Blogger / Gmail Account Disabled?

I’m not sure what happened, but apparently my second blog under my Second Life name has been disabled. It’s odd because I’ve only made one post on the blog and I don’t think I’ve used the gmail (if it has a gmail account?).

I’ve sent in a “what the!?” email (kidding, it’s a request for clarification / dispute) and I’m hoping this will get resolved quickly.

Although… I do have my worries… there have been some pretty nasty tales about posts and accounts disappearing from Google’s Blogger site with no way to get them back.

All I wanted to do was update my blog with some more tips… *sighs*

Cannabis: Why it won’t be legalized any time soon.

There are two main reasons why cannabis won’t be legalized within the next few years:

1.) The justice system feeds people to the jails, and the latter is a very profitable business; arresting and jailing people is an industry.

Legalizing cannabis would severely cut into this industry and big industries inevitably have lobbyists; they use them like a well refined weapon against the slow moving wave of government change.

2.) The other reason cannabis won’t be legalized any time soon is the pervasive attitude from those in power. This is not limited to lower levels of gov’t, it goes all the way to the top: Obama.

It greatly disturbed me that he laughed off the #1 ranked question in his own online polls in 3 different sections: legalizing cannabis to help the economy. That Obama would treat conservative protesters (remember the town hall meetings during the election run) with more respect than thousands to millions of online people voicing their views.

To be blunt: I expected better from him.

I also fear he’s getting the Bush effect: being surrounded by people with biases that aren’t balanced and not seeing how he’s being herded away from his original intentions.

Cure multi-page articles with Repagination and Adblock Plus

I don’t know about you, but when I see what should be a one page article spread across 6 pages in tiny chunks, it drives me nuts! Call me crazy, but I don’t want to wade through ad-saturated page after ad-saturated page just to read a simple article!

A few examples of this are:

• computerworld.com
• environmentalgraffiti.com
• ew.com
• gamesradar.com
• instructables.com
• itwirecom
• maximumpc.com
• rd.com

While Adblock Plus usually makes short work of the ads, there are also self-promoting ads on every page as well. I may be interested in these on the first page, but by the second, third and fourth pages they’re nothing but the visual equivalent of static noise.

Repagination (a Firefox add-on) stitches all of the pages together, much like taking a report and taping the pages end to end to create a large ribbon.

Add in Adblock Plus’ side kick “Element Hiding Helper” to zap the noise, and you can actually do what you set out to do – read the article!

How-to:

Requirements:

• Firefox
• Adblock Plus
• Adblock Plus – Element Hiding Helper
• Repagination (the official project doesn’t support Firefox 3, but a simple edit or alternative source will allow you to use it)

The first thing you’ll need to do is stitch the pages together:

1. Right-click on the Next link
2. Choose Re-pagination
3. Choose All
4. Wait as it loads (you should see your scroll bar shrinking and jumping up)

Then I’d recommend scrolling down to the second page, or even just the last page.

Once you’re there, you’ll want to use Adblock Plus’ Element Hiding Helper to target the areas that are not related to the article (header, footer, “you might be interested in” links, etc.)

The way I target each annoyance is:

1. Right-click on the Adblock Plus icon and choose “Select Element to Hide”
2. Move your mouse over the offender
   
3. Hit W (wider) on the keyboard until it outlines an area that affects the content
   
4. Hit N (narrow) to go back down a level
   
5. Hit B (blink) to see what removing that selection would affect.
   
6. Hit S (select) to choose that area
7. Go into the advanced editor
   

Here’s the tricky part… I, personally, don’t like the first page affected by the slimming process.

In the advanced editor,

1. scroll up the tree until you’re just under the body area,
2. choose the one that’s the ancestor of your target
   
3. then find the ancestor with the SAME name on the same level.
   

Troubleshooting:

Every once in a while Repagination inserts a frame for the next page, which foils adblock’s selection.

The easiest solution to this is to go into Adblock Plus’ Preferences, finding the rules for the site, and replacing (as an example):

instructables.com##*#container + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + *#container > DIV#sidebar

with

instructables.com##*#container ~ *#container > DIV#sidebar

The tilde (~) means “any sibling after”, and so this would target all of the “container”s after a “container” that are on the same level. It’s usuall shift + `, which is called a “back tick” and is in the very top left of most keyboards.

Personal – Keyboards don’t like milk baths

So, in the action of defending my keyboard from an avalanche of toys (brought on by my daughter’s armful of them and insistance about putting them on my desk) I knocked a cup of milk onto my keyboard.

Nothing really happened at first except a big mess, the keyboard even drained through the holes for the flipping feet. Then about 3 hours later… of all things my space bar wouldn’t work.

I get my daughter to go to sleep and fall asleep myself. I come back and my computer’s in standby mode.

Cool, I think, less power used, etc.

Yeah, except I had to restart it to get it out of standby mode (it doesn’t like my video card, it’s a known bug).

A restart later and I can’t log in. Wait, what?

Yeah, see title. Keyboard not responding at all. I couldn’t even arrow into Windows.

So I find the keyboard my daughter’s been using to pretend she can type (she can, but badly, she got me banned from chat once when the computer didn’t go into lockdown mode when the screensaver kicked on)… except….

The stupid keyboard uses the PS/2 connection, and the metal C shaped piece that surrounds the pegs is bent in. Easily fixable, but still exasperating!

But, as you can see, it’s working now.

Looks like I get to clean my usual keyboard with some rubbing alcohol (disolves milk solids, etc, pours out like water, evaporates quicker AND slightly sanitizes).

Personal: Seller on eBay doesn’t accept Paypal

I’ve never seen a seller that insists on credit cards / cheques / etc, but refuses Paypal. To me… this is a huge red flag, despite their 100% happiness rating.

In this particular instance, the seller only accepts credit cards from Canadians, and as I don’t have one (and don’t plan on getting one) I had to ask the seller to cancel the transaction.

Too bad it didn’t work out. Lesson learned – Always filter by “Accepts Paypal”.

Anyone else out there run into this and it turned out well?

[Edit] With a few emails, the guy applied for a mutual cancellation of the whole thing, which was nice as he could have dragged it out and been a jerk about it. From now on I make a point of filtering by Paypal, and usually by BuyItNow. (I hate auctions)

Yahoo! Answers and the Deleted Answer, a resurgence of interest

Ok, there seems to be a renewal of interest over my posts regarding a deleted answer from Yahoo! Answers I blogged about over half a year ago.

As far as I can see this whole thing was a domino effect of:

1. Someone didn’t like my answer and flagged it. Either someone with a high rank, or several people with medium ranks. Or it could have been the person who asked the question.
2. Someone at Yahoo (who is probably ignorant about open source) made a quick decision and moved on.
3. Someone got an e-mail reply from me regarding the letter saying my answer was deleted, but they didn’t respond immediately.
4. Someone found out about my blog posts and contacted me, further explaining Yahoo’s reasoning.
5. Someone got my official dispute and forwarded it onto the person in #4, who restated the same reasoning.
6. Someone from #3 looked over the situation and decided to reverse the deduction of points.

All in all, do I think it’s a systematic bias against open source? No, I don’t see firm proof of this. Do I think it was malevolent / a conspiracy? No.

[edit] But, do I think that Yahoo’s without it’s biases? No, it’s guaranteed to have it’s priorities in some areas that would lend it to being biased. It’s logically impossible to not be biased in some way.

I think it was a culmination of a few people with not enough info and not enough time. It happens.

So why did I blog about this? Like I’ve said before, I wanted to see if this was a one-off or if it was a systematic policy that no one talked about. I also wanted to see if making a small fuss about something I disagree with would make a difference. It did, but not in the ways I was aiming for – I wanted to provoke a change in Yahoo, not be a tipping point for people to boycott Yahoo.

Don’t get me wrong, Yahoo’s got a lot of issues; for example their chat has a nasty habit of kicking people off for no reason or just not working properly. I personally object to the blending of the Yahoo and MSN chat networks, but they’re not my companies, not my choice. I’d just use Pidgin for this “problem”.

Looking back, I think the things that still annoy me are:

1. The person who originally asked the question didn’t get to see my answer, even after the decision about it’s “violating the rules” was overturned
2. I didn’t get an apology from anyone
3. The person in #5 came across as quite abrupt and dismissive
4. Nothing changed, except a few people’s perception of Yahoo

So what’s the result? A few people are ticked off at Yahoo, a few people are ticked off at me. People are now discussing whether open source should be censored, people are talking about whether open source is a viable replacement for Windows. I got my little bit of time in the spotlight.

Beyond that, I can’t see the ripples that my pebble caused in the lake of the world, but I flatter myself that the ripples will continue in their own way for a while.

On a tangent: a few people have said I’m too patient, too idealistic and too forgiving. What do you think?

Problems with Uninstalling Google Toolbar

I’m writing this quick note from a computer I’m fixing – the previous owner had various things installed, and one of them was the Google Toolbar.

Now, I’ve always thought of Google in a positive light, but after today… there will always be that thread of frustration tainting the view.

Ok, short version: The computer had Google Toolbar installed, and I tried to uninstall it. It uninstalled fine on the Admin account, but on a different account with near admin privileges it just wouldn’t get lost!

I tried a total of 7 times (uninstall, restart, check to see if it’s there) to get rid of it and it wouldn’t get the f—- off the computer, so I went into the folder on the harddrive that holds the extensions and found the folder that held the Google Toolbar. Hit the delete key and check? Gone…. FINALLY!

Details: I tried to uninstall it from the add-ons area as well as the uninstall option hidden in the toolbar itself. Each time it promised me that it would be gone, and each time I came back it was in my face insisting I set the search engine, etc etc etc.

Extra annoyance factor: it wouldn’t go away by clicking on the close button. Google: sometimes I have better things to do than to answer your stupid questions about which search engine I want and if I want to “help” you with stuff.

Moving – a comparison

Yep, I’m moving, and I’m looking forward to it. Here’s why:

Old Place:

1. Landlord who’s lazy as hell with the ethics and greed worst than a Ferengi
2. Mom who has no job and complains bitterly about anything she’s expected to do as trade
3. Noisy neighbours who occationally shake the walls with their fighting
4. Nosy neighbour across the street who does nothing but gossip and snoop
5. Rats and mice
6.  Leaking eavestroughs
7. No heat control and having to have 3 space heaters to keep the place warm
8. Fire trap – no exits except by breaking windows in the living room and bedroom
9. No lights in the kitchen – they haven’t worked for months
10. Cold
11. Dark
12. Depressing
13. Insecure – no alarm and the door’s a joke
14. Utilities are extra (110 -130 a month)
15. No cable

New Place:

1. Landlords are nice, friendly and easygoing
2. No mom
3. The only neighbours I have are the landlords
4. Across the street there are only trees and blackberries
5. No vermin
6. House is new and in excellent condition
7. Heat is radiant flooring
8. Bedroom has a big window and so does the living room
9. Lights are included and work well
10. Warm
11. Well lit
12. Happy – it used to be a daycare and Erin was running around like crazy
13. Alarm and secure door
14. Utilities are included
15. Cable’s included – digital cable, even. All the channels!

How To: Move Wine

Ok, I don’t know about you, but I find when I use wine to play games, they play much better if they’re in the same directory as wine… but… the games can take a lot of room.

The solution? Move wine and the games to another hard drive / partition.

Here’s how to:

You’ll need wine installed normally, and you’ll need to have the new partition mounted.

Make sure the partition is writeable as well as readable (easy way: start nautilus under superuser mode and right-click on the directory and change it’s properties).

Go into your home directory and make all files visible

Find and *cut* .wine

Go into your home directory and make all files visible, then paste .wine

Right-click on the wine directory (in it’s new home) and choose “Make Link”Cut and paste the link (it looks like a folder, but has an arrow in it’s icon) into your home directory, then rename it “.wine”

That should be it – test that it’s all working fine by double-clicking a random setup.exe (cancel it after it show it works)

I highly recommend you do this *before* you install any games.

Round Two: Appealing the revokation of Yahoo Answers points

A very helpful person posted a link in the comments that posted to a place where people can appeal “You have violated… and your post has been deleted” type occurances.

I wrote the following:

Please explain how I am in violation of the rules?
I put off the appeal until I had all the information to present in one submission.

Question:
“My company is getting rid of old PCs and I’m considering buying one. They have completely wiped out the hard drive, so there is no OS installed at all. Previously it had Windows Me or 2000 on it (not sure which). Is it going to be foolish of me to think I can buy Windows XP and install it myself? What kind of problems can I expect to run into?”

Answer:
“If you buy the XP disks you just get that – XP. No MS office, no other programs other than the very basics.
If you’re starting over anyways, grab a blank CD and use imgburn ( http://imgburn.com/ ) to burn an Ubuntu ( http://ubuntu.com/ ) or Kubuntu ( http://kubuntu.com/ ) .iso on there.
Put the burned CD in the CD tray and restart the computer. It doesn’t need a hard drive at all to run – it loads into the computer’s RAM (temporary memory).
K/ubuntu comes fully loaded and thousands of other programs are just a few clicks away – you just look them up in a built in installer, it grabs the stuff needed and installs it all. It’s free in both senses of the word – free of cost and free of obligations.”

Notes:
I believe my answer was relevant – it addressed the “problems s/he could expect to run into”, it even gave him/her details on how to get, burn and use a very easy way to test drive an OS that would solve his/her needs.
The other Answers people gave covered the “buying and installing of XP”

This is my first and only “violation” and I would like to avoid any future issues. Please explain how my answer is in error.
Thank you for your time,
Amanda

And left it to be replied to. I expected to get e-mail notices when someone replied to my thread. I didn’t get any official notices of any replies. (They should change that, hint hint Yahoo)

What I did get was this:

I posted this on the Message Board, but in case it’s deleted before you check there again, I thought I’d send you a copy.

Amanda,

I think you should pursue this further.

Jane F. says your post “was not an attempt to answer the question about installing a certain operating system” However, the actual question consisted of two parts. “Is it going to be foolish of me to think I can buy Windows XP and install it myself? What kind of problems can I expect to run into?”

In other words, the asker did not want to know just the specifics of the XP installation process, but rather wanted to know: should they buy and install XP? what problems will they have? The question is not focused solely on the install process itself, it’s really a question about the advantages and disadvantages of buying the XP operating system disks.

You answered that if a person buys Windows XP they only get the operating system, they don’t get MS office or programs other than the very basics. That would clearly be a problem for the average home user who will need a word processing program, at the very least. The only reasonable view is that this an answer to the question. Since only an “attempt” at an answer is necessary, this violation should be overturned.

I think you should ask Jane to reconsider, or find out what the next highest level of appeal is.

[Jean Clemens]

Needless to say, when I checked my thread (which I bookmarked), her answer was not there.

What was there was this:

As discussed earlier, while your post is on a related topic, it was not an attempt to answer the question about installing a certain operating system and was removed for this reason. If you’d like to share what you know on related topics rather than on this question, use the advanced search to find more questions you’re interested in.

Jane F.

So I returned to reading my Yahoo Mail in Thunderbird while mulling over what the answer was to my appeal. I then read an email from Yahoo returning my points, which I included in my reply to Jane F.:

So… to clarify Yahoo’s stance:
There is only one question per Question posted; regardless of other semi-statements ending in a question mark.

Answering any question asked except the main question will have the Answer removed, the points revoked and a negative mark on the Answerer’s record will be issued.

And yet… I’ve had my points returned:
Subject: Yahoo! Answers Points Restored (KMM52219628V58956L0KM)
Message: Hello,

We have reviewed your request, and have restored your points on Yahoo!
Answers. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Regards,
Carmen

Yahoo! Customer Care
http://www.yahoo.com/

I logged in today and got 32 points – 3 best answers and the revoked 2.

My next two questions are:
Why wasn’t the reinstatement of the points in question not stated in this thread?
Is there still a negative mark in my records?

It should be interesting if / when there is a reply. That I have all this documented in a place that Yahoo can’t go into and arbitrarily delete… puts my mind a bit more at ease.

Oh, and to those who have been in the appeal boards at least once:

Yes, I know there are times when the answer to an appeal is punative (the account is deleted). No worries… I have all my emails stored on my computer. My 360 blog will be backed up shortly.

No… I don’t trust these [profanity] the distance I could pick up Canada and throw it. I’ve seen too much to be that naive.