Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

Dear Gmail:

You aren't impressing me with a dialog box saying Switch to the new look -- without telling me WHY I want to switch. Today I saw in Gmail that Gmail's getting a new look soon. Learn more Dismiss. Clicking the Learn More gave me:

About Gmail’s new look

A new look

Watch the video to get an overview of the improvements.

You will automatically get upgraded to the new look soon. If you don't want to wait, you can switch to it today by logging into Gmail and clicking Switch to the new look.

I suppose I'm supposed to be impressed that you're warning me that you're about to fuck up Gmail, as opposed to Facebook that just fucks it up. But it all seems more like a threat.

See, I'm tired of having to bloody upgrade all the time. Especially on YOUR schedule and not mine. And it doesn't inspire confidence that lots of people are complaining about the so-called improvements.

And Google? Get off my lawn while you're at it.

Dr. Phil

PS -- I looked at the video. Kudos for putting in captions, since I normally run with the sound off. But in parts it looks like they want Gmail to look more like Facebook. Or G+. Which if I wanted to use, I'd look at more than once a month...

The First Day Has Come And Mostly Gone

Microsoft Windows 7 Release Day. Oh boy. Oh thrill. I even forgot it was October 22nd, except they did a segment about Win7 on WOOD-AM radio and a couple of people I follow online were installing it today. (And like everything else which falls off the truck early, I guess there were a few machines out with Win7 back on the 13th.) Everyone seems to want to know if it's faster than Vista. Who cares? It needs to be faster than XP Pro, doesn't it?

But the best thing is the new Mac Ad: "Broken Promises" shows a litany of promises that Windows N will not have any of the problems of Windows N-1. Going all the way back to Windows 2. (hee-hee)

The End Of Life As We Know It

Of course Redmond still wants to stop updating Windows XP the end of December. Which is just two months and change away. I'm so sorry Microsoft, but if there are problems with Windows 7, you'll still be giving out customer service ticket numbers two months from now -- way short of Windows 7 Service Pack 1, and certainly far from Win7 SP2, which is pretty much the gold standard for some people's idea of stable upgrades.

I don't see that they can convince the multitude of XP users to upgrade to 7 in two months. And Lord knows that no one in their right mind who has put it off this long is going to choose to do an interim upgrade to Vista.

And what's this crap about ending XP updates anyway -- you've still been selling Windows XP Home netbooks all summer. And now they have to upgrade? On low powered, low memory machines? Remember when I said that Win7 has to be faster than XP, not faster than Vista? And not on top of the line machines, either.

Another Shot In The Foot

Oh and what's this? There's no direct upgrade path from XP to 7? My motivation for doing a cold install of an OS and complete reinstall of all my software for an OS I don't know will work properly is... what? Vanity? Hubris? Stupidity? On Microsoft's part?

Because all MS has been touting 7 for is... children touting Win7. And that's not a sales pitch or a crushing inspiration for the rest of us.

This is developing into a clusterfuck epic fail -- and I don't even know whether Win7 does work or doesn't. It might. But Microsoft's Convert Or Die policy, based on a history of upgrades which didn't go well, is absurd.

Dr. Phil

PS - Remember, Microsoft, I own and use computers to do work, to run application software -- not to run Windows. Or any OS. I need to have one, but it's not the bottom line unless it insists on making it the end of the line.

10-22-2009: The End Of The World Is Coming

Microsoft is getting ready to release Windows 7 to the world. Windows 7? Really? Actually, I know it's Windows NT4, NT5 (2000), NT5.1 (XP), NT5.1 (6) (Vista)... so obviously WIndows 7 comes after NT, 2000, XP and Vista. What?

But the marketing campaign... shakes head. The latest commercial with some six-year-old "on Daddy's laptop" cutting and pasting preliminary Windows 7 reviews into shots of marshmallows, bunnies and hamsters with skimmer hats. Right... I am surely going to believe someone who cannot read the big words properly. I'd rather have, what did they do? Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates stealing a stuffed giraffe to sell Vista? Geesh.

We've Been Through This Before

It's actually possible to fix Windows. XP Pro SP2/SP3 is pretty stable, for example, and its library of printer drivers is a helluva lot more successful than the Vista driver situation. Not that we'd ever want to actually ever print any of the work on OUR computers. Using hardware we actually ALREADY OWN.

But seriously.

WIndows 1.04 shipped with some IBM PS/2 systems -- and was worthless and useless.

There was Windows 286 versus Windows 386... and then Windows 3.0, which really didn't work right and had early Word and Excel for Windows which didn't work right. Windows 3.1 and 3.11 -- they actually performed good enough that Windows actually began showing up on machines.

Windows 95 made a better interface and allowed easier windowing and task switching. Of course it was supposed to work with USB, and Windows 95B OSR2 had USB drivers -- which didn't work with most USB devices without crashing or ignoring the USB hardware.

Windows 98 fixed the USB problems and... oh crap, Win98 had enough problems they had to come out with Windows 98 Second Edition. Which actually works. Then they upgraded it to Windows Me Millennium Edition and the shit really hit the fan. Not a good upgrade, though some computers equipped with Win98ME work okay -- hell, I have a Sony laptop with Win98ME I still use, go figure.

Meanwhile, in the NT parallel universe, NT 3.51 was functional, but NT 4.0 Professional was much better. Service Pack 6a was good enough that SP7 was cancelled.

Windows NT 5 became Windows 2000 Professional and shipped with thousands of bugs. But it's up to what, SP4? SP5? And some IT departments still use it because they've made it stable.

And XP. Once we got to Windows XP SP2, it was worth using. Even Win XP Home SP3 on netbooks seems to work. The same, I fear, cannot be said for all users of Windows Vista, which has so many damned versions no one can quite keep them all straight.

Bottom Line

So you want us to think that Windows 7 is the greatest thing since sliced bread, because you say so?

I don't think so.

Call me in 2012 when you've got Win 7 SP2/SP3 going. Meanwhile, stop with this nonsense of planning to kill Windows XP too soon. Really.

Dr. Phil

The Great Stimulus Project of 2009

And now giant mutant voles are eating into the side of the house, too.

Remember that scene in the medical dramas where they open up some poor guys chest and remove his heart, only to discover that the donor heart is defective or the connective tissue or arteries just fall apart when they try to sew it all back together again? Well thank goodness we're not there yet. But our furnace is sitting in the garage and it isn't even noon yet. (grin)

Alas, poor York, I knew ye well these past sixteen years...

Back in 2007 we had the Great Rinnai Hot Water Heater, Sump Pump and Kohler Backup Generator Project, which all stemmed from the fact that our water heater was getting old and there was no place to drain it in the basement... The 2009 Great Heating and Cooling Project began with the simple desire to raise the humidity in the house during the winter. It's supposed to be good for the sinuses and keep down colds, flu and sinus infections. But putting a whole house humidifier on a nearly sixteen year old furnace seemed silly. Oh, and the one thing I've always hated about the current furnace were the supposedly washable furnace filters. No frame, stiff scratchy fiberglass and impossible to get in and out. Did NOT help our sinuses that we never cleaned the damned thing very often.

So let's talk about a new furnace. And as long as we are, what about central air conditioning? Well, it turns out 2009 is great year to be talking about this sort of stuff. There's some energy efficiency Federal tax rebate money for going high efficiency. In our case it means we could've spent X dollars for a 90% efficient furnace to replace the 85% York we have (uh, had). Or we could spend Y dollars for a 95% efficient furnace plus a heat pump. Y - X = around $1500 and we'd qualify for the $1500 max rebate. So for the same net money, we can get a more efficient heating system and essentially free central A.C. for the summer.

As for air filtration, we looked at an $800 electrostatic unit, but you have to wash the stainless steel blades every couple of weeks. For about $250 we're getting this large cartridge unit that gets changed once a year for about $30. It's gonna take another sixteen years to get around to making up the cost differential with the one-a-year cartridge system -- no-brainer decision there, folks.

Banging and Klanging

So yesterday was Grading Day. And after a nap we went out to the movies and dinner at a Thai restaurant and a pleasant evening. Now Greg and his helper are busily changing our house. They've budgeted two days for the job, but have half of Friday penciled in for trouble-shooting.

And then I'm off to Penguicon!

Dr. Phil

What's Wrong With This Description?

From a techie guy I know, here's a description of one team's effort to set up one of those fancy $17,000 Microsoft Surface large touchscreen computers. Read it and then come back here...

Now, the funny thing is we've all been there. Just before I went to Clarion in 2004, one of my 17" Micron VGA monitors burned up. And I was obliged to buy a 15" ViewSonic LCD monitor, which I had shipped to the Physics Dept. and then just took the box to the sorority house in East Lansing. The night I got there, I started setting up everything. And I couldn't get the damned cover off the back of the unit to plug in the cables. There was a sketchy little diagram on some sort of a Quick Start sheet, but the manual was on a CD-ROM. If there was a better explanation in the manual, it was going to be tough to read when the machine with the CD-ROM drive... needed a working monitor!

Eventually we discovered that the "arrow" shown on the diagram was completely misinterpretable, if that's a word, before I resulted to actually breaking the cover off. Come on, it was midnight and I wanted a working computer for six weeks!

Later I replaced the 17" Micron VGA monitor at the office with another, slightly newer model of ViewSonic 15" LCD panel and they'd not improved the installation process one twit. But at least I knew what I was up against.

Get With The Program

Sometimes I am convinced that the tech writers who write manuals believe the press that no one reads the manuals, so they just go messing with us. But I certainly have seen my share of manuals waxing on poetically about everything BUT setting up the machine and getting it to work.

Dammit, that's the point of all this, isn't it? Getting the damned thing to work? At least that's what I always thought I was spending my money on.

Rhodamine?

Dr. Phil

Upgrades

Computers are funny creatures, since practically speaking they are the sum of their hardware, software, peripherals and other ancillary items. Most people think of upgrades of the big ticket items -- and that's a necessary part of it. But sometimes you have to upgrade the other parts. (grin)

For me upgrades are an uneven process. I am content to use older machines and older technology, and frankly the way I end up with teaching contracts I am mostly part-time and sometimes full-time. 2008-9, while a plunging disaster for some, ends up being a good year for me to make a few upgrades.

Making A Point

Back when I was heading out to the 2004 Clarion workshop, I ordered a pair of Swiss Army USB Memory "knives". Actually, one was a miniature knife and one was a "travel safe" version designed to go through post-9/11 security and had no blades. I had them engraved "DrPhil" and they came with 64MB of memory each. Sturdy, portable, I use these things every day to transfer files between machines at home, office and on the road. Later, I acquired newer memory units for the Swiss Army Memories with 1GB and 512MB of memory. But all that is so 2006.

The other day I wandered by the same Swiss Army Knives place in New Hampshire and found that they had a 2nd generation model with either a white LED light or a laser pointer, in place of the red LED light of the originals. And sizes of memory up to 16GB. I figured a pair of 8GB units would be sufficient. Have a lot more digital pictures to move around, too, besides class and writing files.

Circuit City Meltdown

When the big box store announced it was closing, I stopped by early on to see if there was any point in investing in a Nikon digital SLR. But at that time they weren't doing much of a discount, the staff was non-existent and the displays already picked over. More recently the discounts were advertised as deeper, and in the interim we found some old Circuit City gift cards which would go bye-bye when the doors closed. My parting words to Mrs. Dr. Phil was that if nothing else, I'd buy some memory cards.

The camera section was heavily wiped out. But they were discounting memory cards, so I picked up some SanDisk Extreme III and Ultra II cards -- 8GB Compact Flash for the old HP digital camera, 8GB SD card for the Fujitsu machines and an 8GB Memory Stick Pro Duo for my Sony digital camera. That was good enough for me.

But while getting into line, I ran across the Sony NSC-GC1 net video camera. Though I made a film in my senior year of high school, I've never owned a movie or video camera. I've thought about it, but never had the real need. At Christmastime, a couple of techie geeks in print and on radio were recommending getting one of the little YouTube enabled quickie video cameras like the Flip. The Sony unit? Essentially free with my gift cards and it uses Memory Stick Pro Duo for memory. Even if the unit was bad, it still would do something and for free? Why not?

Kindling

Then there was the announcement last week or so about Amazon.com's Kindle 2. At first I was intrigued -- having essentially a pre-paid 3G cellular arrangement for file transport sounds like a great deal. But then, like Lando Calrissian, further investigations left me muttering, "This deal is getting worse all the time." First, the Kindle 2 loses the Kindle's SD card slot. Too bad, because the Fujitsu's have built-in SD card slots and I have multi-card adapters and use SD cards for things, as noted. Second, while you could e-mail and send via 3G your own files to read on the Kindle 2, they want to charge me a dime for each download. A dime to read each of my OWN files? This is not free pre-paid 3G. And then there were the free e-books from Tor.com, etc. Things to read before I buy physical books. I mean, my interest in a digital e-book reader is NOT buying a lot of e-content from Amazon.com.

Sure, it looked like there was a workaround using the free Mobi writer to create files which were allowed to be updated over the USB cable, but having to have the cable, etc., decreases the usability. I've used e-book readers on PDA and the Rocket eBook, and never had problems with sending over my own files.

Then one of the comments mentioned the Sony PRS-505 Digital Book Reader and I remembered people talking about the quality of the electronic ink on its display. At the time I had decided the cost too high, but looking at it again I found the PRS-505 was actually cheaper than the Kindle 2 -- and you could get a light wedge case for reading in dim light or the dark, something the Kindle 2 doesn't offer. And the PRS-505 takes both SD and Memory Stick Duo cards, technologies I already use. 8GB is a lot of e-content. (grin) Sorry Amazon, Sony has the edge for my purposes.

Postscript

Alas, things don't always go according to plan. The geniuses at the Swiss Army Knife place shipped my order via UPS. Unfortunately, the address is a P.O. Box. UPS doesn't deliver to P.O. Boxes and the UPS depot is 30-40 miles away.

Dr. Phil

New Phones


Saturday, which was a perfectly lovely and sunny day, I had to run out to the Alltel store on Alpine Avenue to buy us two new phones. No, the pair of Motorola V60i cell phones we bought in January 2003 still work fine, thank you very much. But back in November we got a letter from Alltel informing us that our phones would have to be replaced by 31 March 2008. Seems the FCC is taking back some frequencies from the cell phone providers, bands used for analog service and the V60i's handle both digital and analog. Can't have them roaming and broadcasting on radio frequencies no longer assigned to them. Alltel's been our case for over a year to get new cell phones anyway, because the V60i doesn't have built-in GPS which now that we have Enhanced 9-1-1, is actually useful to the emergency services people.

Net result, the V60i's are over five years old, maybe it's time to replace them. Then again, my first Motorola MicroTAC lasted around eight years or so until I was unable to find a decent battery for it. (grin) The Alltel guys have such fun trying to figure out our ancient rate plans.

In With The New


Really, all we need are cellphones. We don't need a helluva lot of other beeps and whistles. The built-in camera, okay, that can be handy. But we are not going to be downloading ring tones, games, etc. to our phones.

Then why a RAZR? It's thinner, wider and longer than the V60i -- which actually makes it easier to hold. Color screen is a lot brighter. And it holds some 500 phone numbers, not 99. Indeed, I have, er had, nearly 99 numbers in my old V60i, and they had a lovely nest of wires hooked up to a PC which allowed them to dump everything from V60i to RAZR V3a.

Er, Not Quite

While it is true I did not have to rekey every single entry, I did find that "standards" have apparently changed. On my MicroTAC, Speed Dial #1 was hardwired for 9-1-1. On my V60i, I had to set Speed Dial #1 to 9-1-1, it wanted to make it Voicemail. And on the RAZR, because Speed Dial #1 was set to Voicemail, then (a) every entry in my V60i's contact list got the wrong Speed Dial number and (b) when it copied the contract list, it just copied the list, not the Speed Dial numbers, so there were no gaps in the list.

I had to sit there with V60i in my left hand and RAZR in my right and thumb through a lot of menus to manually synchronize the Speed Dial numbers, so that when I called my parents this afternoon, I actually got them instead of some emergency number at Western Michigan University.

I hate it when "easy to use" and "easy to upgrade" technology clearly isn't. It's just sloppy programming and sloppy attention to details.

Bottom Line

Because we were required to get new phones, we got nice new ones without any change in our current rate plan, which is actually a saving over we'd probably get set up with if we were starting from scratch. Since we haven't banged our heads on our current minutes allotments, I think we're good. (grin)

Dr. Phil

UPDATE: Dead photos updated 1-10-2015.