by ·0 Comments

As part of the move, several “sytem improvements” have been spawned.  So far, I’ve noted the following:

  1. Outlook waits about 30 seconds after opening before prompting the operator for a password during which time one can send and receive emails, view calendars, and create appointments.
  2. McAfee no longer does background updates and includes such useful prompts as “would you like to update now? (If you click “NO” the update will occur in 30 seconds)” and a splash screen to tell you when the update’s complete that goes away automatically after infuriating you for 10 seconds pegged to the front of the desktop.
  3. All the web shortcuts on my desk now depict the logo for Netscape Navigator.
  4. Our desktops are now automatically backed up once a day but the initial backup will take me several days due to the amount of local data during which I’ve been getting “backup error!” messages that stop the backup and restart it.  All I need is one 96 hour day and everything’ll be fine.
  5. It also appears to take less personal information to reset my password after muffing it three times than it does to reset it with my full arsenal of personal information.

by ·0 Comments

Our network drive that contains the drawings and notes about drawings for the CAD group contains 1.2 million files of which about 10K are useful.  Apparently, the world will come to an end if we don’t save the other ones which are non-human-readable, non-dependent, non-mandated files generated by a module in our software we no longer use.  My boss asked me to oversee the backup as he was on vacation on Friday and ran into trouble doing it the previous few days and I jumped at the opportunity.

All went well with the first 1.1 million of the 1.2 million transferred perfectly using TeraCopy but I kept running into a deluge of transfer errors which caused the program to lockup.  After trying a few things and probably breaking storage best practices in a dozen ways including forcable unlocking every file on drive, checking for faulty sectors, and applying some network juju to find hidden files I checked the free space.  Space available on drive: 120 megs.  Space required for backup: 292 gigs.  I’ve seen 7zip do some impressive shit, but it may have met its match and I was reminded of a rule I learned at RadioShack.  The complexity of the problem is inverse proportional to the complexity of the tools used to find it.

by ·0 Comments

Me: So, how was your day of offroading?
Dad: Great, I got a text message that Jim couldn’t go so Rob and I went.  Remember the rock trail at Big Dog I turned over on last year?
Me: Yeah,  Ryan took pictures.
Dad: Well, I made it this time, I was also the only one to make it through the log course in one pass.

I’m so proud!  My dad figured out how to check his text messages!

by ·0 Comments

The transfer from the Q6600 running at 2.66 GHz to the Core i7 at 2.66 GHz went smooth. Overclocking the core to 4.2 GHz was effortless but I’ve settled for 3.6 GHz to increase hardware lifetime and allow me to run quieter by not needing to crank up the fans and 8 hours of searching for Mersenne primes over 8 threads has verified system stability. I think the austerity of Windows 7 may help.

Such is my loss. My war against slowness and crapware and unnecessary registry keys defined my relationship with my computer. Much like a couple that breaks up and misses the arguing the lack of conflict in my computing life is disconcerting.

Or at least that’s how I felt until I was in my kitchen, booted up my laptop and tried to make a quick photo edit in Photoshop. After waiting for Photoshop’s startup which I assume involves calculating Graham’s number from first principles followed by the flipbook effect of applying a mask my computation ennui passed.  Just in case I ever again miss technological knuckle dragging I’ve made a user on my new computer that’s identical to my main one except it runs SETI@Home, Folding@Home CPU and GPU apps, Einstein@Home and GIMPS at once.

by ·0 Comments

We have a printer at work that’s slowly dying.  The manual feed tray is held in place by a rubber mallet wedged in place between the printer and a desk.  It prints like a stuttering autistic person, should one page fail, the whole project starts anew, usually to stop again at roughly the same point.

At first I thought this was the cacophonous swan song of a dying workhorse but there may be a typographic labor movement afoot. I was printing a document today and it jammed, not too odd except for I was printing to a PDF file. I suspect the work printers have combined forces with the print drivers and are unionizing. This wildcat strike that has been masquerading as a device problem is only the first wave. I must break the back of this printer-tariat (good one, eh?) uprising before the fax machine and the plotter jump on board.

by ·3 Comments

I’m watching my coworker nearly attack the large, Soviet-style printer to the left of me.  The thing jams like Dizzy Gillespie and no longer faxes.  A coworker commented that this was caused by increased complication of modern gadgets and that he wanted a phone that just made calls and printer that just printed.  Being a child of the 80s and growing up with surly printers like the HP LaserJet II that would only print under a waxing moon or certain tidal periods, I have no problem making the device function.   It is like a child that’s a picky eater and won’t take a ream of paper if the top sheet is off-kilter or toner cartridge isn’t seated just right.  The noise of a properly inserted toner cartridge is that of loading a Thompson submachine gun with a drum of 50 caliber dum-dums.  In the modern office environment is unmistakable.

So my older coworkers are a lost causee, my peers are versed in the ways of hardware-fu but what of our coworkers’ children?  Having grown up in the age of functional printing knowing neither mimeograph nor tempermental laser printers we need to give them the tools to succeed with the next generation of grumpy technologies.  I propose the Fisher-Price My First Printer.  It’ll be large and plastic with easy to identify trays and cartridges with a display that simply shows a happy face everything’s ok and a sad face if something’s jammed or otherwise out of order and will play happy music with bursts of bright light when a printer problem is properly fixed.  Best of all, there’ll be a “at least you tried” feature where the device will provide audible instructions if the operator isn’t able to solve something quickly to avoid early frustration.  Wouldn’t it be great, going up to a printer, having it jam and that experience bringing up memories of a joyful childhood.  That’s the world I want my kids to live in.

by ·4 Comments

Lately I’ve glommed onto the John Carter Theory of Caffeine Equilibrium: The substance is best activated by radical changes in temperature in the body.  Achieving this requires a hot caffeine beverage and a cold caffeine beverage and I’ve taken to a can of diet Mountain Dew tempered with the mediocre our coffee machines accept.  Mind you, I’m not a chronic tea liker, given the choice, I’d take just about any store brand diet cola above $600 a pound Spanish oolong grown in Moslem Andalusia through the ashes of Tartars killed during the Battle of Tours (which I think is impossible), but our facilities folks seemed to have forgotten that people freeze at temperatures above water and its still better than the emitic free coffee.

I approached the machine, pulled out a tea single-serving packet and dropped it into the pouch slot stunning the man next to me microwaving a tea bag.

Him: That makes tea too?  Does it taste ok?
Me: It tastes like tea.
Him: How can you have the same device do both?
Me: It’s just a hot water dispenser with a packet cutting device.
Him: That’s genius, I always wondered where the packets went for my coffee.  I thought you reused them.
Me: Nah, that pull out bin holds the empty ones and has to be emptied once in a while.
Him: How wonderful!  You’ve saved me so much time, you’re probably one of those guys in engineering.
Me: Yeah.  It can even make hot water.

I’m not sure how he was unaware of this feature set as “Coffee”, “Tea” and “Hot Water” are three of the labeled buttons on the device.  I hope he goes back and tells all his marketing chums about his amazing discovery, although I’m not sure if they’re equally dim as they may herald him as a genius more than a twit.  I hope I run into him in a similar situation and then I’ll make hot chocolate with the machine and BLOW HIS MIND!

by ·0 Comments

I’m fine with improbability in movies.  1 in a million shots, superhuman sniping abilities, random things exploding that have no business exploding, I can deal with all of them.  The blatantly impossible, I will not suffer.

Joe and I saw Quantum of Solace and in one part the protagonist his temporary partner jump from a plane and fight to deploy the parachute.  I’m fine with the fact that they happened to extend their fall by dropping into a sink hole, I’m fine with the fact that a plane down an engine was able to climb skyward, I’m fine with the fact that a Douglas DC-3 was able to out maneuver both a helicopter and a SF .260.  But the fact that the parachute was deployed within a second of impact and neither person was harmed enraged me.  Not a f&#%ing scratch.  I litterally yelled in the theatre “he should be a puddle!”

Some other notes from Quantum of Solace:

  • There were six different people listed in the Costuming credits.  It’s James Bond, go to Costco and buy a 24 pack of Tuxedos and you’ll be fine.
  • I want to become a glassmaker in a town filming a Bond film.  So many windows, glass tables, chandeliers, and french doors are destroyed that one could power a small guild.
  • The director shouldn’t receive nearly as much credit as the stunt coordinator.  Anyone who can arrange a chase scene through a cathedral under a church under construction, a horsetrack and the roofs of Milan has far more skill and creative power than Quinton Tarantino.
  • Good thing Bond only subdues people that are the same suit size as him.  Infiltrating a dwarf convention or a symposium on Marfan Syndrome would be impossible.
  • There’s also an end scene I’m miffed at but that’d be a bit of a spoiler.
  • I’m glad I have a better phone than James Bond.
  • The movie has the same amount of plot action of a two hour movie but jams it into 20 minutes of exposition.  I’ve talked to four people about the movie but everyone’s missed 1/2 of what happened.  I had to consult the Wikipedia article during the movie to keep characters straight.

by ·0 Comments

My 2 TB home server has been on the fritz and I’m convinced it’s getting Munchausen Syndrome.  Somehow, the motherboard generates a wailing beep that doesn’t correspond to any normal beep code that’s only placated by rebooting.  It then lost my backups (go entire point of the damn thing!) and corrupted my system backup.  I’m not sure what’s wrong but I’m scared to death to let the thing wail when it’s possibly about to light on fire while deleting everything I hold digital.

So right now, I’m sitting here staring at my computer with a glass of Pepsi Max in one hand and a fire extinguisher in the other knowing that if I fall asleep, the power supply will break, hobgoblins will spill out and individually rape each of the four hard drives that hold my precious 5-Color deck ideas and a meticulously sorted collection of hard-to-find por…. pictures of kittens.  Yes, kittens.  Only another hour before everything transfers to my external hard drive, but that’s Microsoft’s estimate.  As anyone who used Windows 95 or newer knows, that the last 2% of a file transfer take three times longer than the rest combined.

At least if my room lights on fire I already have recovery experience. (Note to self, post pictures of room having lit on fire)

by ·0 Comments

Mike Kramer has found an Atari and really wanted to play it but as stopped by the fact that the beast had an 300 ohm (two wires) adapter rather than the 75 ohm of an F-connector/cable screw in thingy. I asked for a set of rabbit-ear antennas and after befuddling a number of attendants at Circuit City who kept trying to sell me TiVos and digital cable boxes not realizing that television can also be distributed through the lumeniferous ether, I found a shitty one myself. The antenna had a 75 ohm to 300 ohm converter and I mentioned to Mike that I had half a mind just to pocket the damn thing. On the way to checkout, he asked what the part looked like and I popped open the box to show him. It was gone. Looks like someone ran into the same problem and chose to steal it instead. I went back and two of the remaining three antennas were missing the converter too. Atari players of the world, unite!