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Brad Fitzpatrick

[ website | bradfitz.com ]
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Stuck in garage [Feb. 7th, 2008|08:20 pm]
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Omg...

I'm stuck in my garage.

My ADT security system had some fault (radio error contacting tower?) and the house started beeping. Phone call from ADT.... they told me to go into my garage (where the box is) and unhook some phone thing.

Then things are still beeping and they ask me to enter my code on the garage panel and hit # and "Off". Or something. But I forgot my code. He said, "Just try what you think it is." I hit some stuff and then it goes into armed mode.

The guy on the phone freaks out: "OMG What'd you press?".

Me: "I dunno. Some numbers. Maybe a pound or so."

Him: "OMG you armed it. We are now in threat level orange." (or some bullshit)

I give him shit for awhile, bitching that I only have ADT because my home insurance requires it (required over some threshold home value... yay me) and I haven't used it in years and I don't even know my code.

He asks for my secret password. I said I have no f'ing clue. I say it's probably in a file cabinet somewhere. He says to go look. I remind him I'm stuck in my garage and if I enter my house, hurricane sirens of death go off. He says, "Sorry." I ask if I should cut the blue wire or the red wire. He doesn't like my joke. I'm like, "Seriously, though... fuck this system. I don't even use it. Can I just disable it?" He says, "Normally I could help you sir, but not at Threat Level Orange now that you've activated it. That's against protocol." (or some bullshit)

So here I am, still stuck in my garage. Fortunately I have a computer here and can blog about it.

I called [info]dina and she thinks she remembers the password, and it jibes with the password hint (/^\w{6}\d{4}$/) that the phone dude gave me.... so that's promising.

Guess I need to call them back and find my password and put it into Revelation, for next time I'm stuck in the garage.

Fuck ADT.
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men's wearhouse can blow me [Jul. 6th, 2006|01:07 pm]
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"If you don't come see me today, I can't lose your already-paid-for clothing multiple times!


What clowns.

If I'm not wearing any clothes for my wedding, you can blame Mr. George Zimmer and his incompetent employees.
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Sure 'nuff [Aug. 2nd, 2005|05:17 pm]
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In summary:

-- missed my first leg, booked through work, through Expedia
-- Expedia won't help, sending me to United (tried 3 times)
-- United won't help, sending me to Expedia (tried 5 times, 2 of which I was dropped)
-- United wants $282 change fee, which I almost paid, until they dropped me

Ended up buying:

-- Southwest, Oakland to Portland. Through Southwest. (better deal than through Expedia, who's now on my shitlist)
-- Alaska Portland to SFO. Through Alaska. Also a better deal than Expedia.

So in conclusion, United and Expedia can now blow me. I was prepared to pay $100 or so for my stupidity/laziness (remembered the flight's arrival time as its departure time, and never double-checked), but $282 and 8 phone calls ultimately ending in failure? Wasn't prepared for that.

Expedia no longer gets my business.
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XM radio can blow me [Feb. 17th, 2005|04:00 pm]
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Is it just me (and my dad), or does XM Radio sound like an over-compressed mp3 coming through a tincan telephone?

My XM radio free trial is expiring soon and there's no way in hell I can pay for that sound quality. Cut some stations and give each station more bandwidth. Christ.

But I hear Sirius is worse?
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iPlastic: Apple can blow me [Jul. 11th, 2003|02:57 pm]
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[Current Mood |bitter]

Apple wants $650 to fix the plastic piece that my PowerBook's lid hooks onto when it closes. (that button you press to open it up)

Um, no thanks. I'll buy some velcro.

Titanium my ass. Surrounding the wireless antenna maybe. In all fairness, I loved my TiBook, but this level of absurdity is offensive.

Update: But at least there's competition in the Apple repair business. Going to some local places to get some quotes.
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Companies that can blow me. [Dec. 20th, 2002|04:55 pm]
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Companies that can blow me:

PayPal --- impossible to get ahold of. We know the person responsible for sending out all those bogus emails to hundreds (if not thousands) of people, but we can't get ahold of anybody there that's interested in knowing who's responsible. This was big enough to make the news.... shouldn't they care who's defrauding them and their users? So far LJ alone has got 30 bogus credit card payments in the last few days from this scam. Of course, this is just reason #3 to hate them, on top of #1: their servers sucking, and #2: their half-working, half-broken handling of eCheck payments.

Authorize.net --- no support in their API for notifications when eChecks clear or succeed. I read through 40 pages of their "Advanced Integration Method" document only to find that their API is dumb as hell and PayPal is theoretically better. (if only PayPal worked, and reliably accepted payments from non-U.S. users) I called their tech support (which isn't half bad... intelligent drones) only to be told, "Well, we can send emails when eChecks clear or fail." No, I refuse to screen-scape emails. Been there, done that. Not reliable. Not for a payment system.

So, I have 4 months to cancel Authorize.net (the "unhappy clause" in the contract), but I'm not sure I want to.... PayPal sucks also.

What do you do when your two main options suck? Cry?
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It's your money. [Aug. 21st, 2002|11:39 am]
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Yeah, I'm stealing these links from memepool:

http://www.blah3.com/money.html
http://www.blah3.com/money2.html

And yeah, I'm filling up your friends page. Blow me.
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Honda can blow me. [Aug. 19th, 2002|03:59 pm]
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Honda Service is clueless. They don't know what the problem is (what? that's their job!) so they wanted to do "what Honda recommends" and replace some solenoids and flush the transmission fluid.

The former is covered by my extended warranty, sans $100 deductible, but the transmission flush would run me $125, which I'm loathe to spend, given that I just fucking had it done as part of my 30,000 mile service a couple months ago for $650.

So I told them to just replace the solenoids, but I have this irky feeling that it's still going to be fucked and I'll be out $100 for nothing. Then, they probably won't do anything more until I pay the $125 for their clueless asses to replace the transmission fluid also.

I liked Seattle Honda more. I never once had a bad experience with them.

I should either a) learn cars, or b) find a new mechanic.

My brother's coming to pick me up now, and I'm jacking one of my parents' cars for the next few days. Unfortunately, they took the Audi TT, so I get my pick of minivan (no) or Jeep (better).

I should take my car to Honda BooBoo Land! Silly Japanese. :P
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Who's cool? I'm cool. (with air conditioning, that is!) [Jul. 10th, 2002|02:10 pm]
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Went to pick up my CD Burner which I loaned Dina about, oh... a year ago. Shows how often I burn CDs, eh? (well, I also have the burner on my TiBook, but OS X can blow me.)

She said she's spending the night at my house tonight (if it's okay with me) because it's unbearably hot in her apartment.

And the guy at the gas station commented on how much I must be dying in the heat, with leather. I replied that I have air conditioning, so it's not too bad. "Yeah, but when you come out to your car after it's been baking in the sun?" I replied that I have a garage, so it doesn't get hot.

Ahhh yea'. Yay for garage & AC & automatic ice maker in the fridge. (oh, that last one doesn't have anything to do with that post, but I love ice.)

Time to burn some CDs. I refuse to say what. Sherm, shut-up.

BTW, Justin ... I drove on that road you recommended. Not bad at all. Kinda gentle, though. Next time you're around these parts, I'll show you some even cooler roads. ;-)
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DSL, yo [Jul. 8th, 2002|07:57 pm]
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Got the DSL action going on. Painful troubleshooting with DSL-Only and Verizon, but all's good now.

Mad props to DSL-Only for their awesome customer support. Jasmine was very entertaining to work with. Verizon was rude to both of us, but it wasn't their fault in the end, so that makes it a little justified I guess.

Intel NICs can blow me. Or the eepro100 driver, at least. No, the NIC... because nothing worked on Windows either, and that's the same NIC. Anyway, yay for promiscuous mode!

Time to setup my home network again and tuck some of these five billion cables away.
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AT&T can blow me. [Jan. 17th, 2002|01:47 pm]
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Chuck contacted AT&T about getting our cable Internet restored last Friday. I contacted them again today and they're clueless: no record of Chuck giving them his cc info last week, so I gave them mine. Of course, the only way to somewhat promptly contact them is using their online chat tool. The browser shows an encrypted sign ... so it's secure, right? I can safely give them my cc info over it? I start sniffing the network on my Linux box.... nope, there goes our whole chat conversation in plain text. Only the applet loaded securely, and then the applet opened an ordinary HTTP connection back to the secure port.

Fucking lame.

AT&T can blow me.
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aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa [Nov. 29th, 2001|07:51 pm]
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fuck everything

not a good day

i can't even think of a single thing to be happy about lately:

work? no.
school? no.
social life? no.

trying to do my math.... no fucking clue what i'm doing. or rather, i think i know what i have to do, but it's really tedious and drawn out, so i don't want to do it, hoping that it's the wrong way and there's a much easier way that i'm not seeing.

time blocks school.
school blocks work.
work blocks happiness.
happiness blocks social life.
social life blocks happiness.

hungry too, but out of food. too angry to go out and be social i think. (bowling, red robins, etc)

i missed my bus this morning. i drove to school, sat through german just waiting to leave. never even took off my coat.

i went running today with brendan, that was good at least. except my normal running clothes i found in the bottom of my laundry bin, soaking wet from last run, starting to smell like mold or something.

out of laundry soap crap. out of food. solution: store.

twice today i just randomly screamed. i think people are home now so i'm actively making an effort to restrain myself. it didn't help much anyway.

60 school days until graduation.
but what really counts is real days.

time to unblock shit, even at the cost of killing an uncompleted task.
kill -9 math
i'll go eat now
then i'll work all night
school can blow me.

my brother told me: "C's get degrees"
truedat.
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drums [Nov. 25th, 2001|03:22 pm]
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Kenji borrowed Ian's drum set.
Chuck doesn't seem thrilled (being right above him)
I think it's funny.
I took pictures.
They're funny.
I'd post them, but kernel: ide_cs: Card Services release does not match!
But it does.
Linux 2.4 + pcmcia-cs can blow me.
I refuse to fix now.
Must study.
Must stay focused.
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non-contextual gibberish [Nov. 9th, 2001|04:12 pm]
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I've been cleaning my ~ and found this:
I postulate non-contextual gibberish is as exciting as normal posts.
It's great when you start to believe your own lies.
Quick, stop the man killing the trees!
Ladies, right this way.
The symphony starts.
Distant fires burn uncontrollably.
Inject the sodium here, please.
It's all downhill from here he realizes, relaxing.
But he checks again, knowing all's the same.
Cut all communications; insanity runs through all wires.
Asymmetric expectations lead to awkward situations.
Generation and comprehension, far dissimilar.
The dog bites the violinists.
No, next, sorry.
Strive to notice absolute change too, not just relative.
The butter only looks poisoned.
Always pay with cash.
Don't give her attention.
Resist the urge to rant.
But syntax highlighters without parsers can blow me!
Sure, you could put sesame seeds on that.
Who cares if everybody's crazy and dumb?
I seem to remember not posting it on Oct. 24th because I was afraid somebody might think they understood it. But now I can't even understand it, so I'm sure it's safe to share.

In other news, three day weekend! I should've skipped today and made it four. Math was fun: I finished my current book. German was fun: we played games. I dressed up today, for the hell of it.
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Dear Linux/Debian [Sep. 24th, 2001|10:46 pm]
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Dear Linux/Debian/PCMCIA,

Blow me.

- Brad


So, uh, I'd been using the kernel pcmcia drivers for my net card because pcmcia-{cs|modules} blows. But now I have to get pcmcia-cs working because I want to use my CompactFlash as a drive and want to use my new Orinoco wireless card.

But cardmgr hangs my system hard. Oh, gotta disable cardmgr from using ports 0x800-0x8ff in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts, ya know? It should fucking auto-detect that. It's in the documentation, along with 30 other work-arounds for different laptop modules... go put it in a database and detect it at run time. Windows manages. Linux should too.

Okay, cardmgr works now. Now I have to build pcmcia-modules because I'm using a custom kernel for ReiserFS and other shit. So I have to get pcmcia-source and build my pcmcia-modules using make-kpg modules_image ... not a problem. Done it before, easy enough.

Oh, but pcmcia-cs won't build modules if you have CONFIG_PCMCIA on in your kernel. Okay, undo that... guess I'll use pcmcia-cs for my wired network card also. Feh.

make-kpkg modules_image (documentation says to use -rev but Debian bitches... yay for outdated documentation)

Compile, compile... woah, it's compiling *_cs modules now! Oh, there's ide_cs.o ... bad ass. Chug chug chug... ERROR.

Turns out wvlan_*.c uses the old min()/max() macros from pre-linux-2.4.8/9 when they changed to three-argument min()/max(). But in linux-2.4.10 they changed it back because everybody got pissed off. So in the meantime (because Debian hasn't packaged 2.4.10 with its mods and the 2.4.10 patch won't apply cleanly over debian's 2.4.9) I have to use 2.4.9 ... with three argument min/max.

So then I had to modify wvlan*.cs in pcmcia-cs to add the first type argument (which is the max_t and min_t macros in 2.4.10).

Everything built now. I now have:
pcmcia-modules-2.4.9_3.1.28-2+Custom.4_i386.deb

Linus can blow me. Stupid API changes in the middle of a stable kernel series.

In retrospect, I could've used non-Debian linux-2.4.10 ... I tried it and it wouldn't build my modules_image so I figured I was screwed, but I realize now that's because I had CONFIG_PCMCIA on when I tried. GAAAR.

Hooray. Time to reboot lapwarmer. Then Starbucks?

Update: "{wvlan|ide}_cs.: Card Services release does not match!" *sigh* Die, bitch... I will fix you.... cd /usr/src/modules/pcmcia/ && debian/rules binary
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Qwest can blow me [Aug. 31st, 2001|06:57 pm]
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You know why I like InterNAP? I call their NOC and a human picks up the phone on the 1st ring and that same human answers my question or fixes my problem. No transferring, no waiting. Oh, and the human's smart.

You know why I hate Qwest? I call and wait on hold for 15-25 minutes because they're always experiencing a "high call volume". That stupid message should say, "We're currently experiencing a high caller to monkey ratio... we'd hire more monkeys but they eat too many bananas."

Oh, I got a new message! "I'm sorry your wait is so long. Your call is very important to us. We'll get to you as soon as possible. Please continue to hold." And in the most corny voice. If I met that person in real life I'd kick their ass.

I wouldn't be on the phone with Qwest now if the 5251 people would have transferred all their accounts into their own names like they were supposed to.

But you know what really irks me? What's the alternative to Qwest for local phone service? Regulated monopolies are just as shitty as unregulated monopolies... same shitty quality & service.

In other news, I've got 7 notable things done today, with a major 8th one in progress. And I'm hungry... gonna make spaghetti soon here, after I get through to this damn place.
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iBill can blow me [Aug. 31st, 2001|03:36 pm]
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[Current Music |Tom Petty]

So I get mail from ibill.com asked me to participate in their survey. Further, "The first 100 people to completely fill out the survey will receive an iBill T-shirt! Go for it and help us to help you!"[1]

So I fill it out (it's ColdFusion too btw, so that can blow me also) and it never even asks for my name, shipping info, etc.

Not only are they not sending me out a t-shirt, but they're making it 100% obvious they're not sending anybody one.

Let's contrast this to PayPal where I got a personal email, followed by a personal phone call, where I chit-chatted with a very nice lady for a half hour. Then I got a kick-ass t-shirt fed-exed to me the very next day. How cool is that?

I know whitaker and evan are tracking all the people and things that can blow me... what am I up to now? 8?

[1] Also of note, lame Jerry Mcguire rip-off.
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Formal education can blow me. [Sep. 29th, 2000|02:54 pm]
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My database class epitomizes all that I hate about formal education. The professor is teaching nothing but theory, not a word he says is applicable in any way to real world database work. Now, that's not to say that I don't appreciate theory --- I do. But theory is best accompanied by current examples, historical changes, anecdotes, etc... Classes should not be entirely theory. The whole class is bored as hell. I only know what he's talking about because I've been doing database work for 5 years now. The rest of the class is going to walk out of there knowing a bunch of buzzwords but being completely clueless in the workforce. There's nothing worse than a CS student that knows buzzwords and can't perform.... absolutely disgusts me. I don't think schools are doing a great job. The best teachers I've had have been TAs, not professors. I think professors get off on the theory because it is exciting, but forget that most students don't have the experience to appreciate the theory.

I've asked two very good questions in class now about but have yet to get any satisfactory answers from the guy.

Grrr. I hate school.
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I hate Windows [Aug. 16th, 2000|12:44 am]
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Programming for Windows is a frickin' mess. I've seen some pretty shitty languages and libraries but nothing comes close to the hell that is Windows programming. ActiveX can blow me.

MSVC sucks, too ... that's the real problem. Look at this: "Catastrophic failure". It doesn't get much worse than that. Of course, I shouldn't be editing the .rc files by hand ... but I wouldn't need to if there were ways to selectively include controls. But nope. So instead I end up modifying shit through the IDE and then taking diffs of the resultant .rc files to see what the hell MSVC is trying to do. Grrrr. I need to write a good Java client instead and distribute that with a JRE.

Update: Figured it out. The resource compiler has its own set of preprocessor definitions separate from the C++ preprocessor. Duh! *rolls eyes*
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Windows can blow me. [Aug. 11th, 2000|01:38 am]
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So, I'm redoing the Windows installation program for LiveJournal and the install system I'm using (NSIS) kicks ass, but it lacks a function to create new directories for certain types of things. The source to NSIS is open, so I was going to add it ... but it's an incredible mess, as Justin admits in the documentation.

However, NSIS has the ability to launch other programs and wait on them, so I thought--- no prob, I'll call "mkdir". Except you can't call shell built-ins. So I wrote a DOS batch file wrapper around mkdir ...

@echo off
if !%1==! goto skipit
if exist %1 goto skipit
mkdir %1
:skipit

But for some reason, it doesn't work on Win9x and the "if exist" line doesn't work, thus causing mkdir to generate an error and freeze the installation process with an ugly black command box showing. I'm not going to pretend I'm a expert batch file programmer, nor do I want to be. They're sick. So, I wrote a little Win32 C program to do it .... no more ugly DOS window during the installation:

#include "stdafx.h"
int APIENTRY WinMain
(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
 LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow)
{ CreateDirectory(lpCmdLine, NULL); return 0; }
Both solutions suck. I mailed Justin and asked him to include the functionality.
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