slangs and abbreviations

this is a direct copas from talkbass forum :p simply because I don't feel like writing anything serious right now heh heh, and since it's a forum, everything in it belongs to its members, including your humble writer here ;), plus, this is stated on their faq page, and though most of them are related to bass, some can be quite applicable in everyday life.

+1 (or any number): Agreed. More numbers= you HIGHLY agree.
A/B: When you compare two instruments by playing them one after another.
ABG: Acoustic Bass Guitar
AFAICS As Far As I Can See
AFAIK: As Far As I Know
Bump or Bumping: Said when you post in your own thread to move to the top of the list.
Blocks: Fretboard Markings
CAR: Candy Apple Red
CIJ: "Crafted In Japan"
Closet Classic: Bass: Has some signs of aging, cracked finish etc etc.
DB: Double Bass
DC: Double Cut Body Style.
DI: Direct Inject (Often referred to as a DI Box, or Direct Box)
Dots: Fretboard Marking
Feeler Used mainly on the "for sale" forums. Meaning "I'll sell if I get what I believe is top dollar."
Fingerboard: Board WITHOUT Frets (Fretless)
FOH: Front Of House
EQ: Equalizing, or adjusting the Highs, Mids, Lows to shape the sound of your bass.
ERB: Extended Range Bass
Fretboard: Board With Frets (Fretted)
FSR: Factory Special Run
EURB or EUB: Electric Upright Bass
FUQUA'd: Having Ed Fuqua bastardize your TB handle.
FWIW: For What It's Worth.
GAS: Gear Acquisition Syndrome.
GC: Guitar Center. A chain of music stores.
GL: Can Refer to "Geddy Lee" (ie. The model) or G&L basses.
GTG: Get Together.
HH: Double Humbucker Pickup Combo
HTH: Hope That Helps.
Hz: A Measurement Of Cycles Per Second
IIRC: If I Remember Correctly
IMHO: In My Humble Opinion
IMO: In My Opinion
IBTL: In Before The Lock
J-Bass: Jazz Bass
J/H: Jazz/Humbucker Pickup Combo
JM(H)O: Just My (Humble) Opinion
LP or LPB: Les Paul or Les Paul Bass (Referring to the body style) or even Lake Placid Blue (A colour)
MIA: Often referred to as "Made In America". Also "Missing In Action" for all the army buffs.
Mids: Generally between ____ Hz and ____ Hz.
MIJ: "Made In Japan"
MIK: "Made In Korea"
MIM: "Made In Mexico"
MM or EBMM: Music Man or Ernie Ball Music Man. MM can also refer to the Marcus Miller signature bass
Mod: Moderator. They can shut you up.
Mojo: Extensive wear on a bass due to years of playing. Such basses seem to have a deep history or charisma.
Noob/Newbie/Newb: New Member
NOS: New Old Stock. Always a Reissue Bass. It's like it's NEVER been played and never aged.
OP: Original Poster
OT: Off Topic
OTOH: On The Other Hand
P-Bass: Precision Bass
P/G: Pickguard
P/H: Precision/Humbucker Pickup Combo
P/J: Precision/Jazz Pickup Combo
P/U or Pups: Pickups
Paul: Forum administrator. Contact with any issues the mods can't handle, or to file complaints.
PBDDI: Tech 21 Programmable Bass Driver DI
PDDI: Tech 21 Para Driver DI
PM: Private Message
POS: Piece of ****. Not a good piece of equipment.
Pwned: Owned
RB5: Roscoe Beck 5-string
Relic: Bass: Nicks, Scratches, and Dings galore. Super Worn in. It's like you've been playing this bass, every for 30 years.
RI: Reissue
Ric: Rickenbacker Basses
SABDDI: Tech 21 SansAmp Bass Driver DI
SC: Single Cut Body Style.
SM58: An Industry Standard Microphone
SX Basses: Essex Basses
Scale Length: The length from the nut of the bass, so the bridge of the bass.
Sig.: Signature
SR5: Ernie Ball Stingray 5-string
Supporting Member Pay $20.00 to support TalkBass, and become a supporting member. Pay $60.00 and become a GOLD supporting member.
TB: TalkBass
The Qintar: An old poster on Talkbass.
Tort: Tortoise Shell (pickguard)
TTIUWOP or TTIUWP: This Thread Is Useless Without Pics
URB or UB: Upright Bass
VTC: Vintage Tone Control
YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary

Thrashing my bos' computer

on an otherwise beautiful sunday morning.. skip the stupid introduction and straight to the point. I've crashed my bos' computer. 

the thing about the IT department of this group of companies is that, there's only one IT guy and he's in charged of three main offices in Jakarta, including branch offices in Bandung. 

how did that happen, don't ask me.

anyways, I have apparently been the guy to rely on by my bosses when they have problems with their pc, which is a role I really much enjoy, with most of the cases revolve around somethings like why certain xxx websites are no longer accessible, why networks are not connecting, how do you download videos conveniently from youpoop, how to bypass national internet safe wtf which basically stop you from accessing x-rated content websites, and that bossy stuff.

so it seemed to be somewhat normal when a bos, whom I highly respect, come to me complaining that he no longer able to use chrome or mozilla, that the only thing worked was internet explorer, who was already heavily bombarded by spammers. In addition, all his doc and docx files have turned into exe..

trouble..

so chronologically, I tried to examine what types of trojans are infesting the little netbook, a lenovo idea pad S100, and what I could easily identified were mowhorc, which I instantly try to deal with: stop their process on task manager, delete their main and hidden execute files, erase their registry entries and all that stuff.

I then encountered browser protect, which I also try to deal with before finding out that there's an endless horde of stuff pushing themselves in within the task manager..

there were just too many of them that I feel the need to deploy a hired gun, but this is not just a blunt extermination effort, where you could just nuke the whole damn thing and start anew, this is a selective, highly calculated safe and rescue mission, which means that hiring the wrong gunman will means the end of a civilization.

and this is where the whole thing went wrong, and stupid fishy advertisement campaign lured me to spyware cease..
and the stupid application identified more than 500 trojans on the system folders, which upon deletion make the pad crashed.

fuck.

I'm a lazy guy, so things that forced me to overdo things would normally be dissed for the sake of other things which yield the same result, at least in the possibility of things, as the same results here does not necessarily implied the proposed excellence level of it.

in this case, disassembling the pad and connecting the hardisk to a third party pc using a sata cable is out of the question. downloading windows xp installation disk and burn them on a cd, find an external cd player to hook it up with is also dissed

what I have is USB dongle, an access to a scrap i386 folder and a considerably high speed internet connection. and that settles it, so I thought, with the USB as the boot disk to ms dos, I installed windows xp using winnt.exe from the i386 folder, which is a success.

but not until I realized that the there are files within the i386 folder that were missing or somewhat corrupt making it untraceable by xp, not allowing the pad to connect to internet, display help content, install new app due to missing dll files.

double fuck.

ah well, at least I get to enter windows again, which allowed me to fix the doc infested mowhorc, this is especially, effortlessly done using a locally made program called mowremoval v2.3.

unlike the spyware cease bitch, the mowremoval was indeed a capable piece of software designed exactly to do what it intended to do, remove mowhorc and restore the infected files. yup, restore.

and last but not least, this calls for the end of xp, the ever so reliable os version with oh so many deseases that makes it vulnerable in terms of security protection.

once again, after two days of bitching hours, windows 7 prevail, and once again installed through a dongle.

ps. obviously there are other bitching stuff such as finding the drivers for this stupid pad, the fn+f5 not working due to technical wonders such as why the hell a hotkey driver would be included within the power management driver pack (and not the ethernet or lan) and so on and so forth. 

repentance

image courtesy of noahakumu

repent (rəˈpent) verb

1. (especially in religion) to be sorry for one's past sins.

2. (with of) to wish that one had not done, made etc. 

reˈpentance noun

re pentant adjective

repentance is the fifth track on Dream Theatre's 2007 Systematic Chaos album, which song itself is the sixth part of a multi-album songs series about then drummer Mike Portnoy's way of confronting his own alcoholism problem

various information revealed that the song is apparently revolves around the steps of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program, particularly steps eight (regret) and nine (restitution) or making a list of people whom one has wronged and, if possible, making direct amends with them. 

Portnoy called this collections of songs Twelve-Step suite, while other songs within the multi-album series include The Mirror, Lie, The Glass Prison, This Dying Soul, The Root of All Evil, and the seventh after Repentance, The Shattered Fortress.

I don't know where each song go in which album, as I'm just an occasional Dream Theatre fan, but you could check them on dt.spatang.com which is a great source of inside information for some, if not all, DT materials.

what fascinate me about this song was the fact that he asked a number of friends, for him, great musicians for us and awesome music gods for me, at least some of them, to do their own versions of repentance, contributed spoken words to the second part of the song. in no particular orders they are:

Steve Vai - "I want to thank you for helping me to see my own selfishness and to tell you how regretful I am it has hurt you."

Joe Satriani - "I really regret not being able to see my friend Andy..."

Mikael Åkerfeldt - "One of my best friends who's the godfather of my daughter, he asked me to sing or play something at his wedding, and I turned it down because I was busy and too much of a chickenshit to do it...And I feel sorry for that, because it was a very very close friend of mine"

Corey Taylor - "Until that moment, I'd never felt like I'd failed at anything...And I felt like I failed her...And I failed myself, and I failed my children...It's still really hard to deal with."

Jon Anderson - "I think it's the betrayal...it still haunts me."

Chris Jericho - "I'm sorry I didn't visit you in the hospital, Grandpa when you were on your deathbed. I'm sorry I didn't come to your funeral...I don't know if I was selfish or just too scared to face it. It's one of the biggest regrets of my life."

Steven Wilson - "So, I wanted to apologize to anyone that I've upset or offended.. they're just words, it's just an opinion, but unfortunately, I tend to express it as a fact, and that's kind of arrogant."

David Ellefson - "I'm here to confess with you that what I did, was wrong... And I'm asking for your forgiveness"

Steve Hogarth - "The only unforgivable thing hauls itself out of bed, looks over my shoulder at the bloody English weather..."

Neal Morse - "I'm sorry for what I did back then... I was a different person. I really was and I'm so sorry. I wish it wouldn't have happened, but it did, and I'm sorry. Forgive me. I'm sorry..."

Daniel Gildenlöw - "I guess I'm simply sorry for being me just so awful to the people..."

The song's ending also contains a spoken passage, which apparently is the twelve promises from the Alcoholics Anonymous book:

-------

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
Self seeking will slip away.
Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
We will suddenly realize that god is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them. 

-------

one thing that strikes me upon hearing this song is that, as a normal human being, at least that's what I'd like to think of me, we all have regrets, past sins, and sometimes we need to let it out, make a direct apology when possible or make that apology ourselves if not. 

and what's so great about this song is that everybody can be a part of it, and in one non particular evening, I heard something coming out of my mouth

- "I wish I could repeat again those periods of time during your visit... I wish I could make you happier, I'm sorry for being such a jerk the whole time. I really regret it. I'm sorry..."