Scribble, scribble, scribble...

17th October, 230,000 words (admittedly we've slowed down... only 555 words per day since the last announcement).

Yesterday was a bit of a wipeout on account of Patch Tuesday's various Windows (in my case Vista HP) and other updates (Office etc.) being applied Wednesday night - leading to catastrophic failure of special goodies I've written to add functionality to Word to help me with navigating it...

To be specific, the ActiveX killbits patch not only prevents vulnerable ActiveX controls from being used by Internet Explorer it does so (via the "killbit") by stopping anything from running them... in my case MS Word - the Office XP Web Component I had on a userform simple wasn't there, which also meant the VBA code fell over "Cannot compile module" because the code referenced a now non-existent object.

However, lest you think it has been all work and no play (oh what fun to have to rebuild and restore one's work PC?) maybe I should share the news that traversable intra-universe wormhole mouths can not be charged! Took me a while to work it out (think: Gauss/divergence theorem + lack of horizon = lack of inside/outside distinction for a surface surrounding a wormhole mouth: think of the two types of circles that go around or though the hole in the middle of a torus/doughnut - they don't divide the surface)... but then I found confirmation in a footnote on p1200 of Misner, Thorne, Wheeler's Gravitation, which was nice. Still don't see how they can have mass either, I mean, come on...

Also worth mentioning, just in passing, something that occurred to me over a nice Lamb Madras at Indigo last night (a line of thought prompted by discussion of a recent New Scientist article on why the mind encourages superstition) which is that according to Your's Truly's theory of mind two contrasting styles of meditation (defocussing (e.g Zen ) vs. e.g. focussing (e.g. Tibetan though e.g. chanting)) lead to two different (but of course, the same) states of non-being, which we may summarise as:











If you know what I'm taking about, you know what I mean; if you know what I mean, why aren't you laughing?

We are in a jolly mood, aren't we?

Enlightening Stuff, eh?

Steganos Safe 2007 & The Buddha Nature of Support Requests

Whilst it would be soooo easy just to rant (believe me when I say this is not yet a rant) I try hard not to. My thesaurus of abuse is extensive, but being abusive just pigeonholes you as an asswipe - and if you are going to be an asswipe then you can have much more fun with irony.

After notifying Steganos of what I thought was a bug, only to be told "that's impossible" I sent them more information (plenty), but the silence was, as usual deafening, so I decided to incentivise them, the incentive being that if they responded I would stop harassing them with irony.

And just because I liked it, here's what I said...

Dear Herr X

Day 1 of daily reminders.

You have enjoined me on more than one occasion to respond: "If you still experience any difficulties, please don´t hesitate to write back. Thank you."

Well, I am still experiencing difficulties, I have written back. But I am beginning to wonder why. What is the point if there isn't even an acknowledgement, let alone an answer?

When someone says in email "don't hesitate to write back" I rather assume they mean "write back" *by* email. Do these messages even reach your inbox? Will you eventually have to correct your template to say "Please return to the "Customer Support" (sic) portal should you have any further queries. This email address does not accept replies."? (In which case, why not send a "message undeliverable" notice?)

On further consideration I realise you didn't actually say you would read or respond to any replies, the fault is clearly mine for not attending to the precise wording. I expected a response before I realised this, now I wonder what you expected me to expect. "Don't hesitate to write back" perhaps meant "think long and hard about writing anything at all, think harder still before clicking the send button...".

Should I ask myself why I am bothering? Whether I now expect anything at all?

Aha! Is this perhaps the new philosophy of Zen support, in which the user achieves enlightenment concerning the paradoxical nature of the Steganos world of customer support and their own personal difficulties through the apparently endless repetition of pointless activities such as writing emails, until the great truth dawns that there is no world of customer support, that it is all an illusion, and that ultimately the answer to such questions as "Why doesn't this work? Why does that happen?" are discovered to be merely "Because."

I understand. It is not the answering that is important, it is the asking. Of course the failure of the UDF Safe I have demonstrated is impossible. It is the very essence of Possible and Impossible, Yes and No, True and False, Real and Unreal. Nothing is real, and the unreadable safe is merely an encryptic nod towards the unknowability of this world. There are no answers because there are no questions; there are no questions because they are not read. There is no Existence, merely Being... and being a Mere Customer is merely the first step on the path.

Before enlightenment: write email, wait. After enlightenment: write email, wait.

Why do I bother? Because.

Tomorrow: Pace Willard Quine: The Radical Untranslatability of Support Requests,