08:16 –With the Roku box not working and therefore no Netflix streaming, Barbara and I watched the last disc of Heartland series three last night. Colin watched as well. When Heartland’s Amy is training horses, she frequently tells tells one he’s a “good boy” in the same sing-song voice that Barbara uses to tell Colin that he’s a good boy. Colin loves to be told that he’s a good boy, and he likes hearing it from Amy as much as he does hearing it from Barbara.
We’re getting short on chemistry kits again. We sold four yesterday. We’ll work on making up another batch of 30 this weekend.
Fitch downgraded Spain’s sovereign debt by three levels yesterday, to one level above junk bond status. Although a three-level cut seems dramatic, it actually wasn’t nearly enough. The reality is that Spain is bankrupt, and its credit rating should reflect that fact. Spain is widely expected to request a bailout over the coming weekend, although as usual the amount of the requested bailout will be nothing more than a band-aid. The reality is that Spain needs to be given (not loaned) at least $500 billion over the next year to 18 months. That amount simply isn’t available, nor is there any prospect of it becoming so. Expect further cuts in Spain’s sovereign credit rating after this weekend, and expect the pressure to move next to Italy.
Have you considered that your Roku box may have fried itself ? Or just its wireless interface ?
We moved our offices recently and we lost our music on hold box and our voicemail due to a lighting strike before I got them back on a UPS. My installer did not move the UPS along with the phone system and we got hit when he had everything plugged into the regular electrical socket.
No, the box isn’t fried. It’s done this before and then started working again. The simple fact is that Roku wireless networking is hinky.
Have you reset your wireless access point? I have been surprised how many times that has fixed a connectivity problem.
Yep. And the WAP is showing the Roku box as connected and with 100% signal strength at the top data rate.
The only other thing I can think of is firmware updates. I’ve had a Roku for a year with no problems.
Your Roku box is probably messed up because of your dog. You weren’t paying him enough attention, he got bored, and as we all know, idle hands are the devil’s playground. He started playing with the box’s configuration, botched a firmware update, and now you see the results.
If only you had a cat. Cats know tech support.
Got a call today from someone at Microsoft who spoke with a heavy India accent. Told me that Microsoft had detected a problem on my computer. It sort of went like this:
M: Hello this Aaron from Microsoft.
I: OK. What do you need?
M: We have detected a problem on your computer.
I: What kind of problem?
M: There is a major software error that could destroy your hardware.
I: Holy crap, that sounds serious.
M: It can be. I would like to install some software to allow me to fix your computer.
I: OK, how do I do that?
M: Go to this website and when the site asks for permission please click Yes.
I: OK. I clicked my fingers and nothing happened.
M: Click on the button with your mouse.
I: OK, I will have to go one of the ones I was going to feed my snake.
M: No, your computer mouse.
I: I don’t have a mouse.
M: Yes, it looks like a mouse and has a couple of buttons.
I: Oh, that thing. I have never used it. Now how do I click.
M: You point the mouse at the button on the website and press the left button on the mouse.
I: I don’t see a button on the website. I do have a button on my shirt.
M: The place on the website that says “Click Here to Install Software.”
I: OK, I moved the mouse but nothing happened on the screen.
M: Is the mouse connected to the computer and working.
I: Yes.
M: Please try again.
I: Still nothing.
M: What kind of computer do you have.
I: Something from Apple called an “IPAD”.
M: An IPAD does not have a mouse.
I: I told you it did not work.
M: Do you have another computer that is indicating to us there is a problem.
I: Yes I have a PDP-11, will that do?
M: click. End of conversation.
I guess there are people stupid enough in the world to think that Microsoft would call them out of the blue to help them with a computer problem. They would basically own your computer at that point.
What would be fun is to drop a PDP-11 on the head of whoever makes these people make these calls.
I have one going on now, calling my cell morning, noon and night, and amazingly, also my internal work landline which is not public in any way, shape or form. They claim my Citibank card is 25 bucks past due and they just need my SSAN and a coupla other things to verify stuff, etc. I immediately went to the online Do Not Call registry and entered in both numbers. Five minutes later, of course, the calls came again on both phones. If I get my hands on the head honchos who do this, I plan to spend a week or two torturing them to death.
Oh, forgot: I do not have and have never had a Citibank card.
Ray wrote:
“I: Yes I have a PDP-11, will that do?”
You have a PDP-11? Wow, I haven’t seen one of them since 1979. Mind giving me your passwords so I can hook into it and play around? 🙂
OFD wrote:
“What would be fun is to drop a PDP-11 on the head of whoever makes these people make these calls.”
That’d be a waste of a perfectly good PDP-11.
Does anyone have more information on the turnout in the Wisconsin recall election? I would have thought that having some precincts with > 100% turnout might be cause for some investigation. However, as far I can tell, no one is following this up.
Miles_Teg questioned: “You have a PDP-11?”
No, I lied. Sorry I can’t give my passwords. Will my credit card number do instead? 🙂
It amazes that there are enough stupid people, still, in the US that fall for those scams. With all the media attention about such scams people still get trapped.
The “Do Not Call List” is a scam for the most part. I get calls all the time from companies and I ask them who they are. When they tell me I then inform them I am on the DNCL and I will now be filing a lawsuit because they violated the list. Most hang up immediately, some apologize. Why have the list if it does not work?
What is particularly annoying are the political calls that I receive. For congress to have excluded themselves from the list just shows that congress thinks they are better than us mere serfs. When I get such a call I contact their local headquarters and pitch a fit telling them I was going to vote for their candidate until I got the call disrupting my dinner. Since they had so little regard for me I will no longer vote for their candidate. Cretins.
I would have thought that having some precincts with > 100% turnout might be cause for some investigation.
And to think that unions are not corrupt.
When LBJ was in the primaries there were many people who were dead that voted. The voter registration list was in the exact same order as people in a local cemetary. They rose from the grave (zombies?), voted, then returned to their resting place. Corruption has always been around. It is just that the technology of today makes it easier to find.
LBJ was really corrupt. After he was in office he had a landing strip that would handle a 727 built on his property. He also had a theatre built in his Texas home, multipe modifications to the property such as an elaborate fence and a really nice barn. All paid for by taxpayer money.
I used to have a VAX, but I put it out for bulky-item pickup at least 20 years ago.
I think Greg was asking about a VMS emulator:
http://qemu-buch.de/de/index.php/QEMU-KVM-Buch/_Anhang/_Weitere_Virtualisierer_und_Emulatoren/_PersonalAlpha
The VMS o.s. is now owned by HP and they still maintain and sell machines with it. A bunch of us techies here in Nova Anglia kind of grew up with it as DEC was headquartered in Maynard, but that rug was kinda pulled out from under us over twenty years ago. A bunch of the VMS people, like me, got sucked into Windows NT, but since then most of us have ended up in Linux. And a lot of the VMS support functions ended up in India.
I was in Boston when all that stuff in Maynard was going down. From about ’89 through ’94, one helluva lot of my friends lost jobs as everything west of Natick collapsed, including Prime Computers, the GM plant in Framingham, and a couple of software gaming outfits. One of the PC mags in Natick/Framingham had tough times then, too, as did medical tech out on the Rte. 128 beltway and beyond. Lots of our new friends left Mass. then. Things started bouncing back in ’94, but then got worse again from ’99 to about ’01—which was when we left for Berlin. Berlin was a very progressive experience, right up until the month I left. My last month, I had only one class to teach, after having had a minimum of 15 classes a week, up to that point. That was late 2009.
Yes, I remember all that; I worked at DEC in the late 80s and then left for grad school until 91 in Worcester and then until 93 in Nova Caesarea. From there to more DEC machines at EDS where there were a lot of DEC refugees at the time, and then in 98 I moved up here to Vermont and my state job office had a VAX and an Alpha in it, both of which were taken away from me and replaced with NT. I didn’t work with VMS again until 06 and 07, again in Worcester for an 18-month exile from my family here after my state job here was deep-sixed and I was forced out. Haven’t seen it since. But one of my current colleagues is also a fellow DEC refugee, from when they had plants here.
A younger brother kept working at EDS in MA until after they’d actually moved the offices back into the Old Mill in Maynard on the scenic Assabet River and then HP bought them and his job folded, too. And one of the only hot chicks I ever knew in all my years in IT with whom I’d worked at DEC, still works for HP and we are connected on Linked-In after these last 23 years.
A long strange trip indeed.