There really should be a death penalty for having a car alarm and not running out to turn it off when it’s set off. I think a deadline of two minutes is probably fair. Soon enough, people would rig the car alarm to call the person’s phone and it could be reset remotely. (Since usually a car with an alarm doesn’t end up getting stolen, right?) Okay, it’s draconian — a death penalty is over the top in this case and should be reserved for things like murder or pedophilia or drunk driving or being a pop star comparable to …
Tag: annoyances
There Goes the Neighborhood
In the Starbucks where Miss Jiwaku and I hang out in Depok — she studies, I work on stuff — demographics have finally hit, like shit on a fan. The demographics I’m talking about are micropopulation dynamics: the national demographics of enrollment in her Bahasa Indonesian language program at University of Jakarta have shifted, such that there’s a lot more Koreans at the university, in the neighborhood, and… at our Starbucks. (Which prompted this advice from Miss Jiwaku to a new Korean student who enrolled this semester, a friend of a friend already enrolled last semester: “DON’T hang out with …
Recent Annoyances
Believe it or not, I’m trying not to rant and complain too much these days, as I said last night to some friends I was hanging out with. But you know, I just spent the afternoon dealing with something that, as usual, incompetent idiots didn’t deal with, and I’m in a mood. And yes, this involves a water leak and my closet, though it’s a different closet — though the source of the previous one’s leak, if that says anything to you… But if you’re not up for a rant, just click on the link above, about the friends I …
용산 멍청이, aka “You Can’t Run Linux on Laptops”
UPDATE (8 March 2013): Yeah, as it turns out, I ended up keeping the laptop: he couldn’t install Linux, IIRC, but I figured out a way, and it was handy for dual booting, when I occasionally needed to use a Korean installation of Windows XP. However, the purchase was still a rather dumb one, and as a rule I avoid purchases like this one… to a fault, as I failed to get a new portable computer before leaving Korea when, all told, I probably should have picked one up. Ah well… ORIGINAL POST: Yongsan Electronics Market is famous for cheap(ish) …
Tune the Damned Thing
While I have been trying to rest my eyes, one of the things I’ve noticed is that trying not to look at anything too long, or in a way that strains your eyes, leads to you noticing more about your aural surroundings — the sounds that surround you. This morning, I woke to what I think were magpies — black birds with blue and white patterns on them. Someone upstairs hollered out his window at them, in English: “Hey birds! I can’t concentrate!” I can see why. They were really dreadfully loud, and their “call” sounded a lot like electric …