by Keith Fenske
January to October 2006
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by Keith Fenske January to October 2006 |
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This archive file contains the following stories that first appeared in "Bloggo - The Non Blog" between January and October 2006:
The presentation here differs from the original because this file makes less use of cascading style sheets: font sizes and spacing are relative to the defaults chosen by your browser. The contents are copyright © 2006 by Keith Fenske with all rights reserved.
Friday, January 6th. I was walking with my cousin's son, who grew up in the city of Calgary, and we were walking in the business section of a small town while waiting for a funeral. (People may be dead, but you still have to wait on them. Ouch. Bad joke.) Someone on this side of the street was having a conversation with someone on the other side. You don't see that every day in the city, noted my cousin's son. Closer to the corner, another cousin's husband and their daughter drove by in a van, slowing down with the window open. "Hey! How are you doing?" You know, that was just the right thing to say.
I had measured the necessary length as 63 feet, with ups and downs and ins and outs. I bought a 75-foot cable. That should have left 12 extra feet, or 6 feet on each end. There was maybe two feet each way when I was done. I don't know where the error was. I thought I'd overestimated slightly on each section. It never occurred to me, until now, to measure the actual cable. Perhaps it wasn't the full 75 feet. More likely, I should have followed the old carpenter's advice: measure twice and cut once.
Why spend two hours running one network cable when a wireless network can be set up in half the time? Because I don't like wireless networks. Even properly done, they tend to disconnect two or three times during a full day of hard internet surfing. Wired networks are much more reliable, and generally work until somebody shoots them. A limiting factor in this house was the location of the two computers. Nice, comfortable offices for each one. What was between them was scary: a furnace, a washing machine, and a clothes drier. That's lots of metal, the worst thing for a wireless connection that operates on "line of sight" transmission, plus one very large source of interference (RF noise from the furnace motors).
Thursday, January 26th. The wacky winter weather continues. Yesterday we reached a high temperature of just a fraction under ten degrees Celsius (approx. 50 degrees Fahrenheit), when the average daytime high is just over minus ten degrees (14 F). That's almost 20 Celsius degrees above normal (36 Fahrenheit degrees)! Today is rain, freezing rain, and snow.
(Temperatures vary depending upon where you measure them in the city. The city center tends to be a couple degrees warmer than the outskirts.)
Friday, January 27th. Clients often don't understand the cost of what they are asking for:
Saturday, January 28th. Went for a walk, got three feet off the driveway and fell down. Damn those sidewalks are slippery today!
Definition of a "black hole" manager: information flows in one direction only -- inward -- until there is a cosmic explosion and a burst of negative energy erupts. (Petiracco, alias Keith Fenske, February 2006)
Tuesday, February 7th. I was adding a computer to a residential wireless network in a condominium complex, and found that the router was on the second floor of a wood-frame building, didn't have any security features turned on, and was broadcasting to the entire neighborhood. It doesn't matter how much free advice is available on web pages, how well the owner's manual is written, or how easy the "fast, easy setup" is, most people just don't read directions until after they have a problem.
Monday, March 6th. At my local branch of the CIBC, some bank machines have stickers that say those ABM/ATM will dispense $20 and $50 bills for cash withdrawals. The other machines? Well, I found that they are missing the sticker: they also dispense $50 bills if you ask for an amount suitable for that denomination. The standard requests are for $20, $40, $60, $80, $100, and $200. I used to go for the nice even number of $100, back in the old days of yore when bank machines were piled with twenty-dollar bills. The fifties are awkward. Most of my cash expenses are for small amounts; anything bigger and I use a credit card. Stores don't like $50 bills, or hundreds. People don't like fifties. The $100 bills are popular in the underground economy where goods and services are bought without receipts and without paying taxes. (The Bank of Canada says it doesn't receive many old $100 bills in exchange for new bills.) To avoid the dreaded fifties, I now withdraw $80 at a time. Today I needed more, so I made two withdrawals of $80. Lots of twenties, no fifties, allowing me to pay for several different purchases in cash. I've asked the bank if there are any statistics on the amounts people choose to withdraw, or if there is an indication that people avoid amounts that might dispense $50 bills. I'll let you know what they say if they reply. (They did reply within a day, but consider this information to be confidential. You can download detailed annual reports, if you wish.)
Sunday, March 19th. A whole lotta snow in the past two days: more than 8 inches (20 cm), and it ain't that light, fluffy stuff we get in cold weather. The temperature was just below freezing, so the snow had some weight, and it's slippery when packed together. I got stuck in front of my house before I could drive to the gas station to buy gas for the snow blower. One of those ironies in life that you just have to laugh at. My neighbors found it funny too. 'Course they helped me get going, then when I got back, we cleared the road in front and the alley behind. It was the Attack of the Neighborhood Snow Blowers for most of the afternoon.
The problem with bad habits is that, after a while, you start to think of them as normal and accepted behavior. (Keith Fenske, September 2000, in reference to poor or stupid drivers)
Tuesday, May 9th. There are now over 200 completely bogus web sites that reference my name, with randomly-generated pages full of garbage content that pollutes the internet, serving only to confuse search engines and feed advertisements or worse. Of the sites that I don't recognize, less than 20 are legitimately linking to me because of my content. (I do have a number of good help pages, if I must say so myself.) Also, as expected, my sample solutions to Java programming assignments are being picked up and copied. I've been tracking this for a while and see that my programs have made it onto "cheat" sites for bad students. To quote my own Java web pages, "The source code for this applet is available, although writing a similar Java program is an assignment for students, and I'm sure that some students won't do their own homework." Looks like some of those students are even too lazy to look for something to steal!
Thursday, May 11th. Fallacies in reasoning. "You don't need to water grass when it's green." Wrong: in hot, dry weather, the grass is green because you water it. If you stop, the grass will turn brown. "That's okay: you can leave your shoes on; the house doesn't get dirty." Not if someone else cleans when you aren't there. The first is an example in not being able to distinguish cause from effect. The second is ignorance: knowing less than you think you do.
Friday, May 12th. I went to see the movie
"Ice Age: The Meltdown"
(2006) today. Like most sequels, it's forgettable. The computer
graphics are better and more detailed than the original "Ice
Age" (2002), but the story is just a wandering continuation of the
original movie. I felt the same disappointment after liking "Toy
Story" (1995) but not "Toy
Story 2" (1999), and "Shrek"
(2001) but not "Shrek 2"
(2004). I am looking forward to "Monster
House" (2006),
where some children find that their neighbor's house is a living, breathing
monster. I think they filmed it from across the street.
Update (Wednesday, August 2nd): I don't know what to make of this movie ("Monster House"). It certainly won't appeal to a very wide audience. It's not a children's movie; it's not an adult movie; and it doesn't have anything that teenagers want.
"You can't help someone who won't first do something to help themselves." (Keith Fenske, May 2006, a comment on people that expect you to do everything for them, while they do nothing. Hardly an original idea, but the phrasing is somewhat unique. Yes, the correct grammar would be "himself". See also December 7th.)
| punched cards | until late 1970's | Punched paper cards were perhaps the first standard media. Their influence was so strong that even today, many coding applications default to a column width of 80 characters. Punched cards disappeared quickly once mainframe computers started accepting on-line users via terminals. Not too many people know what a "Hollerith code" is these days. |
| magnetic tape | 1950's to late 1980's | Magnetic tape reels were almost all 1/2-inch wide with densities that reached 6250 BPI (bits per inch). The most common format was 9-track tape with 1600 BPI in lengths of 2400 feet, holding about 30 megabytes (MB) of data. Capacity varied greatly, depending upon record sizes and inter-record gaps. |
| floppy disks | 1980's to early 2000's | Ignoring the 8-inch and 5.25-inch floppy disks, the 3.5-inch high-density floppy disk (1.44 MB) survived for such a long time because there were too many other competing formats, none of which were fully accepted by the marketplace. |
| CDs | starting early 1990's | The cost of CD recording limited data CDs to a large-volume distribution media until the mid 1990's, when they became an affordable form of storage, holding 650 then 700 MB. It is questionable whether DVDs can be said to be as good of a standard, since there are competing formats. |
| USB drives | starting late 1990's | This category includes all external disk drives based on the Universal Serial Bus protocol (see below). The USB 2.0 interface dominates the external device market, far more so than the similar FireWire interface. |
The first four categories are specifications for the physical media, on the assumption that the media alone is transported from one computer to another. Each computer has its own device for reading and writing the media. The last category changes this relationship. The USB protocol specifies only how the interface responds between the computer and the storage device. It does not specify the size, speed, or operation of the storage device. Hence, the device can have any capacity, from a few bytes to gigabytes. The device can be for any purpose (camera, disk, lab equipment, printer, etc), so long as it follows the USB communication protocol. Further, if the device acts like a disk drive, the computer will accept it as an external disk drive, even if it has never seen that particular device before. Your digital camera pretends to be an external USB disk drive when transferring the image files. The computer doesn't need to know the brand or model of the camera. The image files are also in a format (JPEG) that is recognized by most software.
The shift away from media standards to interface standards allows for a far greater number of devices, and allows the interface standard to remain current far longer, because it won't become obsolete as quickly as each type of media will.
Wednesday, May 17th. Thirty degrees in May (30.7 Celsius, 87.3 Fahrenheit). Weird. Two months ago, I couldn't drive because of heavy snow on the roads. Today everything is baking to death. The average high temperature for this day is 17.7°C (63.9°F), and the previous record high was 28.7°C in 1980. In case you're curious, today's low temperature was 12.7°C, the average low is 4.9°C, and the record low was -3.9°C in 1888. (Numbers courtesy of The Weather Network.)
"People tell you what you want to hear, long before you hear what they want to say." (Keith Fenske, May 2006)
Sunday, May 28th. Had some fun on eBay this weekend. First there was a black-and-white laser printer up for auction, then a memory upgrade, then a toner cartridge. All three were available at the same time, in that order, from sellers inside Canada (no taxes or customs duties). Total cost including shipping was CA$200 or US$180. If everyone delivers as promised, a big "if" on eBay as you know, then I'll have a PCL 5e/6 and PostScript printer with excellent paper handling and rated for more pages per month than I'll ever use, because the printer isn't for me. The printer is for the church, to replace or sit alongside an old color inkjet that prints about one page every half hour. The new printer does 15 pages per minute at 1200 DPI resolution. Since this printer is the same as mine, parts and supplies are the same, which is easier for me.
Tuesday, May 30th. This has been the shortest dandelion season in recent memory. Spring begins with a few weeks
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Tuesday, June 13th. I went to the bank and ... oh, what's the point. Does anyone really like their bank? For all the talk about improving customer service, they are more and more difficult to deal with, and you need about $5000 on deposit in an interest-bearing account just to pay for the service fees.
Wednesday, June 14th. Junior Bunny showed up here last night. He was *so* cute! He sat there completely motionless in the flower bed, the normal defensive reaction of young rabbits. Sorry, no photos; I don't want to scare him away.
Tuesday, July 4th. Another all-time record high temperature today: 32.9°C (91.2°F). I wonder how many of these extreme weather conditions we will have this year? The promise of possible thunderstorms dissipated, along with possible water from heavy rain.
Validation works by checking your software's product key again, to make sure that the key was issued by Microsoft and that the same product key isn't being used more than its license allows. (OEM software can only be installed on one machine. Retail software can be installed more than once, maybe three or five times before activation complains. Corporate product keys are subject to the limits of the license agreement.) This isn't me and it isn't you. A typical user doesn't know how to bypass the first two steps (product key and activation). Most computer shops, hackers, and IT support staff do know how to clone a system by installing it once on one computer, then duplicating all files onto similar computers with the same hardware. This is a normal and accepted practice in corporate environments for deploying large numbers of computers. See Norton Ghost (version 2003 preferred) or Acronis True Image.
In other words, Microsoft's new validation scheme is going after people far removed from what you are doing, and if you find this scheme annoying, then you have cause for complaint. At first, the "Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Tool" (KB892130) was optional and appeared if you wanted to download bonus software from Microsoft. Then it became required to run Windows Update manually (the only way to properly see what software updates are available for your edition of Windows, such as after the first time Windows is installed). To a certain extent, this validation was still optional because you could let Windows automatically download critical security updates without manually running Windows Update.
In approximately April 2006, a confusing twin appeared called "Widows Genuine Advantage Notification / Notifications" (KB905474) and is listed as a high-priority update for Windows XP. This doesn't do anything good for you. Its only purpose is to nag you to death if your copy of Windows isn't found to be genuine. It runs every time your system starts up (confirmed), and perhaps once a day after that (not confirmed). This makes sense only to a large, intrusive company like Microsoft. If someone has an illegal copy of Windows, and they know it's illegal, then they certainly aren't going to go on-line and attempt to validate their illegal copy. If they don't know it's illegal, then being told once is more than enough (which is what the "Windows Genuine Advantage Validation" already does). If it is legal, then checking again and again is like being presumed guilty every day, until you prove otherwise. Judging from the number of updates to this "notification" software (more than one a month), and comments posted on the internet, its accuracy is less than perfect, and has been causing problems for legitimate users, so much so that you can find detailed instructions on how to defeat it.
If you always manually update your copy of Windows XP (and hence have already completed the supposedly optional "Windows Genuine Advantage Validation" procedure), you can disable the critical update for "Widows Genuine Advantage Notification". Windows Update will, of course, scream at you that you've disabled something really, really important, but at least the notification part won't be downloaded without your consent. If you automatically update your copy of Windows XP, and you happen to catch the "updates are ready" balloon before they are installed, and you do a "Custom" install instead of an "Express" install, then you can similarly disable it. In practical terms, it's already on most Windows XP computers and Microsoft doesn't give a way of uninstalling it. So much for being optional! Microsoft has abused their* position of trust (for supplying necessary updates) to install spyware on almost all Windows XP computers.
There are perfectly good reasons (as explained above) for wanting to enforce legitimate software. However, I can't help but feel that this is one step away from becoming an evil empire. Maybe I've watched too many science fiction movies, or not enough with a happy ending.
[* Grammar: I just love collective nouns that are singular and plural at the same time! On a similar note, can anyone tell me why writing "people who" sounds better than "people that" in certain circumstances, such as when the subordinate clause describes an attribute, not an action? The best explanation I've been able to come up with is whether you want to "objectify" or "personify" a noun. I'll ask Doug F. and see what he says. (Later,) Doug says that I can continue my merry ways because adjectival subordinate clauses really do change depending upon whether the antecedent is viewed as animate or inanimate. I'm just glad I'm not making things up, especially inanimate people! Thanks, Doug.]
Get something good. This year's special bargains are last year's leftover hardware, and are old before you even get them. Give new computers to those that need them the most. I know that managers are important, and have nice offices on upper floors, but unless they really use their computers, you are much better off giving new machines to people that do real work, like the secretary. Don't shuffle machines around the office -- replace them and dispose of the old computers safely after erasing or removing the hard drives -- because each user screws up a computer in their own way, and after a computer has been in several offices, it barely functions from accumulated debris.
Cleaning up old computers is practical if the problems are small, or if you aren't paying for the labor. My own "Fenske's Rule of Upgrades" is to replace one item such as a disk drive or add more memory, to think about two items, but to dump the old computer and buy a new one if you need three or more things changed. If the hardware is good but the software is messed up, then it becomes a matter of time. How many hours are you willing to pay for to re-install Windows, the device drivers, and all application software? Without any guarantee that your personal files can be saved and restored? The typical time for this is 5 to 10 hours, longer as the machine gets older (more likely that the original setup discs/disks and owner's manuals have been misplaced, harder to find up-to-date drivers, etc). Unknown computers received in salvage need several days of testing before you can be confident that they will perform correctly.
Old office computers always seem to need at least CA$200 in purchases (CD-R/RW drive, more memory, sound card, upgrade to Windows XP, etc) before we can give them away, even to children in a home environment. Some models are just garbage. In an office, when faced with a repair bill of over CA$400 for an old computer, it makes more sense to buy a something new. CA$1200 pays for a really good tower plus Windows (no application software); CA$800 buys less capacity but is acceptable for limited duty, so long as that duty doesn't change over the computer's lifetime.
Oh, and if you have an old computer that is still doing its job well, keep it. One office has a Windows 95 machine sending FAXes, and Windows 95 is better at that than either Windows 98 or Windows ME, oddly enough. Buying a new Windows XP machine to send the same FAXes would make no sense.
Previous
articles on this topic:
Sunday, July 23rd. Yesterday was another all-time record high
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Sunrise this morning had "dry thunder" with lots of noise but only enough rain to wet the ground. A high of 34.1°C surpassed the 1959 record of 33.3°C. You don't need to be a meteorologist to know that tomorrow's low temperature won't drop below -1.7°C (28.9°F in 1918).
"Japan has a ritualized form of politeness. Since others do not share the same assumptions about correct behavior, Japanese tend to find foreigners rude and insulting, as do foreigners with the Japanese." (Keith Fenske, July 2006. This could be said about any society whose rules of conduct are "closed" and have less tolerance for other points of view.)
Friday, July 28th. Back-to-school advertising in July? That's as bad as Christmas advertising in October. Some retailers have no scruples. Please don't scare children with the end of a summer that isn't half over. Let them play! Classes start soon enough. Summer holidays are meant to be a break from a 24-hour-a-day student life.
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To use a photo commercially (such as in advertising), you need an agreement with the owner (the copyright holder), and you need assurance that any identifiable person in the photo will allow the photo to be used. Photographers call this a "model release" where participants agree in writing usually in exchange for a payment of money. Lawyers call this a lawsuit, usually for much more money, if you don't get the details correct before publication. An "identifiable person" can be extended to include animals and places, and imitations of famous people are also disallowed. (I'm not a lawyer, so don't take my words here as a definition of the law.)
News photographers have less of a requirement for getting permission, when they take photos of genuine news stories. I don't mean sensational tabloid stories about the lives of movie stars. I mean real events that affect other people for good or for bad. If a reporter identifies himself and briefly interviews someone (for example, by asking their name and their opinion of the event), and that person responds positively, then a casual form of permission has been granted. Of course, there will always be times when reporters and photographers simply don't know who the people are, such as during wars or other disasters.
I'm not a commercial photographer and I'm not a news photographer. However, this web page (and all other web pages) are a form of publication. By putting a photo on this page, I am putting the photo somewhere that the public can see it. There are no restrictions on who can read this web page. If I put a photo on this page, from someone that does not want other people to see their photo, then they will be angry and I may get myself in trouble. The same applies to every other web page on the internet, both photos and words, no matter how "personal" you may think your web page is, or how few people read the page.
At the festival today, there were singers and dancers performing a stage show. This show was open to the public (free admission), in a public place (the park), and the performers knew that many people in the audience had cameras. Those pictures I can put here, in an article about the festival, so long as the photos don't portray anyone in a bad light. If I were a news photographer, I could publish the photos in a newspaper or TV story about the festival; I wouldn't have to interview anyone, but I should identify the performers correctly. I can't use the same photos commercially in advertising. For that, I would need permission from the performers, and since many of them are children, I would also need permission from their parents. On the other hand, if I give copies of my photos to the performers, and give them my permission, they could use the photos in their own advertising. They could even make posters and sell the posters -- if I give my permission. I'm not that generous. This is a community event, and they will want copies for their friends and families, far more copies than I want to deal with (because making reprints is a pain), so I will give them some prints, a CD with scanned images good enough to make more reprints but not enlargements, and my permission to reproduce the photos for personal use only.
The volunteers at the food tent and the arts-and-crafts tent are in a different category than the performers at a stage show. Yes, they are in a public place. Yes, they are dealing directly with the public. But they didn't come to the festival with the expectation that they would be immortalized on film. They knew I was taking pictures, and they knew I was supposed to be taking pictures, but they don't know anything about this web page. All they know is that I was taking pictures for the organizers. So that's all I can do with most of their pictures: give them to the organizers or keep copies in my own photo album. A few photos, the more public photos, those I can show here. Behind-the-scenes photos will stay hidden.
The day ended in the middle of the fifth roll of film. I was about ready to quit taking photos anyway. There comes a point when you're repeating yourself. I had taken pictures of most of the volunteers, and had already finished one stage show and was in the middle of a second show by the same performers, when the battery in my camera body died. The spare battery didn't work. A friend was nearby, with a similar model of camera, but with a different type of battery. I nursed my first battery through a few more photos -- by removing it and holding it in my hands to warm it up -- then used what little power remained to rewind the fifth roll of film. I had more film, and three sets of batteries for the flash, but my battery (that is, my enthusiasm) and the camera's battery finished at about the same time. I packed up my camera, bid farewell to the pavilion, walked casually through the park, and boarded a special bus for this festival that dropped me off two blocks from my home.
For more
information on legal rights and wrongs, see Dan Heller's lively web page
Model
Releases (United States, from his "Photography Business Series") or
search
on Google for the two words "model release".
The first and most important step is to regularly empty the trash by right clicking on the "Deleted Items" folder and left clicking on the "Empty 'Deleted Items' Folder" item. See also the Edit menu.
The second step is to reclaim space from old messages: File menu, Folder, Compact All Folders. See also the Tools menu, Options item, Maintenance tab.
This only gets you so far. If you save a lot of messages with large attachments such as pictures, then eventually your mailboxes will become too big. Outlook Express doesn't normally show you the size of each message; you have to ask for that by right clicking on the column headers, left clicking on Columns, and selecting the Size item. This is the same place where you can add or remove other columns from the message list, and rearrange their order.
Outlook Express never shows you the total size of each mailbox folder. To see that, follow the instructions on this support page. It helps to know what a kilobyte is (one KB is 1024 bytes), a megabyte (one MB is 1024 KB), and for some people, a gigabyte (one GB is 1024 MB). The size of the physical memory or "RAM" on your computer can be found by right clicking on the "My Computer" icon on your desktop and left clicking on Properties. If you don't have a "My Computer" icon on your desktop, you can get the same information from Control Panel, System icon.
E-mail programs are for sending and receiving e-mail. They aren't for archiving large amounts of data (files). Some programs are better than others, but seriously, you should learn to save the larger files (photos, videos, scanned documents, etc) separately, not keep them as attachments in your e-mail folders.
Sunday, August 13th. Fearless prediction time: Windows Vista will be released in early 2007 with an intense sales campaign lasting six months. Then Microsoft will admit that Vista runs better on 64-bit hardware than 32-bit hardware, followed by six months of selling new hardware, only to discover that software drivers aren't ready. Six months after that, and one "service pack" (bug fix) later, we'll see stable and good Windows Vista systems in late 2008. Microsoft Office 2007 will confuse the world by introducing new and incompatible file formats.
These printers have a regular maintenance cycle of 25,000 pages where the following items are to be replaced: transfer roller, pickup roller, paper separation pad and subpads, fuser assembly. As near as I can tell, none of this work has been done. The printer was run past two duty cycles and disposed of when it caused too much trouble. Using a supplied toner cartridge and also a known good cartridge, I found that toner wasn't being fused to the page for at least one inch on the right side. Testing by printing an entirely black page made quite a mess from loose toner, in the printer and on my fingers. This is visible on test pages that the seller included with the printer, if you know what to look for, so the problem existed before the printer was shipped. The transfer roller and the fuser assembly are worn and/or damaged. The cost of these parts and the labor to install them is at least double what I paid for the printer. I would never have bid on this printer if I had known the true page count.
The broken side panel is easily replaceable, at a cost of somewhere from US$12.24 to over $100, depending upon who you believe on the internet. (Our local printer shop can give me a more accurate price.) However, this isn't worth doing so long as the printer engine itself is bad.
I have offered the seller two choices. The first option is to send another printer of the same model that does not have these problems or any other problems. The second option is to refund my purchase price and cost of shipping. The printer was not fully tested, is not in good physical condition, and the seller misrepresented the page count. In my opinion, the broken printer isn't worth the cost of shipping it back to the seller. So far, the seller has chosen not to reply. This may be another of those nasty eBay purchases that waste time and money.
A reply was received. The difference in page count? They say they had four units and when I asked, they gave me the page count on the best unit. Between the time I asked and the auction ended, the three better units were sold (according to them), so they shipped me the worst unit. Did they have four items on eBay? No, only one. I said their quote was a promise, and if they couldn't keep their promise, then they shouldn't have accepted my money. As for the defective fuser, they say they don't warrant "consumable" items. Yet on this printer, only the toner cartridge is replaceable by the user. The fuser and transfer roller require disassembly of the printer -- that is, by a qualified technician -- and can hardly be considered "consumable" items. No comment was received on the broken side panel or missing power cord. No offer to replace those. No suggestion that the seller is willing to do something so that I have a working printer, or to give a refund. Just a bland disclaimer of no responsibility.
A second round of e-mail went no better. The seller seems to think that if he can poke one hole in my words, then my entire complaint will be invalidated. He avoids issues that he can't argue (missing power cord, broken side panel), and the more we discuss this, the farther we get from the real problem that this printer won't print properly. The printer has been repacked in its original shipping box and is on its way back to the seller. The eBay/PayPal dispute and refund procedure has begun.
Update (Wednesday, September 6th). Despite being told that the printer had been returned, and being given a tracking number to prove this, eBay/PayPal wants me to get a repair estimate from an independent third party. If I don't do this within ten days, they will cancel my claim. This complaint is now entering the realm of the absurd. I did provide a detailed explanation by FAX, long distance at my expense, with copies of previous e-mail messages to show that I was unable to resolve this with the seller.
Update (Thursday, September 7th). PayPal issued a full refund of the purchase price plus original shipping, and deducted this amount from the seller's account. I pay for the return shipping, which I can accept. The seller has his printer, I have most of my money, and we both lose equally on shipping. For all my grumbling, eBay/PayPal did settle in my favor. I guess the moral of the story is that an item on eBay should be cheap enough to write off the entire cost if something goes wrong.
Update (Monday, October 23rd). I bought a much better printer for less money from another seller.
Update (Sunday, November 5th). After wasting my time, costing me money, and being difficult to deal with, the sellers of the defective printer are now asking me to withdraw my negative eBay feedback:
We feel that this feedback is extreme considering what we delivered. Would you retract it, or reduce it to neutral? Alternatively, we must consider issuing feedback to reflect our experience.In other words, they are threatening to say bad things about me if I don't say good things about them. No, thank you. My negative feedback stands: Printer broken, worn out, page count 61835 not expected 15734, seller avoids. A simple statement of facts in 80 characters or less. If this affects their future sales, then so be it. Other buyers deserve to know how they will be treated by this seller if there is a problem. (Reminds me of a quotation that I just made up.)
"Don't argue with a monk ... unless you're willing to lose." (Keith Fenske, August 2006)
Tuesday, August 22nd. Slightly past warm, humid, with a smell of freshly rotting garbage in the air. Reminds me of living in ... oh, I'd better not say or I'll have another angry mob. The world has become too politically correct when you can't express an opinion or even reminisce without revising history. I have pleasant memories of that place, unrelated to the aroma, of course.
"Now that some time has passed and you've had a chance to look over what you've written, do you have any further comments that you'd like to make?" Ah, yes, the cheap question of book reviewers that don't read the original story, but still pretend to do an interview. (Keith Fenske, August 2006)
Sunday, August 27th. Fresh garden tomatoes, ripened on the vine. There's no better flavor.
As far as I can tell, NAV 2002 continues to run on Windows 98/ME/2000, because it doesn't check boot blocks in the same way that NAV 2001 did. It is, however, likely to suffer the same fate soon as NAV 2001. Symantec has renewed subscriptions for NAV 2003. You need a fair amount of horsepower to drive that version, something that older computers don't have. NAV 2004 and later became all-inclusive packages that are, in my opinion, overkill for most users. Simpler alternatives such as AVG Anti-Virus offer good protection and don't consume so much of the computer's time.
"A neighbor is someone you know well enough to know what they're like, but not well enough to know why they're that way." (Keith Fenske, August 2006)
Wednesday, August 30th. I get so damn tired of maintaining this web site. The more you have, the quicker something grows old. I just want to post a sign saying "Blog No More" and be done with it: stick the files in an archive where they can be indexed, but I don't have to look at them again.
The original intention was to publish my Japan journal and thereby avoid writing letters, and to house reference information for computers so that I wouldn't have to repeat myself each time someone asks the same question. If you think about it, those two objectives are actually the same: write once, read many times. That's the whole reason why we have books: to disseminate information. Except that nobody reads them. In this internet age of instant attention deficit disorder, nobody reads anything, not their owner's manual, not their "quick start" guide, nothing until after they have a problem. Following advice? That's not for me, they think and say. I know what I'm doing; I'm not hurting anything; I'm fine. Or so they think.
Well, I'm not fine. I'm tired and I'm grumpy. Japan is gone and I don't travel anymore. Computers are dull. What little I want to say, rambles, and a page like this is about the only place where it can be.
Thursday, August 31st. It is unusual
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Medical advice: sometimes when it feels like a bug is crawling on your skin, the reason is that, a bug is crawling on your skin. (Keith Fenske, September 2006)
Update (Wednesday, September 6th). I received a prompt and polite reply from the technology department, which contacted the principal of the school, who asked the teacher that posted the PowerPoint presentation to remove it. The file is gone as of Wednesday afternoon. I wrote back and said, thank you! This is a very good response at the beginning of a busy school season: Monday was the Labor Day holiday, they would have received my request on Tuesday, and the whole issue was resolved by Wednesday.
Comments by Robert R. (Saturday, September 9th). Robert's words appear below, indented and italicized. They have been edited and sometimes paraphrased, because they were received in an e-mail message that was not originally intended for publication. The final wording was approved by Robert before being reprinted here. I am using Robert's words to support my own opinions about the scenarios that a student or teacher may face when preparing material for a classroom.
(1) When a student presents homework in class, that presentation is subject to rules of academic honesty, that is, plagiarism. Copyright laws are not really an issue here since they contain provisions for "fair use" in academic and scholarly purposes, or for personal use. You will notice that I am being careful not to quote exact legal statutes, for two reasons. First, I am not a lawyer. Second, this web page can be read anywhere in the world and each country has its own copyright laws, although there are attempts to make the laws more consistent.
(2) The traditional view of a teacher in a classroom is someone who lectures from the front of the class, from a common textbook. If everyone in the class has a textbook for their own use during the class, then all material in that textbook has been licensed, and no claim can be made for copyright infringement. This is the situation that most people think of from their grade school days.
(3) If a teacher is presenting material that is not from a common textbook, then the question arises of where the material was obtained. The teacher may develop it himself (herself), in which case, they certainly have the right to teach their material in their own classroom! The material may have been licensed from another source. It's what happens when the material is neither original nor licensed that is interesting. Teachers (instructors, professors) sometimes believe that the same rules that apply to students also apply to them. That is not the case. Some courts have ruled that earning an income from teaching means that teachers don't always qualify under the copyright provisions of not-for-profit use. Teachers are, in effect, held to a higher standard than their students.
Robert says: I think it is hilarious how often teachers and university instructors violate copyright. The worst culprits are always those who are the most vocal about pursuing plagiarism by THEIR students. Teachers rant about lazy, evil cheaters that download stuff for their term papers from the web, but who themselves think nothing of filling their PowerPoint lectures with uncredited images from the web. When I point out this particular irony, they always think the rules don't apply to them. Most mysterious to me is the attitude that while stealing words is plagiarism, it is perfectly okay to steal images because "I can't be expected to draw that myself!" or "I can't get there to take that shot; I have to download it!" Makes my brain hurt.(4) Such a strict interpretation is unlikely to be applied against one teacher in one classroom. There is very little to be gained by a lawsuit involving one teacher, although in extreme cases, a teacher may be served with a "cease and desist" letter. Here is where the difference between legal rights and practicality becomes important. Giving proper credit to the source of the material will go a long way towards avoiding legal problems.
Robert says: I sometimes obtain images from the web for PowerPoint, but I always credit the source, and I'm careful to observe any restrictions expressed by the source, i.e., won't use the images if there is a "use only with permission" kind of copyright notice. I think it is important the slides have a source listed for the photo or art as good role modeling for students and, frankly, what does it cost me to credit the source?In my particular case with the Texas school, if they had put "Photo by Keith Fenske" on the bottom of each PowerPoint slide, along with the original URL (web address), then I wouldn't have complained. For the owner of a non-commercial web site, proper references are a form of advertising. However, I admit I still would have found it tacky that a large number of consecutive slides were taken from a single source. That's hardly research.
(5) A grey area exists where one teacher prepares material for a class, such as PowerPoint presentations or overhead transparencies, and then loans this material to other teachers for the same or similar classes. The first teacher is no longer just using the material; they are now reproducing and distributing it. That allows a copyright holder to claim loss of income, a solid reason for starting a lawsuit. Before using another teacher's material, make sure they had a right to use the material in the first place, which is the very essence of the idea of copyright!
Robert says: I'm more careful for stuff that goes into my course readers or onto my web pages since those are more publishing and public -- but I almost never get turned down when I ask permission. Many people are flattered I thought their stuff suitable for my book/page. The only problems I've ever had are not receiving a reply because the site is not maintained, or because the source says that they are not the originator/copyright owner.(6) Should a teacher make materials available to someone they don't know, for purposes they have no control over, such as by placement on a public web site, then that teacher and the web site owner(s) become a publisher, and are subject to the same legal liabilities as a publisher of books, magazines, etc. Publishing even one unauthorized image becomes a copyright violation. (Think of the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words.) Publishing a few words without proper citation becomes a copyright violation, as does publishing many words without permission. Violations become lawsuits, and lawsuits cost money.
It is very easy to search the internet and to steal words or ideas on a particular subject. There is very little that can be done to prevent someone from incorporating those words or ideas, without proper attribution or permission. However, if misappropriated words or images are ever placed back into public form, they can be found just as easily by the copyright holders. That is the basis of academic honesty: don't steal from others, because the theft will eventually come back to bite you.
(Note: for specific legal advice, consult a lawyer qualified in your jurisdiction.)
Wednesday, September 13th. Microsoft did something recently, in the last week or month, that prevents older Windows XP computers from successfully running Windows Update. It's not a version thing, or a memory problem; it's something to do with processor speed. As a rough guess, any Pentium processor under one gigahertz may never finish the scan that detects what updates are required. I tested this on an Intel Celeron processor at 900 MHz with Windows XP Home SP2, using a system image that was known to be good (and updating) in April 2006, but which stalls and times out after half an hour or so in September 2006. The same computer updated a few days ago. All I can do is turn off automatic updates completely and walk away. (If you don't, the SVCHOST.EXE process will consume all available CPU time, preventing you from running anything else or restarting the computer.) Since this system image worked in April, I know that the problem isn't with the computer, but with some catalog that is being downloaded from Microsoft. I've also had problems with Office Update not finishing on newer and faster computers.
Peter J. has pointed out that this is a bit of a Catch-22 situation. What are you going to do when Microsoft fixes Windows Update? Run your broken copy and hope that it corrects itself? ("Catch-22" is a 1955/1961 novel by Joseph Heller about insane army regulations, and was made into a 1970 movie of the same name.)
Update (Tuesday, October 3rd). The major symptom for this problem is that your normal Windows desktop appears, the cursor moves, but nothing happens when you click on a desktop icon or the Start button, or it happens very slowly. You may be able to run Task Manager if this is the first thing you do: right click on the task bar (bottom of screen), left click on the "Task Manager" item. Or press the key combination Ctrl-Alt-Delete once. In the Processes tab, you will see one process such as SVCHOST.EXE using almost all of the CPU time. You will also see a process called WUAUCLT.EXE running. You could highlight the most time-wasting process and click the "End Process" button. If you guess right, your system will return to normal. (If you guess wrong, your system may crash.) A much better way is to restart your computer in "Safe Mode" which means pressing the F8 key before the Windows logo screen appears. Then right click on the "My Computer" icon and left click on the Properties item. (Alternatively, go to Control Panel, System.) Left click on the "Automatic Updates" tab and choose the option that says, "Turn off Automatic Updates." Click OK. Restart your computer. Hopefully, now everything will be normal. Note that if Automatic Updates won't run, then manual updates (Start button, Windows Update) won't run properly either.
Update (Saturday, November 25th). Manual updates are working again on this Celeron 900 MHz. No, I didn't change anything. No, I won't be turning on automatic updates for this computer, and I don't know when Microsoft fixed the problem with their update catalog.
Monday, September 18th. In an effort to beautify the neighborhood, last year I planted grass in the back alley between my neighbors' fence and the pavement, after an errant car destroyed our shared fence and the fence was rebuilt. All summer I dug weeds and mowed the new grass. My estimate was that by next year, the grass would have been thick enough to start choking out the weeds. My neighbors sprayed herbicide and killed the half closest to their driveway. Why, I don't know. It's not as if this was of any trouble for them, since I was doing the work. It's as if they had no clue that something good was growing. Now instead of a patch of green, there are dead plants, rocks, and dirt. Ugly, and a message to me to stop helping here and in other ways.
Thursday, September 21st. A slave to advertising, I bought a package of Pedigree Dentabone for Maggie the Wonderdog. (One wonders what she thinks.) These treats are supposed to be edible chewing toys that clean the dog's teeth. Maggie ate hers in four minutes. I suspect that all it's freshening is her stomach, and I hope she doesn't get sick! Reminds me of another dog I knew that could shred a latex squeaky toy in under five minutes.
Update (Friday, September 22nd). Narae S. says that most border collies are "nibblers" so Maggie's overly enthusiastic eating habits may be somewhat unusual.
Lack of humor and missing clever dialog couldn't save the season openers of CSI Las Vegas, Miami, or New York. These are the "dead body" shows, where every episode involves new and more gruesome ways to die. In the past, Las Vegas had a lovely neon "false color" style and Miami had sunset glows indoors and outdoors. Grissom had great lines (Las Vegas), while Horatio (Miami) over-acted, but the scenery was good. CSI New York was hard to watch: gritty, the king of mean, you might say. No characters that you could really like.
Other shows cater to a growing sense of fear and paranoia: Blue Murder, Bones, Close to Home, Cold Case, Criminal Minds, Jericho (to be confused with Jeremiah), Kidnapped, Law and Order (et al), Missing, NUMB3RS, Prison Break, ReGenesis, Standoff, Vanished, Without a Trace. And that's only on regular television, not the cable channels! Troubling to me are scenes such as Horatio and Delco (CSI Miami) going to Brazil, tracking down and killing a man ("the bad guy"), and returning home without any involvement of the local authorities*; or The Unit blowing up a bus because the passengers are suspected in a terrorist plot involving smallpox** (no trial, no detention, no treatment); or Smith where the Jeff character is introduced by killing two men from a distance with a sniper rifle for no good reason, unless you count the graphic blood-in-the-water effect.
Too many shows portray criminals as being evil and needing no rights. Due process is suspended by the protagonists by their arbitrary decision. This seems to be a concerted effort to indoctrinate the American public that wrongdoers, foreign or domestic, should be prosecuted without the inconvenience of laws or civil liberties. Too bad those same laws were enacted over centuries to protect the populace from persecution by their own government and police. I must credit "Law and Order" with respect for the justice system, even when the outcome is wrong in their view, and "Cold Case" with thoughtful scripts that show far more humanity than most.
Even bubble-headed Ghost Whisperer wants to have an evil nemesis, the same plot trail that destroyed Joan of Arcadia, or at least twisted a light show into dark and depressing. Few series can blend humor and horror as well as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of course, not all comedy is intentional, such as three hospital shows ending last year with similarly deranged madmen (are there any other kind?) shooting doctors: ER, Grey's Anatomy, and House.
(* What a missed opportunity to introduce the Brazilian police in a good light! I'm sure they have the equivalent of a CSI department, and officers that are as skilled in resolving crisis situations in 60 TV minutes or less. Maybe the producers and writers believe that all foreign countries are banana republics anyway and good-and-great Americans can do whatever they want with impunity, a blatantly recurring theme in E-Ring and "The Unit".)
(** Courtesy of television scripting, the viewer is shown in advance that the suspects really are bad people that intend to infect large populations with the smallpox virus. However, the main characters in this story have no way of knowing this to be true; they are acting quickly based on fragmented intelligence reports.)
Yesterday, a Windows 2000 Pro computer started waiting at the "Saving your settings" screen for a minute when logging off or shutting down the computer. This may be a conflict with anti-virus software (which hadn't changed at the time of the problem arriving), or someone at Microsoft may have assumed that all Windows 2000 computers are part of a corporate domain, and is trying to save a roaming profile to a network server that doesn't exist. To reduce the maximum wait time in seconds/retries, run the Group Policy editor (gpedit.msc) and navigate to Local Computer Policy, Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System, Logon. Right click on "Maximum retries to unload and update user profile" and left click on Properties. Select the Enabled option and change "Max. retries" to 10 from the default of 60. Waiting ten seconds during shutdown is acceptable; waiting sixty seconds is not. Any application or service that doesn't terminate within ten seconds of being told to shut down, isn't going to terminate later anyway.
Microsoft may be expending too much effort on the soon-to-be-released Windows Vista, and not enough on supporting their hundreds of millions of existing customers. It's as if somebody is asleep at the wheel of the quality control and testing department. If this were one computer, then I'd suspect that computer; however, since these are separate computers with different owners in different situations, and the only common thread before the problems appeared was running Windows Update, then I have to suspect the source of the updates. (All three sample systems are stable with little or no additional software being installed since they were first put into service. They have all been checked for viruses and spyware.) A great irony is that distributing updates is made more difficult when there are more versions of a product, and Microsoft intends to release dozens of variations of Windows Vista, with several product levels, retail and OEM releases, and machine types (32-bit, 64-bit, etc). Looks good in sales brochures, but is lousy for support.
We should be talking about great new features in upcoming products. Instead we are finding reasons to hide in foxholes waiting for this to all blow over. (Memo to news reporters: people have enough bad news already.) Oh, and I should point out that Microsoft no longer tests against Windows 98 or Windows ME. Only Windows 2000 and Windows XP are officially supported, as will the new Windows Vista, bugs and all. So if some update doesn't work on Windows 98/ME, or makes things worse, then that's your problem.
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Update (Tuesday, October 17th). Erin delivered the cookies this afternoon and gave me one of hers as a sample. I traded her a gingersnap, which she liked, because she's eaten more than a few chocolatey mints since yesterday. That's the great thing about cookies: there are so many different kinds and they're all cookies.
It's easy to claim injustice when you belong to a minority. You can blame your problems on the majority's inability to listen to special needs and concerns. However, how tolerant are you of the minorities within your own community? If you were the majority, would you listen to others, or would you force them to act and believe as you do? (Keith Fenske, October 2006)
Tuesday, October 17th. My cooking tip for today is that you can't pop rice in a hot-air corn popper like you do popcorn. The rice is too light and bounces out of the popper.
If we could live for a thousand years, would our minds be as healthy as our bodies? One of today's lifetimes is enough to torture a soul. Ten times longer would twist us into miserable creatures -- or lift us up into great joy -- depending upon how we lived our lives. (Keith Fenske, October 2006)
Thursday, October 19th. I received an e-mail message today telling me that my $15 rebate has been approved, for an item I bought in March. More than six months later? And you wonder why I think mail-in rebates are worthless advertising by stores. I estimate that less than half of the mail-in or on-line rebates I've sent in the past two years have been processed correctly. Some were rejected for reasons that were unexplained or wrong, on-line rebates were refused until I resubmitted them by mail, and others delayed until I could barely remember what they were for. Rebates are used by stores to reduce the apparent or advertised price. Tiny print tells you if the rebates are at the cash register (an "instant" rebate) or something that you must apply for (a "mail-in" rebate). When shopping, I compare only the cash register prices. Of course, I will apply for mail-in rebates, but I don't expect to receive them, and I certainly won't deduct them from what I charge my customers.
Monday, October 23rd. All the printer news that's fit to print! Guido M. sold me a nice, used HP LaserJet 1200 printer with about 16,343 pages printed, that has parallel and USB interfaces, and does both PCL and PostScript printer languages. Price was US$71 or about CA$80, including shipping. Some wear and tear, but nothing significant. Cleaned up easily and tested well; the most severe test being when I printed a page that was entirely black, looking for smooth toner distribution and no printing defects. NFF (no fault found). Much better than my last mistake! All I had to buy was a longer power cord (this printer being too far away for a standard 6-foot cord) and a USB 2.0 cable. I'll get a new print cartridge when the used cartridge wears out that Guido gave me. I posted positive eBay feedback for Guido, and sent a thank-you note by e-mail. A good guy, the kind of seller that you like to meet on eBay.
Wednesday, October 25th. And at the opposite end of the eBay spectrum is the copy of Microsoft Office 2003 that I received today. Supposedly a full retail box, there were so many spelling and punctuation errors on the package description that I didn't even open the shrink-wrap. It's counterfeit, fake, bogus, whatever word you want to use for pirated software. I can't say for sure where it came from, but there are hints. Whoever retyped and recreated the package labelling didn't understand the difference between upper-case and lower-case letters, periods and commas, or putting a space after each sentence. This eliminates almost anyone speaking a European language, including the Russians, whom we often like to blame for pirating (obviously not fairly in this case). Think globally lower and farther east.
Update (Friday, October 27th). Here we go again with the return-and-complain. TWOT for sure (total waste of time). I thought about posting a scan of some mistakes on the box, but could find no humor in that. Why help pirates by telling them what they did wrong?
Sunday, October 29th. The correct procedure for starting a car. In southern climates: sit in driver's seat, close door, put on seat belt, put key in ignition switch, start car, drive. In northern climates: sit, don't close door, insert key, start, don't drive. Do we have something against seat belts? Not at all! While your car is warming up, you'll need at least that much time to brush off snow, scrape ice from the windows, and defrost the inside of the windshield. Then you get back into the car, close the door, put on the seat belt, and drive away.
Monday, October 30th. Wanting to end this month on a high note, and to void the notion that every purchase on eBay goes bad, today I received a genuine copy of Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional in the retail box. It's used, of course, but after six years, I'm happy to find someone that retained the original retail packaging. In my opinion, Windows 2000 is a "classic" version of Microsoft Windows, as is Windows 98 Second Edition ("SE"), and is well worth keeping as a souvenir.
Tuesday, October 31st (Halloween). More good news for October: several of the TV shows that I objected to in September have disappeared from the TV schedule. The most amusing transformation was Smith, promoted heavily in the summer but suspended after three episodes. Maybe calculated violence and mayhem really aren't suitable for primetime television after all.... You'll be able to watch episodes for free on the CBS web site starting in mid November, because while the major networks might argue against internet downloading, they know the promotional value in giving away something that they can't sell, especially when they've already paid for the production.
Tonight is Halloween. I always wish for warm weather so that children can have a pleasant evening of trick-or-treating. Tonight as they go from door to door asking for candy, the temperature is below -10°C (15°F), with a cold wind. I expect to see more coats than costumes. The informal tradition in our neighborhood is that trick-or-treating doesn't start until after supper or 6 PM. Most children come between 6:30 and 7:30, with a few as late as 8:30 when I turn off the outside lights. Around 27 children came in all, each with a good costume. A few were older, but again, were dressed well for the occasion. I honestly wouldn't mind if grandpa showed up as a Halloween spirit! Yes, I give candy to parents that dress up with their small children.
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This portion of "Bloggo - The Non Blog" is copyright © 2006 by Keith Fenske. All rights reserved. | |
