(Twenty) Three Things…

alternateorg on October 8, 2002

1) I’m officially 23 today. I have the pangs of age more than I ever have in the past. Why? Because for the big, parentally-funded birthday present, I asked for a mattress. Not a DVD. Not an XBox. Not even a hooker. I asked for something painfully useful, and thusly, somewhat mature. Oh well. The older I get, the sooner I can become Crotchety(tm)!

2) Go see Miyazaki’s “new” film Spirited Away. Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli are international treasures. Their animation is rivaled only by Pixar, and the human race is better for having them. Spirited Away is an odd film. Like free jazz, or 7/4 time, many can appreciate, but few will actually like. Wipe Princess Mononoke and all of their previous work from your mind before entering. It is a very amazing, and very Japanese film.

3) On November 17th, at the Wiltern in Los Angeles, comedy Ragnarok shall commence. The Clash of the Titans features Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Janeane Garafalo, Mr. Show featuring Bob and David, and the Kids in the Hall. I have my tickets. This is a once in a blue moon, for-charity event. Good stuff.

Life is grand.

SpyWare? What?

alternateorg on September 30, 2002

People often ask me why I hate PCs and Microsoft so much. Here’s a good reason:

Last week, I started seeing a whole new kind of spam on my PC. System messages like this one started showing up on my screen at strange times. They look like Windows systems messages, but they were always advertising something.

I ran the version of Ad Aware that I had installed on my machine, but it didn’t find anything. So I uninstalled AIM, thinking maybe that was the root of the problem. (And besides: why use AIM when there’s Trillian around?). But that didn’t clear up the issue. Over the past couple days, I started getting the messages more frequently…at least once a day.

Then I realized that it had been six months since I installed Ad Aware, and that there were probably new updates. Which there were. When I ran Ad Aware this morning (after being greeted almost immediately after booting up by a spamming system message), it found 14 different spyware programs on my beloved PC. Most of them were Brilliant Digital’s handiwork, which you can read about here. I had installed (and then uninstalled) KaZaa two months ago, but I guess Brilliant Digital is a “sleeper” program that “detonates” weeks after being installed. And I guess uninstalling KaZaa doesn’t uninstall Brilliant Digital’s programs. Lovely.

Pro for Windows: Has programs like Kazaa/etc available natively.
Con for Windows: Such useful programs often install awful applications like the one described above.

And as a sidenote: can any Mac user out there even fathom of NOT knowing which apps have been installed on your own damn machine? Shudder.

He breathes fire! FireWIRE!

alternateorg on September 18, 2002

Charismac claims no responsibility for broken personal or business related property should Hubzilla go on a rampage. As always, a clean and fed Hubzilla results in a happy Hubzilla.

It’s nice to know these kinds of things can still reach the market. And by ‘these kinds of things,’ I mean ideas that were obviously concocted at the company bar outing on Friday after work. Kind of like Spiremedia’s old Quake3Arena intranet module. Via TwoThingsAtOnce.

RIP Netscape 4

alternateorg on September 17, 2002

So who wants to help me write a VBScript/Applescript virus that removes Netscape 4 installations? It would be fantabulous.

Hrm.

alternateorg on September 12, 2002

Sorry Alternate’s been sucking so bad, but we all ended up getting jobs. Who knows, maybe this economy really is rebounding.