On Riding in the Rain

I rode to work today in rain that I can only describe as intense. It was not just raining hard, but it was windy, horribly windy. To add a little more excitement there were a number puddles that dwarfed Lake Ontario, every one of them I would wonder, as I could not see the bottom, "is there a pothole here?, because if there is, I'm toast". But as always it was not the wind or water, it was the drivers that made my day. It is hard for me to say for sure what it is about rude drivers that gets under my skin the most, but I suspect that it is the lack of consideration, they are in a climate controlled vehicle, polluting, while my life is put at risk by their total lack of consideration.

Yes today again, this time, a taxi driver made a right turn across the bike lane to get gas.

Just once I'd like to make it all the way to work without seeing some driver obviously failing to pay attention.

Anyway so tonight I have to update some Windows servers, one is a Java application server. Now I did not notice this before, (probably because it did not happen before) but my Java application server is no longer working. Why? The Microsoft Data Execution Prevention feature is disabling Java! Smart guys, really smart. For non-computer programmers, basically what Microsoft did was disable Java on my Java server, and best of all, the DEP tool does not seem to be decent enough to stop disabling Java even when I disable DEP! But the best part, despite all the idiotic DEP warnings, my Java application still works.

Let me put this in non-computer terms so everyone can understand, I'll use a car analogy. Suppose we have a car that has a warning light that reads "combustion detected in crank case, shutting down engine". Well I assume we all know enough about the modern internal combustion engine to know that without combustion, you don't get to go very far. Well now, suppose after fooling around a bit, trying to bypass the ignition detector, just for fun we push down on the gas, and sure enough the car goes anyway!

Windows, what an embarrassing operating system. I am embarresed becuase I am a member of the same animal kingdom as the people who work at Microsoft! (Were all mammals, well at least I am a mammal.)