Terminally Incoherent

This made me chuckle:

#732536 +(361)- [X]

<El_Pompo> what would be the best language to build a crawler in?

<Emetri> jawa.

It’s a quote from bash.org of course. It might take you few seconds, but you will get it. Or not. Either way, I’m not explaining it.

Ok, here is a hint:

Get it?

I think I want a Koala! No, not the bear you silly people. What the hell would I do with Koala bear. Although, I have to admit it would be kinda awesome conversation piece. Chicks dig little cute fuzzy critters like that too so it possibly could get me laid or something.

“Oh, that? That’s just my Koala bear. He eats eucalyptus leafs and poops golden nuggets. Yup, that’s what they do. So…. You wanna do it?”

Yup, it would be quite awesome. Quite awesome indeed. But I digress… What I wanted to talk about is this:

Koala is a mini desktop system from System 76 that imitates the Mac Mini in shape and size. It has decent hardware specs for it’s size, comes preloaded with Ubuntu (Edgy) and sells for $600. I’m tempted to buy it because of the size. Right now, I’m strapped for space and I have no where to put another computer. But I could just plop Koala anywhere, and since it is a Linux machine it could basically run headless. It also has wifi, so all I really need is to set it up once, then just plug it into a power socket and I have a running linux server that takes virtually no space.

I would essentially use as an SSH server which would be the entry point to my network from the outside. I could probably also run several other services on it for my personal use.

Yes, I could buy a Mac Mini for the same price, but I already decided that I will most likely buy a MacBook at some point this year and I kinda really want a Linux machine running in the house. And I totally want to support a business which sells Linux based systems - there are so few of them these days.

Does anyone here have any experience with System 76? How is their hardware? Are they reliable? Do they offer decent support and warranty? Let me know.

The site was down between 3 am and 7am EST today. I apologize for the inconvenience, but this was beyond my control. My host was doing maintenance in their data center, and had to shut the power down in their building.

Anyways, sorry for the interruptions. All systems should be up and running by now.

Alex Papadimoulis from The Daily WTF just decided to rename his website to Worse than Failure. If you are not familiar with his site, you should definitely check it out. He posts a daily WTF stories from the IT industry sent in by readers which are usually good for a chuckle or two.

It’s funny, but I always figured out that the name suited the content perfectly. However it seems that Alex has grown tired trying to explain his websites title to people in the real world. He specifically mention the awkward situation in which he was asked by his grandmother to define the acronym WTF. Personally, I do not consider this term to be vulgar, but someone who never heard it before might possibly be offended by it.

An awesome-cool name is not always a good name in the long run even if it describes your content well. A popular website with large reader base can be a great asset. But if your domain name contains the term WTF it might not be the best idea to put it on your resume.

A poorly chosen name can also be a factor stunting the growth of your readership. For one, I know that my own site name is a mouthful. In addition my domain name is long, and has a hypen in the middle of it, making it difficult to remember. In retrospect, I have to admit that it was probably a poor decision. So at some point in the future I may need to rethink this name, and perhaps change it into something shorter, and easier to remember.

Fortunately the name of this website would probably never put me in an awkward or embarrassing position like the one Alex described. Even though it’s hard to spell and pronounce, it is clean. What would get me in trouble though is the content, and I tend to swear, insult people and voice my political opinions here.

Choosing good names that are both catchy, memorable and fun is hard. This is why people in marketing can actually be useful. Normally upon sighting marketroid I would usually “kill it with fire” but I have to admit, that they can actually be useful sometimes if controlled properly.

Lately everyone complains about the call centers in India. Sadly the truth is that when you call a large company, the first line of support operators will be equally dumb no matter where the call center is located. Because of the volume of calls that you get at large corporations, it does not make sense to put skilled technicians in a call center. What you do is you hire the dumbest, least qualified, phone drones by a truckload and have them filter the calls. Important issues get escalated, and usually reach someone with some expertise. But before it does, you will probably go through 3-4 phone calls, and about as many escalations. It sucks ass but that’s how they do it.

The sad truth is that people manning the support lines stateside can be so dumb that it hurts. For example, it appears that no one at the Verizon call center can’t tell a difference between .002 cents and .002 dollars. I shit you not. Listen to this audio clip of recorded support call (note, it’s really long):

The story here is this: the caller calls Verizon and asks them how much will they charge him for data transfer in Canada. They quote him .002 cents per KB. He actually makes them write it down in the notes. Later he gets a bill which charges him .002 dollars per KB. He calls back to contest this charge, and neither the support drone, nor his manage, and not even the floor manager can understand what he is talking about.

It actually hurts my brain to listen to this conversation. If I didn’t hear it, I would not believe that this exchange actually took place. I realize people are dumb, but I didn’t suspect that you could be this dumb and still function in the society.

Fortunately it seems that the guy who created this recording finally got high enough in the Verizon command chain that he actually encountered someone with a brain, who gave him a full refund.
Unfortunately their rank and file continue to quote people the wrong price.