Archive for the ‘cranky’ Category
Thursday, December 8th, 2011
You’d think the people who work at Real Networks would treat the only division that actually has a future, Rhapsody, with a little respect. They are the only part of the company that has any sort of potential for revenue and profit these days. And yet they managed to release an update that completely breaks the Rhapsody client. That means they literally didn’t do a single smoke test on the product before release. Talk about a massive display of incompetence. If I worked in QA at Real networks, I’d be polishing my resume, because I would know I deserve to be fired. I mean for crimmeny’s sake, you just days ago announced your big acquisition and transition for all the Napster people, and you break your own product during that critical getting-to-know-the-new-guys phase. You might as well have poured all the money you spent on the Best Buy customers down the drain for all the goodwill you’ve wasted.
Tags: codec, error, fail, incompetent, QA, real, rhapsody
Posted in cranky, mis-cognition, music, oh-well, tech stuff, wonderments | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011
No, there’s not a virus on the new Kindle Fire, but you wouldn’t know that if you tried to get support for the disappearing Box.Net for Android app. One of the many pre-written responses Amazon’s support agents throw out is an assertion that your problems must be caused by anti-virus software. If you point out that there isn’t anti-virus software on the Kindle, they write back to assure you that there’s no anti-virus software on the Kindle.
lol
Tags: amazonfail, box.net, cloud, competition, kindlefail, kindlesupportsucks
Posted in cranky, funny-haha, oh-well, tech stuff | Comments Off
Tuesday, November 29th, 2011
After dozens of years of faithful service, I think it’s getting to be time to move on from Avast anti-virus products. This latest update goes through a lot of sleazy marketing hoops that just don’t engender the level of trust I feel I should have for my anti-virus vendor.
First there’s the way, during the required re-registration-of-the-free-product, you are presented with a dialogue that claims that trying the paid version for 20-days for free is easy to back out of, but then hides the ‘single button’ you have to click. Then there’s the way that they explicitly claim in that same dialogue, that going back to free won’t require a reinstall, but it does, and with a full reboot no less. It’s the kind of pathetic let’s just be annoying and see how many suckers are too lazy to move on business practices that Comcast is famous for. I would certainly be ashamed to work for anyplace that felt such behavior was necessary for survival.
Tags: annoying, antivirus, avast, deception, windows
Posted in cranky, microsoft, mis-cognition, tech stuff | Comments Off
Monday, November 21st, 2011
This morning, I’m trying to surf from my phone, and I get this content filtered err message saying my phone has been enabled for “Web Guard” which has determined I’m trying to go to a naughty page, which can’t be allowed.
So I call tech support. First there’s the ‘helpful’ phone system that says it understands speech and touch tones, but doesn’t understand either, and if it doesn’t like your response three times in a row, disconnects you entirely, instead of passing you on to a human. I finally figure out something it recognizes and get a human, who is full of fail on my problem, and of courses asks me to do the traditional reboot of the device. At which point my phone stops powering on correctly. It gets 75% through booting and then hangs on a blank screen.
Seriously? I call for messed up internet, and now I don’t have a working phone at all? And of course he helpfully suggests that I can buy a new phone since I’m out of warranty on this one.
Now I’m regretting not pick up one of birdie’s spare iphones.
UPDATE: I spent an hour or so seeing if there was any way to get at my storage on the phone, so I could backup anything non-cloud, but no joy. After doing a factory reset, the phone seems to be working again. At least with Android I’m not missing any contacts, just all the text messages since the last time my G1 died.
UPDATE2: It looks like this new life might be temporary. The phone is running hot and crashed once so far, while trying to re-download all my basic apps. And I notice it’s stuck in edge mode instead of 3G. Hrm.
Tags: android, argh, fail, g1, grar, sucks, tmobile
Posted in cranky, mis-cognition, oh-well, tech stuff | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
I uploaded a pdf and a txt yesterday, and they still weren’t showing up in the cloud zone on my Fire this morning. When I tried viewing the pdf within the browser on my pc at work, it let me know the file had been corrupted and couldn’t be repaired. I deleted the file and re-uploaded it, and I can get a viewer to launch for both the pdf and the txt from firefox, but they still aren’t showing up on the fire. I just tried adding a .mobi file as well. Still nothing shows up.
This wouldn’t be half as annoying if they hadn’t embargoed every other cloud app from the device. Well, they still let box.net in, I guess I can sign up for yet another service, but really, Amazon, you guys are acting ‘worse’ than apple.
Tags: amazon, clouddrive, fail, fire, kindle
Posted in cranky, mis-cognition, tech stuff | Comments Off
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011
It’s not been an impressive product release so far, for all that it happened a day early. First up, the first-power-on registration process was broken and required making a 20 minute call to tech support. Up next is the way many apps aren’t available for the Fire, even though they appeared in the TV add for the Fire, like IMDB. Hell, the front page of IMDB has three different links to the Kindle Fire, but you’d be a sucker to buy it for that, since it doesn’t actually friggin work on this device.
UPDATE: Interesting, in addition to lacking support for the IMDB app, they also don’t support the dropbox app, though they will auto-suggest box.net’s app instead. No Spideroak app either. I’d wonder if they weren’t preventing cloud competition by excluding these apps, but all three use Amazon S3 for their back-end, so it seems kinda random rather than malicious.
UPDATE2: How odd. The IMDB app is suddenly on my home page on the fire, but the app’s page on the amazon app store still says the fire isn’t supported.
UPDATE3: Looks like not a single epub reader is allowed on the kindle, even though there are dozens in the app store, some that even say they’d work on my decrepit G1 phone….
Tags: amazon, broken, firefail, imdb, kindle, kindlefail
Posted in cranky, mis-cognition, tech stuff | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 9th, 2011
Yesterday’s training session was annoyingly light on the new material, and consisted more of step-by-step DIY demo’ing than actual discovery. Today’s session is like diving head first into a concrete filled pool. The exercises are vague suggestions that often directly contradict something said earlier.
I would have preferred something in the middle for both. I learn best by watching the first time, and then extrapolating from there, assisted by documentation. Oh well.
Tags: annoying, trianing, work
Posted in cranky, mis-cognition, oh-well, work | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011
Out of the 7 musical projects I’ve sponsored on Kickstarter so far, only one has delivered everything they were supposed to, and recorded their cover song. One is in jail, awaiting deportation, so who knows where that project is going. Another responded to my first email and says they’ll have my stuff in a month or two. One responded within hours of my posting something to the project page, having never responded to emails, and sent me a picture of the package about to go into the mail this morning. A third, though not responding directly to my query, has posted another update which, while setting the stage for more disappointment (the artist apparently never had plans to follow through on the physical discs unless he got a regular label to sponsor him, grar), claims that someday he will. One artist has made no response at all, and seems to be actively ignoring kickstarter now, since she is posting to her facebook and website.
The 3 projects that are for physical goods seem to be progressing more reliably, if status updates are to be believed, though one is getting into the danger zone of non-communication (2 weeks since “shipping soon!”).
The software project isn’t saying much, but their expected lead time is a bit longer.
In the end, we shall see. I certainly won’t be sponsoring anything more, until Kickstarter come up with some way of escrowing the funds to ensure people get what they paid for.
Tags: delivery, fail, kickstarter, responsiblity
Posted in cranky, mis-cognition, music, oh-well, tech stuff, wonderments | Comments Off
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
When I moved into my new place back in July, I transferred service from my old place to the new place, and got 3 copies of the same bill, but none for the new place, so I call them up and ask what’s up, and they assure me that they’ve just not generated a any bills for the first place yet, and I don’t have any balance owing. OK, sounds reasonable.
Then yesterday, I get a call from some collection agent. It seems when I was on the phone with them, they didn’t bother to tell me that they still were showing a balance for the old place. Nevermind that I paid the bill they sent that was marked “final bill” months ago.
Whatever; if I used the electric, I’ll pay for it. I just wish they’d get their shit together. Then again, I noticed that the property management group for my new place’s website only displays the amount due (also incorrectly), but doesn’t actually support online payment. Seriously? What are we, in 1994? =p
Tags: billing, d'oh, grar, seattlecitylight
Posted in cranky, housing, oh-well, seattle | Comments Off
Wednesday, October 19th, 2011
I’m not a big fan of political strategist companies, who’ve commoditized our democracy so that whomever has the biggest warchest wins, but that’s the way of the world these days, so be it.
So it’s an annoyed amusement, when I get one of those massive postcard fliers for some nameless PAC that doesn’t have any positive agenda to put forward, they just want you to know how much they hate the current guy, and they have a link to website for information about their campaign…and the website is a wordpress site that’s still locked down to admin users only. Truly brilliant. Whomever paid WinPower Strategies for their anti port commissioner campaign seems to have wasted their money. oops.
Tags: advertising, d'oh, politics, waste, wordpress
Posted in cranky, funny-haha, oh-well, politics, seattle, tech stuff | Comments Off