Station17.org

Today has been eye opening. I’ve really have to break this down in sections. Work, Life, and Personal.

Work

My job at a PC servicing company just lost a contract. It was with Gateway and if you know anything about what happened to them over the years. Which is the spent to much money on new Gateway Stores and not on making a great product. But I work for the HP contract doing testing. So I’m not sure if I will be affected by this. But even so it’s bad when your boss lies about rumors. I’ll give you an update about this as it goes on.

Life

When to Club Purgatory last night. Had fun dancing with some of my friends. But I really did want to talk to some girl at a club unless you want to hook up. Here’s how the night started. Got to the club at 1030 because my friend were late for dinner. It was going to be at 8pm and they come at 930pm. So I get to the club and parking was 15 bucks. That’s just crazy to pay but there’s nothing else. The line was long but that’s good because of all the girls. Get in the club have two shots and two beers. Later start dancing and feeling good. So we later chill on smoking a hooakah. Which then my friends go to dance and I’m sitting by myself but I’m cool. Two chicks come by to what I think is to get free drinks or something. But I leave and I’m cool. Headed home but not before hitting up Denny’s for a GrandSlam Cheeseburger.

Started a new job last month after being let go from another company in Midland,TX. The new company does Hardware Servicing for HP, Gateway and Best Buy in Irving,TX. When I was let go. I was sad but didn’t know how good it was to leave that office. It was in a corporate environment and I like the idea but now I know it’s not for me. So I when back home in Arlington,TX. I wanted to sit back and have some time to think. That next Monday I posted my resume on all the usual job sites. And I didn’t know there were so many Insurance companies that were hiring. Most there Multi-level marketing companies. I didn’t want to do stuff like that. But something great happened that I didn’t know was great until later that week. I got a call from a staffing agency that wanted to submit me for a job. So I sent them a new resume and later that week I was on a new job. Didn’t know what I was doing because the agency didn’t explain everything to well. After working there for about a month now. I think I’ll like the job. I’m doing Motherboard testing and processing orders. After getting my degree I didn’t know what I would be doing with my life. I’m just happy I have something that I’m interested in.

My Brother-in=Law started working for RIM or Blackberry if you don’t know RIM. And he’s making some money. Don’t want to change my job now because I need a stable check coming. I think if something goes wrong with this job I have a back up.

Just installed Ubuntu 8.04. And I’m like the new background but I don’t see anything different but the some new apps and more hardware support. I know the Ubuntu website was updated but I was really hoping there was something new besides Brasero and Transmission replacing the older counterparts. I think there great apps and they work but I wish there was something more.

Now Firefox 3 beta 5? What’s up with this? It’s been crashing every time I load a youtube video. I’ve seen other Distros like Fedora do this but this was when they were a test for future Red Hat user. And the idea for that was try before you by the stable, long term, supported and get the same thing but you pay for it package.d that fine. I like Red Hat and there an ok. But I know Ubuntu is trying to be an free enterprise type of product. There not making you pay for it but when you want to be enterprise you need to have stable software. Not beta’s please. I really wanted to like how Ubuntu was a stable all around OS. But I really wanted to know why they did this. I know Firefox is about to release the Final Candidate for the masses but why would you wanted to make things confusing by having beta’s in Ubuntu’s LTS.

Now I love Ubuntu but I wish Firefox. My favorite piece of software. Be release early because it’s new and cool, but not stable. I’ll be waiting for a more stable version later.

PS. I don’t know much about Pulse Audio but I haven’t had any problems with it. Wanted to know if you had any problems.

Just had a friend at work say “We just got new computers and they had Winzip installed on it.” Now I know some companies need this for saving space on there hard drive and backing up. But this company was also being cheap. They had the elevation copy on there systems. I couldn’t stop laughing. Has every company just thought to themselves and said “I don’t think theres a free way to do this. So lets just use the evaluation copy because were cheap.” I told my friend to use 7zip if he really needs to backup his files. Even though you can compress files in XP and Vista.

Here are reasons not to use Winzip:

1. It’s crappy shareware from 90’s.
2. Like I said before, you can use the send to: compression folder options in XP or Vista.
3. Who pays for software like this when you have so many free or cheap alternatives. (I’ll list them below.)
4. The features are stupid things like “Improved Compression for Audio Files (WAV)” who uses WAV files but for old phones that don’t use MP3’s.
5. There’s 3 version of Winzip but the evaluation does the most of what the standard does. And the Pro is not worth it of you don’t know how to use a computers.
6. The GUI is still the same from Win95 and they having change it much. It’s still confusing and clunky.
7. For $30 bucks you can ask at high school kid to find and install a free Winzip alternative.
8. With the way backup hard drive prices are going you can afford more space.
9. Even when people have Winzip installed they to stupid to zip old files. They start deleting them.
10. Need it because it’s the only thing that works on Win95.

Now I know some people like Winzip or Winzip PRO and still running pre-WinXP systems. Or your happy with to state Winzip is in. But your still drunk on the Dot-com bubble juice. The Dot-com bubble is over and so is the support for pre-WinXP systems. So WinXP will be over soon.

So the only reason I’d use this if I had got lost in some developing country and I need to use a computer to write a letter to the US embassy that stated why I need to get back to America. And I need to use computer running Win95 with MS word, Winzip, and using Outlook Express to send it to them because I’m on dial up, before the bomb attached to my balls blows up. Because Jack Bauer was busy getting interrogated in the other room. Even though I wouldn’t have the time for it. I’d download a small Linux Distro, burn it to a CD, run it in live CD mode, then write the letter in Gedit, use File Roller to compress the file and email it with Evolution. Just in time for me to send a message to the US embassy and Jack Bauer to save my ass.

Alternatives to Winzip:

7-zip
PeaZip
jZip

jZip is new but it works ok for me. It uses 7zips technology but made a nicer GUI.