Inconsistencies in “The King of Queens”

Before I start listing the inconsistencies, let me say that I actually do love this show. Kevin James has a great propensity for physical humor and combined with his great chemistry with Leah Remini and hypertensive Jerry Stiller, the show is quite funny. Even though the show maintained a light, breezy, non-serious feel throughout its run (although, I felt the last season ended a bit abruptly), I couldn’t help notice the following inconsistencies:

• The dog that Doug and Carrie adopt from their neighbors (the Sacksky’s) mysteriously disappears after a couple of episodes. However, in the episode Ruff Goin’ (Season 9, Episode 5) when Doug adopts a dog from his neighbor because he wants to prove that he is a good person, he mentions that he has never had a dog
  
• Richie (Larry Romano), who is one of the friends in the group that Doug hangs out, is never to be seen after the early seasons. He was written out of the show during Season 3 because he wanted to work on another sitcom
  
• Carrie is shown to be having a sister, Sara (Lisa Rieffel) in a few episodes in the first season, but she is never to be seen in any of the later ones or spoken of. Kevin James clarified in an interview that the writers and producers could not think of a way to develop her character, so she was discontinued
  
• Holly (the dog walker, played by Nicole Sullivan) makes an appearance in one of the earlier seasons where she is a salesperson at a store that Carrie visits. Later she makes their acquaintance as a dog walker. She might have switched jobs, but there is no mention that Carrie makes of this earlier meeting
• Veronica’s character (portrayed by Anne Meara, Jerry Stiller’s real-life wife) initially makes an appearance at a mature singles event where she meets Arthur (Jerry Stiller). During this time, Spencer’s mom is shown to be the actress who played George Costanza’s (the character from Seinfeld) would-have-been mother-in-law (Grace Zabriskie). Suddenly, without explanation, Veronica is shown as being Spencer’s mom
• Nepotism. OK, some of these are not exactly inconsistencies, but I thought I’d mention it anyway. Both Kevin James’s real-life wife and Leah Remini’s real-life husband get recurring supporting roles in this show. So does a guy who is apparently Kevin James’s close friend in real-life. It would be fine except for the fact that he plays different characters in back-to-back episodes, which just seems unprofessional. Danny (Gary Valentine) is Kevin James’s cousin brother (thanks, Dee Dee) in real-life. Jerry Stiller’s daughter gets recurring minor character roles throughout the show
  
• In the final season, Adam Sandler guest stars as one of Doug’s high school friends, but in an earlier season, when Doug injures his knee, we see Carrie putting up a poster of a movie starring Adam Sandler
  
• In S4, Ep 19, Doug’s boss O’Boyle mentions that he has two kids, 17 and 2, but in S8, Ep 19, he is shown to be having two kids of the same age.
• Another inconsistency is how Doug and Deacon became friends and how long they have been friends. (thanks, Dee Dee for pointing this out)
  

Bottom-line, despite these inconsistencies, I really do like the show’s goofy humor.

Things to do (setup, configure etc.) after installing Fedora KDE

This is a note/check-list that I drafted to remind myself what to do when I (inevitably) re-install Fedora KDE every few months or so.

• RPMFusion Repository
• Install “yum-plugin-fastestmirror” which finds optimal servers with best speeds
• Install VLC, gstreamer-plugins-(bad, ugly, ffmpeg, bad-nonfree)
• Clementine music player
• VLC phonon backend
• LibreOffice
• Tixati
• libdvdcss2 for playing dvds – might have to enable ATRPMs repo for this. Disable this repo after installing since it conflicts with RPMFusion
• Copy the (most widely used, if not all) MSFT fonts from the Windows directory. Then, configure Infinality fonts
• Google Chrome
• Adobe Repo: Flash plugin + Adobe Reader
• OpenJDK (IIRC, gets installed along-with LibreOffice as a dependency)
• Xchat + Torify it
• Blue Sora Desktop Theme (goes well with a dark wallpaper)
• Probably best to disable Nepomuk file indexing
• Thunderbird
• Widgets: Lancelot Launcher, Icon-only Task Manager, Unit Converter, Calculator, yaWP, Notes

Tutorial: How to delete Flash cookies using Better Privacy Firefox add-on

What are Flash cookies?

Unlike traditional browser cookies, Flash cookies are relatively unknown to web users, and they are not controlled through the cookie privacy controls in a browser. That means even if a user thinks they have cleared their computer of tracking objects, they most likely have not.

Why are Flash cookies a problem?

Several services even use the surreptitious data storage to reinstate traditional cookies that a user deleted, which is called ‘re-spawning’ in homage to video games where zombies come back to life even after being “killed,”. So even if a user gets rid of a website’s tracking cookie, that cookie’s unique ID will be assigned back to a new cookie again using the Flash data as the “backup.”

What can you do?

Fortunately, there is a Firefox add-on called Better Privacy which deletes Flash cookies. This tutorial aims to describe how to install and use Better Privacy.

  1.    You can install it from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/betterprivacy/ 

2. Restart the browser for the add-on to finish installing. Click Tools – Addons –

   Extensions – Better Privacy Preferences.

3. The path of your Flash data directory varies depending on your OS. Generally,

• Windows: %APPDATA%\Macromedia\Flash Player\
• Mac: ~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/
• Linux/Unix: ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player

4. The “LSO Manager” tab shows you how many and what Flash cookies are

   currently being

   stored on your computer.

5. Click the “Options and Help” tab. Here, you can configure whether and when

   you want to delete the Flash cookies. It’s usually OK to leave the default

   settings as they are unless you have a specific reason to do otherwise.

6. That’s pretty much it. You have configured Firefox to delete Flash cookies and

   reclaimed some control over how you are being tracked online.

References

1. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/betterprivacy/
2. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cookies-think-again/

How to enable the IP filter feature in Tixati P2P client

This tutorial aims to describe how to enable the IP filter feature in Tixati P2P client.

1. Open Tixati
2. Click on “Settings”
3. On the left column, click on “IP Filter”.  You will notice that is turned off by default.  Turn it on.
4. You can leave the default settings as it is unless you need to configure it in a special manner.  Under Auto-Reload interval, remember to choose “1 Day” so that the lists are updated regularly.
5. Now close the “Settings” window and click on the “IP Filter” tab in the Tixati main window.
6. Click “Add”.  You can either point it to a file that you have downloaded onto your Computer or point it to a URL from a site like I-Blocklist, or even specify a country code to apply the IP Filter rules for IP addresses from that entire country.  A list of country codes can be obtained from a simple internet search.
7. Once you’ve uploaded the requisite filters, click OK to close the Window.
8. That’s it!  Your IP filters should be working now.  You can see real-time blocking results when downloading a file. 

 

How to solve unspecified transaction error in Fedora (Linux)

If you’ve ever encountered an error that said something along the lines of “Unspecified transaction error” while trying to run Software Update in Fedora, this tutorial helps to solve that problem.

 

The error usually looks something like this: http://i.imgur.com/fUxKB.png

 

The first thing to do is:

 

• Open Terminal, and run: su -c ‘yum clean all’
• Then, run: su -c ‘yum update’

 

This should solve the above error and if there are any updates, they will be done via the Terminal.

How to close an errant process using “xkill” command on CentOS/RedHat/Scientific Linux

This tutorial aims to describe how to close an errant process using the “xkill” command on RedHat based enterprise distributions.

“xkill” is a utility for forcing the X server to close connections to clients. This utility should be used as a last resort to abort programs that have displayed undesired windows on your screen. If possible, use your distribution’s inbuilt System Monitor to identify the process-id (PID) and end the process safely before using “xkill”, since it could introduce a potential security risk.

You will notice that it is not possible to run “xkill” by typing “Alt+F2”, “xkill” and Enter. This is because the utility is not installed by default on RedHat based distributions. However, by following the below steps, you can install it:

1. The utility “xkill” is a contained in the “xorg-x11-apps” package

2. Open Software Manager (or Terminal, if you are more comfortable with that) and search for “xorg-x11-apps” without the quotes. On the Terminal, you would type, su -c ‘yum install xorg-x11-apps’ and press Enter.

3. Once it is installed, you can run it using “Alt+F2”, typing “xkill” and pressing Enter.

4. I’d like to reiterate the fact that you should be using this as a last resort and only if you are unable to close the errant process using System Monitor with it’s PID.

How To Open Folder as Root in CentOS / RedHat / Scientific Linux / Fedora

This tutorial aims to describe how to open a folder as root in CentOS / RedHat / Scientific Linux / Fedora distros.

 

• There’s a handy tool called “beesu” which can be used to open a folder as root
• On Fedora, I believe it is present in the default repository. So, just search in package manager for “beesu” and install it
• On CentOS / RedHat / Scientific Linux, it isn’t available in the default repository so you’ll have to download it from Koji (http://koji.fedoraproject.org)
• To get it to work after installation, you might have to log out and log back in
• Now, press “Alt + F2”, and in the box that opens up, type “beesu nautilus” and press Enter (Nautilus, of course, is the default Gnome file manager. If you’re using something different, just type it instead)
• That’s it. The root folder should have opened. Use it carefully, since you could potentially break your system when root.

How To Install Screenlets on Scientific Linux / Red Hat Linux / CentOS

Screenlets can be described as theme-able mini-applications that are reside on the desktop, and provide useful information as well as eye-candy. This tutorial aims to describe how to install Screenlets on Scientific Linux / Red Hat Linux / CentOS operating systems.

 

• Download & extract the screenlets.tar.bz2 file from here: https://code.launchpad.net/screenlets/trunk
• Open Terminal, navigate to the extracted folder, and as root, run make install
• Download & install the Python-BeautifulSoup rpm file from tux99’s repo: http://pkgrepo.linuxtech.net/el6/release/noarch/
• Two more dependencies need to be installed. These are: gnome-python2-libwnck & python-numeric
• gnome-python2 is present in the default Scientific Linux repo
• python-numeric for EL6 is present in Koji. Link: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=213877
• That’s it! Open Terminal, type screenlets, press Enter
• Download your preferred screenlets from Gnome-look website: http://gnome-look.org/index.php?xsortmode=down&page=0&xcontentmode=6700 & install it by clicking “Install” button. Enjoy!

How to solve “Error 2046” while watching Flash videos

If you’ve ever experienced an error while watching a Flash video that read something like “Error 2046” or similar, the problem can be fixed by either increasing the Adobe Flash local storage space, (also known as “Flash cookies”) or deleting them.

 

To do this, follow the below steps:

 

1. Linux: Open the Adobe Flash settings by navigating to System – Preferences – Adobe Flash Player & click “Delete All”. This works for the Gnome desktop.
2. Windows: Open the Flash player settings. I believe this can be done by either right clicking on a Flash video, or by navigating to it from the Start Menu. Either increase the storage space or delete the Flash cookies.
3. The third step can be implemented on any Operating System, and works on the Firefox browser. Installing the add-on “BetterPrivacy” and configure it to delete LSO’s (Long Term Storage/Flash Cookies) upon closing the browser.
4. Try playing the video after performing any of the above methods. You should not see the “Error 2046” anymore and the video should load without issues.

How to solve slow KDE by enable the (faster) Raster rendering engine in Chakra Linux

This tutorial aims to describe how to enable the Qt (pronounced “Cute”) Raster rendering engine in Chakra Linux KDE.

The default X-render acceleration might be slow on older computers, those with less powerful graphics cards or graphics cards with sub-optimal drivers (not an uncommon thing on Linux). In such cases, switching from X to Raster noticeably increases speed and performance. The Raster paint engine enables the CPU to do the majority of the rendering, as opposed to the GPU. This is useful in cases where the GPU is slower than the CPU. Otherwise, it is better to use X render.

• Download the KCM Qt Graphics System from the kde-apps website
• Save the XZ archive on your computer and extract it
• Open the file manager (Dolphin) and navigate to the saved file
• Open Terminal (Konsole) at the location of the saved file. This can be done by pressing F4 in Dolphin
• Issue the following command: cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr
• If it throws an error about missing packages, install them from Appset Qt. I got a missing package error (automoc4). Depending on which KDE distro you’re using, this may vary.
• Then, run the following commands:
• make
• sudo make install
• That’s it. Installation is done. Open System Settings-System Administration-Qt Graphics
• Enable Raster. Log out and log back in.
• You should see the increase in speed already. Enjoy!

References

• KDE Archwiki
• This YouTube video

PS: It’s been brought to my notice that this package is available in the CCR (Community Repository) (Thanks Carlos for the heads up). So, just search for kcm-qt-graphicssystem , install it, and follow the rest of the steps from the instructions above.