john.pithed.org

UPDATE 07/25/08: I have determined that this article was somewhat ill concieved, and am declaring it hooey. I’ll leave it up, but TL;DR use alt DNS server / set up local DNS server, and always think before being critical of powerful telecoms.

First off, I am going to have to give full disclosure here. Several people that are very important in my life work at Rogers. I think they are a great employer, and I would too love to work for them someday.

However, I take issue with some of the things they do. The most recent thing that bothers me (discovered via /.) is that Rogers is rerouting any unresolved dns lookup to their own search page, complete with ads. If you have Rogers internet, type in an incorrect URL and see the results. However, their is an easy fix, for the moment.

In that Slashdot article, a commenter gave the IPs for two unpoisoned Rogers DNS servers, 151.202.0.85 and 151.203.0.85. 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.6 are option. To change them, go to your internet settings and enter in those addresses (the DNS fields are usually blank because by default, defined DNS servers aren’t necessary for DHCP, the connection type Rogers uses.

Some of you may wonder why I care (or the angry Slashdotters). I care because its a violation of my privacy on the internet. Of course, this is all moot because I DON’T PAY FOR INTERNET, there I said it, I’m a big whiner or pussy, or whatever, It still sucks.

Because of my relations with Rogers, I’m not going to give them a serious tongue-lashing about this, because I do think that they are a good employer, and they provide the services to people who don’t mind dealing with the hoops. They are just stretching the meanings about providing a service for their customers.
I really do hope that they provide at least an opt-out for this.

I had another post from my transit boredom to type in (and another I deleted completely) but since I polished off a fancy new one I may just have to axe it, and think of some more things to say without boring people to tears.

(Written around July 1)

On the subway again. I had a short post ready to go last week, but then accidentally deleted it on the BlackBerry. Having a scrollwheel that doubles as a button has its disadvantages.

The post was about conversations across both sides of a subway station, and whether or not they were rude to fellow transit-riders. Looking back at it, I’m glad its gone, that would have been boring.

For the Canada Day weekend, Lisa and I went to Lisa’s parents’ cottage, and I had a very relaxing time. Not particularly interesting to talk about, but glad for it nonetheless, as the 9-5 work thing does still tire me down. I watched some great wakeboarding (making me want to go to Wakestock although I know I won’t) and had a short kayak adventure (I got stuck when I ventured into the marsh).

The post is named for my recent inclination to injure my fingers. From many small scrapes to taking a chunk out of my knuckle with a cheese grater, I can’t seem to catch a break.

Employment continues, and hopefully will continue into the foreseeable future (i.e. until September)

I know it’s been a while since my first post, but nobody’s reading this anyway. Also, I am not getting nearly as much time online, working 9-5 in the shop and never being home to user my own computer.

To solve this problem, I am drafting this post on my BlackBerry. This is mostly to kill time on my 30 minute subway ride from Yonge-Bloor to Islington, and because BrickBreaker is one of the most frustrating games in existence, crafted by RIM to drive people crazy enough to get back to work.

The only problem is that I don’t have any way to transfer it from the BB to my computer. There is a program for Linux called barry that can sync a BB with your mail, calendar, etc, but to put it simply, there is no 64-bit .deb package to rely upon, meaning I would have to compile it from source. Embarrassingly, this is something i still don’t know how to do. It also requires Opensync, which seems also needlessly hard to get to work properly. However, in the interest of bettering myself and then displaying it for all (more likely none) to see, I will investigate this further. Eventually.

Despite all the mess, I recently discovered when i switched to Hardy that my BB can charge via USB, something I couldn’t do in Gutsy even with barry installed.

Another Linux issue I’ve encountered recently is WPA. I wasn’t able to get it working in Gutsy even with barry installed. I believe this is because i was using ndiswrapper as the driver for my wireless card, rather then using the one from the restricted drivers manager. Luckily, I rarely encounter WPA.

Otherwise, I’m pretty happy with my current setup on Xubuntu. My desktop is pretty much a copy of Random’s xfce layout. I also followed a blog post that detailed how to get changing wallpapers in xfce. Apparently, xfce can create lists of wallpapers, but only changes them on startup, which seems pretty dumb. A simple hack completes the process, with no resource-hogging deamons to manage that task, all handled nicely by cron.

As I was looking at this post on the BlackBerry, it looked unbearably long, but it looks okay on screen.

I’ll be back soon with more subway-boredom-induced rants.

Hello there, welcome to my inaugural post to my first blog.

I guess I should explain why I am starting a blog in the first place. First of all, I have opinions, and dammit, I want other people to listen to what I have to say. Secondly, I want to put myself out there so people can see how full of flaws I am, and in due time I can work on bettering myself, using my e-shame to leverage my self-improvement.And finally, as I am a moderately cultured tech person, I can use this blog to post some helpful hints that, in turn, other people can find by the power of Google and hopefully help them with the same issues.

In short, I am seeking to better myself, and hopefully help others in the process, in my own not-very-articulate fashion. Hey, at least I know how to spell.

New things I learned today:

1. How to Crudely stitch up a rip in my jeans with a piece of rigid wire. When that falls out, I will upgrade to staples.

2. Thieves often break into your house to get your car keys, which I’m not sure is really dumb or rather smart.

3. Setting up a Wordpress blog.

Big thanks go out to my girlfriend for all of her support through pretty much everything in my life. Also a little shoutout to Random, who owns this domain that I am feeding from like the most vile of parasites. If I don’t post regularly, please feel free to harass me to do so.