joeware - never stop exploring...

I have an ad for some new service Amazon has called subscribe and save. It is a service to order food and other type items like that through Amazon and have it delivered for free. Well I decided to look up an item I just bought last night, my favorite cereal… Cocoa Pebbles… Yes I [...]

Just great… I went in to pick up something at Sharper Image this evening with some gift cards I got from the American Express points program. Right after the guy tried to sell me the extended warranty, I pulled out the gift cards was told I couldn’t use them because the company is in bankruptcy… I was [...]

I watched a Mythbusters this evening and this episode was about an airplane on a conveyer belt… The plane is going one direction, the conveyer belt is going the other direction at the same speed. What happens?
Well the myth is that the plane will sit there… Hello??? Why did this even have to be tested? I [...]

This morning I took on Comcast again as described previously. I get through to security and they say yes there is an abuse ticket open for me but can’t really tell me anything about it, oh wait, I have a server listening… that’s what’s wrong. Not allowed to have a server because this is a residential [...]

Well this has been quite a day for me and Comcast… Three issues, all stupid. Only able to solve one, and only because I figured it out, Comcast was at a loss…
So first issue, friend of mine having issues with her Cable MODEM… Uh yeah, that’s not going to be good…. I pull up the [...]

Why doesn’t coffee taste as good as it smells?

Not a whole lot…
I am on my second Jeep Wrangler, initially I bought a 2003 X. I slapped bigger wheels/tires on it and while I considered it a bit weak (poor gearing mostly) I drove it pretty heavily though admittedly no extremely heavy off road stuff. Along about 10k miles I ran into an issue [...]

You knew this was going to happen when Dreamz said it was the hardest decision he had to make. If he actually had any honor whatsoever, it wouldn’t have been a difficult decision, it wouldn’t even be a decision. You don’t accept a piece of gum in exchange for a promise let alone a Ford F350 unless you [...]

I use the Wide Open West (WOW) Cable company for my internet. In general I love it. Great speeds, price was great, not so great anymore but ok.
Well today something occurred that could get me to switch providers regardless of cost at a moment’s notice, I sent an email to WOW to see [...]

What is it with public restrooms and how they draw in disgusting disrespectful people?
This seems to be an issue of staggering proportions. Anymore, you are surprised if you walk into a lavatory and it actually is really clean. In some cases, certainly we can blame the facilities management who maintain the lavatory, but mostly I think [...]

…both Iraq (with the exception of Baghdad) and Afghanistan and probably Iran and India would all be bombed into rubble…
Driving around Michigan today I got backed up by our famous Michigan road crews in the middle of an intersection. They blocked it for about 5-6 cycles of the light so I am thinking, cool, probably doing [...]

Something that kind of annoys me about the Star Trek Universe is that everyone but the Earthlings and Vulcans seem to be running around with cloaking capabilities… What gives? The Vulcans especially who are all into not disturbing people and running/talking versus fighting and are supposed to be some of the most intelligent beings in the [...]

In actuality cheap I.T. labor screws I.T. up and ends up costing more in quality, correction/redo work, and loss of customers sick to death of dealing with your shitty workers. You get what you pay for. If you want to use dirt cheap I.T. labor… when your data and everything else is ass backwards, you know why. [...]

AFA has sent out a another poll. Their polls make me laugh with how they are phrased. This one was particularly funny so I thought I would share.
You can see the actual poll here:
http://www.afa.net/petitions/islam/islam.asp
As you can see it is about Islam. You can see the current results at:
http://www.afa.net/petitions/islam/ThankYou.asp?s=407537821
 
Here are the results as if this [...]

Is likely going to kill us for future IT support. Well at least those of us in the US, Canada, Germany, UK, and other Western Europe countries.
Right now we seem to be in a phase where we are shipping low end tech positions to India or Costa Rica or Mexico or various not so well to do [...]

Monster.com has been making some changes lately. Mostly I am not liking them. Please note, I am not actively seeking a job but I have my resume out there (as I have for >6 years) in the chance that someone says, hey that is the guy we need and has some really good offer to [...]

…so they can change the channel…
The latest from my friends at the AFA below… They want you to contact CBS and pull programming. I find it funny that instead of telling their concerned members to avoid the channel they instead tell them to contact CBS and try and force them to change.
You know every Sunday [...]

Because we do things like this in Texas…
TEENAGE girls in a US city have been banned from showing cleavage in the classroom because it distracts boys from their studies.
More at http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20067405-13762,00.html
Thank goodness. I don’t know how in the world I, nor any other guy in the USA, ever got an education at all without this ban for [...]

My first run in with Gartner was with an analyst back in about 2000 or so at a conference who told me that over 60% of the production installations of Active Directory would have to be rebuilt from scratch because people didn’t know what they were doing. I told him whoever came up with that [...]

…have been busy little beavers. I have like five emails since the 10th. Someone got high speed!!!
We will go backwards through the interesting ones.
1. High School Valedictorian refused to bow down, has speech censored:
It seems some high school validictorian wanted to make some references to a god or christ or something like that and the [...]

Thank goodness, just when I felt all of my tax dollars were not being wasted properly I hear the Senate is going into a three week debate around making a constitutional amendment that says gay marriage is against the constitution. This is being pushed as an issue by the Republicans and they already know that they [...]

It seems that a lot of people with no actual technical ability want to be in the computer industry because that is where they feel they can make money. In general lots of training companies help enforce this by telling people they can get them certified after a week or a month’s worth of classes.
You [...]

What the heck does that mean?
Well there is this style of restaurants becoming fairly popular in the US, at least in the Michigan area called Mongolian Barbeques. Basically it is where you select various meats, veggies, noodles, etc and throw them in a bowl, select some oils, sauces and spices and then some crazy kid [...]

po·lyg·a·my - marriage in which a spouse of either sex may have more than one mate at the same time — compare POLYANDRY, POLYGYNY
For some reason this evening, CNN is having a special on Polygamy; one report after another. Most of it is focused on the stuff a guy named Warren Jeffs is pushing out [...]

…you don’t own that information. Stop treating it like you do and making decisions with how to deal with it like you do.
In particular, you do not have the right to determine that it is safe for you to put my information on your mobile devices (say like laptops) even if you put your own personal info [...]

I just heard about this controversy, people wanting to rename BC (Before Christ) to BCE (Before Common Era) and AD (Anno Domini - (in the) year of the lord) to CE (Common Era)….
Is this really something worth worrying about or worse, spending money on? Does it really matter at all? I think it lost any religious significance a [...]

Kelly Pickler got voted off American Idol tonight. Wow. I was quite shocked even though she hasn’t sung great the last two weeks.
She wasn’t my favorite but I truly expected her to be in the top three based on her charisma alone. Certainly I think she should have outlasted Paris, Elliot, and Taylor. It may be [...]

I ran into another search windows article today that sucked, I didn’t get the point and it wasn’t even close to being spelled out. This one, however, wasn’t written by Derek. 
SECURITY CONCERNS OF EXTENDED SCHEMA IN ACTIVE DIRECTORY
 

Having written something good about Google, I must now write something not so good about Google so my MSFT friends don’t completely shun me.
So what is the bad thing? Well it seems Google did something to shift around priority of Microsoft hits on their search results. Why do I say that? Well because [...]

Something I like to do a week or so prior to going on the road for work is to update my work laptop with the latest work updates, etc that they like to send down. Something that surpises nearly everyone I work with is that I keep my work laptop almost 100% completely work standard [...]

I just received this email from my favorite group…. the AFA…
 April 10, 2006

SEC refuses Ford’s request to keep homosexual issue off their stockholders meeting agenda
Ford Sales Drop 5% in March
Dear Joe,
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has denied a request by Ford Motor Company to keep a shareholder resolution forbidding Ford to promote homosexual marriage [...]

I haven’t written anything too inflamatory for a bit so possibly this will be. We shall see.
Those who know me know I have a special affinity for Ford. My first car was a 1971 Ford Mustang with a 351 Cleveland (yes it makes a difference) big block, my next car was a 1972 [...]

As I spin down from yet another meaningless hectic month I have come to the conclusion that this simple country red-neck hick boy[1] has had enough.
As much fun as it is to run around with your hair on fire and having no time to spend on exactly what you want to spend it on [...]

I read this article with laughter and sadness at the same time.
On the laughing side, it is funny how upset people can get over a cartoon… Yes a cartoon. If your thoughts and beliefs can’t stand up to being poked at by someone, don’t get mad at the person(s) poking. Also anything having to do [...]

I seem to have developed a following for my less than technical entries on this blog, it seems I tend to get more email and other responses when I rant or complain about something than when I am posting pure tech. I think possibly it is because pure tech may bore people and they either [...]

In an interesting article I picked off of Google News
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/03/08/BUG8QHK6S01.DTL&type=business
it seems HP is being sued by Stockholders because they gave their last CEO a huge bonus for/after leaving of ~$42 million.
I don’t know about you, but it has always confused me why an exec who hurt a company gets any kind of bonus upon leaving. [...]

As many of you know, I do a lot of Technical Reviewing of books and wrote the 3rd Edition update of O’Reilly Active Directory as well as wrote the Exchange chapter of the Windows Server Cookbook (which got mostly slipped into the Active Directory 3e book as well as the Active Directory Cookbook 2e) so [...]

Microsoft is too hung up on names. Why do I say that? Because they like to change them and they like to push things simply on the name. Raise your hand if you got sick of hearing DOT NET all of the time? What about the word “Active”? Or COM or COM+? Microsoft picks words [...]

As mentioned in the last post we checked out the NAIAS 2006 last weekend. I was quite disturbed when I saw the 2007 Jeep Wrangler. I currently have a 2004 Rubicon that I absolutely love.

Anyway, the new jeep, first impressions
1. Front end reminds me of the grocery getter (Liberty) more than the Wrangler.
2. [...]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17866401%255E2702,00.html
Since when has the Golden Globes and Oscars EVER been about the movies popular with the general populace of the United States? I don’t recall ever. Every year I sit there wondering, how the heck did that win, I don’t know anyone that saw it. But now…. now it is a gay/lesbian political agenda machine? [...]

I just realized that I didn’t report back about the Book of Daniel.
I have to say that NBC lucked out that the AFA attacked them, I think they are enjoying the free advertising. If this show had to build its own following normally, it might have been tough, especially since it is only limited [...]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article338230.ece
Awfully stupid way to die.

I lived in Indiana for a while when I was kid, I remember a few things. Riding in a trailer behind a lawn tractor, big fields of something green, and a pool table that I couldn’t see the top of. Later when I had grown up (or more accurately was older) I learned from my [...]

The history channel has been interesting this week with several armageddon type shows. The whole thing sort of confuses me if I look at it as a pure religious conversation.
There are all of these religious folks out their saying we can expect armageddon in our lifetime. So what? What does it mean to us [...]

Yes I watch reality TV, it always makes me chuckle with how unrealistic a lot of it is and the producers visions of reality. I commented before on The Apprentice, time to do so again…
Anyway, saw The Apprentice finale last night. I have to say I liked Randall from the first show but in the [...]

Wal-Mart employee fired for Christmas email
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/18/happy_holidays/

In a sphincters-held-tight culture such as this, little things mean a lot, so when the giant US big box retailer Wal-Mart recently changed a greeting from “Merry Christmas!” to “Happy Holidays!” it drew complaints.
And here the troubles began.
The emails duly arrived, and a customer-facing rep took it on herself to [...]

Avoid Household Mortgage (HSBC).
I think the company is composed entirely of idiots. I have had issue after issue with them and they are really stupid issues. The loan will be payed off in the next three months so I thought I would make sure I write up a rant about them before I forgot.
I [...]

Dana Epp has a blog that I like to follow, today she had a post on PSS frustration.
PSS is Premier Support Services also sometimes known as Premium Support Services. This isn’t free support. You pay dearly for it. Her issue is that she had a problem and worked with PSS for 4 days [...]

What do phones, beepers, and PDAs have in common?
Well now a days lots of things and in fact one of any of those will function as the others.
What I mean in particular is that people have enslaved themselves to those devices.
When someone’s phone or beeper or PDA goes off do you see how they scramble [...]

So did the MTV awards suck this year or what?
About the only cool thing was Green Day winning all of awards they won. Good for them, great band, great statement.
Other than that that was one of the worst MTV Award shows I have seen. I hope they don’t ever bring Puff Daddy, or [...]