Category Archives: Rants

If I have a problem with something, here it will be.

My Latest Vista Test: Network Throttling

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Over the past couple of weeks I have been copying large amounts of data back and forth from my desktop PCs and my ReadyNAS in order to facilitate clearing some local hard disk space and to really, honestly begin scheduled backups.  Today while copying a particularly large file (greater than 2GB if you must know) I found that the transfer rate to the ReadyNAS was a measly 10 MB/s.  I have a gigabit network setup and this represents less than 10% of the available capacity.  Obviously something is up.

I have my full-time, every-day PC running Vista with SP1 and for the most part this is a very stable and good performing platform.  I have thrown a lot of modern hardware at it, including 4GB of DDR2 RAM, two NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards in SLI mode and an AMD Phenom 9950 quad core CPU, so Vista can really go fast.  However, to test out the theory that Vista might be taunting me I fired up one of my spare PCs running Windows XP with SP3.  Sure enough, transferring files to and from the NAS with XP works fine at over 22 MB/s.  Something must really be hosed with Vista, IMHO.

So, off to Google I go in search of answers, and low-and-behold I found this article at ZDNet explaning what I feared: Vista thinks it is smarter than me when it comes to prioritizing what needs to get done on the PC.  Whenever the media sub-system in Vista is active with either audio or video playback the network connection gets crunched down to its lowest level.  No matter what I tweak, disable or alter Vista will not transfer at a respectable speed unless all audio and video sources stop.  This includes playback inside of a browser such as IE7 or Firefox.  I take a deep breath and sigh.

So now I must sit in silence or play music on a separate PC if I want full network capability on my main work machine.  For this fine, new feature I award Windows Vista the “Poo of the Day” award.  I’m sure more of these awards will follow soon enough.  Windows 7 can’t get here soon enough.

Vista is blocking the tubes.

When Malware Attacks, I Should Listen

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When your computer begins to slow down and then do strange things, you really do need to pay close attention because it is trying to tell you something.  In my case Vista was attempting to communicate in a very inept way that it had been attacked by some malware and was in the process of going down the drain.

First I noticed the hard drive LED flashing rapidly all the time.  Next I found that the machine wouldn’t stay in sleep mode any longer.  Browser windows would pop open for no good reason.  It was time to make a trip to my old friend MSConfig and enable the clean-boot options.  Only after booting into Safe Mode with everything disabled (and my system all but useless) did I find the culprit files hiding and renaming themselves in the Windows/System32 directory.

What followed were many reboots, the forced termination of IE7 and Explorer.exe, a reload of some critical OS files from DVD, then a determined and lengthy process of online virus scanning.  Only when all of these processes were completed was the threat finally removed.  I must once again return to my old paranoid ways: never install anything from the internet directly onto my critical PC AND always keep some kind of security (the dreaded User Account Control) turned on to slow down an attack.

And to think I was worried about being bored this holiday week.  Shame on me.

CA DMV SMOG boondoggle

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CA DMV logo

For those of us living in the republic of California and owning older vehicles, we have to put up with an annual mandatory visit to a “certified” SMOG test station to see if our vehicle is still “legal” to drive on the road.  Unlike safety inspections found in other states, however, this test is nothing more than a way to extract additional money from your pocket if you wish to keep driving on the roads.  It works like this:

  • You first pay about $90-ish for the registration and license fees
  • Instructions tell you to go and SMOG test your vehicle for “a nominal fee”
  • The SMOG test station finds ways to have their costs add up to $65 or more
  • If your car doesn’t pass the “test” you have to pay the $65 again once you figure out what’s wrong

This setup seems like a way to fleece those folks who, like me, mindlessly follow the rules set forth by the state.  I’ve seen cars with current registration stickers which clearly spew forth a toxic stew while driving, so am I to believe that the DMV feels these furnaces of CO2 pollution are OK to drive on the road?  Meanwhile, if you haven’t replaced your car air filter in a couple of years you fail the test and another $65 is removed from your pocket.

All of this silliness is almost enough to make someone move out of state, or at least put their vehicle registration elsewhere.  Sheesh.

The Continuing Sadness that is the HR20

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DirecTV HR20

It has been almost a year since I was forced to give up my wonderful HD-Tivo box for the “improved” DirecTV version called the HR20.  Since I’ve had the box I’ve needed to make a lot of adjustments, but one new adjustment just isn’t sitting well with me: lock ups and reboots once per week.

You see, DirecTV doesn’t seem to understand the concept of QA or beta testing.  Whenever they get a new update for the software inside the HR20 they just push it out the door to millions of customers.  For anyone that has ever gotten a bad update on their computer, you know what happens sometimes… things just fall apart.  Well, in my case I lose TV programs and the PVR just stops working.

Normally this would seem to be just a silly rant, after all, it is only TV, right?  Well, what if you paid nearly $100 a month for that TV signal and some of the programs provided were watch-it-once-then-it’s-gone sorts of things?  That’s what I have and that is why I’m so mad about this latest round of mess ups from DirecTV. 

The best part is that they kept me waiting on the phone for 48 minutes the other day just to tell me to reformat my PVR (that didn’t work) and that yes, Virginia, they have a problem and they don’t know if/whether they will fix it and if they do/don’t they won’t call me back to confirm the fix (or not).  Great customer service!

Just Another Week in Texas

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Getting stuffed into an airplane like sardines in a can.  Sweltering heat and humidity during the day with little respite at night.  Eating enough bar-b-que’d animals to cause a meat coma. Encountering more trucks than the entire population of some small countries.  Bouffant hair.  Strange looks from the country folk when driving a minivan.  Lots of NASCAR loving yahoos.  A crazy amount of turnpikes and toll roads.  Gas prices below $3.40 a gallon.  The worst B.O. ever on the cramped plane ride home.

What else could all of this be but a trip to Texas?

Texas

Retail Rip-Off: HDMI cables

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If you have a new HDTV set and are looking to hook up some glorious Blu-ray or PS3 goodness you know that you will have to run to the store and purchase one special component not bundled with any device shipping in quantity: an HDMI cable.

Unlike the days of old when you could run into your local Radio Shack and pickup whatever cheap cables they had on hand and make the new device work, in today’s digital era you are treated the one of the greatest fleecings in modern retail sales history.  You see, Monster, the cable provider of over-priced and over-hyped speaker cables from days past has moved in and pushed just about every other provider of HDMI cables off the shelves, leaving only their own brand at the most outrageous prices.  And the problem is that retailers gladly let them do this because the margins (that’s the money retailers actually make on each good sold) can be 50%, 100%, even 200% on these cables.  Typical devices like TV’s and cameras sometimes net the retailer less than 10% margin.

I don’t begrudge Monster on pushing their cables on the unsuspecting and clueless at the store, that is their business after all.  My problem is that their retail strategy has pushed every other provider of similar products to do similarly stupid things, like raise the price for the same product.  Don’t believe me about nearly all of the cables being the same regardless of price?  Go look at this article on Gizmodo and tell me that you don’t cringe after reading how badly we’re getting ripped off.

The point to this whole story is this:  I had to have a new HDMI cable for some new hardware at home, I can’t go get the cheap cables because they simply don’t exist locally any more, and I got ripped off to the tune of $22.99 for a $5 cable.  Next time no matter how badly I need one of these things, I’m headed to Monoprice where saner heads (and prices) reign.

HDMI cable

Screaming Childeren Make Any Flight Longer

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I took one of the last flights home last night from Austin. As is AA’s custom, they placed two rows of children around me on this journey. Normally I just put in the headphones and deal with the problem, however on this flight some of the children decided they needed to be rowdy and play up and down the aisles during most of the flight. This left me and most of the passengers near the front of the plane (no business class for me) to be forever vigilant about our arms, elbows, and any items we had on our trays.

What really made this flight tough (at 3 1/2 hours long) was not just the playing kids (and by playing I mean obnoxious running around, tearing papers and pulling things off trays) but the screaming kids that simply wouldn’t pipe down no matter what their mothers offered them. If ever there was a advertisement for why birth control is needed, this flight was it.

I must restate my request that some airline flights should really be reserved for business people, or at least give us the option to pay a bit more to keep the kids off some routes. By the end of the flight I wanted to see how much it would cost to fly myself home as I really didn’t like the torture that I received from this flight.

AA MD-82 Jet

Worst Chicken Fried Steak Ever

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This evening I had dinner at a local Austin, TX restaurant: Threadgill’s

Their menu claims that the house specialty is chicken fried steak with gravy. Seeing this and being in a home style cooked meal kind of mood, I jumped at the chance to find a worthy competitor to the reigning run-of-the-mill challenger, found today at Chili’s. The walls were lined with pictures of various singers and bands that had played at the establishment and some of the online reviews for the place looked good, so why not try the “world famous” chicken fried steak? It was, in a word, bad. It was plain, soggy, tasteless and completely inedible. This is what I had been waiting for having sat on a plane for nearly four hours and waiting for my stomach to catch up with the local time?

Thinking that somehow I might be expecting too much, I turned to the small mound of mashed potatoes slathered in white gravy sitting next to the steak. Again, it was a vanilla mass of chewy goo. I looked around and saw that everyone else was ordering burgers or salads, so that should have been my first clue as to the “famous” part of this food order.When the waiter came around again (he seemed too busy to notice a solitary guest in his area and actually topped off my Sprite with water) I told him that I couldn’t eat the dinner and that I’d like to order something else. Puzzled, he scurried off and appeared again with a menu. The moment it dropped onto the table he evaporated and he was not to be seen again for about 15 minutes. Taking a chance, I ordered the second mistake of the evening: the hickory burger. I made it clear to the waiter when he finally arrived that I wanted something that could be done relatively quickly since it was now within one hour of their closing time. He said this would be no problem, then disappeared again into the wind.

Nearly 20 minutes would pass before I would see him again, and when he did arrive he looked at me and seemed puzzled. Oh, he said, you don’t have your dinner do you? I didn’t answer, but instead chose to stare back at him with a look that indicated my displeasure for sitting nearly an hour in a restaurant with next to nothing to show for it. Eventually he did materialize with the so-called burger, but again I was met with a mass of utterly un-taste-worthy food. And by this statement I mean literally it had no taste. I could be chewing on chicken, pork, bark, leaves; it really had no taste or texture beyond the hickory sauce. The final insult was delivered by the fries which were so soggy and unappetizing as to be all but skipped over.

My point in all of this ranting is this: when faced with the option of choosing hotel food, a predictable but lame chain restaurant, or a quirky local establishment pick anything but the local establishment if they have the words “world famous” anywhere in their menu. Because frankly, I’ve been to some pretty distant parts of the world and I can’t tell how this food offering was anything close to famous.

When Drones (Ants) Attack

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Since we’ve entered Season One (cold and wet) of the Northern California weather cycle it must be time for the ants to enter the house and disrupt things. And that they did just 24 short hours ago. Seems that ants don’t like to float around out in the windy, rainy weather we’re having so they decided to make a straight line into my humble abode. Not only that, but they decided the best way in was via the second floor, across the carpet, down the stairs and into the living room. Odd, I would have thought coming straight in one of the ground floors would be easier.

No matter, as they have now all been dispatched and vacuumed up. Until the next time we meet, later ants.

Ants

AT&T / Cingular: The Final Insult

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Today, as if things weren’t just swell enough (said with tongue firmly in cheek) AT&T ships me a bill for cellular service that took place in September. Funny how they conveniently forgot that I canceled that service on September 3rd.  Funnier still, seeing as because their deliberate degrading of the wireless network knocked me completely offline for the entire month of August and most of July.

The sad part is that they wanted another $40 just to part company with them, even though I had already done all the paperwork at the store back on September 3rd. After a lot of negotiation they grudgingly “decided” to offer me a refund.  They wanted to know if there was anything else they could do for me at the end of the call…. and I sat wondering “where’s my working phone service and credit for many years of being a loyal customer?”

Customer  service, indeed.