Happy Holidays: Web Programmer Complains SF Is Full of People Just Like Him

[Hat tip to the literary genius “founder” of DickWhack or whatever-the-fuck-it’s-called](http://valleywag.gawker.com/happy-holidays-startup-ceo-complains-sf-is-full-of-hum-1481067192):

I just got back to SF. I’ve traveled around the world and I gotta say there is nothing more grotesque than walking down (almost all) of San Francisco. Why the heart of our city and surrounding environs has to be overrun by crazy, entitled, money-grubbing, startup hipsters I have no clue. Each time I pass by one, my love affair with SF dies a little.

The difference is in other cosmopolitan cities, this lower part of society keep to themselves. They sit in their parent’s basements, eat cheetos, program quietly, and generally stay out of your way unless you need a leash in League of Legends. They realize it’s a privilege to be in meatspace and view themselves as guests. And that’s okay.

In downtown SF these ironic-t-shirt-wearing lib(ertarian)tards multiply like tribbles, give you the evil eye (when they bother to look up from their iPhones), and act like they own the city — as if it’s their place of leisure, gluten-free, grass-fed restaurants, and Belgian craft microbreweries… In actuality it’s the live-work city for a hell lot more than a bunch of VC-funded beggars trying to make a business model around helping similar lowlifes securely send dick pics to one another. It’s a disgrace. I don’t feel safe planning out my next meal without having my eyes accosted by their shitty reviews on Yelp or nasty “tips” on FourSquare on whether or not the place accepts BitCoin.

You can preach compassion, equality, and be the biggest lover of humanity in the world, but there is an area of town for self-entitled worthless drains and an area of town for the people trying to actually get shit done without being secretly stalked by some dude wearing Google Glasses. There is nothing positive gained from having them so close to us with their hooded sweatshirts flaunting their fly-by-night social mobile gaming startup when their business is on the Internet and their money comes from Sand Hill. They can eat and “work” somewhere else. It’s a burden and a liability having them so close to us sucking up our LTE/3G bandwidth with their Instagrams of their latest bacon and truffle-oil infused lunch. Believe me, if they added the smallest iota of value I’d consider thinking different, but the young trust fund white male ordering a code monkey to make a website designed for other white 1%ers like them hasn’t made anyone else’s life better in a while.

Combining

“I am so tired of stupid people, Terry. So tired of the people that say stupid things like, ‘Combining fruits and nut butters is dangerous for your health because… [food combining](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_combining)!’”

Me: “Just tell them that ‘combining your brain and your mouth is dangerous for **my** health because… the stupid: **it burns**!”

Irony

So, the weather got decent in San Francisco (which has been rare).

On this beautiful Friday, as a way of getting myself unstuckavoiding work, I am trying out [Unstuck][]…

Unstuck's Pick 3

It asks me if I’m using Wikipedia as a way of avoiding work. (I am using Unstuck app a way of avoiding work I should be doing at [Wikimedia Foundation][wmf].)

The irony is thick with that one.

Update: It appears that the app is useful if you are only stuck creatively, not if you’re just procrastinating. Helping me be more creative? That’s the exact opposite of what I need.

[Unstuck]: http://www.unstuck.com “Unstuck iPad app: How to live better every day”
[wmf]: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home “Wikimedia Foundation”

The New Onion

Marie sent me this article today with the comment: “Surprisingly, not an Onion headline.”

The New Onion

The article says:

> The Texas congressman said that if Mr. Obama persists in executing the office of the Presidency *as defined by the Constitution,* he could face “impeachment and/or deportation.” … “Mr. President, there’s still time for you to get in line. But if you continue to fulfill the duties of President of the United States that are *expressly permitted* in the Constitution, you are playing with fire.”

If true, Reality has jumped the shark.

Pear-to-Pear networking

> This resume I’m reviewing claims the dude developed a “pear-to-pear private tracker”

Since [I had ComicLife open anyways][techcrunch], this was too good to pass up:

pear-pear networking

[techcrunch]: http://terrychay.com/article/the-only-people-who-read-techcrunch-are-your-competitors.shtml “The only people who read tech crunch are your competitors”

August 1, 2012… On the way to karaoke

> So the other day — right over there — I saw a bum playing some buckets and another guy right next to him accompanying on an iPad. And, I was like… “This is the future.”
>
> — K3, Senior Jedi Program Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation

The Thunderscan story

I’m surprised I never got around to mentioned this, when [I promised I would][nans second story]. Since it’s been years, go back and read it, and come back. I’ll wait.

In high school, I owned a [Thunderscan][Thunderscan]. For those of you too lazy to click on the link, this was a device that would digitize photos by replacing the ink cartridge of your ImageWriter, [a dot-matrix printer][dot-matrix printer], popular with Macintosh computers of the era.

(For those of you too young to remember what a dot-matrix printer is: in the old days, our printers were slow enough that you could watch an episode of *[Cheers][Cheers]* waiting for it to print out an article or “graphics” —the latter of which was whatever came out of [Print Shop][theprintshop]. And they were so loud, that a popular accessory was huge muffled box to place the printer in, in order to contain what can only be described as the primal periodical scream of the then nascent personal computer, “Why the f*&k do I have to be tasked for the next half our printing up a sinfully ugly banner for [your terrible P.T.A Yard Sale][review the print shop]?”)

Now imagine something that did the reverse (put print into the computer) by scanning it line by line. And realize that a typical “line” of text back then was actually 24 “lines” to this scanner.

This was a Thunderscan.

Continue reading The Thunderscan story after the jump