Author Archive

Just spent 5+ hours wrestling with a network device that I was trying to configure with my Thinkpad, which is running Windows 7 Enterprise. After posting to forums, starting from scratch more times than I can count, bugging various colleagues over the phone, etc etc etc, I had a flash of troubleshooting inspiration….

*walks over to Windows XP machine and plugs in network device*

*pulls up www.google.com*

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Man the world of webcomics is pulling out all the stops today to keep my mind of off this.

So I’m all for backwards compatibility and all, but when there’s aspects of your OS that are getting exploited that are 17 years old, you might want to think about starting with a clean slate at some point. Jes sayin’.

via Slashdot

Because if not, me, my new bluetooth earpiece, and my contrarian nature are gonna hop on this blog-train SO EFFIN’ HARD.

So a few little tidbits to start your year off:

WINDOWS 7 IS OKAY! – Serious, I am always the guy who get’s off the OS upgrade bus line somewhere out in St. Johns, but I’m posting this from my Windows 7 Professional 64-bit install, and lovin’ it. The good/bad Microsoft OS cycle continues….

VIRUSES, SPYWARE, AND MALWARE ARE STILL BAD! – And still out there in droves. We started off 2009 hoping it was on the decline, but no such luck. So if you’re manhood is getting insulted my pop-ups, come see us.

IPHONES ARE COOL, BUT NOT INVINCIBLE! – iPhones are awesome. Except when they decide they want to take a high-dive from your shirt pocket into the porcelain pool. So now we at Old Town Computers do iPhone repair.

I STILL USE TOO MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS IN MY POSTS! – Deal wif it.

We are four years old.

So here’s the deal.

And here is the deal in graphical-poster-based format.

And here are some Deals.

So we are through the first round of Backspace/OTC’s Left4Dead Tourney, and things are shaping up interestingly. The block residents who really should be leading at this point, Backspace and Ground Kontrol, have LOST their first round. OMG. Meanwhile, the dark horse, FUD, had a great round, and the Backspace regulars, No Team, crushed it, with a victory of 897 to 23. Frick.

9:05

RIP Ground Kontrol. Knocked out in a 29-11 loss. But the Backspace Ladies Team, WRU, are now fighting it out.

One week later

The problem with live-blaggin an event you are running is enclosed herein. The end result was kinda surprising. Team Backspace (both the men’s and women’s teams) we eliminated, as was GK, as mentioned above. The Dark Horse F.U.D. put up a good showing, coming in second, as did the Bobcats with their fancy hats, but it was the Ford’s team that pulled it out. A follow up event is soon to come in Oct, be sure to check back here to get more details.

WE’RE OLD.

4 years to be exact.

(you): So what?

(Me): So what!? SO LET’S DANCE!

We will be celebrating our 4th year aniversary on Oct 16th @ Backspace in style, and details will soon follow, but I did want to say that if you could be bothered to attend, you shall be entertained by these rad folks and these awesome peeps. And if you ask really nice like, we might even play games with you.

…because I have been yelling this IRL vent for-fscking-ever now, and the blog-o-tron-o-globe just seems to be picking it up now. Apple? Controlling? WAHT U SAI?

My favorite story to relate on this subject dates back to an era when I worked for a certain Pac NW-based Apple 3rd Party retailer. It was the eve of the release of OS 10.3, which was really when OS X started to shine. The 3rd party store I worked at had just been presented with the somewhat daunting competition of a brand new Apple Store that had opened up just less than 2 miles away. This was in a metro area where there probably were a number of better retail locations, so it already felt a bit Starbucks-esque, opening up right necxt to the local independent coffee shop.

Anyway, since all new Macs need to ship with the current OS once it’s released, when 10.3 was release we were contractually supposed to get what are called flat-packs, which are OS upgrade CDs you could slide into the box just by cutting a little strip of packing tape at the top of the box. Apple was in charge of shipping these out so as to reduce the chances that copies of the OS would get out into the wild before official release day. We had been calling all week asking when we’d get them and the response was always “any day now”.

Release day comes, and our store is stuck with no flat-packs.  So some of us, on our lunch break, hop in my Vanagon and head on down the road to the gleaming new Apple store. Walk in the door and ask:

“Do you guys have the new OS X?”

“Yep.”

How about your current stock of Macs? Do they have it?”

“Yep. The Old OS is installed, but there’s an upgrade disk in the box.”

“Really.”

This store I worked at was the only store that sold Macs in the dark years of the nineties, when, as Neal Stephenson puts it, “(Apple) had GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows for so long that they have gotten all yellow and curly.” And now that they wanted to get into the retail aspect of things, they were pulling some weak-ass “the check is in the mail” BS, and we had to run around like idiots trying to figure out how to give our customers OS upgrades to an OS we should have had flat-packs for. How long did we have to wait for said flat-packs and look like said idiots?

Two months. Two months when they had them at the Apple Store on the day 10.3 was released.

Apple = Uncaring, Monopolistic Corporation that Makes Good Products (sometimes). Anything else that anyone tries to tell you is selling something.

*Edit* Uncaring is redundant, but this continues to emphasize the mopolistic aspect.