bokeh
n.
The pleasantly blurred or out-of-focus look the world takes on after one has spent the evening enjoying a few beers with the members of his/her photo club (e.g. “He has good bokeh this evening”). The word “bokeh” comes from the Japanese word “boke” (pronounced bo-keh) which literally means fuzziness or dizziness.
*one ringy dingy*
*two ringy dingies*
*three ringy di–*
“Uhhhhhh….hello?”
[ pause ]
“No, but we can order them in for you.”
[ pause ]
“Okay. Thanks.”
*click*
“Hon?”
“MmmmMMmMMMfffff.”
“Hon! Wake up.”
“What?!?”
“That was [name removed] from Consort. They need a new inkjet cartridge today and wanted to know if we had any in stock. I told her that we could order some, but that wouldn’t help her right now.”
“It’s freakin’ Sunday morning. Don’t people sleep around here?”
“Apparently not.”
Back at the beginning of the month I went out to a customer’s home. She had taken her machine into Oyen to have a new DVD burner put into it. When she returned home the machine would not boot and gave her a disk error. She called the computer shop back in Oyen and was told that they couldn’t possibly look at it until next week because they were too busy. She called me instead.
As it turns out, the shmuck in Oyen simply didn’t push the molex power connector all the way into the back of the hard drive when he reassembled her case. It would have taken him two minutes to fix this if he had let the customer bring the machine back in. Anyhow, I fixed it and did some other work for her while I was there.
The extra work included setting up a wireless network in her home and cleaning a few virii and trojans out of her two systems. I left the customer with up-to-date versions of Windows XP running current antivirus and spyware protection utilities.
I got a call this past Monday from the client saying that AVG Free had stopped working. I told her to go back to Grisoft’s site and download another copy and to try reinstalling it. She couldn’t. At some point in the past three weeks her computer had become infected with a nasty that had not only disabled her antivirus product, but that was preventing her from going to popular antivirus sites as well.
So I spent all of Wednesday working on the machine. Whatever had infected it showed up as multiple iexplore.exe processes running at a fairly high CPU utilization. The thing is, nothing registered on any of my antivirus scans. Not McAfee. Not F-Prot. Not AVG Free. Not Sophos. Trojan Remover found nothing. Nor did Spybot S&D. Sysinternals Rootkit Revealer said the system was pristine. But every couple of hours something would knock out Windows Firewall and her antivirus product again.
I finally had to give up and reinstall the OS as it was the only way to be sure that I had permanently gotten rid of whatever her system was contaminated with. I’ve given her the standard lecture about ’safe hex’ and what not to do online in the hopes of preventing this from happening again, but the problem is that I’m not exactly sure what happened. It would have been nice to nail down the exact virus or worm that was causing the problem.
Has anyone else out there run across this? Can you recommend some utils I haven’t tried? I’ve Googled this issue backwards and forwards and I haven’t found anything helpful on it. All I can tell you is that this is the nastiest Trojan I’ve ever fought with, and lost to.
One of the first things you have to get used to when you move into a rural community is that the nearest towns have a tendancy to roll up their sidewalks and shutter their windows at 6 PM. If you’re going to go anywhere after that you’ll most likely wind up in a restaurant or a bar. Everything else is closed, with the exception of the service stations out on the highway.
That’s how things work. The locals out here know this. That’s why I’m absolutely floored that the last two people shopping for computer prices have phoned me late in the evening on a weekend. Hell, one called after 9:30 PM this evening. Futureshop in Edmonton isn’t even open this late. I’m grateful for the business, but jeez, what makes people think of shopping around for a PC at a time of night when many families are hitting the sack?
Weird.
Today marks the 14th year of keeping “the plug in the jug”. My wife (who I met over seven years ago) and my daughter (4 1/2 years old) have never seen me drunk. With luck, they never will.
One day at a time…
“…I thought I’d mention that I’m the new media columnist at the National Post. Should be fun. (…) I’m expecting/hoping it’ll make Michael Bate’s tiny skull explode.” — Feb 10, 2006
“Michael Bate is a fucking hypocrite again!” — Warren Kinsella, Jan 31, 2006
“As any regular knows, I don’t believe Andrew Telegdi belongs on the junior high dance committee, let alone in Parliament. Andy is a member of Paul Martin’s privy council - and he’s the same guy who some years ago called people “niggers,” and who more recently attacked Jews who object to his defence of a Nazi death squad member (check out what his fan David Irving posts here). Last night, at an all-candidate’s meeting in Kitchener-Waterloo, he called me a “cancer” within the Liberal Party. That’s nice; he and Mikey Bate should hook up.” — Warren Kinsella, Jan 12, 2006
“Have I mentioned, recently, that Michael Bate is a frigging moron and a hypocrite? No?” — Warren Kinsella, Dec 15, 2005 [Note: Michael Bate's name was apparently hyperlinked to this page in Warren's post. Was Warren implying that Mr. Bate uses, or has used, cocaine?]
“My goodness! Frank magazine is back, sort of, and I hear candy man Mike Bate is annoyed with Yours Truly in the latest Hill Times. That’s quite upsetting.
Let’s have some fun with them - just like the fun they have with others!
If any of you pay to subscribe to the new online Frank magazine, I can advise that a few public-minded citizens will shortly publicize email addresses where folks can send the entire contents of every new Frank issue. Someone will then, um, ensure they get posted somewhere safe - in The Grand Caymans, perhaps - and you can read it all for free!! Forget this $120 a year stuff!” — Warren Kinsella, Oct 03, 2005
Y’know, one would think that the author of a book like Kicking Ass In Canadian Politics (highly recommended, by the way), someone who regularly likes to dish out the abuse, would also be capable of taking some heat in return, right? Right?
I finally tried the new soft chewable Rolaids this evening. The taste was disturbingly familiar and it took me a while to place it. These new Rolaids taste like they’re half salt taffy and half barium (the chalk-like substance you’re forced to drink for stomach X-rays).
Disgusting.
“Did you hear that Dick Cheny shot some guy when he was hunting for quail?”
“Excuse me?!?”
“What?”
“Would you mind repeating what you just said?”
“Dick Cheny was out quail hunting and he accidentally shot his friend in the face.”
“Oh, damn, I liked the first version I heard better.”
“What did you think I said?”
“I thought you said that Dick Cheny had just shot Dan Quayle.”
Oh, goody. Steve (Pissy in the Great White North) Janke is giving lectures on political sophistication. I hope his politics are more sophisticated than his last attempt at guest blogging for Kate, because, well, that was just awkward.
[h/t: Damian]
Here’s the text that I have to read each time I run my lens cleaning CD-ROM:
Why should you use a CD-Rom Lens Cleaner? Because the surface of CD Lens being not proper protected, this would cause the dust and dirt affixed onto the lens, the lens would therefore not be able to pick up the audio and video signal very well. The lens would release the laser beam and beam would be transferred into audio/video signal to equipment itself. Therefore the lens must be cleaned while it affixed with dust and dirt in such case the CD-Rom Lens Cleaner is simplest and most efficient cleaner. We recommend you to clean it once a month, or more often while audio do not work very properly.
It breaks my heart that writers in Asia are getting paid to churn out trash like this while those who can write — like Nancy — are working in beer stores instead. Jesus wept.