Saucemaster

At work most people receive multitudes of emails not related to anything they do or want to know about… QHealth is no different. What’s funny is when an email like below is sent without any context to the entire 100,000,000 user base of the filthy orgainsation…

Colleagues,

Justin was readmitted to the hospital again on Monday for a scan, but was released again later on. We believe he is understanding things more with his wife’s assistance - but then forgets again afterwards. He is confused, and very much concerned with what happened on the night of the assault and has asked for assistance from the people who were with him to piece things together.

For friends who wish to visit, Justin’s wife has asked that when he is better, people visit individually as he is not doing very well with more than 1 visitor in the house at the moment.

With this in mind it is a pleasure to report at the last count over $6600 has been raised for him so far, and there is still money being collected by Technical Assurance (Block 7, Level 8), and by Data#3.

There will be a morning tea at Block 7 next week (details to follow) where, with the help of Data#3 - Techncial Assurance will try to sell the remainder of the raffle tickets. So if you haven’t bought one yet, someone from TA will be coming to visit your area in the next few days.

Thank you very much to Data#3, and the staff that have already contributed. Your support is very much appreciated.

Kind regards,
Technical Assurance Management Team

NOTE: Please do not reply to this email address (If you wish to contact Technical Assurance please contact: Lenita_Me—-th@health.qld.gov.au or on 363—–9)

It’s not just Justin whose having trouble piecing this together!

I ruin earphones for my iPod regularly. And its always the same: a wire starts to break inside the cable shielding, usually near the plug, causing one of the buds to intermittently cut out. It started happening again last week, with the Panasonic RP-HV152 earphones I’ve been using for the last several months. These are some of the cheapest earphones (about AU$10) you can buy, and they were ok for a temporary stop gap, especially as I already had them just laying around. But they are dead to me now, and I need to quickly find some new earphones before I have to actually talk to any of the microtards I work with.

Previous to the Panasonic’s, I had gone through three different pairs of Sennheiser MX 350 earphones. These were pretty good earphones, not harsh and reasonably detailed, with light but nice round bass, costing around AU$40 a pair. I probably would’ve bought another pair of these if I had been able to find them for sale, but alas it seems Sennheiser has moved on (to some real weird-ass designs: witness the fucked up preying mantis MX 90 VC.)

There’s the MX 51, can’t remember how much they cost, and at least they are black, but they are ruined by a goddamn awful chrome finish on the exposed part of the earbud. I hate that fake chrome look slapped onto every fucking product in an effort to add “design” to the feature list. I could’ve bought the MX 50 earphones, for about AU$50. They are made out of spandex or rubber or something, and they are a weird pearly white colour. And guess what? I don’t want white buds either, for obvious “wherever you are, I’m not” reasons. So its goodbye to the German earphones, and its probably for the best given that they keep fucking breaking on me.

I already have a (cold spare) pair of Sony MDRE818LP earphones, and I had to switch to using these when the Panasonic’s began to lose the fight. These earphones could be 5 or more years old, and they still work! But OMFGKMN, there’s chrome on them…I guess I bought them before the chrometards killed chrome dead for me. Thanks to the chrome, these phones look like crap. At least they are mostly black, and they work reliably. But they sound boring, no bass, not much detail *yawns*. Fine for a backup pair, but thank Christ my brand new earphones were delivered this morning as I was reversing out of the driveway.

I’m jumping ahead, but before I continue I should outline my criteria, in order of importance, for new iPod headphones:

1. Must be earphones/buds. I don’t like in-ear (I know in-ear’s sound better to some, but fear of deep penetrating ear canal rape is only tangentially homophobic) or clip-on phones (target market: Star Trek nerds), and bulky cans are totally missing the point of portable music.
2. Must be black, and only black. No other colours. No silver. No white. Definitely no chrome. My heart is black, and so shall be my earphones.
3. Must be affordable because I know they are going to fucking break. AU$50 is ok. AU$200 is not.
4. No decoration. Maybe a stenciled logo and L/R, if its subtle. Keep the ornamentation for silver-smithing.

So then. My lunch hour spent wandering the city looking for a suitable pair of replacement earphones was a dead loss day after day. Nothing, nada, zilch, not a zune. Oh yea, I did find a multitude of sinners, chrome everywhere I turned, white, silver, fake wood veneer, black fucked/decorated with extreme prejudice, in-ear, clip-ons, prices approaching AU$100.

Am I too fussy? Does not my platonic ideal exist within this manboob-riddled reality? Rebate Star Trek nerds, for I will not succumb to your star-sick gaze and off-key siren song. I will continue my search anew! But not in the physical realm. Instead, I turn to Google, its empty form input field and single blinking eye, a world that only exists in the mind, with no physical manifestation barring the electro-magnetic disturbances.

Searching here and there, I catch only whispers off the twisted-pair.

Responses to some tard asking for suggestions for better than stock iPod earphones. The usual suspects. Ugh. My stamina wanes, but then through the Dell heat haze I glimpse it: Yuin. I feel the chill, like a thousand BTU air-conditioner; I have a bright new hope, and a bright new lead to track.

Another nosebleed, and the Yuin buds are information poor, mostly recommendations. Unsatisfaction. Luckily there’s just enough information out there to determine that the Yuin PK3’s meet my criteria: earphones, black, subtle white stenciling, and AU$39.

I may have lost religion at an early age, but I still want to believe. I order a pair of Yuin PK3’s from Headphonic in Perth for AU$39 including postage. No credit cards, no paypal, bank deposit only, suckness, but not enough to disfavour this bright hope.

On the morn of the sixth day, that being today: deliverance. A wooden box wrapped in white cardboard with a pseudo-gothic font reminiscent of a tramp stamp, calligraphic clouds and chinese yew. A web tantalus printed on the box does not answer my HTTP GET.

The PK3’s are housed in a black plastic cylinder. There are optional foam covers for the buds, and I opt out. The 3.5 mm plug is gold-tipped and straight (rather than right-angled). There is a gold-plated 3.5 mm to 1/4 inch adapter included. The cord is thicker than the other earphones I’ve tried, and is J-shaped (asymmetric) rather than Y-shaped (like the stock pack-ins with the iPod). I prefer J-shaped cords, so this is a nice surprise. If anything, at 1.2 m the cord is slightly too short for my liking, and this could impact the PK3’s longevity. We shall see. The styling is very appealing, suitably minimal, all black, the buds are small with the speaker face a gloss black, while the rest is a matt black. The arm of the bud is pinched in slightly. There are two horizontal slits on the back of the bud, and a bass port running up the arm. They seem solidly constructed, and are approaching my platonic ideal event horizon.

First listen is slightly disappointing; plenty of detail, but some harshness and not much bass. An hour of breaking them in and they lose all the harshness, the bass becomes nimble and warm. The PK3’s are simply great value for money. A marked improvement over stock buds or your Sony’s and Sennheiser’s in the same price bracket. Maybe there is a God after all…more importantly though is the question of the PK3’s endurance: just how long can they stand to be in a sado-masochistic relationship with me? If they do suicide I already know I’ll be stretching for the AU$99 PK2’s next.

A selection of reactions upon listening:

“Moonshiner” by Uncle Tupelo

Gave me the sadness upon hearing the harmonica. My black heart just broke.

“Nude” by Radiohead

I used to think the production on “In Rainbows” was extraordinarily flat, but now this sounds like silk draped over my head. Prettiness.

“It’s Kinda Funny” by Josef K

Scottish early 80’s jangly guitars are even janglier.

“Pig” by Sparklehorse

A very loud song, and when the bass kicks in, woah boy.

“The Funeral” by Band of Horses

The reverb tail on the vocal just hangs in the air like a slowly dying butterfly.

Remember that brown, turd-like MP3 player from Microsoft called Zune?

And what do you get if you play that record backwards?

“Don’t use my anus…”

Reporter trades in his PowerBook for a notebook with Microsoft’s new OS.

Wow, this story already sounds like Microsoft-funded pure fiction, kinda like that whole Mac-to-PC switching fraud from a few years ago.

The new system font, Segoe UI, is simple and elegant.

And don’t forget plagiarised. Lucida Grande, the system font for Mac OS X, enjoys no similar controversy.

Lucky for me the HP notebook was powerful enough to show off Vista’s much anticipated Aero touches.

Yes, wasn’t that lucky, but I do find it strange that you neglect to mention that Apple’s consumer notebooks have been Quartz Extreme capable as early as November 2002.

I pressed Windows + Tab to see another cool Aero feature — Flip 3D — which overlaps windows for all running programs and documents like a Rolodex, shuffling the front screen to the back with each additional press of the Tab key. Positively gorgeous — and as useful as the Mac’s F9 Expose feature, which miniaturizes all open windows to fit on the screen so you can see everything in a single glimpse.

Well maybe not quite as useful as Expose. Whereas Expose shrinks and tiles every visible window, letting you at a glance point at the window you want to switch to, Flip 3D forces you to cycle through every window one at a time until you find the one you want to switch to. If the window you want is at the back of the Flip 3D deck, there’s no doubt you’re going to waste a lot more time hunting for that window than you would using Expose.

Minimizing a few windows to the task bar, I was wowed by miniature live glimpses of the running programs as I moused over each. A video game trailer I’m viewing on Gamespot, for instance, continues to play in the miniature, minimized window.

Again, why not take the time to mention that Mac OS X has shown the live contents of minimized windows in the dock since the first version of Mac OS X shipped, March 24, 2001. Further, there’s no “mousing over” required, the icon for the minimized window is the scaled down version of the window. If you’re playing a movie and minimize the window, the movie keeps playing scaled down, in the dock. If you’re playing a movie in Vista and minimize the window you get a rectangle embossed with the title in the taskbar that you have to mouse over to see the live preview.

Given the subtext of your article is a comparison between Vista and Mac OS X, you seem to be doing your best to avoid comparing the two. Now why would that be? Smells like intellectual dishonesty to me.

With everything downloaded, I dove into Outlook 2007, whose all-in-one approach I’ve always admired. This interrelation between mail, contacts, calendar, tasks and notes is great, particularly when it comes to making an appointment based on an email invite, or getting a quick, month-at-a-glance look at upcoming birthdays.

You may prefer Outlook 2007’s all-in-one approach, however Outlook does not ship with Vista. What does ship with Vista are three separate applications dedicated to email, calendars and contacts. If you like the all-in-one approach of Outlook on Vista, I’m amazed you never bought Office for the Mac, and used Entourage which is Outlook’s equivalent on the Mac.

Vista’s bundled Photo Gallery is better than iPhoto, which I hate because it organizes pictures by “rolls” that correspond to the date they were taken, but there’s no way to simply organize iPhoto by existing folders.

Nope, you’re plain wrong, iPhoto does not organise photos by “rolls”. All photos are stored in a single library, and you create albums to organise the photos. You can tag your photos, rate your photos, create photo books, calendars, and great slideshows (with the Ken Burns effect). The “rolls” thing is a misnomer, because iPhoto includes a couple of smart albums by default that show your last few imported rolls.

The only transfer I’ve seen go so smoothly is when using the Mac’s Migration Assistant to move from an old PowerBook to a newer one.

Nice, and let me remind you that this feature debuted with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, April 29 2005, and you just need a plain old firewire cable.

Times have changed. And I’m happy to report — and Microsoft no doubt even happier — that I’ve had zero indication of any kind of net-related badness since switching to Vista. Microsoft now bundles in a more powerful firewall program for controlling access in and out of your computer. It also includes Windows Defender, an anti-spyware program.

Sounds to me as if you are comparing Vista to XP here, not to Mac OS X. If you’re switching from the Mac to Vista, who cares if Vista is better than XP because you weren’t using XP were you?

In fact, Vista’s system-wide search in some ways beats the Mac because it requires only one keystroke — the Windows key — to bring up the Start menu, where you can immediately type.

By default, to start a Spotlight search in Mac OS X you press Cmd-Space. Of course you could always remap the shortcut for Spotlight to a function key to save that one keystroke. Can you even remap shortcuts in Vista?

At the same time, there’s something more literally hands on with the Mac, as far as how folders are simply organized and the way programs are a single file rather than a whole folder full of files that generally cannot be moved from where they’re installed.

Imagine this, to install an application I drag its icon to wherever I want (usually the Applications folder), and to uninstall that application, I just delete the icon or drag it to the trash. The icon is the application. That’s how it works on a Mac. So you can keep your Add/Remove Programs, uninstallers, registry hacks, and other hateful esoterica invented by misanthropic C++ programmers.

But I really miss that peaceful, Zen-like quiet I felt with my Mac when I’d wake it up or put it instantly to sleep. For me, it just works right, without really having to think about it. So I decided to switch again. From Vista, back to the Mac — to the brand new, white MacBook on which I told this story.

So this is the punchline: after using 3 different Vista notebooks and supposedly falling in love with Vista you end up buying a brand new Mac. So what’s with the disingenuous title of your article? You didn’t fucking switch to Vista, you tried it for a while, thought it was fine, and then went back to using the Mac.

Microsoft Updates Its iPod Competitor

“For something we pulled together in six months, we are very pleased with the satisfaction we got,” Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, said in an interview Tuesday. “The satisfaction for the device was superhigh. The satisfaction on the software actually is where we’d expect to see a huge uptick this year. It was just so-so on the software side.”

It took you six fucking months to rebrand a Toshiba Gigabeat? And then it was only so-so? Why did you release it? What is wrong with you morons?

“I’m sure a year from now we’ll do even better,” Mr. Gates said. “But I’m blown away by what they’ve been able to do in a year.”

Gates, you’re so passive-aggressive. Yes, in technology things get better, faster, cheaper as a function of time. But that doesn’t automatically mean you have to give the Zune team a back handed compliment: if they’ve done a good job in your estimation just fucking say it. Don’t pussy around with this “it’ll be even better next year” bullshit. Awww, and now I can’t figure out whether to get a Zune now, or wait another year! :(

“The whole idea behind Zune is much broader than the devices themselves,” said J Allard, the Microsoft vice president who oversees design and development for consumer products like the Zune and the Xbox 360 game consoles. “The conditioned thought is around a portable device being the center point of the experience, when in fact it’s not. It really is about how do we start taking Zune beyond that device.” He said the social networking would appeal to Zune owners and people who had not bought the device.

Oh shit, you know its bad when they deemphasize the device they just finished announcing. It sounds like they don’t even want to sell any of these bricks this christmas.

Poor Microsoft, you didn’t hear the gun when the race started, and you’ve been lapped several times already. I don’t think you can catch up, so if your heart’s not in it, just sit this one out, k?

So Ballmer says that Google reads your email:

“Google’s had the same experience, even though they read your mail and we don’t,” Ballmer said, to chuckles and and a couple of gasps in the audience. “That’s just a factual statement, not even to be pejorative. The theory was if we read your mail, if somebody read your mail, they would know what to talk to you about. It’s not working out as brilliantly as the concept was laid out.”

That’s wierd, because Google’s page on Gmail privacy contrarily says:

Google scans the text of Gmail messages in order to filter spam and detect viruses, just as all major webmail services do. Google also uses this scanning technology to deliver targeted text ads and other related information. This is completely automated and involves no humans.

So either Ballmer is conflating humans reading your email with software reading your email, or he’s just a fucking cocksucker. Assuming its the former, how is ad-generating software scanning your email any fucking different from an SMTP mail server reading bytes of relayed emails on TCP port 25. They are both reading your boring stoopid emails, you lumbering dumbass.

Microsoft has been sued over the tragic discovery of an infant immolation easter egg in the Xbox console:

Microsoft(MSFT) is asking a court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by an Illinois family that claims their infant died in blaze sparked by a faulty Xbox video game system. Among other things, Microsoft is arguing that “misuse or abuse” of the Xbox led to the blaze.

The family’s “losses and damages, if any, resulted from misuse or abuse of the Xbox console at issue,” Microsoft claimed in court papers filed Friday.

The filing does not provide details on the manner of abuse Microsoft believes the Xbox suffered.

According to the original complaint, filed in December, the wiring that connected the Xbox to an electrical outlet became so hot that it started a “catastrophic” fire at a house in Warsaw, Ill. The victim, an infant named Wade Kline, perished in the inferno.

Kline’s family sued Microsoft, seeking unspecified damages.

(Emphasis added.)

So Ballmer, let me get this straight, your company is now claiming that the death of an infant does not count as a loss or damage to a family? What the fuck?!? I smell sulphur…

And they said games have no educational value whatsoever…

I watched from a sidewalk as these pair of cops managed to accidentally hit the young african-american gentleman’s car with their police vehicle. They then exited the police vehicle, pulled the black guy out of his car and shot his face to a bloody pulp in the street. Where exactly is this not teaching people about the real world?