This GNAA Troll is karma whoring using something I posted a year ago!

The "In Korea, only old people..." meme started in the article In Korea, Email Is Only For Old People.

In particular, I see this post as the original instigator.

I find this to be exceedingly amusing.

I'm just writing this to explain why I have the goatse site currently listed as my homepage.

It's because I've been reading slashdot for a good number of years now. I'm approaching 3000 posts. And I find a lot of fun and humour in the community and seeing people react when presented with illogical, untrue or just plain whacky information. Perhaps I'm just becoming jaded.

So I added goatse as my homepage in order to see how people will react. It's funny when people think that this is a troll account because of it. But rest assured that I am not actually the goatse guy.

I just went wardriving for the first time today. A Camry plus an iBook plus an Airport card plus iStumbler add up to one great little adventure!

This took place in the residential areas surrounding downtown Toronto Canada, and in the nearby city of Mississauga and I was finding hotspots at a rate of about 5 per minute.

Unsurprising Findings:
About 80% of APs were not encrypted.
About 70% of APs had default ssid settings, typically "Wireless" or "Linksys."
The AP at my own place did not show up since I have the ssid broadcast turned off.
Warchalking is a lost cause when it's raining.
Don't eat and wardrive. Your notebook gets all dirty.

Surprising Findings:

1. People who change the ssid use silly names. For example, "Dr. (name)'s Office" or "110WillowStreet." Yes, I actually saw an address somewhere in Mississauga, near Hurontario and Dundas I believe.

2. It's possible that the Toronto Stock Exchange has a hotspot running. I saw something called "TSENET" when driving near to the TSE. Who knows, it could have been anything.

3. Wardriving is a helluva good time!

I just got the call this afternoon.

After about 2 weeks of unemployment (which I am sure is very small compared to what many other slashdotters are experiencing) I will be starting work on monday for a IT tech / sysadmin type job. This should tide me over until I go back to class in Spetember. (I am a university student.)

[Btw, does anyone reading this know of any place where I could rent in the downtown Toronto area for not that much money? (I'm looking in the ~$450-500 range. I guess it doesn't hurt to ask ;-) ]

Anyway, the pay at this job is pretty low but I'm not complaining. The work seems quite interesting and, with hindsight, I performed pretty badly at some other interviews for high-paying jobs with great technology companies when I originally thought I had performed quite well. I guess I deserved it. Oh well, I am still learning.

Has anyone else had a situation where they got some other number of moderations to metamoderate than 10? Just today, it gave me exactly one! I took a screenshot too if you're interested, although this would technically be very easy to fake.

It's proven. I'm a slashdot addict and I have now racked up 2000 posts. Wow, and I've only been a member for about 28 months, if my count is right.

Basically, I'm writing this journal entry so that the post can be housed without polluting an article and so I can always find it. Sentimental value, I guess. Feel free to ignore it.

The observations here apply to me, not you. I'm not saying that slashdot damages everyone's productivity. But it damages mine.

Basically over the past year I have noticed that I grades are dropping and I spend tons of time on slashdot reading/posting/etc and having a damn good time. Just look at my number of posts. But dropping grades are bad.

Last summer when I was doing development work for a company, I blocked slashdot on my machine via hosts file and my productivity jumped. Just the inconvenience of having to remove it kept me paying attention to my job.

And look at me now. I have a major paper due tomorrow and I'm writing in my slashdot journal. Damnit, I have to keep myself away from this place!

This could be considered a 'reflection' or a 'follow-up' to my 'The Office' journal entry June. (If you haven't read that one, this journal will be confusing to you. Go read it. It's short ;-)

Today, less that 1 week remains until the end of my work term. The software I developed has gotten some very enthusiastic and positive reasponse from Engineers and managers alike - I did a presentation to the Department Head late last week and it went quite well.

Now, to readers who have been made cynical by long experience with the world of work and programming in particular, please tell me if I learned the right things (as listed below) because, frankly, I'm too young to know.

- Pretty pictures are important. When demonstrating software, having 5% of the GUI done is more meaningful to the manager/non-programmer audience than having 50% of the coding done properly.

- Upper management is uninformed when it comes to computers. They don't know how to recognise policies that cut back on productivity with little or no tangible gain, and frankly they don't want advice or pointers from the people who do know.

- Watch the managers. Managers are managers for a reason. If you are in the lower ranks, you can learn a thing or two from watching how they handle questions in meetings, present information, interact with other people, etc.

- It's better to be a nice person. You're going to have to interact with your co-workers to do your job. It's best to help them out if you know a fix for their problem and make some friends. Some of them know amazing things and are willing to show if you have some initiative. (I found some of the best Dim Sum in Toronto this way!) If the people around you don't like you, then your life will be miserable.

- Appearances matter. Don't go around the office muttering to yourself. Show some pride in your work. Feel free to laugh. Managers and others notice these things and make quiet mental notes about your character. And it's infectious too, and can lead to a better office environment overall.

- Watch your money. You never know when your close family member / friend will ask to temporarily borrow $1000. You know they're trustworthy and will pay you back and you can't easily say no. Don't buy something on impulse and only buy it if you have a good reason and you need that specific item, not the cheaper alternative.

At about 10:36 AM (GMT-5) today a story about a potential Sub-Notebook and Handheld killer (link: http://www.oqo.com appeared on the front page for about 1 minute and then when I tried to "read more" all I got was "Nothing to see here. Move along." The story vanished.

I wish I had a screen shot.

Does this kind of thing happen often? Was the story pulled because it was fake or something?

I remember that the story said the device stored about 3 movies (no mention of size) or about 1000 mp3s. And it ran Windows XP. Am I hallucinating? I did see this story appear momentarily on the homepage.

Or is this a regular occurence that I have only just found out about?