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March 31, 2006

Alaskan Retirement

[Found at holtieshouse...]

Tom had been in the liquor business for 25 years. Finally sick of the stress he quits his job and buys 50 acres of land in Alaska as far from humanity as possible. He sees the postman once a week and gets groceries once a month. Otherwise it's total peace and quiet.
After six months or so of almost total isolation, someone knocks on his door. He opens it and sees a huge, bearded man standing there.
"Name's Lars, your neighbour from forty miles up the road.
Having a Christmas party Friday night... Thought you might like to come. About 5:00."
"Great", says Tom, "after six months out here I'm ready to meet some local folks. Thank you."
As Lars is leaving, he stops. "Gotta warn you.... There's gonna be some drinkin'."
"Not a problem" says Tom. "After 25 years in the business, I can drink with the best of 'em."
Again, the big man starts to leave and stops. "More 'n' likely gonna be some fightin' too."
"Now that's really not a problem" says Tom, warming to the idea "I've been all alone for six months! I'll definitely be there. By the way, what should I wear?"
"Don't much matter..... Just gonna be the two of us”

Posted by Ozguru at 12:00 PM | Comments (2)

March 30, 2006

Contempt of Court

[Found at Read My Lips - the blog: Jan. 20, 2006...]

Having had to take the day off work to appear in court for a minor traffic summons, the man was growing increasingly restless as he waited hour after hour for his case to be heard.
Finally, late in the afternoon, his case was called. He stood before the judge, only to hear that court would be adjourned until the next day and he would have to return.
"What!" What for?" he yelled at the judge.
His Honor, equally irritated by a tedious day and the sharp query, roared, "That will be twenty dollars for contempt of court! That's what for!"
Noticing the man checking his wallet, the judge added, "That's all right. You don't have to pay right now."
The man replied, "Oh, I'm just looking to see if I have enough for two more words!"

Posted by Ozguru at 12:00 PM

March 29, 2006

Pests

A woman was having a passionate affair with an inspector from a pest-control company.
One afternoon they were carrying on in the bedroom together when her husband arrived home unexpectedly.

"Quick," said the woman to her lover,
"into the closet!" and she pushed him in the closet, stark naked.

The husband, however, became suspicious and after a search of the bedroom discovered the man in the closet.

"Who are you?" he asked him.

"I'm an inspector from Bugs-B-Gone," said the exterminator.

"What are you doing in there?" the husband asked.

"I'm investigating a complaint about an infestation of moths," the man replied.

"And where are your clothes?" asked the husband.

The man looked down at himself and said.
"Those little devils."

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM | Comments (2)

March 28, 2006

Muslim Suicide Bombers

[Found at holtieshouse...]

Everyone wonders why Muslim terrorists are so quick to commit suicide.
Let's see now:
- No beer, no bars, no radio, no television, no Playboy or Penthouse, no Teasers, no rugby, no football, no basketball, no baseball, no golf, no dancing, no music.
- No bikinis on the beach, no nude beaches, no summer mini skirts and braless beauties.
- No BBQ pork, no ham, no bacon, no hot-dogs, no burgers, no lobster, no shellfish or even frozen seafood sticks. No Christmas.
- Rags for clothes and dish towels for hats. Constant wailing from the guy next door because he's sick and there are no doctors,
- Constant wailing from the guy in the tower.
- You can't shave. Your wife can't shave. You can't even shave your wife.
- Sand is everywhere. Sand gets into everything. You wipe your backside with your left hand without toilet paper and if they catch you stealing they chop off your good hand and you must eat with your shitty hand.
- You can't shower to wash off the smell of donkey cooked over burning camel dung. - The women have to wear baggy dresses and veils at all times.
- Your bride is picked by someone else. She smells just like your camel, but your camel has a better disposition.
- Then your leaders tell you that when you die, you get 70 virgins and it all gets better!
So........... Nope....... No mystery here!

Posted by Ozguru at 12:00 PM

March 27, 2006

Rules of Thumb

[Found at holtieshouse...]

Some Australian Thoughts
a.. The bigger the hat, the smaller the farm.
b.. The bigger the brim the bigger the overdraft
c.. Whether it's the opening of Parliament, or the launch of a new art gallery, there is no Australian event that cannot be improved by a sausage sizzle.
d.. If the guy next to you is swearing like a wharfie he's probably a media billionaire. Or on the other hand, he may be a wharfie.
e.. There is no food that cannot be improved by the application of tomato sauce.
f.. On the beach, all Australians hide their keys and wallets by placing them inside their sandshoes. No thief has ever worked this out.
g.. Industrial design knows of no article more useful than the plastic milk crate.
h.. All our best heroes are losers.
i.. The alpha male in any group is he who takes the barbecue tongs from the hands of the host and blithely begins turning the snags.
j.. It's not summer until the steering wheel is too hot to hold.
k.. A thong is not a piece of scanty swimwear, as in America, but a fine example of Australian footwear. A group of sheilas wearing black rubber thongs may not be as exciting as you had hoped.
l.. It is proper to refer to your best friend as "a total bastard". By contrast, your worst enemy is "a bit of a bastard".
m.. Historians believe the widespread use of the word "mate" can be traced to the harsh conditions on the Australian frontier in the 1890s, and the development of a code of mutual aid, or "mateship". Alternatively, Australians may just be really hopeless with names.
n.. The wise man chooses a partner who is attractive not only to himself, but to the mosquitoes.
o.. If it can't be fixed with pantyhose and fencing wire, it's not worth fixing
p.. The most popular and widely praised family in any street is the one that has the swimming pool.
q.. It's considered better to be down on your luck than up yourself.
r.. The phrase "we've got a great lifestyle" means everyone in the family drinks too much.
s.. If invited to a party, you should take cheap red wine and then spend all night drinking the host's beer. (Don't worry, he'll have catered for it).
t.. If there's any sort of free event or party within a hundred kilometres, you'd be a mug not to go.
u.. The phrase "a simple picnic" is not known. You should take everything you own. If you don't need to make three trips back to the car, you're not trying.
v.. Vegemite is the staple diet for all Aussie Kids.
x.. The great Aussie salute is that given to keep the flies from landing on your face.
y.. The tarred road always ends just after the house of the local mayor.
z.. On picnics, the Esky is always too small, creating a food versus grog battle that can only ever be solved by leaving the food behind.
and just for luck; The shorter the nickname, the more they like you.

Posted by Ozguru at 12:00 PM

March 26, 2006

Crocodile Hunter

[Found at holtieshouse...]

Things aren’t always as they seem
A rich man living in Darwin decided that he wanted to throw a party and invited all of his buddies and neighbours. He also invited Jimmy, the only Aboriginal in the neighbourhood. He held the party around the pool in the backyard of his mansion. Everyone was having a good time drinking, dancing, eating prawns, oysters and BBQ and flirting.
At the height of the party, the host said, "I have a 15ft man-eating Crocodile in my pool and I'll give a million dollars to anyone who has the balls to jump in."
The words were barely out of his mouth when there was a loud splash and everyone turned around and saw Jimmy in the pool!
Jimmy was fighting the croc and kicking its ass! Jimmy was jabbing the croc in the eyes with his thumbs, throwing punches, doing all kinds of sh*t like head butts and chokeholds, biting the croc on the tail and flipping the croc through the air like some kind of Judo Instructor. The water was churning and splashing everywhere. Both Jimmy and the croc were screaming and raising hell.
Finally Jimmy strangled the croc and let it float to the top like a K-mart goldfish. Jimmy then slowly climbed out of the pool.
Everybody was just staring at him in disbelief.
Finally the host says, "Well, Jimmy, I reckon I owe you a million dollars.
"Nah, you right, I don't want it," said Jimmy.
The rich man said, "Man, I have to give you something. you won the bet. How about half a million bucks then?"
"No thanks. I don't want it," answered Jimmy.
The host said, "Come on, I insist on giving you something. That was amazing. How about a new Porsche and a Rolex and some Stock options?"
Again Jimmy said no.
Confused, the rich man asked, "Well Jimmy, then What do you want?"
Jimmy said, "I want the name of the ****** who pushed me in the Pool.”

Posted by Ozguru at 12:00 PM

March 25, 2006

Gladwrap as Apparel

[Found at Old Horsetail Snake: Just a Giggle and a Chuckle Will Be Fine...]

A guy walks into a psychiatrist's office wearing only Saran wrap [Aussie: read Gladwrap] for shorts. The doc says, "Well, I can clearly see you're nuts."

Posted by Ozguru at 12:00 PM

March 24, 2006

Senility

An elderly man went to his doctor and said, "Doc, I think I'm getting senile . Several times lately, I have forgotten to zip up."

"That's not senility," replied the doctor.
"Senility is when you forget to zip down."

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM | Comments (1)

March 23, 2006

Shopping in London

Two Irishmen in London whilst looking for work were strolling down Oxford Street.

After walking for a few minutes, Paddy turns to Murphy with a look of amazement on his face and says:"Murphy, will you have a look at that shop over there. I thought that London was supposed to be expensive but that shop is as cheap as chips!"

Murphy says: "Paddy you're right so you are, will you have a look at that. Suits £10.00, Shirts £4.00, Trousers £5.00, I think that we should buy the lot and take them back to Ireland. We would make a tidy profit selling them in Dublin, so we would."

Paddy says in agreement: "Murphy that is as good an idea as you'll ever have, but I'm pretty sure that you have to pay Taxes and duty on things like that. The shopkeeper will never let us have them if he thinks we're going to export them and make our fortune, so he won't."

Murphy thinks and says: "Paddy, I've got idea! You can do the best English accent, out of the pair of us. You go in there and do the talking and I'll just stand behind you and say nothing. He'll never guess we're Irish. No he won't."

"OK Murphy", agrees Paddy, "I'll do the talking, you just stand there and look English."

So the two visitors to the illustrious capital city go into the shop, where Paddy is greeted politely by the owner. Paddy then proceeds to do his best Cockney impression:

"Awwwight Guvnor, I'll 'ave 20 of yer 'Whistle 'un Flutes', 20 'Dickie Dirts' and 20 pairs of strides. And if yer don't mind I'll be paying with the 380 'Pictures of the Queen' in my 'Sky Rocket'."

Upon hearing this request from Paddy, the owner smiles, takes a look at Murphy as well, then says to Paddy "You're Irish aren't you?"

Quite bemused, Paddy replies, "Oh be'Jesus. Mary Mother of Christ, if that ain't me best English accent? How in God's name did you know that we were Irish?"

The Owner replies: "This is a Dry Cleaners".

Posted by Ozguru at 12:00 PM

Shipping News

Back in 2001, Microsoft announced that Longhorn would ship in 2003. Combined that with yesterday's announcement of yet more slippage and the history goes something like this:

Of course, they did ship XP near the beginning of that time frame but this is still an awful long time for Microflop suckers consumers to wait. To be fair, it is hard to see how anyone could write a new OS from scratch and get it shipped - I mean it even took Apple a couple of years* to do it :-)

Compare the innovation for a moment (between 2001 and 2007):

Now that MacOS X runs on Intel chips, maybe Microflop should throw in the towel and license MacOS X as a Windblows replacement. Then they could concentrate on making incompatible versions of Oriface instead :-)

[* OS X beta was 1999, shipped as MacOS X 10.0 on March 24 2001]

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 22, 2006

Wedding...

[Found at Bloggin' Outloud...]

Two antennae got married. I missed the wedding, but I heard the reception was amazing!

Posted by Ozguru at 12:00 PM

What a contrast

Two apparently unrelated articles from two different sources happened to appear adjacent to each other in my news reader:

From Slashdot:

For the second year in a row, Microsoft has waited for Novell's annual BrainShare show to start before claiming a huge customer migration win off NetWare and onto Windows. According to this article Microsoft says that there were more than 1.8 million successful commercial sector migrations in 2005 alone, and a total of 3.3 million customers migrated over the past two years. It has also launched a new program to lure customers in the education and state and local government sectors off NetWare and onto Windows.

From The Register:

Novell will support Netware, the veteran, nay ancient, network operating system, until at least 2015. By which time, presumably everyone who ever used the system will be retired or dead.

Speaking yesterday at the company's annual Brainshare conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, Novell CEO Jack Messman said the firm would support users of the latest (6.5) version of the network operating system software "as long as customers want to run it."

Netware users are not as plentiful as they once were, but they still represent an income stream of sorts for Novell. Which is just as well, as sales for its new flagship software, the SUSE Linux distro are not cutting much mustard, especially when compared with mighty Red Hat.

Given the reliability of Netware and the incredible support offered by Novell, I would guess there are going to be 3.3 million disappointed customers out there.

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 21, 2006

Appropriate Gifts

[Found at Old Horsetail Snake...]

It was the end of the school year, and the kindergarten teacher was receiving gifts from her pupils. The florist's son handed her a long box, and she said "I bet I know what it is. Some flowers?" "Right," said the boy. "How did you know?" "Just a wild guess," she said.
The daughter of the owner of a candy store produced a gift. The teacher shook it, and said, "I bet I know what this is. A box of sweets?" "That's right," said the girl, "but how did you know?" "It was a lucky guess," said the teacher.
The next gift came from a boy whose father owned the liquor store. The teacher held the package overhead -- and noticed it was leaking. She touched a drop with her finger, put it on her tongue, and asked the boy: "Is it wine?"
"No," the boy replied.
The teacher took up a larger drop and said, "Is it champagne?"
"No," said the boy, with great excitement.
The teacher sipped one more drop, and declared, "I give up. What is it?"
"It's a puppy!!!"

Posted by Ozguru at 12:00 PM

March 20, 2006

Cosmetics

His wife had just bought a new line of expensive cosmetics absolutely guaranteed to make her looks years longer.

She sat in front of the mirror for what had to be hours applying the "miracle" products. Finally, when she was done, she turned to her husband and said, "Hon, honestly now, what age would you say I am?"

He nodded his head in assessment, and carefully said, "Well, hon, judging from your skin, twenty. Your hair, mmmm, eighteen. Your figure, twenty-five."

"Oh, you're so sweet!"

"Well, hang on, I'm not done adding it up yet."

Posted by Peskie at 06:42 AM

E450 Disk Mirrors

Q: What is the best (most efficient) way to lay out the disks on a Sun E450 (with all disk trays installed)?

A. A fully expanded E450 has 6 scsi controllers which are spread over three dual channel SCSI buses. Ideally these three should be on separate PCI channels (there are also three of these). Given that the on-board SCSI is effectively on channel A, you should put one SCSI card in a channel B slot and one in a channel C slot. Use the "Owners Guide" if you are having trouble working out which slot is in which PCI channel.

Now the six controllers should be:

The two tricks to making sure that you have optimal disk performance is simple:

I used to do something like this (for mirrors):

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 19, 2006

Parrot Problems

[Found at The parrot ratted her out | skipjack DOT info...]

The parrot ratted her out A woman's affair was exposed when the parrot her boyfriend kept saying pharses with her lovers name. The African grey parrot kept squawking "I love you, Gary" as his owner, Chris Taylor, sat with girlfriend Suzy Collins on the sofa of their shared flat in Leeds, northern England.
But when Taylor saw Collins's embarrassed reaction, he realized she had been having an affair -- meeting her lover in the flat whilst Ziggy looked on, the UK's Press Association reported.

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM

March 18, 2006

Health Rules

[Found at Tan Lucy Pez...]

I learned some health stuff today. Nothing really new. Just some reminders. Like I've always heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong your life. But it turns out it ain't necessarily so. Seems your heart is just good for so many beats, and that's it. Then it's done for. So don't waste your heartbeats on exercise. You'll just wear it out. It's like tryin' to extend the life of your car by driving it faster. If you want to live longer, just take a nap.
I always thought that I should cut down on meat, and eat more fruits and veggies. But I just didn't grasp logistical efficiencies. I mean, what does a cow eat? We know it's hay and corn. And hay and corn are vegetables. So beef is just a really efficient way of getting your vegetables. If you need more grain, eat chicken. I imagine that a pork chop might give you 100 percent of your recommended daily allowance of vegetable products. Pigs eat a bunch of slop. And slops just mostly old moldy veggies. It's okay, 'cause their digestive system cleans slop right up.
And all that ranting and raving about reducing your alcohol intake has been disproved too. Wine is made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine. That just means that they take the water out of the fruity bit, so you get even more of the good fruit that way. Beer is made outta grain. Any fool can see that this is good-for-you stuff. I sees.
We shouldn't be worrying about candy either. Just make sure that it's chocolate. Chocolate is cocoa beans. Beans are another vegetable. It's the best feel-good food around! Right next to brandy and beer I guess.
I also learned that foods are fried these days in vegetable oil. In fact, they're permeated in it. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you? So it's okay to eat French fries and such. In fact, it's probably essential.
I tried to learn about how to calculate my body/fat ratio. But my brain was too full. Couldn't hold another thing. I think what the teacher was saying went something like this: if you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. Ify ou have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc. Something like that.
I do know for sure that the lesson scared me straight on exercise! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should be doing sit-ups only if you want a bigger stomach. And something was said about whales. I think it was, "if swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me." Like that. Made sense to me. I'm a logical person.

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM

March 17, 2006

King Arthur

Young King Arthur was ambushed and imprisoned by the monarch of a neighbouring kingdom. The monarch could have killed him but was moved by Arthur's youth and ideals. So, the monarch offered him his freedom, as long as he could answer a very difficult question. Arthur would have a year to figure out the answer and, if after a year, he still had no answer, he would be put to death.

The question: "What do women really want?'. Such a question would perplex even the most knowledgeable man, and to young Arthur, it seemed an impossible query. But, since it was better than death, he accepted the monarch's proposition to have an answer by year's end.

He returned to his kingdom and began to poll everyone: the princess, the priests, the wise men and even the court jester. He spoke with everyone, but no one could give him a satisfactory answer.

Many people advised him to consult the old witch, for only she would have the answer. But the price would be high; as the witch was famous throughout the kingdom for the exorbitant prices she charged.

The last day of the year arrived and Arthur had no choice but to talk to the witch. She agreed to answer the question, but he would have to agree to her price first.

The old witch wanted to marry Sir Lancelot, the most noble of the Knights of the Round Table and Arthur's closest friend! Young Arthur was horrified. She was hunchbacked and hideous, had only one tooth, smelled like sewage, made obscene noises, etc. He had never encountered such a repugnant creature in all his life.

He refused to force his friend to marry her and endure such a terrible burden; but Lancelot, learning of the proposal, spoke with Arthur. He said nothing was too big of a sacrifice compared to Arthur's life and the preservation of the Round Table.

Hence, a wedding was proclaimed and the witch answered Arthur's question thus: "What a woman really wants", she answered "is to be in charge of her own life".

Everyone in the kingdom instantly knew that the witch had uttered a great truth and that Arthur's life would be spared. And so it was, the neighbouring monarch granted Arthur his freedom and Lancelot and the witch had a wonderful wedding.

The honeymoon hour approached and Lancelot, steeling himself for a horrific experience, entered the bedroom. But, what a sight awaited him. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen lay before him on the bed. The astounded Lancelot asked what had happened

The beauty replied that since he had been so kind to her when she appeared as a witch, she would henceforth, be her horrible deformed self only half the time and the beautiful maiden the other half.

"Which would he prefer? Beautiful during the day... or night?"

Lancelot pondered the predicament. During the day, a beautiful woman to show off to his friends, but at night, in the privacy of his castle, an old witch? Or, would he prefer having a hideous witch during the day, but by night, a beautiful woman for him to enjoy wondrous intimate moments?

Noble Lancelot said that he would allow HER to make the choice herself.

Upon hearing this, she announced that she would be beautiful all the time because he had respected her enough to let her be in charge of her own life.

Now... what is the moral to this story? The moral is: If you don't let a woman have her own way things are going to get ugly!

Posted by Peskie at 07:02 PM

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2006-03-17--StPatrick.png

Don't forget that an anagram of 'Saint Patrick's Day' is 'Adapt risky antics'....

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 16, 2006

Signs of the times...

Sign over a Gynecologist's Office: "Dr. Jones, at your cervix"

In a Podiatrist's office: "Time wounds all heels"

On a Septic Tank Truck "Yesterday's Meals on Wheels"

On another Septic Tank Truck: "We're #1 in the #2 business"

At a Proctologist's door: "To expedite your visit please back in"

On a Plumber's truck: "We repair what your husband fixed"

On another Plumber's truck: "Don't sleep with a drip. Call your plumber"

On a Plastic Surgeon's Office door: "Hello. Can we pick your nose?"

At a Towing company: "We don't charge an arm and a leg. We want tows"

On an Electrician's truck: "Let us remove your shorts."

In a Non smoking Area: "If we see smoke, we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action."

On a Maternity Room door: "Push. Push. Push."

At an Optometrist's Office: "If you don't see what you're looking for, you've come to the right place."

On a Taxidermist's window: "We really know our stuff"

On a Fence: "Salesmen welcome! Dog food is expensive!"

At a Car Dealership: "The best way to get back on your feet - miss a car payment."

Outside a Muffler Shop: "No appointment necessary. We hear you coming."

In a Veterinarian's waiting room: "Be back in 5 minutes. Sit! Stay!"

At the Electric Company: "We would be delighted if you send in your payment. However, if you don't, you will be."

In the front yard of a Funeral Home: "Drive carefully. We'll wait."

On a Radiator Shop: "Best place in town to take a leak"

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM | Comments (1)

Changing the Login Window Background

[Found at Mac Geekery - Changing the Login Window Background Without Renaming Files...]

It used to be that if you changed the file at /Library/Desktop Pictures/Aqua Blue.jpg then loginwindow would display that picture as the background instead. In fact, while it's still the case, you can also set a key to explicitly define which file should be used as the desktop picture. My personal preference is to alter a setting over moving around system files (no matter how inert).
In this example, I'm going to change the background to use the Nature/Stones.jpg file instead of Aqua Blue.jpg.
$ sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture -string "/Library/Desktop Pictures/Nature/Stones.jpg"
Now you can logout to get the login window to show up and your change should be noted. If not, either reboot or kill loginwindow.

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 15, 2006

Golfing Accident

[Found at holtieshouse...]

Two women were playing golf...
One teed off and watched in horror as her ball headed directly toward a foursome of men playing the next hole.
The ball hit one of the men;
He immediately clasped his hands together at his groin, fell to the ground and proceeded to roll around in agony.
The woman rushed down to the man, and immediately began to apologize.
"Please allow me to help. I'm a physiotherapist and I know I could relieve your pain if you'd allow me," she told him.
"Oh, no, I'll be all right. I'll be fine in a few minutes," the man replied. He was in obvious agony, lying in the fetal position, still clasping his hands together at his groin.
At her persistence, however, he finally allowed her to help;
She gently took his hands away and laid them to the side, loosened his pants and put her hands inside. She administered tender and artful massage for several long moments and asked, "How does that feel?"
He replied, "It feels great, but my thumb still hurts like hell."

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM | Comments (1)

Modifing CrashReporter

[Found at Macworld...]

If you’ve ever had an OS X application quit on you, you’ve probably seen the CrashReporter dialog box—even if you didn’t recognize it as such at the time. The CrashReporter dialog box gives you the option to close the dialog box, reopen the program in question, or report the problem to Apple. While this is handy, there are times when you might want either more or less information regarding a crashed application.
...
If you’re trying out a piece of beta software, or working with a particularly troublesome piece of code, you might want to see more information than CrashReporter typically displays. To do this, open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities) and type this command, then press Return: defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType developer

Other options (all explained in the article) include:

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 14, 2006

Stuffed?

An explorer in the deepest Amazon suddenly finds himself surrounded by a bloodthirsty group of natives. Upon surveying the situation, he says quietly to himself, "Oh God, I'm stuffed."

There is a ray of light from heaven and a voice booms out: "No you are NOT stuffed. Pick up that stone at your feet and bash in the head of the chief standing in front of you."

So the explorer picks up the stone and proceeds to bash the living daylights out of the chief.

As he stands above the lifeless body, breathing heavily and surrounded by 100 natives with a look of shock on their faces, God's voice booms out again: "Okay ..... NOW you're stuffed."

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM

Intel Mac vs Network Performance

One of the ongoing problems with my Intel iMac has been really bad network performance. This has been a major contributor to the overall bad performance (see Intel iMac Performance). I have not tested the wireless connection (although a note a number of people have complained about it) - I am using an ethernet connection 100TX (full duplex). Based on monitoring, it seems that between 10% and 15% of packets are lost. The easiest way to see this is to try pinging a known gateway - between 2 and 3 pings from every 20 will be lost.
By working with the network gurus, we managed to pin down the problem and develop a workaround. The switch we connect to is a Cisco 3550-24PWR-EMI which was introduced to facilitate the migration to VOIP (voice over IP) VLANs. The problem is that this simply does not work with the Intel Mac. At all. In any way shape or form. The temporary workaround is to use a different switch (without VOIP/VLAN) just for the Macs. This is obviously not a long term solution but it will at least let us keep working for the moment.
I tried to use Apple's "WebChat Support" which is available 24x7 (according to Apple). I entered the chat at 5 PM yesterday and as I post, there has been no response (more than 12 hours later).

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM | Comments (1)

March 13, 2006

What do Lions eat?

[Found at Bloggin' Outloud...]

"A hungry lion was roaming through the jungle looking for something to eat. He came across two men. One was sitting under a tree and reading a book; the other was typing away on his typewriter.
The lion quickly pounced on the man reading the book and devoured him.
Why?
Because even the king of the jungle knows that readers digest and writers cramp."

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM

How to Hide a User Account in Mac OS X

It turns out that the trick to hiding a user account is the userid needs to be less than 500. The always-enjoyable Mac Geekery has explicit instructions for changing an account:


Make the user in System Preferences (secretadmin in this case)

Quit System Preferences

In Terminal:

$ sudo dscl .
Password:
> cd /Users/secretadmin
> read
...
UniqueID: 502
...
/Users/secretadmin > change . UniqueID 502 402
/Users/secretadmin > change . NFSHomeDirectory /Users/secretadmin /var/root
Open System Preferences; the user should not show up (ID is below 500)

Delete the now-unused home in /Users

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 12, 2006

Tree -t your right...

A little old man was escorted into the witness box. After being sworn in, the lawyer asked him to explain what happened.
After a lengthy discussion of the events leading up to the incident, he finally got around to the meat of the case.

"...and then she hit me with a maple leaf."

"Surely that couldn't have caused you any serious injury?"
said the lawyer.

"Are you kidding?" exclaimed the old man. "It was the leaf from the center of our dining room table."

Posted by Peskie at 06:00 PM

Special Tip for the Day

If you're being chased by a police dog, try not to go through a tunnel, then on to a little seesaw, then jump through a hoop of fire. They're trained for that.

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM

March 11, 2006

Jobs I Couldn't Keep (III)

[Found at Bloggin' Outloud...]

I became a professional fisherman, but discovered that I couldn't live on my net income.
I managed to get a good job working for a pool maintenance company, but the work was just too draining.
So then I got a job in a gym, but they said I wasn't fit for it.
After many years of trying to find steady work, I finally got a job as a historian - until I realized there was no future in it.
My last job was working in Starbucks, but I eventually quit because it was always the same old grind.

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM

Use tables in Stickies

[Found at Macworld...]

If you're running Mac OS X 10.4, there's no reason to fire up Microsoft Word or Excel if you just need a simple table. You’ve got access to a pretty handy built-in tables feature in Apple’s TextEdit (/Applications). Create a blank TextEdit document in Rich Text mode (Format: Make Rich Text), and you can then use Format: Text: Table to insert and manage a table.
You may have already known this, but what you may not have known is that any Cocoa application running in OS X can now support tables. For our purposes today, we’ll look at Tiger’s Stickies. This application is now fully table-capable, even though the program seemingly lacks any way to work with tables. Here’s the secret.
To put a table in a Stickie note, you simply need to start the table in TextEdit (or even Word or Excel). Once you have even the most basic structure defined (nothing more than selecting Format: Text: Table in TextEdit is required), select the table in TextEdit, copy it by hitting Command-C, and then paste it into a new Stickies note. You’ll now see the blank table, happily residing within a Stickies note. This still may not seem like it’s much use, though, as there’s still no menu item that you can use to control the table’s rows, columns, and formatting. However, position your mouse anywhere over the table and then Control-click and notice the first item in the contextual menu—Table. (This option isn’t available in any way until you’ve pasted in a table from some other application.)

Read the rest of the article for more details.

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 10, 2006

Questions for today...

If aliens are smart enough to travel through space, why do they keep abducting the dumbest people on Earth?

Why is it that when you talk to God you're praying, but when he talks to you, you're crazy?

Everybody keeps saying that women are smarter than men, but did you ever see a man wearing a shirt that buttons down the back?

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM

Install Front Row (with Bonjour) on any Mac

[Found at The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)...]

So the new Mac minis are cool, and Front Row leveraging Bonjour is just plain smart. But what about the rest of us who can't afford to go out and buy yet another shiny new Apple product?
Behold: instructions for installing the latest version of Front Row (with Bonjour support) on just about any Mac that can run 10.4.5 and iLife '06. A friend of mine turned me onto these instructions, and along with his Salling Clicker-enabled mobile phone, he has a pretty nice Front Row remote setup going on his 12" PowerBook. From the instructions it sounds like the setup is pretty simple, but as usual: this isn't exactly supported or even condoned by Apple (and is illegal since you're basically stealing Front Row and putting it on a non-Front Row Mac), so you're kinda on your own in case something doesn't go as planned.

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 09, 2006

Jobs I Couldn't Keep (II)

[Found at Bloggin' Outloud...]

Well I tried working in a Muffler Factory, but that was too exhausting.
Then, I tried to be a Chef - figured it would add a little spice to my life, but I just didn't have the thyme.
I attempted to be a Deli Worker, but any way I sliced it I couldn't cut the mustard.
My best job was a Musician, but eventually I found I wasn't noteworthy.
I studied a long time to become a Doctor, but I didn't have any patience.
Next was a job in a Shoe Factory. I tried but I just didn't fit in.

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM | Comments (1)

XPenguins on MacOS X

Q: I came across this program (xpenguins) and tried it using the X11 program in /Applications/Utilities but it doesn't work.

A: The problem is that the program wants to write to the root window and Apple's X11 doesn't really have a root window (the X-based windows are using the underlying Aqua environment instead of an xroot window). So instead, you need to specify a window so that the penguins can perform. Any window that draws a canvas should do (i.e. not an xterm). For my example, I am going to use xearth. Note that when xwininfo asked, I clicked in the xearth window. This returns heaps of information but we only need the window id...

toffee$ xearth -noroot &
[1] 10746
toffee$ xwininfo
xwininfo: Please select the window about which you
    would like information by clicking the
    mouse in that window.
xwininfo: Window id: 0x800005 "xearth"
    Absolute upper-left X: 0
    ...
    Corners: +0+44 -1168+44 -1168-494 +0-494
    -geometry 512x512+0+22
toffee$ xpenguins --all -s -n 10 -id 0x800005

And the result?

2006-03-08--xpenguins.png

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 08, 2006

Origami

Despite the fact that Microslosh are still keeping mum, most of the details can be found over at CNET News.

Bottom line: it is the size of a Newton.

On the positive side: it is colour (at least I think it is from the screen shots).

On the negative side: it runs Windblows.

When was the Newton released again? 1993. So that makes Microslosh 13 years too late....

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 PM

Playing House

A little girl and a little boy were at day care one day.

The girl approaches the boy and says, "Hey Billy, want to play house?"

He says, "Sure! What do you want me to do?"

Sally replies, "I want you to communicate your feelings."

"Communicate my feelings?" said a bewildered Billy... "What the heck does that mean."

The little girl nods and says, "Perfect. You can be the husband."

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM

Intel iMac Performance

Well, I am still getting the performance question on a daily basis. Some people (listen to Dave Hamilton) seem to be happy with it but others (like tech ronin) are disappointed:

My feelings about the Intel Macs aren't what they used to be. Probably like a lot of people in the know, I'm disappointed that the claims of 2-5x faster speeds were far from true when applied to real world performance.
Technically, Apple didn't lie. Those specific benchmarks were as claimed. But, when other tests are run on the typical things we do with Macs, performance is only a little better than before in most cases and a lot worse if you aren't running universal applications.

My personal assessment has to be prefixed by the note that it really depends on your application mix. If the only thing you need is iLife then you will have no problem. If you need to use iWorks (and pay for the license because you only get a demo*) then you are still OK. If, on the other hand, you rely heavily on other software (like Microslosh Oriface), then you are SOL (Out of Luck). For my mix of work, the Intel iMac is no faster than my wife's 800MHz G4 iMac. Forget comparing it to a G5. In fact my G4 powerbook (1.5GHz) performs most things faster.
Note that this may (should) be a temporary thing. As more applications move across and as Apple tune and tweak, the situation will improve - just don't get your hopes up based on the 2x or 4x marketing claims.

[* The demo only licence of Pages is a brain-dead move - it means that people will stick with the slooooooow version of Word and whine about the terrible performance of their iMac. If Pages was bundled, they might try it instead. Having tried it, they would then start to think "how come Pages works fast and Word is so slow?" and instead of whining about the lousy iMac performance they would be whining about how lousy Microsoft is...]

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 07, 2006

Jobs I Couldn't Keep (I)

[Found at Bloggin' Outloud...]

My first job was working in an orange juice factory, but I got canned. I couldn't concentrate. In fact, the union squeezed me out. They said they'd beat me to a pulp if I tried to return. Told me I was fruity.
So then I got a job as a lumberjack. But I just couldn't hack it, so they gave me the axe. I tried reapplying but they told me I was barking up the wrong tree and wood I just go away. I guess I couldn't see the forest for the trees.
After that, I tried to be a tailor, but I just wasn't suited for it. That's okay, it was just a sew-sew job. Seams they were trying to rip me off. I almost lost my shirt. The boss buttonholed me and told me to keep my mouth zipped.

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM

Internet plug-in not installed

[Found at Apple Support...]

Safari, Intel-based Macs: Internet plug-in not installed alert

When using Safari on an Intel processor-based Mac, you might see an alert message that you don't have a certain plug-in installed (for example, a plug-in to play multimedia content within a web page) even though you do have a plug-in installed.

Solution
Check with the plug-in's vendor to see if the there is a Universal plug-in format version available (or "Universal binary"). If so, download and install that version of the plug-in.

If no such version is available, you can run Safari with Rosetta to avoid the issue. See Intel-based Macs: Forcing a Universal application to run with Rosetta.

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 06, 2006

Gender Specific Vocaulary

[Found at A.E.Brain...]

THINGY
Female: Any part under a car's hood.
Male: The strap fastener on a woman's bra.

VULNERABLE
Female: Fully opening up one's self emotionally to another.
Male: Playing football without a helmet.Playing cricket without a hector.

COMMITMENT
Female: A desire to get married and raise a family.
Male: Not trying to pick up other women while out with one's girlfriend.

MAKING LOVE
Female: The greatest expression of intimacy a couple can achieve.
Male: Call it whatever you want just as long as we end up in bed.

ENTERTAINMENT
Female: A good movie, concert, play or book.
Male: Anything that can be done while drinking.

BUTT
Female: The body part that every item of clothing manufactured makes "look bigger."
Male: what you slap when someone's scored a touchdown, homerun, or goal. Also good for mooning

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM

VirtualPC on Intel

Q: I just picked up a new macbook. Since you have been posting about the new iMac, I was wondering if you have installed virtual PC and if so how well it work?

A: Very good question. It doesn't work.... yet....

Check out the statement from Microsoft:

Q. What does the announcement about Intel-based Macs mean for Virtual PC for Mac?

A. Virtual PC for Mac Version 7 is still the best emulation solution for users who have PowerPC-based Macs, but it does not run on Intel-based Macs. We are working with Apple to determine the feasibility of developing Virtual PC for Mac for Intel-based Macs. Virtual PC for Mac is highly dependent on the operating system and hardware and will require additional development to run on Intel-based Macs.



Q. I have an Intel-based Mac, and want to purchase Office 2004. Which version should I get?

A. Your best choices are the Standard version or the Student and Teacher version (if you meet the eligibility qualifications). Because the Professional version includes Virtual PC, and Virtual PC does not run on Intel-based Macs, you cannot take advantage of that extra value in the Professional version on an Intel-based Mac.

Basically, from the comments, I would guess that the next version of Office (Office 2006?) will have something. Office 2006 is due April (or thereabouts) but VPC could lag an additional 6 months (based on what happened with Office 2004).

In the meantime, there are likely to be viable alternatives springing up. I have heard that darwine is close to done (not useful for an end user but a good indicator of technology) and I suspect that someone will have something similar soon.

While you wait, you could use Microsoft Remote Access to connect to an existing PC (if there is one). I currently use that to get the Remedy client (coz the Remedy Web Client sucks and blows at the same time).

Hope that helps and congrats on the new Mac.

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 05, 2006

Top 35 Oxymorons

From another brother....

35. State worker
34. Legally drunk
33. Exact estimate
32. Act naturally
31. Found missing
30. Resident alien
29. Genuine imitation
28. Airline food
27. Good grief (for Charlie Brown fans)
26. Government organization
25. Sanitary landfill
24. Alone together
23. Small crowd
22. Business ethics
21. Soft rock
20. Butt head
19. Military intelligence
18. Sweet sorrow
17. Rural metro (ambulance service)
16. "Now, then . . ."
15. Passive aggression
14. Clearly misunderstood
13. Peace force
12. Extinct life
11. Plastic glasses
10. Terribly pleased
9. Computer security
8. Political science
7. Tight slacks
6. Definite maybe
5. Pretty ugly
4. Rap music
3. Working vacation
2. Religious tolerance

And the number one oxymoron .
1. Microsoft Works (Macintosh-only users, trust me on this one)

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM | Comments (1)

MacIntel Compatibility Issues

Looks like i am not the only person who has run into problems with compatibility.

[Found at MacMegasite...]

Although this is the second time Mac users have switched processors, one particular issue with the Intel transition can impact many applications.
When we switched CPUs the first time, from 680x0 to PowerPC, it was possible for applications to mix code for both processors using the magic of the Code Fragment Manager. This means a native application like PhotoShop could still use 68K plug-ins.
However, it isn't possible to mix Intel & PowerPC code in the same application. If you need to use non-native plug-ins, you're forced to run the entire application under Rosetta. Of course if the application is Intel-only, you're out of luck.
Another place this can cause problems is with shared libraries, as I discovered when I tried to use SourceOffsite on my new iMac Core Duo. SourceOffsite is still PowerPC, but it depends on GTK and several other libraries, which are Intel native. In many cases you can work around it by installing PowerPC versions of the libraries in a separate directory and using the environment variables DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH and DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH to trick it into looking for the libraries in a different location.

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 04, 2006

Choices, choices, choices...

[Found at holtieshouse...]

WHY DO MEN PEE STANDING UP
God was just about done creating humans, but he had two parts left over and couldn't quite decide how to split them between Adam and Eve.
He thought he might just as well ask them.
He told them one of the things he had left was a thing that would allow the owner to pee while standing up.
"It's a very handy thing," God told them, "and I was wondering if either one of you had a preference for it."
Well, Adam jumped up and down and begged, "Oh, please give that to me! I'd love to be able to do that! It seems like just the sort of thing a man should have Please! Pleeease! Give it to me!"
On and on he went like an excited little boy. Eve just smiled and told God that if Adam really wanted it so badly, he could have it.
So God gave Adam the thing that allowed him to pee standing up.
Adam was so excited he just started whizzing all over the place - first on the side of a rock, then he wrote his name in the sand, and then he tried to see if he could hit a stump ten feet away - laughing with delight all the while.
God and Eve watched him with amusement and then God said to Eve, "Well, I guess you're kind of stuck with the last thing I have left."
"What's it called?" asked Eve.
"Brains," said God.

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM

Fink for IntelMac

[Found at MacMegasite...]

A preliminary version of Fink for the Intel architecture is now ready. Fink is a package manager for installing Open Source software on Mac OS X. No binary packages are available, and things are still rough around the edges, but it should be usable if you are patient! To install, you need to get the file fink-0.24.12.tar.gz from the Sourceforge file release page for Fink, expand the file, and run the command ./bootstrap.sh . At the end of the bootstrap process, run fink selfupdate and you'll get the currently available packages.

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 03, 2006

Hillbilly Humour

[Found at Read My Lips...]

After living in the remote wilderness of Kentucky all his life, an old hillbilly decided it was time to visit the big city. In one of the stores he picks up a mirror and looks in it. Not knowing what it was, he remarked, "How about that! Here's a picture of my daddy."

He bought the 'picture', but on the way home he remembered his wife, Lizzy, didn't like his father. So he hung it in the barn, and every morning before leaving for the fields, he would go there and look at it.

Lizzy began to get suspicious of these many trips to the barn. One day after her husband left, she searched the barn and found the mirror. As she looked into the glass, she fumed, "So that's the ugly bitch he's runnin' around with."

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM | Comments (2)

Scrollable Stickies

[Found at Macworld: Mac OS X Hints: Scrollable Stickies...]

Stickies, those little Post-It-type notes you can leave on your Mac’s desktop, have gained a lot of functionality over the years. You can dress up notes with multiple fonts and colors, add images, and make notes float over all other applications windows (Option-Command-F). Notes can appear translucent (Option-Command-T) and even hold QuickTime movies. But the one thing you still can’t do is scroll through a long note. If you have a lot of text you want to keep handy, you have to use the keyboard (arrows and Page Up/Down keys) to navigate the note’s contents.
Thankfully, there’s a simple solution, as long as you have Apple’s Developer Tools (also know as Xcode tools) installed. Even those of us who are just users can take advantage of these applications to add features the programmers left out. In this case, we’ll be using a program called Interface Builder (/Developer/Applications) to add scrollbars to our Stickies.

Read the whole article for details. I tried it and it works really well. I used to have a few stickies with important stuff on them and once they reach past the length of the screen, they are relatively useless. Instead of reaching for alternative mechanisms for storing stuff (think Yojimbo or Caboodle), you can just add scroll bars...

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM | Comments (1)

March 02, 2006

Love

Girlfriend: And are you sure you love me and no one else?
Boyfriend: Dead Sure! I checked the whole list again yesterday.

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM

More scripting with oascript

Hi Ozguru, I read your January blogs using osascript. I am trying to label some directories according to criteria in a Bash script. Basically, the script counts items in a folder and if there are less than a certain number, I want it to be colored gray. After reading a bit, it's my understanding the only way to do Finder labeling from Unix is to use the osascript call. I also found Codepoet's MacGeekery post you mentioned, and the following command works fine for files:

find -E . -iregex '.*\.jpg$' -exec osascript \

        -e "tell application \"Finder\" to set the label index of \

        POSIX file \"$PWD/{}\" to 7" \;

But for directories, no joy. I then found your post from last month, but can't seem to get it to work.
What you came up with:
tell application \"Finder\"

    set fileName to posix file \"some file or directory\" as file

    set the label index of item fileName to 7

end tell

As most geeks would know, you can experiment with Apple scripts in the Script Editor (Applications / Utilities / Script Editor) but there are a couple of tricky bits - the first is that it is impossible to use the posix path stuff in the apple script editor because it always compiles the expression and therefore the behaviour does not match. The second tricky part is to make sure you use "item" instead of "directory" or "folder" or "file" (which you did). So, now we need to put it together with something like this (I created a new folder called "Foo" in the current directory).

#!/bin/bash

osascript <<!!

tell application "Finder"

	set fileName to posix file "$PWD/Foo" as file

	set label index of item fileNmae to 3

end tell

!!

That combines setting a directory attribute with the idea of a heredoc. In theory the multiple arguments method of talking to oascript should work but I always have problems with it. Give that a whirl and let me know how it goes...

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM

March 01, 2006

Religious Writes

[Found at Blogin' Outloud...]

I just spoke to my counterpart at a major theological seminary and he was in a tizzy. It seems that he is behind in his theological research and is rushing to publish a much needed paper, without which, there is a very good possibility that he will be reassigned as a priest to a congregation somewhere in the boondocks.

He told me that this situation affected most of the Brothers at the graduate school, at one time or another, just as it affects many professors at universities and colleges all over the world. That's right . . . even at the seminary it's either publish or parish.

Posted by Peskie at 12:00 PM | Comments (3)

Samba mount fails (Linux)

Q: I am trying to mount a PC filesystem (which I can browse) and I keep getting funny results. The filesystem mounts but I get errors when I run df or try to look at the filesystem...

[root /]# mount -t smbfs -o
workgroup=xxx,username=xxx,password=xxx,kerb //xxx/yyy /mnt/smb
[root /]# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
[Normal list of filesystems deleted]
df: `/mnt/smb': Permission denied
[root /]# ls -l /mnt
total 0
?--------- ? ? ? ? ? smb

A: Chances are the windows box is running a later version of Windblows. Try using the filesystem type cifs instead of smbfs. The other options are the same.

Posted by Ozguru at 06:00 AM