I’ll first start off by saying I think smokeping is a great program and Tobi Oetiker is a great programmer whose contributions to the community have been great and in no way could I ever create MRTG or RRDTool. But…. After downloading the source to smokeping today and trying to configure it to run, I was completely shocked at how poorly it was put together. It’s clear that Tobi did not bother with making his code easy to run on any other system but his own with constant absolute paths to his own home directories on his personal machine! His own documentation and install notes are vague at best and I can’t figure out why he did not use relative paths at all in the source. While you do have to edit most files anyway to reflect where your RRD perl libraries are and your perl location, I just find it very odd that he left the paths in like that. Even his example configuration file is catered to his machine and his network making it confusing to delete out what is not needed.

Since moving into the city I’ve had to assemble a lot of furniture from ikea and other various places. Today while putting together snack tables from bed bath & beyond I believe I discovered my source of why I hate putting this crap together, the instructions.

You see in order to save money on printing costs places like Ikea use picture only instruction manuals so they don’t need to translate every booklet into every language where they ship to. Ok, that’s fine , and anyway you don’t need much verbal explanation when it comes to fitting round pegs into round holes, you just need to know which is the proper hole to place said peg in.

What’s the deal with the leaner’s on the subways? You know who I mean, the dude who can’t be bothered to hold on the support poll, instead he has to lean against it. In order to hold on and keep yourself from falling all over the place, you have to wedge your fingers in between the poll and his sweaty back.

I understand sometimes we all don’t want to stand on the subway. I also understand that those polls can be nasty and sticky and the last thing you want to do is touch them with you hand. But come on! I am 5’4″ tall when lying down flat, I can’t hold on to the ceiling or the horizontal support poles that are up high, which leaves the poll you, in all your laziness, are lounging against.