stolen or broken computers

A friend of mine (Erik) recently had his computer stolen, and it reminded me of my general philosophy regarding broken or stolen computers. I'll express it here with regard to Erik's current situation, but it applies equally well to any broken computer or part (except for the junky part, unless you sell the broken computer to a junky on ebay and he fixes it up first and then sells it for drugs, or a new tie or something.)


So, on to Erik's computer:


I always find these things to be blessings in disguise.

It was time to upgrade already, but you would have procrastinated over it for months or even years. Now there's no procrastination, in fact it becomes imperative that he get a new computer, and Moore's Law guarantees it will be an upgrade. Erik wins!

Some poor junky who can't afford a computer gets a pretty decent (maybe beat up, and well used) computer until they sell it for drugs. Junky wins twice!

Everyone is happy.




--Christopher

Mice!

In a house somewhere, at this moment, there is a disease ridden mouse, nibbling on food, rendering it unfit for human consumption. That mouse is not this mouse. This mouse is dead. Passed on to my by a friend are the images of the last of the Mouse von Mousersons. The last of a noble family. Heffe von Mouserson was the adventurous type, ranging far and wide to provide for his many offspring. Unfortunately for Heffe von Mouserson, his adventures ended with a *snap*.

Urine Testing

To all the misguided folks out there who think urine testing is or should be compulsory:

You do not have to be drug tested to get a job. YOU are allowing them to take your freedom, and so they take it, and think they can just take mine too.

Just say NO, I will not be degraded and demeaned so that you can consume my soul in exchange for a bi-weekly paycheck.

Anyone who asks *me* to pee in order for me to work for them has seriously misjudged me. My only response can be, and has been, to leave the interview immediately, as I'm not interested in helping further the interests of a company who thinks they own their employees.

While I agree I do not want my pilot to be on heroin while he is flying my plane, drug testing has become far too commonplace. I do not care one whit if the guy at my insurance company gets high after work, or the kid at the hotel desk smokes a joint some weekend. It is none of my business, and it certainly is not company business either.

The current business stance on this subject can only end with workers who are no better off than slaves. When the company has that kind of control over the entire life of an employee, we can start calling ourselves "client employees" and re-institute collars and human branding. Down with slavery! Down with urine testing! Down with fascism and censorship!

--Christopher Maujean

PS. Free Luna!

Rake task for compiling LESS css stylesheets

desc "Compiles all .less files in app/stylesheets directory into the public/stylesheets directory of a Rails application"
task :less do

 require 'less'

 less_files = 'app/stylesheets/'
 destination = 'public/stylesheets/'
 stylesheets = Dir.entries(less_files)

 stylesheets.select{|s| File.extname(s) == ".less"}.each do |sheet|
    f = File.new("#{destination}#{File.basename(sheet, ".less")}.css", File::CREAT|File::TRUNC|File::RDWR, 0644)
      f.write Less::Engine.new(File.new(less_files + sheet)).to_css
 end
end