Beware Monster, Juliana Ribeiro, and Linear
It appears Linear doesn’t bother to force Monster to take scammers down. Not two weeks after this post about “Micheal Parks” they are right back at it using a different…
Our Recent Blog
Beware Monster, Michael Parks, and Linear
Monster appears to be a relentless source of identity theft scams with “Michael Parks” and Linear being the latest. Monster must be making money from these identity theft scams because…
Beware Monster and Health Gorilla
Today we have a new job scam involving Health Gorilla making the rounds on Monster. Oh, I don’t expect Monster will actually do anything about it. Most likely the scam…
DeVry Students May Finally Get Relief
Anyone who got scammed into attending DeVry, or worse, that shit Keller Graduate School of Management, you have my deepest sympathies. Most of you have learned that, not only are…
Warning – Arc.Dev and the Like
This isn’t a “beware” it’s a warning about arc.dev and the sites like it. You’ve seen sites like this popping up like explosive diarrhea. You need to know the background…
Beware Likewize and soft_9
Beware Likewize and soft_9 found. I ran into them on Newegg. They are yet another pair of reasons to delete your Newegg account and make the painful commute to your…
John Smith – Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars – Audiobook
After quite a bit of thought, I’ve placed the high quality audio version of John Smith – Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars up on Youtube. You can read…
It’s Time to Boycott BestBuy Out of Business
It’s time to boycott BestBuy out of business. Really this is a follow on to my previous boycott post. Some little Keller MBA put together a spreadsheet for FedEx “proving”…
Beware Abusix
I imagine most people are victimized by Abusix without even knowing it. Whoever you use for a hosting company makes the stupid decision to use Abusix instead of a good…
Debian 13 No shim_lock protocol
You just finished installing Debian 13 on your latest computer and at first boot the system tosses up an error message about “No shim_lock.” Yeah, it sucks. What sucks worse…
Bundles – Newegg’s E-waste Disposal System
Beware Newegg bundles! I’ve been a Newegg customer for years, decades (plural) probably. Not anymore. Today they lost me for life. They deliberately bundle shit RAM with a clamshell you…
Yet Another Company to Blacklist
GAMA-1 Technologies is yet another company to blacklist. Even if you aren’t a member of the Software Contractor’s Guild, I’m going to share this with you. What makes it worse…
Beware the Cradle
You know, a cradle can be the greatest thing on earth. It can also cost you days. A few days ago, when I was trying to determine just how weak…
You Aren’t More Productive Using Indians
There has been a push or more accurately a desperation grab by technical recruiters to use Indians for the vetting process. This is always an unmitigated disaster. The ones that…
HP Franken-Z’s
When I first got my HP Z series computer in 2023 I praised it. A bit of new toy syndrome to be sure. As long as I just wrote books…
LF CR LFCR and CRLF Because it Keeps Coming Up
One would think the whole LFCR discussion would have been documented and saved throughout the decades. One should really be warned about thinking. Despite what you will read in Google’s…
The Last IBM Engineer
I get the Route Fifty morning email because that’s what is left of Government Computing News magazine. Don’t worry, you can’t find any reference to Government Computing magazine via Google….
Why I Quit Running BOINC
This weekend I switched all of my BOINC machines to Folding@Home. Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows that I’ve been a big supporter of…
How to still use nvidia340 or nvidia390 – Part 3
When something seems to good to be true, it usually is. antiX 26 had a spin that provides both the 5.10 kernel and the current kernel. It’s a full current…
How to still use nvidia340 or nvidia390 – Part 2
I have a love, like, sometimes hate relationship with Manjaro. When it works, it is sweet. Then they will push out an update that trashes something. It’s a distro based…
How to still use nvidia340 or nvidia390 – Part 1
Yes, Nvidia screwed the known universe by dropping support for both nvidia340 and nvidia390 drivers without Open-Sourcing them. They have Open-Sourced some of their newer driver code but not enough…
Xmake tutorial – Pt. 001
I found Xmake looking to replace CMake scripts that CopperSpice used. I mean, when one has to use three different search engines to look up a function before you can…
Electronic Review Copies Available
There are a limited number of slots to review my latest novel. It’s getting some good reviews now. You can read some of them on this page.
Fully Uninstalling Avast AVG and Aura
For Windows users, uninstalling Avast, AVG, or Aura can be like trying to get rid of a drug resistant social disease. Many end up just tossing out the computer because…
AI Apocalypse
The featured image of a Trumpville isn’t what most think of when they hear the phrase AI Apocalypse, but it is accurate. Hollywood wants to have images of robots slaughtering…
The Cinturion Group Technical Writer Scam
The Cinturion Group Technical Writer Scam is going around again. If you have a resume on ZipRecruiter which has any kind of technical writing on it, you will get the…
D.O.G.E. Team Should Not Be Allowed Near a Keyboard
The D.O.G.E. Team should not be allowed near a keyboard even to check email or apply for a job. What a steaming kettle of excrement this incompetence squared outfit is….
Review – Aura
★☆☆☆☆ I don’t care how good the credit monitoring and identity theft protection is for Aura, as a software package and company, it sucks. Never believe those “best of” and…
Starlink – Catastrophic Architectural Failure
Starlink has a catastrophic architectural failure which is a shining example of why Agile can never be allowed even as close as the parking lot to any project of any…
Microsoft Broke IDE LS-120 Support
Microsoft broke IDE LS-120 support. Agile is not Software Engineering and the rate of turds being pushed out the ass end of Sprints is proof of that. I set this…
Not All Movement is Forward
If you have never had to endure software development run by MBAs, you probably don’t hate the word movement. Decades ago, when I was contracting at Caremark between two of…
Fedora 43 and Postgresql
While Fedora 43 has a fairly clean look, it once again goes to great lengths to be “expert friendly.” This particular battle has to do with Postgresql. Regular readers may…
Beware 24-MAG
24-MAG appears to be yet another in a long string of fake hiring identity theft scams. Beware! Since they are routing people through mercor I have to also question the…
Amazon Tried to Replace Visa Workers with AI
When Amazon tried to replace visa workers with AI (after replacing U.S. citizens with visa workers) it found out the hard way AI write code just as shitty as the…
IV For A Dead Horse
This morning I got an email about bug 37134 from the LibreOffice bug tracker. They flagged it as spam. Up until you got to the link it wasn’t spam. It…
RPATH Notes
Few things are more frustrating when first developing your own libraries than RPATH. There have been numerous hacks over the years. Gnu even gave us libtool because POSIX dlopen() just…
Ubuntu F’ed Networking Again!
I’ve lost count of the number of times Ubuntu F’ed Networking over the course of my career. Was that the 2008 edition when the ISO ran great, it installed, and…
A Samba Share on Manjaro
Manjaro is one of the better Arch based Linux distributions, but it has notorious frustrations with Samba. The latest rounds of frustration come from the fact they should have never…
ID.me Duth Sucketh
ID.me is a shining example of why Agile is not a valid software development methodology. It is also a shining example of Elon Musk and DOGE’s limitless incompetence. One should…
The Viciously Sad State of NAS Disk
Like many of you, I was duped into buying WD RED disks when I originally set up my F4-210 NAS. Western Digital marketed WD RED as the pinnacle of NAS…
Beware Hiring “Companies” Hosted on GoDaddy
Hiring scams are back in vogue because the job market is shit. Despite what the Imbecile-in-Chief in the White House blurts out of the ass sitting on his shoulders, the…
How Qt Bugs Get Fixed
Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas. Just let bad shit keep being bad shit. Agile is not Software Engineering. The email says it all. Happy bug riddled holidays.
Remove Windows 11 Right Click Menu Item
You’ve all done it: installed some software, didn’t like it, uninstalled it, had its ghost on the right click “Open with” menu thereafter. Uninstall programs just leave so much shit…
Twenty of Two The Infamous They Five Nuclear Wars You Can Win (Excerpt)
Arrival I have several rules about bars I go into. · No karaoke · No coin-operated pool tables · No quarter drafts or pitchers of beer served So, here we…
Avoid ALKU like AIDS
If you are an IT consultant with any skills, especially in the embedded systems world, you are going to encounter ALKU. They are almost as bad as Zoom Technical. You…
Getting Samba Share to Work on MX Linux
I really like MX Linux, but with Samba Shares they shot themselves in the foot. The GUI tool is nice, but they made some bad decisions. Yes, I’ve written about…
Review – SilverStone PS13 ATX Tower Chassis
★★☆☆☆ The SilverStone PS13 ATX tower chassis is a really sad product. I had decided to give my old AMD Phenom II system to a new home but wanted an…
Avoid MSI Graphics Like the Plague
As an IT professional I get really pissed off when it comes to North Korean knock-off quality products, and worse, North Korean knock-off quality customer service like MSI Graphics has….
Updating CachyOS – and others
CachyOS uses pacman and paru under the hood so this will work for any linux distro using those. Too many Linux distros don’t include an obvious update method that updates…
Your Floppy, LS-120, or Other Legacy Media Won’t Work With New Motherboard
Despite what kids today and motherboard designers wish to believe, floppy disks and LS-120 drives are still in use. Many Cessna and other plane models have floppy drives built into…
Setting CachyOS Environment Variables
One of the massive problems with software development today, especially in the CachyOS and Linux world in general is that nobody does the documentation. Hack on the fly, make grand…
Funny Numbers – WordPress Statistics
WordPress statistics is a murky, at best, topic. Most sites seem to choose the package that makes them seem more important then paste screen shots all over. The official WordPress…
Flatpaks are Magically Bloated in Size
In a discussion thread on the MX Linux forum someone made the comment “flatpaks are magically bloated in size.” Kids today! Statements like this require a lengthy response. Despite what…
Five Nuclear Wars You Can Win
In life, the journey is the reward. Old Timer certainly has had a journey through this life. For nearly forty years he has been both a geek and an assassin….
16 Minutes to Build a QList
It took CopperSpice almost 16 minutes to build the same QList Qt built in under a second. I have spent more than a day creating the test case and running…
ZipRecruiter Duth Sucketh
I reported this to ZipRecruiter months ago. When you use Agile, off-shore and “priced right” labor, one cannot expect valid software or anything that was even partially tested. Agile is…
FDA Must Ban Agile and Mandate Static Source Analysis
Yes, we have complete whack job in charge of HHS, and the FDA is lead by an anti-vax nutter, but, they could still do something that would greatly benefit mankind….
Humana – Even Free Is Too High A Price
Even if it is free, a policy from Humana (NYSE:HUM) comes at too high a price. It’s time shareholders threw out the board of directors and sent upper management to…
Linux Mint Grub Won’t Update
Linux Mint gets the most complaints about Grub not updating but it is not really a Mint problem. The volume of complaints is due to the fact Mint is the…
What Indian Firms are Looking to Pay U.S. Citizens
I kid you not, this opening popped up on Dice. Indian firms looking for U.S. Citizens. Keep in mind this is for a Senior developer and apparently you only need…
DocPad
I stumbled into DocPad recently and just had to share a mention of it. Normally I, and all other professionals, avoid using Microsoft products for anything. Recently I’ve had to…
Ubuntu Disappearing Wifi
If it hasn’t happened to you yet, you must have a wired network connection because posts about Ubuntu’s disappearing wifi are all over the Internet. This has gotten remarkably worse…
Why Reddit Sucks
I try to stay off social media because social media is human poison. From time to time I will go to Reddit for technical discussions. You would think that, given…
Is Microsoft Going Out of Business?
Given recent pricing decisions, one has to ask if Microsoft is going out of business. Wall Street has been worried about the massive financial abyss that is AI and Cloud…
Illegal Alien Raids Must Start at Elon Musk’s Tesla
Trump keeps spouting out that ass sitting on his shoulders about mass deportations and illegal alien raids, but is he willing to raid Elon Musk’s Tesla factories? Most of the…
That Debian Multi-Arch Packaging Thing
Of my roughly 40 year career in IT, the past decade has been spent in the world of embedded systems cross compiling via Multi-Arch packages. Some systems require building inside…
Windows 10 KB5043064 Error 0x800f0922
KB5043064 is a shining example of why no developer or corporation should be allowed to use Agile without serving at least 7 years in medium security prison for it. Yet…
Ubuntu Pig!
The world is quickly abandoning Ubuntu. At one time it was a much loved Linux distro but now it is a pariah. Much of it started with that virus Unattended…
Flatpak Can’t Print or Attach Files
Flatpak printing and file attaching, especially with email clients that have been flatpaked, is a major (&)(*&+_ing nuisance. “Oh, we’re sandboxed!” will be the rallying cry from the support team…
Flatpak Won’t Load URL
I see this mostly on Manjaro Cinnamon, but it’s rampant on other distros given the volume of complaints. It is yet another reason why Agile must be banned globally. Anything…
The Real Reason Ammo Prices Are So High
I have been hearing so many friends and relatives who are Trump supporters complain “If Trump doesn’t get in this time ammo prices are going to skyrocket!” Well, he’s not…
The Two Page Myth
I get so pissed off with this Two page Myth that it is finally time to empty my colon. When an HR professional tells you a resume can only span…
Why IT Consultants Won’t Work in Chicago
During the 1980s and into the mid-1990s there were IT consultants who would take corporate housing, or some other dwelling type in the Naperville area and schlep into Chicago on…
CrowdStrike – Undeniable Proof – Agile Must Be Banned Globally
By now most of you have heard of the Great CrowdStrike Outage of 2024. Actually using the year in the name is probably making too broad of an assumption that…
Time for Class Action to Block Avast Settlement
For those who don’t know, Avast got caught selling your data despite all of their claims to “privacy.” They now have a “settlement” with the FTC where they pay a…
Some Things I listed on eBid
Many of you probably haven’t heard of eBid but it is an eBay alternative. Reality is that eBay has so many scammers and for two decades plus they have adamantly…
Six Sigma Was Always a Joke
At its core, for assembly line manufacturing, Six Sigma could be made to work. It was bounded by the realities of physical science and not subject to whims of management….
Time to Boycott All Retailers Using FedEx
It’s time to boycott all retailers shipping orders via FedEx. This is a company with no qualified management. Given I just wrote a post about the i9 gen13 CPU in…
Nothing Can Save Intel
Quite honestly, nothing can save Intel (INTC). They’ve had one processor, the x86, and they have been trying to spin that one-trick-pony for decades. Every time they try to break…
PayMore == Scam
On July 19th I sent a query with a link to this list on DropBox to the PayMore West Allis location as it seemed to be the closest one. I…
Why the World is Abandoning Netgear
There was a time when Netgear owned the consumer networking router and hub market. Not anymore. Customers are running away screaming. Somehow a Keller MBA must have been put in…
Asus Pro B760M-CT CSM
Years ago I promised myself I would never build another computer. Been buying HP and Lenovo (mostly HP) off-lease small form factor desktops and that massive HP z820 you’ve read…
Installation and Configuration of OpenSuSE Leap 15.6
OpenSuSE has a well deserved reputation for being “expert friendly” and Leap 15.6 doesn’t do a lot to fix that. Yes, I’ve written about OpenSuSE on this blog many times…
The Much Maligned Red Washer
I don’t think there could be more disinformation about anything in home hobbyist x86 computer world than there is about the red washer. Almost as much disinformation as the metal…
Intel Graphics Screen Jitter
I first noticed Intel graphics screen jitter under OpenSuSE. Previously I had an NVIDIA graphics card in this ThinkCentre but it died. Only been using the on-board Intel chipset for…
Changing Default Compiler on OpenSuSE
Every Linux distro seems to include a default compiler that is horribly out of date. Many times this is because academics on standards committees don’t have a clue about the…
Are You Tired of Thunderbird’s Incessant Begging?
You’ve all seen it, unless you have been enduring Evolution. Thunderbird’s incessant begging for money. Sometimes it seems like Thunderbird pushes out an “update” that only nags for money. Adding…
New Emacs Book
Yes, I’ve finally written an Emacs book. I spent the first two decades of my career on DEC platforms using EDT and have always been offended by PC editors forcing…
Debian 12 is Better Than Windows 10
I keep a Lenovo ThinkCentre SFF with Windows 10 on it because I have email and a few other things for one specific client on it. Most every other company…
Synchronizing Evolution
It’s kind of quaint to think of running Evolution PIM on just one computer so you never have to synchronize anything. When I see Apple Cult members trying to do…
How Hackers Get In
Today even people who know nothing about computers have heard of hackers, ransomeware, and spyware. There was even a very funny Dick Tracy comic strip in the 1970s where this…
RedDiamond 3.6.4 Released
A new release of RedDiamond, version 3.6.4, has been released. You can find AppImage, RPM, and Debian packages here. For those of you unfamiliar with this OpenSource project, it really…
CopperSpice and Fedora 40
It has been my personal experience that Fedora is one of the least tested Linux distros in the market. Sadly CopperSpice chose to support Fedora first. This is a distro…
Evolution Close Message Window on Delete
I must admit Evolution has come a long ways as an email client. When this was default email client on SuSE before it became OpenSuSE it sucked! The data server…
Win-G
I’ve been seeing this Win-G contract for a few months now. That’s by no means its official name, but good enough for who it is for. You have to be…
GNOME 3 – Most Hated Desktop This Side of Unity
Not since Ubuntu tried to force its Unity desktop onto the Linux world has a desktop been hated as much as GNOME 3. This is a case of kids who…
Medical Device Developer Linux – Pt. 2
Since people messaged me directly about Medical Device Developer Linux this requires more posts. Quite possibly I’ll have to add a “user forum” to this blog. Doubtful many of you…
Medical Device Developer Linux
We desperately need a Medical Device Developer Linux distro. I know I’ve blogged about this before, but with all the wet-behind-the-ears kids thinking Agile is software engineering (it’s not) and…
Your Roku OPT-OUT Letter
Like many of you I have some Roku devices. Once the streaming services managed to compress/strip Standard Definition television far enough the pathetic 25Mbps download speed Internet services available in…
Linux and USB Floppy Drives
Everybody thinks they are dead, but floppy disks are still around and you basically need a USB floppy drive to use them because modern motherboards don’t have a header connection…