bryan wann :: binary fury

I reinstalled OS X today using the “Archive and Install” method. It basically moved my existing /Applications, /Developer, /Library, /system, /private directories to another place, installed a fresh copy of the OS, then restored my apps and accounts. Several things were broken afterwards like codecs, printer drivers, VPN, and some Adobe CS2 files. I was able to root through the files and restore most of the stuff.

One thing I was excited about was the promise of the built in OS X VPN client doing group authentication. It seems “L2TP over IPsec” is different than “IPsec”, which I need to connect to our Pixen. Short story is, I’m stuck using the existing Cisco VPN client.

However I am excited to find that Yahoo finally got around to releasing Messenger 3.0 beta. I’ve been stuck with 2.5.3 for a few years primarily because other y! clients like Fire don’t do cameras. The camera support in 2.5.3 is buggy, there’s been cases where the camera will crash my client and the person that was I was chatting with. Yahoo’s stance has always been “who uses macs? there’s not enough for us to care.” The new client looks iChat-ish and video seems promising.

Another stupid email from my apartment management, this time connecting freedoms of the United States to their services. Really, somebody is trying too hard to be clever.

Hi Bryan,

Let FREEDOM RING!!! Today we are celebrating our independence. We are grateful for the freedom we all experience as Americans. As a resident of our community you have many FREE services we provide. Feel FREE to call us if we can serve you!

We’re glad you’re a resident!

Sincerely,

Your Team at the AMLI at Lantana Hills

I caught the last few minutes of the Italy vs German soccer game in Chicago. That’s all I needed to watch. 0 to 0 in overtime, Italy scores two goals in a minute to win. woot!

I made it to Seattle! Wearing earplugs on the flights was the best idea I’ve ever had. Both had multiple babies that wouldn’t stop crying the whole flight (the parts I was awake for, anyways). Especially the four hour flight from Chicago, there was one two rows ahead of me that was really wailing non stop for hours.

The fireworks here were crazy last night. I didn’t see any of the professional shows, but there was plenty going off in the neighborhood. All around us people were launching artillery shell-style fireworks from their driveways. Not just a few people, it was about one launch per block. It was like driving into Bahgdad and seeing anti-aircraft fire. The smell of burned gunpowder was all over and the air was full of smoke. So awesome a sight and sound.

Last night I left my Oakley sunglasses on the bumper of my truck while I was working, then went out for dinner. Whoops. This morning I found them a few hundred feet away, they had been ran over by a car. Interestingly, the frames were scratched to hell but were intact. The lense and nosepiece were further away; the lense had a crease in it, but it wasn’t broken. That was awesome in itself, I was able to salvage them by buying new lenses. I really expected them to be shattered; says a lot for overpriced plastic.

I designed what I think are workable feet for the Rover rack. I tried cutting the sheet metal with a jigsaw+metal bit, but it was a horribly noisy ordeal. I had bought a 100′ extension cord, which reached perfectly out to the street. I worked on it out there thinking it’d quiet down some of the noise; I could hear the noise echoing off the buildings. I’m surprised somebody didn’t narq me out to the apartment fascists (even though I was on a public street). I went back over to Nathan’s and used his chopsaw to hack out the pieces. The’re a little rough, but nothing a grinder or file won’t fix up.

I made the journey up to Killeen and went to several Army surplus stores. Most of them had a bigger selection of stuff than I remember in stores I had visited before. Lots and lots of new/used clothes too. Army combat uniform (ACUs), battle dress uniform (BDUs), chemical suits, parkas, winter jackets, synthetic underwear, wool underwear, formalwear. Boots, lots of boots too. I like buying used military stuff for work clothes, it’s cheap and still durable.

The two stores that stood out to me were Surplus City and City Surplus. Surplus City was right off Ft Hood property and where I went first, the largest of the stores. They had a decent selection of used rope, netting and canvas that could be handy for Burning Man. Great deal on used hemostats, three for $5; at Fry’s they’re $7 each. Handy things to have for odd electronic projects. City Surplus was a small windowless building; I didn’t think much of it until I went inside. Floor to ceiling of clothes, it was packed! This is where I found and bought a traditional shemagh (keffiyeh).

Back in Austin, I went over to Nathan’s and started to work on the vise project. It took a couple of rods but I finally remembered how to SMAW weld. The comedy of the situation was that Nathan was working on fuel injectors on his fixer-up Subaru while I was welding and grinding a whole eight feet away. Drilling the 3/4″ holes for the pins was tricky. Whenever I’d try to sink the bit, it would wobble and try to walk all over the metal. We slowed the drill press down to 200 RPM, which helped some. The sheer amount of torque being applied was causing the entire drill table to vibrate. I had to ease the bit down while applying light pressure and either hold on to the work or the shelf to cut down on the vibration. It wallered out a huge chunk but eventually settled in a spot and drilled through.

I decided to weld in some bracing underneath the vise platform and make it removable. I figured having an upright piece would be useful somewhere down the line and keep my options open. This thing is solid and may be over-built. Its first test was bending the 1/2″ re-bar for the carrying handle. No welds broke, yay.

It needs to be disassembled and painted, but here’s the final product. I also need to round off the corners of the plate, I stabbed myself in the leg last night carrying it around. Outside of the Land Rover project I don’t know how much I’ll put it to use, but it sure makes for a great blog entry right?

Today’s lesson on foreign policy: (picture me almost yelling at the person on the phone so they hear me)

Me: “I need the hard drive serial number. it starts with WCAL, then eight digits.”
Tech: “WD2500SD drive parameters 255 cylinders 63 sectors”
Me: “Ok, that’s the model number. What is the serial number?
Tech: “Server number?” *proceeds to give me the server serial number*
Me: “No no, the hard drive serial number.”
Tech: “Yes yes, it is a serial aye tee aye hard driver”
Me: *cry*

I had a dream last night I had ordered a pizza, I kept waiting and waiting, an hour and a half later, it never showed up. At some point this morning I thought I really did order one. I’m hungry now.

I keep having this reocurring dream where I’m running a race/marathon and my legs get so heavy early into it, I have to slow down and pick them up and move them into position. I’ve been having this dream occassionally for months. I don’t know what’s up with it. I think twice I’ve had a dream where I was able to run unemcumbered and it felt great.

As each day goes by, I’m my hatred for advertising, marketing, and to a degree, capitalism is growing. I loathe when marketing runs contrary to technology and convienience. It has gotten to the point where it highly annoys me when people try to sell me things, no matter the method. I see it as a con, somebody is trying to make me part with money for an object I’m perfectly fine without. If I really needed something, I’d go out and buy it or improvise my own. I don’t need somebody else telling me I need to buy their widget.

Sex sells. This one annoys me the worst. People will stick a hot girl or guy (or even “secret sex tips to drive your man wild” for the reading crowd) on the cover, box, TV commercial, home page or whatever just to market it to the general population. And it works, extremely well. If it doesn’t result in a sale, it certainly results in attention which is a gold mine to a marketer (think booth bunnies).

I have truely gotten in the mindset that if it’s marketed with a hot girl, watch out — the girl is bait, somebody is trying to get me to spend money on something I wouldn’t otherwise. Whatever was actually sold, there has to be enough perceived value behind that hot girl to get the person to keep spending money again and again. This takes place over, and over, and over again.

Take Maxim for example (for sake of argument, we’ll pick one that doesn’t show nudity, but I believe it holds true for any), it shows hot girls on the cover and throughout the magazine to get you to buy the magazine. It throws in enough video game tips, football coverage, fashion tips and a few cocktail recipies to prop up the percieved value to coax you into subscribing. The rest is advertising to the age/gender demographic that happens to fall for that particular magazine By then, you’ve already paid money; the editors will put in the minimal amount of expense and effort to keep you buying that magazine.

Herding people to websites. Everyone does it, unsuccessful websites don’t. You’re either doing it for yourself — where you herd people to your web site so you can market your product on the hopes you’ll close sales; or you’re doing it for somebody else — herding people to your site to make people see/interact with advertisers and sponsors.

Tricks that require me to interact with a website when there’s viable time consuming alternatives
really
piss
me
off.

Let’s take MySpace for example. Social networking websites are pure money machines. When a friend (that you’ve suckered into joining, and laughed at them for doing so) sends you an email, MySpace will send your primary email account saying “you have a new MySpace message — log in to the website to read it!”

…

You’ve just sent me an email, asshole, why not send the actual message to me and make it more convienient for me? No, it will never happen, they want me to go to the website where I’ll be exposed to advertisers. And because I’m already there, I will stick around for a few minutes which exposes me to more advertising.

GMail did something that surprised me. It’s predominately a web-based service, yet they give you POP3 access so you can read your email without having to go to the website. I haven’t used that method to see what the catch is. POP3 is a pretty basic protocol, no frills there. IMAP offers way more functionality, but you’re not going to see it offered (Gmail please prove me wrong) because it’s going to reduce the amount of eyeballs going to the website to read those targeted ads.

Soda cap instant win games have actually taken a step BACK when it comes to convienence. Back in the day, you’d twist off the lid and it would tell you “you’re a winner” or “sorry, drink more.” Marketing got clever and started putting codes under the bottle caps like “X48JJP”, then tell you to visit a website to tell you if you’re a winner. Why? So they can grab your attention for a longer amount of time and try to market more to you. Maybe this works well because people like codes.

Gathering information from customers. “May I get your address?” “May I get your telephone number?” “Would you like to be on our mailing list?” My answer to these questions have always been no. I’ve gotten countless shocked looks because I refuse to give somebody my telephone number or ZIP code at the register. I must surely be some undesirable riffraff who doesn’t play the game! One might say, “it’s such a trivial piece of information”, but my response is it has absolutely nothing to do with the transaction — totally unnecessary. It wastes my time giving it out, zero incentive. *Maybe* every now and then they’ll need it for credit card verification, that’s fine (and usually unescapable).

My Marriott Rewards statement came in the mail today. Two inches of actual account information, accompanied by eight pages of Marriot marketing material. Why couldn’t they send this to me via email? If they did, would they send me an actual statement, bury it with marketing, or make me log into the website to view it?

Alas, I’m selfish. I’ve been in business long enough and played both sides of the game. I’ve mined data from my customer base to use to market and cross-sell (didn’t use any hot blondes though, maybe that’s where I went wrong). I’ve convinced people to spend money. When those same attempts are used against me, I get annoyed. Sigh.

AAAAAHH it’s 1:12 AM and I’m wide awake and bored. I had better not wind up going to IHOP from 3AM-5AM like I did Sunday morning because I couldn’t sleep. I think the waiter guy was on speed, he kept coming by the table every 3 minutes asking if everything was ok. For fucks’s sake, let me enjoy my big breakfast platter in peace!

I’m in a flighty mood again where I don’t want to come home. Fortunately, I have a trip to Seattle coming up in two weeks.

Somehow either I talked myself into, or I was talked into, building a roof rack for Alex’s Land Rover. New, they run for $1300; I figure we can build one for less than $300. The part I’m sort of working on now is fabricating rain gutter mounts. It’s an interesting project in that the Rover is 2,500 miles away from me so I can’t like make something using trial and error, and I don’t have a proper workshop with metal working tools (chop saw, oxy-aceteylene torch, plasma-arc cutter, drill press, MIG welder, sheet metal brake, pipe bender). The goal is to fabricate what I can in Austin, then take it with me to Seattle and build the rest of it up there — and hope it all fits sight unseen. I’m pretty confident I can get creative and improvise what I need. I have a decent amount of tools I can use now to build the mounts; hammers, large pliers, propane torch, jigsaw with a bunch of metal cutting blades, drills, angle grinder. What I really need at this point is a vise that’s mounted on a reciever hitch bar, since my apartment has no workbench. They don’t exactly sell them at Harbor Freight or Sears, usually some rancher builds his own. If I had access to the cutting and welding gear, I’d make my own. I suspect I’ll jury-rig some sort of vise/hitch setup somehow. Stay tuned…