quick computer update

I updated Opera to version 10.51 and everything is working fine now. Whatever was slowing things down seems to have gone away. *shrug* Yeah...that's right...I fixed it...yep, all me...and I'm sticking to that version.

New Computer update

Well, I had the new computer for about three weeks when, one day, I shut it down to do a hard reboot for some reason, and, when I when to turn it back on by pressing the on/off switch on the front, I found it would not turn back on. So, I called the people who sold me the machine, and they immediately gave me an RMA to send it back. Which I did at my own expense (grumble). In due course they send me a replacement which arrived at my doorstep last week.

I plugged all the various cables into the box and hit the power supply switch in the back and then the on/off button in front. Nothing. Not a peep. Zip! Zero! I was not at all happy.The next day after work, I called the retailer and got a very nice woman on the phone who said that she would be happy to give me another RMA, but perhaps I might like to talk to tech support first. After a moment's consideration, I accepted that offer, and was promptly transferred to tech support. One of the reasons I hadn't opened the first computer to see if there was anything user fixable inside is that Asus has a seal on the case that states that the warranty is void if the seal is broken. I told this to the nice young (I assume) man who answered the tech line. He told me not to worry: he would take care of that.

With that assurance, I popped the case and the first thing that I noticed was that the power lead from the power supply to the motherboard was not connected. I mentioned this to my "mentor" who allowed as how it might be good to plug it in. When that was done, a little green light went on at the bottom of the motherboard. I was excited! However, my hopes were dashed almost immediately when pressing the on/off switch still produced no results. After poking around a bit, my guy has me pop the front panel. Well, this is something I wouldn't have thought about. Seems that the on/off button actually wasn't the actual switch. That was a little white plastic piece seated in the computer's frame. When I pressed the switch with a screwdriver, it worked...the computer turned on. For some reason the button was not activating the switch. Well, from here on it looked like I was going to have to come up with a unit specific work around, so I thanked my tech support guy for all his help, and settled in to figure out how to make the power button work.

In the course of my poking and prodding, I pushed on the switch one more time...and it popped right out of its seat. Turns out the problem was that the switch had not been fully inserted in its seat. Either that or it had somehow been popped loose. In any event, after I figured out how I could get my fingers in to where they needed to be, it only took a firm push to pop the switch into place, where it seated with a satisfying "click". Since then, it has been working just fine. It is fast and reasonably powerful, but I added something from CNN to my browser the other day when I was watching the House vote on Health Care reform that they say impoves the streaming video experience. However, since loading that plug-in, my display has been slow. I'll have to work on that next. Also, I really don't like Vista. It is just awkward and cludgy.

Life continues....

Music

Music is important to me. In fact, my most persistent desire is for my life to run with a continuous soundtrack in the background. No mater what else I might be doing, there would be good music rolling underneath. One of my great disappointments in this life is that over-the-air radio (and I am talking about FM; I haven't listened to AM since I was in high school mid-twentieth century) has degenerated to the point that it is virtually irrelevant. I listen to CD's or MP-3's in my car; I listen to my MP-3 player when I'm out of the house and not in my car; I listen to Internet Radio at home. All are vastly superior to what is currently offered over the air. (Aside: OK, there are still some radio stations out there who play good music. Most of 'em are college stations. But, for the most part, they are all down at the bottom of the frequency range and of lowish power.

So, for the past six or seven years I have been listening to Radio Paradise over the Internet. Bill and Rebecca Goldsmith have been programming great music over the Internet for the last ten years, and I am truly grateful that I found them. I find Bill's programming matches my musical tastes about 80% of the time...and that's a pretty good average. The one thing, though, that I have been becoming a little uncomfortable with for the past year or two is that I am only hearing what Bill plays. Back in the day, I listened to WNEW-FM out of New York City. There were at least 7 or 8 distinct personalities playing music back then, so you would hear different stuff virtually all the time. Sure, they had a basic playlist, but it wasn't like today where the playlist is engraved in stone. Back then, the station's basic playlist may have accounted for 50% of what was played. The other 50% was made up of emerging acts, old stuff that hadn't topped the "Hit Parade", tracks off albums that were not the big hit pieces and weird shit that came out of who knows where. Thing is, I heard a lot of music back then that I wouldn't have heard if I were listening to only one programmer.

I think I have finally found a way to correct this problem. I am now subscribing to Pandora in addition to keeping up my listener support contributions to Radio Paradise. I am going to alternate days with one day going to Radio Paradise and the next going to Pandora. Today is a Pandora day and I have to say that Pandora plays pretty good music. You tell 'em what music and which artists you like and then the play those and others who make similar music. The thing about Pandora is that you can create a bunch of different radio stations with different themes and artists. You can have a soft rock, hard rock, couintry rock, folk, classical and stations that mix genres. Then you can listen to one station for a while before switching to another station that is also programmed for you.

I highly recommend both Radio Paradise and Pandora to any and all out there. And for the jerks at the RIAA, let me say that, for the most part, I listen to the streaming music. However, I do buy about 10 tracks a month to add to the MP-3 player. If at all possible, I buy directly from the artist's web site in the faint hope that most of my purchase price will go to the artist and not to the parasitic suits. Also, to the jerks at the RIAA and the jerks at ClearChannel (or whoever it is who has bought up a huge chunk of the broadcast stations out there) I want to say that one of the major reasons music sales are down is because the vibrant diversity of what was presented to us back in the heyday of vinyl just isn't here anymore. However, places like Radio Paradise and Pandora begin to fill the void...at least when I have an Internet connection.

I just have a little more work to do around the house to get my music into where it needs to go, and I will have a soundtrack at least when I'm home...and that's a good start.

spend, spend, spend....doing my part to boost the economy

I did it. I dithered and dithered for weeks, and then I made the plunge. I bought an ASUS CM5570 (refurbished) which has a pretty fast CPU and 6gigs of RAM. Now, I am, for the moment, stuck with Windows Vista (Home Premium), but I am thinking about going to Windows 7 ASAP. That move will be determined by what the upgrade costs me. If Microsoft is gonna gouge (and I can't finagle something CHEAP), I'll suffer through with Vista for a while. In other words, any upgrade to Windows 7 will be strictly determined by price.

After our conversation of about a month ago about how my old Dell was starting to do weird things and how I needed a new desktop machine...and she said that she was OK with this if I could do it for under $500, I haven't raised the issue again. When this little box showed up for like $421, with all that RAM, a big hard drive and an NVidia video card, I just couldn't resist. However, I haven't specifically mentioned that this is actually a done deal. I'm waiting to see how long it takes for either her to notice that I seem to have a new toy, or to finally ask if I am happy with my new machine (you know, letting me know that she knows...).

Of course, there is a small caveat at work here. While the 'puter did cost less than $500. I had to replace the monitor as well. I had two monitors die within two weeks of each other. I took the 22" Gateway in to someone who works on flat screen TVs and asked what it would cost to fix it. His answer was somewhere between $120 and $150. Well, I had originally purchased that monitor for $129 about 8 months ago. And I knew that I could get a new flat screen monitor for about the same cost...so I did. I found an nice 22" Dell that was going for $139 to replace the Gateway. The guy at the shop told me that it was just not cost effective to repair these bits of technology. So, the next time my town has an electronics recycling day, I will contribute two flat screen monitors, one 17" and  one 22". I would have been much happier fixing these because I'm sure that what failed in each is a relatively small and inexpensive part.

Ah well, such is life in Babylon...

Hack, Hack...wheeze....

I've had this damn cold for a month now. It is starting to bore me. It sorta migrates around my body...stuffed up nose this week; cough next week; impacted ears the following week; and then it starts over again. I just can't seem to kick it. I mean, I don't feel all that bad other than the fact I'm blowing my nose ever three minutes, my eyes are watering and I have this ongoing cough. Other than that, I don't feel bad at all. *sigh*

Of course, this means I can't go near my Mom who is at her new rehab facility. There are signs all over the place saying something to the effect that if you have a cold, stay the hell out. So, when I called to see how she was doing this morning, when she heard me coughing she told me to stay home today. I was happy to oblige. Of course, work is another thing entirely. We are staffed so thin that any call-out puts a heavy strain on store management. So, I go in today to pass my germs on to a cross section of the area's population. Just call me patient zero.

Isn't this fun? I said I'd post more, and this is the first of many. I've decided to post what would be journal entries (if I kept a journal) in the absence of more profound subject matter. And now I have to go pull myself together for work...

Greed and avarice, Part 1

Catchy title, that. I can see it easily reaching Part 1,000,000 very quickly if I allowed myself to catalogue every instance that I run across. However, today I will limit myself to commenting upon the Amazon/McMillan Publishers pricing controversy. Basically, Amazon prices new and bestseller ebooks at $9.99 apiece. McMillan wants Amazon to sell its ebooks for $12.99 to $14.99. Now, I assume that Amazon's cut of the price is not changing (ie. they are not getting a bigger payout per book), so this means that McMillan is hoping to get $3 to $5 more per book rolling into its coffers. If McMillan sells 10,000 ebook copies of a book, that means it makes an extra $50,000 for one that sells for $14.99.

Personally, I find that offensive. McMillan is, basically, picking my pocket to line theirs. I mean, it is not like it suddenly costs $5 more per copy to produce and ebook. No, the cost of an ebook all lies in writing and editing. After that, the cost per copy is negligible. In fact, I would suggest that the people at McMillan run out and get themselves a copy of Chris Anderson's "Free". As it is, I can see the pirate flags unfurling across the Internet. I would guess (hope) that McMillan's revenue from all sources begins to slide. And, if furtherance of that hope, I am calling for a retail boycott of all McMillan products. I also call for McMillan's authors to demand that their publisher cease and desist this larceny of their readers.

'Nuff said...

New Year's Resolutions

Ok, here it is, February, and I am just getting around to New Year's Resolutions. Although, in my defense, there have been extenuating circumstances...which I won't bore the world with. However, I am now ready to deal with my resolves for 2010. In addition to those which primarily affect only me, I am going to make a concerted effort to post more here. (Yeah, yeah...I know that this is not world shaking news considering how few people know this blog exists.While the major reason I will be writing more is that it is something I need to do if only to keep my mind exercised, it does have the potential to impinge upon the lives of other people.

So, let's see if I can bring my average up to...oh, let's go crazy here and aim for...three posts a week. Three posts of at least one paragraph (each containing at lest four sentences, on average) per week is not an overreaching goal. Obviously, this post, as a precursor, doesn't count. So, that means I need to write something else today. Let us (me) begin.

Short and to the point...well, short, anyway...

That's what television shows are. Commercial television is now running about 8 minutes of ads per half hour of air time. That means your favorite sitcom is now all of 22 minutes long, if you're lucky. That hour long drama is actually only 45 minutes of show, the rest of the time is spent with screamingly painful commercials. Just another bit of evidence showing the decline of our quality of life.

Too much of a good thing?

I now have three "cloud" accounts where a couple months ago I had zero. Cloud accounts are places you can place files and then share them with others. Places like Dropbox, Google Docs and, now, Ubuntu One.


My problem right now is that I don't have people in place to use these resources. But, if I start to get my act together, I should have all three in use by the beginning of 2010. These are the perfect tools to use to build a virtual organization. All work is placed in secure locations out on the web while they are active. Once we build the company, we move everything to our servers and zero out what is in the third party hosted accounts. This is cool stuff. Now let's see if I can make use of it.

My first order of business is to take all my bits and pieces of a business plan, and to put them into a coherent order. Once they are lined up, I need somebody to help (even if the help is just text editing--although I would like actual collaborative help as well) turn them into a presentable business plan. While that is in progress, though, we can start working on building a website and working on the structure of this idea. More to come on this...

How things have changed.

So, for the past week or so, my wife and I have been getting letters from banks. Now, these are not just any banks, they are banks that issue credit cards. More to the point, they are banks that issue branded store and gasoline company cards. The interest rates on these cards are approaching (within tenths of a percent) 30% interest. Now, when I was a kid, loan sharks charged that kind of interest. In fact, we had laws against charging exorbitant interest. Those laws were called usury laws, and those who broke them were considered the lowest of the low.

I think it is time we begin to recapture that particular bit of our heritage. So, the next time you see your neighbor who works for Citibank (I use them because at least four of the letters we have received came from them: J. Jill and Mobil are two of the name branded cards that come to mind), or any of the other big card issuers, spit at their feet and move away. Grab your kids and tell them what horrible people work for the banks. And cut up those cards. I plan to cut up my Mobil card and send it back to the company with a note saying that my never darkening the entrance to one of their service stations is all I can do (other than start writing online at any and all opportunities) to protest their greed.

No, think about it. How much do the banks pay you for the use of  your money? Savings accounts pay...what?...3 or 4 percent? CD's brag about a 5% return, and you only get that if you lock in for two or three years. And yet the banks are then turning around and charging you 30% to use their credit cards (which actually use your money to make those "revolving" loans. Fucking incredible. And we are supposed to respect and even admire these people. Hell, my family once were Wall Street stock brokers and bankers. When my uncles presided over the fall of the family business, I was pissed. But now I thank my lucky stars that I am not engaged in this slimey, evil business anymore.

'Nuff said, at least for the time being...