Rants

Rule #12

“Bounty paper towels”

I always keep a roll of paper towels in my cube. Donna and I eat lunch together there, so we always go through a couple three then. They come in handy for wiping up desk dust bunnies that develop and hide behind my PC. Plus they are handy for the occasional drip when pouring my daily Diet Dr. Pepper.

This Monday I used the last one on the roll. I walked back to the Tool Crib where they usually have shelves full, except today. The shipment was late and the attendant said, “They are due in Wednesday.” Luckily I had a short roll of brown towels that came out of a bathroom dispenser as a back up.

I went back Wednesday to see if the paper towels had come in. No they hadn’t. Tried again today, but there are still no paper towels and my brown paper roll is just about gone. Hope the real paper towels come in tomorrow.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 782

When Does 3=1?

When it comes to Samsung monitor warranties.

As I boxed up the dead monitor I found the little clear envelope that held the driver disc, a handy dust cloth, the quick set up guide and a warranty card. Right there in bold letters at the top of the warranty card it stated that this monitor had a 36 month warranty for parts and labor. Huh? An internet search had told me it had a one year warranty.

I went online and filled out a service request on the Samsung web site. I entered name, address, phone number, alt phone number, email address (twice) and a password (twice) before I got to the part where you enter the monitor part number and serial number. When I did that is indicated that the monitor had been manufactured in April of 2009. The date was useless for the one year warranty (which was already moot), but helped if there was a three year one as it meant I wouldn’t have to produce a receipt as proof of purchase as it was long gone. When I hit the next button a dialog box popped up that said that my process couldn’t be completed and I needed to call 1-800-SAMSUNG.

So I called the number. Voice mail hell, 2 choices, followed by 3 choices and then 5 more before I got a recording telling me the offices were closed and to call back during working hours. At least it was the old fashioned listen then hit a number kind of menu and not one those where you have to say the words where you have to shout into the phone to have any chance of the machine understanding you.

I waited the hour until they were open and called back. As you can guess by the title of this post, the CSR was very apologetic, but could do nothing for me, nor could she explain why the paper I had said 3 years instead of the official 1 year figure.

A more in depth search on Samsung LCD monitor repair one the web told me the problem could be a power supply board, a main board issue, a burnt out back light. etc. Not worth the time, money or effort on my part. Into the trash it goes.

Don’t worry I’m disposing it correctly because my fair city actually has curbside pickup of electronic equipment. All you have to do is give them a call the day before your regular pick up, tell them what you are chucking out and they come take it away.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 767

Back In The Saddle Again

We went out geocaching this morning for the first time in a couple of weeks. I had a map with about a dozen caches picked out, but we only managed 4. No we didn’t DNF the other 8, but merely never got to them. There were two new ones along the Boyd Pond Bike Trail south of town. We had done the four caches around the pond last September and we swore we would come back and walk the trail again soon, but never did. Now was our opportunity. Went the more direct route to the cache and opted for the “scenic”, windy way out and ended up walking 4.2 miles total. and quite a 4.2 miles it was.

Turned on the computer this morning and the relatively recent Samsung SyncMaster 2233SW Monitor flashed its display for a second and then went black. Rebooted and it did the same thing while loading the bios, so it wasn’t Windows 7. The updated Bios from the other day? Doubtful. Had to be either video card or monitor. I let the PC boot up and I could make the display come on for a second by turning the monitor off and then back on. Trying to work like that would be very time consuming and annoying after a very short time. To be sure it was the monitor’s fault and not the video card I plugged a VGA cable into the laptop and tried to used the monitor as a second display, but got a the same problem, a brief glimpse of a desktop and then black.

Checked the internet for possible quick fixes, but found none. I did find the the monitor carried a 1 year parts and labor warranty. We bought it on June 14th last year which made it 1.13 years old. to Quote Agent 86, “Missed it by that much Chief.” After lunch we went to Staples to buy a replacement. In our price range there was a Dell and 2 different Samsungs. We picked the Dell, after all the Dell monitor that originally came with the PC lasted 6 years and the Samsung only did a little over a year. The Dell comes with a one year warranty and on the way out the salesman tried to sell us a one year extended warranty for $25. Donna was sorely tempted, but I talked her out of it. I did make a deal with with her, if this Dell only makes it just over the one year mark before crapping out, I would opt for every extended warranty ever offered me.

Finished up Season 2 Disc 6 of Law & Order this after noon. We love seeing the folks who were cutting their acting chops on the show way back in the early 90 and the ones who make one show guest starring plots. The final two episodes on the disc treated us to each of George Costanza’s parents Jerry Stiller on one show and Estelle Harris on the other. We also got Sam Rockwell in only his 10th credited role. We also got a very young Sabrina Llyod, AKA Natalie from Sports Night. The second to last show was the first ever appearance of Leslie Hendrix as the coroner, Dr. Elizabeth Rodgers, who I bet is very thankful for Dick Wolf as she has had pretty steady work since then playing that role. She has done 142 episodes of the original Law and Order, along with 104 episodes of Law and Order Criminal Intent, 9 episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and even one appearance on the short lived Law & Order: Trial By Jury.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 761

Your Breakfast Is Ready Sir

We got up early again today to go for a bike ride before it got too hot. We headed cross town to DD, so I could get some of their fabulous coffee. I headed inside while Donna walked next door to get the Sunday paper. For her I ordered one plain bagel toasted with butter on the side and a water to drink. I got a small coffee and a coffee cake muffin. By the time I had completed the transaction there was a person standing there handing me small bag with the toasted bagel. I sat at the table with Donna and we split up the paper and waited for the rest of the meal. And waited. After waiting a bit more, I went up to see what was taking so long to pour a coffee and take a muffin off the shelf. As I stood up and headed to the counter I heard Donna call my name. There was a tray sitting at the end of the counter with a water, a coffee and a muffin.

How long had it been there? Couldn’t have someone said, “Your breakfast is ready sir.”? We were the only people waiting for food…

The Emperor hasn’t moved all day.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 750

OE is Dead, Long Live Thunderbird

The new laptop has Windows 7 and I like it pretty well and decided that it was time to try it on the desktop computer as I stumbled into a $50 legal copy of the program. I only had two real problems with the install, one there is no Outlook Express for Win7 (or its predecessor Vista), so I needed a different desktop email client.

I have been using Outlook Express for email at home for about as long as I have been using a computer. It has only been around since 1996, but it just seems like forever. I can’t remember what I used for email prior to OE, maybe Pegasus Mail (which according to Wikipedia has been around since 1990 and is still in use today), but it didn’t come up in my web search for a replacement. Thunderbird seemed to be the top pick, but folks complained of issues importing email from OE. To test it out, I downloaded, installed it and tried it out. Everything went smooth for me, so I learned how to export the new email data and how to restore it for after the the 7 install.

The second issue came about after I had installed Windows 7. My old sound card was no longer being supported and the last official drivers for it were for XP. There was a small speaker icon in the task tray with a bright red X through it. That would never do. Google searched turned up traces of possible drivers, but I had no luck locating them. Looks like I might have to buy a new sound card (like I did 7 years ago when I first got this PC.) I was sort of surprised by that development because I had downloaded Micrsoft’s Windows 7 Upgrade Adviser software and it didn’t flag that as an issue.

It did flag a couple other things, so I decided to try and get some drivers for those items to see if I needed anymore new hardware, because if it did I might just revert back to XP. Somehow, don’t ask because I don’t remember how, but while getting those drivers a box popped up with a list of attempted driver updates. The sound card was listed and and lo and behold it found a driver. I have sound.

Now comes the task of reloading all the programs I normally use, but I should be all finished by tomorrow.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 750

Slight Price Increase

One of the vending machines at work has had a sign on it for a couple weeks now letting us know that there was going to be a price increase. Last week they put up a new sign on each of the machines that dispense chips and candy bars and the like, saying that on July 6th the items in the them would experience a slight price increase.

The standard bag of chips went from 70¢ to 85, the smaller bags went from 50¢ to 60 and the occasional $1 item went to $1.15. That is an increase of 21%, 20% and 15% respectively. A quick survey of co-workers on what percentage would they consider “slight” and 10% was the highest number I got, while fifteen per cent was what we would have called moderate and twenty & twenty-one per cent was considered bordering on substantial.

The drink and coffee machine prices remained the same.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 719

It’s Digital Cable Month 2010

Stopped off at the cable place on the way home from work today. Saturday the Tour de France starts and to get Versus, the network that carries the race, we have to upgrade to the Digital Plus tier. It costs and extra $20, but it is worth it for the three weeks of Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwin narrating the bike race and watching the beautiful French countryside glide by. While my CSR was filling out the “paperwork” I picked up a channel guide and noticed something called “Value HD” which offers most of the usual cable channel’s HD versions. I asked her how much more would that be, $4.95 came the reply. What the heck, we have a HDTV this year, it’ll be worth the extra five spot to try it out.

We got home and quickly realized that we had no real place to put converter box. It is a lot larger than last year’s model which fit on top of the tube TV. At first I figured I’d place the flat screen TV on top of the converter box, but it was full of holes for cooling and I didn’t want to melt the TV’s plastic base. Even if there was room, I couldn’t place the box sideways because there were holes there as well. Next we thought that we could just place it on the floor in front of the armoire, it’s only for a month. I doubted the remote would work with it there without having to hold it high over our heads to get the proper angle to clear the coffee table. Didn’t matter, the cables weren’t long enough. It ended up on the empty shelf to the left of the surround sound/DVD player, the only down side to this is we have to keep that door open when watching TV. Small price to pay.

The remote they gave me didn’t match the instruction sheet they gave me, so at first I couldn’t program the cable remote to operate the TV. That meant we now needed two remotes, one for channels and one for volume. I did a internet search for the model number of the remote and found several helpful sites that would offer me the manual – for a fee… But then I decided to RTFM and there on page 3 of the cable company’s booklet were instructions for the remote. Now we are making progress.

I then started surfing through the HD channels and of the approximately 40 available it seemed like every 4th or 5th was viewable. That’s no good. So I then checked to see if we could get Versus, the whole reason for getting the converter box, and we could (unfortunately it isn’t offered in HD though.)

As always the Digital Plus comes free with the half dozen of each Encore and Starz movie channels. I checked them out seeing if I could find something to watch and as I surfed them I kept on going past and discovered that I could also watch all the premium channels, HBO, Cinemax & Showtime.

So, should call and complain about the missing HD channels and take the chance that when they correct that they will also yank the free premium movie channels? or should I keep my mouth shut and enjoy the movies and learn to live without the missing 2/3s of HD channels?

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 710