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May 31, 2008

Skipping First-Tier Support

Don't you wish there was a way for qualified people to skip over the script-reading first-tier support personnel?

I want to start every support call with, "Hi. I already know more about this than you do. What I need is to speak with somebody who knows more than I do. I've done all the basic things you will ask so can we skip the part where you ask me to reboot the device and you try to explain how to log on? Just pass me up the line to the next level so we can get this solved quickly."

Wouldn't it be cool if there was some kind of way to universally skip first-tier secretaries and get right at the more knowledgeable people? A membership number to something that you can enter during the phone intro to jump to the second-tier support folks.

Hey, you! Get to work on that!

DLink Email Support Is A Black Hole

Just a small point. Dlink makes some OK products. One of which is a wireless bridge (DAP-1522) that I suddenly have come to need. The set-up was pretty painless but the damn thing was as slow as a dial-up connection. My crappy Airport Extreme, which seems to need a hard boot every day or so and blocks access to my HP 2600N, was at least fast.

Foolishly hoping to avoid taking the Bangalore Express to phone support, I emailed support with my issue. Nothing. Not even a confirmation email. A couple days later I sent another.

Eventually I bit the hour-wait bullet and actually got a decently-speaking Indian who ran me through the basics. (I resisted the urge to explain that while I was waiting I swapped out wireless NICs in my Belkin F5D8230-4 router in hopes of getting DD-WRT running on it.)

Ultimately, the bridge is bad and has to be returned so I'm stuck with that terrible Airport Extreme until I get an alternate working.

It will be fun to see how long (if ever) before I get a response from their email support team. Clock is ticking, DLink!

May 26, 2008

Joooones!

While waiting for the start of Iron Man yesterday the audience was treated to the trailer for Indian Jones and the Kingdom of Once Great Filmmakers. I gotta say that my only reaction was this:

Even the trailer is boring.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Spielberg and Lucas used to know how to make fun movies but both have lost their way for, likely, different reasons.

Lucas: Never a great director or writer he at least knew the difference between a good story and a bad one. Now he seems to have surrounded himself with sycophants and worshippers and not a single person with the balls to speak up when a bad idea is on the table.

Spielberg: Perhaps the best director of the 80's, if judged by box office. Somebody poured sweet lies into Steven's ear, telling him that he must use his talents to make important movies, that he needed to use his power and money to promote important issues in his films. Too bad he listened to those Hollywood vipers because they stole his creative sole.

I don't know when I will subject myself to the latest Indy offering but when I do I will take the time to report on it here.

May 19, 2008

Alaska Project Cancelled

After ten months of discussions, planning and expeditures the motorcycle trip and video project has been cancelled due to a lack of motorcycle riders.

Two of the riders bailed last month. The final one, Mark, pulled the plug today. He was the mastermind of the trip where I was just the videographer who volunteered to record the adventure.

After the test ride Saturday it became evident that he would lose more than he gained if he continued with the project. Carol and I will find something else to work on this summer. Somehow I expect to turn this into a good thing.

At least I got a new Pathfinder out of the deal.

May 18, 2008

Test Ride

Naturally, we needed to take the new Pathfinder out and get her good and dirty. And learn how she handles when the pavement ends.

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We headed out for a test ride yesterday. Turned out to be the hottest day of the year so far, a milestone that could have been achieved even ten degrees cooler.

The route we picked took us into the Olympic mountains. Even though we reached a maximum altitude of 3086 ft. that was significantly below what was intended. Snow turned us back. Twice.

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Dean and Bryce joined us on the ride even though they won't be on the Big Ride. Wish they were going along.

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I learned a few things about the run-and-gun style of filming. I have to get faster at getting out and setting up the shot. I took shots with the Fig Rig and without. The Figg shots were very nice but it is such a hassle jumping out and getting the thing out and ready, then putting it back in the seatbelts to secure it from flying around the Pathfinder's cabin. Ended up taking the final few shots completely hand-held.

Outsmarting Garmin's current.gpx

Yesterday, we took a test ride with Mark and two other bikers up into the Olympic mountains (more on this later). I had loaded some three hundred waypoints into my Garmin Nuvi 360. Sure, I knew that it wouldn't show me the Forest Service roads we took, rather it was an exercise in loading and using waypoints via GPX files.

Now the issue is how to clear out those waypoints without going one-by-one through the 6 click process of deleting them. On some sites people have resorted to simply resetting their devices (as I did myself one time). However, there is a better way.

* Connect the GPS device to the computer
* Open MapSource on the computer
* Load up current.gpx from the GPS device
* Edit the waypoints, etc.
* Do a "Save As" to a different file name on your computer. Be sure to save as a GPX file.
* Disconnect the GPS device and boot it up.
* From the menus, use the "delete all" feature to remove all of your favorites.
* Right now current.gpx on the GPS has nothing in it. This is a good thing.
* Reconnect the GPS to the computer
* Copy the edited GPX file to the GPS into the same directory as current.gpx
* Disconnect the GPS and boot it up. You'll find only your new set of waypoints on the device.

TIP: If you are going to load up a ton of waypoints into your Garmn, it makes sense to save a copy of current.gpx onto your computer beforehand to make reverting that much simpler.

May 03, 2008

The Butterfly Conundrum

We are hardwired to care for and value children and it is a genetic imperitive that we do so. However, smothering children with 'love' is counter-productive.

Instead, ask yourself, "What would Ender Wiggins do?" Ender is the fictional prodigy hero in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game . As a child in kindergarten he quickly discovers self-reliance as a survival tool. Ender is extremely advanced for his age and has skipped several grades and is the target for the class bully.

Not only does he decide that he must win confrontations with older, bigger kids without the (non-existent) help from adults but to make matters easier for himself he chooses to win all the future battles up-front.

He wants to stop future bullying by beating the bully so badly now that not only will that bully never bother him again but nobody else will even consider coming after him.

As parents, we are faced with the Butterfly Conundrum.

We see our little larvae emerging from their cocoons (ever so sloowly). They struggle at everything and we think we can make things easier for them by intervening. It's true, too, but everything has a consequence.

The problem is that the butterfly requires the struggle of emerging from the cocoon to build the strength required to survive. When we step in to relieve the effort we unintentionally weaken the little bugger and make him/her weaker.

One school morning when The Daughters were in grade school they were in tears over the dresses Mrs. Director selected for the day. After much wailing it was finally learned that it was Friday Flipup Day at school, a day in which boys running around the playground would flip up any available skirts then laugh at the girls.

As parents we faced a number of options and almost all of them had us stepping in to save the day. In fact, we might well have been able to fix the problem -- for a while, at least -- but there were bigger issues. This was a teaching moment for us and Ender was the Professor.

My instructions were to Daughter The First, being older and bigger and she followed them exactly (and she wore the dress that day).

At recess she approached the ringleader of the boys and told him that if he flipped up any skirts ever again she had my permission to punch him dead in the face and that she would not get in trouble for it. She delivered her line with great conviction and, dare I say, believability. The boys got the message.

Just like that, Friday Flipup Day ended and my daughters learned how to solve that problem for the future when I may not be available to swoop in to the rescue.