What is it with the metro area that makes some people around here such nasty, psycho motherfuckers? Like not just rude or arrogant but outright mean and aggressive, like rude on steroids...

Not everyone's like that, thankfully, but the ones who are are so extreme it's shocking. I go outside of the area, and it's not so bad, so it keeps me wondering what the deal is around here. I'm curious if anyone else has any thoughts on this...

Drugs, congress, Fugazi, Minor Threat, Al Gore, Bush(es), local radio programming quality, Cox, Comcast, Verizon, local pro sports team quality, Wilson Bridge, Mixing Bowl, quality of local schools, quality of local air, sketchy employment, crowds at wegmans, poor selection of goods at giant, shitty bowling alleys, SUV drivers, fat rich women, the local courts, Patrick Ramsey, mosquitos, humidity, local road quality, local transportation department quality, property taxes, quality of local nightlife, MS-13, Tom Joyner, Jack Diamond, the IRS, Colin Powell, Barak Obama, Elaine Chao, Dick Cheney, gas prices, and actor Danny Aiello are a few of the things that cause the anger you have noticed.

What do you have against Colin Powell?


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

Well, Mr. Powell, despite having an alternate and more common name pronunication available, chooses to pronounce his name in the same fashion as the name of the body part that produces the excreta that you shit each day.

It's pronounced: Kaw-len
Not Koe-len

guys on internet with no lives like to vent here as well, plus its fairfax, its to diverse....

dont forget is pretty dead on, as I am proof of... except the diversity part. I believe firmly that humans should pick one race and start breeding to the point where all people are the same color. Race problems solved.

cowardly cops helps too

Yeah, I grew up here. People here are real M.F.ers. It's all the liberal hippie baby boomers that think they are the most important people on earth and everyone else should bow down. They drive like it too, like they own the road. Gimme gimme, more more. Shut up you f-ing spoiled little babies.

I worked in Smithfield County about 10 years ago as a consultant. County population was something like 432 people. Everybody was extremely nice. I noticed that in a lot of small towns. Everybody extremely nice. So I asked a lady, what makes people here so nice and her response was, "It's because we all see each other everyday and everybody knows everything about everybody, you have to be nice because you're going to be dealing with that person everywhere."

Now in big cities or metro areas you can yell at somebody and you may never see that person again in your life.

That's true re: small towns. It's also true that people who complain about mean people / liberal hippies are ignorant and simple-minded small town people (or rednecks for those who need translation.).

I say if you don't like the Whopper, then don't eat at the BK Lounge. -§

Lawman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Now in big cities or metro areas you can yell at
> somebody and you may never see that person again
> in your life.

Or it may be the last person you see again in your life.

Speaking of which, here's an article about a mean person who got everything he asked for and rightly deserved:

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_3861397?source=rss

RESton Peace Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Drugs, congress, Fugazi, Minor Threat, Al Gore,
> Bush(es), local radio programming quality, Cox,
> Comcast, Verizon, local pro sports team quality,
> Wilson Bridge, Mixing Bowl, quality of local
> schools, quality of local air, sketchy employment,
> crowds at wegmans, poor selection of goods at
> giant, shitty bowling alleys, SUV drivers, fat
> rich women, the local courts, Patrick Ramsey,
> mosquitos, humidity, local road quality, local
> transportation department quality, property taxes,
> quality of local nightlife, MS-13, Tom Joyner,
> Jack Diamond, the IRS, Colin Powell, Barak Obama,
> Elaine Chao, Dick Cheney, gas prices, and actor
> Danny Aiello are a few of the things that cause
> the anger you have noticed.



You forgot extreme development. Otherwise, everything else is right. [gasp]

If I had to pick one thing it would be the self important soccer moms driving huge SUV's. The other day I was on the Fairfax Parkway and one was driving right over the center line for about two miles. She had both lanes blocked. I already knew what I was going to see when I got to pass her, her bitching away on a cell phone not seeing or caring where she was going. And the 2.5 kids in the back seat watching a movie.

Hey, it's good to have the kids distracted when the SUV flips over and they are about to die.

paleogrrl Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What is it with the metro area that makes some
> people around here such nasty, psycho
> motherfuckers? Like not just rude or arrogant but
> outright mean and aggressive, like rude on
> steroids...
>
> Not everyone's like that, thankfully, but the ones
> who are are so extreme it's shocking. I go outside
> of the area, and it's not so bad, so it keeps me
> wondering what the deal is around here. I'm
> curious if anyone else has any thoughts on this...


Shut the fuck up, bitch.

Well if you work for the government or at a gov contractor you will see the sheer amount of fiscal waste/apathy there is and how fucked over everyone is except for the few people at the top. Eg. I know my company charges the government about seven times what they give me and everyone else in my company and getting anything accomplished in politics or gov is such a dirty, wasteful, smile and wave the flag deal it's sickening. Coupled with our world policies of we just don't give a flying shit and pass any bill that the best lobbyist promotes (see telecom/cable net neutrality/ we need to fight child porn by tracking every single computer forever/need to fight terrorism by tracking every single communication forever) and I guess you get the picture.

You think Fairfax County is bad. My wife and I went with our son to a seafood restaurant in Manassas. Our son was tired and cranky because it had been a long day. He started acting up in the restaurant and this nosy woman came up and started giving us advice about how cranky her kid was, etc. Is that annoying or what? My wife and I couldn't believe how rude this woman was. People in Manassas need to mind their own business.

Mean in Manassas Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You think Fairfax County is bad. My wife and I
> went with our son to a seafood restaurant in
> Manassas. Our son was tired and cranky because it
> had been a long day. He started acting up in the
> restaurant and this nosy woman came up and started
> giving us advice about how cranky her kid was,
> etc. Is that annoying or what? My wife and I
> couldn't believe how rude this woman was. People
> in Manassas need to mind their own business.

How f-ing rude!

Was that old town or Manassas Park? I hear MP is a hell of a lot worse than Manassas.

Lots of good insights. Thanks! I've wondered about the uncontrolled development here and population density plus that baby boomer/me-me-me attitude described here, plus the soccer mom scenario where folks have lost touch with what's going on around them because they're spending more time interfacing with technology (e.g. cell phones) and not real people. Plus I wonder, too, about stress from jobs (as described here, I've noticed a lot of unhappy federal employees myself, too) and the crazy, escalating cost-of-living here.

Meanwhile, speaking of Manassas Park and it being worse than Manassas...yep, I've heard that, too. I've had good experiences with people/businesses down in Manassas (including old town) and on down the road (well, a long ways down the road) into Charlottesville. In fact, I've found Manassas Battlefield Park to be a great refuge when I need to get away from the metro-area nasties and relax...well, most any place where I can get out and walk in nature is a good place.

But back to Manassas Park...yeah, a few months ago my car got totaled in a parking lot when some drunk teen-ager went joyriding in a stolen vehicle...and guess where that kid was from...MP. I thought that was classic when I saw where he was from on the police report.

FFX county (the DC area in general) is WAY better than some other places in terms of "attitude of the local population". I've lived here for 12 years and never had a problem with people being mean. Maybe a bit impersonal, but I don't mind that. I can compare this to the years I spent living in small-town PA, where you live around some of the most miserable people on earth- the very visible sense of despair you get from some of those places can start to be overwhelming. Alot of inherently angry people too, people who are just looking for confrontation and are ready to fight at the drop of a hat. Also, everyone knows everyone else and everyone else's business, and they usually make a concerted effort to involve themselves in it.

In fact, moving to this area seems like a vast improvement, but I guess if you never lived outside of the county you don't have anything to compare it to.

I think Fairfax County has pockets of assholes (Vienna, Oakton, parts of McLean, etc). However, I think all in all people in Fairfax are pretty decent.

As for The Meeper's observation ,he/she is right. When I was growing up in small town USA, I always had some asshole trying to start shit with me because I wasn't 'neck enough. Fuck that noise. And God forbid you should go to college, "You think you're better than me?" or practice hygene, "Are you one of them gays?" or work in an office, "I wish I could git paid to do nothin'."

Yeah. Small towns suck ass. Middle America, for the most part, sucks ass.

DUDE.... that was so dead-on

"i wish I could get paid to do nothing" is something a white-trash relative of mine said in reference to me being in computer support. So I said back:

"I sure wish I could live the rest of my life with no financial security and die poor in a place where nothing is located".

That relative recently moved to a city.

RESton Peace Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> DUDE.... that was so dead-on
>
> "i wish I could get paid to do nothing" is
> something a white-trash relative of mine said in
> reference to me being in computer support. So I
> said back:
>

We must have the same relative, because what I posted was verbatim from a cousin of mine. Then he wonders why I won't associate with him.

Mean in Manassas Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You think Fairfax County is bad. My wife and I
> went with our son to a seafood restaurant in
> Manassas. Our son was tired and cranky because it
> had been a long day. He started acting up in the
> restaurant and this nosy woman came up and started
> giving us advice about how cranky her kid was,
> etc. Is that annoying or what? My wife and I
> couldn't believe how rude this woman was. People
> in Manassas need to mind their own business.


why dont you take your stupid ass restaurant-ruining loud sack of shit son home and stay there. dont get mad when you are making others mad. what is REALLY rude is going to a restaurant and expecting everyone to put up with your crying little bitch. when did it become publically acceptable for people to have noisy ass kids? that's right... IT DIDNT. shut the fuck up and eat at home until he grows up.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

Gravis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mean in Manassas Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > You think Fairfax County is bad. My wife and I
> > went with our son to a seafood restaurant in
> > Manassas. Our son was tired and cranky because
> it
> > had been a long day. He started acting up in
> the
> > restaurant and this nosy woman came up and
> started
> > giving us advice about how cranky her kid was,
> > etc. Is that annoying or what? My wife and I
> > couldn't believe how rude this woman was.
> People
> > in Manassas need to mind their own business.
>
>
> why dont you take your stupid ass
> restaurant-ruining loud sack of shit son home and
> stay there. dont get mad when you are making
> others mad. what is REALLY rude is going to a
> restaurant and expecting everyone to put up with
> your crying little bitch. when did it become
> publically acceptable for people to have noisy ass
> kids? that's right... IT DIDNT. shut the fuck up
> and eat at home until he grows up.


your a fuckin god man

gravis makes a good point, noisy kids should be taught they won't go anywhere if they act like that. Once they get left behind at a few major events they'll learn to shut the fuck up. hopefully, and if not, shock treatment.

RESton Peace Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> gravis makes a good point, noisy kids should be
> taught they won't go anywhere if they act like
> that.

i still like my explaination better. :)


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

"why dont you take your stupid ass restaurant-ruining loud sack of shit son home and stay there. dont get mad when you are making others mad. what is REALLY rude is going to a restaurant and expecting everyone to put up with your crying little bitch. when did it become publically acceptable for people to have noisy ass kids? that's right... IT DIDNT. shut the fuck up and eat at home until he grows up."

I would make sure that after my kid crapped his diaper, to tuck the dirty diaper neatly under Gravis' carseat, hopefully on a 95 degree day.

I think some of the parents around here take better care of their pets than they do their kids.

Now, I hate crying kids. I can't stand it when I get on an airplane and a kid crys the whole way (Flight from St. Louis to Honolulu comes to mind). But the worst is when people don't remove the kids. Now I have no problem if the kids starts crying and the parent takes the kids outside/away. The parents have a right to enjoy whatever it is they are doing. But when the kid stays there, it prevents me from enjoying my food. So when I just payed some obscene amount of money for some food, I feel ripped off when a kid blows the experience by screaming/crying/yelling/talking loud.

I remember when I grew up, trips to the restaurant were maybe 3 times a year. So I blew the first trip and didn't get to go for the next five. That shut me up.

Now, it seems almost any mom has 5 kids in her back seat, brings them into the place where I am and lets them roam free. This morning I was at Costco. 4 kids are running around, saying MOMMY I WANT THIS NOW as louad as possible in high-pitched tone. Mom says no, kids start crying. Damn it was loud. I wanted to shoot the kids.

LAter I'm at the gas station. An asian soccer mom in her SUV drives up, 3 kids in the back, yep you guessed it, watching a movie. She swerves in front of me, takes my pump that I had waited for, and turns off the engine to pump her gas. The kids start SCREAMING because their move has stopped. The kids opens the door ans starts hitting his mom b/c he can't watch any more. And I thought I was addicted to TV. The lady is apologizing to me for cutting me off, she said she had to get her kids home to watch Barney. My face was probably very red as I told her where to go. NExt her phone rings and she pulls it out and finishes pumping, drives off with it and runs a red light while looking the other way at the kids. I had murderous thoughts again.

I see little kids in Costco (and other stores) wandering around without their parents all the time.

i don't even bother trying to dodge the little fuckers any more. better they learn early to watch where they're going, and better to bump into me and fall down than to run in front of an SUV being driven by another attention-less mommy

"I remember when I grew up, trips to the restaurant were maybe 3 times a year. So I blew the first trip and didn't get to go for the next five. That shut me up."


didn't I give that advice earlier in the thread? Damn I would be a good parent if I didn't believe in giving kids marijuana.

WashingToneLocian-

About small towns sucking ass...yeah I grew up in one that was...if you can imagine...that was a mix of suburbia and a farm town. A lot of narrow-minded peeps, not nasty mean, just stupid. It sucked ass for its lameness and the limited experiences of some of the people there...the types who can't see the big picture and can't think outside the box.

Since then I've lived in a couple other smallish towns that were nice, but they were more the exception it seems.

Stinkypoon, love your idea. Much as I like kids, I get tired of when they're allowed to run wild and not pay attention and I'm having to dodge them. Fuck it, they can just run into me and fall down, too.

Either that or I swear I'm gonna start saying what I think half the time I'm trying to get somewhere and there's a kid underfoot:

"EXCUSE ME! Would the parent(s) of this child like to come get him/her out of my way?!"

Oh and then the whole screaming kids in restaurants thing...my parents took me out a lot but they trained me early on that it was a special treat to come along and we were going some place I should be on my best behavior. Then they made sure I'd had a nap and whatever else so I was comfy and in a good mood when we went. I knew exactly what the expectations were, and if I started acting up, I got the "you better knock it off right now because all these people in this restaurant don't care to hear you carry on." I just knew, consistently from them, that certain behavior in public was unacceptable and if I pitched a fit, I got taken to the car. Consequences...I learned bad behavior had consequences...but good behavior had rewards. My folks also stressed points of etiquette, like saying please and thank you and other things to the wait staff, what to do with the napkin and all the table manners stuff...and pretty soon I figured out if I did these things (=be polite and courtesy), I got a lot of attention and compliments from the wait staff and other people around us. I loved that kind of attention.

And it's interesting, the kids I see that get that kind of attention and direction (saw that today with a little boy and his grandma)...positive reinforcement...are well-behaved and more often grow up to be pleasant, respectful, polite adults. Meanwhile, I look at those other kids allowed to rage around with no attention, no discipline and wonder if this is where the assholes come from, like they grow into adults with no concept of self-control or responsbility, who can't behave well in public or practice basic kindness.

Anyway...just makes me appreciate having parents who didn't let me get away with any crap growing up. :)

I wonder if maybe nowadays parents were taught like that, and thought it was too harsh, so they let their kids do whatever so that they won't be being 'mean' to their kids.

I wonder why you have to have a license to drive a car but anybody can have kids with no training. And sometimes I think the test for getting a license is too easy for adults. (How some of those Asians get their license is beyond me)


I am not racist.

That is not racist. I think it's beyond coincidence that with a 90% accuracy rate I can pick out an asian driver on the road.

One day I was driving to work, heading north on 28. I stopped at a red light..this light had been red long enough that the opposing left-turn traffic had a green arrow.

This Lexus sedan comes flying by in the left lane, completely oblivious to the fact that the light was red. Thankfully the left-turn traffic had finished and the light was going to turn green in a few seconds anyway--otherwise that would have been a horrific wreck.

After the light turned green, I caught up to the Lexus and I saw an Asian gentleman with a cellphone to his ear.

most of my bad experiences come from just about any driver that is on a cell phone. race doesn't mean shit, we're all morons when distracted.

brianl703,

I saw the EXACT same thing last week on main st in fairfax, old asian guy. i was sitting at a light, and nobody was in the lane to my right. all of a sudden a car slowly cruised through the red light like it was no big deal. the light turned green and i got ahead of the guy but had to stop at another red. like fucking clockwork he did the again, and through another not far from there. the whole time i was hoping he'd find a green light and stop before he hurt someone;)

Its funny with the screaming kids on the airplane, the suggestion was to ask the parents to take them outside.

I too have seen kids hitting their parents and no matter how many times I see I still cant believe it.

Clearly no parents here. Too bad you won't remember spoutin' all this pap by the time you spawn... Gravis accepted of course - from the spawning part.

we hope

Why does everyone give Gravis so much crap?

He uses Linux, so he can't be all bad...

He's just poor. The rest of us use Linux because it's better.

I've always been impressed with Linux's ability to work on outdated hardware.

I have this dual Pentium 200 with 196MB of RAM (I got the motherboard and the RAM out of the trash at my last job) and SCSI drives on a ultra/wide controller. It runs Samba on Debian with kernel 2.4.32. It'll almost max out a 100megabit ethernet link on reads from my Windows XP machine.

It also most recently had an uptime of about 5 months, till I took it down to add a 72GB SCSI drive to it.

I also use it as the firewall for my wireless access point. It's really nice to be able to fire up tcpdump and see what's going on with your wireless access point..

I had a linux server on a virtual machine runnung on vmware for three months collecting packets in ehtereal for analyses, and I know my uptime would have been much longer if I hadn't been running it on 2003 server.

Had to reboot the 2003 machine at one point, had no choice, so the virtual machines had to be restarted also, and I def. was looking for a different low-cost virtualization strategy afterward.

I used tcpdump to log the packets to a file, then sent it to my Windows XP machine to look at them with Ethereal. (Saved it on a drive which is shared with Samba).

Even a relatively slow by today's standards machine (dual P200) does a fine job of capturing packets.

I also run the folding@home client on it to keep one of the CPUs busy :)

And it's never used swap. I have never, ever seen it use swap.

In fact the only problem I've ever had with it was when one of the CPU fans stopped working due to a flaky connection. I got out the soldering iron and soldered the two CPU fan power wires to one drive power tap.

pgens Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> He's just poor. The rest of us use Linux because
> it's better.

best said: lol


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

And then, there are those of us who use Macs.

I know, everybody groan and get it over with...every IT guy I've ever worked with has.

Nevertheless, I still love my Mac system. Not saying it's better than anything else, just that it works for me.

paleogrrl Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And then, there are those of us who use Macs.
>
> I know, everybody groan and get it over
> with...every IT guy I've ever worked with has.
>
> Nevertheless, I still love my Mac system. Not
> saying it's better than anything else, just that
> it works for me.


and it only cost you two grand. chump.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

I ahve two macs and they suck. Cannot do a thing a pc can't do, and only ten times the price.

If you need the Unix stuff, here's an idea, Use freebsd or linux.

Actually, spent less than two grand, and you know, no computer's perfect, but I've had a lot less problems with my Mac at home than most of the PC systems...well, I should say PCs are not the problem, it's certain Windows operating systems that are the problem...with crashing, especially when running certain pagination/graphics software. And being that crashes are what annoy me the most with computers, I'm happy with my Mac. Happy to pay what I did to get what I knew I'd be most comfortable with...unlike where I work (a nonprofit), where they have the most out-of-date system...Windows 98...yes, I said 98. Before I had this job, I had not seen that since '98. Also have not seen the blue screen of death since '98...nor spent more of my time trying to get the computer to work vs. doing work since '98...nor wanted so much to pitch a computer off the roof of an 8-story building since '98. That work set-up I got stuck with is such a piece of shit. &%$@!!!

buying a brand name pc is for morons. so I guess if you MUST buy a brand name then a mac is the way to go, but I am just sick of the endless bullshit involved in running osx. It makes using advanced features into a small-scale nightmare. In windows a lot of those features may not be so easy-to-use either, but at least they are availble.

I guess that depends on definition of "brand." I would never buy an HP or Compaq because of the hell I went through with them years ago regarding proprietary hardware and upgrade limitations. That's the "brand with proprietary parts" route. Following that I went 100% build-my-own, which had its own problems when pieces here and there sold by the fly-by-night computer show vendors would fail. That's the unbranded PC with branded-third-party hardware route. I settled on Dell because they tend to use name-brand parts within their systems, and the parts as a whole have gone through a degree of integration testing (branded PC with pranded-third-party route). I'm done with spending weekends rebuilding my own stuff when some piece dies. And if you know where to monitor deals, Dell machines can be had for _very_ reasonable prices.

As far as OSs are concerned, if you get the Dell you can pick Windows or a Linux derivitive. Better yet, I have been getting into virtualization lately, so to me the answer going forward is to buy the maximum performance Dell within a certain budget and run VMWare on there with a few virtual environments running. There are ways to get OSX running on VMWare so I can always go that route if I want to. I can then remote in to whatever OS is appropriate for a given task. On my laptops I dual-boot XP and Linux, using Linux for everyday stuff and XP for my development tools.

dude, you know I worked for Dell until last week so it's just preaching to the choir, but I will tell you the home user experience for the average Dell customer has been slipping rapidly in the past year. Dell is shifting to lower-quality parts that are still made by those "name brands" in some cases and not in others.

But I never have issues with my homemade machines. I mean never. But then again i follow fairly strict data retention, security, and usage procedures so I in theory shouldn;t have to worry. Windows has not caused any problems (during SP2) that cause me to get angry.

running mac osx on vmware is pretty easy actually, been doing it myself with that hack that's out. also been running vista beta but it's a waste of time since vmware can't do 3d acceleration and probably never will.

My problem with OSX is the lack of capability to get to certain tools and edit certain scripts without doing an overly protective root login procedure. Also, a lot of common everyday windows tools have no equal in OSX or have to be purchased from third-parties. Fuck dat.

pff... how much did you pay for it? i paid ~$650 for my 2GHz/1GB RAM system in 2002 and it's still cranking away today. i dumped in $50 afew months back for a new video card (i was using a voodoo 3 card for a long time) and now i can play the latest games with ease. now gee... how much was your mac? linux makes computers worth using, even on older systems (like 300MHz)... and it's free and easy. yes, it's easy to use. (see ubuntu. | ubuntu even has a user guide for idiots)


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

Agreed. I have upgraded laptops twice since I bought my main PC three years ago. I think we hit the point where stuff was powerful enough to get normal shit done. The goal of Vista is to change that and make everyone go through a hardware upgrade cycle jsut to get a few dumb graphics dingdongs working. The same graphic dingdongs that anyone running Ubuntu or whatever else can already get on older hardware.

I am in the beta program for Vista and guess what? No reason I have seen to upgrade unless you want to be asked ten times every user session if you REALLY want this or that application or utility to launch. Want news interface bells and whistles? Then install a new KDE or Gnome theme.

Even Windows XP runs acceptably well on a 300MHz system if you give it enough RAM (256MB or more; 128MB isn't enough).

brianl703,
  what planet are you on? XP, even hella stripped down, still runs crappy on a 450MHz with 256MB RAM. win2k did about the same as they, at the core, are the same OS.  *pause*  hmm... it just dawned on me... if you are probably in windows now. i go to my brother's place where he has windows xp on a laptop and it's slow even after i had optimized XP, which reminds me of how slow "acceptable" is to windows users. for me, if a program isnt fully launched in three seconds or so, that is slow. on windows you should expect to wait three to five seconds before anything begins to show up. it's a shock going back and using windows after so long on linux. on a 300MHz, i would expect to wait 10 seconds before anything happens when launching a program.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

I did the optimizations on this webpage:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html

It's actually faster than Windows 98 on the same hardware (even when it had only 128MB RAM). Loading programs is primarily an I/O bound function so if it's taking a long time to load programs, check the hard disk for problems...or replace it with a better one.

I have a Duron 850 laptop which WAS running Win2K with 384MB of RAM. Slow as hell. I replaced the hard drive in it because it sounded like it was about to fail(and HDD health showed load/unload cycles about 2 counts away from reaching the failure threshold), installed XP, and it's MUCH faster. Dr. Hardware showed that the transfer rate from the old hard drive was not what it should be. Part of that is that UDMA was not turned on on the old hard drive, but even after I turned it on it was still slow. With the new hard drive, the transfer rate is much faster.

Definitely doesn't take as long as 10 seconds to load IE on the 300MHz machine.

By the way, 256MB may NOT be enough. Press control-alt-delete and look at the "peak" entry under commit charge (K) under "Performance". If that number is ever higher than the amount of RAM installed, then adding more RAM will make a significant difference in performance.

computer geeks going at it again.

people, people.

no this discussion is awesome, I say carry on. There is merit to almost every point being made.

Listen, for me it will always coem down to games. Gaming companies bow to windows so I run windows most of the time so my games can be at the ready. I can run a VM of linux if I need some daemon to run, or I can lilo into linux (yes I use lilo, I am a fag) in order to make full use of the system's resources.

Mac OSX in theory looked nice, but makes using the unix features a huge hassle.

I back up as well and data loss was never the problem... just time.

I'm talking more about buying third party video cards at the shows that should have fans but don't so they die, cheap power supplies that will eventually malfunction and fry the motherboard, etc.

What happened with your job with Dell?

I got a much better job, my girl works for the company so I can say for sure it is a good company . I was a contractor anyway. Now I am back in the NOC world and working like real IT folk should.

The trick with power supplies is to spend the extra bucks for one that is RU/CSA/CE/TUV approved (although some of them are obviously faking those approvals).

The RU (looks like a backwards R next to a U) symbol always has an approval number under it that starts with E. I believe you can go to the www.ul.com website and look it up. The CSA symbol also has an approval number under it, but I have no idea where to look it up.

If you see RU and CSA symbols with no approval number, I'd be wary of that power supply.

These approvals basically mean that the power supply has been tested to ensure a minimum level of safety (it won't shock you and it won't catch fire). If a power supply manufacturer couldn't even be bothered to get these approvals, how good is their product? It's probably a piece of shit.

By the way, the Dell Optiplex GX270 has the bad capacitors problem.

http://www.badcaps.net if you aren't aware of this problem.

Always nice when you have the inside scoop on whether a company's good or not, unlike me, who moved across the country to work with lunatics. Or, well, half of them are lunatics. Fortunately, there are other things about the job and life that balance that out.

RESton Peace Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> no this discussion is awesome, I say carry on.

shut up, computers are for fags. you are hella gay. i use the internet with my mind powers.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

you mean your mind PROBLEMS.

Dells are crap. Never knew what the big draw was. They are just as expensive as any other PCs. They always seem to have catastrophic problems, like hard-drives crashing after two weeks or batteries melting. And from what I hear, it is virtually impossible to get anyone from customer service who speaks English.

Speaking of Dell, this is one of my all time favorite executive e-mail chains. Ha!

http://www.fuckedcompany.com/extras/dell_email.cfm

You know there's something to that...operating a computer with one's mind...just saw that one of the science magazines this month has an article out about technology someone's working on that allows paralyzed individuals operate a computer with their thoughts...and by that I mean they learn to think certain things that makes different portions of their brains fire, and then the resulting bio-electric activity triggers detectors that end up controlling a mouse on a computer screen. I've seen something on this research before, but I didn't get a chance to actually look at this new magazine article to see what the new development is. I run across stuff like that and always wonder what Brave New World applications will come out of it in 10-20 years.

RESton Peace Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> you mean your mind PROBLEMS.


sorry about that RESton, my kitten typed that up. i put a password lock on and everything but he must have seen my type it in. i guess that's what i get for teaching him how to use a computer.




im betting the RIAA wouldnt hesitate to sue him too.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/21/2006 02:10AM by Gravis.

Gravis,

Do those Munchkin kittens grow big like real cats? Or are they midget cats? He is so adorable. I love the website kitten wars. Thanks for telling me about it.

Trickie

TrickiL Wrote:
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> Do those Munchkin kittens grow big like real cats?
> Or are they midget cats?

i dont really know.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

who cares.

People don't "live" here. They come seeking power because they think they are above average and special. The ones that get power become corrupted. The ones that don't get mean, then leave.

RESton Peace Wrote:
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> Drugs, congress, Fugazi, Minor Threat, Al Gore,
> Bush(es), local radio programming quality, Cox,
> Comcast, Verizon, local pro sports team quality,
> Wilson Bridge, Mixing Bowl, quality of local
> schools, quality of local air, sketchy employment,
> crowds at wegmans, poor selection of goods at
> giant, shitty bowling alleys, SUV drivers, fat
> rich women, the local courts, Patrick Ramsey,
> mosquitos, humidity, local road quality, local
> transportation department quality, property taxes,
> quality of local nightlife, MS-13, Tom Joyner,
> Jack Diamond, the IRS, Colin Powell, Barak Obama,
> Elaine Chao, Dick Cheney, gas prices, and actor
> Danny Aiello are a few of the things that cause
> the anger you have noticed.


THIS IS THE FIRST MENTION OF PRESIDENT BARACK H. OBAMA ON THIS WEBSITE!!!!!

Too bad it wasn't the last.