Archive for the 'Annoyances' Category

Update: the light switch is not at bad as originally though. Click here to see why.

A few months ago there was some maintainance performed in all of the apartments in our complex. Our normal, up is on, down is off, human-style light switch was “upgraded” to the monstrosity pictured at the right. Now, I’m a technical kind of guy, and I was intrigued at this new hi-tech switch. There is a motion sensor on the top and a button on the bottom. When you click the button it always returns back to the same position. The green LED flashes intermittently, and sometimes seems to flash when it detects movement. All of this is fine, so far. But there is one really annoying “feature” of this light switch: it shuts off after 5 minutes of no motion detected.

I am assuming this was installed to save electricity. The first time I took a shower with this thing, the light turned off while I was rinsing soap off of my face. My eyes were closed at the time, and when I opened them, it was pitch black. I got to finish the shower in the dark. Thank you crappy light switch.

Every time I take a shower now, I’m always paranoid that this thing is going to shut off on me, so I wave a towel over the top of the shower curtain every one to two minutes. Sometimes I am really relaxed and forget about waving the towel, and just when you least expect it: “Click!”

I came up with what I thought would be a solution. There should be a mechanism to detect if the shower is on, and if it is on then the light won’t shut off unless the light switch is manually turned off. The problem with this comes when someone wants to take a long relaxing bath. The water won’t be running, and the light will still turn off!

I could see where this type of switch might be useful. If it had been me, I would have installed this thing in my closet. That’s the light I tend to forget is on when I walk out of the bedroom. I can’t recall forgetting to turn off the bathroom light. Anyway, I had some ideas for fixing the problem. I unscrewed this switch to see if it might have an adjustable timer. Unfortunately it was just a black box and I didn’t want to risk breaking it because I don’t own it. My next idea was to actually switch it with the normal light switch in the closet, but I didn’t know what the maintenance people would say to the landlord if they came in and noticed it.

Finally, there are the paranoid theories I keep thinking about. How do I know that this thing doesn’t have a hidden camera in it instead of just a motion sensor? This thing reminds me of HAL, a little bit too much. It’s just a switch with a light in it, but it still creeps me out sometimes.

I hate this stupid, evil light switch.

My Uncle just recently moved into a different apartment complex. I won’t say that it’s new, because it’s not. I was helping him by setting up his computer for him and getting him to the point where he can get on “the intarweb.” He told me that I could park anywhere. Furthermore, he told me when we got there which parking space to park in. I was there from around 8:00pm until almost 11:00pm. The computer is really slow and they just moved in so there are boxed and things everywhere. Most of the time spent was trying to find all the components and cables and get them plugged in somewhere. After a long while I was finally able to return home. It had not been a fun experience.

As I was walking out to the car I felt a little uncomfortable, almost as if someone were watching me. When I got to the car I found a Post It note affixed to the driver’s side window which read:

You are parked in my space. Do not park here again or you will be towed.

All I have to say is, “Thank you.” I can only imagine how the rest of the night might have been had I come out to find my car gone. I only wish that I knew which car belonged to the kind soul who spared me the frustration and the $200, because I would have put a post it on their window saying:

Sorry for the inconvenience that I may have caused you by parking in your spot. Thanks for not ruining my day!

Your Friend

I am taking a History class that has an online component and is taught in a computer lab with Internet access. The teacher lectures while everyone looks at myspace, checks their email and basically does anything to avoid actually learning. This can be distracting, but is bearable.

Enter Flash games.

Imagine the sound of a spacebar being hammered between ten and twenty times a second followed by hushed jubilation in the form of, “Yes!” and, “All right!” Next, picture this happening every thirty seconds for ten seconds at a time. Now picture this going on for five minutes with no obvious signs of stopping! Something had to be done.

I tried for three of these attempts to give him the crook eye, but he wasn’t looking in my direction. He was too busy concentrating on irritating me to notice me staring at him. By this point I noticed the student next to me shaking his head incredulously. Knowing that I wasn’t the only perterbed pupil in the classroom boosted my confidence. It was at the precise moment that I felt this surge of assertiveness that keyboard crusher happened to glance in my general direction. Without any conscious thought I let loose with a crook-eyed head shake with shoulders hunched and palms turned upward immediately joined by mouthing the words, “What are you doing?”

The student to my left that had once shared in my frustrated head-shaking immediately went stiff and almost magically removed himself from the situation. It was his reaction that started my paranoia. Had I overdone it? The kid in the row behind me didn’t look amused by my harsh reproof. He was sitting next to at least one good friend who had seemed to be enjoying his role as spectator until I ruined it for him. I began to feel ill. I only knew one other person in the class, and she was nowhere near me at the time, so I emailed her. I was hoping she might check it, see my dilemma and offer backup in case of emergency. She was too busy learning to find my plea for help.

The hammering of the keyboard had stopped, but the hammering in my head was just beginning. I thought I had met my objective, but I was still not able to concentrate and learn. I waited until class was over and pretended to be working on an assignment at the computer. I was fearing eye contact as I worried that that may act as a catalyst for the punks who saught my suffering. I waited five long minutes. I mustered the courage to chance a look back; they were gone.

I packed up my belongings and was on my way. I watched my back during the long walk across campus and to my car. I will see them again on Thursday. I only hope that they don’t remember me.

I am considering starting a petition requesting the removal of Flash plugins from all lab computers.

I find it increasingly preposterous that the BIOS updates I want to install are distributed in the form of executables with floppy disc images buried within them. I really would find it a lot more useful if they would allow you to download just the image files. Then I’d be able to use dd on *NIX machines to write floppies.

Of course, this is all rather interesting considering that the laptop I wish to flash to BIOS on doesn’t even have a floppy drive, but that’s another point altogether.

Well, I’ve arrived in Las Vegas without critical incident. I happen to have realized my mind is becoming feeble. I don’t know if it was because I was tired or just excited to be leaving, but I have discovered that I can’t remember anything anymore.

Krissy and I stayed the night in Barstow. I learned quickly that a “data port” is a fancy name for a telephone jack in the wall. My laptop’s modem doesn’t yet have Linux drivers released for it so that precluded anything useful from happening that night. I popped in my wireless card and fired up kismet to look for nearby access points; there were none. I was sitting on the bed and wanted to conserve energy, so I popped out the wireless card and layed it on the bed. I later moved the laptop to the desk.

Later that night Krissy realized we had left nearly all of our dress clothes for church back home. I was less than pleased that I had hidden them where we would easily forget them, but quickly realized everything would nonetheless be okay. And everything was okay. We visited some outet stores in Barstow that happened to have some really smoking deals on exactly what we needed. We then continued on our merry way to Las Vegas.

My Grandparents’ new place is huge compared to the place I grew up in. There are really high ceilings and I think they’re really happy with it. I wanted to post to this blog so I proceeded to set up the wireless router I had brought with me so I could get on the Internet in the living room of the house. Then I realized the wireless card was not in the laptop where I almost always keep in, even in transit. I frantically scoured my backpack and my pockets. I ran out to the car fearing the worst. Krissy hadn’t seen it, and I knew all along where it was: blending into the colorfully cheap Motel 6 bedspread in Barstow. We had two beds in our room because it costs the same as having only one and at the same time gives you a larger room.

So I’ve already wasted nearly $80 replacing clothing I already had and now I’ll have to fork over another $30 to replace the wireless card I so deftly left for a confused cleaning lady to toss in the trash or give to her manager.

This has been the best vacation ever!