If Gentoo Linux were a Car...

1. You go pick up an engine (in pieces) and body parts from the central warehouse.
2. You find that your version of sys-car/transmission is too new and you need to get a newer version of sys-car/engine out of storage.
3. You put together the engine, transmission, and body. You're pretty psyched, only to find that you have yet to install car-misc/seats.
4. You install the seats, but find that the latest version of car-misc/seats does not correctly recognize the human body, due to an incompatibility.
5. You downgrade car-misc/seats and in the process must downgrade sys-apps/steering-wheel for height concerns.
6. You install the radio separately, which is the easiest part.
7. You turn the car on and it explodes.

Latenight philosophy with DH and DS

"Me" is me, "Dustin" is DSollick. Dustin was reading through (and critiquing harshly) a story he wrote.

Dustin: No shit, nothing without life?@!
Me: Actually it's wrong
Me: :P
Dustin: that too, lifeless worlds
Dustin: lifeless universes
Me: The earth existed long before there was life, for example
Me: indeed
Me: THEN AGAIN
Me: what if all these lifeless worlds and lifeless universes
Me: are just things in our lives? Just things that exist because we, life, observe them?
Me: Sometimes I look in a mirror and wonder how I came to be. How I inhabit this body. What if I inhabited a different body? What recognizes vision and sound and acknowledges it? Is it a mind? Does a mind do that? Or is it the soul. I don't think you can hook up eyes and ears to a brain and have a person. I don't think they'll see the world like any of us. If at all. But what.
Me: What happens when I die? When I am reborn. Do I inhabit another body? Obviously. Do i live through 18 years before I ask the same questions? I had life experiences at 3 that I can't remember but I know i saw them through my eyes, these eyes. These. Where would they be stored? That says it's the mind. My soul would remember. Can I tap into that?
Dustin: I wasn't expecting a philosophical discussion
Dustin: x.x
Me: Neither was I.
---
Me: is that how it happened
Dustin: yes.
Dustin: XD
Me: in your collective consciousness?
Me: What if we are made up of collective cohesive consciousnesses working as one? Hmm. I don't feel like multiple people, but what if we are? What if I are? Am? Is.. ? But really.
Me: Interesting thought
Dustin: I'm really glad the 11-page copy I wrote didn't make it; these are laughable, that one was grimace-worthy
Me: lmao!
Me: Maybe we are mosaics of consciousness. Each part of us coming from a different place. Varying morals. Maybe people get tainted. Maybe serial killers are tainted with a single bad piece. Spreading out like ripples.

Lying to the Verizon Guy

I got my new phone a couple days ago (a RAZR² V9m)! OH MY GOD! IT'S INCREDIBLE!
It was originally a Sprint phone, but I flashed it to the Verizon software on the way to the mall.
So, we're about to leave the mall, and I decide to try to get it activated on my account. The Verizon guy at the booth is busy, so we wait a little.
He comes around to help us; I ask, find out I need my mom's social security number (last 4) since she owns the account technically. Okay, that's fine. I call her, get that over with.
I hand him the phone.

VZW Guy

 

VZW Guy looks phone over and notices the battery cover.

This is a Sprint phone.

Me

The battery cover was a replacement.

VZW Guy

Ah, alright.

VZW Guy fights to get the battery out.

Where'd you get this battery?

Me

eBay.

VZW Guy

Ah. Okay. [He gets battery off] This is a Sprint phone. Says so right here.

Me

The entire body was a replacement.

VZW Guy

I'll be surprised if this works. I'll try it, but I'll really be surprised.

He's working, I make a loud comment to Heather about Verizon opening up their network to allow other carriers' phones. He interjects: "Not yet. Next year."

VZW Guy

It won't work.

VZW Guy tries various numbers, to little success.

This is a Sprint phone.

Me

I know.

VZW Guy

If you told me that earlier, we could have saved some of this trouble. We can't activate it. I suggest you sell it on eBay or something.

VZW Guy puts the phone back together, turns it on. Verizon Wireless logo pops up!

What did you do, make your own phone?!

Me

[Admitting the Obvious] I flashed it.

VZW Guy

Ah.

Fun fun, but you can't lie to Verizon Guy! He knows all!
I can't blame him; he's a trained drone.

Later, I call tech support, tell a lie about the tech telling me that it could be added to their DMD (Device Management Database); they try to activate it and fail (Very nice peppy girl whose name I can't remember; also this guy named Anton or Anthony or something similar who was completely awesome.)
He put in a ticket and they're adding it to the database.

Major props to the VZW call center techs! Booth guy wouldn't do that! :P

Flashed my phone over to Generic, and will get the Verizon data in there myself. Screw using backed up data! (You need to back up the Verizon data and apply it to a flash to get everything working; texts, web, apps, etc.)

Yay!

Vista Woes Pt. II; What gives?

Getting wireless working in vista sucks. I'd rather BITE MY OWN ARM OFF. What gives?
Getting vista to accept a non-signed device driver sucks. What gives?
Getting the Group Policy editor to work sucked (had to remove system policy file).
I was running on battery power until my computer died, and vista never even told me.
It just sat there and then shut off, degrading the capacity of my battery further. What gives?
30 GB volume, I barely have anything on it and it's got 10 GB free. What gives?
Right this moment I have a restart pending for reconfiguration and a program that says "Cancel pending.. Please wait.. This may take several minutes. Please do not exit from this operation." (Not like I can exit, or anything.) What gives?
Installing the windows update for my video card caused it to shut off and not start up anymore: boot = windows failure = poweroff. Safe mode to the rescue. What gives?

Point of Note: I still don't have wireless working. At all. It connects to my router, and that's it. Its dumb ass can't get an address from DHCP, when everything else (including older versions of Windows) can.

I choose Bite my Own Arm Off. It really would be less painful and time-consuming.

I believe I've restarted this thing 30 times in configuration.

For some reason, Vista boots through GRUB?
Not even kidding. My Grub -> Vista GRLDR -> Vista BootMgr.
I don't remember installing that. Is that legal?
It appears GRLDR is a giant GRUB binary. It contains the stage1, stage2, every stage1.5 AND a menu.lst configuration file, all in one. Neat.

Anyway, I'm staying up all night or something.

I decided to install Vista.

So.
I attempted to install Vista (Really Windows 2008 Server Standard) once-
On my 12 GB partition.
It said "This drive requires at least 9978 MB free!"
Alright, I figure that's fine and reformat it; there are well over 12000 MB free.
It then says "Windows suggests that you have at least 17000 MB free on this drive."
I figure again that that's okay, it's just a suggestion!
Apparently not. "Windows could not find any suitable drives."
That was some weeks ago.

Today, I tried again (new hard drive, 30 GB windows partition, etc.)
The install completes without a hitch.
Then, I start installing drivers. 300 megs worth of drivers. Wonderful! (This is still downloading, btw.)
Sounds worked out of the box, so did my touchpad + scroll and cardreader, it was pretty amazing.

Windows shuts off when I close the laptop (like, when the phone rings and I have to check the caller ID)- Minor annoyance.
Windows asks me for permission to do EVERYTHING- Minor annoyance.
I disabled Administrator and made my account the administrator (just so there weren't two). Fine.

I'm apparently not allowed to shut the computer off?
"Restart [tooltip: This power option has been disabled by the administrator.]"
Excuse me? I am the administrator, and I sure as hell did NOT disable this.

Oh.
Internet Explorer comes pre-configured in super anal high security mode!
"Internet explorer wants to warn you about going to mozilla.com."
"Internet explorer will not allow you to download this file from mozillamirror.com"
[Repeat last message for 15 different firefox mirrors: I add one of them to the whitelist and click 15 more times until I get lucky and it tries to use the one I whitelisted.]
Annoyingly enough, I CAN'T DISABLE THIS MODE!
Screw IE.

I'll have more updates as time goes on (Still getting everything set up and downloaded and such. Jesus.)

I have just one question.

What do you have to press to open the Force Quit dialog?

Here's a hint: They're all keyboard keys.

The accelerator for Log Out makes sense!

Force Quit is Option-Command-Escape

On another note, I absolutely love OS X. I take back all the bad things I said about it.
I'll put up some screenies some time.

Happy Hacking!