seryn

I am back.

Monday 11:30am to Wednesday 1pm-ish being "gone" has swamped me with over 500 posts in the feeds, zero DW comments, zero fiber blog contents, 2 emails (plus something I sent myself so I didn't lose it), and something in the neighborhood of 5 months' worth of average phone usage (my plan has about three years worth of normal usage allotted per month, but any cheaper plan has horrendously restricted data caps--- I'm not a phone person.)

Monday I consumed all the remaining rum, 3 limes, a drunken "splash" of grenadine---- combined into "punch". Then I discovered it wasn't tart enough and added apple cider vinegar. I will say that there is one benefit to making rum punch after you've already started drinking... you don't care if you get it wrong.

I've slept about 7 hours total.

I'm so upset about everything that I feel completely overwhelmed. And honestly... all I had to do was call the ISP and wait for the box to arrive.

I have to say that I am absolutely thrilled with the customer service by my ISP. I waited less than 3 minutes total on hold in 5 calls. It would have been less if I could have found the direct tech support phone number, but I lost patience with web browsing via itty bitty phone screen after I'd found the main number. They were happy to direct my calls.

Whenever the local phone company started coming out with their cheap DSL service, they kept hounding us to try them. I kept saying, "I don't care that I'm paying 5 times what you're advertising... your rate is going to go up in 30, 90, or 360 days and you won't tell me what it will cost then. Your rates are contingent on me buying other things I don't want. But mostly, when I have a problem, which I never do, my ISP answers the phone."

I'm happy to pay more for stability. And I'm thrilled that the first time I've had a serious problem in almost 10 years, I got helped right away by competent people who didn't talk down to me when I had no idea what I had or why it might have broken. I even made 3 of them laugh because I'd called so much that I knew their verification questions. I got so I rattled all of it off as soon as I got off hold. It was kind of funny that I had a spiel, but it saved time.

One of the nights while I was sleepless, I was watching Holmes on Homes and he kept saying, "Don't look for the cheapest contractor, you get what you pay for."

That's weird.

There's all this gloom and doom about how Palm Pre phones can't sync with iTunes anymore. "*woe* *gnashing* *shakes fist*"

I figured it functions as a USB drive, so I could plug it into my computer and copy the files my own self. OK, sure, since some of them are multiple directories deep, this is not ideal, but I could grab all my absolute favorite songs at least.

So imagine my surprise when I plug it in and iTunes offers to sync to it. It tells me that it cannot auto-sync because I have 10.5G of songs, so maybe I should pick manually which ones it should port. So I picked all my 5 star and 4 star and 3 star songs. *shrug* It's more than I will ever need on my phone.

I'm not sure why the iTunes people are bitchy about who can sync with their software. Sure they want to encourage people to buy iProducts, but I have an iPod and I'm sure as fucking hell not going to buy an iPhone when they have exclusivity with AT&T. So either iTunes is an all-purpose media player or it's the syncing software for iProducts. I don't really see the problem as long as it's one or the other, but purporting to be an all-purpose piece of software that happens to adeptly handle the syncing of iProducts while screaming bloody lawsuits against anyone using it with a non-iDevice is untenable. If it's just a sync tool, then it needs to get along with my other all-purpose media software and it needs to be a lot lot lot lot lot lot less invasive/huge/slow/buggy. I don't play things in iTunes on my computer. If I want to listen to music on my computer (which I don't often) then I use WinAmp. So I really am just using it to sync my iPod and I'm really irritated by all the crap it needs to have running all the fucking time in case I might ever happen to plug in my iPod. I can generally tell when I'm likely to plug something in. I'd be OK with it taking a minute to launch all its helper applications in contrast to all the garbage using more memory than 2 browser windows combined.

Still, since it just magically works, I'm happy. I wish there was less gloom and doom and deliberately caused angst because the iPeople can't fucking share.

I was involved in a discussion about the lameness of capslock.

(There's no word from Lenovo on whether they're actually going to get rid of it on their laptops despite the announcement from June 28, 2009.)

This is the solution I use: http://michaeljaylissner.com/blog/remap-caps-lock-as-backspace

It's a registry hack, the text of the file is clearly visible, and I understand how to do registry merges. But the best part is because my computer does not think I am hitting capslock, it does not toggle the indicator light.

It's been a while and I still haven't trained myself to use that backspace key reliably, but at least I don't accidently start writing a Howler.

The funny thing though was when I was discussing something with a friend who then SHOUTED and later added, "I didn't even need catslock for that." She's got at least 15 cat names in active use (not sure how many cats that means she has, but maybe they seem myriad) so I suggested that she keep her door closed as that's more effective than catslock.

I know it was a typo. But I couldn't resist.

I am a god.

I got my TiVo to display the output of the digital cable box.

Comcast ships its digital cable boxes DVR-crippled, but there is a software setup toggle that fixes it. In the Motorola DCT2000 cable box's setup menu (which is hard enough to find) there is an option for "RF Bypass". It is factory set to "off". Change it to "on", then power cycle the cable box and the TiVo and repeat the TiVo Guided Setup. Suddenly the TiVo can display non-menu video.

The jury is still out on whether the TiVo will be able to change channels via serial cable, but Magic 8 Ball says "All Signs Point To Yes!" Or rather, the internet suggests that the only digital cable boxes where the serial cable tends to work are the DCT2000s.

I am really irritated that it took that much work. (I cannot even indicate how amazingly lucky I was to stumble upon exactly the search phrase that led me to the one dude on the TiVo forums who had exactly my equipment and exactly my issue. His resolution was "it was the fault of the cable box, I had to do a coax bypass"... so I had to Google for that which took some astounding luck as well.)

This has been a real hassle and I was extremely frustrated until I hit upon the magic solution.

Blerg.

My computer BSOD'd today. I figured it was iTunes because "everyone knows" it sucks and BSODs non-Apple computers. Well, it turns out to have been a vicious virus thing. It spoofed my google searches so I didn't think it was anything serious.

I was in an IM window and listed off all the weird cryptic process names in the task manager and my SO said, "Wait. wfdmgr that's EVIL." He sent me a link and the link, when clicked said it's part of WMP 10. When he viewed the link it said, "trojan/worm". So I viewed it from his mac and it says "windows media player 10". But I don't use windows media player (only 9 came with my computer and I refused to allow it to update that) so I figured I should delete it. Shift-deleted the file, created a text file in the same place, renamed it to exe and set the attrib flags to +R +H +S (which basically says you have to be admin to alter the file).

Then I searched the Registry to make sure it wasn't in the secret hidden "run on startup" menu. (Just so you know, I fucking hate that they hide that. HKLM/software/microsoft/windows/current version/run I swear there should be a desktop icon that says, "LOOK HERE!" and goes directly to the regedit of that folder.)

Oh. and this was behind 3 firewalls, with Zone Alarm, AVG (with updated definitions as of yesterday), and Ad Aware all running. (Those are so redundant that they complain about each other.) So I have absolutely no idea where my computer got this from. The (non-spoofed) sites suggest it comes from opening email attachments. But I use web-email and don't open attachments from unknown people. (I don't get many attachments at all, though a lot of mail is HTML based, that's not the same thing, and again, not from strangers.)

I don't see the point of having really fucking annoying antivirus provisions (they CONSTANTLY complain about each other, Zone Alarm loathes AVG) if it doesn't do any good at stopping the viruses.

I'm going to go buy a fucking mac.

But then again, the mac on the adjacent desk is running a spoofed google, so who knows what's going on.

My head hurts and I didn't get any laundry done because I've been doing this for hours. I think it's pretty damned ironic that computer viruses are usually trojans since that's a brand of condoms meant to prevent the spread of viruses and parasites.

I have issues with assuming my computer knows what it's doing. Given that when I wasn't looking early this year it went and fucked some infected whore--- I had to wipe back to factory settings! I don't trust it to know what's best for it.

But 3 computers ago, I was still fighting this MyStuff organization method, My Computer? Of course it's My Computer. Assholes, maybe that's what you meant about the EULA saying you could download my computer's harddrives? My Documents? Okay... but you keep trying to put stuff written by other people there. My Music? I don't write music. All the stuff in my MP3 library is ripped from CDs (that I own) and according to the RIAA isn't mine at all, I'm just paying to be near it temporarily.

But the more I fought with it, the more handling I had to do. The more uninstalls that had to be manually tweaked. The more registry settings that had to be massaged and removed by hand. Basically if I tried to put my thumb on the situation to retain some control, I had to micromanage everything from then on.

I recently got an iPod. It was free, doesn't require batteries, and holds 8G. That makes it theoretically superior to the late birthday present MP3 player I got which takes 2 AAA batteries and only holds 1G (but I saw the receipt, it was under $10 with tax & shipping and one cannot count on receiving free iProducts in the future.)

iProducts require the use of iTunes which requires the use of QuickTime (I'm surprised they didn't rename that to iM.A.Sucker and just package it all in one box.) So now, instead of QuickTime running on the rare occasions when I encounter something that needs it, iTunes wants it run on StartUp. It already takes my computer ages to start cold because of all the firewalls and virus checking and self exams I have it do. But it doesn't just add to the start menu.... no, it adds itself to a hidden Registry entry. Not that most users even know about the Registry. It seems more like one must sleep with a power user to know about it.

Everyone I know who uses iTunes bitches about the constant crashes. More people have problems with iTunes and rant about it than Verizon had customers who couldn't hear them--- and remember that Verizon had to run endless ads reminding us that their service sucked! I was so leery of their service I almost excluded them when I was shopping for cellular service. iTunes supposedly gets along with computers about as well as computers get along with gravity after being dropped from a 30 story building. I didn't know ANYONE who was happy with iTunes. Even Mac users and iTunes and Mac should get along like hands in gloves inside a muff where no one can see them getting it on.

So you can see me, here, being leery. iTunes==scary!

I installed it. It works fine. Getting rid of the animated "album cover" display took a little familiarity; it shouldn't default to that since most new users don't own album art! But it seems to do all right. It's not any worse than WinAmp at least.

In some respects, I think if I could have started with iTunes, I'd have been a lot happier. I hated having to organize my music library by hand. But now that I have, I really don't want some new software coming around and fucking with it... what if I uninstall? So I don't let any of my players handle library organization. But it most assuredly would have been easier if they'd had this 8-10 years ago before I did all the work by hand.

I like the idea that technology should just work.

But last time I didn't have my thumb on the controls it was catastrophic. I might be too old to become an iPerson. I could probably convert though. I really want a pocket device that tells me where to eat when I shake it. The modern equivalent to Magic 8 Ball... interfaced with maps and ratings and preferences.

I ended up liking Verizon cellular service just fine. I never have to ask "Can you hear me now?" So maybe when they sent that dude around to check, it actually was them testing their service instead of releasing a pre-Gamma version like most software companies do. And maybe that's why "everyone" "hates" iTunes. I haven't heard much complaining about it lately, so probably I noticed during one of their major version updates...

I know I heard LOUD bitching about Firefox 3.5... but I got the 3.5.2 yesterday and it's stable and no slower than the 3.0.6 I had.... I did read that one must manually clear the saved data because its internal db array gets fragmented... but 3.5 has extensions to automate that... it seemed easier to upgrade and grab the extension than to try to figure out how to manually edit a non-plaintext database.

Of course, if you talk to me after Tuesday, I might be vitriolic about the new Opera.... 10 is coming out. I love Opera. If I could get it supported by all the big web places, I'd probably never use anything else. But yesterday I discovered I cannot send mail from Yahoo!Mail in Opera. It works fine in Firefox. But all the innovations I use daily in Firefox were Opera inventions. Opera did tabbed browsing. Opera did personal toolbars. Opera did site-based controls of cookies/permissions. Opera kludged on-board email and RSS feeds.... Firefox came up with linking to one's Google accounts. I consider Opera to be the best innovators in the browser world and everyone else to be trailing after them looking for crumbs. But nothing works right in Opera. Especially adding to the Google Reader and managing one's iGoogle page and using the new features in Gmail and I cannot get G-chat to be stable in Opera and....

But you can tell I've gone completely insane. I got an iPod, upgraded to a known-broken variant of Firefox, added iTunes, will be upgrading to the non-beta version of Opera, and I'm shopping for a new cell phone and possibly a new service provider. It sort of seems like I should just buy a brand new computer and start over entirely. It looks like a lot of the CDs should be re-ripped. When I started 8 years ago, space was a really limited constraint... heh.

The only thing that concerns me about phone shopping today... I might over-buy just because the store is air conditioned and I'm very over-warm.

One of the interesting things I read this morning is a discussion about where Borders is financially. I don't shop there even though it's one of the most convenient bookstores to me. I stopped when they made half the store into a music store. No one should buy a CD from them since their prices were so egregiously high ($18.99 for a CD regularly priced for $11.99 at Best Buy and that wasn't the best price) ... and plus it was right at the beginning of online music sales, even if the downloads thing didn't go anywhere, Amazon was selling CDs.

In the course of reducing shelf space, the science fiction section was cut by 50%. Then about two-thirds of the remaining shelves were devoted to graphic novels and tie-ins. Functionally they now had 1/6th the selection. They were happy to look something up for you and to order it from their warehouse, but it took 7-10 days to get it. It was faster to order from Amazon.

I miss being able to browse for books, I cannot seem to get from one book I liked to another book I might like when using Amazon. People who liked one book "also liked" lawnmowers and crates of fruit leather. So it's really difficult to find anything new there even without the skewed recommendations engine which seems to think I will like something merely because it is being heavily promoted.

But it wasn't functionally any different than shopping at Borders. When Borders noticed their sales were dropping, they increased the size of their children's nook and eliminated the science fiction section entirely---except for the movie tie-ins.

As a bookselling business, they deserve to fail because they don't sell books as their primary business anymore. It's about the children's toys, the cafe, and the music sales. Books have become an afterthought for Borders.

The original poster's answer to booksellers struggling has been that everyone should be handling e-book sales. I don't agree with that because I don't buy e-books. The problem with all the digital formats is that the purchase price is not a purchase price, it's a term-unspecified lease. If you buy in e-pub format, you don't have rights to other formats. Converting it between formats is possible using Calibre, but a violation of the DMCA. If you bought in e-pub and put it on your portable device and the device gets stolen, you have to buy it again. Theoretically people keep copies on their base computers, but there are a lot of publishers claiming having 2 copies is illegal under DMCA. The problem with that particular law is that violating it makes you a terrorist and subject to indefinite detention, rendition, and a complete suspension of your rights as a citizen and your rights as a human being. It's not a huge leap to see that buying e-books means you can be seriously harmed for relatively minor infractions of rules no one tells you apply.

The other thing I have against e-books is lack of durability of contents. Sure, that would be convenient if the revised version of the book you bought fixed the typos or corrected errors in instructions instead of making you go out and fetch errata and try to kludge them into your bound copy. But without the ability to compare to the original, how would you know what they were changing?

The fic I just finished reading has the same author, the same title, and the same premise as the one I'd thought was abandoned. But there are distinctive differences that I happen to remember because they were so very specific, like if it said, "He was 5 feet 7 and a half inches tall." Then in the revised story, it says "moderate height". It's not hard to notice that kind of change. But I would not have noticed if it went from "average height" to "moderate height"-- at least not after 3 years, unless I could diff.

So the only way I want an e-book is if I own the paper copy as well. And to do that, I'd have to buy it twice.

But the real reason I don't like e-books is because you can't give your copy away when you're done with it because it was never yours. The publisher was just lending it to you.

I found Miro, which might be of interest in my podcast news viewing.

I found the NBR (nightly business report) which might be of interest to my SO who watches international business news like most people watch the weather forecast (obsessively).

An absolutely terrific idea, google calendar available by text message if you link up your account and phone. Like I can add an appointment by texting GVENT instead of texting to my gmail and adding it manually. I am unsure I want to tell Google about my phone. Linking something free with something I pay for might not be the best idea. But on the other hand... so convenient!

After the umpteenth time Rachel Maddow was pre-empted for some more crap about Michael Jackson-- and it turns out the media cares more than the public about that-- I found out that Rachel Maddow's show was being aired during the earlier timeslot (I have a conflict and cannot record then.)

Fuck them if they can't get their schedule straight. I'm going to watch from the podcast which has no commercials.

Now. These podcasts are huge. So they take a while to fetch. I decided to look into automatic fetching tools. The top match was Juice. I don't know if it will gracefully handle what I want it to do, but I'm going to try it.

I currently do not bother with podcasts, so I have no software available. Strangely I do have VLC installed, which at least plays the video podcasts. I'm not big on audio stuff, so I've never really considered podcasts a desirable medium. There are a lot of knitting podcasts, but they're generally horrible. There are interview ones which depend largely on post editing so they're variable; and the completely appalling ones where it's someone's personal blog only they can't be bothered to type.

But podcast news is vastly superior to getting it via the TV. I knew this immediately upon the first viewing via download.

I am in need of recommendations.

First, if you know anything about kitchen mixers, I have finally decided I should sacrifice the space and buy one. The reviews of modern KitchenAids suggest they have engineering problems including gearboxes that leak motor oil into the workbowl. I need the mixer to be strong enough to knead bread dough. I don't mind if it's heavy because I intend to store it on the countertop instead of lifting it out of a cabinet for each use. But it absolutely must be able to handle heavy-duty mixing jobs like dual-loaf bread dough recipes that want to be kneaded for 15 minutes. The point of buying a machine is that I cannot do that kind of hand-intensive labor, so it cannot overheat, smoke, or fail while doing its job.

Second, I think we are looking to upgrade our media options. We currently have Netflix (with a Roku for downloading), an ancient TiVo with Lifetime, a $25 DVD player, and a tube-TV which does not have any fancy plugs (we bought it because it was cheap and we knew it would be an interim thing while the digital conversion hoopla was settled), we have ordinary cable from before they offered digital and have refused to upgrade because of the need for a cable box. We do have tolerable broadband but it is low-tier and independent.

So, pretty much you can assume we have nothing that we need to carry forward, but that I would like the ability to play downloaded content and DVDs.

I have heard good things about AT&T's UVerse, but have heard horrendous things about AT&T in general. We have been pretty unhappy with AT&T phone service mostly because the price isn't dropping despite how little value landlines have, in fact charges keep going up. (Mobile service through Verizon but not for any particular reason-- TMobile/Sprint doesn't serve inside my apartment, AT&T and Verizon do.)

In exchange:
I will say that we are extremely happy with both Netflix and the Roku. The Roku device is $100 plus tax and shipping, but it is exactly what it says it is, a device which downloads Netflix and Amazon (and probably others) content and displays it on your TV without the need for a computer (though it does require broadband connectivity). Netflix is Netflix, but with access to their downloadable catalog, the vagarities of mail service no longer hold me hostage. If the Roku people did a deal with Hulu, that would be awesome.

We used to be diehard TiVo supporters, but TiVo has dicked us around a lot and now their (very expensive) service comes plastered with really obnoxious and intrusive advertising. For example, whenever you pause a popular program, there's an ad for weightloss product plastered all over the lower third of the screen. The whole point of having a DVR is to be able to pause and rewind TV.

I think we might like to divorce ourselves from TV content entirely because of the Hulu type services. The shows are there, with no conflicts for recording, the commercials are minimal. Really, it's hard to beat. But we definitely would like the ability to play media in our living room so we can both watch it. Maybe we should just buy a huge computer monitor and a dedicated laptop. Then we'd need a source of local news, but my national newses are podcast.

Third, I would like recommendations on mobile phones. My LG EnV handset is 2.5 years old. I like having a keyboard available because I send more txts than I make calls. But the really locked down phone (you can't download apps or ringtones from anywhere else but the Verizon pay-for site, you can't even make your own) has limited the usefulness of what might have been decent hardware. If anything I might want to be able to do costs me $6.99 plus a monthly fee, I'm not going to do it on the phone.

I admit to being tempted by the iPhones from the commercials I have seen, but I worry that each of those little brightly colored icons they show costs the $6.99 type price and probably they're only available from the iApple iStore too. So it looks like they've got the same problem... Really expensive hardware that's extremely limited by nickel and dime fees. No idea if that's true, maybe iPhones have tons of free apps.

I've also understood that AT&T service for the iPhone sucks filthy weasel toes with athlete's foot. But again, people love to complain when things aren't going well and hardly anyone jumps up and down screaming, "It works marginally better than my minimal expectations!"

I won't say that price is no consideration, but I kept the first phone for years, so investing in hardware isn't the issue compared to the monthly pricing schemes. If it's going to take up room in my pocket, then it should be useful.