My Golf Swing at 60fps
There's probably as much or more virtue in recording an off-day to see what's wrong in your swing as there is recording and reviewing your best. This is notedly an off-day for me. I've just started playing with a looser grip, which was working wonders for me at the range and on the course yesterday, but which is probably throwing off my timing today. Excuses, excuses...
I'm hitting whiffle balls here. Little pink, crappy ones that dent easily and seem to lack the weight needed to accurately represent an arc. I eventually split or crushed all my good ones and thought I'd give the cheapsies a try; half thinking they were marked down because it's probably hard to sell pink golf balls. But no. They're just light-weight junk is all.
I'll also note to the unfamiliar viewer that I am 'pigeon-toed.' So if it looks like my legs and hips are doing something impossible or unnatural, it's because they are.
And, yes ladies, those are my triceps bulging and rippling. And I'm sorry, but no, you can't have any of this delicious carnal hotness. Deal with it.
An Irreverent Hypocrisy
Continuing comments at You Are Your Television - Kill Everything.
"
It sounds like you are trying to excuse the people [...] for playing along; for voting against their own interests; for tuning in to a consolidated media that lowers their standards and keeps them stupid; for allowing atrocities to be committed in their names and under their flags.
But whether they made the problems themselves, whether they built the world in their image or someone else rammed it down their throats, they still live there. It's still their world and nothing can exempt them from the responsibility they bear for failing to respond to the real problems of their age; much less for playing along and paying homage to them. Example: Governor G.W. Bush didn't magically conjure a hurricane or personally poke holes in the levies, but when Louisiana flooded he damn well should've sent help. That's civic responsibility.
"We didn't want great big SUVs poisoning the atmosphere, unnecessarily depleting unreplenishable natural resources, increasing the demand for oil and thereby encouraging principalities of war and unrest to fits of murder in the middle east... But hey, now that they're here, fuck it. Look, honey, there's a TV in the headrest!"
If you're saying the people are too stupid to be responsible for their own actions... Okay. I can feel you. But if that's your point you should probably hang onto the stones of cynicism and defeatism, as panes of glass are rather expensive a material to build a house out of.
And if the people are too stupid, or ill-informed, or uneducated (oh the many diplomatic ways of calling people 'stupid') due the machinations of wealthy industrialists and capitalist oppressors... Good, great. We agree. So where's the beef?
Better yet, let's try something constructive here (since "troll" seems to be everyone's new favorite word to bandy about with irreverent hypocrisy) what do you think could be done to remedy the unaddressed evils in a world full of people too indoctrinated to recognize them? Let's talk solutions here. Let's pretend to hold ourselves to the same standards we claim to hold the rest and pause to look inward and ask of ourselves, "What are you going to do about it?"
Personally, I've got a 12 step plan which I'd love to outline for you now. Oh, but "Lost" is coming on, and it's sweeps month! Fuck it, I'm sure someone else will straighten it all out eventually.
"
"
It sounds like you are trying to excuse the people [...] for playing along; for voting against their own interests; for tuning in to a consolidated media that lowers their standards and keeps them stupid; for allowing atrocities to be committed in their names and under their flags.
But whether they made the problems themselves, whether they built the world in their image or someone else rammed it down their throats, they still live there. It's still their world and nothing can exempt them from the responsibility they bear for failing to respond to the real problems of their age; much less for playing along and paying homage to them. Example: Governor G.W. Bush didn't magically conjure a hurricane or personally poke holes in the levies, but when Louisiana flooded he damn well should've sent help. That's civic responsibility.
"We didn't want great big SUVs poisoning the atmosphere, unnecessarily depleting unreplenishable natural resources, increasing the demand for oil and thereby encouraging principalities of war and unrest to fits of murder in the middle east... But hey, now that they're here, fuck it. Look, honey, there's a TV in the headrest!"
If you're saying the people are too stupid to be responsible for their own actions... Okay. I can feel you. But if that's your point you should probably hang onto the stones of cynicism and defeatism, as panes of glass are rather expensive a material to build a house out of.
And if the people are too stupid, or ill-informed, or uneducated (oh the many diplomatic ways of calling people 'stupid') due the machinations of wealthy industrialists and capitalist oppressors... Good, great. We agree. So where's the beef?
Better yet, let's try something constructive here (since "troll" seems to be everyone's new favorite word to bandy about with irreverent hypocrisy) what do you think could be done to remedy the unaddressed evils in a world full of people too indoctrinated to recognize them? Let's talk solutions here. Let's pretend to hold ourselves to the same standards we claim to hold the rest and pause to look inward and ask of ourselves, "What are you going to do about it?"
Personally, I've got a 12 step plan which I'd love to outline for you now. Oh, but "Lost" is coming on, and it's sweeps month! Fuck it, I'm sure someone else will straighten it all out eventually.
"
Slow Boot at XP Logo
The Problem(s)
A machine came into the shop this week with a litany of issues, starting with a corrupted BIOS, an overheat problem that eventually led to the power supply, and an inexplicably slow boot time, hanging most notably at the Windows XP logo and scroll bar. The latter of the issues proved a challenge worthy of my efforts.
The Flailing Hunt for a Fix
We start with the basics. MSConfig, Hijackthis, and Sophos Anti-Rootkit (bullocks to RootkitRevealer) revealed no significant abusers. A defrag set the bits in order. Services and start-ups were reduced to good measure. And all without change to the incredibly long boot.
Some quick reading introduces me to a program called Microsoft Bootvis: A tool for recording and visually analyzing the sequence of events taking place during XP's boot cycle. In many circumstances, I'm told, Bootvis can cut startup time in half just using it's automated procedures. Though in my case, automation did not yield significant results.
The visualizations, however 1.) told me that the boot sequence was taking around 90 seconds start to finish, and 2.) about 70 seconds of that was dominated by two processes: an 'AVG Antivirus' dll file and fltmgr.sys.
First thing, I uninstalled AVG, immediately shaving twenty-five seconds off the boot time. This still left fltmgr.sys eating up fifty seconds all by it's lonesome. And on a 2.8Ghz Hyper-Threaded P4 with a gig of ram... Uh-uh. That boot is still way, way too slow.
I looked into fltmgr, of course, but found it an underlying construct of the OS - one that, in all likelihood, was supposed to be there, doing whatever it was doing throughout the boot.
I then turned my eyes to the visualization in Bootvis that showed the Prefetch process overarching the drivers sequence and taking just as long as any of the drivers. So, after some reading, I deleted the contents of C:\Windows\Prefetch and changed the registry to prefetch only boot items thereafter. This yielded no change in boot time.
More reading... Someone mentions the file indexing for XP's "high speed" search as a cause of slowdowns. I turn off indexing on the c:\ drive and disable the service. No change.
Disable print/file sharing. Nope. Network drives? Nope. Disable all superfluous hardware in the device manager: Out goes modem, network adapter, floppy drive and controller. Nope. Physically detach secondary IDE channel along with CD/DVD drives. Nope.
The Solution
In the Device Manager, under IDE Controllers, I finally found - stumbled onto really - that both channels had somehow reverted to PIO mode. This can prove a bit of an annoyance when it happens to your CD drive, and you suddenly find that burning a disc takes an hour or more; But when it happens to your hard disk... Well, you've lost gobs and gobs of bandwidth to an inferior data transfer mode, the likes of which the word 'bottleneck' cannot begin to describe.
The desired mode here is DMA and the easy fix to get your IDE channels recognizing their DMA capability again is to simply uninstall them by right clicking the offending channel in the Device Manager list and selecting 'Uninstall.' (They will reinstall themselves on reboot.)
After uninstalling both PIO-moded channels and rebooting, DMA 5 capability was detected once more and my customer shall be happy indeed to report - to friends, colleagues, and total strangers alike - a reduction in OS boot time from ninety to thirty seconds. I say again, :90 to :30. (That's with AVG reinstalled.)
And all this regards merely the boot time. Imagine how slow every other operation that required a call to the disk must have been. I wouldn't have noticed it in a few hours doing a repair (especially while simultaneously working on two or three other systems) but the disk access must have been insufferable!
Once a program is loaded into memory, of course, even the end user wouldn't easily notice a difference in performance, but that first double-click to open a program must have been taking... Well, by these figures I suppose it was taking at least three times as long to perform every disk operation!
The more I think of it the more I think this woman owes me some baked goods for figuring this one out, don't you?
In my Six-Fo'
...my eight-nine to be exact. But hell it is a red Chevy so - six of one, half dozen of the other.
Today I began a full-scale tune up on my G20 Chevy van. I say "began" because it remains now in pieces and I have retired for the day. I started this project with a visit to Murray's. The man behind the counter had a sort-of permanent smile and upbeat attitude that seemed incredibly sincere, though extremely unlikely. I noticed myself being wooed by his smile, suggestions, and helpful demeanor. A half hour later I walked out with $75 worth of a tune-up. That guy will be President in 2012.
Seriously though, he was a great help and pointed me in some necessary and worthwhile directions I hadn't then considered. I walked into Murray's planning an oil and filter change, new air filter, and spark plug afternoon. I walked out planning an oil change, an air filter, spark plugs, plug wires, distributor cap, and distributor rotor. Or in other terms, every single act of vehicle maintenance I know how to do without a guiding hand.
The oil change went off smoothly; I even managed to drain the filter without splashing crude around. Then was the challenge. As an old-school cargo-style van, the engine is not so much under the hood as it is three inches to the right of the driver's right knee. Access to the engine is basically behind the ashtray on the dash, and it's a bitch to get behind.
On the contrary, once you've spent a good quarter hour prying the plastic back it's actually kind of nice to be able to sit in a captain's seat while you tinker with the engine. Though it does make a helluva mess.
With the engine exposed I first wrote down the orientation of the plug-wires to the distributor cap. Then I started pulling wires, and here's where I am especially indebted to the fellow at Murray's who told me I was going to need new wires once I got under there. For with each wire I pried back came a puff of blue dust; oxidized copper. A closer inspection of the plug ends thereafter would not have allowed me to, in good conscience, put them back on, feeble and broken as time had rendered them.
Then we pull the plugs. But wait, I don't have a socket deep enough. Back to Murray's. Cha-ching... Up to $80.00 now. I pull the plugs, install the new ones, and decide to tackle the distributor cap and rotor. A stripped and rusted screw eats up another fifteen minutes all on it's own, but I prevail and reach the rotor.
But the damned thing won't come off. A rotor basically just slides into place and this one won't pry off with a foot-long flathead. Fuck it: I break it off. Now we slide the new one on... We... We slide the new... Damnit... Get on there... Motherfucker won't go on. Maybe a little tap with the hammer. No. Pull it back off for a minute and let me look this over. Shit, I cracked the new rotor with the hammer.
What's happened is, the gear shaft on which the rotor sits has gathered some rust over the passed twenty years. No? Really? Sure has. And that has expanded it's foot print such that the old rotor couldn't release and the new one isn't really big enough to accommodate the extra millimeter of oxidized metal.
Sandpaper! I cleaned up the surface with some sandpaper, and the new rotor - though cracked - at least proves that it will now take the shaft. Now I'll just need another rotor... 'bout up to $90 with that, but I'm not going back to Murray's tonight. Evening is settling in and I'm getting hungry.
I finished running the new plug-wires and as I left it I need only slide on a new-new rotor, top that with the distributor, plug the wires back in according to my diagram, and reinstall the ashtray/firewall. All of which I shall complete tomorrow after work, having swung by Murray's yet again for my 2nd rotor in two days.
As of now I am sweaty and tired, covered in rust, grease, and electrolytic gel. So I'm off to shower, but don't worry, then I'll come right back here and regale you with all the details of how, where, and in what order I lathered.
Come to think of it I might just forgo the shower and have sex with your mom instead. Boosh! (See 'cause she's a dirty whore.)
Today I began a full-scale tune up on my G20 Chevy van. I say "began" because it remains now in pieces and I have retired for the day. I started this project with a visit to Murray's. The man behind the counter had a sort-of permanent smile and upbeat attitude that seemed incredibly sincere, though extremely unlikely. I noticed myself being wooed by his smile, suggestions, and helpful demeanor. A half hour later I walked out with $75 worth of a tune-up. That guy will be President in 2012.
Seriously though, he was a great help and pointed me in some necessary and worthwhile directions I hadn't then considered. I walked into Murray's planning an oil and filter change, new air filter, and spark plug afternoon. I walked out planning an oil change, an air filter, spark plugs, plug wires, distributor cap, and distributor rotor. Or in other terms, every single act of vehicle maintenance I know how to do without a guiding hand.
The oil change went off smoothly; I even managed to drain the filter without splashing crude around. Then was the challenge. As an old-school cargo-style van, the engine is not so much under the hood as it is three inches to the right of the driver's right knee. Access to the engine is basically behind the ashtray on the dash, and it's a bitch to get behind.
On the contrary, once you've spent a good quarter hour prying the plastic back it's actually kind of nice to be able to sit in a captain's seat while you tinker with the engine. Though it does make a helluva mess.
With the engine exposed I first wrote down the orientation of the plug-wires to the distributor cap. Then I started pulling wires, and here's where I am especially indebted to the fellow at Murray's who told me I was going to need new wires once I got under there. For with each wire I pried back came a puff of blue dust; oxidized copper. A closer inspection of the plug ends thereafter would not have allowed me to, in good conscience, put them back on, feeble and broken as time had rendered them.
Then we pull the plugs. But wait, I don't have a socket deep enough. Back to Murray's. Cha-ching... Up to $80.00 now. I pull the plugs, install the new ones, and decide to tackle the distributor cap and rotor. A stripped and rusted screw eats up another fifteen minutes all on it's own, but I prevail and reach the rotor.
But the damned thing won't come off. A rotor basically just slides into place and this one won't pry off with a foot-long flathead. Fuck it: I break it off. Now we slide the new one on... We... We slide the new... Damnit... Get on there... Motherfucker won't go on. Maybe a little tap with the hammer. No. Pull it back off for a minute and let me look this over. Shit, I cracked the new rotor with the hammer.
What's happened is, the gear shaft on which the rotor sits has gathered some rust over the passed twenty years. No? Really? Sure has. And that has expanded it's foot print such that the old rotor couldn't release and the new one isn't really big enough to accommodate the extra millimeter of oxidized metal.
Sandpaper! I cleaned up the surface with some sandpaper, and the new rotor - though cracked - at least proves that it will now take the shaft. Now I'll just need another rotor... 'bout up to $90 with that, but I'm not going back to Murray's tonight. Evening is settling in and I'm getting hungry.
I finished running the new plug-wires and as I left it I need only slide on a new-new rotor, top that with the distributor, plug the wires back in according to my diagram, and reinstall the ashtray/firewall. All of which I shall complete tomorrow after work, having swung by Murray's yet again for my 2nd rotor in two days.
As of now I am sweaty and tired, covered in rust, grease, and electrolytic gel. So I'm off to shower, but don't worry, then I'll come right back here and regale you with all the details of how, where, and in what order I lathered.
Come to think of it I might just forgo the shower and have sex with your mom instead. Boosh! (See 'cause she's a dirty whore.)
Ant vs. Spider - Spider Wins
I was heading outside to film my golf swing when I noticed a congregation of crawlies on the screen door. A trio of ants - one grounded, two with wings - and a deuce of spiders that included our old friend Spider-Hunter! He's gotten even bigger, by the way.
You can see his Armpit Hair!
I didn't get any passable shots of Spider-Hunter this time, but made great labors trying to take just one good shot of his counterpart, what had caught itself one of those flying ants I mentioned and held it in a death-grip. Despite three or four dozen snaps I just didn't have the combination of light and angle I needed to get a decent shot. This one will have to do:
That's just Creepy.
Next time: My golf swing at 60fps.
You can see his Armpit Hair!
I didn't get any passable shots of Spider-Hunter this time, but made great labors trying to take just one good shot of his counterpart, what had caught itself one of those flying ants I mentioned and held it in a death-grip. Despite three or four dozen snaps I just didn't have the combination of light and angle I needed to get a decent shot. This one will have to do:
That's just Creepy.
Next time: My golf swing at 60fps.
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