So after many evolutions, and two minutes-burning cell phone calls to SWCP tech support (who were helpful, anyway), we seem to be back in business: connected to DSL via wireless network.
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The cause of my woes, it appears and I’m actively hoping, was interference by Zonealarm free firewall software. It’s served well in the past, at least apparently. It may’ve been that elephant-repellent thing; I’ve no real way of knowing.
The tech I spoke to on my second call, who had me turn ZA off, assured me software firewalls aren’t too necessary anymore. At least in my case, since my DSL modem comes with a hardware firewall.
Also, after I succeeded in connecting yesterday, I DL’d a new-mark “upgrade” of ZA. Since the phone jack on my notebook computer went out several weeks ago I hadn’t been online with that machine for a long time. So I routinely upgraded the everyday stuff: ZA, AVG antivirus, the Fox, T-bird, and Opera, which I use as an alternate browser. It’s entirely possible the older ZA wouldn’t have screwed me up.
Whether or no, this also allows me (briefly, before I get back to writing real stuff!) to ride another favorite hobbyhorse of mine: my aversion to automatic updates. Yes, the ZA update was entirely knowing and deliberate; mea freakin’ culpa.
It still points up a reason I eschew automatic updates, and generally don’t update at all until I get some kind of feedback on whether the update will do something like switch free software to pay, work worse than the older mark (or not at all), or bust the registry and screw up my machine. All of which have happened to me in the past.
One can’t get complacent even with people who’re generally reliable. A few months ago I installed a new download manager from eMusic, whom I like quite a lot. And it a) had less usability for me than the old version; and b) didn’t actually work.
I should’ve known better because a year or so earlier eMusic had put out a mandatory upgrade that was such a total fiasco they made an updated version of their old DL manager available, which I promptly installed and liked. This time they gave me a choice; I DL’d and installed the new one. And bang.
While the new manager might actually work with broadband – on dialup it would not successfully complete a DL – I mean not one – I won’t go to it despite being nagged whenever I open my old DL manager because it doesn’t do what I want it to do as well as the old version. The eMusic development gnomes appear to’ve gotten all entranced by the idea that I need a browser and an MP3 player. Yeah, like I don’t already have those things. Like about five each. (Okay, I think just three browsers, and Internet Exploiter hardly counts because I do not use it.)
Plus they gave an option to install a new toolbar – yeah, that’s what I need, too: something else getting between me and what I’m really trying to do onscreen. They suckered me into trying it by offering a free daily MP3 – without revealing up front it was one of their choosing. Yes, another thing I can’t live without: filling up my dwindling hard drive space with megabytes from the same crappy garage bands whose unrelenting Friending attempts do so much to make the MySpace experience what it is. By which I mean, Hell.
The toolbar itself offered nothing of value. Except a really suave realtime local-weather monitor. I liked that so much I installed a Firefox add-on called Forecastfox which, while not quite as cool as the eMusic one (so far as I’ve ascertained; haven’t had time or inclination to monkey with all the options yet) serves just fine. Off went the toolbar.
Since I’m in pissin’+moanin’ mode, I note their seem to be trends in insufferable arrogance among software developers. At one point it was all the rage to try to plunk their software into the startup menu. Even on a Win95 machine with about the clock speed of my Palm T|X, that tended to shave off, like, oh, 0.5 seconds from the time it took the program to come up. But it sure did eat up RAM, and slow the damned computer wa-a-ay down!
Then the fad was to have a given program jump all the file associations that were even remotely relevant, so you had to go back and prevent your music player from trying to run all your video files incompetently – if you were lucky and it didn’t take over, say, your spreadsheet files.
These days (along with trying to hang browsers and music players on every goddam thing) the burning hotness is those stupid toolbars. If I installed half of them as wanted it, I’d be writing this on a workspace the size of a postage stamp. Of course a lot of sites – this at least is abating some – insist on using a micrometer font that would fit the whole Bible into a space like that. Maybe there’s some kind of symbiosis going on here?
Woof! Rowr! Grr. Arrgh.
Yes, I decided to take some of my pet peeves out for a run today. They’ve been fed so goddam much lately they need the exercise.
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“The tech I spoke to on my second call, who had me turn ZA off, assured me software firewalls aren’t too necessary anymore.”
Always believe what the techs tell you – Yeah, right.
I had a tech – this was a “house call” – tell me that the cable access line was sufficiently grounded that I shouldn’t need to disconnect my computer from it during thunderstorms. A couple days later, there was one headed my way (I have a small TV pretty much dedicated to the Weather Channel to keep me warned about such things) and I decided *not* to take his word on that, but unplug/disconnect the computer (but not the TVs) anyway.
The storm moved in, there was a fairly nearby lightning strike, and there was a *audible as swell as visible* SNAP! where the cable entered the TV I was watching. That TV survived the incident, but I doubt that my computer would have.
- M. \”/
I do believe this tech. That’s why I went with SWCP. They’re nerds.