Sense of Adventure » technology

New look, with dinos

Victor — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:48:37 +0000

Whaddaya think? Shiny, yes?

Behold the power and the glory of the Atahualpa theme. It’s so powerful I seem to’ve barely scratched its potential for customization. And it’s so user-friendly that – well, look.

However, what WordPress just did to me is inexcusable. I logged in less than an hour ago. Then when I tried to save the next paragraph I wrote here, it made me log in again – and lost what I’d just written. Bullshit, WordPress. (It’s in tune with the rest of the last 24 hours on the tech front; see below.)

As I was trying to say … question for you: do you find the page loading slowly now? It seems to on my middlin’-fast DSL. Then again, that seemed to start happening when I installed the Tweet This WordPress Plugin for Twitter.

I snagged some nifty dinosaur art from Wikimedia Commons. Then I took a slice from each image to drop in the new theme’s Headers directory. I even managed to get Ol’ Horny, my Blue Triceratops Head logo, up there at the top. The effect pleases me. You? (And thanks to Happy Curmudgeon for already casting a favorable vote on Twitter.)

So today I was going to get a lot of writing done on Deathlands before hopping online. First I decided to burn off a CD of the directory where I keep my writings for security’s sake, as Joe urged me to do. It’d sting to lose the newly-finished draft of The Dinosaur Lords to a disk crunch.

And what I found was that the CD-burner program that comes with WinXP is especially handy for transforming blank CDs into coasters.

Frustrated with that I went online in search of a nice – yes, and free – program that’d actually work. And encountered the second Tech Pissoff of the day.

I belong to the Amazon Associates program – as no doubt you’ve noticed thanks to the less-than-subtle (I hope, anyway) hints I pepper my posts with suggesting you consider buying stuff through this site. I realized yesterday I needed to change my email address, since the old one’s going away soon.

It turned out the process is what seems to me unnecessarily complicated: you have to invite your new email address in as a new user, accept it, and then delete your old account. Worse news: it doesn’t work that way. Not for me, anyway.

Here’s the message I sent the Amazon support team:

I’m trying to change my primary email address. I follow your instructions and invite my new email address. I get the email at my my new email address. I follow instructions to confirm my new email address. And when I get to the “Add a New User” page it shows an “outstanding invitation” to my old email address.

I’ve tried this twice now. Same result both times. Effort wasted.

Since it’s apparently impossible to change my primary email address using your online method, how can I change it, please?

A little tart, perhaps. But I’m getting pretty gorged on things not working.

So in my inbox I find this gem waiting from Amazon.com Customer Service:

I’m sorry for the trouble you’re having trying to change your primary e-mail address. For security reasons, we do need you to make this change yourself.

What you’ll first want to do is decline the invitation that was sent to your old e-mail address and try starting over. Make sure you send the invitation to your new e-mail address.

For your reference, I’ve included the instructions again…

And it then proceeded to reiterate the procedure I’d followed unsuccessfully.

Okay, help me out here, please, if you’d be so kind. In my original message, would you please point out to me where I invited my old email address? Because it sure looks to me as if the helpful Amazon.com Customer Service team told me to try the very procedure I was complaining didn’t work.

Just for S’s & G’s I tried it again. And for what was then the fourth time, it failed. Surprise!

I sent a brisk response. We’ll see if it elicits something more than a boilerplate response from some drone who scanned the first line or two of my first post for keywords and hit a button.

Has anybody else had this problem?

In connection with this, for months I labored under the apprehension that nobody had actually bought anything through my Amazon Associates links. Then I happened to click through from the monthly email statements and discovered that, no, some of you in fact have been buying through my site all along. Thanks!

The amount due to me just hadn’t yet hit the $100 level that triggers an actual payment. But thank you, my readers, for your kind and generous efforts to support this site.

Speaking of kind and generous … I’ve been eating out a lot the last few days on the generosity of friends buying me meals to celebrate the completion of DinoLords. I mentioned Steve Kubica doing it Friday at Nothing But Noodles. Sunday Joe bought me late breakfast at VI, and then Larry bought dinner at Los Cuates. Thanks very much to all of you.

Moreover Saturday night John and Gail Miller hosted a movie night, and grilled us excellent steaks. Steve and Jan Stirling brought one of Steve’s exceptional salads, and Lynn Kaczor brought a fine cake. Turned out to be a birthday cake: it was John’s birthday, which I had crassly spaced out. Sorry, and Happy Birthday, bug guy!

(Per request I brought garlic bread. Bought the bread at Smith’s; it’s not bad and they bake it daily. Then I cut it into chunks, slathered it with butter, and added about a clove of crushed garlic per chunk. I’m serious about my garlic.)

We watched Balls of Fury, the 2007 Enter the Dragon parody that substitutes ping-pong for gongfu, starring Christopher Walken as the villain (in Chinese drag) and a long time fave of mine, James “Lo Pan” Hong. Oh, and Maggie Q – can’t forget her; wouldn’t want to. (Her real name is Maggie Denise Quigley. Guess I don’t hold the stage-name against her.)

So that was good. And writing about it reminded me not to let minor annoyances fuck with my serenity. Bonus.

Revenge of the nerds

Victor — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 03:17:56 +0000

I’m looking to make the long-deferred move to broadband, simply because the Heartbreak of Dialup™ has become too, well, heartbreaking. Plus on those occasions I actually need to use the Net in the course of my occupation (it happens) it’s no more rewarding or useful to spend minutes waiting for a page to load than when I’m screwing off as usual.

Nerds! Nerds! And I'm glad to see 'em!

My all-wise (on matters telephonic and web-related, anyway; he’s mostly wise, otherwise) pal Larry uttered to me the dictum: “No matter what, you’re gonna wind up getting Internet from someone you hate.” Given that my choices are Comcast and The Phone Company, that’s a pretty good guess. Therefore what remains is that key cost/hatred coefficient.

So far TPC is coming out ahead. With a twist: while I can get the whole package, DSL + ISP, from them, what I’m looking at is Southwest Cyberport as my ISP. It comes highly recommended by various friends I regard highly, including both Larry and Joe.

Some of my other friends, who will remain nameless, expressed reservations. SWCP doesn’t appear to offer 24/7 tech support (neither, in my experience, does TPC, but let it go.) So am I sure I want to go with SWCP?

Following a visit to them today, I say Hell, yes! Here’s why.

I walk in the door, and what do I see? Nerds.

Walk into The Phone Company office, what do you see? Peppy preppies and suits, right?*

What would you rather see at your ISP? Dapper corporate types? Or dudes with weird beards and clothes that looked as if they happened to be within arm’s reach when they got up to go to work, and women wearing sweaters that look as if they were knitted by blind aunts from unraveled Army blankets?

No contest, right? Give me the latter. Every time.

Important Addendum: no offense, SWCP guys, gals. I mean, seriously? Just having a little joke, here. This is pretty clearly a pro-nerd post, yes? I’m pro-nerd. Totally. I mean, some of my best friends … including all the ones alluded to above. So don’t go channeling my confidential personal data to Abkhazia if I sign up with you, pretty please?

… I realize I’m coming perilously close to violating my own dictum here: never get crosswise of people who are going to be out of your line of sight with your food.

The fact is, they were nice nerds I encountered at SWCP (though gods know what they’ve got chained next to the servers. Then again, that’s industry standard.) Believe it or not, that’s not an oxymoron, either. I even knew a drop-dead gorgeous female nerd, once upon a time.

(I ran into her unexpectedly at NASFiC last year. Even though she’s got to be in her fifties, let’s just say that, no matter how discriminating your taste, if you happened upon a picture of her naked, you wouldn’t look away any too quickly. The same, sadly, cannot be said for me. Then again, it never could. So there’s that.)

There are some financial ramifications to be worked out. I’m trying to save money at the same time as I get, y’know, usable Internet service. So I’ve got to roll those around in my head a while. But I need to make some moves pretty quickly, and the broadband break has got to be one of them.

The picture, by the way, is the immortal Donald Gibb in his definitive role as Ogre in Revenge of the Nerds (hit the title or the pic to buy!) I liked him in Bloodsport too. And whaddaya know? He went to the University of New Mexico. Also he’s one day younger than I am. Poor bastard.

*Full disclosure: I have no actual idea if that’s really what I’d see at a TPC office; I’m guessing. I don’t go into offices unless I have no goddam choice. For example, I resist going to the doctor unless 1) there’s broken bone sticking out somewhere; 2) there’re things visibly crawling around beneath my skin; 3) my temperature exceeds 100°. Centigrade.

Bombay Calling!

Victor — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:43:18 +0000

But first, since we needs more graphics on this site, and also since I’ve been dying to post this:

Japan welcomes its robot overlords

Hat tip to Katherine Mangu-Ward at reason.

What’s it got to do with the subject of this post? Well, accomplished rationalizer that I am (it’s a living), I could spin you a mighty explanation about how it pertains to technology and globalization in our modern world. The truth: nothing!

And yes, I know we’re now supposed to call it Mumbai, not Bombay. Bear with me. And always remember: we do digression right! And by “right,” I mean “compulsively.”

What this is all really about is that my phone, hence Internet, service blinked out an hour or two ago. Yes, I suffer from the Heartbreak of Dial-Up. A connection I need to correct here, directly. *Sigh*: it still must wait its turn.

I had no dial tone, either inside the house or at the box in the back. To quote Mojo Jojo, “Curses.” So I called Qwest tech support.

Which connected me with a rather obviously Indian gentleman. That’s subcontinental, not American. After hearing my piteous plaint, he asked if I’d tried calling my landline from my cell phone.

“No,” I admitted. “There didn’t seem much point if I didn’t get a dial tone.”

So he bade me Hold while he called, and I Held, and lo! the phone did ring.

The first time I picked it up I got nothing – although I also didn’t get that utter leaden anechoic deadness when the line is just plain out. I hung up. The phone rang again, and this time I had a connection!

So we’re back in business for now. And I have to get broadband. Arrgh!

Anyway, the reason I named the post as I did is that the incident put me in mind of a classic rock song which you’ve never heard of, “Bombay Calling,” by the sadly overlooked late 1960s/early 1970s group It’s a Beautiful Day. It’s great in itself, a smokin’ four miunute instrumental. Moreover it provided the inspiration (by which I think they meant, “all of the notes”) for one of my all-time favorite songs: Deep Purple’s classic “Child in Time,” which I’m listening to as I type this.

Yes, kids, I know dinosaurs and humans didn’t walk the Earth at the same time. I’d remember.

So anyway – that’s what’s happening. Now to put on pants (“Welcome to TMI Theatre!”), grab Emma, and head out to the Nature Center for a walk while there’s still some daylight yet.