bad customer service bad

So…
after recently discovering that no one really knew what they were doing with my camera lens, I got a call yesterday about my other big toy that’s been in for repairs — the laptop. While replacing the case which had been cracking all to hell, they apparently damaged my screen. And since they’re doing all the repairs locally, they have to order in the part and take another 3 days.
Breaking stuff seems to be the easy part. Getting it fixed… not so much.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

Video Game Lessons

I’ve played 3 different video games recently. Two of them had great features I would love to see in more games; and one I could definitely do without.
Just to quickly get the bad out of the way:
I finally got around to playing Darwinia, a game put out by a company whose done some other great games. It’s got an interesting concept, nice graphics, (and once they dumped the gestural interface) was easy to use. BUT… I refuse to let any application call in over the internet to their manufacturer’s servers unless there’s something productive in it for me. And judging from the error messages I get every 30 minutes when the game crashes, it won’t run unless you let it connect. Deleted.
But the good stuff:
I picked up the complete Lego Star Wars. The name pretty much says it all. You get to play through all six movies done up in Legos. There’s a great sense of humor about it all. While it’s easy to play, it’s not simplistic.What I really liked though doesn’t even kick in until you ‘finish’ the game. Once you’ve gone through every mission, and you go back through again, playing different characters, you get access to new tools, capabilities, and areas of the levels that you didn’t have before. Rather than the typical method of going back and refining your game until you could beat any level in your sleep, you’re actually not even finished, and haven’t seen everything yet. It really makes for a more interesting game, spread out over a longer time.
The other game was Homeworld 2. It’s a pretty straightforward sci-fi, space-battle game. The graphics were pretty well done for their time. The 3D navigation was a little rough, (or I was just missing something). And it was WAY too short, with a truly disappointing last mission. But what I loved was the continuity. The exact fleet you built — or at least whatever survives the mission — is what you start the next mission with. Good or bad, this carries through for the entire game. It’s nice to see a game that can handle that kind of flexibility. It saves you from either having to waste time at the start of each mission building up a whole new force or from simply being handed exactly what you’ll need.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

smokin’ CF

Strange.
I tried copying some photos off a CF card I haven’t used in a while. This card has never been used with the newer card reader. No matter what I did, it wouldn’t show up. Then I noticed a “hot” smell, and when I went to pull the card out of the reader, it burned my fingers. It had been in there off any on for less than a minute total.
Works fine in the old card reader. No heat.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

hard drive

to follow up…
I ordered a hard drive today, for the photo back-up thing. I went with a 500 gig external firewire 400 drive.
It also has USB 2, though I don’t intend on using it. When you’re dealing with long, large transfers of data, firewire easily outpaces USB 2, regardless of their specs. I didn’t go the SATA route because my main computer is a MacBook which doesn’t have an expansion slot for the appropriate card needed to connect to the drives.
I went with 500 gigs, because while still being obscenely large, it was a bit more stable than the 1 TB drives. Most reviews on the larger drives make them still sound a bit flakey, which is reasonable considering how new they still are. Even so, I’d guess as a strictly photo-archive, 500 gigs will hopefully last me another year or 2. I calculated that the largest my photo collection could currently be is 140 gigs, but I think realistically it’s gonna be somewhere between 20 and 40, not counting thumbnails and crap.
I picked up a reasonably-well-reviewed drive from Newegg.com for $120 including shipping.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

*ping*ping*ping*ping*

Boohiss. I was thinking of going to MoCCA this year, but it turns out it’s the same weekend as my Texas trip.
So, last night, I found out that, despite my best efforts, the magnets in my stereo speakers have been affecting the screen on my TV. (It became apparent, when I removed the speaker, and the picture went to hell). I then proceeded to somehow snap the pin off my admittedly beat-to-hell power adapter for my laptop. When I fell asleep talking on the phone, I bent the frames on my glasses. And after being woken up by a redundant request for information from a minor client, I noticed my cat was bleeding.
But for some warped reason, I was in a fairly good mood all day. In good cheer, and very mellow. If I had been depressed or down, this kind of day would have just wiped me out. As it was, aside from falling behind in work, it was the best day I’d had in a while. I ran to the Apple store first thing and picked up a new power adapter. (My conscience wouldn’t let me claim it as a warranty repair, since I had practically destroyed the thing previously). I took Pixel in to the vet, and she had, as I suspected, another ruptured anal gland. (Yes, it’s exactly what you think it is). My glasses were fixed with a pair of pliers. And the TV righted itself overnight.
Life balances out. Well… except for my checkbook, which took a more than substantial hit.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

Wrong from the start

My sister is frequently too self-righteous and pig-headed for her own good.
I called to offer her a free computer last night, since I knew of a cache of them being given away. Her immediate response was to rail against Macintoshes. There’s no way she would ever want one. She doesn’t know anything about them. Her husband is an ‘expert’ in Windows, because he is always repairing his mother’s Windows machine. And apparently I am a bad, vain person for offering her one, because not everyone “can be a computer genius”.
Several thoughts:

  1. Last Christmas, I watched her husband, the ‘expert’, take several hours, with the help of his cousins and uncles, figuring out how to download pictures from a digital camera.
  2. So according to my sister, a Windows machine like her mother-in-law’s is better, because it’s more common. Despite the fact that her husband, as she said, is over there constantly fixing it?
  3. Apparently I’ve learned much in recent years, because the last time I gave her a Macintosh, she got rid of it because she refused to believe me when I told her she could get online with it. Now, though, I’m a computer genius.
  4. Best of all… I never offered her a Macintosh. I offered her a computer. There are a couple Windows machines in the cache being given away.

But by the end, when she finishes up a five minute rant by insulting me for offering her a free computer, well… she can kiss my ass. I briefly considered sending her the Windows machine with a little note saying “I didn’t offer you a Mac”. But that idea was quickly discarded when it occurred to me that my sister of all people wouldn’t have the grace or humility to feel bad about the way she treated me. She’d just complain that it was too old or didn’t come with whatever. She can go spend a $1,000 of her own money, which I know she damn well doesn’t have.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!