Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Ditch Digger School, Here I Come

Since I have 13 children, I work full-time, still need to finish the basement re-model, have this site and another under construction, I really, REALLY don’t have time to become obsessed with a television show. But of course, I have.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

And it’s because it’s well written and I’m enjoying the characters. NOT because I have a crush on Amanda Peet and her enormous teeth.

Anyway, so my obsession has unearthed a major problem with my life (besides that little problem I have with eating an entire container of Ben and Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream in one breath)

Man, oh man, I hate technology. Seriously. Hate it, hate it, HATE IT!

A small sample of my week last week:

In my quest to watch Studio 60 at a convenient time and un-encumbered by children screaming over the finely crafted Sorkin dialog, I set my DVR to record the entire series. The home built media server (tried using MythTV, ended on Windows Media Center) has never worked properly, you know. It’s probably because I’m a Windows spaz, and I don’t really know how to build a PC, but man… it sucks.

So I went and got a Comcast DVR. I know, I know. People hate it. It’s slow. It’s retarded and sometimes possessed. I’ve never had Tivo, so I don’t have a great frame of reference. Plus, we got a decent deal on their voice, data and TV plan. Fine, I’ll suffer with the icky DVR. It beats what I built.

Except that it really doesn’t work right either. Perhaps they have me in their engineering department and I wasn’t aware of it. Sometimes the local affiliates would come in and sometimes not. The vagaries of signals and interference, apparently, according to the friendly Comcast folks at Comcast Tech Support World HQ. Or a bad DVR unit. So I took it back, waited in line and got another one. It worked. Sort of. Now the Sci-Fi channel is bad. Then channel 5 (NBC and the home of all things Sorkin related this fall) goes kablooey again. I call again and Comcast thinks it’s my wiring. Which is just FABULOUS, since they did they wiring in the house. Anyway, they cable guy comes out, makes tsk-tsk noises at my cable splitters and then discovers that the real problem is up on the pole in my backyard.

Now I may guilty of doing many, many stupid things with technology, (like the time I had the DNS server re-direct everyone’s web traffic to the Regis and Kathy Lee home page at abc.com), but shimmying up a 30 foot pole and mucking around with the cable is not one of those things. (I think someone, at some point was pilfering cable and that made everything go screwy. Whatever. It wasn’t me.) All of that (including goofying around with the media server (again)) in a vain attempt to get it hoofing along enough to record ONE MEASLY HOUR OF TELEVISION. Kill me now.

Anyway, it works now and I can get my Studio 60 fix, until someone at NBC realizes that it costs a fortune to make, isn’t in the top 10 and they can replace it with some other reality TV drivel for an eighth the cost. Then I’ll be sad inside (again) and have to make some actual progress on the basement.

I also tried to install Movable Type on our Xserve. I don’t think it’s possible. Spent all night CPAN-ing and trying to get DBI and DBD::mysql to compile. Played with makefiles and config flags, until I lost the ability to feel the tips of my fingers. (I tend to bang on the keyboard when I type. And when I get annoyed at computers not doing what they are supposed AND JUST INSTALL THE HELLISH MODULE, ALREADY!!/, I also tend to beat on things.) Oh, as a side dish, getting Ruby on Rails to work… not a walk in the park there either.  If you need to do it on OS X Server, just follow these instructions. Though I still can’t get it to work with Apache and I’m testing lightTPD instead. Again. whatever.

And remember this? Apple accidently sent me two processors (when I only needed one), I sent the bad one and the extra one back and then they had no record of me sending one of them back. One definitively made it back to the Apple mothership, and the other was possible lost in whatever place G5 processors escape to when they have a chance to sneak off. Apple charged my AmEx $941.08 for that little gem. So I called Apple, who eventually directed me to DHL, who basically told me I was screwed, since “our system can’t go back that far and we can’t track based on your name.” “Can’t go back that far”?? It was less than two months ago! But I was able to convince Apple (thanks Matthew in AppleCare Enterprise) that the two shipments from Salt Lake to the Apple Return Center in early October were from me. Score one for me.

Final tally for the week: Technology: 7, Jon: 1 (there are a couple of other things I didn’t want to bore you with).

So I’m seriously thinking about hanging up my keyboard and going to electrician school. Or even better, bulldozer operator school! (Is there a school for that?) That would be eleven-teen kinds of awesome. And maybe they’d let me take the bulldozer home every now and then. I could use it to make all my other household appliances behave. Threaten them with squishing unless they straighten up and fly right. And how cool would it be to commute to the job site in a bulldozer. Road rage take on a whole new meaning when you are perched up on a big yellow machine!

Jon scribbled this mess on 11/15/06 at 04:25 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Twitter

    Favorite Entries

    If you are new around here, the following entries have been reasonably well received. You might want to peruse these.

     

    Holy Crap! Look at all this STUFF down here. It's awesome!

     

    Really, I'm glad you made it down here. Almost no one ever comes down here. I'm like in a freaking dungeon down here. I get lonely. But not you. YOU made it all the way to the end of the page. For this I think I've a little crush on you. I don't know, is "love" to strong a word to use in this situation? Well, if it's not "love," then it's very strong "like." I'm totally in like with you for coming down here. You are awesome. Please love me back! I know, I know, I shouldn't be all needy, it's not attractive at all, but you don't know how it is to be stuck down here. Who scrolls all the way to the end of a page anymore these days? Anyway, thanks for shedding some light down here in the depths. I appreciate it. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a dollar, OK?


    ©2005-2008 Jon B. Deal All Rights Reserved. I'm not kidding around here, I know people who know other people who would be willing to beat you up or similarly infringe on your rights, should you happen to infringe on my rights.