Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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I Sing the Body Electric

(h.t. to Ray Bradbury for the post title)

What a wonderful world (h.t. Bob Thiele and George David Weiss via Louis Armstrong). Yeh, just sitting here contemplating one small aspect of the wonderful world we live in. Despite the machinations of politicians *spit*, Mass MEdia Podpeople and Academia Nut Fruitcakes, we have available to us such a massive amoiunt of knowledge, our own means of fact checking and many, many eyes to do the checking on the lies, damned lies and worse perpetrated in the name of “news” and “education” that instead of accepting the lies promulgated by such as Walter Cronkite (R.I.P.) about the Vietnam War*, we can actually–easily–fact check sources of information and come up with a closer approximation of truth than is available from traditional sources.

Thank God for the resources made available via the internet. And God bless citizen journalists on the internet.

*By any rational analysis, “America lost the War in Vietnam” is a disingenuous meme on the order of the ancient Egyptian attempt to erradicate all historical record of the Hyksos or the hagiography of that greatest of presidential violators of the Constitution, Lincoln (so far: The 0! is attempting to give him a run for his money). Just saying. Do your homework and you’ll see.

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Testy

Yeh, still feeling a bit testy.

Well, my ISP’s service is still “not as advertised,” but I never really expected that it would be. But apparently, griping and complaining and keeping it up until one gets results is the ONLY way to get results with my ISP, now. Once? Great service. Recently? Like pulling eye teeth. Even the service techs who drop by are getting a bit exercised. Tired of having to deal with problems they keep submitting for folks higher up the food chain to deal with–folks who have been killing customer connections left and right for the past few months under the claim that they’re “improving service”.

Not around here. My complaints–though backed with more tech knowledge than most that have been submitted from this area, and there have been MANY–have been essentially the same as everyone else from this service area… and no matter how the local techs have kept pressing for solutions that are out of their hands, it just needed much more heat coming regularly and without ceasing from customers to apparently finally get someone to stop sitting on their thumbs.

“Apparently” I say, because at least I have solid connections now (haven’t checked with others locally yet), but service has apparently improved from time to time in the past few months, only to fail outright or become unusably slow without warning–and without the ISP knowing part of the system’s down until being flooded with customer service calls (“Our call system is full; please call back later” or simply phone numbers that don’t work are not things a customer without service likes to hear… )

But for now…

speedtestnet-06

Not bad. Not as advertised, but not bad at all. For now. (Of course, earlier today? Notsomuch good. Not at all, at all… *sigh*)

But for now, it’s not sucking dead bunnies through a straw. For now.

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Browser Sniffers Suck Dead Bunnies Through a Straw

*sigh* I am oh-so-tired of sites that browser sniff to determine whether, in the site designer’s idiot mind, the site will “work” with my browser. Typically, sites that won’t function at all can be made to be fully functional when I simply RIGHT-CLICK, choose “Edit Site Preferences” from the context menu, select Network, tell Opera to mask itself as Internet Exploder or even just Firefox, then reload the page.

If all that’s different (and it is all that’s different; no functionality is changed, no emulation of another browser is implemented) is that the site now “thinks” I’m using a browser on its approved list, so now the site works, then browser sniffers are worthless wastes of time.

But idiot site builders still use ’em, because… they’re idiots, I suppose. No, worse: dumbasses. Heck, even Microsoft only warns of browser incompatibilities when it’s going to insist on using mondo insecure ActiveX controls or needs a Silverlight plugin. (That’s when I download and install Moonlight, if I’ve not already. Thanks but no thanks, Me$$y$oft; I prefer open source for that. Of course, Moonlight’s only for Linux systems, but that’s what I’ve been using whenever I’ve visited a Silverlight-“enabled” site. *heh*)

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One of Those Lil “Gotchas”

N.B. This is Win7 compgeeky, so skip to a post below if you’re not interested in this stuff.

I’m running the Windows 7 RC on this “side” of this computer, and every now and then a teensy lil “gotcha” pops up. Nothing comprising an insurmountable roadblock, but casual users who are early adopters may find their upgrade path come October 21 to have a few small stumbling blocks. Here’s an example from my “lunch hour” today.

So, I was offered a freebie full version of CA’s Internet Security 2009. “Hmm,” methought, “why not just give it a try?” So, d/led the installer, UNinstalled my anti-virus (the only “resident” anti-malware on this “side” of this machine apart from Win7’s firewall) and installed the thing… sorta. The install routine popped up with a warning that it could ONLY install a trial of the anti-virus, because my system didn’t meet the minimum requirements.

So, I installed it again, right over the installation already attempted, except that THIS time, I first RIGHT-CLICKed on the installer program and chose “Properties”. From the Properties lage, I selected the “Compatibility” tab and told Win7 to invoke the installation file in Vista Service Pack 2 compatibility mode. OK’ed my way out and…

Bob’s your uncle. I was able to install the FULL versions of the entire CA Internet Security 2009 suite of applications.

Easy-peasy. If you know what to do.

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Obamanation Kiddies’ Hour?

Obamucation

Obamanation Kiddies’ Hour? Notsomuch in America’s Third World County. So far, I have confirmation of two gradeschool/middle school combos here in America’s Third World County canceling any participation in The 0!’s first nationwide indoctrination of America’s pubschool children in Obama Worship.

Hmmm, seems parents were burning up the telco wiring and–surprise! surprise!–school administrators looked at their hole card and decided deuces weren’t gonna cut it.

Open thread at Moonbattery (whence the graphic above was stolen urm, borrowed).

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Recessional

It’s been too long since I let “Kipling Tuesday” lapse at third world county, and while it’s not Tuesday, contemplating the morass of sins our government commits in the name of The People using the power an enstupiated, greedy sheeple electorate has given it, I thought his “Recessional” most apt.

Recessional
Rudyard Kipling

God of our fathers, known of old–
Lord of our far-flung battle line–
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine–
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget–lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies–
The Captains and the Kings depart–
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget–lest we forget!

Far-called our navies melt away–
On dune and headland sinks the fire–
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget–lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe–
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law–
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget–lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard–
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard.
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
Amen.

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Service? What Service?

Yeh, I’m back griping about my ISP again. *sigh*

So, service had been “fair to partly cloudy” since about late Sunday evening/early Monday AM. Not stellar, but mostly up and mostly adequate. Then I got this in my email:

We appreciate that you have chosen Xxxxxxxxx Online High-Speed Internet service, and we constantly look to bring you a better service
with new improvements.

We have just increased your download speed from 8 Mbps to 12 Mbps, and your upload speed from 52 Kbps to 1 Mbps.

All you need to do to get the faster speed is unplug the power cord from your cable modem, and then plug it back in to the outlet. That’s it!

“Really?” methought. “OK, I’ll just do that lil thing, since service seems slow today.”

Cycled my “modem” (it’s NOT a modem–“MOdulator/DEModulator”; it’s a specialized router, but who’s keeping score? Oh, I am, that’s who). Checked my connection. Yep. Still slow. In fact, checking with SpeedTest, the latency test timed out three times with three different servers before I could get a SpeedTest started. Then, when the download “speed” refused to go above 190kbps (WHAT?!?!), I canceled the thing and tried again. Yep. No matter what server I chose to test my connection with, the touted “12mbs” download “speed” was nowhere, mon frere.

So I called. Eight times. Seriously. And that doesn’t count the times the correctly dialed phone number refused to connect–either one of them. Why eight times? Disconnected when put on hold twice. Got a rude $%^&* named “Champale” (sp? What mother would name a child that?) once and hung up myself. The other five were cycling through attempting to find someone who would escalate the call to someone who knew something beyond just the first level diag chart, cos I’d covered all those bases in spades more times than the doofuses on the other end of the line have (and actually know what those things are meant to accomplish).

Once again I was told an upper level tech would contact me within 24 hours. Of course, when I’ve been told that before, it’s turned out to be false. In fact, the last person I talked to confessed to me that my record does not indicate an escalation has ever taken place.

Now? I’m back to a nominal download/upload speed–for now!–that is acceptable, but 1/3 less than the lying email I recieved today. And I’ll have an acceptable connection until… I don’t, if the record of the past couple of months is any indication.

Oh. Well.