Tag: Technology

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"We’re concerned about your online security…"

OOoopps!

I forgot to enter the super special secret code from Verizon again.

This code has to be entered so that they will let me see my bill online.

This is one of the little annoyances they DON’T mention when you switch to online bill paying. We’re concerned about your online privacy.

I can pay the bill online… I just can’t see how many phone calls were billed to my account from 976 Chinese Slut.

I requested the super special secret code a few weeks ago. For my safety and security Verizon has to send the super special code by mail, and once again they sent it. I forgot to enter the first one too…

In the shuffle of life, when the super special secret code finally gets to the house a week or two later… It’s just not at the top of my priority list. So now I’ve requested two super secret codes and forgotten to enter them prior to their expiration. Ooopps.

I’m having the same problem with a certain bank. I just want to log in to make sure that they have some cash to pay a bill.

Recently they forced me to change a password for my online protection. I forgot about the password change and last month entered the password wrong a couple of times. Then I remembered the change and logged in successfully checked the balances and logged out.

This morning, I entered the old password once then remembered the change and entered the New password.

I’m still locked out of their site. It seems like the wrong password count is over the life of your password instead of resetting the count once you get it right.

So here I sit waiting for them to send me an e-mail with the super secret identification number so that I can reset the password to something equally forgettable and start the cycle all over again.

I havent even finished my first cup of coffee yet.

All of which leads to the point.

Why am I living in service to Banks, Phone companies, Utilities, and the 150 other web sites all demanding that I maintain user IDs and passwords? Wasn’t technology supposed to free us from drudgery? Now I’m as much a record keeper as I ever was.

I’ve swapped Invoices and statements for user ids, passwords and ever changing user agreements.

We value your privacy, and for your protection and inconvenience we’re absolving ourselves from any responsibility arising out of our loss of your data or your exposure to identity theft. Thank you for being our willing patsy… If you have comments or concerns dial 800WHOCARES.

I miss the good old days… Statements, envelopes, stamps, writing checks!

Is this a sign that I’m getting old?

Time for the second cup of coffee….

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A friend of mine has an Apple TV and…

One of the problems with iTunes, and video formats, and DLNA is that there’s not much in the way of cross platform compatibility.

Since this household is a mixed platform house. That means that we have multiple video formats, all of which play just fine on their respective computers.

The problem is that if you want to play a video that you’ve purchased on iTunes you can’t play that video directly on your 55″ DLNA enabled flat screen TV unless you have an appliance (Either Software or Hardware). Or you can root around behind your big ass tv that’s hanging so neatly on the wall and connect your computer to it then hope that you can get decent audio out of your computer to an amp or something.

I’ve done it. It’s a serious pain in the ass.

The other alternative is to reprocess all of your video files into whatever format IS playable from your DLNA enabled player. Time consuming, prone to error, and often you end up with degraded audio and video.

Here was my situation.

I have video stored on a main drive that acts as a media server. The video is shown as available to all the DLNA devices. In this case, the Xbox, the TV, and surprisingly the DVR satellite box. What’s annoying is that not all of the video will actually play on any single one of the devices. And NONE of them will play any of the video that I purchased from Apple.

So I’m playing around with my computer at a friends place and notice that he has an AppleTV thingy. Sure enough, if I can play the video in iTunes… I can direct it at the AppleTV and bang… I have video and audio. The really cool thing is that Once the link is made between my computer and the AppleTV, I can navigate the whole library from the AppleTV, I don’t have to mess with the computer other than to make sure it’s on and running iTunes.

LESS THAN 24 Hours after leaving my friends house…

I have an AppleTV connected to the TV in the bedroom. I’ll probably end up with another AppleTV in the living room connected to the big ass TV too.

As I’ve explored the AppleTV i’m impressed… I can access anything on Netflix, I can access not only my purchased Apple video on my computer, but I can also access those videos from the cloud.

AppleTV also has various networks pay per view offerings available. Which has lead to a discussion about the merits of keeping the Satellite service.

It breaks down like this.

I watch, exactly one sitcom.

Two or three adventure / drama programs from the networks

and BBC America

I’ll tune into The Simpsons but most of the other shows on Fox Sundays are… well Crap!

I watch the news, and SciFi channel. The news is always annoying, talking heads breathlessly decrying the latest atrocity or providing second by second commentary on the latest high speed car chase. (High speed?!?! Most of these morons never get above 100!)

I’ll watch the National Geographic channels, the history channel, and several of the learning type channels.

I’ll watch comedy central for SouthPark, or Futurama

I pay for Stars just so that I can watch Spartacus

I pay for HBO just so that I can watch True Blood.

So the question I find myself asking is this…

Am I getting value for the price I’m paying?

Survey SAYS!  Not really. At over 100.00 a month, it’s not really worth it to me.

Of the 300+ channels available to me I don’t watch most of them. I couldn’t care less about BET, or ION, or the Spanish language channels.

I’ve long thought that as a PAYING CONSUMER… I should be able to pick and choose those channels that I wanted. I shouldn’t have to buy a package or packages just to get the one or two channels from each package that I actually watch never tuning to ANY of the ones that I don’t.

I’m considering doing what my buddy and so many other people I know have done… I’m thinking that pulling the plug on my satellite box might be reasonable.

I was raised on TV I’m a child of the ’60s. I’ve never known a life without broadcast TV. I find myself wondering if taking complete control of what I watch and when I watch it isn’t a better option.

If I re-allocate the 1200 a year from satellite to Netflix, Hulu, BluRay, or iTunes purchases… That’s a lot of entertainment that I can suddenly afford to see, on my terms without commercials.

Of course I’ll miss the local news broadcasts… But I can get most news on the internet… Who knows I might just start reading the newspaper again….

Oh and to my friend who is the cause of all this, laughing his butt off in his office…

LAUGH WHILE YOU CAN MONKEY BOY!

Remember I’m the one who usually causes the chaos… Be careful or I’ll remind you of a certain LaserDisk purchase…

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The Internet Blackout was interesting…

Yesterday, during the  internet blackout my email box was very, very quiet.

On thing in particular was missing… SPAM

Yep, folks not one piece of SPAM clogged my email.

I”ve become so accustomed to the continuos avalanche of SPAM that I thought something was wrong with my email.

It reminded me of the infamous “Day without a Mexican” in Los Angeles of several years ago. That was a day when all or a majority of Mexicans stayed home in protest of something or other. In their case the protest kind of backfired.

The traffic in LA was a breeze, no-one was having to dodge flying debris from gardening trucks on the freeways, there were no car fires, fewer accidents, and fewer broken down cars on the side of the road (or in traffic lanes.)

The next day traffic returned to it’s normal screwed up mess and everyone was asking for more days without mexicans, La Raza was NOT pleased.

This morning my email box has the usual amount of SPAM. The online drugstores, Teens who want to show me their tits, and the Letters from bankers telling me that distant relatives in Kenya have died are all keeping my Junk Mail filters busy again.

However, if I have to choose between SOPA and censorship OR SPAM… I’ll take the SPAM any day.

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SOPA & PIPA Are dangerous Fight BACK

Censorship is one of those things that we all say is bad. Yet we engage in censorship every day. We choose what we want to see & hear, we choose what our children see and hear too.

This kind of normal censorship is reasonable and in fact demonstrates our ability to be responsible for our actions

Small groups protesting each other CENSOR each other by one group shouting louder than the other. In recent years, a new tool has been added to the small group Censorship tool box… It’s the single word RACIST! Even in this situation we accept that tempers flare and even appreciate the passionate expression of someones differing beliefs.

We know that we can, if we choose look up both sides of a protest and we can evaluate and decide for ourselves whose opinion we agree with. The news media will present both sides in an unbiased way. We can read about the protest in the newspaper and have all the facts laid out before us.

CAN we?

Do we really trust the talking heads on TV? Do we really believe what is printed in the news paper?

I think the answer is more often than not NO! Part of the wonder of the internet aside from giving voice to every village idiot, is that we also get information. Tons of it, sometimes completely unfiltered.

That unfiltered, un-sanitized news is often our best insight into the truth of a situation. In our country our freedoms are highly dependent on a free flow of information from all sources.

Which brings us to…

Get the point?
You can find the contact information for your Representative HERE Click on your state, then find your representative and call them.

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RAID Array is toast… (Update)

My Buffalo LS-QL R5 8TB started failing in September. Since that time I have re-formatted the unit, tested the drives (no problem found), re-formatted again, re-flashed the firmware (Lots of fun finding that..) And through it all been completely unable to get any response out of Buffalo Tech.

I thought I had everything squared away but the unit died again after 10 days of operation.

Report Last night at Midnight

Running Time
: 10 days
, 15:34:32
[HDD Usage Status]
RAID Array 1 Usage Rate
: 747128112 kbytes / 3890505728 kbytes (Usage Rate
19%)
[DISK error status]
DISK1 0
DISK2 0
DISK3 0
DISK4 0

Report This morning at 5am

HDD error occurred
Disk(s) the error occurred
:UnknownDisk()
(sda) WRITE sector:12016445 count:1
Disk writing error
Some data may not be recoverable.
Immediate change of disk is recommended.

I’d happily change the disk IF I COULD FIGURE OUT WHICH ONE!

“Unknown Disk”??? How is that possible?

NAS Navigator for Windows appears to be accurate (more or less)

NAS Navigator for Mac reports:
“Unformatted / Unconnected” at the same time the drive is in fact running. and also reports “E13: An error has occurred on RAID ARRAY 1”

But that’s it! Nothing specific enough to actually diagnose or correct the problem.

I’m really not up for doing the math to figure out which drive that sector is on.

All the drive indicator lights are green and the drive is doing a disk check after powering down due to the error. I was hoping that at least one of them would be flashing red.

Buffalo Technology is not interested in providing products that are reliable or serviceable. This can be easily illustrated by reading their support forums, if you can… Some of the comments from the buffalo support team are far less than customer oriented and in some cases downright nasty.

Their software is buggy, and they do not appear interested in updating anything to correct their deficiencies.

If I had to do it again, Buffalo Technologies equipment would not be anywhere on my list of potential purchases.

If you’re looking for a NAS… Look at another manufacturer.


————– UPDATE —————–


After fooling around more with the Buffalo unit and at one point “BRICKING” the array and it’s enclosure entirely. I have identified that 3 of the four drives consistently fail. This is after having formatted and tested the drives on another computer and each of the drives reporting no errors. I did figure out that (sda was drive 1 buy moving it to slot 2 where it became sdb.) You know… I didn’t want to guess about that and with 3 drives reporting problems I wasn’t wanting to make any assumptions. It appears that Disk 1 is sda, Disk 2 is sdb, and so on through sdd. That might have been bloody useful to actually PUT IN THE FAQ on the Buffalo Web site. Even a simple “yes that’s the way we report a failure.” would have been helpful.


A 75% drive failure in the same enclosure is interesting as hell to me especially where there has been no abuse, vibration, or other factors outside of normal operation. This is well beyond what the MTBF numbers say should happen. Nonetheless, when the drives are all put back in their array, they fail I’m now two for two and am calling the 3 drives toast.


I think it’s suspicious that the failure occurred on all three drives at the same time. But then again I’m a suspicious kind of guy.


So now I’m left with spending $165 per drive to replace them, thereby bringing the Buffalo unit back online and wondering if there’s something else going on… Or I could just bite the bullet and replace all 4 drives and hope the problem isn’t in the enclosure itself….


OR I can purchase a WD 3TB Mybook NAS. It’s non-raid but apparently Buffalo Technologies RAID5 array isn’t as redundant as its supposed to be. 


On the upside… I have significantly LESS data to worry about now anyway.


If I could buy 4, 3TB drives and put them in my existing Buffalo enclosure I’d consider it, since it would be an upgrade. BUT Buffalo technologies isn’t updating the firmware on my enclosure so that’s not an option.


TO BestBuy Boy Blunder! …………………………………..


I now have a nice happy WD 3TB My Book Live plugged into the port the Buffalo Tech unit used to occupy.  I paid 200.00 for the new machine. I have several ports open on my maser switch so If I need additional storage space… I’ll buy another 3TB and move on.


Yep, no RAID but as long as I’m going to have to backup the data to another media anyway who CARES?

I noticed some variant OS builds on the net for the Buffalo enclosure. Maybe if I get really bored I’ll flash one of those to the unit and see if someone else’s FREE implementation works better than the factory build. I’m going to have to be REALLY BORED!

By really bored… I mean so bored that masturbation is off the table… AS IF!

Again if you’re looking for NAS devices… Avoid Buffalo Technologies.