Ryan Morlok’s Blog

For those of you who have never eaten at Hot Wok, you probably don’t understand the magic.  I don’t know of any place on the planet where you can get Chinese food that cheap.  I can walk into that place, order the Hunan Beef on white rice and only pay $4.87.  And that food lasted me for two meals.  Can anyone else name a single serving that lasts me two meals? No.

Anyway, I drove over to the Hot Wok on Mattis and Bradley this afternoon to pick up some food, and much to my dispair, it was closed.  It’s turning into some sort of Sammy’s Pancake House.  I hate pancakes.  My only hope is that the Hot Wok on University over in Urbana will remain open, but even if it does, the days of quick cheap Chinese food near where I live are over.  I’ll miss you Hot Wok. :’-(

I’ve been working on moving my copy of Adobe Creative Suite 2 to my new Mac, and boy has it been a pain in the butt.  For most Mac software, you just drag the application from the mounted directory to the applications folder and your done with it.  Even Microsoft with their Office install wasn’t able to foul things up too bad.  With Adobe, it’s been a nightmare.

First, do not try to the copy the appications directly from one computer to another.  That works for most things, but it didn’t for Adobe.  I missed some Library files and that didn’t work so well, and then when I got those, I had to fight with the activation transfer.  That was running into all sorts of errors (probably from the direct app copy) so I gave up and decided to do a reinstall (I couldn’t find the install CDs initially, but by this point I had located them).

So I go to do the reinstall, but it won’t let me install more than the version cue software.  It thinks that the other applications are already installed, and there’s no option to reinstall them.  What’s worse, I can run the normal uninstall utilities (or the license deactivation) because it’s complaining about missing support folders and that the copy isn’t activated.  After one failed install, I manually deleted all of Adobe’s stuff, and tried again.

This time the install actually worked. Things went in, and everything was peachy-keen.  I then went to do an application update.  I wish I was exagerating when I say that the updater asked for my password 20 times.  Could they have just asked for sudo priveleges for the overall installer app and then launched their sub-installer apps from that?  Oh-no.  They have to ask for authorization for each individual installer application.  One of those managed to fail, so after the whole process was done, I went back in to try again, but strangely it was listing all of the updates as available for download - even the ones that I had successfully installed.  It was nice enough to give me a list side-by-side of the updates that were installed, but instead of taking the ones out that were already installed, it just left them there.  Regardless, the update failed a second time, and I just gave up on it.

Adobe’s problems go beyond just the install process for CS2, their applications take forever to launch.  In an informal test to launch Illustrator, it took ~45sec.  This is on my new Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro with a 7200 RPM harddrive and 2GB of RAM.  I understand that this is doing emulation, but please.  On my old Powerbook the load time was on the order of minutes.  What’s worse is when you install CS2, Adobe wants you to use their Acrobat Reader for opening PDF documents.  They change the file associations (without asking you) automatically on install.  Again, their product takes ~5 sec where the default (Preview) takes 1-2.  Even the people on Windows have to agree that Acrobat Reader is slow as all getout to load.  It’s also really annoying when it loads directly in your web browser, which in my opion is more distracting (and slower) than it’s worth.

I stopped by Sam’s Club this evening to pick up some office paper on the way to Kim Labs.  It was closed.  No big deal, I’ve been bitten by the weird Sam’s Club hours bug before, but when I stopped at Staples next, things just got annoying.  It was also closed.  It was only 6:30.  Maybe I’m remembering things incorrectly, but I remember most stores staying open until 8 or 9 on Sundays.  Sam’s has always closed early, but I’m sure (at least in Minnesota) that things stay open later.  Oh well, tomorrow night is another day…

I found a bunch o spam comments on my blog again today.  Looks like the math plugin was only successful in keeping Steve off the comments.  Maybe I’ll switch to a different captcha plugin, or maybe I’ll just modify the current math one so that it will be nonstandard.

The comments on my blog are starting to come under the fire of spam.  It’s not too bad now, maybe a few a week, but I’m sure it will be getting worse in time.  When I get a chance, I’m going to look into a solution similar to what Mikero has.  Basically you have to type in a word or phrase to identify yourself as human.  Maybe I’ll make mine that you have to solve a math equation.  That should keep Steve out.

I understand that the government doesn’t really have to sell themselves to anyone, but they could try a little harder. Come on, the rainbow-bar separator looks like something straight out of 1995.

I’m currently reading up on FDA regulations related to clinical studies and the requirements related to computerized data collection and analysis (this is for both my Business Administration class and for Morlok Technologies. I must say, anything in which the government has a hand is as boring as saw dust. What amazes me the most is their raw use of outline formatting. Legislation is especially bad. *Blehk*

I’ve moved to a different desk at Kim Labs recently, which is right next to the newly installed refrigerator. Anyone who knows anything about me should realize that this probably isn’t a good situation. Literally, without removing my headphones, I can reach the door to the ‘fridge and pull out a soda. The Pepsi bottling company has never been so pleased. I’ve been keeping it stocked in true Morlok style. Any who have visited the Minnesota Morlok house can attest to the ‘fridge downstairs that’s traditionally kept overflowing with drinks.

I’ve taken it upon myself to keep this ‘fridge stocked with plenty of diet pop to my liking. It’s not that I’m incosiderate of non-diet drinkers, it’s just I’m not going to make multiple trips to my car to haul additional cases of soda, and I can’t really carry more than 3 24-packs at once. Anyway, this afternoon I was unpacking some Diet Dr. Pepper into the refrigerator, and half way through the 24-pack, the design on the can changed. Apparently their going to a new logo for the soda, and I happened to receive the 24-pack in which that transition occurred (OK, I recognize that it could be spread over lots of 24 packs, but still). I was pretty impressed (with the multiple logos in one box, not the logo itself, it’s kinda whatever).

While I’m on the topic of soda in the work place, I’d really like to get a few things off my chest. When you’re at work, pop should be free. No two ways about it. I’m probably in the 98th percentile in terms of pop drinkers, and I only go through about 5-6 cans a day. When you think about it, even with a conservative estimate of $0.30 per can, that’s less than $2 a day to give your employee free soda. That’s $500 a year. In the scheme of things, that really not important when it allows your workers to just a grab a drink when they want and get back to work, rather than having to worry about making change with the payment bag, as done here at Kim Labs. Plus, the free soda really shows that you’re willing to take care of some of the little annoyances in life to make working just a little nicer for your people. When I have employees, the soda’s on me.

If you’re not aware, I’m currently on my Lenten no-pop kick, which could just as aptly be described as my Lenten drink-a-ton-of-tea kick. No big deal, it’s a yearly occurrence. The problem this year is I’m making a lot of that tea at work. We have a microwave in the lab, but the problem is the RPMs of the turntable in the microwave don’t jive well with my preferred tea-heating time. It turns out that my 3 minute warming time leads to almost exactly xx.5 revolutions, where xx is some number I don’t know. “Why is the a problem?” you may ask. Because I insert the mug with the handle facing the door, and when I go to take it out, the handle is facing the back of the microwave. Every time. Very annoying.

Once upon a time ACM@UIUC was an engineering group. They did cool projects ranging from vending machines, to computer animation shorts. Now we’re really a marketing group. Sure, there are still some cool projects going on, but it just doesn’t feel like the stories I’ve heard of the past.

This is probably just me being bitter. I’ve been working on posting flyers for events lately, and it seems like every evening there is some sort of information session or tech talk that we’re hosting. There’s no way I even have time to attend all of the events we host, nonetheless organize them. Top4 has been working to try to encourage more project work, but right now I feel like we’re the kings of corporate event advertising. It doesn’t help that I’m involved with CSGSO, which also has corporate events.