My college blues

This is really funny!!

2008-03-14T09:23:00.000-07:00

This is an actual letter from an Austin woman sent to American company Proctor and Gamble regarding their feminine products. She really gets rolling after the first paragraph. It's PC Magazine's 2007 editors' choice for best webmail-award-winning letter.

Dear Mr. Thatcher,

I have been a loyal user of your 'Always' maxi pads for over 20 years and I appreciate many of their features. Why, without the LeakGuard Core or Dri-Weave absorbency, I'd probably never go horseback riding or salsa dancing, and I'd certainly steer clear of running up and down the beach in tight, white shorts. But my favorite feature has to be your revolutionary Flexi-Wings. Kudos on being the only company smart enough to realize how crucial it is that maxi pads be aerodynamic. I can't tell you how safe and secure I feel each month knowing there's a little F-16 in my pants.

Have you ever had a menstrual period, Mr. Thatcher? Ever suffered
from the curse'? I'm guessing you haven't. Well, my time of the month is starting right now. As I type, I can already feel hormonal forces violently surging through my body. Just a few minutes from now, my body will adjust and I'll be transformed into what my husband likes to call 'an inbred hillbilly with knife skills.' Isn't the human body amazing?

As Brand Manager in the Feminine-Hygiene Division, you've no doubt seen quite a bit of research on what exactly happens during your customers monthly visits from 'Aunt Flo'. Therefore, you must know about the bloating, puffiness, and cramping we endure, and about our intense mood swings, crying, jags, and out-of-control behavior. You surely realize it's a tough time for most women. In fact, only last week, my friend Jennifer fought the violent urge to shove her boyfriend's testicles into a George Foreman Grill just because he told her he thought Grey's Anatomy was written by
drunken chimps. ?Crazy!

The point is, sir, you of all people must realize that America is just
crawling with homicidal maniacs in Capri pants... Which brings me to the reason for my letter. Last month, while in the throes of cramping so painful I wanted to reach inside my body and yank out my uterus, I opened an Always maxi-pad, and there, printed on the adhesive backing, were these words: 'Have a Happy Period.'

Are you fu*ing kidding me? What I mean is, does any part of your tiny middle-manager brain really think happiness - actual smiling, laughing happiness is possible during a menstrual period? Did anything mentioned above sound the least bit pleasurable? Well, did it, James? ?FYI, unless you're some kind of sick S&M freak girl, there will never be anything 'happy' about a day in which you have to jack yourself up on Motrin and Kahlua and lock yourself in your house just so you don't march down to the local Walgreen's armed with a hunting rifle and a sketchy plan to end your life in a blaze of glory.

For the love of God, pull your head out, man! If you just have to
slap a moronic message on a maxi pad, wouldn't it make more sense to say something that's actually pertinent, like 'Put down the Hammer' or 'Vehicular Manslaughter is Wrong', or are you just picking on us?

Sir, please inform your Accounting Department that, effective
immediately, there will be an $8 drop in monthly profits, for I have chosen to take my maxi-pad business elsewhere. And though I will certainly miss your Flex-Wings, I will not for one minute miss your brand of condescending bullsh*t. And that's a promise I will keep. ?Always.

Best,
Wendi Aarons
Austin , TX

Simplest AJAX page fetcher

2007-09-19T09:57:00.001-07:00

So working on one of my projects I needed a script that would dynamically fetch a page and put it into a <div>. Here's the simplest script I came up with to do the job:

function fetch(URL, divId) {
req = window.XMLHttpRequest ? new XMLHttpRequest() : new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP.3.0");

req.open("GET", URL, true);
req.onreadystatechange = function() {
if (req.readyState == 4 && req.status == 200) {
document.getElementById(divId).innerHTML = req.responseText;
}
}
req.send(null);
}

Save the above code as fetcher.js. Then include it in your html/php/whatever page:

<script language="javascript" src="fetcher.js"></script>

The last step is to create the a <div> to load the content into and the link that would actually do it:

<div id="container_div" class="container">Some default text<div>

<a href="#" onclick="fetch('url_of_page_to_fetch.php?with=arguements', 'container_div')">fetch</a>

That's it! I use it to dynamically load photo album pages, but it can be used for anything. Enjoy!

Any UNIX-like system admin hack

2007-09-04T11:23:00.001-07:00

I am writing this in response to a recent post linked on Digg: Mac OS X Admin Hack

Reboot into single user mode (depends on your flavor of nix. Look it up)
If necessary mount the root filesystem in read/write mode (mount -rw -o remount /)
useradd a new root user ( useradd -u 0 username) OR add your normal user to the /etc/sudoers file (don't forget to set permissions back to read only)
Reboot

It works with anything but most systems. It might not work on for example my Linksys router that runs Linux since it doesn't have a screen, etc. But any desktop is yours about 2 minutes after you start doing this.

Preventative measures:

Put a password on your bootloader (grub does it)
Put a password in BIOS
Encrypt your filesystem

Attacks against preventative measures:

Use a liveCD to install a new bootloader
On older systems you could short the battery to reset BIOS settings. Newer systems often have removable flash chips on which BIOS settings are stored. Look up how to swap them out. Otherwise you'd have to solder it off and put a new one back on or do something else like change the motherboard.
While the root (/) filesystem may be encrypted, the /boot cannot be. That is where the kernel and other boot up stuff (init images, etc) are stored. If you swap this out for your own init image that still asks for the encryption key and then e-mails it to you you've just decrypted the filesystem.

Conclusion: physical access to computers is insecure. In most cases it is extremely easy gain unauthorized access to the data stored on any UNIX based computer.
Conclusion2: you don't need a LiveCD for most things. Not even on a Mac...

That's enough bull...

2007-07-31T14:07:00.000-07:00

So what the hell is going on? Is Vista really that bad that my university tells me not to buy it almost 8 months after it's been out? Here's an email I get form my University's IT department:

Subject:	ITS Support for Windows Vista and Office 2007
From:	"Help Desk"
Date:	Tue, July 31, 2007 14:33
To:	"Help Desk"
Cc:	"SOS"
Priority:	Normal
Options:	View Full Header \| View Printable Version \| View Message details

As you may know, Microsoft released the Windows Vista operating system and Office 2007 applications in early 2007. Even though the software has been available for over six months, there are still many

As of this writing, ITS is aware of compatibility problems with Vista and Blackboard, Vista and the Clark wireless network security system, and Office 2007 files with Mac users and those Windows users with older versions of Office. We have also heard of issues with the programs Ad-Aware, Banner, Oracle, SPSS, & SAS.

With ITS currently being unable to provide solutions for these issues, and still testing Windows Vista and Office 2007 for yet to be discovered compatibility issues, we have decided to not deploy Vista or Office 2007 at this time and cannot fully support either piece of software via the Help Desk or other Desktop Support services. ITS is encouraging the members of the University to avoid purchasing computers with Vista pre-installed or updating their current systems.

If you already have Windows Vista, ITS will do our best to help you with problems you may have, but we expect that there will be issues (such as the compatibility ones mentioned above) that we cannot fix.

The ITS Help Desk does have copies of Windows XP Professional and Office 2003 Professional available for purchase by University faculty, staff, & students. If you have not already purchased a copy of Windows XP from ITS, we recommend that you purchase a copy to replace Windows Vista and upgrade back to Vista when ITS officially supports the operating system and when you feel you are ready for the change.

We hope that if you have questions about this message, that you won't hesitate to contact the Help Desk.

ITS Student Help Desk - sos@clarku.edu; (508)xxx-xxxx

ITS Faculty/Staff Help Desk - helpdesk@clarku.edu; (508)xxx-xxxx