Tag: Technology

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More Car Service

Car220100428

At the car dealership… Again!

One of the problems with modern cars… although I think the problem is more about the people servicing modern cars is that the computer in the car dictates what service can be done and when.

For example, I know I’m taking a trip that will have me driving at least 3000 miles. 

As in the old days… I still like to have the car serviced, tires checked, oil changed, you know BEING RESPONSIBLE so that I don’t have a dead ass piece of junk off to the side of the road in the middle of an unfamiliar town and not knowing who to call or perhaps being uncertain of exactly where I am so that I can get help.

Well the computers have other ideas… Apparently, you’re not supposed to drive your car more than 300 miles from home. 

See last time I was here I explicitly told the dealership I was going on a long trip. So I wanted all services done before I left.

I didn’t have to worry about my trip being interrupted by the car bitching about service needed. Unfortunately, the computer and the people doing the service had other ideas. The computer said that 4300 miles remained before the next service. Between the time that I had the car in for service and today… I’ve driven 600 miles. The car is now saying it wants service in 2200 miles. Hummm…. Can you see the problem?

See, I know the car… I know the kind of driving I do, I know that going up & down the mountain puts a monkey wrench in the mileage calculation. But try to explain that to a machine… or the people that act like machines.

I’ll grant you there are benefits to the computerization of our vehicles. You don’t have as many situations where your spouse says “I didn’t know I needed an oil change, or I didn’t hear the squealing of the brake calipers on the rotors”

But as I say all too often… I’M THE HUMAN, you’re the machine… do what I said.

So here I sit… waiting for another 3 hours for my car to be serviced. Those 3 hours… By the way would be mine… If folks had done what I asked in the first place.

Isn’t that a kick in the pants… It always seems to come down to:

Do what I’m telling you

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Bright & Shiny

I did something that I probably shouldn’t have done.

Macbook air january 15 2008 1799

I just got a brand new MacBook Air.

I was a bad boy and spent money that I shouldn’t have. However I have a plan… it’s probably not a good plan but it’s a plan nonetheless.

At least I didn’t go for the new MacBook Pro retina display… Drool, Drool

So this little puppy is fast I optioned it up to the max, i7 processor, 512GB solid state drive, 8GB of RAM.  Slick! and quiet unless i’ve got it doing something really intense. Then the fans kick in and it’s surprisingly noisy.

I have to hand it to Apple. Their migration assistant works like a champ. It took a while but this machine grabbed everything off my MacBook Pro (2008) version and got me a working machine with almost zero effort.

I am always impressed when software works as described without a hiccup.

My plan is to upgrade the drive in my MacBook Pro and squeeze some more life out of it. Meanwhile I’ll be  using the Air as my main machine for a while. Obviously, the machine will also be with me pretty much 24/7.

I’m pretty impressed with the speed that I’m seeing on applications opening. I’m also getting used to OSX Lion, soon to be OSX Mountain Lion. I’m thinking that I like Lion… I really wasn’t sure that I would and was wondering how I was going to downgrade it to Snow Leopard functionality, but I think there will be no need.

This little puppy is backing up to the NAS as I write this… It’s claiming 8 hours to completion I’m hoping that the backup will be done sooner than that.

I’m impressed by a number of things about this machine. First is, as I mentioned the speed. The other thing that’s interesting is the display. It’s easy for me to forget that the display is only 13″ The clarity is so nice that I’m having no problems working with it. While this is not a retina display, I think that it’s an improvement over the display technology used in my older MacBook Pro. The overall weight of the machine and that fact that it has no critical moving parts is also very attractive.

This machine is also equipped with USB 3.0 and has an SD card reader built in. The USB is of interest because many of my portable backup drives are USB 3.0 devices. The SD card slot means that I have one less thing to carry with me if I’m on a photography expedition.

I haven’t run the machine on battery yet, but plan to tomorrow. Apple claims up to 7 hours I’ll be interested to see how well they live up to that claim.

Without sounding like an Apple fan boy. I must admit that I in general like the Apple products. I like the fact that I tend to get about 4 to 6 years out of an Apple machine where with a Windows machine I’m lucky if I get 2 or 3 years of useful life. In the case of the Windows machines it’s not that the hardware fails… it’s that Windows runs slower and slower until the machine is all but unusable.

That’s whats happening with my little netbook, If the machine is in sleep mode, it typically will not wake up and be useful without doing a restart.

Between all the checks that Windows does regarding how long the machine has been asleep and if updates are available or if maintenance has been done or needs to be done.

The machine is effectively useless for 5 to 7 minutes after it’s waking up. I’m the user and I opened the machine NOT to have it do all these checks, I opened the machine because I needed to use it.

The solution is to reformat the netbook, re-install Windows, and then restore all my information. Honestly… That’s a real pain in the ass.

In contrast, my MacBook has been in use since 2008. It’s been reloaded from its backup one time. That was because I was cleaning up some files and deleted a chunk of stuff that I later realized I shouldn’t have.

If this new MacBook Air lives up to it’s lineage I expect that I’m going to be using it well into 2017.

Damn! As I wrote 2017 I thought no, that can’t be right but sure as hell, 2017 is just 5 years away.

Now ain’t that a kick in the pants!

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Apologies to those of you that legitimately comment on the blog

Target

Due to some moronic people who think that somehow I’m going to repost their dumbass website links for free, I’ve turned on moderating and added an automatic filter.

The moderating means that you’ll not be able to have your comment posted instantly.

The filter means that if you try to embed a link to a website or other stuff that could be construed as advertising or malicious code, your link goes immediately in the shitter, possibly your post too.

I know it seems draconian. I honestly had no choice. The primary offenders appear to be China and several South American countries.

The best one was from some idiot in South America whose message, in addition to being loaded with bullshit links also told me to update my website more often.

Really? You think that’s going to not cause me to take a good hard look at who you are?

To the real people… please be patient if you comment and it takes me a while to approve it.

As always, thank you for taking time out of your day to read my blog.