Tag: Technology

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If you want to lose all your work…

Just turn on iTunes!

I swear, after the latest update to iTunes I’ve had more crashes and slow shitty operation than I can ever remember having.

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My computer is a very busy machine. As a general rule I have many applications and processes running all the time.

It’s not uncommon for me to have several file copies running at once. Plus routine backups, and various downloads running Via Safari or FTP.

Often there are so many processes running that I honestly forget how much my computer is doing while I’m typing away on a blog or working on the book.

That is until I think, “Hey I meant to load that application on my iPad.“

Then I’ll bring up iTunes and watch hours of work and backups and file copies turn to shit.

I thought programs in the Apple OS were supposed to be sandboxed. I thought I was supposed to be able to kill programs that had fucked themselves over without having to worry about other programs being disrupted on the system.

Not if iTunes decides to hose you.

How can one single program fuck itself over, then fuck over file copies and the ability to save files in 3 other applications?

How can one single Apple Written and sanctioned program refuse a Force Quit Command? How can that same program prevent access to the UNIX Terminal where I could issue a Kill command directly to the OS?

How can one signal entertainment program violate all the rules and seize control of the system in such a way that only a hard power down will return control to me The User!

Talk about a way to really piss off a user…

I shouldn’t have to shutdown every other program to use iTunes but that is clearly what I’m going to have to start doing. 


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Talk about a time waste!

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It was a simple enough thing…

I wanted to change my Google News from a two column format back to a one column format.

I’d decided to try the two column format a couple of months ago and recently decided I really didn’t like the way it looks or works on my computer screen or more importantly my iPad.

So I clicked on the little gear at the top of the page. Guess what? The control for columns isn’t there…

I can adjust all the feeds but can’t DELETE certain feeds entirely (an annoyance since some of the so called Google news feeds are so poorly written as to be unintelligible).

So, I start hunting for the control that will let me have a single column of news articles.

1.5 hours later I’ve found many things I don’t like about Googles accounts, their Google+, and their Blogger account management.

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After signing into the Google Dashboard which very helpfully shows me all my Google applications and services but will not allow me to DELETE those services that I’m no longer interested in.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to disassociate myself from the Google tit.

I found a listing of applications for my Android phone(s). EVERY Application EVER! Including those that I didn’t pay for, and those that I downloaded only to be disappointed by.

Google says these applications are installed on my Phone… They’re not!

Again, the helpful dashboard displays it all very nicely, but won’t permit me to edit the list or delete those particularly disappointing applications that shouldn’t have ever seen the light of day.

Also included is a Product List.

Within the list are a number of services that 1) Ive never used, 2) I have no need of, 3) I don’t care about.

However all show as active on my dashboard and account. What are these? Why are they here, and how do I control them? Apparently I can’t.

I found 247 photos in The Picassa section of my Dashboard.

What bothers me is that SOME of those photos I believe came from my iPad. WTF?

I have another problem too. I’ve deleted many of those photos both from the web and from my phone and yet they keep coming back.

Obviously, I’ll check the setting on both the ipad and the my android phone and delete the photos again. (Thank god there are no sexting photos!)

I just deleted the Google+ application from my iPad simply because I wasn’t using it. Honestly, I’ve lost about all interest in Google+. I do suspect the Google+ application was the source of the photo sharing from the iPad. (I probably clicked through a sharing question without fully realizing it’s importance.You know, the question just before the one that authorizes Google or it’s assignees to remove your left testicle in the event of a 3rd world food crisis.)

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Then there’s the list of Blogs that I subscribed to when I was using Blogger.

Many of those Blogs I’d like to unsubscribe from.

If you click on the helpful “Settings” link, you’re taken to a login page that wants you to sign in using a social media login. Or you can create a google account. 

Wait! I’m signed into a Google dashboard, from an existing Google account and I’ve clicked on a link that implies I can alter the settings to a blog that I’ve subscribed to… What???

How about a link that simply says UNSUBSCRIBE! You’d think that wouldn’t be unreasonable from the freaking dashboard Link labeled “MANAGE BLOGS” 

If they mean manage the blogs that I created then why do they show me all the blogs I’ve subscribed to and how the hell do I delete the Blog I created?

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Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

It appears that the only way to clean up after myself and remove things that I no longer wish to have associated with me is to close and cancel the Google account those things are associated with.

Fine by me! 

This may have made my decision about my next phone… Quite probably it’s not going to be an Android. 

My world is far too complex as it is…

I see no need to make my world more complex with useless “Dashboards” that don’t actually allow direct control of the account without companies collecting yet more data on me.

Why the hell should I have to associate a Twitter Account with a Google account JUST TO REMOVE a blog that I don’t read anymore. Come to think of it I don’t use the Reading list anymore either.

I’ve been noticing this surreptitious collection trend more and more lately.

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We’ll let you change your account information IF you give us;

Your Phone number OR

You allow us to link to your facebook for the purposes of directed advertising OR

Let us know your twitter ID so we can scan your tweets for sales and marketing information. OR

You let us plug into your life in a myriad of other ways.

Given the recent NSA monitoring disclosures, for me it begs the question…

Just WHO am I giving this information to?

Does a company really need to have a profile on me that links my entire online footprint together? That profile is essentially defining me, my politics, preferences, & shopping habits. God help you if you’re vocal about what you perceive to be wrong doing on the part of our government or it’s leadership.

I did a search the other day for a gold jewelry item. From the moment I did that search… ALL of my web search pages have links back to various jewelry vendors. 

I decided not to purchase the item but I’m being pounded again and again by advertisements from vendors for something I’m not interested in and probably WON’T be interested in. 

Thank god I didn’t look up Venereal Diseases!

I understand that a FREE account isn’t necessarily free.

I don’t mind a reasonable trade off. But where does it stop, and when does the collection of data become too intrusive?

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I suppose that as of today, I have an answer to that question. 

Google has become too intrusive. I’m thinking that it’s time to find another search engine, and to make sure that all Google related cookies are gone.

It does make one wonder about just disengaging altogether.

Maybe wired phones, printed books & newspapers, and snowy TV was a better era in American life.

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Am I becoming anti-technology or just paranoid?

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There was a time when I didn’t mind playing with Windows, Mac, Linux, UNIX, Android, and IOS all at the same time.

I actually liked the challenge of cobbling together all the bits necessary to connect disparate machines & systems into a nicely unified whole.

This led to about 20 email addresses and nightmares in synchronizing various contacts lists.

Lately, I’ve been on a simplification kick. I’ve been deleting accounts of various types that no longer serve me. Now I’ve gotten to the point where I’m looking very hard at email addresses.

I have an Android phone, I have Mac computers and an iPad that I freaking love. 

By definition this means that I have to have at least one gmail account. It also means that I have to connect the Mac & iPad to that gmail account in order to keep the contact lists current between the devices. 

This is an uneasy connection / alliance at best. When it works it’s mostly ok when it breaks it’s a royal pain in the behind.

I’ve gotten tired of fighting to keep everything in sync. 

I’ve long believed that technology should be transparent to the user. With Macs in general that is true. But sometimes trying to work outside the Mac empire is… well opaque. 

I’ve finally gotten to the point that I just don’t want to have to fiddle.

With the recent revelations about the monitoring our own government is conducting, It’s time for me to consolidate and reduce my internet footprint to as minimal as possible. One easy way to do that is to standardize on Apple devices and services exclusively.

Obviously, that won’t stop the monitoring, but at least I’ll know where I’m bleeding information from.

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Sorry about the repeated posts

We’ve been without power since about 10AM I’m sitting on the deck with the laptop on battery and transmitting via my cellular hotspot.

All is well except that it’s only a 2G connection here at home which means it’s tediously slow and the connection times out.

The practical upshot of which is…

I had to resend the previous blog entry several times. And editing??? Fagetaboutit!

Have a great afternoon.

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And Once again Verizon demonstrates…

Why so very many people hate them!

Internet goes down. 

Modem says problem Bad & at their end.

Call Verizon.

35 minutes of screwing around with their stinking voice obfuscation system which is all the while telling me that I can resolve my problems by visiting them on the web at www.verizon.com. 

To which I say If I could visit you at www.verizon.com I’d sign up FOR THE CARRIER providing me with the ability TO visit www.verizon.com.

Then I finally get to some female in god knows where but based on the static and her accent I’d bet she was in India somewhere. I ask her a simple question. “Is there a service problem in my area?” All I needed was a simple “Yes / No / I don’t know let me check”.

Instead we went down the rabbit hole which is all too common these days.

“What is your operating system?” – I’ve gotten in the habit of simply telling them UNIX. It’s true and then we don’t have to deal with the bullshit Windows questions.

“What is the Model of the modem you’re using?” – It’s a Netgear ADSL2+ DM111PSPv2

“Do you have a Verizon Modem?” – Nope, the one you sent me died and I didn’t feel like waiting 2 weeks for you to get ’round to sending me a new one so I bought this one a year & a half ago and it’s been working just fine since I installed it.

“Can you connect your computer directly to the modem?” – Uh NOPE, I’m not going to tear all my wiring out just so you can say I did.

“Is the modem connected directly to the wall?” – UH YEAH… the Modem reported to me that at 12:53 PST it lost contact with your DNS Servers and was no longer able to obtain a DSL address.

“What are the lights on your modem indicating?” – FUCK!!!!! Power Green, Ethernet Green, DSL Signal Green, WWW/WAN RED

“Do you have a wireless router?” – Yes

“What is the make of the wireless Router” – It’s an Apple not that it’s of any importance to this situation

“Is the modem connected to the Router” – GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!! Everything was working and has been working just fine. Can you please just run a damn line test?

“Can you directly connect you computer to the modem?” – Look lady, I’ve got 10 computers of various types, and operating systems all running and communicating to a bunch of hard drives just fine via the router that you’re obviously trying to blame for your companies failure to provide internet service.

SO NO I’m not going to rewire my shit unless you can give me a seriously fucking compelling reason to do so.

What is the result of the line test?

“Oh the line test has indicated a problem, can you turn you modem off and back on?” – Yes… climbs back up on the ladder to push the button.

Ok modem restarted…

Static ~ Static ~ Static ~ Long Long Long wait…

“I’m so sorry that you have been inconvenienced you will be receiving a phone call within 24 to 48 hours explaining when you can expect your internet service to resume.“

So the line test failed… “Yes, the line test failed, We have received reports that DSL service has been disrupted in your area.“

So had you received those reports Before or After we began this little conversation?

“We knew there was a service outage in your area“

Great! Thanks for wasting my time.

I Hang up.

Why the hell is it so damn hard for people to just answer the question? Better yet why the hell didn’t Verizon route me to a recorded message based on my phone number that simply said

“DSL Service is Temporarily Down in your area. We are working to resolve the problem.“

That would have saved me the annoyance, and the “Technical Support Monkey” in India a lot of frustration.

This blog will not have any pictures…. I may add some when the internet comes back up.

How did I post this you ask????

I’m using the hotspot in my cell phone. It’s only a 2G connection but it’s working.

Sigh…

Saturday Update:

They’re at it again.  This morning Verizon was giving my modem an ip address… every 20 seconds. However the data rate was 2000 BITs per second.

Rough math says that’s about 250 Characters per second which means that if you were just reading text based information you’d be able to easily keep up as the text scrolled across the screen. That is assuming that you can actually read… I guess if you’re here reading this blog you do know how to read… Good for you!

However with todays content rich websites… the reality is that you’ll see nothing but a blank page.

After restarting every single system in my network (Modem, Routers, Computers, WiFI extenders), I realized with horror that I’d need to report the problem to Verizon. 

After Irishing my coffee… I was once again on the phone working my way through the insanity that is Verizons menu system.

It’s all voice activated and apparently tuned for non English speaking people because even when I’m speaking to it calmly (Before it pisses me off) it doesn’t understand me. 

As an aside… I really hate voice recognition/prompts that have Genuine People Personalities I find them annoying and condescending. 

This time I tried to work with the damn machine.

I was able to get it to run a line test. It determined that something was wrong and told me that it was going to transfer me to a human being. 

“Cool” I thought. 

Then for my protection, it wanted me to enter the last 8 or 10 digits of my account number. As If I had that handy!!!! Failing that… They wanted me to enter the amount I’d last paid them. UHHH Yeah! RIGHT! If I don’t have the account number handy, I’m sure as hell not going to have the last amount I paid handy.

I mean I could look it up ON THE INTERNET except that I can’t get to the Verizon web pages.

You know… The web pages where we’re all asked to “Go Green” and Save paper by signing up for automatic payments? Yeah… THAT page.

Which takes me into the loop where the Genuine People Personality tries to get me to pull this information out of my ass.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

At this point I’m heating up for a full on explosion.

Then I remember being told once swearing foully at these systems can get you to a human being. So I channel the spirits of some of my favorite Marines!

It did break me out of the loop… and I felt better too!

Then I’m in a hold queue where a very nice voice complete with Indian accent is telling me they’ll get to me in less than 15 minutes and that she’s sorry for the inconvenience.

I’m calmer. I go back to my desk. I’m watching the modem performance statistics.  

The indian accent lady is telling me they’ll get to me in less than 15 minutes and that she’s sorry for the inconvenience. AGAIN

When all the sudden the stats jump way up Bits… Kilobits… Megabits… per second. the throughput stabilizes at 2.96Mbps (normal)  for my DSL service.

Still, the indian accent lady is telling me they’ll get to me in less than 15 minutes and that she’s sorry for the inconvenience.

I hang up. 

Whatever the hell the problem was… they must have gotten thousands of calls about it.

I’m guessing that was enough to light a fire under them. 

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Good! 

Remember these Utilities WORK for YOU!

They need to be reminded of that on a regular basis. 

Yeah… I’m all Nebari today. So what?

I’d decided that I was going to refer to whoever I spoke with at Verizon in the Nebari way.

“Servicer… I will give commands, you will execute commands“

I probably wouldn’t have made and friends… but I sure as hell would have felt better!