Please note that the mechanism to temporarily disable delivery of Windows XP SP2 is only available for a period of 240 days (8 months) from August 16, 2004. At the end of this period (after April 12, 2005), Windows XP SP2 will be delivered to all Windows XP and Windows XP Service Pack 1 systems. link

Microsoft has decided what’s good for you. I hope you like service pack 2! If it causes or fixes problems is not even the issue. The issue lies in a large multinational corporation enacting control over every possible installation of their software. Just because I chose to buy and install XP2 shouldn’t give Microsoft the ultimate power of it’s update and control. You want that control back? Turn off “auto-update” and go off grid.

This morning, BLAMPH I was woken up by the BLAMPH sound of a smoke detector. BLAMPH We have three of these BLAMPH things upstairs alone and I BLAMPH wasn’t sure which one BLAMPH was causing it.

I open the door to the bedroom and listen for the next BLAMPH. This is a beeping chirp-honk that’s being made by a device that’s dying. It certainly want’s to die. As visions of me knocking it directly off the ceiling flash in my sleepy head.

This is apparently a typical smoke detector system. The detectors all get power (120v) as they are wired into the apartment. They have little 9v batteries shoved in them (in case the AC power goes out) and they watch the voltage of that battery to see if it’s dead. If you know anything about electricity, you know that you can’t obtain the voltage of a battery without draining a tiny little bit of it’s remaining charge. This should take years but it’s already happened to 2 of the detectors in our apartment. You know, the apartment we’ve only been at for 5 months. I force it off the ceiling, disconnecting it from house power. IT’S STILL BLAMPH’ing. It does this 3 more times until it dies completely in this wierd 2001 Hal style; BLAM-pee-achh-ooop.

So my question is this? Why can’t we program in self preservation? It defies logic to have my cell phone beep and buzz AND flash, telling me it’s running low on charge. When THAT ITSELF is using up battery power! I think I could get at least 3 more minutes of talk time if it didn’t go BEE-doo “Battery Low!” If the phone or the smoke detector KNEW that I was going to rip out it’s only remaining power source and fling it across the room – it would die a lot quieter battery death.

Yikes. What’s going on there…

Update: Article on slashdot about Live Journal outage. Looks like they’ll have it back up soon.

I’m hard it work on the ever popular “Kris’s Web Christmas List 2004.html” and I’m popping links off the big retail sites.

I get to Amazon. Sure, I have some favorites that I want. Some Breakbeat Science. Some hip soundtracks, maybe add to my classic rock collection. Let’s see what they have for best sellers. Techno, Trance, Drum & Bass… I’m scrolling down. I recognize the cover art for a grunge band from the 90’s.

Amazon put the band “Sponge” (you may remeber their one hit wonder ‘Plowed – or not…) as the number FOUR best selling D&B album. *chuckle.

Link – Screenshot

I just can’t stand it anymore! IE has no freaking clue as to what cascading stylesheets are trying to accomplish. Two huge things in this picture that killed me tonight.

1. The 1px line off to the right of the side title. Why? The width of .side is 200px. Why is the width of .sidetitle (which is nested INSIDE .side) not the same size? Or better yet, ONE pixel smaller? So now I have to set the width of .sidetitle to 200px and the width of .side to 199px. This makes the .sidetitle push out and fill that farging little annoying gap. Oh, and I know it has to do with absolute positioning, I spent a week on that.

2. My .images sets the border link color to black. Even though the link image is nested inside a div=.images. it still shows up in the “default” colors in IE! I had to add a link=#000000 tag to my body. I should NEVER have to do this with CSS.

IE What is the FRIGGEN deal?!
Kills me!
*pant *pant

Well this morning one more $pammer made me do it. I’ve turned off comments past 30 days on the server. So if it’s more then 30 days past the date I posted, comments are shut off.

This is one step closer to a full disable. I started with MT Blacklist, which is a great program in itself, but now keeping up with comment $pam is an everyday job. See my blacklist.txt and cherrish the 2300+ entries.

Now I’m running that and the MT Close Comments Plugin. Don’t make me set it to zero…

Update: This seems to have done the trick. Comment sp@m has been cut to zero for the last couple of weeks. I would like to follow Sean’s advice and upgrade my MT version – but I’m planning on doing that when I build a new server and / or move the current one. With jobs and stuff – I just don’t have the time.