Rant: I'd like to say “Fuck you” to the Computer Science Department

And here I thought my ranting came to a premature end...But I've returned to rant another day

Before I get to the rant, I saw a comment saying something about me possibly being a very difficult person to deal with. Actually, I'm an easy-going, cool, down-to-earth person and these rants are for fun.

Back to the rant...

*sigh* I don't even know where to start...How about stop being fucking retards?

Maybe I'm naïve or something but whenever I hear the words Computer Science and main lab the thought of a modern computer lab comes to mind. *sigh* What a fucking disappointment.

The first time I ever used this supposedly modern computer lab (which was in 2005) I was anything but impressed. The still had old Dell optiplex (700Mhz) machines with CRT monitors running Windows 2000 on one side of the lab and some 1.8Ghz systems on the other side while other computer labs had machines with 2.4Ghz+ P4s. So at this point I'm wondering wtf is going here. Are these people serious? Those machines sucked so badly that throwing a smoke grenade in Counter Strike would make the machine freeze because the smoke was just way too much for those machines to render *roll eyes*.

The following year, they finally got newer machines (for half of the lab) but by then I said fuck the lab and bought myself a laptop. There was no way I was going to wait to use a computer when I had my own laptop. But what good is a laptop if wireless access isn't always available on campus?

So now, we'll skip ahead to last year when the other side of the same computer science lab finally had new machines brought in. These machines were supposed to be blazing fast with Core 2 Duo processors and 2GB of system memory. Yeah, right? More bullshit. First issue, all the machines came from Dell with ball mice...okay, but I thought optical/laser was what was being used. The second issue, the machines are slow like dog shit. Seriously, if I see an Intel Core 2 Duo sticker on a computer, I'm going to expect a fast, responsive system (ofcourse there are other components to consider, memory bandwidth, latency, hard drive speed and interface, etc). Disappointed again. Epic Failure once again. These computers are so slow it takes MSN Messenger about 5 minutes to sign in. That's just plain retarded. I only wish I were exaggerating but it is so.

After years and years of the same monotonous bullshit, the computer science department at my school finally decided to introduce some useful courses into the curriculum. So after so many years, it finally became painfully obvious that they needed to introduce some web design and computer and network security to their computer science programme? Are you fucking kidding me? Why did they wait until now? And they wonder why most business prefer students from the rival university (UTECH).

Hell yeah! The computer science lab just got about a dozen Intel-based iMacs, a Mac Pro and a cinema display. Oh wait a minute, these machines aren't actually available to computer science students. So, what happened here is that another faculty needed some space for multimedia classes and that was the reason why those machines ended up in the computer lab in what used to be a secondary lab/tutorial room. At first it was said that we could use the machines whenever there were no classes. Sure, turned out to be bullshit after a while. They restricted access to only those in that class. But that never mattered to me since Apple computers are overrated in my opinion. Not too long ago, a lecturer had to borrow that same secondary lab for a tutorial and the Mac-noobs started to get annoyed, showing signs of their disapproval. And this is something that has happened more than once.
I can only ask the following question: why the fuck do these people think they own the place which they borrowed in the first place? Maybe they think using Macs to design things makes them superior to other people.

Being caught in my own bit of problems and having to spend extra time in school part time, I decided that maybe I should just do web design since its just for credits. And after attending the first class I was somewhat disappointed. Hoping it would improve, I decided to stick it out. As class progressed, it became somewhat noticeable that the lecturer thinks the class is filled with a bunch of tech-noobs. Now, I'm not saying that I'm a genius, but in this day and age, how the fuck are you going to ask college students if they know what Google is? Or even Youtube? Oh...maybe they didn't want to assume anything (yeah, right).

Anyway, this about wraps up my rant for now. And yeah, there are cool lecturers and other people who are associated with the department who get my full respect.
I'll put more effort into getting a rant out on schedule and with the usual style.

Life: Weekly Review [29-Sep-2008]

This is a quick run-down of the week starting September 29.

Monday:

Had a Japanese test (yeah, I'm trying to learn Japanese) which was supposed to be an hour long but I ended up finishing in approximately 18 minutes which sorta pissed of some of the people in the class. Then it was of to the language lab for an hour.
After that I was off to the computer lab for 2 hours and then to the electronic lab for 4 hours directly after that. 8 Hours between class, work and doing lab experiments.

Tuesday:

Another morning I just had to wake up early to get to the computer lab for 8:00Am. 2 Hours later, I'm off to Japanese for 2 hours. It sucks having to walk half-way across campus for class.

Wednesday:

Again, I had to get up early so I could make it to the computer lab but this time for 9:00Am. At least I sold an old textbook which means money for me. My friends dragged me into playing basketball with them. And after such a long time of not playing any form of sports I could actually still play which was surprising. One huge problem, after 10min I was unable to continue the game. I'll blame school for me not actively engaging in sporting activities.

Thursday:

And away I go to the computer lab for 8:00Am again but this time I had to help underclassmen (mostly girls tho, ^_^) who are doing introductory computer science courses with their lab exercises for 2 hours. 10:00Am I was off to Japanese class which is actually pretty cool. And then back to the computer science lab which is pretty much the main hangout spot for my friends and I.
2:30PM, not may people showed up for the computer science club meeting which although a disappoint, was expected.

Friday:

Woot, Japanese class again but this time at 10. Ugh, I remembered I had an assignment that was due for the "Web design & Programming" course. I spent the rest of the day trying to finish and for some reason progress was rather slow. So slow that I didn't get to finish everything before the submission time. Disaster :(.

So now, its 7:30PM...maybe I'll pwn some n00bs in Combat Arms or study.

-xerosai

The giants are at it again

I started using this thing the moment I heard it was out. It's still beta and all. But it's a great start. One of the largest entities in the consumer technology industry, Google, made one more step to conquering the world. Tuesday, September 2, Google released the BETA test for their up and coming browser dubbed 'Google Chrome'.

The release of this news came after the company 'accidentally' released a full comic explaining their plan for their browser. This comic can be viewed at http://www.google.com/chrome by clicking the 'Learn more' link.

We would stress this point, it's a BETA test, meaning not all the bugs are worked out yet and they are looking for consumer feedback as to what needs to be changed or added. As a BETA we can be happy that you can at least uninstall it when you're done playing around unlike other BETAs.

Appearance:

With this browser Google has taken an interesting approach, "Out with old and In with the new". Not a revolutionary approach, but they may have gone a bit too far with what they decided to leave out.

Google has taken the browser design from scratch with a minimalist approach. For those used to the traditional layout, such as that found in Firefox, the absence of several buttons and toolbars will immediately through you off. Novice users, I believe will have a difficult time navigating the window, and the awkward positioning of the bookmark icon looks like it was thrown in at the last minute. Even the home button isn't initially there. It is a setting that must be selected.

The window itself has the feel that it belongs on a Mac. Tabs appear at the very top of the screen giving it the appearance of a file jacket. The width of the tabs is limited by the width of the screen so if you open more than a few they get really small making it difficult to navigate through them.

Performance & Features:

The installation took a bit longer than I would have liked but I can overlook that since it quickly made up for by importing all of my Firefox bookmarks and such quickly 'n' easily. Loading page to page and rendering images to screen is comparable to what you would expect from Firefox 3.0, so we can congratulate them on that.

There were some problems with streaming video especially when they were multiple tabs open. Even though Google boasts that they have solved most memory leak issues, the way they have designed each tab to be an individual process takes up too much memory for the average computer. The smart address bar seems a step below the one in Firefox 3.0, but it gets the job done.

Security, one of the most focused upon aspects of Chrome performs well but we'll see how well it goes when people start targeting their malware at the browser. The download manager could use some work and just initially seems out of place.

Final Opinions:

Great start, but it's still a way off. Even though this is an open source application, and it has all these security and memory management wonders, we have already seen these things well executed in Firefox 3. I'm hoping that more will come to the interface. I don't need clutter but I wouldn't miss some of the feel from an older browser.

And, we really hope the issue with the tabs and memory will be resolved. All in all, this is no revolution just another option. I don't see myself leaving Firefox anytime soon but knowing something as well designed is out there gives security to users.

Life: Weekly Review [01-Sep-2008]

I suppose it's time I gave ranting a rest and did something else.

This will be a quick run-down of the week starting Monday September 1, 2008

Monday was the start of the new academic year which will be my final year. I think that's probably why I was a little excited since I can't wait to finish college.

Tuesday was a slow day, spent most of the time in the computer lab trying to get into the frame of mind since I'll be working as a lab assistant.

Wednesday was the official start of the academic year since classes started on that day. Again I stayed in the computer lab for most of the day while chatting with friends. I also decided to delay making a rant.

Thursday...slow day again and still not much to do since none of my classes are on this day.

Friday wasn't that bad...had my first class which was interesting. It's about time they added web design as a course instead of just sticking to pure computer science with stuff like compiler design and theory of computation. But now the Friday class will be discontinued starting next week so that means there is no reason to go to school on that day. I suppose I'll work in the lab on that day as well.

Today...did laundry and played some Combat Arms and decided to stop playing since people were cheating. How noob can a person get? Then my stereo receiver started malfunctioning again so that prompted me to go back to my "Old Faithful" until I can get a new one. So now I have a Yamaha CR-700 (from the 1970s) and a 5-Band equalizer hooked up to my computer with gold-plated cables ^_^. I guess they don't make things the way they used to.

So, it's now 6:37Pm and I have nothing to do at the moment other than IM people, listen to music and get a little reading in.

Bored: New Dance

"Bolt to di worl"


Yes my faithful followers. Honestly.....the last couple days have been very slow and I didnt wanna let this go on any longer. Unfortunately....I still have writer's block and so I am just gonna leave you with a video from the energy god himself to pass the time. The new dance that is sweeping the clubs by storm. Learn it fast people.

"The Lightning Bolt"

Rant: OMG He/She did what?!!!!!! Are you SERIOUS?!!!! STFU plz

Everyone at one point or another is bound to find themselves in a scenario similar to the dialog below especially if you live with others.

Person A: What happened to the cake in the fridge?
Me: Uh, I ate it.
Person A: OMG!!! You did what?!!! That cake was mine!
Me: Well, I ate it so its gone now.
Person A: How could you have done that?! Why didn't you ask?
Me: It was in the fridge so and I wanted food
And at this point everything the person has to say gets turned into blah's
Person A: blah blah blah blah blah!!!
Me: ...

Whoa, who would've thought the smallest things could set someone into a crazy bitch mode?

It's alright to be upset about something but I think there's a limit to how far being upset is taken. And you'd probably think people would be able to rationally sort their problems out, right? Wrong! These lamers make a big deal out the situation. And they don't give a shit if it's in a public place. Nope, that just incites them to carry on like fucking retards.

These people need to be run over by a freight train or something equally heavy.

Before reading any further, take a look at this video

Okay, now that you've seen the video I can continue...

So, this girl in the video hits a bird while driving and totally loses it. Is she fucking serious? Oh, come on, get a fucking grip! So, she hits a bird and she feels sorry, I can understand that. But dang, that's just overdoing it. Seriously, its just going too far.

I sincerely hope that I don't meet a girl like the one in that video. It would be like a fucking living nightmare. Even her friend seemed to be wondering wtf.

I can never understand why people react in such an excessive way. Maybe they want to draw attention to themselves? If that's the case then they're nothing but lil attention whores who need something better to do with their meaningless lives.
Here's another example of a scenario that one may encounter.

A guy and a girl are having a conversation about random things
girl: so, what kind of girls do you like in terms of appearance?
guy: well, you know...I like girls with long hair, blue eyes...oh and maybe Asians too...
girl probably realizes that she doesn't fall into that group remotely
girl: omg! What?!!
guy is probably wondering what he said wrong and has a confused look on his face
guy: ...
girl: How could you like those kinds of girls?!
guy still doesn't know what went wrong since he answered the question that was asked
guy: ...

In the above scenario, the girl completely loses it and makes a huge deal out of it. There's really no point in making a big deal out of the personal preferences of anyone at all. If anyone has time to be making a big deal out of stuff like that then they should get counseling or shut the fuck up.

Okay, so maybe not everyone is like me and not everyone has a low tolerance for overreacting people but seriously these people need to calm the fuck down. I bet if they were to watch themselves after being taped they'd probably see how retarded they are when they overreact for no real reason.

Well, this just about wraps this rant up for now. Thanks for reading and hope you found it entertaining.

liked/disliked this rant?leave a comment
-xerosai

My Vista Experience …. And Other Stuff

First, let me just take the time to say thank you. Thank you Mr. Powell…for teaching me a very valuable lesson. Imagine I was giving you another chance to redeem yourself and you wasted it. Now I’m $500 in the hole. Asafa, please seek out Dr. Phil, you NEED help. Anyway, such is life. Congratulations to the Jamaicans for all making it to the men’s 100m finals and congratulations to Usain Bolt for winning. See video1 and video2 (in French).

But enough about that, now on to the main topic at hand. Many of you have heard about Microsoft’s recent operation system, Microsoft Vista. I have had the pleasure of trying it out back when it was in its beta and RC stages (coughs…bootleg) and I must say…it was a real experience. There weren’t enough software and drivers that supported it at the time so my initial experience wasn’t that great and at times, things were frustrating. But it wasn’t Vista’s fault. Due to this, when people asked me about it, I tell them to hold off for a while. Just long enough for software and drivers to get up to scratch. NOTE: Vista hogs memory so I recommend having at least 2GB of memory first.

Not everyone embraced Vista like I did, and so since the integration of Vista to the world, people (and this may include you as well) have been having bad experiences with Vista. Microsoft identified this and released a new operating system, Windows Mojave. You can check that out here.

So…I bought my laptop (HP Pavilion DV6770SE) and I was happy when I saw Vista on it. A little pissed with all the unnecessary services and apps running, but happy nonetheless. I eventually got everything cleaned up and I was running cool and everything. I felt like a kid opening presents on Christmas morning. But all of this happiness was crushed when I realized that the most important app I use at work gave trouble on Vista (3 out of 4 BSODs at startup) and so I had to resort to installing back XP. Recently, I was bored one Friday so I just went ahead and re-installed Vista. I had missed it too much. This time, something was different though. I mean, 1.4GB memory used at startup was something I wouldn’t stand for. So I set out on a mission to cut this down. Eventually, I had found this article about tweaking Vista which proved to be very helpful. In the end, I tweaked the hell out of my laptop, kissing Aero and the sidebar goodbye, and now memory load is 850MB at startup. Now, you might be asking yourself, “why the hell would you do such a thing like that?”. My answer to you is……I’m f**king paranoid about my memory.

I had found some other neat sites while on my mission. Vista Knowledge, a cool site about Windows Vista Desktop Customization & News. And some HD wallpaper sites too. Of course you need your desktop to look beautiful: myHDWallpaper.com, Cool HD Wallpapers and HDwallpapers.net. Here’s my desktop.

Nice and clean. I love widgets, but I love a clean desktop more.

Sigh…I will miss XP. Should be posting a part 2 eventually. Anyway, I’m gonna go watch some NFL pre-season games. Until next time.

Btw.....EPL started today. Go Manchester United.

- wiz