1 July 2008
Catostrophe
Business card found in the mail room at work:
All apostrophes and spaces as printed:
Dr'Brown's Repair
When It Break's Down Call Dr'Brown
Washer's/Dryer's/Ref//Oven's/Hotwater Heater's
35$ estimates
24hr service
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16 June 2008
Revolutionary Breakthrough in Audio Cable Technology
Amazon has a passel of brilliant reviews of the Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable:
The cabling system has a base-plate connector of prefabulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two spurving bearings are in a direct line with the pentametric fan. The main cable winding is of the normal lotus-o-delta type placed in panendermic semi-boloid slots in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a nonreversible tremble pipe to the differential girdlespring on the 'up' end of the grammeters.
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6 April 2008
Dear Apple: WTF?
The new Airport Express 802.11n looks a whole lot like its predecessor. You'd think it would be the same design with an updated radio that runs at higher speed. Once upon a time, Apple might have valued consistency enough to fulfill that expectation.
As it turns out, the new Express N looks and quacks like a duck, but is not a duck at all. The hardware and software interfaces look the same as the previous Express, but function very differently. In fact, to achieve the same operational result, you have to configure them -- using the same set of controls -- in opposite directions.
A simple test case: two Express base stations, one old and one new, both of which you want to connect to the same Airport Extreme N base station and both of which you want to share their respective ethernet connections with wired clients. On the old Express, you tell it to participate in a Wireless Distribution System (WDS). This setting alone is enough to allow ethernet clients to share the connection, but there is nothing in the user interface which reflects this state. You can optionally disallow wireless clients on this base station, but wired client sharing is implicitly always allowed.
Contrast this with the new Express which, if set up to participate in a WDS, will not share its Ethernet connection (but again, with nothing in the user interface reflecting that state). However, if you instead tell the new Express to simply join the existing wireless network, not extend it (which setting on the old Express would explicitly not share its network connection), the previously available "Allow wireless clients" setting mysteriously changes with "Allow Ethernet clients". Check that box and suddenly all your wired devices are online. Note however, that wireless clients are now implicitly disallowed, since this Express is no longer participating in a WDS.
Dear Apple: this is not user-friendly, easy plug-and-play wireless networking. This is obscure, opaque barely-functional wireless networking that makes blindingly apparent why those less technically inclined often feel anyone who can actually make these devices work is a practitioner of the dark arts.
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29 March 2008
Ken Betts' Towing: Don't Count On It
Called AAA today at 1:30 after discovering I had a flat tire and no key for the locking lugnuts. I figured it would be easy to resolve given the time of day and that there's a Big O Tire just two blocks away that takes new jobs until 4pm on Saturdays.
AAA sent a Ken Betts truck, but decided a service truck would do, even though I asked for a tow. Turns out, no, I didn't just need air; there's a gash in my tire. Sorry, it'd be another 45 minutes on top of the 30 I'd already waited.
After an hour, I called to find out where the truck was. Just another 40 minutes, sir. Sorry, that's just how long it takes. Increasingly frustrated calls to AAA followed, but all they could say was that calling another towing company could take just as long.
ETA for the proper Ken Betts truck? 4:02. Too late to get a simple flat tire repaired and a full two and a half hours after my initial call. At that point, they would have had to leave it for the weekend at a random Big O Tire in the middle of Oakland. No, thank you.
So I turned to my six-days-remaining factory warranty to have it towed to the dealership. The dealership is already closed, needless to say, but at least they'll cover storage in a secure location for the weekend. And the wait for the new truck from another company? Just 70 minutes, but "probably sooner" I am assured.
75 minutes later, I'm on the phone again. No truck. It is now 5:30 PM and No. Fucking. Truck. There was a mix up. The towing company was waiting for a call back from BMW who had called me around 5 to verify that I still had a warranty (yessir, for six more days, I sure as hell do) and then neglected to call the towing company. "They're sending a truck now. It'll be there in 30 minutes."
Forty minutes later I am just getting my phone out to make another call when the truck finally turns the corner onto the cul-de-sac on which I have been trapped for the last five hours.
Now all I have to do is catch a cab.