To Technical

While watching the recently released movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka in his vast wisdom had some valuable advice to offer.

He becomes somewhat annoyed with the children, who keep reminding him how much more they know than any of the others. When they begin to tell him a technical reason that something cannot be done or that it's not scientifically possible, his response is simple yet profound. He simply tells them to stop mumbling, that he can't understand a word they are saying.

After seeing this a couple of times, a revelation comes to me. He's making an important point. Don't question. Don't hesitate. Don't let the illogical hold you back. Follow your heart. Find a way to make it happen. Even if you have to import Oompa Loompas from Oompa Loompa Land, make your dream a reality, whether in a chocolate factory or elsewhere.

Partitions

I had used the standard DOS fdisk to partition my harddrive. It's a meager drive at only 80 gig, but serves its purpose, that being, partitioned into many small partitions (most about 5 gig) so that I can install and check out some of the different Linux distributions that are available (I'm still looking for that perfect distro).

I'm guessing that I was tired/rushed/careless (maybe all three) or perhaps the installer decided it could do a better job than myself, but while installing Ubuntu, my partition structure was wiped out. No big loss, this is primarily a test machine anyhow, no serious data loss, but once finished looking at Ubuntu, I did need to recreate the partitions. I'm thinking, no problem, I'll just boot up my trusty Knoppix CD and use QParted (which is related to or the same at QTParted) which in theory would let me resize the existing and create new partitions.

No luck, the drive seemed to be getting locked, saying it was mounted although it wasn't, and other odd things. Keep in mind this is probably due to my not knowing exactly what I was doing (this was my first outing with QParted). I decided to wipe out all of the partitions and completely start from scratch, still having difficulty deleting the partitions with QParted. That's when I came across a project on sourceforge.net called Ultimate Boot CD that is bootable CD loaded with tools for setting up and manipulating your motherboard, processor, disks, partitions, and a variety of other things.

Using one of the tools on this CD, within the F3 option from the main menu (I don't remember the tools name), I was able to erase all of the partition information on the harddrive. Then I rebooted back into Knoppix and was able to recreate my partition structure using QParted. Exactly what my problem was before, I'm still not positive, but the steps/tools above got me back into a happy place again.

Comments More Important Than Code?

As a firm believer in comments, this post caught my attention. Check it out.

From slashdot.org
Developers: Comments are More Important than Code
Posted by timothy on Tuesday April 26, @10:11PM
from the if-you-disagree-provide-comments dept.
CowboyRobot writes "I was going through some code from 2002, frustrated at the lack of comments, cursing the moron who put this spaghetti together, only to realize later that I was the moron who had written it. An essay titled Comments Are More Important Than Code goes through the arguments that seem obvious only in hindsight - that 'self-documenting' code is good but not enough, that we should be able to write code based on good documentation, not the other way around, and that the thing that separates human-written code from computer-generated code is that our stuff is readable to future programmers. But I go through this argument with my colleagues, who say that using short, descriptive variable names 'should' be enough as long as the code is well-organized. Who's right?"

Pay for Spam

How often have browsed the web looking for spyware or adware to install? Chances are, not often and not intentionally. Most people, myself included, actually get quite upset to find out that a desirable looking shareware or freeware application comes fully loaded with enough advertising to cripple the application's usefulness. Or you discover that the email address given during website registration was sold to spammers who are more than ready to flood your inbox. I quickly unistall the application and never look back as well as discontinuing my account with any such website.

Now imagine paying these companies to send you spam. Imagine paying for the software that's full of advertising. Well imagine no more. Microsoft Money and H&R Block Taxcut are two software packages that you can spend your hard earned money on and they will do the honor of nagging you with advertising and plugs for there own and other companies.

It started out as small easy to ignore advertising, now it's matured into all out harassment. This years tax software from H&R Block was chocked full. Advertising from ING Direct, Earthlink, and credit report companies filled the box and applications.

Companies better take note. There's enough alternative software available that users don't have to pay for your spam. If I want harassed by advertising, there's plenty of opportunity available elsewhere. I won't tolerate paying to be hassled by advertising.