Category: I do these sorts of things so you don’t have to

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Mediacom, Sucking Dead Bunnies Through a Straw. IOW, Business as Usual.

Well, Mediacom is at it again. This quite apart from sending us 4 “DTAs”–digital jail boxes–that were ALL dysfunctional, and known to be so, according to the local tech who’s replaced 25 of them in the last couple of weeks with known-good MODELS from a different MANUFACTURER. No, this is something else: supposedly we’re hitting our data cap. Really unusual activity. Data consumption on the order of 3GB during a service outage is one clue.

Then, yesterday afternoon, after griping out yet another Mediacom Suckage Expert (A.K.A., “customer service representative,” “phone tech support person”) I DISCONNECTED our cable “modem” for 2.5 hours, reconnected and. . . more than 2.5GB of additional usage recorded.

Next? I then disconnected the cable “modem” for 16 hours. Reconnected and. . . yep. More usage, though less: only 1.6 additional GBs of data usage reported while our system was completely, physically disconnected from Mediacom.

Our neighbor, who has extremely modest Internet needs/usage has reported the same issue to Mediacom just this week. Mediacom, of course, says it’s all us.

Lies.

Local onsite support is better. The local support tech (I say “local”. Mediacom has him covering LARGE parts of 3 counties all by his lonesome) has had multiple encounters with folks supposedly hitting their data caps who simply aren’t, in all reality. Yeh, well, I just talk with folks around town, and my neighbor and I aren’t the only ones I know about.

Mediacom: asking the question, “How many customers can we screw today?”

Update: Strangely, after four hours of connectivity today, Mediacom’s data usage report has shown no increase in usage during that time. Yep. As ALWAYS, the problem is at Mediacom’s end of the pipe.

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I Don’t Know Why More People Don’t Do This

N.B. Casual computing notes. Almost NONE of this is for a business setting, although securely accessing remote desktops can be a big help there. But that’s not something I’d push the Windows Remote Desktop Connection app for. Maybe that’s just me. . .

My lil “living room lappy” doesn’t have much horsepower, but it doesn’t need much to log onto the media computer connected to the TV, and a lil rdp file semi-automates even that. Just using it as a semi-dumb client works really well in that situation. Heck, it even saves steps if I’m too lazy (and you can bet I frequently am) to walk back to my “real” computer back in my office. *shrugs*

I really don’t know why more folks don’t use remote desktop access for everyday stuff. It is a wee tad less convenient accessing other computers from my Kindle Fire. Sadly, the best tool for it seems to be TeamViewer. *scratches head* That doesn’t really make sense to me, but at least it works when I need it to, for values of “work” that are a bit kludgy.

*heh* The first time–years ago–I accessed my Wonder Woman’s computer and took control of her mouse, it freaked her out. Of course, that was back in the day when I had to set quite a few things up well in advance for her computer to accept my access. I don’t remotely access as many computers nowadays–especially WAN computers–as I used to do (all the time, it seemed for some years), but I’d just not ever want to do with NOT being able to access–and use just as if sitting at it any computer (of mine) on our LAN, any time, from any of them.

Yeh, yeh, I access files and folders more than I actually do remote computing on different computers scattered around the house, but not a day goes by I don’t fire up an application on Z-I from Z-II that just works better on Z-I than on Z-II, or whatever (yeh, not the computer names). (My music transcription software is an example. I might want to jot a few notes *heh* or make some edits while on the lil living room lappy, but the office machine is better for that. So. . . rdp, baby.)

Yes, it does sometimes mean files are scattered around at different machines, but regular justifications of archives on NASes, etc., help keep everything pretty well organized. (And then there are the “families” of files that have specific homes “in the cloud” as well, and synch up on all registered machines. . . which are then synched/justified on NASes. For the few terabytes of data I want to protect, it works all right.

Oh, look. The voices in my head wander’d afield. Who’d-a thunk it? 😉

(Yes, I know there are some approximations of full desktop access available for various Android and even *meh* iPad situations–see my comments about Kindle remote desktop access–but really? Notsomuch.)

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New Policy

Well, no, not new-new. Perhaps a better way to say it is a new statement of a policy that’s grown and matured over time.

Never suffer a fool, gladly or not, for in doing so all you do is kick the can down the road and into a neighbor’s yard. Therefore, when encountering fools, dumbasses, trolls and yahoos, kick THEIR cans as often and as hard as necessary to at least make sure they know what behaviors have earned them their pain.

Of course, “kick their cans” is normatively a metaphorical construction that more or less means, “Read them the riot act, and keep reading it to them as often as you have the time and energy to do so until they at least decide to behave properly around you.”

Almost all of the fools, dumbasses, trolls and yahoos out there are “special snowflakes” who have never had their nonsense and execrably rude behavior thrown back in their faces, have never suffered any consequences for their behaviors. Mock them. Roundly and soundly. Point out each and every one of their flaws (“And you smell bad, too!” is a nice one–especially in Internet fora. *heh*) Name-calling, as long as it is restricted to being descriptive of their behaviors and not as attempts to rebut their arguments (assuming they can make any) is fair. If they fit the class, they’ve earned a wee bit of name-calling, but keep it descriptive and as close as possible to their evidenced behaviors!

Being polite to jackasses only encourages them in their bad behavior. Sometimes, they need a (metaphorical, remember!) 2×4 upside the head. Well, more like most times.

Thatisall.

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You Do Not Want to Have This Image in Your Head

Over on FarceBook, one guy posted,

“got a pedicure yesterday. Need to go to XYZ, WV, and do a mineral bath and massage treatment next.”

My teeth are still good enough, but I’m not flexible enough, anymore, to give myself a “pedicure”. . . *heh*

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Semi-Almost-Halfway Empty Nest/China Syndrome

Five Year Rule? Five years after kids move out, whatever they behind is yours to do with as you will, right?

OK. Just checking. . .

Old, discarded tech; office equipment/supplies; clothing; stuffed toys; bedding; artwork: all on the block, headed for the tip, donated; entering common household use as OURS, now. Whatev’. ‘s’way it goes. . .

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I Post These Kinds of Things Because You’re Slacking Off

The problem with self-pub? Whole HERDS of 20-something illiterate liberal arts graduates “writing” books for a “readership” of their peers. The sheer depth of their cultural, historical and LITERARY illiteracy (grammar atrocities, word misuse, COMPLETE misunderstanding of background and usage of common expressions, etc., etc.) is mind-boggling. It’s too late to lobotomize them. They’ve already done such a good job on themselves, already.

(Yes, there are a few who actually either know how to use a dictionary and form moderately coherent sentences. . . or else have gone outside their cohort and enlisted the aid of the rare literate proofreader/editor to clean up their glurge.)

Yeh, yeh. Dylan Thomas said it best (though about a different kind of death): “Rage, rage against the dying of the light. . . ” *heh*

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For Most Things, Brains are Better than Muscles

Even if it means just being smart enough to know when to quit.

Example: Moving a piano.

When the right equipment is used and the piano is properly prepared for the move, two (reasonably healthy) guys are all that’s needed, but heaven help folks trying to move a piano w/o the proper equipment and mental “muscle,” because physics surely will not. My last “piano move” 20 years ago: good equipment, me, a 12-y.o. boy and a 14-y.o. girl (both a couple of standard deviations above the mean and able to take direction very well). Moved the piano out and loaded into truck. Arrival at destination? It took me and three inexperienced guys who apparently were not as bright as my two kids to move it in and set it up. ‘S’truth.

Nowadays, I’m smart enough to know that–at my age and physical condition–hiring someone would be better, because despite knowing how to move one, I’m just getting to be too old for the gig. *sigh*

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FarceBook Funnies

Ran into a kid in a FarceBook thread on musical tastes. He was really offended by my comments delineating how obvious it is that contemporary society has, on the main, NO musical taste, and indeed, more or less, that most folks have no capability to discern music from rhythmic noise.

He went on to list a number of “great” contemporary popular works (I am kind), all of which were boring, derivative, insultingly stupid, etc., including a “fantastic” (his word) popular song that had an annoying (and extremely boring) rhythmic ostinato that did absolutely nothing to support the rest of the piece. Oh, and the vocals were juvenile, quite apart from the stupid lyrics.

But the pieces were definitely the kind of thing that would appeal to a musically illiterate junior high school student.

So, he was offended. Mentioned one was “great” in the class of greatness of a “great book”–Plato’s Republic (which isn’t really a book at all but a collection of dialogs of varying lengths and importance that together might make up a novella-length “book,” although it has been compiled and presented as a “bookette” *heh* It’s easier for academic bookstores to charge more for the collection that way. In my collection, every book with an edition of “The Republic” is part of a much longer collection of works. ADHD folks’ opinions may vary.).

It further devolved into his assertion that it was too, and just as great a “book” as King Lear. . . which isn’t a book but a play.

*head-desk*

Kicker: He’s apparently a grad of a “rigorous” liberal arts program (that uses the Great Books of the Western World as a curriculum/curriculum resource/guide), and can’t discern that King Lear is a play, not a book, and he is a writer for The Puffington Host. Naturally. Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind unit.

*sigh*

It was fun playing until I ran out of popcorn.

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Computer Security: the Value of Resident Anti-Malware

So, how important is having a resident, up-to-date anti-malware product for Windows users?

Middlin’. No, seriously.

Here’s a wee experiment I recently did:

  • Windows 7 box, mostly updated (I did not accept some problematic M$Office 2010 updates, but then I rarely fire up M$Office).
  • Removed all resident anti-malware products.
  • Surfed normally for a month.
  • Scanned with offline standalone scanners and online scanners from reputable anti-malware companies.

Result? No malware.

A properly-configured modern(ish) browser (Opera 12.17), decent firewalling and simple safe computing practices were all that was needed for me to avoid infections/infestations with malware.