Another app, called "SoldierEyes," turns a smartphone into a sort of battlefield navigation device. In addition to displaying a digital map, it features an "augmented reality" mode that enables the user to flip on the camera and scan the horizon. Digital markers pop up on the screen, displaying the direction and distance to objectives on the battlefield.The Army is looking to field cellphone-like devices, smartphones and tablets to Soldiers to help them do better things on the battlefield. I'm all for Soldiers having the tools to kill bad guys, but lets hope the device(s) the Army chooses turn out to be more reliable than the devices that I have. My year old Samsung smartphone catches only one email out of fifty, locks up for minutes at a time, turns off at random, and on full volume can barely be heard. I would hate to hear about how one of our warriors got killed because his I-Trash superphone couldn't muster enough electrons to get that call-for-fire message out. In my experience, electronic devices are not reliable enough for me to place my faith in.
Showing posts with label Electronic Junk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Electronic Junk. Show all posts
Friday, June 3, 2011
Electronic doodads for warriors
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Kidde Scorn
Ok, so why is it that modern smoke detectors these days not only cry wolf half a dozen times a year, but decide to do so only at zero-dark-thirty? It defeats the whole purpose of having them in the first place, if you're so used to them giving false alarms that you don't even bother to check the house out in the middle of the night. You instead spend your time waiting to hear which one goes off first so that you can either smash it on the ceiling with a broom like it's a bigass bug, or take it down and sling it out into the yard like I did last night.
A couple of years ago I updated our house to code by retrofitting the old battery powered smoke detectors with integrated, hard-wired Kidde smoke detectors. A week later I was far far away in a foreign land when the report from my wife came in that the whole house was beeping at like three in the morning. It finally stopped on its own, and didn't repeat that again for several months. At this point, it's a quarterly thing for the detectors to sound off for no reason, and it always happens late at night.
As a residential electrician in a past life, my experience has been that in a twelve pack of modern smoke detectors, one or two of them right off the bat are going to be defective. You normally find this out when you test them; the ones that are screwed up are immediately noticeable, and you replace them so that the home owners don't have an issue with them in the middle of the night. From what I can recall, the smoke detectors from my youth - the one you payed a nickle for and got ten free at the bargain bin at the local flea market - always worked like their supposed to for twenty years or more. You replace the battery when it starts to chirp, and they only go off when there's real smoke, like when you're burning some delicious bacon.
Somewhere along the line the manufacturers who make these detectors have fallen asleep at the wheel.
Last night we had another one go down - the second this year - at a quarter til' three in the morning. Knowing my wife, she no doubt lost the rest of the night's sleep over the event, which means she'll suffer at work today over an item that I would gladly pay three times as much for if it just worked like it's intended. If not, it's back to the flea markets for the nicotine coated one's that some farmer took down when the battery died. I know those will work.
Grrrrrrrrrrr.
A couple of years ago I updated our house to code by retrofitting the old battery powered smoke detectors with integrated, hard-wired Kidde smoke detectors. A week later I was far far away in a foreign land when the report from my wife came in that the whole house was beeping at like three in the morning. It finally stopped on its own, and didn't repeat that again for several months. At this point, it's a quarterly thing for the detectors to sound off for no reason, and it always happens late at night.
As a residential electrician in a past life, my experience has been that in a twelve pack of modern smoke detectors, one or two of them right off the bat are going to be defective. You normally find this out when you test them; the ones that are screwed up are immediately noticeable, and you replace them so that the home owners don't have an issue with them in the middle of the night. From what I can recall, the smoke detectors from my youth - the one you payed a nickle for and got ten free at the bargain bin at the local flea market - always worked like their supposed to for twenty years or more. You replace the battery when it starts to chirp, and they only go off when there's real smoke, like when you're burning some delicious bacon.
Somewhere along the line the manufacturers who make these detectors have fallen asleep at the wheel.
Last night we had another one go down - the second this year - at a quarter til' three in the morning. Knowing my wife, she no doubt lost the rest of the night's sleep over the event, which means she'll suffer at work today over an item that I would gladly pay three times as much for if it just worked like it's intended. If not, it's back to the flea markets for the nicotine coated one's that some farmer took down when the battery died. I know those will work.
Grrrrrrrrrrr.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Anger Management
So this last weekend I decided not to blow a gasket when my Competitive Edge Dynamics Millennium 2 chronograph once again gave me absolutely nothing of worth. This was my 5th range trip using it without a reading at all, or at least an accurate one. When I got my third reading of 85osomething fps from my 308, I tried my 1911 with handloads and got 600 something, so I went ahead and did myself a great big favor and calmly dismantled the device with accurate fire from my pistol.
If they weren't so expensive, I would probably buy a dozen more for this purpose as it worked pretty spectacular as a target; at least, way better than it does as a chronograph. As I had said before, from all of my research on chronographs, the sensor/screen technology is very primitive, and when you chose one brand of chronograph over another, you're not buying better electronics so much as you're buying features. The sensors are going to be the same.
Checking out this post on LongRangeHunting.com forums told me what to expect from CED's customer service, which appears to be lacking. I wasn't interested in a $72 refund check for my troubles, and I also decided that I wasn't getting duped for another $90 for the IR screens only to have to build a "black box" to make a supposed reliable piece of equipment perform as it was intended to without it. In my experience, Competitive Edge Dynamics builds their chronographs out of the finest snake oil, and perhaps I should have seen it coming. From their website:
I also did research on gun forums to find out what the general consensus was, but apparently didn't look hard enough. I also could have scrolled down on CED's information page to find an extensive list of reasons why their shit chronograph won't function. Caveat Emptor - buyer beware: if you have to do a "flashlight test" on a product that costs twice as much as the competition just to see if the fucking thing is even working, you have been shammed. I offer you evidence now about this piece of equipment with the hopes that somebody looking into chronographs will know what to expect. If my words aren't enough, take a look at what you can expect at 3 o'clock in the afternoon while out testing loads on the range:
This could be you , sports fans! See all those "e" marked down? Those are errors. Also, actually shooting these loads that I tested at range showed the velocities to be over 200 fps faster than what the chrony was reading; gravity doesn't lie. Now you know and can make your choice. For me, I'm going to buy another $80 Shooting Chrony Beta model to put in my range bag, and later buy an Oehler 35 when I have the fundage. And for the time being, I'm on a jihad to expose all the pathetic pieces of gear out there with reviews and posts like this one.
If they weren't so expensive, I would probably buy a dozen more for this purpose as it worked pretty spectacular as a target; at least, way better than it does as a chronograph. As I had said before, from all of my research on chronographs, the sensor/screen technology is very primitive, and when you chose one brand of chronograph over another, you're not buying better electronics so much as you're buying features. The sensors are going to be the same.
Checking out this post on LongRangeHunting.com forums told me what to expect from CED's customer service, which appears to be lacking. I wasn't interested in a $72 refund check for my troubles, and I also decided that I wasn't getting duped for another $90 for the IR screens only to have to build a "black box" to make a supposed reliable piece of equipment perform as it was intended to without it. In my experience, Competitive Edge Dynamics builds their chronographs out of the finest snake oil, and perhaps I should have seen it coming. From their website:
Expanded digital chip design now gives the CED M2 the ability of reading velocities at much lower light levels. On clear days, this means the ability to chronograph from early morning till almost sunset.Close to sunset is when my Shooting Chrony Beta and Competition Electronics ProChrono would start to give errors, so this is the line that sold me for the most part. The M2 gave me errors the first time I ever took it out, which was in the late afternoon, so the above line is bullshit.
I also did research on gun forums to find out what the general consensus was, but apparently didn't look hard enough. I also could have scrolled down on CED's information page to find an extensive list of reasons why their shit chronograph won't function. Caveat Emptor - buyer beware: if you have to do a "flashlight test" on a product that costs twice as much as the competition just to see if the fucking thing is even working, you have been shammed. I offer you evidence now about this piece of equipment with the hopes that somebody looking into chronographs will know what to expect. If my words aren't enough, take a look at what you can expect at 3 o'clock in the afternoon while out testing loads on the range:
This could be you , sports fans! See all those "e" marked down? Those are errors. Also, actually shooting these loads that I tested at range showed the velocities to be over 200 fps faster than what the chrony was reading; gravity doesn't lie. Now you know and can make your choice. For me, I'm going to buy another $80 Shooting Chrony Beta model to put in my range bag, and later buy an Oehler 35 when I have the fundage. And for the time being, I'm on a jihad to expose all the pathetic pieces of gear out there with reviews and posts like this one.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Looking for a chronograph? Here's some helpful tips:
Buy a cheap one.
Having started out with a Shooting Chrony F1 model, and then stepping up to a Competition Electronics ProChrono Digital, and now to a Competitive Edge Dynamics M2, I can tell you that you most definitely DO NOT get what you pay for. In fact, from the research that I have recently done, it seems that chronographs are all basically built from the same cheaply made bargain bin parts and sensors, and that spending more money on one may give you more flashy features, but not reliability.
I was duped into buying the CED M2 because of the manufacturer claims of being more reliable than the rest, and less prone to errors due to light issues, but I see now that I ended up with the least reliable chronograph on the market. Looking back, the Shooting Chrony gave me about the same level of errors as the M2, maybe a little less, but in that I knew nothing of the limitations of these devices, so one could say that errors would be expected. It was only when I bought the CE ProChrono that I read up on the fact that light makes them very fickle; to operate reliably, they need bright sunlight.
If you are having problems getting your chrono to read, make sure you set it up where it will have either full sunlight or full shade or, in the case of the CED M2, don't bother setting it up at all because it won't work regardless. Make sure that there are no shadows across the sensors, and if there are, put up something to completely shade them. If you are shooting rifles, set your chrono up at 12 to 15 feet from the muzzle, and maintain that distance for each shooting session.
If you have the CED M2 chrono, and don't feel like heeding my warning about not bothering with it, make sure to place the display device on a separate table several feet away from the gun or you will get crazy errors. I found out this weekend that you can shake the display on the M2 and get a reading from it despite the fact that the sensors were 15' away. On previous shooting sessions with the M2, I often got two readings for one shot, on an interval of about 1 in 10 shots. Very frustrating. If there are others shooting near you, make 20 feet or more of space in between the chrono and them, as well as the display or the M2 will read their shots too. Also, you will get readings when the wind gusts, so keep that in mind as the display will make all kinds of cool calculations for you, which don't mean squat when you have six velocity readings of 112 fps from the wind queering your shot string. Something else of note is that when I failed to get a reading from my third shot yesterday, I picked up the display and the numbers on it faded in and out, prompting me to install a brand new battery, with the same results. Not what you would expect from a $200 device advertised as being super fancy pants reliable and better than the competition.
I hope this information helps somebody. I was hugely let down this weekend as I had new loads for the 308 from my recently acquired IMR 8208 XBR powder that I believe will end my temperature and consistency problems, and the M2 chrono decided it didn't feel like working that day. Having a working chronograph for load development is a must, and I expected more from the M2 than I got. I din't get a single reading from it, so instead of ruining my test by continuing to fire the rounds, I called it a day.
That's not exactly true; I threw a great big fit about it and hurled the M2 display into the woods at a shown 324 feet per second, but at least I didn't shoot it. For some background, the Shooting Chrony met it's fate on the edge of darkness two years ago when it was not recording shots from my AR15 while shooting offhand. I started shooting closer and closer to the sensors in order to get a reading as the sun was going down until I was shooting a half inch above the unit, and the inevitable happened when I put a 55 grain round right through the display. That was an accident though. The exact same thing happened to my CE ProChrono a couple of months ago when I skipped a round off the top of the display, ruining my OCW test, which prompted me to immediately toss a C-Products magazine in the general direction of the chrono that - as fate would have it - smashed in the display screen with a perfect shot. I had no other choice at that point but to finish it off humanely with a magazine of 100 grain hardcast rounds from my Kel-Tec.
Doesn't someone out there make a chronograph that doesn't suck? I mean, damn, we can send people to the moon; we can replace a human being's heart; we can split atoms and use that technology in a bomb to end the world, and yet there's no one out there that has mastered building a device that can clock the speed of a bullet. Really?
Sheesh!
Now comes my dilemma. CED makes an infra red light kit for the fancy pants M2 that is reported to end the problem of light sensitivity. Thinking about it though, the M2 is reported to end the light sensitivity problems without the IR kit, so I have my doubts, and there's also the issue of the display fading in and out, so their overall quality is in question. I could shell out the $90 on the IR kit and maybe have a working chrono, or I could spend the same amount on another Shooting Chrono F1 and have one that at least works some of the time, which would also allow me to take my M2 and set it on fire in the yard and dance around it in a loin cloth while screaming profane gibberish. I really like that idea. For what it's worth, when my F1 chrony took a round to the face, it still worked, except to say that the bullet hit both sensors and ruined them. So it's at least tough.
I think a nasty letter to the manufacturer is in order, and I have already left a review on the Sinclair International website where I bought the CED M2, which as of this morning hasn't posted yet. I'll keep checking that though.
If you come across this post, which I'm going to go ahead and call a Competitive Edge Dynamics M2 Chronograph review, my advice to you is Caveat Emptor. Don't bother wasting your dollar on "advanced software and digital circuitry" that was put together from Radio Shack seconds and packaged in a cool looking plastic package. Buy the cheapest chronograph you can find as they are all made from the same 1950's technology, and maybe the recent breakthroughs in IR technology will bear some fruit and make these things not suck.
*Update* I found this post on Sniper's Hide about folks building their own IR light source as the kit from CED doesn't sound all that reliable.
Having started out with a Shooting Chrony F1 model, and then stepping up to a Competition Electronics ProChrono Digital, and now to a Competitive Edge Dynamics M2, I can tell you that you most definitely DO NOT get what you pay for. In fact, from the research that I have recently done, it seems that chronographs are all basically built from the same cheaply made bargain bin parts and sensors, and that spending more money on one may give you more flashy features, but not reliability.
I was duped into buying the CED M2 because of the manufacturer claims of being more reliable than the rest, and less prone to errors due to light issues, but I see now that I ended up with the least reliable chronograph on the market. Looking back, the Shooting Chrony gave me about the same level of errors as the M2, maybe a little less, but in that I knew nothing of the limitations of these devices, so one could say that errors would be expected. It was only when I bought the CE ProChrono that I read up on the fact that light makes them very fickle; to operate reliably, they need bright sunlight.
If you are having problems getting your chrono to read, make sure you set it up where it will have either full sunlight or full shade or, in the case of the CED M2, don't bother setting it up at all because it won't work regardless. Make sure that there are no shadows across the sensors, and if there are, put up something to completely shade them. If you are shooting rifles, set your chrono up at 12 to 15 feet from the muzzle, and maintain that distance for each shooting session.
If you have the CED M2 chrono, and don't feel like heeding my warning about not bothering with it, make sure to place the display device on a separate table several feet away from the gun or you will get crazy errors. I found out this weekend that you can shake the display on the M2 and get a reading from it despite the fact that the sensors were 15' away. On previous shooting sessions with the M2, I often got two readings for one shot, on an interval of about 1 in 10 shots. Very frustrating. If there are others shooting near you, make 20 feet or more of space in between the chrono and them, as well as the display or the M2 will read their shots too. Also, you will get readings when the wind gusts, so keep that in mind as the display will make all kinds of cool calculations for you, which don't mean squat when you have six velocity readings of 112 fps from the wind queering your shot string. Something else of note is that when I failed to get a reading from my third shot yesterday, I picked up the display and the numbers on it faded in and out, prompting me to install a brand new battery, with the same results. Not what you would expect from a $200 device advertised as being super fancy pants reliable and better than the competition.
I hope this information helps somebody. I was hugely let down this weekend as I had new loads for the 308 from my recently acquired IMR 8208 XBR powder that I believe will end my temperature and consistency problems, and the M2 chrono decided it didn't feel like working that day. Having a working chronograph for load development is a must, and I expected more from the M2 than I got. I din't get a single reading from it, so instead of ruining my test by continuing to fire the rounds, I called it a day.
That's not exactly true; I threw a great big fit about it and hurled the M2 display into the woods at a shown 324 feet per second, but at least I didn't shoot it. For some background, the Shooting Chrony met it's fate on the edge of darkness two years ago when it was not recording shots from my AR15 while shooting offhand. I started shooting closer and closer to the sensors in order to get a reading as the sun was going down until I was shooting a half inch above the unit, and the inevitable happened when I put a 55 grain round right through the display. That was an accident though. The exact same thing happened to my CE ProChrono a couple of months ago when I skipped a round off the top of the display, ruining my OCW test, which prompted me to immediately toss a C-Products magazine in the general direction of the chrono that - as fate would have it - smashed in the display screen with a perfect shot. I had no other choice at that point but to finish it off humanely with a magazine of 100 grain hardcast rounds from my Kel-Tec.
Doesn't someone out there make a chronograph that doesn't suck? I mean, damn, we can send people to the moon; we can replace a human being's heart; we can split atoms and use that technology in a bomb to end the world, and yet there's no one out there that has mastered building a device that can clock the speed of a bullet. Really?
Sheesh!
Now comes my dilemma. CED makes an infra red light kit for the fancy pants M2 that is reported to end the problem of light sensitivity. Thinking about it though, the M2 is reported to end the light sensitivity problems without the IR kit, so I have my doubts, and there's also the issue of the display fading in and out, so their overall quality is in question. I could shell out the $90 on the IR kit and maybe have a working chrono, or I could spend the same amount on another Shooting Chrono F1 and have one that at least works some of the time, which would also allow me to take my M2 and set it on fire in the yard and dance around it in a loin cloth while screaming profane gibberish. I really like that idea. For what it's worth, when my F1 chrony took a round to the face, it still worked, except to say that the bullet hit both sensors and ruined them. So it's at least tough.
I think a nasty letter to the manufacturer is in order, and I have already left a review on the Sinclair International website where I bought the CED M2, which as of this morning hasn't posted yet. I'll keep checking that though.
If you come across this post, which I'm going to go ahead and call a Competitive Edge Dynamics M2 Chronograph review, my advice to you is Caveat Emptor. Don't bother wasting your dollar on "advanced software and digital circuitry" that was put together from Radio Shack seconds and packaged in a cool looking plastic package. Buy the cheapest chronograph you can find as they are all made from the same 1950's technology, and maybe the recent breakthroughs in IR technology will bear some fruit and make these things not suck.
*Update* I found this post on Sniper's Hide about folks building their own IR light source as the kit from CED doesn't sound all that reliable.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Equipment Change Proposal: Cameras, cell phones, and other electronic junk
This post is rage against the electronic machine, and it probably ain't gonna be pretty.
My bane in life is that nothing electronic lasts around me, and that shit is for real. I'm waiting for the CIA to knock on my door with a one-way ticket to China for a new job sitting in an office across the street from the servers for their intelligence agency. If you want connectivity problems in a building, around office computers, or around people with cell phones, just sit my happy ass twelve feet away and it will happen. Mrs. CTone has commented that I have a magnet in my head.
Now that that is out of the way, whomever designs cameras, cell phones, and other electronic doodads can go blow a goat. Tonight the fam and I were decorating the ol' Christmas tree, you know, something that only happens once a year, and the only working camera in the house ironically was the one in my brand new but barely functioning cell phone; my seventh in two years. OK, technically my sixth as one of them - a BlackBerry - was slain dead by a 33" tire on my XTerra due to the shitty engineering of the bastards at Maxpedition.
Why yes, bitterness IS my middle name. How did you know?
Flashback to yesterday: I picked up the not-quite-two-year-old Sony A300 DSLR camera to take some pictures of the little ones, and when I turned the thing on it made this "Brrrrrraaaaaaaaappppppp" sound that emanated from the lens. Did the same thing when I turned it off. I went to reach for it tonight as it was a picture taking moment, with the kids hanging ornaments on the tree and all, and remembered that the Sony happened to not be capable of doing its designed duty due to suckage. My old standby is my shitty Canon PowerShit SD750 that had to be sent back to the factory brand new, right out of the package. . . . . .twice. Well, that camera sucks too! Turning it on gave me a white screen. It still makes a flash, and you can zoom in and out, but no picture takey takey.
My relationship with the PowerShit is not a nice one; the first time I used it was on a trip to Germany, and out of almost a thousand pictures taken, about a hundred of them you could make out what they were.
Mr. Goat, I am pleased to introduce you to the folks at Canon.
My new cell phone is a Samsung Captivate with Android operating system, and it randomly gets so hot sitting idle on my desk at work that it warns me to turn it off or it will burn up. Also, it turns itself off about once a week for no reason at all that I can establish. WTF?
I don't know much about low voltage electronics other than they are unreliable as hell. Laptops are a perfect example; anything with Windows in it only lasts about three months for me. That's not a lie. The only reason -- Only. Reason. -- that I no longer do Movie Guns anymore is because out of the three laptops that I own, and two desktops that I did own, none of them stay functioning long enough for me to do a post. Either the CD/DVD drive burns the fuck up the first time I use it, or Windows Media Player shits the bed (every time; I was burning the second CD I ever attempted in my new work laptop the day before yesterday and WMP took an unrecoverable dive. It does not work anymore), or the operating system crashes (often), or an update installs a driver that doesn't work and the computer won't boot.
I can't tell you how much moolah I would drop down for some tickets to watch a pride of syphilis afflicted lions tear apart the whole Microsoft staff in one horrific bloody massacre. I'd even spend the ten bucks for some stale popcorn.
I may need a custom made tinfoil hat to shield my magnet from my electronics, or the folks making em' need to figure this shit out and make them not suck. It's true that I may be a mutant - I have DVD players that don't work, cell phones that don't work; I've seen every register at my local Wal-Mart reboot simultaneously at the very moment I swiped my bank card . . . .twice (once while the Mrs. and I were dating and, no shit, I was right then telling her about how I have some sort of issue around electronics).
The chances though that it's really me are slim, while the chances of mankind making mother boards and microchips so small that the copper running through them grow from the heat and short out are startlingly high. It speaks volumes though, to me anyways, that there are so many things that we humans use day-to-day that are just not built to last. If they were, then I wouldn't have so much to bitch about, now would I? What has to be done or not done for some people to build useful stuff that doesn't fail when you need it? Why is it that products used nowadays that has low amounts of voltage running through it barely seem to make it through the year? Is it because technology is advancing at such a rapid pace that it's better to just buy a new phone every year than update it?
I will make it my Christmas wish to have one electronic gizmo last the full 2011 year, or the fuckers that build the stuff will again hear my wrath!
My bane in life is that nothing electronic lasts around me, and that shit is for real. I'm waiting for the CIA to knock on my door with a one-way ticket to China for a new job sitting in an office across the street from the servers for their intelligence agency. If you want connectivity problems in a building, around office computers, or around people with cell phones, just sit my happy ass twelve feet away and it will happen. Mrs. CTone has commented that I have a magnet in my head.
Now that that is out of the way, whomever designs cameras, cell phones, and other electronic doodads can go blow a goat. Tonight the fam and I were decorating the ol' Christmas tree, you know, something that only happens once a year, and the only working camera in the house ironically was the one in my brand new but barely functioning cell phone; my seventh in two years. OK, technically my sixth as one of them - a BlackBerry - was slain dead by a 33" tire on my XTerra due to the shitty engineering of the bastards at Maxpedition.
Why yes, bitterness IS my middle name. How did you know?
Flashback to yesterday: I picked up the not-quite-two-year-old Sony A300 DSLR camera to take some pictures of the little ones, and when I turned the thing on it made this "Brrrrrraaaaaaaaappppppp" sound that emanated from the lens. Did the same thing when I turned it off. I went to reach for it tonight as it was a picture taking moment, with the kids hanging ornaments on the tree and all, and remembered that the Sony happened to not be capable of doing its designed duty due to suckage. My old standby is my shitty Canon PowerShit SD750 that had to be sent back to the factory brand new, right out of the package. . . . . .twice. Well, that camera sucks too! Turning it on gave me a white screen. It still makes a flash, and you can zoom in and out, but no picture takey takey.
My relationship with the PowerShit is not a nice one; the first time I used it was on a trip to Germany, and out of almost a thousand pictures taken, about a hundred of them you could make out what they were.
Mr. Goat, I am pleased to introduce you to the folks at Canon.
My new cell phone is a Samsung Captivate with Android operating system, and it randomly gets so hot sitting idle on my desk at work that it warns me to turn it off or it will burn up. Also, it turns itself off about once a week for no reason at all that I can establish. WTF?
I don't know much about low voltage electronics other than they are unreliable as hell. Laptops are a perfect example; anything with Windows in it only lasts about three months for me. That's not a lie. The only reason -- Only. Reason. -- that I no longer do Movie Guns anymore is because out of the three laptops that I own, and two desktops that I did own, none of them stay functioning long enough for me to do a post. Either the CD/DVD drive burns the fuck up the first time I use it, or Windows Media Player shits the bed (every time; I was burning the second CD I ever attempted in my new work laptop the day before yesterday and WMP took an unrecoverable dive. It does not work anymore), or the operating system crashes (often), or an update installs a driver that doesn't work and the computer won't boot.
I can't tell you how much moolah I would drop down for some tickets to watch a pride of syphilis afflicted lions tear apart the whole Microsoft staff in one horrific bloody massacre. I'd even spend the ten bucks for some stale popcorn.
I may need a custom made tinfoil hat to shield my magnet from my electronics, or the folks making em' need to figure this shit out and make them not suck. It's true that I may be a mutant - I have DVD players that don't work, cell phones that don't work; I've seen every register at my local Wal-Mart reboot simultaneously at the very moment I swiped my bank card . . . .twice (once while the Mrs. and I were dating and, no shit, I was right then telling her about how I have some sort of issue around electronics).
The chances though that it's really me are slim, while the chances of mankind making mother boards and microchips so small that the copper running through them grow from the heat and short out are startlingly high. It speaks volumes though, to me anyways, that there are so many things that we humans use day-to-day that are just not built to last. If they were, then I wouldn't have so much to bitch about, now would I? What has to be done or not done for some people to build useful stuff that doesn't fail when you need it? Why is it that products used nowadays that has low amounts of voltage running through it barely seem to make it through the year? Is it because technology is advancing at such a rapid pace that it's better to just buy a new phone every year than update it?
I will make it my Christmas wish to have one electronic gizmo last the full 2011 year, or the fuckers that build the stuff will again hear my wrath!
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Massive technical difficulties
So, my home PC is no longer on the rocks (it's at least running under it's own power) but the big ass 22" screen is TU. While I was on travel, I was going to do a Movie Guns on my work laptop since I didn't have the kids around to otherwise direct my attention.
Sadly, my new work PC has the same problems as my old one, in that it can't capture images from a movie. Pasting a picture into MS Paint, or any other program doesn't work, so no Movie Guns yet. To top that off, coming home from travel took way longer than I had anticipated, so that is where I've been.
O'Hare Airport sucks.
Now, the time has come in my home renovation to do my man cave, so the home PC is unplugged and buried under stuff in a back room, but my wife's new computer is available. Also, my mother kindly gave me a laptop to use in the meantime, but both of these lack the big ass screen that I believe gives me such nice screen caps.
I have an idea though, but I don't want to give it away just yet in case I'm really just an idiot. Brilliancy or bust!
I'll keep you posted.
Sadly, my new work PC has the same problems as my old one, in that it can't capture images from a movie. Pasting a picture into MS Paint, or any other program doesn't work, so no Movie Guns yet. To top that off, coming home from travel took way longer than I had anticipated, so that is where I've been.
O'Hare Airport sucks.
Now, the time has come in my home renovation to do my man cave, so the home PC is unplugged and buried under stuff in a back room, but my wife's new computer is available. Also, my mother kindly gave me a laptop to use in the meantime, but both of these lack the big ass screen that I believe gives me such nice screen caps.
I have an idea though, but I don't want to give it away just yet in case I'm really just an idiot. Brilliancy or bust!
I'll keep you posted.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
My Gateway is busted
My two year old Gateway is all jacked up, but it's running. Unfortunately, I'm not on it because the monitor is dead. The warranty is two years from what I can gather, and it's been right at two years. A quick Google search shows that my monitor is known for dying a quick death.
I remember a time when people took pride in building shit that lasted for awhile. Those days are over.
My computer is not the only thing that's screwed up. I got a HTC Fuse for Christmas, and when I have time I'm sending it back because it's so jacked up it barely works. I have two pages of stuff I've wrote down that doesn't work, and that's not counting the stuff that's just part of the design. That it answers calls in my pocket is a design problem; that it forgets every phone number in my speed dial is a defect. I have to hard reset sometimes several times a day because it locks up and won't work.
Junk.
When will people start making quality products again? Electronics these days are especially unreliable, and I don't trust my lively hood to them.
I will have lots of time next week, and I will be using a laptop to do the Movie Guns post. I wanted it done this weekend but that's impossible right now. Stay tuned.
I remember a time when people took pride in building shit that lasted for awhile. Those days are over.
My computer is not the only thing that's screwed up. I got a HTC Fuse for Christmas, and when I have time I'm sending it back because it's so jacked up it barely works. I have two pages of stuff I've wrote down that doesn't work, and that's not counting the stuff that's just part of the design. That it answers calls in my pocket is a design problem; that it forgets every phone number in my speed dial is a defect. I have to hard reset sometimes several times a day because it locks up and won't work.
Junk.
When will people start making quality products again? Electronics these days are especially unreliable, and I don't trust my lively hood to them.
I will have lots of time next week, and I will be using a laptop to do the Movie Guns post. I wanted it done this weekend but that's impossible right now. Stay tuned.
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