Tag: Geeky Stuff

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Can we please cancel Ezra Miller?

It’s not like he was all that good in Justice League

I may be a bit biased because even as a little boy I didn’t like The Flash.

I don’t think I’ve seen anything else that Miller has appeared in. If I have, since I don’t recall Miller, his roles must not have been all that large or his acting compelling enough for me to remember him.

There are some actors, who make an impression on the screen even in minor roles. These are the folks you watch during the movie, then you watch the end credits for the actor’s name, then you IMDB their name to find out what else they’ve been in.

After that, you rent the other movies to see if their acting holds up. If they turn in compelling performances in other things, you’ll keep an eye out for them and spend your money to see them.

Jason Mamoa, for example. I liked him way back in Stargate Atlantis. I know there are people who don’t care for him, but I’m expressing my opinion.

I wasn’t sure that he’d be able to pull off Aquaman. Lets face it, Aquaman was always a generic Lilly white, blond, blue eyed dude. I remember thinking… Mamoa as Aquaman????

Now I can’t think of any version of Aquaman except Mamoa.

His portrayal is wonderful and he’s brought a humanity to Aquaman that has enriched the character for me personally. Aquaman in the comics always felt arrogant and elitist. He wasn’t really all that likable.

Mamoa’s rendition is generally humble with a touch of arrogance. He’s got a sense of humor and playfulness.

I really like the Polynesian cultural elements. They make so much sense in context of the character. Who better to protect the sea, than someone with a deep cultural connection to it?

I was honestly hoping for something better, more interesting, for The Flash. Instead what we got in Justice League was a neurotic selfish child. I suppose we got too much of Ezra Miller’s real personality translated into the character.

Given all the negative publicity and reporting surrounding Ezra Miller. I’m honestly hoping that the folks controlling the DC movie franchise just flush The Flash entirely.

Ezra Miller is largely forgettable and perhaps should be forgotten.

There are a lot of other super interesting characters in the DC universe. Perhaps we’d be better off with one of them stepping into the spotlight.

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Interesting, if you’re a Geek

I’ve been using Bitdefender antivirus for about the past 6 years. Generally speaking, I don’t have too many problems with viruses. Most of the people I know have enough sense to stay away from sites containing viruses, and they don’t as a rule forward email wily nilly.

There have been some emails over the past few years that were infected but generally speaking I maintain antivirus only as a safety precaution.

I started using Bitdefender because a couple of companies I worked at used it and it seemed pretty robust while not sucking up tons of system resources. Many of you may know of the product because it’s marketed mostly as a Windows solution. However they also have a Mac version of the software.

You have to buy their Total Premium package to get it, but that didn’t bother me because I also had Windows and that package gave me 5 licenses.

I just got the renewal notice telling me that another 3 years was going to cost $200. “Whoa!” That’s a lot of money. Not really a lot over the course of 3 years but I got to thinking about what I was really using.

I’ve not been doing a whole lot with Windows, so I didn’t need the Windows license anymore. I don’t use Bitdefender’s VPN, Parental Controls, or in fact any of their products except the Mac Antivirus.

I’d become disenchanted with even that product because it seemed to be really busy all the dang time. There wasn’t enough file activity, downloads, and email attachments, to justify the application constantly checking (something… I don’t know what). Don’t even get me started on what a royal pain in the ass Bitdefender was every single time Apple updated the OS. Uninstalling and reinstalling the application became a really common event.

That was an annoyance. But the bigger question was that the Bitdefender dashboard only showed that one license was in use, when I knew for a fact that there were 3 of the 5 available in use. This raised the question, did they really have as much of a handle on things as they said they did.

This led me to investigating alternatives.

To The Internet Boy Wonder!

There were tons of reviews of various antivirus products. Bitdefender was always in the top 3, even on the Mac side of things. Norton was another and well, to be honest, I didn’t even read the Norton reviews. Norton and I have a really bad history. So admittedly I’m biased. One other product popped up on the Mac side of things frequently.

It’s a Mac only product from a company called Intego. I’d used their product in the past until they got too expensive and honestly bloated beyond all reason. If I recall correctly I stopped using them about 8-10 years ago. In great part because they were sucking up all kinds of system resources on my Mac OS 9 system. Then they got super expensive and I was done.

I think they learned their lesson. Their current product reviews stated that the product had a light footprint and did what it was asked to do. Their suite of applications was nicely integrated and during installation the user had the option to install only those apps from the suite that were wanted.

Very unlike Bitdefender which installs everything and then forces the user to execute uninstallation utilities for applications that aren’t desired.

Intego is a Mac only solution. They’ve been Mac only right from the start. That means that their solution isn’t a reworked hack job converting a primarily Windows application to a Mac compatible version. It’s Mac to its foundations.

I read a ton of reviews, the only “Dings” I found were that some years Intego didn’t submit the product for “Professional Evaluation & Review” to various publications.

Also noted was that the installation process was a bit iterative. Meaning that if you install their entire suite of applications, you have to authorize each application for access when you bring it online.

I understand why some reviewers might be annoyed with this, but I see it as a plus. It forces a conscious choice on the part of the user to allow a product access to their system or not. I like having a touch more control over what applications have access to my entire disk, or my network traffic. Many other suites issue a blanket pass for such things and that has always made me uncomfortable.

Really, does a network utility need access to my contacts? I think not.

Goodbye Bitdefender

I also found a coupon that got me a substantial discount. So I purchased 3 licenses for 2 years. Uninstalling Bitdefender took forever, installing the Intego suite took a little while, but it went very smoothly.

An interesting side note is that Bitdefender offered me half off the subscription price when I turned off “Auto Renew” I guess they thought if after 6 years this guy is turning off Auto Renewal we’re going to lose him.

They weren’t wrong… Trouble is, it was too little too late.

I’m going to be running Intego for about 30 days on my system, then I’ll put it on the other half’s.

Thus far, I’m liking what I see.

The various interfaces in the applications are clean and well laid out. I like the net barrier application’s visual firewall. I could see where net barrier could be annoying if you have a lot of applications that want to phone home. That being said, once authorized the application doesn’t ask again.

The Washing Machine application is a bit slow, but it wiped 4 GB of crap from my system. I haven’t even run its duplicate scan yet. I’m hoping that it’s as intelligent and informative about what it plans to do as the cleaning cycle.

The antivirus portion of the application is clean and simple. Some reviews said that it was a a bit slow, but my experience was on par with doing a full scan in Bitdefender. Yeah… it’s going to take a while.

If I find any weirdnesses or annoyances, I’m planning on updating this post. I’d recommend that everyone take a look at your subscriptions when they come up for renewal. Rather than just clicking on the Pay Now button, give it some thought. Do. You really like the application or service, or can you do better?

Have a great weekend.

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Calendar Cleaning! That’s better!

Where did all these observances come from?

A while ago, I subscribed to an online Calendar that neatly stuck all the US holidays into my digital Calendar.

It was nice at first. Everything that I wanted to know was there. I could plan long weekends and knew when it was likely to be a bad day to go to the bank or post office.

As is usual for me with these things, I simply forgot about it and was content that I wouldn’t have to enter holidays that moved around from year to year depending on Fridays or Mondays closest to the actual date if the holiday fell on a Saturday or Sunday.

Years go by. There was small additions to the observances, but they were pretty mundane. One here, one there, in a month. No big deal.

A few more years go by.

Today I opened my calendar to full month view for the first time in I don’t know when.

WTF?!?!

My once simple calendar was now loaded with all kinds of observances and holidays that mean nothing to me. There were literally hundreds of Civil Servants days. Obama Day? Librarians Day? 4 different wordings of Juneteenth? Columbus Day, Indigenous Peoples Day, National Indigenous Peoples Day?

In some cases there were so many observances on a single day that the “All Day” section of the calendar was saying +9 more because it couldn’t display them all in the space provided.

There were also duplicates… So Many duplicates! (I hate duplicate data.)

Come on…

Unless it’s a national holiday and therefore a day off from work, or the banks are closed. I don’t care.

There was a time when it was nice to see “National Secretaries Day” but now, it’s become easier to find a day without some observance or another than to pay attention to all the observances.

It’s all become noise, a distraction. Is my calendar free for that day? Who can tell at a glance anymore?

After spending a few minutes trying to figure out the best way to flush all the random crap that had become meaningless. I decided instead to simply unsubscribe from what had once been a very useful service.

My calendar took 2 minutes to reconcile itself.

When it was done…

AHHHHH! Once again at a glance, I can see my schedule without having to open the day to specifically check.

My appointments, and mine alone show up. Their little green tags clearly show how much of my day they occupy. They’re not being overwritten by events and observances that don’t matter.

My historical calendar is visible again. This is a calendar that I created years ago with neat facts about the day in history. Amelia Earharts take off, the first man in space, the first woman in space, the date of the Norman invasion, that kind of thing. In each of these entries notes section I’d put detailed information about the event.

Suddenly Anniversaries, Birthdays, and my stuff is all there, with the original color coding I’d selected, instead of a muddy mess.

You know, it’s not so hard to enter “Real” Holidays into my calendar. There are some that require special treatment, but it’s a small price to pay for a clean readable schedule.

This is what happens when you pander to everyone.

Maybe we should pick just a few biggies and leave the rest to be observed by those who care?

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Huh, When the Universe Speaks…

Who the hell am I, to not listen up?

So here’s the saga thus far…

I ordered an M1 MacBook Pro. I wasn’t really ready to buy a new computer. But I ordered a new machine, because I was going to have to rebuild my current Intel machine from the ground up.

I thought to myself, “If I’m going to go through all this trouble, let me look at a new machine.”

It’s not that rebuilding is that much of a pain in the butt, I was worried however that if I didn’t order a MacBook Pro with the new M1 chip and the Touch Bar (Which I like) that I wouldn’t be able to get another machine with the Touch Bar. I was thinking this because Apple has phased out Touch Bars in the 14” and the 16” Mac Book Pros.

So I ordered a new machine. The new machine was delivered on Friday, and was defective right out of the box. That’s the only time in 20 years I’ve had an Apple product not work as expected.

Saturday, I contacted Apple to arrange for the new machine to be replaced. The replacement wouldn’t be available until late June or Early July.

Today, Monday, I took the new machine to FedEx to return it.

I came home and all was right with my world. I’d just have to wait on the replacement like a kid waiting for Christmas.

After doing a few chores it was lunch time.

I pulled up Apple News while I was eating my lunch. As I was scanning the articles, I noticed that the Apple WWDC opening address had been going on while I was delivering the defective M1 machine to FedEx.

I opened the article describing the WWDC and began reading. About 2/3 through the article there was mention of the new MacBook Pro 13”. Guess what? The new MacBook Pro has an M2 processor, can be configured with 24GB of RAM, and a 2 TB solid state drive.

Impressive, and not unexpected. I knew going in that my M1 would be last years model.

What was significantly surprising was that the new M2 machine also comes with a Touch Bar.

Well now, that blows a big hole in my reason for buying a new machine in the first place, doesn’t it?

Don’t get me wrong, while the M1 was doing it’s thing, It was amazing! But! I no longer have a driving reason to purchase a new machine at this moment in time!

I was bummed out that my new M1 wasn’t right. Now I’m not as bummed out.

I just cancelled the M1 order completely. I don’t need to spend the money quite yet.

If I wait a few months, I can get an M2, increase my computer memory by 1/3, have a 2 TB drive, the Touch Bar, and spend essentially the same amount of money.

I’m preparing to rebuild my Intel machine as I type this.

I can wait 6 months. Perhaps I’ll be able to walk into an Apple store where I can open and test the new machine before I leave.

Maybe, the universe doesn’t hate me as much as I thought it did…

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Bummer! That didn’t last long

The new machine is going back to Apple.

Bummer!

On the plus side I was able to basically build out an M1 system and I’ve got a complete backup of that system.

Because the decision to return and replace the machine was made in less than a day, I still have my original MacBook to fall back on. So it’s an inconvenience and a delay but not the freaking end of the world. I’ve got a computer.

So here’s the deal.

As I mentioned yesterday, the new machine smelled funny. It was an acrid smell, (which is how I described it to the Apple Folks,) unfortunately “acrid” is one of those words that’s become buried in dictionaries but is rarely used these days.

I had to use the sentence, “The smell is reminiscent of a smell commonly associated with burnt out IC chips in old computers or printers.”

That registered with the Tech Support people….

Sigh.

English is such a rich, complex language. It’s a pity so many people, myself included, have poor command of it.

I digress.

The first symptom I noticed was that the Start Up chime had no bass. I wrote that off to the machine having a down level version of the OS, and I’d seen some articles suggesting that there was some kind of sound issue on M1 systems which had been corrected via software.

The second symptom was the acrid smell that increased the longer the machine was running and decreased if the machine was sleeping or turned off. This smell was not the usual smell of a wave soldered circuit board warming up for the first time. That smell is the smell of rosin which is almost sweet smelling. This smell was bitter, and irritating to sinuses, and mucus membranes.

The third symptom was that any and all audio played through the internal speakers had about half of the bass missing.

I don’t listen to music through the internal speakers of my computer very often. One thing that can be said about Apple machines is that their onboard sound systems are quite good.

This particular computer sounded like a Dell from 1990.

These combined issues caused me to seek guidance from AppleCare.

They, as always were nice, polite, and helpful. Tech support made the suggestion that the machine should be swapped out. I was fine with that except that the machine’s configuration is somewhat unusual and the unit has to be built special in China.

The Tech support people went Oh, that could be a problem.

They transferred me to a super nice man named Josh who walked me through all the necessary steps to wipe the machine, remove it from my Find My, and iCloud account.

Then he carefully explained the exchange process. When he quoted me the lead time, I’m sure that he had his earpiece well away from his ear.

In this case he needn’t have worried. The lead time, is late June or early July. He asked if this was alright.

I told him it had to be alright because the machine would have to be built in China, then shipped, and production schedules are what they are. Yeah it’s an inconvenience, but there’s nothing either of us can do about that.

He said, “Thank you for being so understanding about it, most of the time this is the point in the conversation when people start yelling and cursing me out.”

I told him that I had a long career in the industry. I got it. I mentioned that Apple could perhaps mitigate this kind of thing by maintaining a small supply of “Esoteric” builds of products in Cupertino.

Then I followed on explaining that might not work too well because there was no way for Apple to anticipate failures and it would represent dead stock racking up inventory tax just sitting in a warehouse.

The problem with this machine may just be infant mortality. It happens sometimes with complex circuits. Or it could be a manufacturing process issue.

If the problem is a manufacturing issue, Apple better move fast to nip it in the bud. This is the kind of thing that gives companies big shiners when it comes to public opinion.

Reliability gets you customers DOA equipment does not.

We know from experience that China gets sloppy with their manufacturing process from time to time.

Anyone remember tainted dog food? How about tainted Heparin (The blood thinner). Or blood pressure meds tainted with carcinogenic chemicals and in some cases metal filings? Oh, remember the tainted drywall, that was a good one, carcinogenic chemicals vaporizing in enclosed spaces like people’s homes? Then there was the defective lithium ion batteries in Samsung phones (How about a fire in your pants scarecrow?)

Good Job China! Great freaking quality controls you’ve got.

In fairness, given the number of products produced in China that work just fine perhaps I’m being a touch unfair. The problem is that with so much being produced in China, when they screw up, they really screw up on a massive scale.

This is why I’ve always questioned our reliance on goods manufactured in China. This isn’t to say that there aren’t manufacturing problems elsewhere in the world, but It seems to be China where executives are routinely murdered, only when their carelessness embarrasses the CCP. Otherwise everything is, “A-OK top notch…” even when it’s not.

You’ll note I didn’t mention anything about sloppy laboratory practices. We’re not supposed to say anything about a disease causing a panic that crippled the global economy are we? Sloppy laboratory processes, particularly in research labs, can have dire consequences. Just Sayin…

Honestly, I’d be much happier if all Apple products were manufactured here. For that matter I’d be happy if all our products were manufactured locally.

It’s a lot easier to fly a process engineer to Texas, or Oklahoma on a Sunday than to fly that same engineer to freakin China, to figure out whatever step, or steps, a Chinese executive decided to omit to speed up production.

Perhaps an executive forgot to whip the Uyghurs enough on a particular day???

I know, I know, I’m being hypocritical. I have no high ground to bash China when I’m feeding the beast like everyone else, purchasing goods produced for mass consumption under ethically or morally challenged circumstances.

Again, I digress.

Apple has indicated they’re going to be very good about the exchange. I’ve already packed the New Machine up in all of it’s original packing materials. I’ve printed the return label, and I’ll drop it off at a FedEx facility on Monday.

Then I’ll wait for a new, new machine to arrive sometime between June 25th and July 6th.

Although, if it’s a manufacturing issue… It could be longer.

On the one hand I’d like the notoriety of being “The Guy” that caught a problem with Apple’s production lines.

On the other hand, I’m not sure that would be a good thing if thousands of Apple customers have to wait another month for their machines, and know my name.

What would be nice is if Apple responded to my job applications, or better yet sent me the machine for free.

HA! I’m not holding my breath…