats: 'this guy will go far'. What's the story? Is Tom Clancy getting old or does he need some quick cash to pay his ...

First Putin put up a $10 million reward for anybody that neutralizes the Chechen rebels Aslan Maskhadov and Sjamil Basajev. Then the Chechens doubled the offer "We offer an award of $20 million to countries, organizations or individuals who give the Chechen republic active help in detaining the war criminal" Putin. The statement was signed by "the anti-terrorist center of the Chechen Republic". What will they do when they finish playing Poker? Play Russian roulette?

Crap! Genesis crashed. Guess several people at NASA are trying to hide after the big media coverage of the event. It would have been way cool if the parachutes had worked and the stunt pilots had recovered Genesis. Shit happens I thought, until I had another look at the mission home page: (click for larger image) Notice the two different stories? The headline says that Genesis may have crashed due to parachute problems (pretty obvious that it crashed if you ask me) The other story says that the satellite returns in a dramatic capture I clicked on the Genesis dramatic capture link and I was greeted by a "return: not available" page: (click for larger image) If ...

Watched Plan 9 from Outer Space a few days ago. It must be one of the most crap movies ever. One of the actors passed away after shooting a couple of scenes as the "Ghoul Man". What did they do? Shoot the scenes again? No, the chiropractor of the wife of the producer takes over the role and holds the cape in front of his face the whole movie. The only "decent" shot of the "Ghoul Man" is repeated at least 5 times. More: BadMovies.org review of Plan 9 from Outer Space Buy Plan 9 from Outer Space on Amazon.com

Guess it's better to drive with the windows closed and the air condition on in Netherlands. Yahoo reports of Dutchman covered by crap "It was a nice night ... so he probably opened his window when he stopped at a traffic light, and then -- (it) happened," said Dana Kragten, spokeswoman for police in rural Drenthe province, on Tuesday. "The tank had a small window which burst, probably due to pressure ... The man said he had no time to back away his car or close his window."

What do you say when: You are white Your wife is white You are there, in the hospital, for the big moment, doing your best to not faint and you see a dark head popping out between the legs of your wife? Corriere Della Sera reports the fuckup in an artificial insemination lab where the embryos of a white couple went to a dark couple and vice versa. The white couple got two dark twins but the story doesn't say what happened to the dark couple.

Thanks to hard work by our technical support personnel: Crap And Crapability, Cool Or What and egilh are now up and running again. Let's just hope I don't face the same faith as Sony Executive that had to pay $850.000 for enslavement I was looking for a simple 5 1/4 adapter for one of me 3 1/2 hard disks but I couldn't find any so I ended up buying the ViPowER 10LSFU. If it works I'll buy one for the other hard disk as well, do their testimonial and post until the disks get full :-)

Ok, I admit it: my 'server' is running the cheapest hardware I could find that gives me the performance I need. I can understand saving money on some high performance design details but the PC case? I really want to me the guy who designed the PC case of my server. It looked OK enough when I installed the parts but I discovered a major flaw last night when the PC went down hard enough to refuse booting again (which explains why this post is 24h late). I opened the case and started poking around, looking for possible problems when I touched the cause ... The house still smells burned flesh! I made the mistake of touching the 2 hard disks I have mounted in the 3 1/2 ...

From ShitBegone, the only toiletpaper with its own blog I know about ShitBegone is the American dream. A young man from Wisconsin made his way to New York City, the Big Apple. There he set out to forge his own future, making his name in the world of toilet paper. ShitBegone is a journey of discovery, an assertion of responsibility, and an expression of joy. It is the embrace of life. It expresses dedication and hope for a better world, for each individual and for all humanity The page goes on to cover the finer points of wiping: Some people crumple them, but the better way is to fold them. When you crumple toilet paper, just like if you crumpled a piece of writing ...

Better be careful if you use your IBM ThinkPad on your lap: IBM said on Thursday it will recall about 553,000 AC power adapters worldwide for several models of its laptop computers because of potential fire and electrical shock hazards...The 56-watt adapters can overheat, cause damage to the circuit board and melt through the case, the company and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said Via [Slashdot]

Microsoft just released the new Windows Media Player 10. At the same time they also released a Preview Release of the Music Download service. The Music Download Press release service says: In addition to the new U.S.-only service, MSN is also working with industry partners in several international markets to offer music services that meet the specific needs and desires of the consumers in those regions. Through these relationships, an MSN Music offering, built on industry partner technology, is currently available in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Brazil, Korea and Australia. So far so good; finally a music download service that can be used ...

I have a bit of allergy/cold at the moment so I bought some sugar free Halls to feel better. I did a major mistake and left the pack of Halls in from of me while I was debugging a GIS system I'm working on. I went in 'debugging trance' and when I came out of it 30 minutes later there was only one Halls left. Boy did they work, but not in the way I expected. Turns out there is a small writing on the side; un comsumo eccessivo puo avere effetti lassativi. In other words; they're a great laxative I have to learn to RTFM before I do something.