Corporate Zombie

I had a repair job this morning. A laptop was booting up fine, then attempting to login, and was immediately logging back out. Every user was doing this. Even in safe mode

Reverting to “last known good config” was no good

The trail to success started with various articles talking about the userinit key in the registry, and how some spyware protection programs can alter them. There was talk of replacing certain files with userinit.exe, but when i couldnt find said files, i didnt bother with that, but i believed i was on the right route

After a bit more digging i found the following: http://windowsxp.mvps.org/peboot.htm

This is the solution to the problem

In the effort to get to the solution i tried the registry tools in trhe Hirens cd, but only the Offline one would work, and this isnt very intuitive at all.

So BART PE to the rescue. I found that the “userinit” key was not present in the registry, so i created the string and all seems fine now

In a move that seems so counter-intuitive that it must have been a dare by one Microsoft developer to another, the very first option you get upon booting into the Microsoft Recover Console for XP is along the line of “Select your partition, or hit ENTER to quit”

Hit ENTER to quit?

HIT ENTER TO QUIT?

It is the fucking opposite of everything that happens in computing. Enter is the universal keystroke to APPROVE something, not fucking quit! FUCKING IDIOTS

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/04/cuil_means_rear/

“tainting” the internet to their own benefit. Cuil does not mean knowledge, but you’ll be hardpressed to find an official that will stand up and say so, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuil#Name

While getting my hair cut today, a gaggle of characters entered the establishment. Wearing a vest, a tracksuit, several sovereign rings and a pencil beard, this was without a doubt the dodgiest looking traveller i have ever seen. With a female child traveller in one hand, and the subject of the trip in the other hand, he declared to the assembled masses

“HEY BAAS, PUH A STEP IN DA YUNG LADS HEAD, FIVER FER CASH”

The Turkish Barber turned away from me, with the cut throat he had been using on me in one hand, and said, “Nine Euro, no problem”

The Traveller agreed.

Then i saw the youngster about to be transformed with his fashionable “step”. At this stage I would advise all parents and would be parents and anyone going to get a step, DONT, have a look at this for evidence against a “step” in ones hair:

Step Haircut

I have this thing. I will not let any woman from eatern europe cut my hair. However, every now and then i’ll go “what the hell, it’d be handy just to get it done here and now”, and without fail, i always regret it.

Today i got my hair cut after sufferring what can only be described as a murdering of my hair by a forgetful hairdresser. I came back to one of my better experiences from Australia. Greek and Turkish barbers are ahead of the game on the haircutting front. And i found a turkish barber in waterford. Brilliant!

A lot of Irish guys out there now will be going “Fag” or “what about the hottie in the tight trousers with the big boobs that i can rest my head in while she cuts away”. To them i say, feck off, that lovely bossomy feeling lasts for ten minutes, then you have four weeks of looking like a muppet!

The guy who cut my hair today was a typical Turkish young guy, fashionable hair, questionable sexuality, but i care not, he was a dab hand with a scissors, a clippers and, most impressively, a cut-throat razor. I have forgotten how good a haircut with a cut-throat trim was.

Anyway, the point i make is, Eastern European women, stick to what your good at, painted on jeans and womens hair. Turkish Men, keep up the good work!

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/riaa-critic-bec.html

This morning my lovely work van (Renault MegaVan 1.5 D) (Its a piece of crap, the engine has been rebuilt twice, but not my fault, all done prior to my handling of the beast) passed 1000KM on a single tank of fuel. About 625 miles in the old tongue. This is pretty good going i think for a car-van that is almost always half full of kit in the back, and rarely goes under 3500 revs! Picture to follow!

Edit: Picture!

Fuel Efficiency, eh!

Came across this today messing around with WAMP server. The index page it has has some images. I was looking to replace them as i was feeling lazy about creating an Index page

I couldnt find the images it was using, so had a look in the code. What they had done was encode the image straight into base65 encoding.

I like the idea, basically all you need is your PHP script, and no images, you dont have to worry about the permissions or directory structure or anything. Kind of nifty. Were you no further encode your scripts say with ioncube or the like, you could be fairly sure that your images in your script couldnt be replaced

Here is how it works:

1. Encode the image: http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp

2. use the result as a string in php, with <<< EOFILE and a carriage return preceeding it, and a carriage return and EOFILE; at the end of it.

3. Using the base64_decode() method, you can produce your image from the encoded string

WAMP use this in conjunction with a switch statement and GET variables to produce their images. Install WAMP and examine the index.php page it produces for a full working example.

I really like this. I know it beefs up your code size, making pages longer to load, but for something small, like a newsletter, it would save on calls to a central server.

At the start of this year i was driving my car, VW Passat, named Jessica, 193K Miles on her, 1000 euro to the first buyer) My insurance was with Quinn Direct.

At the start of this year i was working for a different employer, who were brilliantly subsidising health insurance with Quinn Health Care (formerly Bupa).

With these two insurance policies in my name i applied for the Quinn Direct Free (to the value of 300€) Home Insurance.

Today i have moved employment, no long drive my Passat, and have different house insurance. So i rang to cancel my policies.

I was informed that i would have to pay 50 euro to cancel my Car Insurance, and 23 Euro to cancel my Free House Insurance.

Whatever about the Car Insurance, but charging me to cancel a free service that i never claimed agains, what is that about?

When i asked the lady on the phone, what that is about, she said she would have to talk to her team leader, and promptly two seconds later told me that the fee stands.

It seems to me that Quinn are getting just a little too Americanized for their own good. It is a problem with a number of Irish Companies these days. No longer is the client/customer the person who benefits from the service being provided. It is in fact us, the customer, that is nearly being held to ransom for the things that we are legally obliged to have in place. What sense does this make?

Anyone got any ideas?

Ive had two:

1. Cancel my Bank Account. Anyone who knows me in real-life knows I’m a stubborn prick who hates being told what to do, and especially hates being taken advantage of. I am very likely to go down this road

2. Go to Quinn Direct HQ with Blow-Torch and Camera. Post vid on website, make enough money from advertising to cover court costs, blame it all on temporary insanity brought on by the current economic cluster-fuck the government has lead us singing and dancing into!

3. Something a little saner and more likely to work…(please note them below)

Take the following:

You go into SubWay, you get a meal deal, you get a voucher for a free drink, or sub, or whatever. You go to any other SubWay and you can order your free item and present the voucher. No dramas

Now, try to port this over to the banking industry. You have a cheque you receive from your employer. You to a branch of the bank in question. they wont cash it.

WHAT THE FUCK PEOPLE! ITS THE SAME FUCKING BANK BUT A DIFFERENT BRANCH! ARE THEY UNABLE TO COMMUNICATE INTERNALLY??????