t 'n t luoma

I provide tech support for nearly everyone I know (and 99% of the time I’m happy to do it).

I can’t count the number of people I’ve helped decide what computer to buy. I don’t have any idea how many people have asked me “just one question” about their computer. I worked at the computer labs in both college and seminary, and, not to be immodest, but I was good at it.

I once talked a very non-computer literate family member through reformatting their hard drive and reinstalling Windows over the phone.

I have salvaged computer installation that were thought to be damaged beyond repair, sped up computers, been called a savior for installing RAM, reinstalled Windows more times than I can count. I’m currently running 3 operating systems with a couple more ready to install. I’ve setup networks, wired and wireless, both at home and away.

At home I have my printer setup via Airport Express which extends my Airport Extreme wireless network. This lets me print from basically anywhere in the house.

Recently the printer stopped working, not long after I upgraded my Mac to OS X 10.4.3. I deleted the printer, reinstalled it. I installed the printer on the Airport Extreme instead of the Airport Express. I plugged it directly into my Powerbook.

Nothing worked.

It said it was printing, but it wouldn’t finish.

Finally I decided to install it on my Windows box. But I needed the drivers. So I connected to my FreeBSD box, downloaded the files I needed to the church network, and went down the next day to pick them up.

I installed the drivers under Windows, printed a test page, and again, nothing.

So I installed the printer monitor software.

I launched it. This is what it said:

I kid you not.

I then put paper in it, and it claimed a paper jam. I removed the tray and the toner and stuck my hand in the printer, where I promptly touched the metal bar inside the printer.

Later, after icing my finger, I looked in where I stuck my hand and there is a little warning sticker which reads “356°F 180°C” which I probably would have seen if I had a) turned on the light and b) looked where I was sticking my hand.

So I am typing this mostly with one hand. Meanwhile I’m trying to think of a name for Mr. Blister. I’m thinking maybe “Steve” ... Then again, “Mr Blister” has a nice ring to it.

Posted by TjL at 01:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In preparation for Apple’s “Black Friday” sale, I had two items in my “Shopping Cart” ’ one was the Apple iPod AV Cable ($19) and the Apple iPod Universal Dock ($39).

Last year I picked up an Airport Express at a really decent price and I use it often, so I was hopeful I’d get something else as equally useful.

Well, I could have been disappointed when Apple didn’t have anything all that interesting to me for sale...

...but I found something much more interesting. Getting the Video out of Your New iPod--for Cheap! which reveals that if you take a “camcorder A/V cable” and:

• Plug the red RCA plug into your TV's yellow RCA jack.
• Plug the yellow RCA plug into your TV's white RCA jack.
• Plug the white RCA plug into your TV's red RCA jack.

you can get your iPod with Video (c’mon Steve, can we call it a “viPod” please?!) to work with a cable you may already have ’ I did. I tried it, and whiz-bang! It worked! However, I have, as many of you know, a terrible memory. So I did what seemed logical to me:

But as I was writing “Red” on the white plug, and “White” on the yellow plug, and “Yellow” on the red plug, I couldn’t help but think that Orwell would be pleased, not as pleased as he was with a certain ad campaign, but this certainly strikes me as Doublethink.

I’m happy to see that this news has made its way into the comments on the Apple iPod AV Cable page. It will be interesting to see if anyone spots a downside to using a non-Apple cable.

Meanwhile, I’ve discovered I can use an existing cable, my Dock from my 3G iPod, and I saved $50 :-)

Posted by TjL at 03:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So we’re all familiar with my previous troubles with shipping (if not, Google for 'FedEx' on this site).

FedEx has been the previous subject, but there’s a strange entry in a package I’m currently tracking via UPS:

• Nov 18, 2005 12:56 P.M. / US / BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED
• Nov 18, 2005 6:06 P.M. / NASHVILLE, TN, US / ORIGIN SCAN
• Nov 18, 2005 6:53 P.M. / NASHVILLE, TN, US / DEPARTURE SCAN
• Nov 19, 2005 11:18 A.M. / NASHVILLE, TN, US / ARRIVAL SCAN

So what I’m wondering, Little Package, is what were you doing all night? Out on the town, where you? Who were you with? What were you doing? Just wait until your father hears about this, it’ll kill him, ya hear me?

Posted by TjL at 01:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Stupid Television Programmers:

Stop it. Just stop it.

I’ve had enough of your stupid games with the start and end times to your shows.

I missed an episode of “Commander in Chief” last week. It was on from 9:00 - 10:01.

“Why would a show be on until 10:01?” you ask.

Simple: the Stupid Television Programmers think that if you are watching their network at 10:01 that means that you are not watching another network. Which means that if you are watching ABC from 9:00 p.m. until 10:01 p.m. they hope to get you to watch from 10:01 p.m. until 11 (by which point they will have run ads at the bottom of the screen for the news and hope to have you hooked in for that too).

TNT has done this for years, they started/ended at :05 past the hour. Maybe because they were hoping to catch people who were flipping through channels at the top of the hour.

But now several networks (ABC especially) are doing this thing where they will run shows for 59 minutes or 1hour and 1 minute.

Well they’ve now screwed themselves with all the TiVo owners in the world (and other PVR owners as well).

For those of you who aren’t familiar, the beauty of TiVo is that I don’t it to record based on channel and night. For example, last year “Alias” was on at 9 p.m. on Wednesdays after “Lost”.

I didn’t set the TiVo to record Wednesday nights at 9:00 p.m., I said “Record new episodes of Alias” and the TiVo did the rest. So on weeks when Alias wasn’t on, it didn’t record. If Alias was on but was a repeat, it didn’t record. Now this season Alias has moved to 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, and I didn’t have to do anything, and I didn’t even have to know when the new season was starting, the TiVo took care of it for me.

The only problem comes when two shows overlap (i.e. what if I want to record two shows and they are both on at the same time?). For that TiVo will warn you if it sees conflicts when you first setup a “Season Pass” (their name for when you tell the TiVo to record all the episodes of a given show), but if there aren’t any conflicts, it will just schedule it. If conflicts arise later, it will set priority based on which Season Pass is ranked higher. You can set the rank yourself, but if you don’t, newer shows are given a lower priority than older shows. This makes sense to me, if I have been watching a show for a long time and a new show comes along and conflicts, it’s a safe bet that I want to watch the old favorite over the new.

So here’s what happened:

“Commander in Chief” (CIC) was scheduled from 9:00 - 10:01 p.m.
“Nip/Tuck” was scheduled from 10:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.

Since CIC is a new show, it had a lower priority. It didn’t get recorded.

WOW! Talk about backfiring, eh? Here you were trying to lure people to stay on ABC from 10:01 p.m. until 11:00 p.m. and you ended up losing a bunch of TiVo and other PVR users.

Dear TiVo:

You rarely disappoint me, but tonight was a big let-down (and I’m not the only one who thinks so).

1) You ought to have told me that a show wasn’t going to be recorded due to a conflict. We see each other every day, you couldn’t put up a little message: “Hey, a conflict has been found and I think you’d rather watch Nip/Tuck than CIC, but I just wanted to let you know” -- is that asking so much?

2) Also, Nip/Tuck is on several times a week. CIC is not. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to record Nip/Tuck on another night? You know I’m like 4 weeks behind in watching it anyway, so it’s not like it was going to bother me if I had to wait a day or so.

3) At the very least, you should have recorded the first hour of CIC. Yeah I would have been upset if I missed something important in the last minute of the show, but probably it was just a “Next week on CIC...” which you know I never watch anyway.

Dear Stupid Television Programmers:

Why is CIC only on once a week? You may have heard about these new fangled VCR things that people have? Yeah, so maybe you’d consider replaying some of your top shows at like 5 a.m. on Thursday? I know, that would break out of the box you want us to be in where we sit and watch on your schedule, but our lives don’t work that way, and the sooner you realize it, the better we’ll get along. F/X has figured this out, why haven’t you? Could it be because you’re old and slow to change? Life is change. Embrace it.

Posted by TjL at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)