* Travel Journal: Chicago
Posted on March 16th, 2010 by Mike Shriver. Filed under Journal.
Joe got in today. We spent a few hours in old town. I picked up a chai spice mix, walked to the Ukrainian village section of town for dinner/lunch.
* Travel Journal: Seattle – Chicago
Posted on March 15th, 2010 by Mike Shriver. Filed under Journal.
The first leg of my trip is domestic. I fly to Chicago to spend a week in that city in celebration of St Patty’s day. This portion has been planned for several months, since Cornelius and Shauna left Seattle late last year.
I’ll meet with them today and stay the week at Cornelius’ Sister’s flat in Wrigleyville. I haven’t seen either of them for several months and I expect to spend most of this week in a drunken haze. Joseph Arrives tomorrow, and will serve as my party tour guide for the week. I expect there is no preparing for this.
I don’t feel as if I am traveling internationally and this leaves me worrying about whether I should feel more unprepared for the Journey ahead. It’s also my first time traveling semi-solo. I feel as if I don’t yet know what I am missing for this trip. I’m also starting to think that is a normal part of traveling.
* On Bundled Software and the Deception of Hewlett-Packard
Posted on February 26th, 2010 by Mike Shriver. Filed under Uncategorized.
Several months ago, Costco had an amazing sale on HP all-in-one printers. That week, the helpdesk that I work at got hundreds of calls from users asking us to install the drivers for these devices. The device comes with a factory supplied CD-ROM that includes drivers for the printer. It also comes with about 200 MB of additional software: Imaging software, the HP ‘Solution Center,’ something called WebClips, and about eight other programs. I have never seen any of these programs used, and in fact, I couldn’t even begin to guess at the functionality that these applications are supposed to add.
Installing the drivers from the CD is a process that should be simple, and take 15 minutes at most. HP’s installer, though, automatically attempts to install all 200 MB of software that is included on the CD, dragging the process out to 45 minutes or an hour. It is enormously frustrating for an analyst who is measured by call handle times to have to sit and babysit this process. The easy solution is to plug the printer into the machine, turn it on and let Windows automatically install the driver for the printer, then take HP’s CD and place it in the microwave. This process is easy, and takes about 5-15 minutes, depending on how long you spend in a vengeful rage watching the CD meet it’s deserved fate. This will work 100% of the time, and results in a far more stable working printer.
I suppose that it is in the interest of self-preservation, then, that the CD has a large, and very scary looking warning printed directly on it outlining this exact process, and admonishing the user against this course of action:
Caution! The printer’s USB cable must be unplugged before proceeding!
Do not plug USB cable in until instructed to do so by the installation software!
I can only conclude that this is a deliberate gesture of belligerence on HP’s part. I can’t fathom how any company’s QA department could let software this poorly written get into the world is beyond me. I can’t even figure out why HP would have taken the extra effort to write and bundle this software, since it doesn’t seem to add any useful functionality.
The propagation of intentionally deceitful information to get a user to install software they otherwise wouldn’t is a defining characteristic of malware. In this case, the software (hopefully) unintentionally exhibits another characteristic of malware, the disruption of compter function.Any hardware that comes intentionally bundled with such destructive software, is not hardware I am going to recommend to anyone whose computer I am likely to end up supporting, and certainly not hardware I am going to purchase myself, even if there is a great deal on it at Costco.
* Favorites: Personal Notes in Used Books
Posted on February 24th, 2010 by Mike Shriver. Filed under Uncategorized.
One of my favorite things is going to a used bookstore and finding the personal notes left behind in the front covers of my most loved books. Tonight I found this inscription in the front cover of a copy of Vineland, by Thomas Pynchon:
Rachel– after you read this book all things will become clear and understandable– we are all of us in Vineland! -Jose
I found this gem at Mercer Street Books in lower Queen Anne. Left inside this book was a photograph of a hillside very similar to the one on the cover. I liked the copy enough to buy it, and will probably tear into it a third time, soon. So far, each time I have purchased this book, I read it once and left it somewhere for someone else to find, and (hopefully) enjoy.
* Swift Industries Roll-Top Panniers
Posted on February 16th, 2010 by Mike Shriver. Filed under Cycling, Photography.
I’m extremely excited about the most recent accessories I have purchased for my bike, a set of panniers. These beauties were handmade by a front-room operation here in Seattle called Swift Industries. I first came across these when I was looking for patterns to make some Panniers for myself, and I have been jonesin’ after them for quite some time now. Thanks to some saved up Christmas gift money, I was finally able to put in an order. Since they are hand-made to order, it took about three weeks for me to get them, and it was completely worth the wait.
* The Needle’s Click
Posted on January 29th, 2010 by Mike Shriver. Filed under Craft.
Thanks to the capable instruction of my friend Danielle, I have taken up a new hobby-as-distraction: Knitting. Of course, as in most things, I am something of a prodigy of this competitive sport.
Remember kids, the ‘K’ is hard. Say it with me: K-nitting
* Homebrewering: Stage Beer!
Posted on September 16th, 2009 by Mike Shriver. Filed under Craft.
I got a little impatient and cracked a bottle open on Monday. Inside I found a liquid not unlike beer! Success!
* Homebrewering: Stage Two
Posted on September 7th, 2009 by Mike Shriver. Filed under Craft.
I am now just a few weeks away from playing out this scene:
The setting is a dark, unfinished basement in an old house in Ballard. Indie music blares lethargically from the speakers of an old boom box. A dense cloud of 20-something hipsters mills around, their motions mirroring the mundane cycles of their lives; A weather system of humanity fueled by the dreary indie music and a fridge full of watery beer. It leads them outside for a cigarette, back inside for a beer, back outside to vomit in a bush, and take it from the top.
But who is this tall, handsome stranger? And what does he carry in his hand, but a case of homemade beer! Instantly faces light up, attitudes change and the party’s death flow reverses. Hipsters find new meaning in their lives as they crack open a bottle of a flavorful home brewed ale. Someone changes the music to a lively dance song, people begin to congregate on the dance floor and move their bodies in ways that are new and lifegiving. Another dreary party saved from the cusp of collapsing under it’s own angst. A hundred hipsters turn their eyes to me and ‘Prost!’ and I am regarded as hero.
I put my first batch of home brew in bottles yesterday. This is the final leg of the journey.
* Homebrewering: Stage One
Posted on August 27th, 2009 by Mike Shriver. Filed under Journal.
I have a lot of respect for crafty people. I like the kind of people who own sewing machines, or buy darkroom chemicals from ebay; the kind of people who hammer old silverware into jewelry, and paint; and who make music, and make musical instruments, and fix everything first before buying new. I’ve never considered myself all that crafty. In fact, I kind of write myself off as being too lazy to really get into something long enough to really learn it.
A friend mentioned that she is taking a cheesemaking course from WSU, recently. This is strange, and awesome and made me want to try to learn my own craft. I’ve had an idea that I wanted to try homebrewing for a few years, now, and I think that comment gave me just enough of a kick to try it out. I nabbed an old kit from craigslist for fifty bucks, got the ingredients a week later, and brewed everything up last weekend:
This is what beer started out as: Malt extract, specialty grains, hops, and yeast (that white package is actually corn sugar used when bottling. Just pretend it’s yeast, and let’s move on).
* The Stories the Whiteboard Tells
Posted on August 19th, 2009 by Mike Shriver. Filed under Journal.
Some more of those “I thought that shit only happened on the internet” times:
Living in a house of eight unrelated people is always going to be an adventure. Keeping common areas clean and resolving conflict when they aren’t gets overwhelming. Everyone falls on a spectrum that seems to range from being unconcerned with a few dirty dishes, but stressed by indirect confrontation about mess, to those who can’t stand the mess, and have no direct way of communicating their discomfort.
In my current house reside eight people that had never met before the current housing situation. Previously, I have always lived in houses with friends, and while the dish situation was rarely better in those houses, communication was better, and so conflicts tended to raise to the surface faster, as opposed to boiling unnoticed until someone moves out.
Probably the best situation I lived in had 5 guys in one space, but we regularly shared meals together. In fact, we made it a point to have a dinner with just the ‘family’ once a week where we shut out the rest of the world and enjoyed each other’s company. Seeing each other regularly led to complaints about cleanliness problems coming out in normal conversation. They weren’t kept inside until agreed upon times. It also prevented dreaded ‘house meetings,’ which amount to times specifically scheduled for complaints. We looked forward to weekly dinners, no one dreaded our house get togethers.
The kitchen sink seems to bear the brunt of the cleanliness complaints everywhere I’ve lived. Anyone with workable ideas about how to manage sink cleanliness and avoid the associated negative communication needs to write a damn book. I am completely out of ideas.
Our house whiteboard has become the de facto forum for airing complaints:
