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The more time I spend in the US, the more I realize how much more sensible the rest of the world is. So if you know anyone who is hiring in Europe or Asia, let me know.

Today’s battle royale is our heating bill. It’s been upwards of 15 degrees for over two months – and in any case we have a portable space heater (powered by electricity, not gas). Not since – perhaps – the second week of March have we turned on our heating. (I think it’s been longer, but let’s say second week of March.)

Billing cycle for March 9 – April 9: $12 (this, too, seems high).

Billing cycle for April 9 – May 9: $50 (WHAT?!)

So in the hotter month, we’ve used more heating?

In any other country of the world, I would call up the gas provider, argue for a few minutes and have someone come over and take a look at the meter with me, so I could verify that it was right. When it was decided it wasn’t, they’d correct it in a month or two retroactively. No muss, no fuss – just some time on the phone to make sure everything sticks. Number of agents? Two – me and the gas provider.

In this country, I call the company that bills me. They tell me that they’re “just a billing company – we just take the readings we download and provide you with a bill.” Then they tell me that I need to call the rental office. Rental office says they’ll have the gas company look at it – and I ask if I can just come see. No, can’t, it’s a secure area, so I need to provide a qualified third party tech. I call back the “innocent” billing company and ask them what to do about the bill. They recommend I pay the whole amount, so that – and I quote – “your credit score is not adversely affected”. I ask them what about paying it back, then when they find out there was no use; I’m told it’ll be eight-ten weeks. Disgusted, I ask them if I can charge them interest and hang up. Muss and fuss, and plenty of wasted time on the phone. So, let’s see now, the number of agents that need to get involved: me, one; billing company, two; local gas company, three; rental office, four; third party tech (at my expense), five; credit companies, six, seven, eight; to ensure prompt return of my money (at my expense), a lawyer, nine. So, at least, four agents, and more likely eight.

<sarcasm>Ah yes, the vaunted American free market – so efficient.</sarcasm>

So again, if you know of a place that needs me outside of North America, and that includes the US state of Canada, I have a resume for you. In fact, I’ll post it here in a few days and you can start hiring me.

A friend of mine has a theory about my computing issues – he says I have the weirdest computer problems ever.

I don’t disagree. I have crazy issues with technology.

Just today for example, my iPhone locked up and refused to respond to any input. Don’t know why – it was sitting idle in my pocket when I last saw it. I can’t get to the log, so I don’t know what the heck happened.

Earlier in the day, Ubuntu crashed coming out of a hibernation on a computer that it has never – not one single time – crashed out of hibernation before. Unfortunately the log doesn’t show what happened, but again, it had been sitting idle.

Yesterday, I found that the permissions on my Mac were out of whack – I couldn’t even sudo because I didn’t have permissions to read the file listing superusers. Fortunately, I knew how to fix this – login in single user mode, force a replay of the journal, change the permissions on the root directory and commit the changes to the drive.

(That last, by the way, is why my friend remarked I have the weirdest computer problems.)

The list goes on and on.

My folks say much the same though – my Father routinely tells me that I have the weirdest computing issues and my Mother often throws her hands up in amazement when I tell her that something or another has died.

But I’d like to take a moment to tell you why this is the case: it’s because of the Fundamental Failure Mode Theorem. Originally expressed in Systemantics, this theorem states basically that every non-trivial system is running in an error mode. Every operating system comes with a list of known issues longer than War and Peace; the publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica would likely express amazement at the errata list that accompanies a processor. And most of the time the computers work – they operate in some sort of error condition that doesn’t really become an issue until compounding factors push the entire s ystem over the edge.

And therein lies the problem: I like pushing my devices as close to the edge as they can possibly run. It’s not thrill seeking, contrary to what many believe – it’s because I find new things to do and say, “Hmmm, I wonder if…”

So the next time I have a problem that you think is nigh impossible, then remember the Fundamental Failure Mode Theorem and how easy it is to push a system over the edge.

If you’ve noticed a slow down in posting here, you’re not alone. The fact is, that majority of the things I want to blog about, are easier to “micro-blog” about. Most of the things I want to write about are either short, immediate things that don’t bear repeating after the fact, or those on which I don’t really have much to add. So, I’m wrestling with the question of modifying my feed (or installing TwitterTools, as suggested by SarahMck) to include my Twitter posts over here. I could provide a non-Twitter feed, too, if you’d like, via the miracle of Yahoo Pipes.

Anyone with strong thoughts on this either way?

Let’s not get into details here.

Let’s say there is an object O.

Object O is (apparently) venerated by many, including people A, B, C, and D. I learn this from their blogs, where I discover that O can do know wrong. I criticize O on technical grounds. Whenever I do so however, people A, B, C and D show up and criticize me. It’s especially fun to get the ad hominem attacks from D.

I called A, B, C and D for what I think they are: sock puppets. Shills. Trolls. Whatever you call them. They continue mocking me and proclaiming that O is right.

Then people who would know a lot better start commenting on O and start criticizing it as well, for many of the same technical reasons as I had originally observed. They also make the same sock puppet and shill observations. They too decry the foul and, frankly, unethical methods used to drum up support for O.

So it’s with some glee as I’ve watched one after another all their blogs have been deleted, because you cannot be a sock puppet when everyone knows who you are.

It’s delightful to be right.

So, HA!

In the sea of programs, I occasionally find a couple of gems. One of these particularly awesome programs is Notepad++. Ostensibly a replacement for the tired old Notepad that has served my needs very well in Windows for so long, I find new tricks almost every day – some two years after starting to use it.

For example, today, I needed to create a new backup (see here why) on a new external hard disk. I set SyncBack loose on my home directory, and given that there were 120.2GB to be backed up, I figured it’d take a while and went to sleep.

I woke up to find that it was almost done. But then I there were the logs. SyncBack produces these incredibly informative and detailed logs in HTML. The only issue was that since everything was copied over for the first time onto this drive, I had 31 pages of logs – and 12 errors.

I figured the vast majority – if not ALL – of these errors were Windows settings files, like the registry (NTUSER.dat) and the associated logs (NTUSER.dat.log, for example). However, I despaired at going through 31 pages of logs to find errors.

So what did I do? I opened all the HTML files in Notepad++. Errors have different names, plus I have a few files saved with error in the file name (for example, funnyfacebookerror.png), so it was going to be a pain in the rear to go through all of them. Instead, I knew every error would show up in red. So I did the following:

As Steve Jobs would say, “Boom”.

As quickly as that I found all the instances of actual errors – all of them red in colour in all the open files.

Instead of taking 15 minutes, it took me less than a minute.

Incredible.

And that’s not the first time I’ve saved 93% of my time using Notepad++.

So if you have need for something more than Notepad.exe, do try Notepad++. And if you like it as much as I do, go donate a little something too!

Two of my hard drives seemed to have died within a space of a couple of weeks: alaris, a 300GB 3.5″ PATA drive, and senali, a 60GB 1.8″ PATA drive. I suspect in both cases it’s just the stupid drive electronics, but unfortunately, there’s not much I can do.

Other problem? One of them held backups of all my CDs, so I’m going to have to re-backup all of these discs. Damn.

But no backups were lost. So, all things considered, not too bad.

RIP, alaris: 2005-2008.

RIP, senali: 2004-2008.

The only problem with “Web 2.0″ is that when “Web 2.0″ breaks, you can’t do anything. You can’t even fix it yourself, because you don’t know where the problem lies.

Case in point: I can’t get to my Google Reader. So I can’t read my usual sites. Makes me think I should keep an OPML whenever I update my reading list.

Then of course something else will break… Bah!

In the meantime – curses!!

So I’ve decided to make clear I’m not going to David et Jonathas, especially in the wake of Rebecca Ritzel’s review. Seems like S&M is the new norm over at AOT – and that’s just not my kind of show, yaddamean?

Comments closed on this entry. Tough love.

…I’d like to take a moment here now to point out that Joel Spolsky is the most rockin’ human being on the planet.

He says EXACTLY what I’ve been thinking about Windows Live Mesh: Ray Ozzie – you need to find a new niche. (And that’s coming from someone who is really in dire need of a new syncing solution.)

Joel is the anti-Scoble. And I’m proud to say I adore Joel for that.

In fact, in honour of this, I will now create a whole new category for this level of rockin’: JoelRockinSpolsky.