Nerd rants

So fed up with Windows. Vista.

I just obtained a new, supercool device, a Garmin sports watch. A heart rate monitor and a GPS device in one package. I love it already. Everything's worked perfectly so far, but now I'm trying to get it to transfer data to my laptop. It's not going as it's supposed to go. I've tried a couple of things, and I'm a bit fed up already. So I open up the control panel, and it looks like this:



Yeah, I'm nearly 35, so I'm blind. I have to have cat-size icons so I can tell which item is which. Even though I manually change the view to 'Details' every time I have to open this friggin' thing. I like the 'Details' view because most of the stuff fits in and I don't have to scroll and the things are shown in neat alphabetical order so I can quickly find the item I'm looking for. But no, Windows just refuses to remember my preference, and shows me these huge, colourful blobs instead.

I mean, they're neat and all, and yes, it's nice that graphic designers have got work to do, but does anybody really focus on the icon? This is the control panel, it's pretty technical stuff and I, for one, focus on the text below the image to find the thing I'm looking for. I mean, I'm a software engineer, and I don't know what the 'iSCSI Software Initiator' does. Why the hell is it on my laptop anyway? Who the hell knows the icon to it by heart? Who the hell thinks there ought to be an icon? Icons are good, when you want to distinguish Word documents from PDF documents in a folder. But, you don't make an operating system easy to use by designing icons for complex functionalities and then forcibly wrapping them around the faces of unwilling users.

I actually feel sorry for the poor graphic designer who had to design the icon for 'Internet settings'. It's got an Earth, not unlike a dozen of the icons in this view, and a, ooh I get it, a dialog box with some check boxes. Yeah. I wouldn't have guessed without the text underneath it though, that by clicking this picture, I actually get to set the Internet settings. Is there a way to hide the text? I can't find it. But if there was, things would really get interesting.

So please, Bill Gates, the next time, remember my preference. I want to see text. Just so I can find stuff. Like this:



And another thing. In Windows 2000 the 'find in files' functionality of file system search worked. In Vista it doesn't. How the hell can this be possible?

Just try it. If you dare. If you have Vista. It even sounds like some kind of a contagious disease. Yeccch. Like this:
1) create a text file in any folder, named 'test.txt', containing e.g. the word 'ville'
2) copy the file to the same folder with a different file extension, e.g. 'test.pkb'
3) search the folder for the string 'ville'.

I claim that you can't make Windows Vista to find the file 'test.pkb'. Not by using the advanced search options, not by indexing the file, no way. It just doesn't work. In Windows 2000 it worked fine, the search functionality could find strings from binary files, no problem.

And I'm not complaining just because nerds like to do that. I really need this function in my work. It's not a rare situation that I need to find out where a certain procedure is called from, and the only way to do that is to search the file system.

Yeah, I know there are options. There are programs that can search the file system better than Windows. I just find this a horrific flaw in the basic functionality of an operating system.

Oh. And BTW, when reproducing the test case I described earlier, I just found out that now the Vista file search finds the string 'ville' in every file in the test folder.

MUTINY!

(is Mac any better?)

The times, the times

There are times you want to listen to Coldplay. There are times you want to listen to Dimmu Borgir.

There are times you want to buy an apartment. There are times you want to sell one. There are times you want to do both at about the same time.

Times when you buy a motorcycle, thinking that it's the coolest thing there is to do. Times when you sell the motorcycle. Thinking that it's not so important now, it's been 10 years there sitting in the barn, without nobody driving it. Better that somebody drives it, an enthusiast. I'd rather ride a bicycle now. Because I'm not going anywhere far away, and I like to burn spaghetti instead of gasoline.

Times when you play the bass, times when you play the guitar, times when you play with nothing except the FruityLoops software. Times when you think that being a musician is the only possible career option there is, times when you don't even think about music, except learning a song from the childrens' show that's on each morning. Times when you see how right you've been, and how wrong you've been. Times you realise that it's about the perspective.

There've been times when I've been very lonely. When I've craved attention, a lot. From about anybody. There've been times when I've craved for solitude. Oh boy, there's been a lot of those times lately. The balance might be tipping at about now. If you count only the time, not the intensity. And after some decades, when the offspring have left home, it might tip the other way again. Of course, there'll be about a decade of celebrating the new freedom, in the meantime. But I'm getting way ahead now.

There are times when you think that Mad Max II: The Road Warrior is the greatest movie there is. And then again, uhh. Well, it still is, isn't it? Ok, some things persevere. And that's good.

Perhaps, the thing that I wanted to say, is: it's not the times that change, as they keep on saying, it's you that changes. And by you, I mean myself. And you also. Clear?

Times when you want to write the blog, or whatever, times when it's not a question about what you want, instead of about what you have to do. Might be weeks or months, the times. Patience might be required. But if there's a hole, in the tight schedule of all the things that need to be taken care of, I will write a tiny post, while consuming a couple of doses of alcohol. I enjoy that a lot. I hope that reading all of this, to the end of the very last sentence, is not an insurmountable pain for you. You're not skipping paragraphs in hope of finding a punch line, aren't you?

There isn't one.