Tag: Modern Problems

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As I suspected…

This is such a first world problem, I’m laughing at myself.

In August, a year ago I got laid off from my job. That afternoon after all was said and done, I went home and opened my trusty 6 or 7 year old MacBook air and was greeted with a display that wasn’t working properly.

I looked at my watch, and buzzed out to the Apple Store, (God I miss being able to do that without the hassle we have to go through today,) to see if they could give me any help.

touchid.pngTechnically they were helpful, but not with the display in my poor computer. I walked out of the store with a brand new MacBook Pro with the nifty touch bar. I really like it even today.

At the time, sitting on the couch in my apartment I pondered the functionality of the fingerprint scanner and the fact that it could be used to authenticate transactions. I distinctly remember thinking that could be trouble.

I mean, you see something online, and there’s the nifty button saying…

Press me and your hearts desires can be yours…

I set it up to handle authenticating my passwords for websites and added one debit card to it.

My iPhone tried to helpfully add other credit cards. While I appreciate the assistance and the Apple ecosystem, there are times when you can be a bit too helpful!

I’ve been very good about using that nifty button. Or rather I should say not using that button.

The first time you use it, you’re not sure that it worked. It’s special, you’re excited about using something new. After you use it a few times it’s not so new or exciting, it’s still special, but it starts to become “ho hum”.

There’s the danger! Next thing you know, you’re tapping that little button all over the place and it’s very easy to become disconnected from the concept that each time you press that cloying little fingerprint, you’re spending yourself into the poor house.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s very cool and very convenient.

BUT if you’re unemployed, essentially locked down and bored you’re potentially in trouble!

Thankfully I’ve had decent self control but over the past week or so, It seems that I’ve been hitting that button a lot. Not so much that I’ll need to have it replaced, but much more than usual.

To be honest, I’m a little terrified with the holiday season coming up.

Me, bored and holiday depressed with super easy online shopping is a really bad combination. I tend to get a bad case of consumerism.

In my defense, I do need to buy some shirts, the ones I’m wearing, I’ve been wearing for 10 years. Yes, they’re starting to get threadbare and the collars are fraying. That being said, it seems that the shirts have been at the bottom of the list this week and (ahem) haven’t been the recipients of the touch button love.

While in Florida, I watched my brother place an order for gun parts on-line and get them the next day UPS. OMG! That was a revelation!

Living in California I assumed that just wasn’t possible, my Brother looked at me like I was crazy. Differences between the California gun legalities and living in the real world astounded me. And I thought to myself, “Probably just as well the little button and I would get too familiar,” Not that I’m a gun nut or anything, but guns like any other hobby can get expensive.

Luckily, most dive gear sites aren’t using “The Button” I’ve noticed that some travel sites are using the button though, that could be dangerous too.

My weaknesses seem to be in the area of movies, TV shows, music, electronics, and software. Guess what? Amazingly, those sites all use “The Button”.

I’m soooo screwed! But I’ll have plenty of entertainment, and a house that is smarter than I am… At least until the power gets turned off.

Have a great week!

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Some days I’m just too dark.

mockingtodo20201014.pngThere it is, the “Perky” reminder in my ToDo list saying that I should write something at least in my blog.

It’s overdue too.

Go on you little bastard, mock me!

I’ve tried a couple of different tangents. Trouble is, every time I try to put something on paper it takes a path leading straight to the bowels of hell.

I suppose I’m sick of everything! Although the salacious pictures of Hunter Biden do pique my interest. I’m curious about that 12 minute video… 

By nature, I’m a voyeur so my prurient interest shouldn’t be surprising to anyone.  

Way back in the day I was entirely fascinated by a grainy poor quality video of a 3 way staring a young actor (now famous) that made the rounds on videotape. Even today, the only porn that I can not look away from is of the home grown amateur variety. Much of today’s stylish, scripted, professional porn has become “ho hum” and unfortunately predictable. But the lighting is always awesome!

Along those same lines I’m curious to know what Hunter’s email, video, and pictorial evidence will do to his father’s election chances. 

Oddly enough, I don’t think it will matter one bit.

Joe Biden is under investigation in the Ukraine, has been accused of sexual harassment by Tara Reed, has been caught in at least three other lies where what he claimed was not in fact what was recorded in the public record, and now if the emails found on this computer hard drive are proven to be real he’ll be literally at the center of another scandal.

It won’t matter. He’ll never be subpoenaed, he’ll never be brought to trial, he’ll never answer for any of it.

Hence the blog takes dark turn. Any Republican politician would have already issued the requisite humble apology and been forced to resign. Captains of industry have been destroyed for less. We have police chiefs forced to resign for something their wife tweeted.

Against this backdrop of cancel culture and outrage how can Joe Biden still be a viable candidate? What happened to equality?

If specific targets (Conservatives) can be “Canceled” for these offenses, then everyone can and should be “Canceled” for similar offenses.

There is the crux of it for me. Patent, (dare I say systemic,) inequality. 

Either we are all bound by the same standards, rules, and laws, or none of us are.

If none of us are bound by these things, then why am I wearing a mask in public, not shopping in person, obeying stay at home orders, not looting, or any of the rest of it.

We already have anarchy. I should be out enjoying myself!

See, that’s why you’ll see me skip a few days blogging. It’s actually for your protection…

We’re all in this together!

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Another thing off the ‘Honey Do’ List

Fragmented diskThe new SSD drive is in the other half’s computer and apparently working correctly.

It’s updating the NAS backups now. The OS installation was a pain in the butt because nothing worked as expected but once again I’ve “won”.

The restoration of the data took 6 hours, (I let it cook overnight) thankfully it wasn’t a matter of piecing all the files on the drive back together.

As I’ve said before, your computer is personal and that’s okay. But having files spattered all over the drive with no coherent plan or filing system is difficult for another person to navigate or help you with. You’re welcome to toss stuff into your computer in any way that you like, but don’t come to me for help when you’ve lost a single Word document whose name you can’t remember, in a sea of 200 GBs of other documents that you should have deleted or archived a decade ago.

As an aside, I transferred the other half’s mess of a document folder to their home folder on the server. It’s very busy indexing all those files now and hopefully will provide a little help the next time I hear the dreaded, “My computer has lost a document I really need, can you find it for me?”

“Sure babe, I’ll get right on that. Fix me a tall drink, make me a steak, and then leave me alone.” 

After all a man deserves a last meal, right?

There are PDF files of music that look like important scores in a buckshot pattern in every conceivable location on that poor machine. I’m half tempted to go through it like Jesus went through the Temple.

I have a masochistic curiosity to find out if organizing the files into a more coherent directory structure would improve the operational speed of the system…

But I’m not that masochistic…

There is one bright spot. At least I can take control of their computer from my desktop and I don’t have to be seen swearing under my breath or shaking my head in frustration. That’s a mercy because I have no desire to fight about it while I’m cleaning up the mess.

It’s possible that the drive failing like it did, effectively rendering all their data inaccessible while we were waiting on the replacement drive may have provided an education.  Ever since I brought the new server online I’d been saying, “You should probably put your important docs in your personal directory on the server. That way if something happens you can still access those documents via your ipad.“

My advice wasn’t heeded, and so there was a week of uh, tension. It didn’t help that I said, “You know, there’s a reason I make these suggestions.” I can’t imagine why things were tense, Ahem…

I am going to run a duplicate search routine on their home folder. Just for the sake of freeing up space. I may regret it later but when I see 1000 plus files in a Downloads folder I have to question what the hell is going on.

I hope everyone has a good week.

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Apparently this is a Technology week.

After 11 years, we’ve decided to retire the venerable HP all in one printer.

The machine pretty much works, although its ADF feeder is prone to jamming.

Our reasoning was the cost of ink cartridges. A full set costs about $100. The cost of a new printer isn’t much more.

I have a nice Canon all in one printer sitting in a storage facility but it’s been sitting there for a year and once again we’d have to spend $100 to get cartridges for it. There’s also the unknown about its status. I’d never intended to have it sitting idle in storage for so long and at this point it may need a printhead replacement. Which means it’s cheaper to just replace the whole machine.

This led to the inevitable conclusion that buying a new unit with a warranty was probably the best solution.

Epson Tank PrinterAfter shopping around a bit, we decided to go with one of the new Epson tank machines. Costco was even having a sale on an acceptable unit.

This little thing is pretty dang neat. It’s smaller than the HP or the Canon, and produces really clear crisp prints. I like the no print cartridge aspect. Instead you just fill the tanks up from a bottle of ink. The bottles are much cheaper than cartridges and this thing is rated at something like 7000 pages per fill. This is a full color machine similar to the HP and Canon. The majority of our printing is black & white and the Costco version thoughtfully includes 3 black refills in addition to the Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow.  

The cost per page in just about equal to my nifty laser printer. The only reason we didn’t just go with the laser printer only is because it doesn’t have a scanner and it doesn’t know how to talk Airprint which is very nice if you need to print from your iPad or iPhone.

The new inkjet can print duplex (double sided), and the scan/copy speed is acceptable. It’s not going to win any races, but for occasional use it’s more than adequate.

I can even see a day when the Canon laser finally dies that we’d just go to having one printer. I like having the laser because when I’m writing it’s fast and cheap to print a manuscript.

If you’re in the market for a new machine take a look at the Tank versions of inkjet printers. You’re going to pay a bit more out the outset for one, but you’ll recover the costs over the life of the printer in supplies.

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Huh, First time I’ve seen that in a while.

About three months ago, I replaced the hard drive in the other half’s computer. I fought with the system to get a functional operating system on the drive but was finally successful and the other half’s computer was suddenly faster and stable.

I thought, “Cool,” and assumed that I wouldn’t have to deal with computer issues for a while. 

Think again! 

This morning, the other half was sitting there in front of the computer with a very puzzled expression. Innocently, I asked, “what’s wrong?”  There are times when you shouldn’t ask questions!

The other half said they’d tried to use the computer just now and were presented with a white screen and that the computer seemed very warm to the touch. I figured it was nothing, a simple hard reset would bring everything back up and then I could go back to beating my head against the wall in the heinous job search.

This was not to be, no amount of cajoling (a.k.a. swearing), incantations, or holding keys down during the boot up process gives me anything but the white screen. I can’t even get to the built-in diagnostics of the system and those are supposed to be in ROM and therefore independent of the hard disk. In other words, I’m wondering if the computer itself is dead because I should be able to get to something that would aid me in the diagnosis of the problem.

Generic SSDAn hour later I’m holding the nifty new SSD drive in my hand, wondering why it “sings” when I try to mount it on my computer. This is a solid state device… There are no moving parts and yet when I plug it in to my system the device very clearly makes a high pitched sound.

At the same time, the device refuses to identify itself to my computer at all. Placing the old hard drive in the other half’s  computer confirms that there is nothing wrong with the computer itself and in fact the machine boots happily.

I contact the manufacturer of the SSD and after a brief discussion am directed to please box up the drive for replacement.  The person I was speaking with (an American) recognized a kindred spirit and was pretty forthcoming. Instead of leading me through all sorts of useless diagnostics (which I’d already done) they responded to my question, “Did I miss anything,” with a laugh and said not that they could tell. 

It was refreshing to not have endless apologies and kow-towing. This was two professionals having a technical discussion about a piece of hardware that had died during what we used to call the infant mortality period. They weren’t defensive and I wasn’t angry sometimes shit like this just happens. It’s inconvenient on both sides but it’s reality and nothing is going to change that reality.

A new drive should arrive on Monday. 

Aside from a slightly long wait on hold dealing with the company was a real pleasure. The long hold time was due to lots of people upgrading their computers who probably shouldn’t have been inside their machines in the first place.  Apparently, a lot of “average” people failed kindergarten blocks and are unable to correctly put oddly shaped plugs into equally oddly shaped sockets. The tech & I had a bit of a laugh over that.

Now, the only problem is getting the OS back on the new drive… 

I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it!