The $%*! frustration thread

[Sajainta]

Funnily enough, the only time my father ever got asked for a bribe was in Chicago.

[Lord J Esq]

Once upon a time I got into a fender-bender in Seattle. The people from the other car found a police officer nearby, who happened to be a friend of theirs. The officer was chummy with them from the beginning. He wasn't hostile to me, but I'd never been in a fender-bender before and I didn't know that I should have given him a statement. I learned later that that was my only chance to affect the outcome of the insurance claim. The price tag for my ignorance and for the officer's negligence in providing explanatory assistance was an eventual $2000 in insurance premium hikes after they both claimed medical injuries (for an impact with less jerking motion than a small pothole) in addition to repair costs.

The people in the other car committed insurance fraud, which was the more serious offense that day. I should have been more knowledgeable about what to do in those circumstances; that was my shortcoming. And the officer: He failed to provide the public service that I take it for granted police officers are supposed to provide. That's a breach of public trust which borders on corruption, although I don't know if it crosses the line.

Having said all that, all of my other, albeit limited encounters with police officers have been professional. I am genuinely surprised that several of you have had notably bad encounters in the United States. I don't know what to make of that. When it comes to allegations of police misconduct, I am usually inclined to suspect that the supposed victims of that misconduct were actually the ones doling out the inappropriate behavior--a suspicion reinforced by broad sentiments like "fuck the police," which would only ever be justified if the police were completely corrupt, in contradiction to what I have personally seen over the years. On the other hand, I trust some of you enough to take you at your word when you say you've been on the losing end of police misconduct, which turns my suspicion back toward the police and their testosterone-fueled temptations to be greedy and tyrannical.

That's just the American police. I have no standing to gauge their conduct in nations like India.

[utunnels]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-03/17/c_13783945.htm
Darn those ignorant rumour spreaders and followers, or should I say I feel sad for them.
Well, I think I have to wait until the price goes normal again.

[Ramsus]

My Macbook is now a useless plastic brick, right after the limited one year warranty expires too.

[tushantin]

My Macbook is now a useless plastic brick, right after the limited one year warranty expires too.

Can't ya revive it? D=

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

Typical Apple.

I bought a fourth generation iPod (touch) and plugged it into my three year computer only to find that my Tiger OSX (10.4.6) is too dated to run the iPod. Yet I can plug it in to my 8-year old Dell PC (which is currently out of commission) and it works just fine. Essentially they had made it so that you HAD to upgrade your OSX to Leopard OSX just to get the iPod to be recognized...

Damn hipsters.

[Ramsus]

My Macbook is now a useless plastic brick, right after the limited one year warranty expires too.

Can't ya revive it? D=

I haven't taken it apart to examine the insides and test the battery's charge (it's the unibody Macbook with the sealed battery), but it's probably some kind of logic board failure, seeing as to how it won't respond to any power events or the charger (which works, tested it with a multimeter).

I'll just have to strip it and sell it for parts, since logic board replacement parts alone cost too much, and I don't want the hassle of doing it myself.

[Thought]

Damn hipsters.

Alas, it is a well known fact that hipsters ruin everything.

[Ramsus]

Ordered one of these:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/07/lenovo-thinkpad-x120e-review/

Upgrading it to 4GB of memory and a 500GB notebook drive with spare parts I already have.

Seems like it's small but rugged enough, has a nice matte finish (no fingerprints or smudges!), doesn't produce a lot of heat or noise, and has pretty decent battery life. The AMD Fusion architecture seems to perform somewhere around a low end Core 2 processor, which is more than good enough, and it even outperforms a few dedicated mobile graphics chips on the graphics side of things. Best of all, everyone says the keyboard is amazing.

This still makes my iPad next to useless though, since I no longer have a Mac to develop iOS applications with.

[tushantin]

Ordered one of these:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/07/lenovo-thinkpad-x120e-review/

AMD Fusion?! Rockin!  I wish I could swap my Intel Atom processor (from HP Mini 210) with this one!

[tushantin]

NEWS! I'm partly happy, and partly frustrated, (mixed emotions) about the current state of events.

Over a month of sleeplessness, I've been staring dead eyed at the screen and working my hands spontaneously over the mouse and keyboard trying to do the best I could. But my efforts and talents were betrayed by lazy, half-assed teammates and irresponsible, negligent and ignorant teachers and headmistress. Burden fell on my shoulders, but I tried my best to fulfill my quest. "Everybody else is doing it, so what's YOUR problem?" <---- That's what they keep telling me.

Then while I've almost finished my scenes and am just waiting for raytrace render to get over with, I get a call from Pooja who tells me...

I'VE FAILED!

And it's not just me: everyone in class did too. Hell, 95% of every class under my Maya teacher has failed too! None of them were able to submit their projects in time. Now even if I manage to taunt the faculty about this they're going to deny everything, refusing to see the obvious that if the majority failed they're doing something wrong! But no, they'll just get away with it saying we're irresponsible. Well, they are partially correct (I failed thanks to procrastinators), but that doesn't discount their own negligence.

Now they're asking every one of us to pay a fine of Rs. 500 per student. The hell I would!
 

I'm gonna dedicate my time solely to my novels and my dreams from now on.

[Syna]

On Thursday, my boss asked me to write a high-concept pitch based on his ideas.

Yesterday, he rejected said pitch and, in a very condescending manner, as though I and the video team were to blame, said that our pitch was off the mark because the project demanded an entirely different setup.

I swear, this is the most powerful motivation ever to 1) find a way to Neverland, 2) burn out like a Romantic poet, or 3) DO FREAKING CARDIO FOREVER. There are advantages to getting old, I strongly believe that, but this guy is just the embodiment of all the reasons not to. Senility + arrogance is an awful, awful combination.

[Shee]

Did the Main Room last night.

Did my job.  Got enough people out.  Not a single woman I invited showed which is....hilarious?  At least I got...excuses?  Stupid 2.0...  Anyway I did fine but they STILL cut my time short.  Fuck that show.

[ZeaLitY]

Ugh, someone please tell me there is some value in Zen. I've tried reading two books, and they all seem to be collections of obfuscating, vague language, intentional confusion of short-hand abstractions, and juxtaposed contradictory statements with a smattering of scientifically-untrue assertions. Thus far, it seems to me that Zen is the practice of deluding yourself into some kind of comfort by tangling your mind in a massive philosophy and discounting personal meaning, like a more insidious version of Abrahamic religion. Its bits can be skewered seven ways to Sunday, whether scientifically disproven or demonstrated to be a linguistic MacGuffin. I'm sure if one practices reading and believing a labyrinthine set of stories and ideas long enough, they'll feel comfortable in it and also feel self-affirmation from being a part of global Buddhist practice. But that doesn't mean it has any fucking merit, does it? Some people get meaningless satisfaction out of accumulating credits in Halo: Reach, and others get it by sitting in a room alone and calling themselves enlightened, without actually doing something meaningful or grand in life. Enjoy your cloister. The rest of us will be enjoying the world.

[tushantin]

Ugh, someone please tell me there is some value in Zen. I've tried reading two books, and they all seem to be collections of obfuscating, vague language, intentional confusion of short-hand abstractions, and juxtaposed contradictory statements with a smattering of scientifically-untrue assertions. Thus far, it seems to me that Zen is the practice of deluding yourself into some kind of comfort by tangling your mind in a massive philosophy and discounting personal meaning, like a more insidious version of Abrahamic religion. Its bits can be skewered seven ways to Sunday, whether scientifically disproven or demonstrated to be a linguistic MacGuffin. I'm sure if one practices reading and believing a labyrinthine set of stories and ideas long enough, they'll feel comfortable in it and also feel self-affirmation from being a part of global Buddhist practice. But that doesn't mean it has any fucking merit, does it? Some people get meaningless satisfaction out of accumulating credits in Halo: Reach, and others get it by sitting in a room alone and calling themselves enlightened, without actually doing something meaningful or grand in life. Enjoy your cloister. The rest of us will be enjoying the world.

That's odd; may I know the names of the books you've read?