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At the present my techno-farm, for lack of a dedicated cave, consists of only a few systems:

1. SAL1600—Gaming system, cica 2006.
2. Alice—Netbook, a mid-2010 model.
3. Vectra—Franken server.
4. My phone—A simple froyo based LG Optimus/LG-509.

Dixie, my darling laptop lays retired along with spare parts from vectra’s old case. My mother’s PC, tablet, and cell phone are exclusive of my interest here.

A few quick calculations for my über penny pinching mindset:

My phone isn’t particularlly spectucular but after a year of abuse, it still serves sufficently for what it does: excessive texting / instant messenging, and about as much web surfing/e-mail as a normal person might do on a PC. I particularlly like being able to lay down (without using a laptop) and chat/surf in comfort. My main beef is the limited internal memory (About 30M out of 150M, even with almost everything moved to the MicroSD card), and small screen size. A phone worth buying as a replacement, would cost in the range of $500 without any contract deals. A prime target would be something like the HTC Sensation. All things considered, I am generally hesitent to get such an Android device until 4.x is the norm, and I will likely use this phone until it drops over dead or the carrier offers a free/low cost upgrade at renewal.

After all these years, I will admit that despite being annoying years, SAL1600 has had quite a long life, it is only now just starting to show signs of old age (for my tastes). Sooner or later it will need replacement purely to keep pace with it’s main task, running DirectX powered games. Within maybe 3-5 years the CPU will be to old for the job, and by then the capacity for memory could be exhausted (I’ve not upgraded past the stock 2GB DDR2). Building a new computer from existing parts can be done pretty cheaply. Maybe $400 for a modern CPU, mobo, and a chunk of DDR3 memory. Plus a video card. I like Windows 7 as far as it goes, and think modern DirectX is a good thing for game developers (because of the requirements for support), but the cost makes building up a modernized rig as bad as just buying a new PC and a better GPU. Whatever Windows XP would do if I suddenly changed out all the core componants, idk. But in the end, it is just cheaper to spend for a better GPU ($140-$200).

Like wise for how much all of that PC shit would cost for an overhaul/replacement, I could easily buy an ASUS EeePad Transformer and dock. That is a device I really like the concept of, enough so that if I had knew it was coming out, I might not have baught Alice but instead saved for it, then rooted it. However, as I do have Alice, which for less work lets me what matters more (i.e. a full unix/linux environment), I don’t care to spend that much just for the possibilities it offers.

The end sum of things? I’d really like to persue these vectors but the Return On Investment is not high enough to make me interested in the expense. Given the choice, I’d rather save more or even pay off my car (a lot) faster. The average person my age, given my level of income, would probably go spending on gadgets like a raging bull in a china shop!

In taking a look at tablets in general, I can’t help but note if I ever did get a tablet for ‘serious’ use, I would probably be inclined to get something like the old HP Slate 500, slap Linux on it, and go. iOS and Android are pretty much the big shiz now when it comes to phones and tablets, but I’d still opt for something that I can put *my* choice environment on.

Reason why I would exclude iOS is because of Apple’s control, I also do not feel that the platform is sufficently designed for “Hackability” in the way that unix systems and Microsoft Windows are. While I’d probably be willing to by a Mac someday if I could justify the cost, an iPhone or iPad really isn’t likely to be something that I will ever buy for myself.

Android on the other hand, is similar but I would generally take it over iOS. What I don’t like about Android is the lack of control. It excells at what it does but you can’t really get that power over the device, unless you gain root access to it, plus setting up a suitable cross compiler or doing development on system with most present-day Android devices, would be mildly irksome.

Which makes me think, if the principal difference between something like a Galaxy Tab or a Slate 500, is getting to install my choice of OS, why does it have to be so? I mean, Android phones and the like generally have the issue of “Rooting”. But simply, I think manufacturers should offer pre rooted versions at an additional cost. Like wise, I believe the world would be a better place if Microsoft Windows eventually took this model as well, although I find that unlikely before the next major version of Windows (likely NOT8), and I think it’d be a darn fine way for them to get sued lol.

Ahhh, but in the end, there is a real kicker to it. I have a netbook that offers everything that I want. The only reason to have a tablet would be if I operated in an environment where a netbook was inefficent, like travelling most of the time. So in the end, I do actually prefer my Alice :-).

The day started off with my first alarm going off, and a sinking feeling that if I was smart, I would get up for work at the first alarm rather than the second. Probably ideal, because after a late night I was rather thinking of leaing early and stopping off for dunkin’ but alas, it was not to be.

The royal pain bellows in noting that there is some earth shattering discovery, there has been a recall of ground beef; this one in fact. She forgot to charge her tablet last night and her computer boots to slowly, so obviouly it is my problem to discover this impertive information, as my lunch for the day was made with ground beef. No sickness has been reported yet.

My tickets to Canada are rather highly non refundable and ‘oli escherichiais rather the sort of thing that would get me rejected at the border, so of course, I went through the problem of running Google. Is it so hard to type two words into a box and press enter? My word, I am genuis! Perhaps leaving my computer running, makes me brillant. Sure enough nothing matches what she bought so in theory, it is pretty safe, plus the reports show it was a totally diffrent kind of packaging then what she buys. Good, sounds safe.

Then my mother’s mental retardation caused me to facepalm into a morning headache. She didn’t want me to get ‘sick’ before my vacation, good reason for see the above paragraph. The WHAT THE FUCK!? how ever is that the same ground beef lunch was made from, we have been eating on pretty steadily for nearly two weeks now. If there was any problem it would probably have been noticed by now. To top it off, lunch is leftovers from several days ago. Meaning if there was an actual risk over 0.00000000001% it would be several orders of magatude to late, and I would already be ill. Totally wasted my time, made me ~20 minutes late, and all for something already obviously a non-issue, and we’ve been in perfect health. Just freaking brillant I tell you, or as my choice of words on the way out were, if there was a problem, her choice of actions would be like telling someone not to cut the red wire right after they’ve already checked into hell.

On the way out to add insult to injury, she begins ranting that customs have been strict lately and what if my computer gets taken away? I note their only interest in my computer should be that it’s the same one I left the US with and that there is nothing illegal on it (does linux count?), which goes for both Canadian and American security. Her useless rant continues towards the direction of border security being omni-potently above the law and able to do just about anything (maybe even murder on the spot?). FUD, FUD, FUD, FUCK OFF RETARD! I am tired of it. I don’t FUD. Go fly a kite. I really am tired of this endless stream of bullshit.

Breakfast became a Pepsi—as Coke has less sugar and caffeine. On the upside though, I only had to stop for petrol o/. Would it be rude to say, why don’t I just cut the Fugu myself?

Interesting little cluster of stuff:

1. Phone power level is critical, standard android message to connect the charger comes up.
2. SD card unmounted for reasons unknown!
3. The carriers account app gives me a notification saying
   that I should reboot my phone because it has been 49
   hours past the reccomended frequency of rebooting. My
   last power up was apparently “August 1st blah blah”.

   It says that they reccomend everyone reboot their phone
   at least once a week in order to improve/maintain
   performance.

Now why that makes me angry? Why the fuck would I want to reboot my phone? If
you require a reboot for performance reasons, guess what mac? YOU ARE FUCKING
DOING IT WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is exactly one device that I reboot for performance reasons: my Windows
machine, since games performance tends to suffer after a day or two of uptime.

My OpenBSD server reboots for kernel upgrades and power outages, or if the
weather outside is raining cats, dogs, and zombies, I may decide to
power down as a cheesy form of insurance..

My Linux powered netbook reboots when I decide I that I would d rather power
down then go to hibernate or sleep mode with my current session. My workstation
is usually powered off when I leave work and state is maintained on a
development server nearby.

Guess what. My phone only gets a reboot when one of two things happen:

• Power is so low that I decide to shutdown rather than get a dead battery.
• The SD card unmounted.

The former rarely occurs as unlike today, as I rarely forget to keep my charger
handy. Where as the latter happens every now and then, and the Android UI won’t
allow me to remount it; the battery is also ontop of the card, making it
impossible to yank and reseat. That happens every couple of months, although
more frequently of late.

Somethings make me angry.

O.K. I may have just recently cleaned out the mouse wheel of my MX400 at home, for the first time in years: as the dog hair and gunk was making it nearly impossible to scroll.

Today however, I got a new treat at work: the mouse on my desk is so old, there is mold growing out of it!!!

I’m really glad the keyboard is good stuff lol.

This is an except from a short convo’ about the similarity between programming languages in general.

	Me: Most programming languages are pretty much the same, it's just a matter of choosing your headaches
	A Friend: well yeh
	Me: Lessons learned:
		C -> sigh, yet another hash table implementation.
		C++ -> error messages should only be written in one of two ways, templates are written in a third.
		Java -> please GOD, not again.
		C# -> groan, building C/C++ libs is even worse.
		Perl -> Yes I know it is unitialized, damn gum it!
		JavaScript -> WTF was that mac?
		Lisp -> Did someone stick a fork in my eye?
		Lua -> off by one errno'
		Haskell -> Holy shit my head hurts.
		SML -> Cool headfuck but where's the damn batteries?
		Shell -> Shame most people SUCK at it...
		Cmd -> COBOL just got sexy.
		Python -> Can not use contractions.
		Ruby -> You lie.
	A Friend: you missed php
	Me: I respectfully omit PHP as it multiple inherits from several, and adds it's own headaches :-)
	A Friend: lol
	Me: hehe

That being said, except for the sort order, I would say that Lua probably got the highest marks there lololololololololol.

After recently reformatting the Windows NT box (I tend to every year or two), I did install Visual C++ 2010 Express Edition out of my ISO for the whole show. Well, finally I got around to opening a project file (after generating it with premake4 ofc). Running off the default settings, I went ahead and compiled, then I ende dup standing here “WTF, where is the button to clean gone?”

Then I clicked on the thing to enable “Expert” settings and was elightened. I don’t know if it is just beause it’s the Express Edition rather than the Professional Edition or something, but I just lost my last tread of respect for Microsoft—I used to think they knew how to make development tools.

Eh, that reminds me, if anyone holds there breath waiting on C99 support in the C-aware portion, you’ll die.

Somehow, whenever my brain gets so heavily infused with thoughts about this one particular girl in Canada, my coding aptitutde seems to increase… algorithms fall into place. It’s almost like hack mode with a smile, and I can’t explain it :-S.

Sigh, another slice of the universe that makes no sense yet o/

Great way to start off the work day: a headache and occasional spells of vertigo. Oi. If this impacts my coding, I shalt be pissed.

Before dinner, ma came in and gave the dogs some lettuce, well for one reason or another, Corky decided to leap on my pillow and basically roost himself on my shoulder :-/.