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Timmerov's Blog
Friday, September 30, 2016
  evotrumption
trump is a natural result of evolutionary biology. i explain. it's all about breeding strategies. evolution selects for individual fitness. it is a common misconception that fit means best. as in biggest, strongest, smartest, most talented, fastest, etc. nope. evolution judges you by how well you can transfer your genes to the next generation. ie how efficiently you can breed. being the best as previously defined is a strategy. however, very few individuals can actually be the best. consider a herd of deer. the bucks compete to be the prince of the forest. who then mates with all the does. there are other strategies. for example, the does identify the prince and mate with him. he's pretty easy to identify. he won all the fights. and chased off all the other bucks. but there are still more strategies. a doe could identify a future princeling while he's still young and too small to challenge the prince. which brings me to the last breeding strategy i'm going to discuss. a buck could figure out what traits the does are looking for in future princes and imitate them. imitation could be cheaper (and safer) than actually investing the resources to becoming the biggest and strongest. ie the trump strategy.

stereotypically the R party has a ruling elite (the princes of the forest) and a loyal following (the does). the rank and file have done really well historically by following the leaders. the rank and file don't need to understand the issues. they just need to identify people who do. they can focus on putting food on the table. win-win. historically the rank and file have done a pretty good job of picking leaders. but then along comes trump. he's a pretty shitty businessman. but he honestly truly believes he's a really good businessman. he must be. he's gotten richer. the rank and file can be forgiven for believing it. cause they've been bred to trust their leader selection criteria. real leaders and real businessmen hate him. cause they know for absolute certain he's a fake. he's really only popular among other charlatans. who are hoping to join his fourth reich.

note - the stereotype is easier for me to see in the R party. cause of my particular bias. i'm sure the D party does the exact same thing. so feel free to substitute D for R and hellary for trump and politician for businessman in the above argument if that's your preference.
 
Friday, September 23, 2016
  winbash
okay so i'm running bash on windows. which is actually pretty cool. however, there are some gotchas. the first one i ran into, and it's a doozy, is the unix file system and the windows file system are seriously NOT compatible. you can find the unix files in AppData/Local/lxss. but just leave them be. cause if you edit one of them with say, visual studio, yer fucked. bash won't be able to find the file. well, it will be able to see it. but not access it. and certainly not delete it. and what's worse... windows won't be able to delete it either. which is just really goram weird. but... it's clearly labelled beta. so ya get whatcha get.
 
Thursday, September 22, 2016
  clippyclonetana
jfc microsft! cortana. really? really???!!! people fucking hated clippy. and now you've inflicted cortana on us? shame on you. shame on us for using this piece of shit operating system from that piece of shit company. anywho. how to kill cortana. run a command prompt as administrator. c:\> cd c:\windows\systemapps c:\> takeown /F *cortana* c:\> mkdir c:\windows\SystemApps.bak. open the C:\windows\systemapps folder. cut the *cortana* file. navigate to c:\windows\systemapps.bak. paste. permissions thing shows up. ignore it. open task manager. details tab. kill cortana et al. kill searchui. go back to the permissions dialog. tell the stupid thing to move the stupid file. reboot. ***caution*** this will disable the program search feature. which is kinda useful. sigh.
 
Sunday, September 18, 2016
  mod-t
i got a mod-t 3d printer a while back. it's best feature is that it's cheap. and it does a passable job at relatively easy stuff. i've printed buttons and soaker hose to pvc adapters. so i've gotten useful work out of it. but fundamentally its value is entertainment. i have vague plans to 3d print a chess set. printing through the web site works pretty well. it was down one day and i tried slicing using alternate methods. and burned a hole in the platform. yeah. don't do. that. currently i'm trying to print a large piece. and am running into a new set of problems. so i figured i'd coagulate advice for all (meaning my future self) to find. - score the platform with the wire brush so the pieces stick. pieces are printed at 45 degrees. support is printed nsew. so i score at 22.5 degrees. give or take. - some spools of filament are wrapped more tightly than others. if it gets stuck it could break. the printer will notice there's no filament and stop. but if it doesn't break then the printer will happily go through the motions of printing without actually printing anything. which kinda sucks. ideally move the tight filament to an empty spool. loosely this time. i don't have an empty spool yet. so i just unspool as much filament as i think i'm going to need. then respool it. - as the filament is drawn into the printer it can tug the spool right off the holder. position the spool holder so the filament is pulling the spool onto the holder. i haven't tried putting the spool anywhere other than right next to input hole. though i'm hankering to try putting the spool on top of the case with over the top unspooling. - remove the platform from the carriage. flex it to free the piece from the platform. - unload the filament when not in use. it gets brittle and tends to break in the feeder tube. blech. - to cancel a print: tap the button. wait for the extruder to move to the top. hold the button until it stops flashing and stays on.
 
Friday, September 16, 2016
  tramp
trump is like rolek. everyone knows rokek is cheap knock-off of rolex. so there's no fraud, right? everyone knows trump is a lying sack of yams. so it's all good, right?
 
Thursday, September 15, 2016
  rhythmbox
so i moved from windows to linux. centos specifically. i miss visual studio. and i miss itunes. am currently using rhythmbox. it works in that it imported my itunes collection. and will play it. shuffle play even. but it's missing features and polish. like frikken remember which playlist i had selected yesterday. cause likely imagonna wanna play it again tomorrow. sheehs. it's got shuffle by track. but not shuffle by album. apparently there are plug-ins that'd do the trick. but man, should be built-in. it crashes when i right click a track. which is a pretty natural thing to do when you want to remove a track from your playlist cause it's playing christmas carols in july. which is just wrong. relaunch. re-select the playlist. sigh. some sort of volume normalization would be cool. not sure if itunes did this or not. but man. some songs are just real freakin loud. and others are dead silent. /end rant. yeah i know. i have the source.
 
Monday, September 12, 2016
  catcalling
the beautiful and talented alisa trained the cat to come when called. hear the noise. get a treat. a yummy yummy oh so good treat. it's a very effective method. even a creature as stupid as a domesticated house cat can figure it out. the cat calling noise is made by noisily sucking air across the lips and teeth. kinda like the noise a mouse in distress makes. but loud. anywho... so one morning i hear my wife calling the cat. and calling and calling and calling. okay so i had to go see what was going on. she was sitting in the living room reading. i opened the sliding door. and sure enough. outside, up on the powerlines, there was a mockingbird calling the cat.
 
Sunday, September 11, 2016
  measles
know any anti-vaxxers? they got kids, right? are they healthy? i'm gonna go with nope. more likely you're thinking these are the sickliest kids around. the good news is if they survive they'll grow up to be just as healthy as the kids who got the vaccinations instead of the diseases. TWICE! heh. i explain. most every infection knocks down the immune system. usually for a couple of weeks. but measles is a whole other kind of beast. measles knocks down the immune system for YEARS. but wait, there's more. measles seems to make the immune system forget every disease it's ever encountered. which means if a kid gets knocked out of school for a week with chicken pox, then gets measles. the kid could get chicken pox again. chicken pox kills an otherwise healthy kid once in about 25 thousand infections. pretty good odds. but man, why on earth would you risk that twice? and that's just one of the many childhood disease that can kill your precious snowflake. so yeah, if you love you kids, vaccinate them.
 
Saturday, September 10, 2016
  codeblocks
so i pretty much only use windows when i have to. my current editor of second choice is codeblocks. but it's got a number of shortcomings. the biggest of which - sometimes it loses its fucking mind when it opens a file. 100% cpu usage for literally minutes. doing god knows what. the workaround is to disable symbols browser. Menu Settings -> Editor... -> [Icon] Code Completion -> [Tab] Symbols Browser -> [Checkbox] Disable symbols browser. this might get reset every time you open a new project. dunno for sure. but it does seem to somehow get re-enabled. which is really frikken annoying. cause i forget the workaround. and giggling the answer generally gives stale answers to past bugs that chewed up cpu forever. sigh. i bash microsoft a lot. deservedly so. but man. visual studio is the cheesecake.
 
Friday, September 09, 2016
  permacon
okay so i installed windows 10. i made an administrator account admin. and a standard user account timmer. and i installed turbotax. now there's a fucking shortcut on timmer's desktop i cannot delete. pah. right click. properties. security. edit. add timmer. give timmer full control. apply. close. close. close. now i can delete the shortcut. fuck you microsoft.
 
Thursday, September 08, 2016
  lose10
oh. my. god. so i was working at a startup pretty much from the time windows 10 released to the time the free update expired exactly one year later. so i couldn't really take down my computer for an unknown amount of time to do the update. also wasn't sure i really wanted to. given the negative press. but then someone said windows 10 could run ubuntu. really? cool! so we were going on vacation most of august. things were naturally winding down at work. so that last week of the free upgrade period was set aside. i tried mightily. something always went wrong. and that's pretty much literally what windows said. oops something went wrong. piece of shit. so we went on vacation without upgrading. came back. and centos started telling me the windows disk was failing. oh dear. not sure that's exactly why windows 10 wouldn't install. but okay. then one day it completely died. i had already backed everything up. so i wasn't too worried. and i wanted to replace the hdd with an ssd anyway. so i bought a windows 10 pro oem license key from the internet for $25. should be good to go, right? well, yes. but really, no. there was a trick no one would tell you about. download the windows 10 iso from the microsoft website. not the windows 10 N nor KN nor Home. Windows 10. okay? good. burn it to a dvd-r. open up the pc case. install the new ssd. unplug all the other hard drives. leave the case open. boot from the dvd. install windows. first problem, the key was rejected. okay. proceed without one. windows 10 installs. yay! but no network. hrm. okay find the motherboard disk. install the network drivers. reboot. yay! network. oh god. updates. still can't activate. cause it's an oem pro key. and windows installed retail home. blech. and this is where i wasted a crap ton of time. but the solution is easy. and obvious. (imagine eye roll that would pull muscles.) /sarcasm. so boot from the dvd again. install windows 10 again. this time choose custom install. delete the two partitions windows made last time. and enter the key. this time it works! wtf? really microsoft. fucking really? sheehs. finish the install again. this time it's windows 10 pro. yay! but network is gone again. install network drivers from motherboard disk again. and now i have a working windows 10. sheehs. i'm frikken exhausted. so my working theory is the first key check failed cause there was no network. so the installer installed windows 10 home. whereas the second check did work cause the install dvd found the network drivers from the first installation. and once the installer validated the keys, it knew they were for oem pro. so it installed windows 10 pro instead of home. whew. this might explain why you can't just install windows 10. you have to install windows 7 or 8 first. so the win 10 installer can pick up the network drivers. confused? you won't be after the next episode of suck.
 
Saturday, September 03, 2016
  "coincidence"
the other day i happened to glance at the two ads on whatever web page it was i was looking at at the time. one was for diet coke. the other was for a teeth whitener.
 
Friday, September 02, 2016
  chrome
chrome disappeared from computer today. obviously something went wrong with yesterdays update. no problem. i'll just google a solution. oh wait. hrm. okay, the links are there in /bin /usr/bin. they point to /etc/alternatives. which goes absolutely nowhere. okay i'll just uninstall chrome and install it again. what's the command for yum uninstall? i'll just google it. oh right. amazing how we've become so dependent on a thing that didn't exist when i started using computers for a living. anywho. yum by itself led me to yum reinstall. which did the trick. wee!
 
most every day i wander the corridors of my mind and open a door at random.

blogs of friends
bad astronomy
freedom to tinker
joe's

web comics
casey&andy (complete)
cheshire crossing (complete)
indexed
middle age
order of the stick
smbc
wildelife
xkcd

comics
dilbert
doonesbury (sunday only)
foxtrot (sunday only)
frazz
wizard of id

defunct
azriel's
bob's
byron's
caitlan's
cool science facts (idle)
exploding unicorn
flyingvan
phil's
ratface's
rob's
some ex-intern's
tina's
hyperbole and a half

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