LIFETIME LIMITED WARRANTY

This product is lifetime warranted
- except as defined below -

To be free of defects in materials and workmanship to the original purchaser when used under normal conditions from the date of purchase.

Swivel and tilt mechanisms and bases are warranteed[sic] for 5 years.
Pneumatic cylinders, casters, all wood or plastic components and all upholstery are warranteed[sic] for a period of 3 years.

This chair is made up of the following pieces, from the ground up:

1. Casters
2. Base
3. Pneumatic cylinder with a plastic cover
4. Swivel/tilt mechanism
5. Wooden chair bottom and back, with leather upholstery
6. Plastic arms that also hold the bottom and back together

Ok… so… maybe I’ve missed something important here… but… umm… what exactly IS covered by this warranty then?!

I have not once yet had to format my Linux partitions. I’ve switched drives a number of times, and done all sorts of things with various partitions, but I’m still using essentially the exact same installation I’ve always had. I’ve had to reinstall my packages a few times (two commands and I’m done), but all of my configuration files have always stayed intact, and I’ve never had any real problems. I must say that that’s quite nice.

Colette seems confused about why I would think the dog understood Flemish. The dog neither confirms nor denies its proficiency in Flemish.

Personally, I think the dog knows more than it lets on. I mean, really, how can you trust a creature that’s EXCITED about jumping into the car during rush-hour?

Microsoft slams iPhone as irrelevant

And I quote:

However, it’s a closed device that you cannot install applications on… — Chris Sorenson, Microsoft

I agree completely Chris. Closed devices and proprietary software are both bad. Please, tell us what we can do to be more open and be better members of the business community.

For those who are wondering what the heck I’m talking about:

demonbane@Thief:~$ dig warez.debian.net
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 21790
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 3, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; ANSWER SECTION:
warez.debian.net.       2938    IN      A       127.0.0.1

And, for those who are reading this and aren't geeks, find out about localhost.

P.S. Congratulations on making DD Nico!

• Izdajem sobu, ploče, knjige, tajne, prijatelje, rodbinu i državu.
• Selling [out] my room, albums, books, secrets, friends, family and country.
• Menjam žutog kanarinca za svinju od 150 kg. Boja nije bitna.
• Looking to trade a yellow canary for a 150 kg hog. Color not important.
• Mlad student, 26 godina, ne puši, ne pije, ne juri ženske, rado bi promenio način života.
• Young 26 year old student, doesn’t smoke, drink, or chase after women, gladly willing to change lifestyle.
• Ako neko želi da ostavi alkohol i cigare, nek’ ih ostavi kod mene.
• If anyone is looking to leave alcohol and cigarettes behind, you can leave them with me.
• Vi imate Sony PlayStation, ja imam vreme, znanje i iskustvo. Za simbolicnu naknadu prelazim najteže nivoe igara.
• You have a Sony PlayStation. I have time, knowledge and experience. For a symbolic gesture of goodwill from you, I will gladly beat the most difficult levels of games on your behalf.

Current Mood:  amused

<begin EXTREMELY geeky stuff> (scroll down for more non-geek stuff)
I have a nightly cron-job running on it that creates updates my local Debian mirror. Only I don’t use any of the standard tools for the job, I use a home-brew script (sidmirror.pl) that I wrote years ago. (As a side note, if I ever revive my “Geek Page” under WP, I’ll start putting up the tarballs again.) One of the things that the program does is compare every single file in the local tree against a list of current packages as extracted from the mirror’s Packages file.

The only catch is that the loop that does the check is AWFUL. I mean, REALLY REALLY REALLY awful. To the tune of:

foreach (@allLocalFiles) {
    foreach $item (@packagesFiles) {
        if ($item ne $_) {
            push(@deleteFiles, $_);
        }
    }
}

The actual code is slightly different, but not by much. The loops are really that bad.
</end EXTREMELY geeky stuff>

So, needless to say, this burns a LOT of CPU time. So much, in fact, that the normally quiet little Dell turns into a raging ball of hot-winded fury. As soon as all of the fans kick in I get the feeling that my apartment is about to be blown up by a nuclear device which is charging up as I sit there, paralyzed.

This goes on for a few minutes, and then, as suddenly as it started, the noise stops. The fans start whirring down and within a few seconds I’m in near-perfect silence again. It’s freaky, in a way… as though the Dell is saying to me, “You managed to escape this time, human… but some day… some day soon… oh yes… it’s coming…”. Lets just hope that “it” isn’t a creepy clown or some such… or, if it is, that it’s a QUIET creepy clown.

(As an amusing note here, I originally started writing the note this morning around 10. I just checked it again a minute ago at about 3:30, and most of the eastern half of the world is offline. I guess they do need to sleep sooner or later.)